TV

Grand Designs Australia
1x06 Hamptons House
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Ocean Giants
Part 1 Giant Lives (of 3)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Films

Glorious 39 (2009)
[#74 in 100 Films in a Year 2011]
I've owned this on DVD since it came out, but chose to watch it on iPlayer because it was available in HD. And it was worth it, I felt. There's no UK Blu-ray release for goodness knows what reason, but there is an American one.

Fiction

Torchwood: Long Time Dead by Sarah Pinborough
Chapters 5-7
Ooh, ok, some wonderfully nasty/creepy twists here, and there may be more to Cutler's (apparent) Retconning than met the eye. I take it back, for now, and reserve my judgement.

Articles

Weekend Report: The Help Reigns Over Gutless Conan, Fright Night by Brandon Gray
(from Box Office Mojo)

It was a box-office bloodbath for Conan the Barbarian and Fright Night among others over the weekend.

...The top-grossing new release, Spy Kids: All the Time in the World, mustered just $12 million... It's the worst-performing Spy Kids movie by far, grossing a little over a third of the last one, Spy Kids 3D: Game Over... It even fell short of Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore from last summer.

...Conan the Barbarian went the way of past August fantasy/ancient action movies and flopped hard... Fright Night was even less attractive [with a gross] which was low even by the modest standards of unromantic vampire movies.

Ouch.

this week on 100 Films

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

My Neighbour Totoro (1988)

a charming story, where very little of significance seems to happen, yet is never dull or overly stately. It works to build a lot of character and affection, so that by the climax, when something definitely does happen, all the work that’s gone into the characters really pays off. It doesn’t whack you round the head with its impressiveness, but instead sneaks up on you with the realisation that it’s a beautiful work.

Source Code (2011)

Duncan Jones is clearly a good director, constructing a credible mid-scale thriller here (the same could be said about the work of screenwriter Ben Ripley, or the performances of any and all members of the cast) with a few flashier elements that stand out (in a good way), but I presume his previous effort showed more promise, because Source Code is hardly groundbreaking. It's certainly a solid, dual-pronged, science-fiction mystery, but not an especially deep or complex work.

More next Sunday.