Articles

Jonathan Ross: The king of comics
by Jonathan Ross (from London Evening Standard)
The title might suggest a profile of Wossy's new(ish) comic-writing career, but actually it's a piece by him about the new-found cool of comic books and their movies. I presume someone copyedited it to death though, as it's filled with references to "Spiderman", and "Captain Marvel" being in The Avengers alongside "Iron Man, the Hulk, the Mighty Thor, Captain, America, Hawkeye and Sgt Fury" (most of that last bit's fine -- spot the mistake in the middle). Still, the rest of the piece is good.

The Ethical Rot Behind Before Watchmen & The Avengers [Opinion]
by David Brothers (from Comics Alliance)
By contrast, here's a very good piece on the evils of the comic book industry.

TV

Have I Got News For You
43x01 (13/4/12 edition; extended repeat)
[Watch the extended version (again) on iPlayer.]

Horrible Histories
4x04 Episode 4
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

House
8x17 We Need the Eggs
Unless I've forgotten something, I have no idea what this title has to do with this episode.

Pointless
4x17 (5/4/11 edition)

I'm the One That's Cool

This has been around for almost three weeks. You may've seen it. But I only just did, so there. (It's really good, though.)

Watch it bigger on YouTube and/or buy it on UK iTunes. Only the song though, sadly.

TV

Not Going Out
5x01 Band
It's nice to watch a series of Not Going Out not thinking it might be the last ever -- they've already commissioned a sixth. Hurrah! And based on this, it's still on form. Double hurrah!
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Onion News Network
2x08 Artificial Intelligence
This show gets loopier by the episode.

Articles

Marvel: What Does the Future Hold?
by Daniel W. Baldwin (from CHUD.com)
The forthcoming Avengers movie -- that'd be Marvel Avengers Assemble, obv. -- is the unprecedented culmination of years of work from Marvel's movie division. But they're not stupid -- they have plans beyond it. Many plans. Here's a good succinct summation of what is actually known about those plans (and is very light on the usual conjecture and wishful-thingking-fan-speculation that usually fills these pieces), covering 12 movies that could actually be coming out within the next five or so years.

TV

Dame Elizabeth Taylor: A Tribute
Happened to notice, while browsing through recordings that have been on my V+ box for ages, that this was shown a year ago today. I didn't realise it had been so long. But a good time to watch it, eh. Nicely done too, full of comments from people who actually knew her rather than 'celebrities' who just liked some movies they saw once.

Horrible Histories
4x03 Episode 3
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Pointless
4x16 (4/4/11 edition)

The Sarah Millican Television Programme
1x06 Episode 6 [season finale]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Drive Angry (2011)
[#39 in 100 Films in a Year 2012]
After all that Game of Thrones-ing, trying to get back to some film-watching. If I can end the month by reaching May's target (#41), I'll be a happy bunny. Might sound easy, but I'm probably going away for a week soon -- could get in the way, that.

TV

Castle
2x08 Kill the Messenger
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Horrible Histories
4x02 Episode 2
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Playhouse Presents
1x01 The Minor Character
Well, that was certainly pretentious. Not sure what the point was, really. I could have a guess, but it was buried under so much arty pretentiousness that it doesn't seem worth caring about. Whenever actors/writers/directors clamour for a return of The Wednesday Play/Play for Today-style single drama series to mainstream TV, this is the kind of thing that shows why it doesn't happen. Hopefully future instalments will be less irritating/disappointing.

Pointless
4x15 (1/4/11 edition)

Films

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
[#38 in 100 Films in a Year 2012]
Not bad, but possibly my least favourite of the six films leading up to The Avengers.

Marvel One-Shot: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor's Hammer (2011)
[#38a in 100 Films in a Year 2012]
A fun little thing, more standalone than the other one.

this week on 100 Films

Once again, no new reviews were posted to 100 Films in a Year this week.

But I did add my review/defence of Sucker Punch to my new blog, as it's on Sky Movies Premiere this week. Have a (re-)read of that here.

More next Sunday. Hopefully.

TV

Mad Men
5x04 Mystery Date
Mad Men at its best, this, for all kinds of reasons.

Pointless
4x14 (31/3/11 edition)

Scott & Bailey
2x05 Episode 5
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

The Voice UK
1x04 The Blind Auditions 4
That's the auditions over, and with it the show's main gimmick. But don't worry, they've got another one lined up for next weekend's double bill.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Would I Lie To You?
6x01 Episode 1
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Films

Marvel One-Shot: The Consultant (2011)
[#37a in 100 Films in a Year 2012]
A short film on the Thor Blu-ray, contributing towards the interlinking of Marvel films.

Thor (2011)
[#37 in 100 Films in a Year 2012]
With The Avengers -- sorry, Marvel Avengers Assemble -- out soon, it's about time I got round to the last two movies that lead up to it. So here's the first.

TV

Archer
3x05 El Contador
Though they seem to have got the episode order back on track (after the mess-up a couple of weeks back), they still haven't fixed their Demand 5 URLs. But they do from next week. So that's nice then.
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

The Graham Norton Show
10x19 (9/3/12 edition)
New series of this started tonight. Still finishing the last one.

Horrible Histories
4x01 Episode 1
New series! On five times a week! (Imagine me here muttering something about kids having no attention span these days.)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Mentalist
4x19 Pink Champagne on Ice
I'm not sure the title of this episode even refers to anything in it.
[Watch it on Demand 5 from Friday 27th April. Probably.]

Once Upon a Time
1x02 The Thing You Love Most
This is... surprisingly cheap. The CGI looks about 10 years old. Maleficent seems to be based on Dolly Parton. The whole feel of its fantasy-world scenes is like a cheap-American-pulp-fantasy version of quality European fairty tales. I could go on, but I'll save something for future episodes.
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Onion News Network
2x07 Sex in America

Pointless
4x13 (30/3/11 edition)

Collection Count

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

This week, I've finally added the first two volumes of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones to my DVD collection (I've wanted them since they were first released nearly four years ago), thanks to Amazon.co.uk's Deals of the Week. They're still available there at under £15 each. The third and final volume isn't included, presumably because it's currently out of stock, but it can also be ordered for under £15 (which I have done too, naturally).

Each set contains seven or eight feature-length episodes, with so many special features (all about the real historical events, nothing about the making of the series itself) that some individual episodes are effectively two-disc sets, one for the film and another for its extras. That's some impressive work (and why these cost so much when they were first released).

Number of titles in collection: 1,461 [up 2]
Of which DVDs: 1,151 [up 2]
Of which Blu-rays: 310 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 3,637 [up 21]
Number of films in collection: 1,548 [no change]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,464 [up 15]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Castle
2x07 Famous Last Words
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

House
8x16 Gut Check

Just a Minute [2012]
1x10 Episode 10 [season finale]
This has been brilliant. I hope they do more for the telly.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Sarah Millican Television Programme
1x05 Episode 5
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

William Boyd to Write the Next James Bond Novel!
by John Cox (from The Book Bond)
Completely out of the blue, IFP have announced a new James Bond novel! It'll be published in autumn 2013 and be written by William Boyd, and it'll take Bond back to the '60s. So much for the modern-day reboot. Will it follow or ignore Devil May Care? Only time will tell.

TV

Fry and Laurie Reunited
I've had this recorded since whenever it first aired (sometime in 2010!), so it was nice to finally watch it. It was good, too, though a bit repetitiously structured -- too much "previously"/"coming up" stuff around the ad breaks. It had a 90-minute slot, but I dread to think how short it would be if you removed the ads and cut out all the needless fluff.

The Matt Lucas Awards
1x01 Episode 1
Not as much fun as I hoped it'd be. But there's promise. Big improvement would be making it a bit tighter -- trim just five minutes (to make it a regular 30 instead of 35) and it would probably feel less leaden.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Pointless
4x12 (29/3/11 edition)

TV

Game of Thrones
1x09 Baelor
1x10 Fire and Blood [season finale]
Bloody good, this is. Don't even know where to begin with comments on it, especially in case anyone reading this hasn't bothered to watch it. But you really should. One thing that's nice is that it doesn't feel at all final. Yes, some things come to a head, but just as many in the penultimate episode as in the final one, and loads of stuff is left hanging. This isn't a series of consecutive discrete stories, it's one long story that has to be broken up due to sheer length. Great stuff.
And so it continues in season two, which has of course already begun. But I'll try to leave a bit of a break before I begin watching that. But golly I want to know what happens next.

Just a Minute [2012]
1x09 Episode 9
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Mad Men
5x03 Tea Leaves

Mark Lawson Talks To
Mark Gatiss
Well, that was brilliant. If you missed it, sorry it's no longer on iPlayer to point you towards.

DVD Extras

Game of Thrones
From the Book to the Screen
Creating the Show Open
Features from the GoT season one Blu-ray. Interesting, but shame they have a tendency to repeat each other. Not so much among these ones, but I had a quick look at the half-hour "making of" and many of the interview snippets from these appear there too. Not much depth either (they last barely five minutes each), but elsewhere on the set are seven audio commentaries and an hour-long Anatomy of an Episode, so hopefully there's more meat to those.
That said, the title sequence featurette is an exception. Though brief, it gives you a good idea how they came up with that awesome opening.

Articles

‘Ridiculously Photogenic Guy’ image goes viral
by Eric Pfeiffer (from The Sideshow at Yahoo! News)
Missed this story last week when it happened, but it is quite amusing -- especially the various examples here.