Articles

Conan The Barbarian Scripter Answers: “What’s It Like To Flop At The Box Office?” by Nikki Finke & Sean Hood
(from Deadline)
Conan was just one of several movies to flop at the US box office this past weekend. Here, one of its screenwriters explains what it feels like to be on the bad side of a big movie not being big.

Doctor Who's Global Takeover by Jace Lacob
(from The Daily Beast)
A pretty interesting interview -- not entirely filled with the usual completely-repetitive hype-led interviews you see pre-series (which tend to offer the same information in different configurations with one or two new tidbits at best) -- with Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat.
(Incidentally, the author/interviewer sounds like he's got the first letters of his names the wrong way round...)

TV

The Hour
1x05 Episode 5
1x06 Episode 6 [season finale]
A rather good final pair of episodes, I thought -- normally I'd've waited a week-ish before catching the finale, but the penultimate episode and its Next Time trailer led me to watch the last one live. A particularly tense closing episode, I thought, even if the thriller element was ultimately a little too complex for its own good, perhaps, or maybe inadequately explained.
Still, I enjoyed it overall, and another run would be welcome. Mixed critical reception and falling ratings may have seen to that, though.
[Watch episodes five and six (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Pointless
4x55 (19/8/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Comics

2000 AD #1744
Catch-up is not progressing as one might have hoped. Must try harder still.
Incidentally, for added value, check out the strip-by-strip reviews of every prog posted at Everything Comes Back to 2000AD. The five for this issue can be found here, here, here, here and here... though sadly they've replaced one of their three regulars with someone who seems perpetually grumpy at every strip being halfway through, despite the fact he chose not to catch up on the previous parts.

TV

Dragons' Den
9x04 Episode 4
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Pointless
4x54 (18/8/11 edition)
Not entirely sure what went wrong with my listing of Pointless viewing, but I definitely watched this episode today (not Saturday, as previously listed). Maybe I included it on autopilot. (Not that it matters, or that anyone would've noticed. It would've bugged me if I hadn't corrected it, though.)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

The DCnU LOGOS - 'ALL NEW' 52 of 'Em
(from Newsarama)
I like logos. No, I do -- I've actually been looking forward to this inevitable big reveal. Just me? Maybe. But I like it. So ner.

Eileen Atkins pulls out of Upstairs Downstairs by Paul Jones
(from Radio Times)
According to the article she "was unconvinced by the direction of the latest scripts". Ouch. That's some bitingly honest criticism -- you'd expect no comment, or something blandly generic. Hope this doesn't bode badly as I liked the first run at New Year.

Grant Morrison on the Death of Comics by Brian Hiatt
(from Rolling Stone)
Morrison clearly has lots of Opinions, and he's not at all afraid to share them, which makes for a grandly interesting interview.

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.

TV

Dexter
5x04 Beauty and the Beast
And the plot proper finally gets underway. This seems to have provoked complaints in some circles, but personally I like the slightly different tack they've taken to storytelling. When your whole season is always one long story, it makes sense to change it up -- it makes it a "novel for television" and all that, and we expect such basic variation of format in novels in a series, so what's wrong with it on TV? Nothing. It's grand. So there.
(Incidentally, I'm a little surprised it's taken them until the fifth season to use that episode title.)

Law & Order: UK
5x06 Deal [season finale]
Ooh, cliffhanger! Considering Jamie Bamber has since been in a (failed, sadly) US pilot and has a US guest spot or two lined up, I wouldn't be surprised if the resolution to said cliffhanger is the obvious. Then again, maybe the plan was to shoot L&O in US filming gaps. I guess we'll find out whenever series six begins... which, according to this, is very soon in the US (where it'll just continue on as one long series). How annoying.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

My Favourite Joke
Episode 4 (of 6)
Lots of old stuff in this one. I don't mind -- I'm more likely to discover stuff I've not seen -- but it does make their inability to play the clips in full all the more frustrating.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Fiction

Torchwood: Long Time Dead by Sarah Pinborough
Prologue
Chapters 1-4

This had to be the oddest choice of subject for the three Miracle Day prequel novels: it's conceivable that we might want to know how Gwen and Rhys got from the end of Children of Earth to their seclusion at the start of Miracle Day; it's conceivable we might like to learn more about Rex before we met him getting stabbed through the chest in a road accident; but do we really need a second revival of Suzie Costello and a peripheral connection to PC Andy? Well, we'll see -- great novels have been written for lesser reasons.

There's a slight potential problem/irritation for readers, though, in my opinion: by making the lead hero character a new one, DI Tom Cutler, we're ahead of him. A few chapters in and he has a weird fascination with the remains of the Hub and a figure he half remembers dressed in a Second World War greatcoat. If you're enough of a Torchwood fan to buy this novel, it's eminently obvious he's been Retconned and that figure is Jack even before the coat is mentioned. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there's some twist here, but if there isn't and this goes too long… well, you need a good idea to make it still work when the reader is five steps ahead of your characters.

Articles

A closer look at DC’s ‘New 52′ commercial by Kevin Melrose
(from Robot 6 at Comic Book Resources)
DC's promised big push for their relaunched New 52 begins with this, the TV commercial. Unfortunately, for all the reasons Melrose points out, it really isn't very good.

TV

Pointless
4x53 (17/8/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Rob Brydon Show
2x04 Episode 4
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993)
[2nd watch]
At least, I'm pretty sure I've seen it before -- unlike the first one, I didn't remember any of it.

Fiction

Torchwood: First Born by James Goss
Pages 211-251 [the end]

I didn't start reading this until the second one arrived, but I've finished it as the third one lands on my doormat -- read it at about the right speed, then. Now I just need to completely self-motivate myself to read the next two. Oh dear...

Anyway, as for the end of this one... It turned out quite good, I think. The friendly-alien-explorers, humans-are-actually-the-nasty-ones stuff is hardly revelatory (I'm sure Torchwood has done it before, never mind science fiction in general), but it works well enough. A decent enough tie-in novel, then.

I think the next two could be more interesting in their role as Miracle Day prequels, though. Here we have the only surviving Torchwood member and her Torchwood-member-in-all-but-name hubby solving a Torchwood-y case -- very tie-in-novel-normal, and barely at all connected to Miracle Day. Book two, however, features some minor supporting character dealing with some Torchwood-y clean-up -- will that have anything to do with Miracle Day either? How much do we need to learn about the remains of the Hub, the remains of Suzie Costello (who I thought had been completely dealt with ages ago), and the activities of PC Andy (assuming he's in it all that much -- he's not mentioned in the plot outline)? Could be an odd'un.

And then the third book stars Rex... who'd never heard of Torchwood before Miracle Day episode one and was just a regular CIA agent (it seemed), not versed in extraterrestrial-type cases. And Jack apparently didn't know him in Miracle Day either, so it's not likely to turn out to be some Retcon-fuelled business. Most intriguing how they'll work round that, I think -- could be an odd'un also. Whether that's a good or bad thing for either book, I don't know...

Articles

Zombie Invades Couple’s Wedding Photos by Whitney Jefferson
(from Jezebel)
Now this is funny. The full set of photos, in case you somehow miss the link, is here.

Collection Count

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

Just a couple of new additions this update -- but it's also the monthly running time update, and that's always exciting!

There should've been slightly more new titles to add, but for the second time my attempt at buying Sin City on Blu-ray has fallen through. Those with exceptional memories may remember when I tried in March: I was sent a copy with two Disc 1s and no Disc 2. This time, over a week after the due dispatch date, ASDA Entertainment -- one of The Hut Group's many, many subsidiaries -- decided they didn't actually have any stock after all so wouldn't be fulfilling my order. No Hut-run website is especially reliable so I'm not all that surprised.

Third time lucky? Maybe. We'll see... probably in another five months or something.

Number of titles in collection: 1,359 [up 2]
Of which DVDs: 1,129 [up 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 230 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 3,361 [up 3]
Number of films in collection: 1,432 [up 2]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,027 [no change]

Plus this week it's time for a running time update, so...

Total running time of collection (approx.):
242 days, 12 hours, and 26 minutes.
(Up 23 hours and 7 minutes from last month.)

That's the smallest monthly increase since March 2010! Well I never.

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Pointless
4x52 (16/8/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Single-Handed
2x05 A Cold Heaven Part 1
Things aren't looking good for our Jack... but there's still a whole episode to go. Considering the relatively low ratings this has apparently been getting (scheduled against both Torchwood and The American Killing, I'm not massively surprised), I hope there's some comeuppances to be had in the final episode.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Torchwood: Miracle Day
4x06 The Middle Men
On the one hand I feel this season is still improving; on the other it's still kind of... clumsy. It's lacking the right kind of subtlety that made Children of Earth so good, or makes other US imports (which is what this really is now) so popular. It's also lacking the regular utter barminess that made Torchwood so Torchwoody, actually -- I can see why so many still see it as a failure.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Articles

Ridley Scott to direct new Blade Runner film by Justin Harp
(from Digital Spy)
Well, I didn't expect that! I knew someone had bought the rights to Blade Runner and so a prequel/sequel was inevitable (as they're not allowed to do a remake), but I didn't think Sir Ridley would sign up. This could be interesting... or disappointingly awful.

The Walking Dead: Why Frank Darabont Was Fired & The Chaotic Aftermath by Anthony Ocasio
(from Screen Rant)
Here's something I forgot to mention a few days ago. You may have heard that filmmaker Frank Darabont had left as showrunner of The Walking Dead; you may even have heard that he'd actually been fired; but this is a fuller version of what went on. Not good, really.