Articles

Bond Designer Danny Kleinman On His Skyfall Title Sequence (And How To Craft A Great 007 Opener)
by Jan Yamato (from Movieline)

I loved Skyfall's title sequence, so I also liked this short piece in which Kleinman discusses some of the thinking behind it.


Doctor Who 50th Anniversary: 49 Ways The BBC Could Celebrate
by Dave Golder (from SFX)

On one hand, this article is quite jokey. On the other, an awful lot of these are actual very good ideas. The more of them that actually happen the better.

TV

1001 Things You Should Know
1x10 (23/11/12 edition)
Missed one. Seems the only thing I missed were the questions as no one won. That said, questions are the only reason I watch, so...
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Arrow
1x04 An Innocent Man

Hunted
1x08 Snow Maiden [season finale]
I knew it wasn't going to wrap everything up, because the Radio Times said so, but even still it was disappointing. I mean, what the hell was that "One Month Later"? How did she survive being shot in the chest and falling so far into a river? Are we meant to believe that's her baby? And so on and so forth. I didn't care about there being a second series before, but now I want some proper bloody answers please.

Articles

The Dark Knight Rises Epilogue – Nightwing, Huntress, Robin and more
(from Live for Films)

Short fan-made comics about what might happen to several major characters in the wake of The Dark Knight Rises. They'd make a pretty awesome fourth film... one that we'll never see, but still.

TV

1001 Things You Should Know
1x08 (21/11/12 edition)
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Person of Interest
1x17 Baby Blue

Proms 2012
Prom 59 The Broadway Sound
Very belatedly watching this year's John Wilson Prom

Articles

Skyfall sinks Titanic to become second highest grossing UK box office film
by Author (from RadioTimes)

It seems like such a short time ago that Mamma Mia sat quite clearly atop this list -- that was a big story at the time, which I don't recall happening when Avatar, Toy Story 3, Harry Potter 8 or Titanic's re-release all overtook it.

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, Skyfall is now a solid second (almost £3m up on third place). Can it take the top spot? It's got nearly £11m to go if it will -- quite a stretch after five weeks on release. But you never know -- after all, it took Mamma Mia 23 weeks to sneak past Titanic...

TV

Dragons' Den
10x09 Episode 9
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Hebburn
1x06 A Very Big Day [season finale]
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Mentalist
5x04 Blood Feud
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Rolf's Animal Clinic
1x05 Episode 5
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Articles

Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart return for X-Men Days of Future Past
by Paul Martinovic (from Digital Spy)

Ooh, exciting news!

TV

1001 Things You Should Know
1x07 (20/11/12 edition)
Gooood riddance.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Elementary
1x04 The Rat Race

Never Mind the Buzzcocks
26x08 Episode 8
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Stephen Fry: Gadget Man
1x01 Super Commuter
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Comics

The Amazing Spider-Man #698 by Dan Slott & Richard Elson

It's the beginning of the end for Peter Parker as Spider-Man: ASM comes to a close with next month's #700, before a new series with a new Spidey launches in 2013. Naturally this has some fans up in arms, as if Slott were the devil himself. Of course, there's also the climax of this issue, which has some pretty shocking developments. But c'mon, it's a story, and it's far from done.

And it's in comics -- even if something terrible happens, it'll be undone within a few years at most. How do comics fans not get that by now?


Dial H #2 by China Miéville & Mateus Santolouco

The Iron Snail! Awesome.


Judge Dredd #1 by Duane Swierczynski
featuring Ripe with art by Nelson Daniel
and Protection Racket with art by Paul Gulacy

The new US Dredd comic from IDW. I wasn't going to bother (regular readers know how well my reading of 2000 AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine is going), but it has a rather cool foil-stamped alternate cover of Dredd's badge (still available here) which was hard to resist.

And the content is good stuff too, thank Grud. Swierczynski seems to have a handle on the action, humour and ideas that are inherent to Dredd. A promising beginning.

Articles

Merlin to end after series five
by Andy Joannou (from Digital Spy)

The internet flooded with moaning and wailing Merlin fans at midnight on Sunday/Monday when it was announced that the currently-running fifth series would be Merlin's last. Which is funny, because they've said since the start that they have a five year plan, and as the series has remained successful that's surely the reason they've chosen to end it now. Pay attention, 'fans'.


Seitz on Liz & Dick: A Retro-Bad TV Biopic
by Matt Zoller Seitz (from Vulture)

Ladies and gentlemen, behold Liz & Dick, the worst reviewed program of 2012.

As the Telegraph put it, it's been "savaged by American critics". More here.

TV

1001 Things You Should Know
1x06 (19/11/12 edition)
The most irritating quiz show contestant of all time, and he becomes the first to get on three editions?! Bloody typical.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Arrow
1x03 Lone Gunmen

Castle
2x18 Boom!
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Dave's One Night Stand
4x02 Patrick Kielty
Seems I missed the first episode of the series. It starred Al Murray. Can't say I'm fussed.

Spy
2x06 Codename: Citizen Lame

Films

Moonfleet (1955)
[#91 in 100 Films in a Year 2012]

this week on 100 Films

Two new reviews were published to 100 Films in a Year this week, both of biographical documentaries...


Bill Cunningham New York (2010)

What he actually is, more than a “fashion photographer”, is a documentarian, recording how people choose to present themselves to the world, both as individuals and how that translates en masse. Fashion may seem like a meaningless, arbitrary, frivolous thing to afford such time to, and I’d have no argument against Fashion being called exactly that. But fashion — the actual clothes we wear in our actual lives — is something a good many people spend a good amount of time obsessing over; it’s how they choose to represent themselves in the world, how they indicate what they’re like as a person, how they show which groups or types of people they align with. We all do it, even if it’s not a conscious choice. Surely that’s worth recording?

Read more here.


Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Project (2011)

Briefly covering his upbringing, to better set in context what follows, Unauthorized tells the story of how Harvey and his brother Bob took their success as concert promoters and applied the techniques to the movie business, moving from simply buying and distributing foreign and indie films, to actually producing them, in the process revolutionising the American film industry for a decade or two.

Read more here.


And also new to the new blog was...


Gambit (1966)

With the Colin Firth / Cameron Diaz remake in cinemas now, it seemed a good time to re-post my review of the Michael Caine / Shirley MacLaine original. I don't know what the remake's like (not that good, according to what I've seen), but this is wonderful.

Read my review here.


More next Sunday.

TV

The Comic Strip Presents...
Five Go to Rehab
Well that was disappointingly rubbish.

Merlin
5x08 The Hollow Queen
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Person of Interest
1x16 Risk

QI
10x08 Jumble (XL edition)
The one I said I'd fill in.

Comics

2000 AD #1805-1808
• Low Life: Saudade, Parts 1-4 by Rob Williams & D'Israeli

Remember how I read The Judge Dredd Story Everyone's Been Going On About, only to discover part of the reason for that was, a few parts in, it tied in to the current story in The Simping Detective, so I had to go back and read all of that? Well, turns out it's tying in to the current story in Low Life too, as revealed even further down the line, so I need to go back and re-read all of that too. And this is a case in point of why one should read the whole Prog in one go as it comes, rather than story-by-story -- especially as the surprise of it happening not only once but twice has now been spoiled for me.

But my, have they clearly gone big with this one!

Anyway, I've now caught them all up to the same point (a couple of Progs back) so can proceed in an orderly fashion through the rest of their stories… or story.


2000 AD #1809-1811
• Judge Dredd: The Cold Deck, Parts Four - Six by Al Ewing & Henry Flint
• Low Life: Saudade, Parts 5-7 by Rob Williams & D'Israeli
• The Simping Detective: Jokers to the Right, Parts Six - Eight by Simon Spurrier & Simon Coleby

And here it all gets pretty epic, if occasionally confusing thanks to ties to long-standing continuity and the three strips all lightly playing off each other, not to mention Spurrier's tendency towards purplish verbosity. But in spite of that, it's pretty awesome.

Prog 1811 is with subscribers today and in shops from Wednesday. Looks to be Prog 1812 (in shops Wednesday 5th December) is the final part of all these tales. Can't wait.


Dial H #1 by China Miéville & Mateus Santolouco

This series is quite far through now, but I'm only just getting round to starting it. It's OK, I would've bought all of the first arc anyway. And it's even more OK because I thought it was pretty good, with a promising concept well executed. I've heard not a lot of people like it and perhaps it's been getting low sales, so maybe it takes a downward turn, and even if it doesn't it may turn out to be one for the chop before too long, but I'll keep going for the moment at least.

Collection Count

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

This week's update includes a DVD I actually received a couple of weeks ago, but thought I'd be returning. I imported the Thai DVD of Birth because it was the only one in the world to include a second disc of special features. The website said it had two discs; the packaging boasts about the two discs; but inside was just the film disc. After emailing the retailer, turns out the second disc isn't made any more, so that was a bit of a waste. Luckily it was no more expensive than just buying the UK DVD (especially after I got a compensatory refund) so I'm not ludicrously out of pocket for no reason. Shame about those extras though.

Number of titles in collection: 1,506 [up 2]
Of which DVDs: 1,146 [up 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 360 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 3,755 [up 2]
Number of films in collection: 1,547 [up 2]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,700 [no change]
Number of short films in collection: 370 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Bring Me Morecambe & Wise
1x01 From Stage to Screen

Castle
2x17 Tick, Tick, Tick…
This feels very much like a season finale two-parter, which is very odd as it's still very much mid-season.
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Derren Brown: Fear & Faith
Part 2 (of 2)
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

The Mentalist
5x03 Not One Red Cent
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

TV

1001 Things You Should Know
1x05 (16/11/12 edition)
Featuring one of the more irritating contestants I've ever seen on a quiz show. And he won too! Which means we have to suffer him next time as well. Ugh.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Hebburn
1x05 She Doesn't Just Give It Away
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Hunted
1x07 Khyber
I presume that was meant to be an "is Sam poisoned?!" cliffhanger, which was promptly spoilt by plastering her all over the trailer. Not that we don't know she'll survive, but still.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

TV

1001 Things You Should Know
1x04 (15/11/12 edition)
On which two players amass all the money, then a third swoops in, finally gets some questions right, and waltzes off with over £5,500. Seems somehow immoral...
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Live at the Apollo
8x01 Episode 1
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Articles

Hunted creator Frank Spotnitz confirms Sam Hunter spin-off series
by David Brown (from Radio Times)

So, basically, Hunted series 2 but by a different name. And probably not on over here. Or on Sky1, I suppose, but they seem to be doing less pinching of drama these days than they used to.