Monday 2 April 2012

TV

Game of Thrones
1x01 Winter is Coming [2nd watch]
As season two kicks off in America (and, indeed, tonight in the UK), I'm finally getting on with watching the first season. And golly does it look good on Blu-ray; and golly aren't the discs packed with special features -- I'll have to get stuck in to them too, at some point. Other than that, it's still as awesome as it was first time round (has it really been almost a year?! Crikey). I look forward to actually finishing it this time.

The Graham Norton Show
10x18 (2/3/12 edition)

Just a Minute [2012]
1x03 Episode 3
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Pointless
6x33 (29/3/12 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Comics

Batman: The Dark Knight #7 by David Finch & Paul Jenkins
A big fight? Fine. Attempt at a Big Twist? Adequate. Featuring plenty of Superman and the Flash in a Batman book? No thanks, this isn't Justice League. Upcoming change of writer? Good good.

Batwoman #7 by J.H. Williams III, W. Haden Blackman & Amy Reeder
Less-good art and a confusing story is robbing Batwoman of its previous greatness. Boo.

Resurrection Man #7 by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning & Fernando Dagnino
After last month's trip to Gotham, now Mitch Shelley is in Metropolis. Not sure if there's a reason for that, other than hanging him on bits of the DC universe everyone will know. Still, good book, no matter of where it's set.

Articles

Box Office Guru Wrapup: Hunger Games Still #1, Breaks $250M
by Gitesh Pandya (from Rotten Tomatoes)

The stats are quite incredible, so I shall try to abbreviate this to the key interesting ones:
The Hunger Games remained the most popular film leading the box office with more ticket sales in its second frame than the two new releases combined...

[It] scored another $61.1M this weekend, according to estimates, propelling the ten-day cume to an eye-popping $251M. That allowed [it] to break Avatar's record for the fastest non-sequel to break the quarter-billion mark. [Avatar] needed 12 days... including the Christmas frame whereas Hunger had no holiday help. In fact, only three films in box office history have ever reached the milestone faster - The Dark Knight... Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen... All were July releases when weekday numbers were much stronger thanks to students being out of school and the Potter figures included a boost from 3D...

The fact that Games could collect so much in such a short period of time outside of summer is nothing short of incredible. Overall, it was the seventh best performance for any film in its sophomore weekend and fourth biggest among non-sequels behind Avatar, Spider-Man, and Alice in Wonderland [which is, you could argue, a sequel]. Among second weekends, Hunger beat out every installment of the Harry Potter and Twilight franchises...

Overseas... the international total [reached] $113.9M... A final global gross near $600M is possible for the $75M production.

That's what happens when you take teeny books with a Twilight-esque fanbase and turn them into a film that's actually well-reviewed.