Comics

2000 AD #1783-1784

Featuring...

• Judge Dredd Day of Chaos: Eve of Destruction, Parts 19-20 by John Wagner & Colin MacNeil
• Flesh Midnight Cowboys, Parts Ten - Eleven by Pat Mills & James McKay
• The Zaucer of Zilk Parts 9-10 by Brendan McCarthy & Al Ewing
• Time Twisters The Twitch by Simon Spurrier & Simon Gurr
• Cadet Anderson: Psi-Division Algol, Parts Four - Five by Alan Grant & Steve Yeowell
• Terror Tales Kitsuneland by Alec Worley & Mark Harrison

During Part Five of Algol I suddenly realised that one of the characters who had been in it throughout was in fact a man, not a woman. Yay Yeowell art.

Meanwhile, Flesh ends and I won't miss it, and so does Zaucer of Zilk, which I wouldn't say I like exactly but did strangely grow on me.

TV

Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe
1x05 (28/2/13 edition)

The Good Life
1x07 Backs to the Wall [season finale]

The Last Leg
2x06 (1/3/13 edition)
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Mayday
Part 2 (of 5)
Part 3 (of 5)
There's an intriguing supernatural-ish vibe creeping in as this serial passes the halfway point. Interesting to see if that's going anywhere...
[Watch parts two and three (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

TV

Arrow
1x12 Vertigo

The Good Life
1x06 The Pagan Rite

Mayday
Part 1 (of 5)
BBC One's new nightly mystery-drama about a missing girl and some very spooky woods gets off to a strong start. Properly chilling final shot too.
Disadvantage of nightly episodes: having to keep up. Advantage: not having to wait weeks to find out what happens.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Films

Garfield (2004)
[#25 in 100 Films in a Year 2013]

TV

Elementary
1x16 Details

Heading Out
1x01 Episode 1
Sue Perkins delves into the world of writing and acting with her first sitcom, and it's largely very good too. Hurrah.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Starlings
1x06 Episode Six

TV

Arrow
1x11 Trust But Verify

The Mentalist
5x11 Days of Wine and Roses
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Pointless Celebrities
Comic Relief Special
With Ben Miller!
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Stella
2x08 Episode 8

Comics

2000 AD #1777-1782

Featuring...

• Judge Dredd Day of Chaos: Eve of Destruction, Parts 13-18 by John Wagner, Henry Flint & Colin MacNeil
• Flesh Midnight Cowboys, Parts Four - Nine by Pat Mills & James McKay
• The Zaucer of Zilk Parts 3-8 by Brendan McCarthy & Al Ewing
• Age of the Wolf II She is Legend, Parts Six - Ten by Alec Worley & Jon Davis-Hunt
• Nikolai Dante The Dante Gambit, Parts 4-6 by Robbie Morrison & John Burns
• Cadet Anderson: Psi-Division Algol, Parts One - Three by Alan Grant & Steve Yeowell
• Time Twisters Contractions by T.C. Eglington & Lee Carter

Colin MacNeil's art is a great fit for Dredd, while Wagner continues to throw everything but the kitchen sink at Mega-City One. One strip where a kitchen sink might be employed as some kind of apocalypse device is The Zaucer of Zilk, which warms on me despite itself. Can't say the same for Flesh, though.

Age of the Wolf is the kind of thing I wish I'd been reading since whenever it started. Cadet Anderson suffers from Steve Yeowell's undetailed style, though it's enlivened considerably by being coloured (here by Eva de la Cruz). The one-off Time Twister is rather good, including more consistent art by Lee Carter than was seen in his recent run on Grey Area.

TV

The Good Life
1x05 The Thing in the Cellar

Films

Anonymous (2011)
[#24 in 100 Films in a Year 2013]

Comics

2000 AD #1772-1776

Featuring...

• Judge Dredd Day of Chaos: Eve of Destruction, Parts 8-12 by John Wagner, Ben Willsher & Henry Flint
• Age of the Wolf II She is Legend, Parts One - Five by Alec Worley & John Davis-Hunt
• Nikolai Dante The Wedding of Jena Makarov, Parts 10-11 by Robbie Morrison & Simon Fraser
• Nikolai Dante The Dante Gambit, Parts 1-3 by Robbie Morrison & John Burns
• Grey Area Personal Space, Parts Two - Three & Xenophobia by Dan Abnett & Lee Carter
• What If...? Max Bubba Hadn't Killed Wulf by Alan Grant & Carlos Ezquerra
• What If...? Cassandra Anderson Hadn't Become a Judge by Alan Grant & Robin Smith
• Flesh Midnight Cowboys, Parts One - Three by Pat Mills & James McKay
• The Zaucer of Zilk Parts 1-2 by Brendan McCarthy & Al Ewing

The introduction to Age of the Wolf II implies it's a sequel picking up 10 years after the original, but the story itself seems to dive in among existing threads and characters. Either it's designed to throw everyone in at the deep end, or it's the usual 2000 AD trick of newbie-alienating. On one level it doesn't matter; on another, if it's the former then ultimately it should cover everything we need to know, whereas if the latter it might be best to just give in and go with the flow. Great art, at least.

Ever since I first saw the cover of The Zaucer of Zilk, and some of the interior art while flipping through the Progs when they arrived, I thought it looked like it would be awful. And it is. Or, at my kindest, I'd say it's not my cup of tea. Or as the strip would likely have it, it's zot zy zup of zea. (Bloody stupid thing.)

this week on 100 Films

First up, it's now March, which means it's time to look back at February. This month, the top 5 is favourite Best Picture Oscar winners. Which are yours?

As well as that, seven new reviews were published to 100 Films in a Year this week...


The Hunger Games (2012)

Seen by some as a Battle Royale rip-off and by others as no more than the new Twilight, The Hunger Games is different enough from its Japanese forebear and immeasurably better than that detestable cross-media abstinence-fest.

Read more here.


Iron Sky (2012)

Throw in a moderately witty spoof of the Downfall-based Hitler YouTube meme, and moderately audacious elements like the Nazis turning a black astronaut white as part of their new attitude to racial purity, and you have a film that is moderately successful on its own terms.

Read more here.


Johnny English Reborn (2011)

Perhaps the best word to describe it would be “sedate”. Even the action sequences, of which there are a couple, can’t muster much speed, let alone jeopardy.

Read more here.


Love and Other Impossible Pursuits (2009)

it was shot in 2009 but not released until 2011, when it was slated by critics (a measly 39% on Rotten Tomatoes), flopped at the US box office (it opened at an unimaginably painful 67th place (who knew there were that many films out at once?), grossing just $25,423 total), and went straight to DVD in the UK. Ouch.

Read more here.


Tom Conway as the Falcon, Part I

Featuring reviews of The Falcon's Brother, The Falcon Strikes Back, and The Falcon in Danger.

Read more here.



And finally, new to the new blog...


Johnny English (2003)

Every joke is sign-posted at least a good few seconds in advance, sometimes several minutes, yet that’s half the fun — you know what’s about to go wrong and that nothing can stop English doing it anyway.

Read more here.


Sunset Blvd. (1950)

it’s tempting to say Sunset Blvd. is overrated. But really that would be a slightly sensational way of saying I’m not entirely sure what to make of it.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

TV

Elementary
1x15 A Giant Gun, Filled with Drugs

Let's Dance for Comic Relief 2013
Episode 3 (of 4)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Films

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
[#22 in 100 Films in a Year 2013]

Johnny English Reborn (2011)
[#23 in 100 Films in a Year 2013]

Comics

2000 AD #1770-1771

Prog.1771 was a (slightly) bumper-length Prog to commemorate 2000 AD's 35th anniversary. What this means in practice is two variant covers, slightly better paper than normal, a free poster, lots of ads for future strips, and two more Thrills than usual -- all for a slightly higher price than your regular issue. Well, it is only a half decade...

• Judge Dredd Day of Chaos: Eve of Destruction, Parts 6-7 by John Wagner & Ben Willsher
• Grey Area The Do & Personal Space, Part One by Dan Abnett & Lee Carter
• Nikolai Dante The Wedding of Jena Makarov, Parts 8-9 by Robbie Morrison & Simon Fraser
• Absalom Ghosts of London, Parts Six - Seven by Gordon Rennie & Tiernen Trevallion
• Strontium Dog The Life and Death of Johnny Alpha, Chapter Two: The Project, Parts Eight - Nine by John Wagner, Carlos Ezquerra & Hector Ezquerra
• What If...? Gunnar Survived the Quartz Zone Massacre by Andy Diggle & Colin Wilson
• What If...? The Visible Man Returned to Earth by Pat Mills & Henry Flint

Grey Area could be great if Abnett didn't remind readers of the entire premise every other instalment. It grates, especially when reading them in such close proximity. I know elsewhere I moan about my lack of understanding when it comes to long-running stories, but they're things that have returned from months/years away only to pick up where they left off -- Grey Area has been running weekly for a couple of months at this point, we don't need telling what it's about again.

As, to all intents and purposes, a new fan, the two What Ifs make barely any sense. Nice art by Colin Wilson though. Conversely, I'm beginning to get a handle on Nikolai Dante and enjoying it -- makes me want to find the whole thing and read it through. Maybe they'll reprint it all in collections at some point (they have as it's gone along, but I think some of the early ones are out of print).

Collection Count

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

This week, I got the Men in Black Trilogy BD dirt cheap. I like the first one, haven't seen the second since it came out, and haven't seen the third yet... so maybe not the world's greatest purchase... especially as I already own the first on DVD and BD (though the latter was free). But, hey, it was cheap, and I can flog my current copies to make it cheaper still.

Until Saturday morning, most changed numbers actually went down this week... but then I received two random sales purchases, and this happened:

Number of titles in collection: 1,536 [up 1]
Of which DVDs: 1,152 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 384 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 3,855 [up 2]
Number of films in collection: 1,614 [up 3]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,722 [no change]
Number of short films in collection: 374 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

The Graham Norton Show
12x18 (22/2/13 edition)

"Are you a Judi Dench fan?"
"Uh, yeah, of course, of course."
"No, is that seriously what that T-shirt means?"
"Heh heh, no."
"What does it mean?"
"Uh, it's some, y'know, the kids these days, their urban, urban slang, Graham."
"Ok. Does it mean anything?"
"Heh heh, it's vacuous, it doesn't mean anything."

a) it does mean something.
b) if you don't think it means anything, why the hell are you wearing it?!

[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]


How I Met Your Mother
8x05 The Autumn of Break-Ups
Love Brover.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]


Top Gear
19x05 (24/2/13 edition)
Effectively the last of the series, because they're off on a two-episode jaunt along the Nile in their 'Christmas Special' next week.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Films

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
[#21 in 100 Films in a Year 2013]

That's a helluva title, isn't it? Shame about the film -- a definite case of the overrated for me.

Comics

2000 AD #1769
Featuring...
• Judge Dredd Day of Chaos: Eve of Destruction, Part 5 by John Wagner & Henry Flint
• Grey Area Feel the Noise, Part 3 by Dan Abnett & Karl Richardson
• Nikolai Dante The Wedding of Jena Makarov, Part 7 by Robbie Morrison & Simon Fraser
• Absalom Ghosts of London, Part Five by Gordon Rennie & Tiernen Trevallion
• Strontium Dog The Life and Death of Johnny Alpha, Chapter Two: The Project, Part Seven by John Wagner, Carlos Ezquerra & Hector Ezquerra

TV

Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe
1x04 (21/2/13 edition)

Climax!
1x03 Casino Royale
The first ever screen appearance of James Bond -- sorry, 'Card Sense' Jimmy Bond, an American secret agent. For all the drawbacks -- it's a 48-minute '50s-TV adaptation of the novel, so is Americanised and sanitised -- it's actually not that bad. And Peter Lorre is a perfect choice for Le Chiffre.
Sadly, though a complete version now exists, MGM insist on only putting out the initially-found truncated version which is missing the final few minutes/seconds. Shame.

The Last Leg
2x05 (22/2/13 edition)
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Articles

The Ice Warriors: missing episodes animated
by Chuck Foster (from Doctor Who News)

BBC Worldwide have finally confirmed that August's DVD release of Second Doctor adventure The Ice Warriors will indeed include animated versions of the missing episodes two and three, as well as the previously announced 'telesnap' version of the episodes

Finally indeed!

And, even better news, they've been done by a different company to the awful Reign of Terror animations. The preview clip looks pretty decent.

(Sadly, the Reign of Terror chaps were commissioned to do the very-important Tenth Planet 4, so we still must hope they've improved.)