TV

Downton Abbey
1x01 Episode One
Rather good, that, as you'd expect from writer/creator Julian Fellowes and such a talented cast, really. The only mystery is what it's doing on ITV -- surely such classy material is the domain of BBC One?
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

QI
8x02 H Anatomy (extended repeat)
"H Anatomy"?! When Fry begins the episode with a list of parts of the anatomy that begin with H -- hands, head, heart, etc etc -- one wonders why it couldn't've been named after those instead.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Hercules (1997)
[#99 in 100 Films in a Year 2010]
One to go!

Articles

Muse beat The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash to win best cover song of all time
(from NME)
Don't disagree with the winner -- or with Mark Ronson featuring in any "worst of" list -- but more interesting are some of these covers I didn't even know existed. Ronan Keating doing Fairytale of New York? Take That's take on Smells Like Teen Spirit? I have to hear these...

Stephen Fry to play Mycroft in Sherlock 2 by Simon Reynolds
(from Digital Spy)
The Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes sequel, that is, not the second series of Sherlock. Tsk.
With further apologies to Mr Gatiss, then, I'll say that this is rather perfect casting. Though I still want to see a Fry/Laurie Holmes/Watson at some point, please.

The Walking Dead: brilliant fan-made opening credits

I'm somewhat excited for the forthcoming TV adaptation of Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore's zombie comic The Walking Dead -- I've never read any of it, nor followed news of the TV version particularly closely, but the comic's meant to be good and there are good people involved in the TV production.

This opening credit sequence was made by a fan -- to stress the point, they're not what we'll be seeing on screen when the series airs -- but they're rather cool, undoubtedly to a professional standard (unlike the vast majority of fan-produced videos, of course) and, I suspect, unlikely to be topped by the final sequence.

Which is a shame, because they've actually made me even more interested.

The Walking Dead Opening Titles
by Daniel Kanemoto on Vimeo

this week on 100 Films

2 new feature-film reviews were posted to 100 Films in a Year this week, and they were...

Night at the Museum (2006)

everything in said museum comes alive at night. This results in largely comical hi-jinx. These are fine — the easily-impressed will love it, the highly cynical will probably despise it, and the rest of us can sit in the middle, being adequately entertained while the film plays but require nothing else from it ever again.

Ocean's Eleven (1960)

It does have its moments [but] this would definitely be for Rat Pack fans only had it not been for the remake… and, really, there’s no reason the remake should change that.

Also this week, a review of a short film...

The Met Ball (2010)

Culled from footage shot while making The September Issue, The Met Ball clearly had no place in the finished film but does work as a piece in its own right... The interest for us normal, sensible folk lies in what it exposes about the fashion world; the ludicrous lengths they go to, the shockingly inflated sense of self importance.

More next Sunday.