Films

Sister Act (1992)
[2nd or so watch]

Games

Tales of Monkey Island
Chapter 1 Launch of the Screaming Narwhal

The fifth Monkey Island game has been out for a long while now (over a year -- crikey, really?!), and I've even had the DVD version for a few weeks, so I'm not quite sure why it's taken me so long to get round to playing it. Expectation, I suppose -- I've loved the Monkey Island games for as long as I've been using computers; they're a part of my childhood, and my adolescence, and they're excellent -- who knew if this could live up to it?

I shouldn't have worried though, because it's brilliant. Not all of it -- the control method is frequently awkward (though as this isn't a fast-paced pixel-specific kind of game that's an irritant rather than major flaw), and there's a pair of sections that rival the Doctor Who Adventure Games for mind-numbing easily-failed repetitive boredom.

But by far the majority is entertaining, brain-taxing (in a very good way), and funny too. Hurrah! In fact, it was so good I played it all in one sitting -- which lasted about four hours (I'm sure it could be completed much faster, but I enjoy exploring everything and working through every dialogue tree that I can manage).

And there's four more episodes to go -- even better! Not to mention that it seems to have been a huge success. Dare we hope for a Monkey Island 6? I hope we don't have to wait as long (nine years!) next time.

this week on 100 Films

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

Final Destination 3 (2006)

what of The Point: the deaths? Some are moderately inventive, and one or two even provoked a crumb of the intended amusement, but somehow it didn’t click as it was clearly intended to (i.e. more with the humour of the second than the fear of the first).

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

The whole film is a grab-bag of filmmaking styles, techniques and modes, thrown together with a gleeful abandon. Tarantino uses what he wants when he wants it, sometimes for no reason at all, and with no eye to creating a stylistic whole.

Matchstick Men (2003)

Matchstick Men ends with a twist. One of those great big changes-everything-you’ve-just-seen numbers that have a habit of making a film notorious. I’m almost loathe to mention it, because I’ve never read a review that mentions it. Maybe they’re playing along trying to keep the secret. But not me, because I bloody hated it. The twist, that is. The rest of the film is pretty good

More next Sunday.

TV

Dexter
4x04 Dex Takes a Holiday

The Making of King Arthur
Nothing to do with the recent(-ish) film, everything to do with how the Normans appropriated and developed the myth (and what happened to it over the next couple of centuries). Written and presented by Simon Armitage, who seems distinctly odd and a little self-centred. But then he is a poet.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Proms 2010
Prom 1 The First Night of the Proms: Symphony of a Thousand
Every year, I intend to watch or listen to more of the Proms. Last year I managed one (and a half); this year, so far, none. But this -- more properly known as Mahler's Symphony No.8 -- was about to disappear from my iPlayer downloads, so... (If anyone's interested, the full programme can be read here.)
I've also got Prom 2, The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, but that also disappears tomorrow and it's five hours long. Not looking so good.

Would I Lie To You?
4x05 (20/8/10 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

So Bryan Singer just called regarding Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class... I'm quite excited now. by Harry Knowles
(from Ain't It Cool News)
Ah AICN, still with their amateurish design and useless headlines. They do get good scoops though, and here's a great one -- or, rather, few -- about the forthcoming fourth (or fifth, if you count Wolverine) X-Men film. It's going to be set in the '60s, with a young, walking, full-head-of-hair-owning Charles Xavier setting up the titular mutant supergroup with an equally young Magneto.
Even more new details in the article.

TV

Dexter
4x03 Blinded By the Light
I believe it's tonight season four started on FX over here. Tum tee tum...

Joanna Lumley's Nile
Part 2 (of 4)

Films

Snake Eyes (1998)
[#86 in 100 Films in a Year 2010]

Articles

The lexicography of Starbucks by Jon Kelly
(from BBC News Magazine)

An English professor's stubborn refusal to use a coffee chain's terminology has struck a chord around the world. But why are brands so keen to impose their jargon on us?...

Tony Thorne, King's College London's former language centre head... believes the impact of such marketing techniques is insidious. "Some of this stuff is ludicrous in its complexity," he says... "It's intended to bamboozle and intimidate. I see it as a form of corporate bullying."

Ultraviolet light reveals how ancient Greek statues really looked by Esther Inglis-Arkell
(from io9)
Well I never.

Collection Count

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

Nothing this week. Not a sausage. I currently have quite a number of DVDs and BDs on their way from various places around the globe; I imagine they'll all turn up in one batch, just... because...

Number of titles in collection: 1,201 [no change]
Of which DVDs: 1,102 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 99 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 2,941 [no change]
Number of films in collection: 1,258 [no change]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 4,176 [no change]

Statistic of the week:

Collections of short films:
12
(1.0% of the total)

I don't actually have a total for the number of short films I own across these collections (and the odd couple on other sets too). Maybe I'll make that a stat-creating task for the future...

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Dexter
4x02 Remains to Be Seen

How I Met Your Mother
5x13 Jenkins
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Films

The Damned United (2009)
[#85 in 100 Films in a Year 2010]

Articles

Box Office Bob-omb: 5 Reasons Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World Failed To Find An Audience by Josh Tyler
(from Cinema Blend)

Here's what it all comes down to: There were big expectations for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, but only from the handful of people who'd already seen it. But it was always a movie without a specific audience. It's a broad movie built on a lot of different niche elements, and as much as we'd like to believe moviegoers are open-minded enough to step outside their comfort zone, most of the time they won't. The mistake was in thinking that all the different audiences Scott Pilgrim speaks to were the same audience, when they're not.

First 100 days: David Cameron and Nick Clegg lose buddy movie script by Marina Hyde
(from Comment is free at guardian.co.uk)

if even the terminally artless wing of the Conservative party are now viewing the coalition through the prism of Hollywood movies, the rest of us will be miles ahead. We can see that what we are dealing with is a malfunctioning buddy movie.

Star Wars on Blu-ray: George, don't do that… by Joe Utichi
(from Film Blog at guardian.co.uk)

Turns out George Lucas isn't just a fan-irritater with his CGI'd-up Star Wars 'special' editions, but also a great big hypocrite:

A 1988 congressional hearing heard that colourising old black-and-white films would constitute "destruction of our film heritage". The speaker's statement continued: "In the future it will become easier for old negatives to become lost and be 'replaced' by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten."

It's hard to believe now, but that speaker was George Lucas.

TV

Grandma's House
1x02 The day Simon decided it might be a nice idea to surprise his mother with a gift
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Normans
Part 3 Normans of the South [final episode]
I've said all I need to about this series, really -- the concluding part is just as good as the first two.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Vexed
1x01 Episode 1
In their review, the Radio Times seemed to imply this was the most horrendous thing to blight our screens for decades. Conversely, I really enjoyed it. It's not flawless, but mostly it's entertaining, funny, and I think most of the bits that RT complained about were actually misinterpreted by them.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Films

Matchstick Men (2003)
[#84 in 100 Films in a Year 2010]

TV

The Deep
Part 2 Into the Belly of the Beast
Still risible. It looks like it might have enough central plot to sustain a two-hour film, which has then been padded with problem-of-the-episode bits and dull emotional subplots to make a five-hour series. And the problems are compounded by poor dialogue, stupid characters, illogical plot jumps, and weak acting.
I'm beginning to wonder if it was written as a deliberately bad B-movie-style kind of thing, before the director & cast took it seriously. I hope for the writer(s)'s sake it was...
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Dragons' Den
8x06 Episode 6
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

That Mitchell and Webb Look
4x05 Episode 5
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Would I Lie To You?
4x04 (13/8/10 edition)

Articles

The greatest rant you'll see this week: World War II is full of plot holes, and the writers should all be fired by Charlie Jane Anders
(from io9)
Saw this a little while ago, forgot to mention it. It's very funny. The full rant can be found here.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The Lamentable Weekend Gross — what happened? by Cyriaque Lamar
(from io9)
Geeks don't equal cash, as we've seen. This suggests three things that may have gone wrong, complete with amusing video.

TV

Joanna Lumley's Nile
Part 1 (of 4)

The World at War Blu-ray is a travesty

I think I may have bemoaned this in the past, but my anger has been provoked again, so here we go.

A quick summary: The World at War is a classic documentary series about World War 2. It was made in 4:3 (fullscreen). The forthcoming remastered DVD and Blu-ray has cropped it -- i.e. cut out a significant chunk of the image -- to 16:9 (widescreen).

That's not on.

The company behind it, Fremantle (also behind plenty of other pop culture travesties, like everything that stars Simon Cowell), have recently (or, recently enough that I've only just noticed) issued their reasons for this bastardisation. Essentially, "because 4:3 is old and 16:9 is modern". They have more specifics than that, but they're all rubbish.

Normally I don't like Amazon reviews about an unreleased product that the reviewer hasn't seen/read/heard... but sometimes there are exceptions, and this is one of them -- especially when there are a bunch of misguided five-star reviews saying how great it is the series is now in widescreen. So I've joined the one-star review crowd.

My review can be found here. I'd copy & paste it, but I'd hate for Amazon to delete it on the assumption I'd nicked it from my own blog (as it were). I'd appreciate if you'd go click "Yes" at the bottom, to say it was helpful, even if you don't really care. I appreciate that by posting it here I'm also chancing people clicking "No" just for the hell of it, but... well, please don't.

And it would also be good to click "Yes" on these two well-informed reviews as well. And, just for good measure, a "No" on this one and, particularly, this one (as you can see in the comments, the guy who wrote the latter is a right idiot).

You're allowed to disagree with me, of course, but if you do then (in this instance) you're just plain wrong.

TV

Dexter
4x01 Living the Dream
Season 4 starts on UK TV sometime this week, I believe -- plus season 5 kicks off before long in the US -- so what better time to get round to it for myself. Somehow I doubt I'll have the patience to make it last 12 weeks, but you never know.

Films

Bride & Prejudice (2004)
[#82 in 100 Films in a Year 2010]

Final Destination 3 (2006)
[#83 in 100 Films in a Year 2010]