TV

Busy day in front of the telly...

Downton Abbey
3x03 Episode 3
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Lorraine's Fast, Fresh and Easy Food
1x04 Baking It

Merlin
5x01 Arthur's Bane Part One
I think the popularity of Merlin has caught some people by surprise. It started off OK, a lesser Doctor Who-slot drama, but as the series has grown so its audience seems to have been established -- this season five premiere gained around 6 million viewers according to the overnights, leaving it just behind Strictly and X Factor. It's in the same ballpark as Who these days, rather than a couple of million behind it. I wouldn't argue it's that good, but it is still fun with an increased edge as it's grown older. And as the producers always said they had a five year plan, perhaps getting somewhere fast too.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Never Mind the Buzzcocks
26x02 Episode 2
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Peep Show
4x03 Gym
4x04 Handyman
Remember when I watched the first ever episode of Peep Show and didn't like it so never watched it again (despite what I said)? Yeah. But this was on Dave when I wasn't feeling so well and I just let it happen. And it was quite good, actually.

Person of Interest
1x09 Get Carter
Much like Suburgatory, having to download to catch up got me in the habit and now I've overtaken C5. Oh well.
[Watch it on Demand 5 from Tuesday 9th October.]

Suburgatory
1x15 Fire with Fire

this week on 100 Films

Two new reviews were published to 100 Films in a Year this week.

But before that, October has just begun, so here's the September update.

And with that out of the way, those reviews...


The Negotiator (1998)

As premises go, “hostage negotiator turns hostage taker” is a doozy. You can immediately imagine all the drama to be had from pitting The Best Negotiator In The World against The Second Best Negotiator In The World — he’ll know all the techniques! He’ll… well, mainly the techniques one. But also his colleagues will be working against him — will they be on his side? Or against him? It practically writes itself.

Read more here.


Unknown (2011)

In the film’s special features, producer Leonard Goldberg talks about how, having made thrillers his whole life, when he starts reading or watching them he can usually figure it all out early on, but the novel on which Unknown is based managed to surprise him. Thinking if it could surprise him it might surprise others too, he snapped up the rights, and I must say I think he was right.

Read more here.


And new to the new blog...

Melinda and Melinda (2004)

One might argue that this is a remake of Sliding Doors, but only in a superficial and unsustainable way. Here, two stories are told, both taking the same premise — a Manhattan dinner party is interrupted — but one is told as a tragedy and one is told as a comedy. The only common factor is Radha Mitchell’s Melinda, who takes on a very different role in each tale.

Read more here.


Taken (2008)

remember Man On Fire? The Tony Scott/Denzel Washington one. Well, replace Washington with Neeson and Dakota Fanning’s character with “his daughter” and you’ve more or less got it. Taken is practically a remake, only in Europe, with a happier ending, and an hour shorter. It’s also not as good, but that’s a different matter.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week. I'm a bit under the weather at the moment, hence the overnight delay in this post. I doubt anyone noticed.

And there's not much at all to notice this week, either. I would've had Prometheus and the Indiana Jones BDs in the past, but all websites seem to be rubbish at getting pre-orders out early these days; plus for those I went with sites who have always been bad at it, so what do you expect.

In other news, it's the running time update. Big new Bond box set could make a large impact... except it replaces all the equivalent films on DVD. Still, that makes it 4.167% longer anyway...

Number of titles in collection: 1,492 [up 1]
Of which DVDs: 1,143 [up 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 349 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 3,703 [up 1]
Number of films in collection: 1,507 [no change]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,679 [no change]
Number of short films in collection: 367 [up 2]

And the running time update goes as follows...

Total running time of collection (approx.):
269 days and 40 minutes.
(Down 6 hours and 32 minutes from last month.)

...oh. I must confess, I'm not entirely sure how it's gone down. But that's what it says, so...

See you next week, faithful reader.