TV

Doctor Who
32x07 A Good Man Goes to War [mid-season finale]
Answers! But also, many questions!
And on that note, Doctor Who returns later this year. I believe someone said September...
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Doctor Who Confidential
6x07 The Born Identity [mid-season finale]
That episode title still doesn't appear on the BBC website's episode guide. I'd assumed it was spoilersome, but... well, it's not really, is it.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Mentalist
3x23 Strawberries & Cream Part I
This aired as a two-hour season finale in the US; here, Channel 5 have decided to split it in two. Boo. They made a two-hour season finale out of two completely unrelated episodes either last year or in season one (I forget; maybe both), but when it's an actual two-parter... tsk.
[Watch it (again) on Demand Five.]

The National Lottery: Who Dares Wins
4x06 (4/6/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Robot Chicken
2x16 Drippy Pony
2x12 The Munnery
2x11 Adoption's an Option
2x17 Day at the Circus
2x18 Lust for Puppets
2x19 Anne Marie's Pride (aka Donkey Punch)
2x20 Book of Corrine [season finale]

TV

Archer
2x05 The Double Deuce
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

The Graham Norton Show
9x07 (27/5/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Paul Merton's Birth of Hollywood
Part 1 (of 3)
Merton's a solid documentary maker, and here he tells the story of the beginnings of Hollywood -- how did America come to dominate the film world, why in the middle of nowhere in California, etc etc. Very good.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

$#*! My Dad Says
1x13 The Better Father
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Collection Count

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

This week my DVD total lands on 1,111. Which doesn't really mean anything, it's just... well, you can see what it is...

Number of titles in collection: 1,320 [up 4]
Of which DVDs: 1,111 [up 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 209 [up 3]

Number of discs in collection: 3,260 [up 4]
Number of films in collection: 1,393 [up 4]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 4,840 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Lead Balloon
4x01 Pig
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Mentalist
3x22 Rhapsody in Red
[Watch it (again) on Demand Five.]

Scott & Bailey
1x01 Episode 1
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Films

Jonah Hex (2010)
[#59 in 100 Films in a Year 2011]

DVD Extras

The Inside Story of Jonah Hex
Featurette on the Jonah Hex Blu-ray that takes a quick look at the history of the character in comics.

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.]