Films

Diner (1982)
[#93 in 100 Films in a Year 2011]

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Extended Trailer
The semi-mythical 8½-minute trailer for David Fincher's adaptation of Stieg Larsson's novel has now been released. (Above link should be for the UK; US is here). It's worth checking out, because 8½ minutes is a long time and you get a great idea of the film from it. Looks like it could well be something special.

Articles

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: 8-Minute Trailer Streaming, 6 Tracks of Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross’ Score Available for FREE by Germain Lussier
(from /Film)
I've mentioned the trailer in today's Films post, but this is worth noting for the free sampler. After the massive success (both artistically and critically) of Reznor & Ross' score for The Social Network, this is a definite pre-order for me.

A daily dose of sci-fi - Day 22

Coolest alien race

So what does "coolest" mean, eh? There are loads of possibilities for a category like this. I don't think it means "alien race most like Samuel L. Jackson", for instance.

Cybermen

I love the Cybermen. They're better than the Daleks. They prefigure the Borg.

When done right they can be properly scary, because they take us humans and strip away all that makes us human. They have no emotion -- they can't be reasoned with or bargained with or persuaded. And they stomp about and shoot stuff and blow stuff up and all that too.

And, in the right designs, they can look rather cool.


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

TV

Have I Got News For You
42x06 (25/11/11 edition; extended repeat)

Onion News Network
1x02 Snowlocaust

Articles

Space: The Final Frontier by Shaun Usher
(from Letters of Note)

just weeks before NBC's season premiere of the original Star Trek series, two of the programme's producers... contacted Gene Roddenberry and asked him to quickly write the show's now-famous opening monologue... For the next week or so the three men exchanged drafts by memo, a couple of which can be seen below; Roddenberry came up with the final draft on August 10th, an hour before it was recorded.

A daily dose of sci-fi - Day 21

Favourite alien invasion movie/series

Alien invasion is a constant theme of sci-fi across books, TV, film and more. Unsurprising, really -- it involves aliens (sci-fi!) and keeps it grounded on Earth, which can be good for both relating things to your viewers and, perhaps even more importantly, the budget.

Torchwood: Children of Earth

It's not an invasion story per se: only one alien actually arrives and it's after, essentially, a bribe. But it's a bribe to stop an alien invasion (if I remember correctly), so I'm going to count it. And that's because it's bloody brilliant.

Torchwood was quite good through its first two series. Some episodes were brilliant, some were dire, and overall it felt half-thought-through and made up on the fly -- characters' behaviour changing from week to week, that kind of thing. I think more people wanted to like it, as a rare dose of adult-orientated genre TV in the UK, than actually genuinely did.

But that all changed with Children of Earth, which is flat out one of the greatest SF miniseries ever made, never mind its connections to previous Torchwood or Doctor Who or what have you. It's a cracking tale full of action, emotion, humour, tension, fear, heartbreak...

You don't need to have seen previous Torchwood to get it, and if you disliked previous Torchwood that shouldn't put you off: Children of Earth is exceptional.


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

this week on 100 Films

Just 1 new review was posted to 100 Films in a Year this week...

How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

I saw a trailer for this at the cinema a few months before its release. I thought it looked to have basic animation and a too daft tone. I wrote it off, expecting a Pixar-wannabe… Imagine my surprise when it garnered endless positive reviews and a huge box office. My impression from the trailer was massively wrong. How to Train Your Dragon is, as everyone else has likely already impressed upon you, brilliant.

...but, as I'm sure you've noticed, we're now in December (almost Christmas!), so there was also the November update this week. Grand.

More next Sunday.

TV

How I Met Your Mother
7x04 The Stinson Missile Crisis
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Merlin
4x10 A Herald of the New Age
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Strictly Come Dancing
9x20 Week 10 (aka Movie Night)
To repeat myself from last year, "I'm usually in the room when Strictly's being watched, but rarely or barely watch any of it myself. Movie Night's a different beast though, what with being a film fan, and I found it all rather entertaining." Very hard to judge this year -- the score that landed Harry Judd a lowly fourth (of six) would've been enough to top the leader board just a fortnight ago.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

A daily dose of sci-fi - Day 20

What's the best adaptation of a sci-fi book/story?

I don't read enough books to judge this properly -- "best adaptation" implies "the one that has been adapted best", not "the best one that is also an adaptation". So, um...

Children of Men

I've not read The Children of Men, but damn it made for a good film.

And especially good for me because I went to the cinema knowing nothing about it (can't even remember what led me there -- a vague awareness it had received some good reviews, I think), and consequently was completely blown away by it.

And it's probably not going to get mentioned anywhere else in this month of sci-fi-ness, so why not now?


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

TV

The Graham Norton Show
10x05 (25/11/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Live at the Apollo
7x03 Episode 3

Pointless
4x02 (15/3/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

QI
9x12 Illumination (XL edition)
[Watch QI XL (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

Steven Moffat scotches rumours of a Doctor Who Hollywood reboot by Tom Cole
(from Radio Times)
In both tweets and an official comment to "a national newspaper", Moffat says the rumoured Who movie is not a reboot and certainly isn't turning up anytime soon (if ever) anyway.

Collection Count

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

Lots of tweaks across the board this week. Usually this whole thing quiets down just before Christmas, before a big jump thanks to the day itself, but this year I think I've got a few bits and bobs on the way to keep it going until then anyway. Which is different.

Number of titles in collection: 1,404 [up 3]
Of which DVDs: 1,141 [down 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 263 [up 4]

Number of discs in collection: 3,498 [up 11]
Number of films in collection: 1,495 [up 2]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,329 [up 14]

See you next week, faithful reader.

A daily dose of sci-fi - Day 19

Empire or Rebel Alliance?

C'mon, how much choice is there in this one?

Rebel Alliance

As the blog I took this from put it, "plucky good guys with the coolest space-ships or evil planet-destroying bad guys who are controlled by a demonic Emperor?"

Rebels it is.


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

TV

Life's Too Short
1x03 Episode 3
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Mentalist
4x02 Little Red Book
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Pointless
4x01 (14/3/11 edition)
I'm sure there's a reason these Pointless repeats just skipped two episodes into the start of series four... I just don't have any idea what it might be. Still, this is the series I started watching in (albeit later on) and now everything looks more familiar -- the higher-definition question screen, the lack of needless repetition of scores on said screen, the more dramatic lighting... Super.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Rev.
2x03 Episode 3
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Articles

Andrew Stanton Tells Me It’s On His Agenda To Completely Change The Way Movies Are Made by Brendon Connelly
(from Bleeding Cool)
On how Pixar make movies differently, and why live-action should be done that way too.

A daily dose of sci-fi - Day 18

Best use of special effects on the small screen

Much like yesterday's film topic, there's a lot to choose from here. TV special effects were even cheaper for even longer, but since at least the '80s there's been some excellent model work, and in the last decade or so CGI has caught up too. Big budget films still rule this arena, but there are plenty of lower budget (and, certainly, direct-to-DVD) ones with poorer effects than, say, Doctor Who.

And actually, it's from that very series that this choice comes...

Daleks in Space
from Doctor Who: The Parting of the Ways

I said yesterday that effects had to be iconic and I think this one is. It also represents the culmination of decades of dreams. Daleks have been seen invading en masse in comic strips since the '60s, but the TV series has always been limited to half a dozen real ones and maybe some cardboard cutouts (seriously, they used to use cardboard cutouts).

But with the development and cost-effectiveness of CG, this became an on-screen reality in 2005. And it was incredible. Thousands of Daleks, pouring through space... Click the link above for a video clip if you need reminding.

Much like yesterday's choice, there may be better-realised, or even more groundbreaking, examples of special effects work in TV. But this beats many of them for sheer impressiveness and the realisation of all those childhood imaginings.

Glorious.


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

TV

Argumental
4x04 Episode 4

Frozen Planet
Part 5 Winter
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

House
8x07 Dead & Buried
I presume that thing with Chase being on TV is going somewhere in future episodes. It better be anyway, otherwise what a half-arsed aside.

Pointless
3x48 (18/11/10 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

Drool: Here’s The Blu-ray Set For Game of Thrones Season 1 by Devin Faraci
(from Badass Digest)
This looks rather pretty. Hope we get the same treatment in the UK, whenever the set is ultimately released.
And it reminds me that I really need to get on with watching it! It was on back in April and I only watched the first two episodes. Might need to re-watch those at this point, I think. (And finding those links reminds me I'm still only halfway through The Crimson Petal and the White. Dammit!)

Fox confirms sequels for X-Men: First Class and Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes by George Wales
(from Total Film)
I really loved First Class (when I get round to writing it, it'll be a five-star review at 100 Films), so I'm very excited by this news. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was also meant to be good, so I'm sure The Sequel to the Rise of the Planet of the Apes will be one to look forward to too.

A daily dose of sci-fi - Day 17

Best use of special effects on the big screen

This is a very, very tricky one. While you might argue old special effects were Not So Good, I think you can go at least as far back as the groundbreaking effects work of Star Wars before you reach that time. So that's 35 years of movies to consider -- crikey.

And, actually, there's a definite charm and lingering impressiveness to, say, the stop-motion work in King Kong or the integration of matte paintings in Forbidden Planet. So that makes the list even broader. Oh dear.

But I think I have a good one...

Lightsabers

The best special effects are iconic, and there are few more iconic than the lightsaber. Sure, they're not always the best realised special effect -- even on the new Blu-ray editions the colour and thickness of the beams can be variable -- but that doesn't matter when they're so damn cool and instantly recognisable.

And there's the sound too. Visuals may be the main calling card of this category, but in film the visuals are in part sold by the sound, and everyone knows how a lightsaber goes.


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

TV

Dave's One Night Stand
3x02 Tim Vine
God Tim Vine is good. Even if "Pen Behind the Ear" is too much of a time-filler.

Junior Bake Off
Episode 12 (of 13)
I know who I want to win, and (slightly cruelly) who I don't... but will they? Ooh, tension.

Pointless
3x47 (17/11/10 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]