TV

Grand Designs Australia
1x08 Cottage Point House
As I post this I notice the bastards decided to end the series with a double bill, meaning the final episode will have been deleted from Virgin Media catch up now. Grr. Guess I'll have to suffer the quality of it on 4oD online...
[Watch episode 8 (again) on 4oD.]

Ocean Giants
Part 3 Voices of the Sea (of 3)

Pointless
5x03 (31/8/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Ruth Jones' Summer Holiday
After her previous seasonal specials (I don't remember her Easter one, so I must have either missed it or have it sat around recorded somewhere), now she gets a 'summer' one, which is the weakest excuse yet. It'll be a full-blown series next at this rate -- no bad thing.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Comics

2000 AD #1747—#1749
Judge Dredd: Day of Chaos - Nadia, Parts 5-8 by John Wagner & Ben Willsher

Normally I of course read Progs the sensible way, but what with events in Dredd being so monumental at the minute (and, as a subscriber, having the post-monumental-events Prog land on my doormat yesterday), I decided to skip ahead by reading just the Dredd strips from the relevant issues. (Naturally I'll return to the rest later.) Shame to race through the story like this (as you can see, it's half of it in the period of time I previously spent on an eighth), but hey-ho.

So, the end of Part 7 was indeed suitably dramatic... though perhaps lessened by the fact it's wrapped up later in the same Prog, and in the way I imagine everyone guessed it would be (or I did, anyway). Still, nice try, especially with an additional twist in Part 8.

Articles

Day 3875: Torchwood: Molecule Day: Frying Tonight! by Millennium Dome
(from The Very Fluffy Diary of Millennium Dome, Elephant)
A lengthy but very accurate assessment of Torchwood: Miracle Day at the halfway point (ish).

this week on 100 Films

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

The Locket (1946)

The story is, largely, a passable melodrama. We’re presented with plenty of evidence that Nancy is definitely a tricksy operator, but then is the man telling the tale an unreliable narrator? I don’t know if the filmmakers were even aware of such a concept. Maybe that’s unkind; maybe they just didn’t want him to be one; but the ending we do get is very pat, and I’m not sure it quite makes sense.

Nirvana (1997)

The most obvious point of reference is Blade Runner... Writer/director Salvatores introduces themes of what it means to be human and a lead character one might like to decide isn’t after all, and sets it in a perma-night, dystopian, multi-cultural future... running us through locations named after Marrakech and Bombay City, which may or may not be part of the same sprawling metropolis, and which all exhibit appropriately specific cultural stylings. These aren’t just pretty backgrounds, but in some ways reflect the film’s use of video games as a metaphor for reincarnation.

Also this week, the monthly update for August. You've missed your chance to buy the thing it's selling, but hey-ho.

More next Sunday.