Comics

Daredevil #5 by Mark Waid & Marcos Martín
While I felt the first arc tailed off, this one is keeping the quality up -- really great stuff.

Collection Count

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

This week's arrivals include Masters of Cinema's new releases of Silent Running and Touch of Evil, the latter of which includes five different versions of the film -- crikey!

Number of titles in collection: 1,399 [up 4]
Of which DVDs: 1,141 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 258 [up 4]

Number of discs in collection: 3,476 [up 7]
Number of films in collection: 1,488 [up 6]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,270 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader, when I might exceed 1,400 titles! Or I might not...

11:11 11/11/11

It's the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year (of the 21st century)!

...yep, this post was pretty pointless.

TV

The Case
Part 5 (of 5)
Interesting choice for a last-minute twist. Not sure if I approve of the surprise or think it was a pointless addition.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

How I Met Your Mother
7x01 The Best Man
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Junior Bake Off
Episode 4 (of 13)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Joanna Lumley's Greek Odyssey
Episode 4 (of 4)
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

TV

The Case
Part 4 (of 5)
A twist-y cliffhanger! Except it's not really a twist if the thing your main/hero character thought to be true turns out to be true, is it?
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Frozen Planet
Part 2 Spring
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Junior Bake Off
Episode 2 (of 13)
Episode 3 (of 13)
This is tougher than the adult version: there, each week there were three challenges in which to impress the judges, with one person (sometimes two) kicked off; here, there's just two challenges in which to do well, with three people being sent home. Poor kiddies.
[Watch episodes two and three (again) on iPlayer.]

Comics

Batwoman #1 by J.H. Williams III & W. Haden Blackman
[2nd read]
Batwoman #3 is out today... but I won't be getting that until at least Saturday, so, as with Animal Man (and soon Aquaman), I'm having an in-print re-read of the issue I previously read digitally, and...

Batwoman #2 by J.H. Williams III & W. Haden Blackman
...catching up issue 2, too. And it's not as if I don't have enough other DC stuff to tide me over until this week's releases finally arrive.
Anyway, the art in this series is exceptional. Williams's art is beautifully detailed, the inks making everything unusually crisp and accentuated, sometimes inverting the style to make characters different (e.g. the DEO agent), and that's not to mention his varied and interesting layouts; while Dave Stewart's colours are thoughtfully applied -- look at the opening four pages, for instance, where Batwoman herself is very painterly, the location and Plebe have modern comic colouring, and the nameless gang of stock robbers are rendered in the blocky simple colours of old comics. This kind of thing goes on throughout. Brilliant stuff.

Articles

Treasury to close loophole that allows VAT-free DVDs
(from BBC News)
That would be the loophole exploited by the likes of Play.com to offer their low prices -- it's how they started out, and various other companies have copied it since, including Amazon for some of their orders.
It'll be interesting to see how this change effects things, mainly in terms of if prices for consumers shoot up. Supposedly this is to help smaller UK-based businesses be able to compete, but I can imagine bigger companies like Amazon keeping their lower prices and swallowing the cost of VAT in order to price out the competition. Or they might not bother. Fingers crossed things don't get jacked up too much...

TV

Ask Rhod Gilbert
2x07 Episode 7
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Death in Paradise
1x02 Episode 2
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Junior Bake Off
Episode 1 (of 13)
Having enjoyed the adult version -- or "the grown-up version", if you want it to sound less porn-y -- the kids' one seemed worth a go. Largely similar, but with a much more annoying presenter.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Pointless
3x33 (28/10/10 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

'No evidence' for extraterrestrials, says White House
(from BBC News)

The US government has formally denied that it has any knowledge of contact with extraterrestrial life. The announcement came as a response to submissions to the We The People website, which promises to address any petition that gains 5,000 signatories...

More than 17,000 citizens joined the two petitions, and the White House has since amended the requirements for response to a minimum of 25,000 signatories.

As da kidz say, "lol".

TV

The Case
Part 3 (of 5)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Misfits
2x05 Episode 5
2x06 Episode 6
Way back when it started, I nearly didn't watch Misfits, but I was glad I did because it turned out to be brilliant. It's always nice to have been on to something before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon (the second series had over double the first's viewing figures). But however much I liked the first series, this second one has been better in every respect.
It feels grander in scale, without seriously stepping outside the bounds of our five protagonists and their community service. It's more ambitious in its arc plots, both in terms of characters and genre-y elements, and that's made for an even better series all round.
And now I'm almost caught up (Episode 6 is, really, the season finale, though it was followed by a Christmas Special a few days later) so I can join everyone else in enjoying the currently-airing third run (it's second episode went out last night)... hopefully before I get it seriously spoiled.
[Watch episodes five and six (again) on 4oD.]

Pointless
3x32 (27/10/10 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Top Gear USA
1x03 Episode 3
Tonight's challenge was the closest they've yet come to real Top Gear. Still a pale imitation of the British version overall, of course.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Hairspray (2007)
[2nd watch]
This was #53 of 100 Films 2008 and is reviewed by me here.

TV

The Case
Part 2 (of 5)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Have I Got News For You
42x03 (28/10/11 edition; extended repeat)

The Impressions Show with Culshaw and Stephenson
3x02 Episode 2
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Never Mind the Buzzcocks
25x05 Episode 5
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Gambit (1966)
[#89 in 100 Films in a Year 2011]

Articles

There's little sign of intelligent life on Twitter, never mind over Los Angeles by David Mitchell
(from The Observer)
Why a surprising amount of twitter users are surprisingly less intelligent than, of all people, Victoria Beckham. It's most amusing, but the real killer comes in the penultimate paragraph. As many a twitter user would say, "#fail".

this week on 100 Films

2 new reviews were posted to 100 Films in a Year this week, and they were...

Saw 3D (2D) (2010)

the support group for Jigsaw survivors is a nice idea, but they don’t find anywhere to go with it. At least the notion of a fake Jigsaw survivor making a mint out of selling his fake story is an idea that has legs... Accompanying this is, of course, the arc plot that has stretched across the series. As the final film it’s time to wrap that up… Sadly, it isn’t particularly satisfactory.

True Grit (1969)

Mattie Ross is a great character — plain speaking, knows her own mind, ready & prepared for anything… and isn’t ever shown up either, instead besting everyone’s low expectations of her. Actress Kim Darby was 21 at the time but is completely convincing not only as a 14-year-old but as a 14-year-old who’s wise beyond her years.

More next Sunday.

TV

Downton Abbey
2x06 Episode 6
So, the war is over, and the house, staff and patients mark it with a big silence at 11am on 11th November... Shame ITV couldn't've scheduled this series better so as to land this episode closer to / on Remembrance Sunday, really.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Merlin
4x06 A Servant of Two Masters
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Misfits
2x04 Episode 4
With series three now underway, I really should get more of a wriggle on with this. But it's so good it feels wrong to rush it. This episode, yet more speedily-arrived big twists. Writer/creator Howard Overman certainly doesn't let his ideas come close to outstaying their welcome.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Comics

2000 AD #1754
This Prog's ECBT 2000AD reviews:

visual review

Judge Dredd Day of Chaos: Elusive Part 02

Ampney Crucis Investigates... The English Assassin Part Five

Future Shocks Hacked

Angel Zero Part 04

Low Life The Deal Part 5

The uber-meta Future Shock is awesome, and about a gazillion times better than bloody Indigo Prime which it replaces (but only for a couple of Progs -- boo!) The script by Simon Spurrier is cleverly self-refential, while Jon Davis-Hunt's detailed art is every bit how I like comics to look. Apparently he drew a Dredd strip in a Megazine I've yet to read, so I look forward to that.
Mind you, Rob Williams' hilarious ("by all things legally binding!") and inventive (Dirty Frank's use of his kaiju) script, plus D'Israeli's gorgeous black-white-grey art, mean Low Life runs it close for best Thrill of the Prog.

TV

Derren Brown: The Experiments
1x02 The Gameshow
Not quite as fascinating as last week, because the results never seemed in doubt to me... but then, I didn't necessarily expect them to be baying for his TV to be smashed up, or calling out all those things to be done in/to his flat. And did anyone watching on TV (as opposed to in the studio audience) really believe the final accident wasn't a pre-arranged stunt? If Derren fooled you that easily... well, you need to watch more of his programmes.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

The Graham Norton Show
10x02 (28/10/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Pointless
3x31 (26/10/10 edition)
I had some good ideas for the final Marilyn Monroe answer, but as the couple won we didn't get to see all the other pointlesses! Boo!
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

QI
9x08 Inequality (XL edition)
Loads of great stuff in the XL version again! (I'm going to keep mentioning that until they just don't even bother with the 30 minute edition.)
[Watch QI XL (again) on iPlayer.]

Would I Lie To You?
5x08 Episode 8

Articles

Cowboys & Aliens slammed as Universal boss admits to "s***ty movies" by Tara Fowler
(from Digital Spy)
To quote said boss, "One of the worst movies we ever made was Wolfman... Cowboys & Aliens was a mediocre movie... Land of the Lost was just crap." Well crikey. On the other hand, he did acknowledge that box office flop Scott Pilgrim was "good".
DS is, of course, just the news -- for a bit of analysis of this funny-but-maybe-not-a-good-idea story, see here.

The return of The Killing by Vicky Frost
(from the Guardian)
An interesting interview with the creator, Søren Sveistrup, ahead of the series' return to BBC Four later this month. Also worth a look for fans is this blog post (linked to in that article) which reels off all the unanswered questions/plot threads from the first series. It doesn't make it any less good, but it does point out a lot of gaps.

Collection Count

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

Absolutely nothing to report this week. Oh well. Next week maybe, but it depends on how quickly various places get pre-orders to me...

Number of titles in collection: 1,395 [no change]
Of which DVDs: 1,141 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 254 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 3,469 [no change]
Number of films in collection: 1,482 [no change]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,270 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.