Friday 9 December 2011

TV

The Graham Norton Show
10x06 (2/12/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Pointless
4x06 (21/3/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

The Dark Knight Rises prologue: Tom Hardy's Bane blasted as unintelligible by Ann Lee
(from Metro)
The opening six or seven minutes of Christopher Nolan's third and final Batman film were screened for critics and filmmakers last night. Trust a Mail-owned paper to be depressing: most (perhaps all) of those critics have soundly praised the footage, noting the tricky dialogue as the one minor downside that may be fixed (the film's still six months away). For a more thorough preview, try /Film, which also has details on how much of the finished film will be in IMAX. Sounds incredible, though I'm not sure I'll be able to see it in that format. Still, there's time to plan yet...

Doctor Who named most-downloaded US iTunes show over Modern Family by Hugh Armitage
(from Digital Spy)
"This is incredibly exciting news," said Doctor Who lead writer and executive producer Steven Moffat. "It's an honour to be on the same list as all those shows, let alone at the very top. And for a British show to have achieved this in the US is absolutely remarkable."

Matt Smith rues cancellation of Doctor Who Confidential by Paul Jones
(from Radio Times)
“It’s a pity as I think it’s a show which can reinvent itself year on year and it’s one of the biggest shows on BBC3," said Smith. “I guess people come in and have new ideas and want to have their own fresh take on it"
A polite way of saying "some people change things for the sake of it to make their own mark", I think.

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

Not much to report this week, except for that the numbers are still going up, despite it being nearly Christmas. Expect some next week too; the week after, I'm not sure; and the week after that will be the big (hopefully!) Christmas one.

I will say, though, that I was sent two packages from the same US retailer a couple of weeks ago. They shipped just 3½ hours apart. The one sent second arrived last Tuesday; there's still no sign of the one sent first. Weird.

Number of titles in collection: 1,408 [up 4]
Of which DVDs: 1,142 [up 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 266 [up 3]

Number of discs in collection: 3,504 [up 6]
Number of films in collection: 1,498 [up 3]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,335 [up 6]

See you next week, faithful reader.

A daily dose of sci-fi - Day 26

Best battle scene

I kinda feel this ought to be a big ol' space battle, like that one in Serenity or something, but I can't think of many that immediately jump out at me, so I guess this becomes "best battle/fight/action scene", and I offer up this one:


I love a good movie sword fight, but unsurprisingly these are few and far between in sci-fi movies. Except for Star Wars.

For all the prequels' flaws -- and they are many -- the one thing they have over the original trilogy are the lightsaber duels. Whereas the first three films largely feature actors bumping some sticks together a bit, the prequels feature fully choreographed fights that are properly exciting to watch.

The best of these is at the climax of Episode I, when Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan take on Darth Maul (there's a bunch of Fantasy names if ever you saw them) and his infamous double-ended lightsaber. It is, as I said, fully choreographed and properly exciting, and just about everything you dreamed a lightsaber battle should be ever since you were a kid.

Some may argue there are better duels later in the prequel trilogy. Maybe, but this is the first one that showed what a lightsaber duel really could be, and this is the one that sticks in the memory.

And it's nice there's something to like about the prequels, eh?


Read about a daily dose of sci-fi, with links to the rest of the series, here.