TV

How I Met Your Mother
6x18 A Change of Heart
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Scott & Bailey
1x05 Episode 5
Not the kind of stuff you expect from the penultimate episode. Which is probably why it's there -- more surprising. That said, I'd guessed the 'twist' right from the start.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Wimbledon 2011
Ladies' final day... though more interesting (certainly more fun) was the senior doubles between Mansour Bahrami & Andrew Castle and Pat Cash & Mark Woodforde. They relegate that kind of thing to red button and don't put it on iPlayer though, sadly.
[Watch the ladies' final (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

The Locket (1946)
[#68 in 100 Films in a Year 2011]
Most of it, anyway, until BBC iPlayer Desktop started being a bastard with its eagerness to delete things. I'll finish it off as soon as I can... get hold of it again...

Fiction

Carte Blanche by Jeffery Deaver
Friday: Down to Gehenna, Chapters 53-72 [the end]

Deaver's plotting is quite good -- full of twists and reveals -- even if he has a tendency to describe events then in the next chapter reveal he'd left out a small detail that completely changes the situation. A neat trick, but one rather overused here. Plus his dialogue is too on the nose, especially the swathes of exposition.

And though his twists and reveals are clever, they're rather packed in and rushed through at the end. Perhaps they should've been spaced out and used more, rather than dispatched in a handful of chapters. Or even pared back entirely. By rushing through them it makes for too much of a change of pace, feels wasteful of decent ideas, and undermines the (apparent) villain. It'd probably work in another novel, but it doesn't fit Bond. Indeed, the whole novel becomes less Bondian as it goes on.

Also, this makes for two new Bonds in a row that have finished with slightly drawn-out after-the-apparent-climax conclusions. Odd.

The subplot about the death of Bond's parents is quite well-handled, though. It reveals enough that it's wrapped up within the novel, but also leaves enough threads hanging if it's decided to continue the Bond novels as direct sequels to this one. Neat.

Collection Count

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

A few late arrivals (quite a few, actually) have led me to bump this to Saturday again. I ought to just move it permanently, it's not as if anyone's going to object. This week's lot include a DVD-to-BD upgrade, except it's not an upgrade as I'm keeping both (the BD includes none of the extras sadly, but was part of a very attractively priced box set), and a pile of stuff from Masters of Cinema's recent bargain-packed sale.

Also, a nicely round set of numbers in this first block. Lovely.

Number of titles in collection: 1,340 [up 14]
Of which DVDs: 1,120 [up 8]
Of which Blu-rays: 220 [up 6]

Number of discs in collection: 3,329 [up 17]
Number of films in collection: 1,413 [up 15]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 4,992 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.