Friday 28 February 2014

TV

Brooklyn Nine-Nine
1x07 48 Hours
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]


How I Met Your Mother
9x04 The Broken Code
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]


The Last Leg
4x04 (21/2/14 edition)
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]


The Mentalist
6x09 My Blue Heaven

After Patrick Jane (spoilers!) murdered Red John in the previous episode, the series just continued the very next week in America, even though the entire series seemed to be over ("seemed" being the operative word) and this episode presents a "two years later" format reboot. Here in the UK, however, we've had a more respectful couple-of-months break, and I think it works better for it.

It's a relatively genteel way in, dealing with where the characters have been for the last couple of years and setting up why they might return (or won't) to something akin to their old way of life), rather than diving right in with "here's the new setup". Even by the end that isn't wholly clear: there's a kind-of-cliffhanger rather than fully establishing how the show will work from now on. Even though I know where it must be going, I wanna see what happens next now.

So the show still works, then.

[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Films

Up (2009)
[#12 in 100 Films in a Year 2014]

What Do You Mean You Haven't Seen...? 2014 #2!

Comics

She-Hulk #1 by Charles Soule & Javier Pulido

Not a title I'd pay any attention to normally, but I happened to read such good reviews that it seemed worth a go. Paid off too, because I thought it was good fun.

The titular Hulk-relative is a lawyer by day, and this series (or at least this issue, but by extension I presume the series) is concerned with that rather than the usual superhero activities of "punching things". Writer Soule (a practising attorney himself) keeps things fun but also detailed, and moving too -- even though it's only 20 pages, there's a decent chunk of story here; indeed, a whole tale. Why can't more comics manage that?! Pulido's art isn't popular with everyone, but I liked his clean, chunky, retro style for this title, especially when ably supported by Muntsa Vincente's colours.

This could well be a keeper.

Thursday 27 February 2014

TV

Death in Paradise
3x07 Episode 7
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Audio Drama

Doctor Who [Big Finish]
18x03 The Stones of Venice Part Three

Wednesday 26 February 2014

TV

Friends
8x08 The One with the Stripper [5th or so watch]
Which one with the stripper, you may ask? Well, it's the one with the stripper who isn't a stripper. Also, the one where Rachel tells her dad.

Suspects
1x02 Episode 2
I was giving this a second chance, but it's often laughably bad -- literally: some of it was very (unintentionally) amusing. Whether it's funny enough to keep me watching, I've yet to decide.
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Audio Drama

Doctor Who [Big Finish]
18x01 The Stones of Venice Part One [2nd listen]
18x02 The Stones of Venice Part Two

I'm getting stuck in to the massive pile of Big Finish dramas I own by listening to them on dog walks. Well, that's the plan -- it worked for this first day, so, y'know, we'll see.

Before Big Finish 'officially' started doing seasons with the BBC7-initiated New Eighth Doctor Adventures, the 8th Doctor's adventures in their main range nonetheless appeared in season-esque clumps. A nice idea: he was still the incumbent Doctor when they started, with an unfilled gap between his sole TV appearance and his regeneration (which, of course, we finally got to see last year), so why not treat him to TV-style on-going adventures rather than occasional one-offs?

Still, they weren't officially demarcated as seasons, so as I listen I won't be number them in season terms, as some fans do (that would just become confusing when they eventually abandoned the idea). But I will try to make note of where the stories come, and this is the third story in his first 'season' of adventures. The most striking thing now is how "classic Who" it feels. Makes sense -- it was released a good four years before the series returned to TV -- but with the 8th Doctor leading Big Finish's way in becoming more new series-like, it's striking now. An intriguing tale nonetheless, once it settles in, with a nice quirky edge.

Finally for now, it's funny to look back and see that the 8th Doctor's initial stories spanned releases 16 to 19 (his first two, Storm Warning and Sword of Orion, I listened to many years ago. I might return to them, but as I've already tried that a couple of times down the years I wanted to forge on into new stuff). When Big Finish began the 8th Doctor was conspicuous by his absence, and it felt like an age before they finally got McGann on board. As they're in sight of story #200 (out June 2015), with dozens (hundreds?) of other Who productions along the way, #16 seems hardly into the range at all.

Tuesday 25 February 2014

TV

Duck Quacks Don't Echo
1x03 Episode 3

The National Lottery: Who Dares Wins
7x08 (22/2/14 edition) [season finale]
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Person of Interest
2x10 Shadow Box
Gave up on waiting for Channel 5 to re-start this and just got on with it by... my own means.

Films

The House of Fear (1945)
[#11 in 100 Films in a Year 2014]

The 10th movie starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes.

Monday 24 February 2014

TV

Arrow
2x10 Blast Radius

Elementary
2x15 Corpse de Ballet

Outnumbered
5x04 The Gap Year
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Room 101
14x05 Episode 5
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Fiction

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Volume I: Mr Norrell, Chapters 15-19

Sunday 23 February 2014

TV

Brooklyn Nine-Nine
1x06 Halloween
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

How I Met Your Mother
9x03 Last Time in New York
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Stella
3x02 Episode 2

Saturday 22 February 2014

TV

8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown
5x05 (21/2/14 edition)
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Friends
8x07 The One with the Stain [5th or so watch]

Top Gear
21x02 (9/2/14 edition)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Voice UK
3x07 The Blind Auditions 7
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Articles

Ghosting
by Andrew O'Hagan (from London Review of Books)

A fascinating account of what it was like to ghostwrite Julian Assange's book, by the man who did just that.

(Worth noting that this article is over 26,000 words long -- i.e. long enough to firmly count as a novella (based on the selection criteria of awards that offer a prize for such things), so don't expect to just rattle through it in a spare five minutes.)

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week. Except last week, when I was away, making posting trickier, and there was nothing to report anyway.

This week makes up for it, though: there's a couple of new additions, plus it's time for every month's highlight, the running time update.

Number of titles in collection: 1,656 [up 2]
Of which DVDs: 1,198 [up 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 458 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 4,142 [up 7]
Number of films in collection: 1,781 [no change]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 6,118 [up 16]
Number of short films in collection: 406 [no change]

And finally...

Total running time of collection (approx.):
296 days, 22 hours, and 27 minutes.
(Up 14 hours and 29 minutes from last month.)

See you next week, faithful reader.

Friday 21 February 2014

TV

The Last Leg
4x03 (14/2/14 edition)
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

The National Lottery: Who Dares Wins
7x07 (15/2/14 edition)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Voice UK
3x06 The Blind Auditions 6
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Thursday 20 February 2014

TV

Brooklyn Nine-Nine
1x05 The Vulture
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Duck Quacks Don't Echo
1x02 Episode 2

Room 101
14x04 Episode 4
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Wednesday 19 February 2014

TV

Death in Paradise
3x06 Episode 6
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

How I Met Your Mother
9x02 Coming Back
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Suspects
1x01 Episode 1
Channel 5 chose not to renew their rights to CSI or NCIS or something and instead invest the money in this original homemade improvised police procedural drama. It's... well, it's a nice idea -- but I don't believe the police procedure in it can be anything close to reality (maybe the actors needed more training), and improvisation doesn't make for great dialogue. Maybe in a character drama it does, but not in situations like this. Undecided on if I'll give it a second chance.
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Monday 17 February 2014

TV

The British Academy Film Awards 2014
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

See also: Bafta: Unseen, a 45-minute online-only programme that presumably contains all the awards they didn't fancy showing on TV.

Sunday 16 February 2014

this week on 100 Films

No brand-new reviews on 100 Films in a Year this week, but Masters of Cinema re-issued their Lubitsch in Berlin box set, so I re-posted all my reviews from 2010...

(Spot the also-posted incongruity.)


Anna Boleyn (1920)
In an age where Henry VIII is young, slim and sometimes irritatingly called “Henry 8”, not to mention more interested in shagging every young girl he can find than in, well, anything else, it’s somewhat refreshing to return to a time when he was always older, fatter and more interested in polishing off a huge slab of meat than seeing his wife. OK, so they call him “Heinrich VIII”, but at least that’s because this production team spoke a different language.
Read more here.


Die Austernprinzessin (1919)
Lubitsch stages numerous epic set pieces on gigantic sets: Ossi’s bath, where a stream of maids carry her to and fro, wash and dry her; a huge cast of choreographed waiters, kitchen staff and guests at the wedding dinner; a mad foxtrot sequence that follows it; or the ladies’ boxing match, where for the third time in as many films Lubitsch shows a gaggle of women fighting over a man.
Read more here.


Die Bergkatze (1921)
Location filming in snow-covered Alps adds a scale and breadth to the film's imagined-kingdom setting that would be inimitable in a studio. Perhaps art director Ernst Stern was right that the realism of using genuine locations doesn't quite sit with the highly stylised fort; on the other hand, a studio set simply wouldn't have the same effect
Read more here.


Ernst Lubitsch in Berlin: From Schönhauser Allee to Hollywood (2006)
Part biography, part making-of, part analytical retrospective, Robert Fischer’s documentary does what it says on the tin: tells the story of the life and work of actor/director Ernst Lubitsch from his formative years, living on Schönhauser Allee in Berlin, to when he made the move to America in the early 1920s.
Read more here.


Ich möchte kein Mann sein (1918)
the kind of silent film that might surprise some among a wider film-viewing audience, both in terms of the attitudes prevalent in what is occasionally assumed to be a highly prim era, and, even accepting that it really wasn’t, the things people were prepared to put on film then
Read more here.


Die Puppe (1919)
[A] constant expression of humour, working at every level from intellectual wit down to slapstick tomfoolery, means that even if one element has been done to death in the past near-century, there’ll be several other moments or scenes to compensate.
Read more here.


Rambo III (1988)
he goes off to Afghanistan to defeat half the Russian army single-handed. He does all this showcasing the body of a plastic action figure coated in a year’s supply of Johnson’s Baby Oil, using weapons like explosive-tipped arrows, good for tasks like taking out helicopters. Or obliterating individual soldiers.
Read more here.


Sumurun (1920)
this is primarily an Arabian Nights-style drama… but, while on the surface this looks entirely at odds with Lubitsch’s previous comedy work, it actually concerns itself with the same topic: romance, and the various entanglements and complications that lead to it.
Read more here.


More next Sunday.

Saturday 15 February 2014

TV

Death in Paradise
3x05 Episode 5 [2nd watch]
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Thursday 13 February 2014

TV

The Last Leg
4x02 (7/2/14 edition)
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

The National Lottery: Who Dares Wins
7x06 (8/2/14 edition)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Room 101
14x03 Episode 3
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Wednesday 12 February 2014

TV

Death in Paradise
3x05 Episode 5
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Duck Quacks Don't Echo
1x01 Episode 1

Films

The Next Three Days (2010)
[#9 in 100 Films in a Year 2014]

The remaining 80-or-so minutes.

DVD Extras

Special Features on The Next Three Days

Including a pretty standard and brief Making of The Next Three Days, which mainly emphasised the choice of setting and filming in Pittsburgh; an equally speedy overview of The Men of The Next Three Days; a potentially interesting featurette called True Escapes for Love, marred by being just like one of those cut-price US TV documentaries where someone moderately famous reads an obvious script at camera intercut with old news footage and the like, though fortunately only for seven minutes here; and a smattering of the deleted & extended scenes, until I got bored with them.

Comics

Wolverine #12-13 by Paul Cornell & Alan Davis

I caught up!

...except then the next issue (the aforementioned new #1) dropped through my letterbox, so I'm instantly behind again. Hey-ho.

Killable was good though, I thought. All the S.H.I.E.L.D. stuff seemed like a bit of an aside from the enjoyably low-key Wolverine goings-on, but it tied back in nicely at the end. That said, being an issue shorter probably wouldn't have hurt it -- condensing all the stuff at the mall down to two issues instead of three, essentially.

Tuesday 11 February 2014

Monday 10 February 2014

TV

The National Lottery: Who Dares Wins
7x05 (1/2/14 edition)

Star Trek: The Next Generation
1x01 Encounter at Farpoint
This isn't me making a start on TNG -- this is me making a start on the sampler Blu-ray released a couple of years ago.

Veronica Mars
3x20 The Bitch is Back [series finale]
Veronica Mars: The Movie is released March 14th. I'll see it as soon as the distribution of Kickstarter rewards allows.

Yonderland
1x07 The Heart of the Sun

Comics

Wolverine #8-9 by Paul Cornell & Alan Davis

Being the first third of Killable. Great stuff so far. Adams' art is excellent, too, leaving me a little baffled about why it wasn't to my taste in the first few issues. The inker and colourist haven't changed either, so goodness knows what was going on.

Sunday 9 February 2014

TV

Archer
4x12 Sea Tunt Part 1
4x13 Sea Tunt Part 2 [season finale]
Finally got round to these via other means after Channel 5 titted around with them at the end of last year. I might just download the next season at some point, rather than wait for C5 to mess it up again.

Friends
8x04 The One with the Videotape [5th or so watch]
8x05 The One with Rachel's Date [5th or so watch]

Veronica Mars
3x19 Weevils Wobble But They Don't Go Down

Films

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)
[#10 in 100 Films in a Year 2014]

Comics

Wolverine #5-7 by Paul Cornell & Mirco Pierfederici

When I said I didn't like Alan Davis' art, I meant it just wasn't to my taste, not bad per se. Pierfederici's is poor, though, with all kinds of messed-up faces, perspectives, and a sudden loss of detail in the middle of his third issue.

Next up is The Big Arc Everyone Talked About, which I suspect these first seven issues were all about facilitating: Killable. And Davis is back for it, which I now welcome.

this week on 100 Films

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


The Big Lebowski (1998)
it does meander a bit, and has a certain relaxed manner that isn’t going to be for everyone, I think that’s a valid stylistic choice rather than a filmmaking error. It’s perhaps a film to relax with, to laze even, rather than one to expect to grip you and hold your attention tight for two hours.
Read more here.


Oblivion (2013)
You could probably have generated a whole film about this world as it appears to Cruise and Riseborough, but it’s obvious from the very start that there’s something more going on. The guessing game is part of the fun, and as with almost any film with twists some viewers will get them bang-on and feel it’s all blatant, and some will be genuinely surprised.
Read more here.


And new to the new blog...


Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)
it’s easy to see why this was accused of being an American revenge fantasy. It’s not only got a bunch of Vietnamese soldiers being slaughtered (this time America wins!), but they’ve teamed up with the Ruskies (we’re still in the Cold War here, remember), so Rambo gets to blow a load of them away too. How satisfying for a certain facet of America
Read more here.


More next Sunday.

Saturday 8 February 2014

TV

Brooklyn Nine-Nine
1x04 M.E. Time
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

How I Met Your Mother
9x01 The Locket
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Outnumbered
5x02 The Swimming Competition
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Voice UK
3x05 The Blind Auditions 5
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Films

The Next Three Days (2010)
[#9 in 100 Films in a Year 2014]

The first 50 minutes thereof, anyway -- then the disc went screwy (again). I await a replacement for the remaining 80-or-so minutes.

Comics

Wolverine #2-4 by Paul Cornell & Alan Davis

Both the story and art grew on me over the remaining issues of the storyline. Though, in typical modern comics style, even though the story's over, it's not over. Tsk.

Collection Count

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

Just one again this week. May be the same next week too, though there should be a little bit of a rush towards the end of the month.

Number of titles in collection: 1,654 [up 1]
Of which DVDs: 1,197 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 457 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 4,135 [up 2]
Number of films in collection: 1,781 [up 1]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 6,102 [no change]
Number of short films in collection: 406 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

Friday 7 February 2014

TV

Death in Paradise
3x04 Episode 4
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Friends
8x03 The One Where Rachel Tells Ross [5th or so watch]
"THAT IS BRAND NEW INFORMATION!"

The Last Leg
4x01 (31/1/14 edition)
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Room 101
14x02 Episode 2

Suits
3x02 I Want You to Want Me
Dave advertise this so much, I decided to (semi-accidentally) give it a go. I quite liked it at first, but by the end it degenerated a bit into, "let me tell you what happened earlier and exactly how I feel about that so the audience are clear on it". Shame.
[Watch it (again) on Dave OD.]

Comics

Wolverine #1 by Paul Cornell & Alan Davis

Not the issue that was out on Wednesday, but the last "Wolverine #1"... which was out less than a year ago, in March 2013. Marvel have really gotten ridiculous with their re-numberings recently (they also managed to get this up to 13 issues in just 10 months, which is another typical Marvel move), although Wolverine is an almost-historic case-in-point: this was (by my reckoning) the fifth Marvel comic to be dubbed Wolverine #1, making the new one the sixth!

Anyway, I didn't really like the art and I'm not sure about the story yet. Hopefully things pick up because I've got all 13 issues of this particular iteration (which flows on into the 'new' #1, cementing that it's just a marketing ploy).

Thursday 6 February 2014

TV

Friends
8x02 The One with the Red Sweater [5th or so watch]
Pretty sure I'm grossly underestimating how often I've seen some of these episodes now. Hey-ho.

Films

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
[#8 in 100 Films in a Year 2014]

Articles

AMC officially developing Preacher as a TV series with Seth Rogen
by Sean O'Neal (from A.V. Club)

After all the other times Preacher was "officially" coming to the screen, I'll believe this one when I see it.

Tuesday 4 February 2014

TV

Friends
8x01 The One After "I Do" [4th or so watch]

Top Gear
21x01 (2/2/14 edition)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Veronica Mars
3x17 Debasement Tapes

Fiction

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Volume I: Mr Norrell, Chapter 14

Monday 3 February 2014

TV

Brooklyn Nine-Nine
1x03 The Slump
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Elementary
2x13 All in the Family
So they sent Bell off to a new department, that it looked like Sherlock and Joan were going to get involved with... only to bring him straight back. Why?

Friends
7x23 The One with Chandler and Monica's Wedding Part 1 [4th or so watch]
7x24 The One with Chandler and Monica's Wedding Part 2 [season finale; 4th or so watch]

Veronica Mars
3x16 Un-American Graffiti
This is where VM ditches the over-arching murder/crime plots in an attempt at greater casual viewer friendliness... but, of course, on-going romantic/personal plots stay. Funny how audiences are accepting of one but find the other a problem... or is it just that network execs think they are?

Fiction

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Volume I: Mr Norrell, Chapters 12-13

When I pause reading a book it usually means I've accidentally quit it, but this one I hadn't forgotten -- even if it'd been three weeks.

Sunday 2 February 2014

TV

Friends
7x22 The One with Chandler's Dad [4th or so watch]

Stella
3x01 Episode 1
Hmm. Feels like it wants to be a reboot but can't let go of previous stories either, and like it was trying a bit too hard to be kooky now.

this week on 100 Films

It's now February, which means it's time to look back on what January 2014 brought for 100 Films in a Year. My monthly summary is here, which this time includes a look at the sci-fi & fantasy films of Tom Cruise.


On regular duties, just one new review was published this week...


Premium Rush (2012)
The emphasis is firmly on “action” during the film’s brisk hour-and-a-half running time, the plot primarily an excuse for bike-related chases and stunts. You don’t need to be a cycling nut to enjoy what’s on display here... There aren’t many (or any?) action flicks based around pushbikes, so the whole thing comes across as pretty original.
Read more here.


But there were two new to the new blog...


Blood Diamond (2006)
Its most impressive achievement is mixing important real-life information with a compelling narrative in a way that does not feel preachy. It also doesn’t compromise on its moral messages for the sake of a twist, and has some great action sequences to boot.
Read more here.


First Blood (1982)
“Rambo” has become a byword for violent excess. But, as many film fans know, the first film has marginally nobler aims: here, the not-yet-titular hero is a Vietnam vet dealing with a mixture of PTSD, unresolved service issues, and poor treatment from the ‘folks back home’. Taken in by an unreasonable police department, he finally snaps…
Read more here.


More next Sunday.

Saturday 1 February 2014

TV

Outnumbered
5x01 The Hamster
The final series begins! Considering the kids are all now Old (it's almost two-and-a-half years since the last series, so no wonder they all seem massively older), that's probably for the best.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Voice UK
3x04 The Blind Auditions 4
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Films

Oblivion (2013)
[#7 in 100 Films in a Year 2014]

I watched this late last night, so it does count as the final film of January. FYI.

Collection Count

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

Just one addition this week. The prediction for next week is "none", so...

Number of titles in collection: 1,653 [up 1]
Of which DVDs: 1,197 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 456 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 4,133 [up 2]
Number of films in collection: 1,780 [up 1]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 6,102 [no change]
Number of short films in collection: 406 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.