TV

Friends
3x03 The One with the Jam [4th or so watch]

The Sarah Millican Slightly Longer Television Programme
3x02 Episode 2
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Wrong Mans
1x02 Bad Mans
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

TV

Doctor Who
21x19 The Caves of Androzani Part Three [2nd watch]
Aside from the poorly-realised Magma Creature, Androzani really is brilliant. The direction is first-rate, the performances are top-notch, the story is second-to-none... even the lighting, notoriously dreadful throughout the Davison era, has been nailed. And that cliffhanger...!

Friends
3x02 The One Where No One's Ready [5th or so watch]
We once studied this at university as a perfect example of economical but hilarious screenwriting. And it really is.

Never Mind the Buzzcocks
27x02 Episode 2
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Newsroom
2x05 News Night with Will McAvoy

Fiction

Solo by William Boyd
Part Four, Chapters 6-12
Part Five, Chapters 1-2 [the end]

Well, I thought that was really good. A cracking spy story, a well-observed recreation of Bond and Fleming (without slipping in to parody), all-round a good read. It does have a bit of an open-ended conclusion, though, so (when combined with the fact it was so good) I dearly hope IFP can persuade Boyd back for another go.

TV

The Big Fat Quiz of the 90s
Channel 4 seem to have these on fairly regularly now, but I normally only bother with the 'traditional' year-end one. This one, however, had a good line-up of guests. And it was quite fun, so, yeah.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Castle
3x02 He's Dead, She's Dead
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Friends
3x01 The One with the Princess Leia Fantasy [4th or so watch]
I feel like I've seen season three even less than season two, but who bloody knows.

Films

Team America: World Police (2004)
[3rd watch]

Matt. Damooon.

Fiction

Solo by William Boyd
Part Three, Chapters 1-5
Part Four, Chapters 1-5

this week on 100 Films

First up, as it's now October that means its time for the always exciting 100 Films in a Year monthly update.

How good was September? This good. Also at that link: five great Shakespeare adaptations.


And that wasn't all this week, oh no. There were also three new reviews published, including...


Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (Deluxe Edition) (2013)

Given the choice, I think this adaptation functions better in its original, intended, two-part version; but the single-film version is not fundamentally different to double-billing its constituent parts. [But] though there are aesthetic reasons for choosing to watch The Dark Knight Returns as two separate features, there are several unavoidable reasons why picking up the Deluxe Edition is preferable.

Read more here.


Les Misérables (2012)

Jackman is the star of the show, and brings his musical theatre background to bear on a clearly-sung but emotive performance. He was unlucky to be in the same awards year as Daniel Day-Lewis’ all-conquering turn in Lincoln, because otherwise those gongs might well have been his.

Read more here.


Safe House (2012)

Denzel Washington is a fugitive, Ryan Reynolds is the CIA rookie who ends up looking after him — and later, chasing him — after Something Goes Wrong at the titular abode in this workmanlike thriller

Read more here.


And finally, reviews new to the new blog...


Great Expectations (1998)

It comes across more as an academic exercise in turning a British Victorian novel into a modern American movie than a believable tale that works in isolation. Indeed, many of the changes appear to be designed purely to help distance it: the changed character names, the focus on the love story, and so on. Yet it directly recreates many scenes from the novel, and it obviously retains its title

Read more here.


Solaris (2002)

When Andrei Tarkovsky adapted Stanislaw Lem’s thoughtful science fiction novel in 1972, it took 165 minutes. When Steven Soderbergh did it 30 years later, it took just over 90. Lem hated them both, stating that he didn’t write about people’s “erotic problems in space”, but for those concerned with what the film is about rather than what it (perhaps) should have been about, it seems that an abbreviated running time is no barrier to loading any adaptation of Solaris with a weighty thoughtfulness.

Read more here.


Stormbreaker (2006)

An adaptation of the first in Anthony Horowitz’s bestselling series of Alex Rider novels. It does a good job of translating the book, aided by an extensive cast of recognisable Brits (and some Yanks) and some entertaining action sequences.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

Collection Count

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

Belatedly, here's this week's small update... followed by the always-fun monthly running time update.

Number of titles in collection: 1,616 [up 1]
Of which DVDs: 1,186 [up 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 430 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 4,024 [up 1]
Number of films in collection: 1,719 [no change]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,967 [up 1]
Number of short films in collection: 392 [no change]

And that all-action running time update tells us...

Total running time of collection (approx.):
288 days, 22 hours, and 6 minutes.
(Up 1 day, 3 hours, and 13 minutes from last month.)

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Atlantis
1x02 A Girl By Any Other Name
That name presumably being "Morgana", as the makers of this (and, funnily enough, Merlin) seem to have borrowed her arc plot for Medusa.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Friends
2x23 The One with the Chicken Pox [4th or so watch]
2x24 The One with Barry and Mindy's Wedding [season finale; 4th or so watch]

Films

Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965)
[2nd watch; #84a in 100 Films in a Year 2013]

To mark Doctor Who's 50th anniversary on my film blog, I'm intending to write Make/Remake articles on the two Dalek movies. Which naturally means re-watching them, because I haven't seen them for years (and now own them on Blu-ray).

Initial impression is, I liked this a good deal more than I used to, which I think might have been received wisdom about them being almost a blight on Who history. It's certainly of comparable quality to the original serial, which it sticks to very closely.

Fiction

Solo by William Boyd
Part Two, Chapters 9-18

The end of the Africa section of the novel -- next up, Bond goes the titular solo. It's a bit meandering at times, but it builds to a helluva last-minute twist; actually, the kind of twist you feel you should've seen coming, but I didn't at all. Super stuff.

TV

Doctor Who
21x18 The Caves of Androzani Part Two [2nd watch]

Downton Abbey
4x02 Episode 2
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Friends
2x22 The One with the Two Parties [4th or so watch]

The Great British Bake Off
4x07 Pastry
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

TV

Friends
2x21 The One with the Bullies [4th or so watch]

Mock the Week
12x10 (26/9/13 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Doctor Who
21x17 The Caves of Androzani Part One [2nd watch]

After just four episodes in the presence of the Fourth Doctor (the lowest amount yet, but not the lowest overall), #bbbDW50 races on to the titular Time Lord's fifth incarnation.

This one's a pretty clear choice for a celebration of the show's 50th anniversary: it's the story most recently voted the best ever by fans, in (where else) DWM's Mighty 200 survey. There are a number of contenders for such a lofty position (other regular incumbents include Genesis of the Daleks and The Talons of Weng-Chiang), but Androzani is also a deserving choice -- not least because two of its four episodes feature some of Doctor Who's best ever cliffhangers. (The fact that the middle one's remarkably poor should just be overlooked.)

Despite being a personal favourite too, I've only actually seen it once -- I first got into Who through the Target novelisations, and Androzani was one I read and loved from those early days of my fandom. Nice to revisit it properly, then -- it deserves it, it's bloody great.


Friends
2x20 The One Where Old Yeller Dies [4th or so watch]


The Hoff's Best Film ...Ever!
1x06 The Hoff's Best Romantic Comedy Film ...Ever! [season finale]
Action, Horror, Sports, Sci-Fi... Yeah, rom-com totally fits with that.


Suburgatory
2x10 Chinese Chicken
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

TV

Unintentional comedy day...

Friends
2x18 The One Where Dr. Ramoray Dies [4th or so watch]
2x19 The One Where Eddie Won't Go [4th or so watch]

The Hoff's Best Film ...Ever!
1x04 The Hoff's Best Dance Film ...Ever!
Action, Horror, Sports, Sci-Fi... Yeah, dance totally fits with that.

The Sarah Millican Slightly Longer Television Programme
3x01 Episode 1
Miss Millican goes the way of most BBC comedy programmes and gets a buried-in-the-schedules extended-by-10-minutes repeat of her programme.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer, or watch the shorter version in HD.]

The Two Ronnies Spectacle
1x01 Two Become One
Like Bring Me Morecambe & Wise, but with the Two Ronnies. So that's nice.

The Wrong Mans
1x01 The Wrong Mans
A new comedy-thriller from Horrible Histories' Mathew Baynton and Gavin & Stacey's James Corden. Very promising first part -- funny and thrilleringy.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

TV

Doctor Who
13x04 Terror of the Zygons Part Four [2nd watch]

OK, so maybe I was wrong about the Skarasen the other day. Some dodgy effects at the end aside, though, this is a cracking conclusion to a great story. Top choice for the Fourth Doctor, if I do say so myself.

Also noteworthy, #bbbDW50 reaches the halfway point today: this is the 25th episode of the 50 we'll be watching to mark the anniversary. (However, because scheduling decisions will see the final 10 episodes squeezed into two weeks, the chronological halfway point was... yesterday. Huh, thought they'd be further apart than that. But I suppose turning the single-episode TV Movie into a three-parter for our schedule counterbalances the speed of the final episodes. Anyway...)

Incidentally, the 5.1 surround sound mix on the DVD sounds fantastic, especially the theme music.


Friends
2x17 The One Where Eddie Moves In [4th or so watch]


The Great British Bake Off
4x06 Sweet Dough
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]


Never Mind the Buzzcocks
27x01 Episode 1
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Fiction

Solo by William Boyd
Part Two, Chapters 7-8

TV

Friends
2x16 The One Where Joey Moves Out [4th or so watch]

QI
11x03 K-Folk (XL edition)

Films

The Falcon in San Francisco (1945)
[#84 in 100 Films in a Year 2013]

Flight (2012)
[#83 in 100 Films in a Year 2013]

this week on 100 Films

Three brand-new reviews were published to 100 Films in a Year this week, and they were...


The Dinosaur Project (2012)

The story concerns a group of present-day explorers heading into the jungle to find dinosaurs. Lead explorer-man’s son tags along for various contrived reasons, and because he is Young and Hip he brings a bunch of cameras that he’s constantly recording from, hence the found footage thing. And the footage is “found” rather than “returned” because, of course, Things Go Wrong.

Read more here.


Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

At times I wondered if the film might just want to be a straight thriller, but that Kubrick couldn’t escape what he saw as the inherent ludicrousness of the situation. Even if you wanted to try reading the film from that angle, the silly bits are too silly to take the rest seriously.

Read more here.


Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)

For a film with world-ending consequences, it all feels a little slight and lacking in scale. I’d say it feels “of its era” — a slightly indefinable feeling based on not only the quality of its CGI but also the cinematography, the choice of locations, the tone and pace... — but it’s less of its era, more a few (or more) years earlier.

Read more here.


And new to the new blog...


Blade Runner: The Final Cut (1982/2007)

You don’t need me to tell you about Blade Runner. It’s one of the most popular movies ever, if not with a mass audience then with a significantly-sized cult following and even wider-spread respect. Still, I’m going to go on about it for a bit anyway.

Read more here.


Cloverfield (2008)

it’s when the monster turns up that things kick off. From then the film does a great job of creating an unrelenting chase/escape, drawing the viewer in with its first-person/eyewitness style. You’re never going to be fooled into thinking it’s a real thing that really happened, obviously, but it comes as close as it’s likely to.

Read more here.


Jumper (2008)

Budget is plastered across the screen in incredible action sequences that show off the promise of the concept to good effect. Griffin jumping a double decker bus at Roland is a particular highlight. The jumping car chase, on the other hand, is visually neat and a good idea, but also entirely pointless

Read more here.


More next Sunday.