Films

Green Lantern: Extended Cut (2011)
[#53 in 100 Films in a Year 2012]

Comics

Star Trek: The Next Generation / Doctor Who: Assimilation² #2 by Scott & David Tipton (with Tony Lee) & J.K. Woodward

This is marginally better than the awful issue one, but not by much. That showed us an adventure with the TARDIS crew in ancient Egypt, ending with them meeting the Enterprise gang in '20s San Francisco; this issue shows their perspective, having an 'adventure' on a water-covered planet before encountering the Doctor & co, in what is actually a Holodeck simulation (of course). Except their 'adventure' involves four or five pages of people discussing mining works, followed by a little bit of flooding. It's as thrilling as watching paint dry.

When the two crews get together things liven up a little, but it's all too brief. I say "brief" -- it's a 20-page comic, it's just hardly anything happens on each page. The Tiptons' dialogue is clunky, though that might just be the Trek style. Still, it doesn't wring right, often coming across like a first draft no one bothered to refine. Woodward's art is still awful, a loose mishmash of photo reference and indistinct long-shots.

With the two crews teaming up, and some mysteries that promise to be built upon (the cover for #3 features the fourth Doctor, Kirk and Spock), there's potential for this series to improve. But Woodward's art isn't going to do it any favours, and the kerfuffle over regular IDW Who scribe Tony Lee leaving the book halfway through is concerning too. I don't hold out great hope.

Articles

Ron Perlman Is Hellboy Again For Make-A-Wish
by Brendon Connelly (from Bleeding Cool)

Reviews of Batman: Earth One from
ACB by John Barringer
CBR by Doug Zawisza
iFanboy by Chris Arrant
IGN by Joey Esposito

They're all very positive, and make it sound enticingly intriguing -- not something you'd expect from yet another re-telling of Batman's origin story -- which is why I've decided to dive in and buy it.

TV

Battlestar Galactica [2004]
3x10 The Passage

How I Met Your Mother
7x20 Trilogy Time
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Mock the Week
11x04 (5/7/12 edition)
aka Episode 100. Loved the "best bits" montage.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Comics

Animal Man #7 & #8 by Jeff Lemire, Steve Pugh & Travel Foreman

I've slipped dreadfully far behind with Animal Man (#11 was out last Wednesday, and there's been an annual too), so it's about time I began to catch-up -- starting (obviously) with this two-parter.

Sadly, I didn't think it was up to the standard I remember the book having. It's too slow (taking four pages to tell something you could do with just as much depth in two) with the occasional horrendous gap in logic (you're driving along, you see a massive stampede of angry animals coming toward you, so you... get out and run the other way on foot?!) The second part is better, with some twists and a big cliffhanger, but still slight.

And there's no way this should only be rated T+.

Articles

10 Interesting Things From The Dark Knight Rises Press Pack
by Alasdair Stuart (from Bleeding Cool)

My favourite was about how they've done the Batcave (#9 on that list). The full, surprisingly lengthy (49 pages! Throw in a few pictures and paperback-sized formatting and you've got yourself a book!), press pack can be found here.


Dark Knight Rises: Christopher Nolan takes Batman to new place
by Geoff Boucher (from Hero Complex at the Los Angeles Times)

An in depth feature on TDKR -- and a proper newspaper-with-access-y one, not a fansite "cribbed together from old news articles and our opinions"-y one. Belying the professionalism, it was riddled with typos when I read it last night, but they may have fixed those by now.

Collection Count

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

Last time I mentioned that "TheHut have been typically tardy in sending out a recent order for several titles." A week later and two-thirds of them are still awaiting despatch, and the other third hasn't turned up yet. That wasn't all I was expecting in the regular post either, so Royal Mail have thoroughly let me down there. They've been appalling recently.

So rather than reach a nice round 1,500 titles as I thought I would this week, there's absolutely nothing to report. Sucks.

Number of titles in collection: 1,498 [no change]
Of which DVDs: 1,156 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 342 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 3,713 [no change]
Number of films in collection: 1,582 [no change]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,579 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Episodes
2x08 Episode 8
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Films

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010)
[#52 in 100 Films in a Year 2012]

It's on Film4 tonight (by the time you might be reading this), so I'll try to have a review up during the day -- keep an eye out if you're interested.

Comics

Amazing Fantasy #15 (2012 reprint) by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko & Jean-Francois Beaulieu

As part of the celebration of Spider-Man's 50th anniversary, Marvel have re-printed his first ever appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15, alongside the stories from The Amazing Spider-Man #1, all with new colours by Beaulieu. Some people fundamentally object to that, but where's the arm when the original version has been collected in numerous different editions down the years?

One thing it does prove is how much comic book art has changed since the '60s. You put modern colours on an '80s, maybe even a '70s, book and it looks like it was produced yesterday; this, however, looks like an imitation of an old-fashioned style. Still cracking stories though.

TV

Dexter
5x09 Teenage Wasteland
This season keeps spinning in surprising directions. I'm loving it.

Rules of Engagement
2x03 Mr. Fix It
Random late-night comedy viewing, this time courtesy of E4. See also:

The War at Home
2x11 Out & In
Dear God this was awful. And then, every once in a while, it threw in a couple of inspired funny bits. Weird. And the storyline featured/started in this episode even got nominated for awards, so that's even weirder.

Yes, Prime Minister
1x08 One of Us [season finale]
This, on the other hand, is always excellent. (Even if it took long enough to continue watching it.)

TV

Dexter
5x08 Take It!
Structural changes abound (what I thought would be this season's on-going case, the Fuentes brothers, has been resolved... though it has longer-lasting implications; and that's a helluva cliffhanger too), but that's a good thing -- helps keep the series fresh. I know some fans objected, especially after the high-point of season four, but I think it's working. It may not be the best season ever, but the quality's still up there.

Mock the Week
10x01 (9/6/11 edition) [2nd watch]
11x03 (1/7/12 edition)
In which they discuss the Jimmy Carr thing. Was that really so recent? I know this would've been taped nearly a week ago now, but the Carr stuff feels even older.
(Series 10 episode courtesy of Dave.)
[Watch 11x03 (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

Sky Living to screen US Sherlock rival Elementary
by Paul Jones (from Radio Times)

That doesn't bode well, does it? Do Living show anything good?

Also in that article, news that Sky have bought Green Arrow adaptation Arrow -- but that gets to air on Sky1. I thought it looked potentially interesting from the trailers, rather than another throughly cheesy/cheapy/campy Smallville, so we'll see.

TV

MythBusters
6x05 Viewers Special 2!

A Short History of Everything Else
1x03 Episode 3
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

TV

Dexter
5x07 Circle Us
I like Dexter's funny-punny titles. This isn't one. Boo. Still, good episode, and the trailer for next time looked incredible too.

Would I Lie To You?
6x09 The Unseen Bits [season finale]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

this week on 100 Films

No new reviews were posted to 100 Films in a Year this week, but it's July today and so the June update is now available. Exciting times.

I also added a few old reviews to my new blog. They were...

Double Indemnity (1944)

perhaps the archetypal film noir — unsurprising, really, when you have Raymond Chandler co-adapting a novel by James M. Cain. Present and correct are the femme fatale, dry-witted lead man, voice-over narration, shadowy photography, murder, cover-ups, investigations, twists…

Read more here.

Public Enemies (2009)

Mann continues his love affair with digital video, but here he pushes it to the limit: gone is any pretence of 35mm gloss, much of the film looking ungraded and featuring the fluidity of video’s higher frame rate. Some reviewers see this as progressive, bringing an unpolished documentary realism to a period setting. Others lament the lack of polish and glamour

Read more here.

Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960)

After the ‘origin story’ becoming the default setting for new versions of well-known heroes in the past few years, it’s quite nice to witness a tale that dives in assuming we know who Robin Hood, Little John, the Sheriff, and so forth, are... This allows the film to get on with its plot, such as it is — a bit of an excuse for an array of action and humour, mainly.

Read more here.

Note that Sword of Sherwood Forest is available on iPlayer to view and download, until 1:44pm today.

More next Sunday.

TV

Battlestar Galactica [2004]
3x09 Unfinished Business [extended cut]

I had thought I was going to watch the broadcast version of this episode -- I usually do with things, first time round (see: Neon Genesis Evangelion. (I say "see" -- I watched that before I started this blog.)). But goodness knows when second-time-round might be, and this particular extended version makes a regular episode feature-length, with 26½ minutes of added material.

According to executive producer Ronald D. Moore, this is "an 'editor's cut'... the starting point for cutting down the episode to the standard length... while it offers a lot more details on the characters, it is a rough cut (unlike the Pegasus extended cut). He considers some scenes better and some worse than in the final cut, sometimes preferring story points only being told by implication and not spelled out. He thinks some scenes may be too long, with the ideal cut maybe somewhere between the two." (There's also an odd situation with the episode's music score, which you can read about in a little more detail here.) So my decision to watch the longer version was based on the premise that if neither's perfect, I may as well see the one with more material.

It certainly felt like quite an epic episode -- in character terms, anyway -- dealing with a lot of long-standing issues (even if the viewer didn't know about all of them yet). Moore also notes that there was "a faster pace in the aired version", so it would be interesting to see the contrast. Hopefully someday there'll be a second-time-round and I can watch it then.

Articles

Daniel Kleinman Joins Skyfall
(from MI6)

I am ever so happy about this news! Kleinman designed all the Bond title sequences from GoldenEye to Casino Royale (those two in particular being amongst the finest the entire series has to offer), but was replaced on Quantum of Solace by the director's preferred effects company... who turned in a woeful, uninspired sequence that may be among the franchise's worst. Hopefully Kleinman will be on full form and deliver something incredible once again.


July 2012 Preview
by Ray Subers (from Box Office Mojo)

If you're interested in movies' box office grosses (which I am, at least a bit), then here's an interesting preview/analysis of the next month's films. That includes the likes of The Dark Knight Rises (will it best The Dark Knight? Can it possibly beat The Avengers?); The Amazing Spider-Man (can it equal Sam Raimi's trilogy? Will it get lost in DKR build-up?); Ice Age: Continental Drift (as only the second animated series ever to reach a fourth entry, coming behind two very successful CG 'toons already this year, is it doomed?); and, of course, more (all of which will almost certainly be less successful).


The mystery of The Killing Zone
by John Cox (from The Book Bond)

Easiest way to explain this intriguing work is from the article itself:

One of the more mysterious stories in the world of the literary James Bond is that of the little-known 007 novel The Killing Zone by Jim Hatfield. [It] appeared in 1985 -- the year official continuation novelist John Gardner had off -- and claims on its copyright page to be officially licensed by Glidrose Publications (now Ian Fleming Publications). But this book is far from official.

More (naturally) at the link.

TV

How I Met Your Mother
7x19 The Broath
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Films

Cars 2 (2011)
[#51 in 100 Films in a Year 2012]

Toy Story Toons: Hawaiian Vacation (2011)
[#50a in 100 Films in a Year 2012]