TV

The Culture Show
The Sounds of Hugh Laurie [special]
Laurie seems to have been everywhere promoting his album -- we've already had a whole hour-long special in ITV's culture series, for instance -- and here one of the Beeb's culture strands sits him down for a brief chat with a couple of singsongs. Nothing hugely new or hugely revelatory after all those other appearances, but nice enough.

The Shadow Line
Part 4 (of 7)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

TV

The Event
1x22 Arrival [series finale]
So that's that for The Event, cancelled post-finale in the US -- which means we get a cliffhanger here. Fortunately a lot of threads are wrapped up first, so it doesn't make for a wholly unsatisfying ending. It's a shame the series never really latched on with viewers (both Stateside and here, where C4 ended up burying it around midnight), because it got a lot better as it went on. Aside from Leila's clichéd pregnancy reveal (they could really have done with killing her off when they had the chance), the handful of last-minute revelations were all very intriguing for where they'd've gone next. Shame.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Have I Got News For You
41x07 (27/5/11 edition; extended repeat)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Fiction

Carte Blanche by Jeffery Deaver
Tuesday: Death in the Sand, Chapters 19-24

Articles

The Hobbit Films Get Official Titles by James White
(from Empire)
It's official: they're to be called The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again. Which is nice.

TV

Britain's Next Big Thing
Episode 7 (of 7)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Family Guy
9x07 Road to the North Pole [Christmas special]
5x09 Road to Rupert
BBC Three had a night of Family Guy's Road to... episodes last night, which I V+d and watched in the early hours. Sadly, they chose to only show five of the six (skipping Road to Germany), two of which I'd watched quite recently, and then my recording of the last one mucked up -- so their 'night' turns into 'two episodes'. Hey-ho.
The first one is last Christmas' hour-long (in the US) special and is all kinds of sick and twisted. I loved it. New favourite Christmas TV special! Yay!

Fiction

Carte Blanche by Jeffery Deaver
Sunday: The Red Danube, Chapters 1-5
Monday: The Rag-and-Bone Man, Chapters 6-18

Here we go, the new Bond novel. Unlike Faulks' effort from a few years ago, this one makes like the films and drags Bond into the present day, all GCHQ and al-Qaeda and iPhones and whatnot.

We'll see how it goes, but it starts well: the first five chapters are effectively the pre-titles, an action sequence in which Bond stops some kind of disaster that has an ancillary connection to the main plot that'll follow. In the process it sets up the new world order -- the 30-something Bond who in 2011 works for an organisation more secret than MI6; his app-laden phone, complete with orders delivered via text message; his ruthless but appropriate mindset -- plus story specifics, like the threat this novel will tackle -- real-world (no hollowed-out volcanoes, of course) but appropriately grand -- and a Bond-equalling henchman character. Good going.

The pace consciously slows after that, taking Bond back to London and indulging in even more world-building. This is a Bond reboot, even more so than Casino Royale, so we briefly learn how this Bond was recruited (three years ago) and where the fictional organisation he works for sits in the make-up of MI5/MI6/etc. Plus Chapter 9 introduces us to the villain, a properly nasty piece of work thanks to his hobby. Bodes well for later. (I mean how evil he is, not the hobby per se.) And in Chapter 18, Bond doesn't sleep with a woman. Very modern. But, even though it would seem anti-Bond, it works, continuing to establish how the character might well be now, rather than dragging a product of the '50s into the '00s.

Remember the review I mentioned the other day, criticising the writing? Most of it's fine. I've certainly read worse. The foul-sounding "steaming curds" as a description for lovely scrambled eggs does stand out, though, as does this nasty use of a made-up verb:

He greeted a smartly dressed Asian woman keyboarding deftly at a large computer

Ouch. Damn American writers.

So, most importantly: does it feel like Bond? Yes and no. While previous continuation (i.e. non-Fleming) novels have slowly shifted Bond into the era they were written (much as the films did), I've never read any of them, so for me the literary Bond has always occurred in the '50s and '60s (or, in the case of Young Bond, even earlier). Unlike Faulks, who emulated Fleming as far as possible, this reads to me like a classic Bond novel crossed with a modern thriller... which I guess is the point.

Articles

Matthew Vaughn On X-Men: First Class – On The Writing Credits, On The Bond Influence, On The Difficult Shoot And More by Brendon Connelly
(from Bleeding Cool)
A variety of interesting questions and answers with... well, the title sums it up.

TV

The National Lottery: Who Dares Wins
4x05 (28/5/11 edition)
The lists feel more desperately obscure/specific every week. And pity the poor girl who managed to throw away two out of three lists she played by guessing answers that were almost correct.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Vera
1x04 Little Lazarus [season finale]
Generally this is quite good, though in this case marred by some niggly plot holes (mainly to do with the husband).
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Articles

Agreeing and Disagreeing with Roger Ebert on Dim Projection by Tim League
(from Alamo Blog at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema)
A response to/continuation of Ebert's article the other day on dim projection of movies. It shows it can be done right, but, as Ebert says in the comments, "I have a sinking feeling that many theaters do not make the effort you describe".

Films That Killed Studios by Helen Cox
(from New Empress Magazine)
If you're a film fan you may well be familiar with some or all of these stories, but it's still quite astonishing to see how studios have been killed just by a single misjudged film.

this week on 100 Films

3 new reviews were posted to 100 Films in a Year this week. As they included both versions of Assault on Precinct 13, I did a Make/Remake feature on them here.

And the rest of the reviews included...

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

I should probably also note that the main cop character is black and the main criminal is white, which I imagine was revolutionary in the ’70s. To be honest, it would probably go against the norm today — note how the remake reverted to (stereo)type.

Assault on Precinct 13 (2005)

In terms of the representation of race on screen, this is a film that could certainly be seen as a step backwards. While the original had a black police officer in charge of a white criminal, here not only is the lead officer white — as are all but one of the dozens of other policemen — but all the criminals inside the precinct are black or (in one case) hispanic. Ouch.

Family Guy Presents Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story (2005)

it does feel like three Family Guy episodes stitched together. Much like that other stitched-together-from-three-animated-TV-episodes movie, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the events of part one (or the first twenty-odd minutes) seem entirely separated from the two-parter that makes up the back hour. Fortunately the Family Guy team seem to have more common sense than their Lucasfilm counterparts, choosing to link back round to the start for their film’s climax, tying it all together after all.

More next Sunday.

TV

Doctor Who
32x06 The Almost People
32x06a Prequel to Episode 7
Helluva cliffhanger -- impressive to live up to all the hype they've been giving it! And a teasing prequel indeed. I suspect we may finally get some answers next week... though as it's part one of two, and as we're halfway through the split-in-two season, I suspect there'll still be more than enough questions.
[Watch The Almost People (again) in HD on iPlayer, and the Prequel to Episode 7 on the official website.]

House
7x23 Moving On [season finale]
That was remarkably inconclusive. Ah well.

Robot Chicken
2x09 Massage Chair
2x13 Metal Militia
2x14 Veggies for Sloth
2x15 Sausage Fest

TV

The Graham Norton Show
9x06 (20/5/11 edition)
One of the least enjoyable Grahams ever, if you ask me. Ho hum.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Have I Got News For You
41x06 (20/5/11 edition; extended repeat)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Robot Chicken
2x04 Celebrity Rocket
2x02 Federated Resources
2x05 Dragon Nuts
2x07 Cracked China
2x08 Rodigitti
2x10 Password: Swordfish
Ooh, Doctor Who reference! But no, I didn't get it... not 'til I read this.

Collection Count

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

Quite a lot of stuff turning up this week, one of them a DVD-to-BD upgrade of a box set that adds even more films to it. Lovely! Also, the running time update. Shiny!

Number of titles in collection: 1,316 [up 7]
Of which DVDs: 1,110 [up 2]
Of which Blu-rays: 206 [up 5]

Number of discs in collection: 3,256 [up 10]
Number of films in collection: 1,389 [up 9]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 4,840 [up 24]

As I said, it's time for a running time update, so...

Total running time of collection (approx.):
234 days, and 31 minutes.
(Up 2 days, 4 hours, and 8 minutes from last month.)

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

How I Met Your Mother
6x13 Bad News
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

The Shadow Line
Part 3 (of 7)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Films

The Thief (1952)
[#58 in 100 Films in a Year 2011]

Articles

Carte Blanche by Jeffery Deaver – review by Steven Poole
(from guardian.co.uk)
aka the new James Bond novel. This is a marvellously scathing review! Of course, this is just a thriller being reviewed by a broadsheet critic, so maybe the novel isn't so bad -- other reviews, like The Telegraph's and the Evening Standard's, are most positive -- but this review's still a good read.

The dying of the light by Roger Ebert
(from Roger Ebert's Journal)
On how 3D projectors in cinemas are ruining the projection of 2D movies. And they really are. This is also an interesting stat:

David Poland of MovieCityNews.com ran the numbers and determined 60% of sales [for Pirates of the Caribbean 4] were in 2D and 40% in 3D: "Not only is this a clear rejection of 3D on a major movie, but given how distribution is currently designed, it makes you wonder whether Disney cost themselves a lot of gross by putting their film on too high a percentage of 3D screens."

/Film Interview: X-Men: First Class Director Matthew Vaughn by Germain Lussier
(from /Film)
Title says it all. He also discusses the prospect of a sequel to Kick-Ass:

We might do it. People forget that Kick Ass we made for $28 million and now with DVD and everything else has made $225 million in revenue so it’s done great business. A lot of people say it could be like Austin Powers how the first one people couldn’t get their heads around, they all discovered it on video and then the second one was a huge blockbuster... There could be one but if I do a sequel to that it’s gotta be just as good, if not better.

TV

Archer
2x04 Pipeline Fever
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

The Mentalist
3x21 Like a Redheaded Stepchild
[Watch it (again) on Demand Five.]

$#*! My Dad Says
1x12 Goodson Goes Deep
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Articles

Clash of the versus movies by Stuart Heritage
(from Film Blog at guardian.co.uk)

by the time that Dinosaurs v Aliens rolls around, we'll have been hit over the head with such an extraordinary number of similar movies that we won't care whether the dinosaurs or the aliens win. Mark my words, soon we'll all be suffering from versus fatigue.

Already in the pipeline are films such as Strippers v Werewolves, Gladiators v Werewolves, Aliens v Ninjas, Boy Scouts v Zombies, Humans v Zombies, Aliens v Avatars, Cockneys v Zombies and Michael Bay's Zombies v Robots. Add this to the teetering stack of versus movies made by The Asylum (including Alien v Hunter, Mega Shark v Giant Octopus and Mega Shark v Crocosaurus) and you would be forgiven for despairing at the film industry's staggering lack of imagination.

But why do so many of them feature zombies?! Are they the new vampires? Can we expect a Twilight-y human-zombie teen romance soon?

Oprah Winfrey: 10 moments that made her by Tom Geoghegan
(from BBC News Magazine)
Sounds like it's just a list of memorable things from her chat show, but it's actually a more analytical piece than that (through the prism of a top ten list), which makes it interesting.

Vaughn: 'X-Men: First Class influenced by Bond' by Zakia Uddin
(from Digital Spy)

He also teased a follow-up to the movie that could open with the assassination of John F.Kennedy, who has been shot with a "magic bullet controlled by Magneto".

Ooh, good idea!

X-Men: First Class Reviews from
Digital Spy by Ben Rawson-Jones
Empire by Dan Jolin
Total Film by Rosie Fletcher
Consensus so far (based also on other comments I've read scattered about) is that it's excellent, perhaps the best X-Men film yet. Super.

TV

Britain's Next Big Thing
Episode 6 (of 7)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Event
1x21 The Beginning of the End
Only one episode left?! Feels like there's much more to go. Hope it isn't too much of a cliffhanger...
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Robot Chicken
2x00 Christmas Special
2x01 Suck It
2x03 Easter Basket
2x06 1987
The special, included as an extra on the season two DVD, aired in the US on December 22, 2005 (between seasons one and two) and simply includes a couple of sketches from the first season and one from second.
Compilationtastic.
I fastforwarded the first season ones. And said second season sketch was in Easter Basket, so naturally I fastforwarded it the second time.
Fastforwardedtastic.

Yes, Prime Minister
1x07 The Bishop's Gambit

TV

The National Lottery: Who Dares Wins
4x04 (21/5/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]