Films

Argo (Extended Cut) (2012/2013)
[#13 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

this week on 100 Films

I launched a new mini-series of reviews this week on 100 Films in a Year: every Thursday between now and the end of February will be Thin Man Thursday, reviewing the six detective comedies starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles. If you've not seen them, they come highly recommended.


Elsewise, six new reviews were posted this week...


The Crab with the Golden Claws (1947)

Adapted from the ninth Tintin adventure, which is the one that introduces popular supporting character/co-lead Captain Haddock, the plot sees Tintin following clues left by a dead seaman to uncover an opium smuggling operation being run on Haddock’s boat without his knowledge. Animated via stop motion using doll-like puppets, the film was only ever screened twice

Read more here.


The Grey (2011)

Promoted as Liam Neeson’s latest Taken-style actioner, The Grey is more of a survival horror, but with wolves instead of some mystical entity — though given the apparent lack of accuracy in the wolves’ behaviour, perhaps they’re supernatural after all.

Read more here.


Parker (2013)

Parker trailed well — funny lines, promising action, solid setup — but doesn't deliver. The funny lines remain funny, but the trailer has them all. The plot's generic — not necessarily a problem, but here it's hampered by pointless asides and subplots. The action only delivers once or twice

Read more here.


The Thin Man (1934)

Playing like a cross between an Agatha Christie mystery and a screwball comedy... The murder mystery is standard enough, albeit with enough genuine suspects and twists to keep the viewer guessing. The real joy comes from the investigators: retired detective and alcohol fan Nick Charles (William Powell) and his rich, interested wife Nora (Myrna Loy). Plus their dog, Asta, who gets up to all kinds of mischief.

Read more here.


The Woman in Green (1945)

it seems Moriarty may have finally outwitted our hero, leading to a remarkably effective climax with a hypnotised Holmes at the villains’ mercy. Moriarty’s plan is genuinely despicable, with the initial murders being entirely incidental to his end goal. It gives the film a subtly different tone to the rest of the series.

Read more here.


Finally, six archive reviews were also reposted to the new blog -- including four animated adventures for Sherlock Holmes...


La Antena (2007)

it's incredibly imaginative, especially with its visuals, which are often pleasantly barmy. The setting is a dystopian future (or alternate reality) where people can no longer speak (thus justifying the silent film styling), and this world is wonderfully realised without a hint of realism or awkward attempts to explain why things are the way they are.

Read more here.


The Baskerville Curse (1983)

this is an adaptation of that perennially popular Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and as such Peter O’Toole barely features. A shame, as he’s the only half decent thing in this mess.

Read more here.


The Sign of Four (1983)

a 49-minute animated Sherlock Holmes adaptation from the ’80s, one of four in this particular series [featuring] the voice of Peter O’Toole. Vocally he makes for a good Holmes, though the character design could be a little better.

Read more here.


A Study in Scarlet (1983)

Peter O’Toole is again the voice of the famous sleuth in this disappointing animated adaptation of the first Sherlock Holmes mystery.

Read more here.


Valley of Fear (1983)

The negatives of the previous films still remain, primarily the weak ’80s TV animation. It’s not as badly designed as the bright-and-colourful version of Baskervilles, at least. O’Toole’s performance is nothing to write home about either.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

TV

Outnumbered
2x04 The Airport [2nd watch]

The Voice UK
4x03 The Blind Auditions 3
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Hancock (Extended Version) (2008)
[#12 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

Collection Count

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

An addition and an upgrade this week make small tweaks, but there's a running time update to coalesce the past month's additions in an exciting way.

Number of titles in collection: 1,731 [up 2]
Of which DVDs: 1,208 [up 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 523 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 4,327 [up 3]
Number of films in collection: 1,869 [up 2]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 6,464 [no change]
Number of short films in collection: 441 [no change]

As promised...

Total running time of collection (approx.):
312 days, 20 hours, and 50 minutes.
(Up 1 day, 13 hours, and 51 minutes from last month.)

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled
2x03 Two Lesbians Pissed on by Bats
[Watch it (again) on Dave OD.]

Outnumbered
2x03 The Old-Fashioned Sunday [3rd watch]

Fiction

The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun by Hergé
[second half]

TV

Hergé's Adventures of Tintin
The Calculus Affair

This is the animated 'film' (actually a TV series edited together into one 57-minute chunk) that I referred to when I read the book. My comment that it "bears no resemblance to the book whatsoever" was based on the series' Wikipedia entry, which says the following:

The Calculus Case (The Calculus Affair) was the most altered series, the changes amounting to a completely different story altogether.

Having watched it, I can say that's utter poppycock. Lots has been changed, certainly, but all of the set piece action sequences remain, and the fundamentals of the plot are the same too. One character has been cut, there's a bigger role for the Thom(p)sons, and who gets where when and how has been tweaked, but it's still about Bordurians kidnapping Calculus because he's invented a sonic weapon, and Tintin and Haddock travelling to Borduria to rescue him from a castle-prison.

It's actually pretty good, too, with a nice clean animation style and some fun antics. Absolute purists must hate the deviations, but it's mostly in the right spirit.

Fiction

The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun by Hergé
[first half]

As mentioned, this is Part 2 of one of the most popular Tintin stories. It's pretty good, but I have to say I'm not quite seeing what's so good (unlike with The Calculus Affair, for instance).

TV

Death in Paradise
4x02 Episode 2
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Live at the Apollo
10x06 Episode 6 [season finale]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown
8x02 (16/1/15 edition)
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Brooklyn Nine-Nine
2x01 Undercover
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

The Newsroom
3x05 Oh Shenandoah

Room 101
15x03 Episode 3
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled
2x02 The Pig Knows You're Frightened
[Watch it (again) on Dave OD.]

Broadchurch
2x02 Episode 2
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Celebrity Mastermind
2014/2015 Episode 10 (of 10)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Castle
4x09 Kill Shot

Outnumbered
2x02 The Dead Mouse [4th watch]
Contender for the best Outnumbered episode. Certainly, the mouse's funeral is one of the best bits of the entire series.

Films

The Sugarland Express (1974)
[#10 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

The Thin Man Goes Home (1945)
[#11 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

Fiction

The Adventures of Tintin: The Seven Crystal Balls by Hergé

I bought a complete Tintin box set a couple of years ago, but hadn't got round to reading any of them until the other week. Having enjoyed the last two so much, I decided to continue -- though not in order, as the last two weren't. The Seven Crystal Balls is another fan favourite, a possible contender for the second Jackson/Spielberg Tintin movie, and was adapted for one of the animated films I intend to watch soon (as mentioned last time), so it seemed a good choice.

It's also "Part 1 of 2", so I'll read the follow-up sometime in the next few days.

this week on 100 Films

Four brand-new reviews were published to 100 Films in a Year this week, and they were...


Always (1989)

Released the same year as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and followed by Hook, Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List in his filmography, Steven Spielberg’s remake of 1943 fantasy drama A Guy Named Joe is sandwiched between several all-time classics (and Hook), which probably explains why it’s been widely overlooked and, consequently, underrated.

Read more here.


American Movie (1999)

A behind-the-scenes making-of with a difference, American Movie: The Making of Northwestern is a documentary about wannabe-filmmaker Mark Borchardt attempting to produce a horror feature film with little more than some mates and good intentions, battling against a lack of money, interest, and dedication.

Read more here.


Frankenweenie (2012)

Even if the narrative is no great shakes, there’s plenty of fun to be had along the way. The dog, Sparky (ho ho), is very well observed; indeed, all of the animation is naturally top-notch. It retains an indefinable but desirable stop-motion-ness, something I felt Burton’s previous animation, Corpse Bride, lacked

Read more here.


Snake in the Eagle's Shadow (1978)

quite a slight story, but that’s OK: we’re here for the action, and it delivers that in droves. There are more fights than you can shake a stick at; and not just minor skirmishes littered between two or three headline bouts: regular highly-choreographed duels make up the bulk of the running time.

Read more here.


Plus a full seven archive reviews were reposted this week too...


Alone in the Dark (2005)

I could go through every scene in the film describing what’s wrong in this way, but no one wants to suffer that. Suffice to say it only gets worse — none of the initial flaws improve, but are compounded by more weak performances (Tara Reid as some kind of scientist?) and the story entirely vacating proceedings.

Read more here.


The Aristocrats (2005)

The Aristocrats is, apparently, an incredibly famous joke, well known to all comedians -- and, generally, only told to each other, not to audiences -- that is flexible enough for anyone to tell in their own way and still have it work. It's also incredibly vulgar; in fact, the point is often to make it as vulgar as humanly possible. To explain much more would ruin the point of the film, which aims to expose and explain this cultish joke to the masses.

Read more here.


Churchill: The Hollywood Years (2004)

What if the Americans made a movie of Winston Churchill's life, prone as they are to re-write World War 2 history to show they won it all by themselves?

Read more here.


Exiled (2006)

features several impressive action scenes. They're Leone-like in the way there's often an extended pause, the threat of violence hanging in the air -- then a sudden burst, over quickly. But within this style there's a lot of visual flair -- unlike Leone, slow motion makes the moments last minutes, underlined by the entire climatic shoot-out taking place in the time it takes for a can of Red Bull to be kicked in the air and drop back down.

Read more here.


Frankenstein (2004)

According to the blurb on my DVD, it's a "contemporary retelling of Mary Shelley's gothic horror classic". I guess no one in the publicity department actually watched it. In actuality it's more a sequel: Dr Frankenstein has somehow survived to the modern day and emigrated to New Orleans, where he continues his experiments, while his original monster... has tracked him down in the name of justice.

Read more here.


Holiday (1938)

not the funniest of comedies — though I did think it was funny — instead hitting a level of dramatic/character interest that I didn’t predict. I think it’s more a personal favourite than an objective Great Film (but then, one might argue, what is?), so the best I can do is encourage you to seek it out

Read more here.


Ripley's Game (2002)

the Radio Times criticises the humour included in the murders and thriller sections, viewing it as a failure of director Liliana Cavani; conversely, Roger Ebert approves of it, praising them as appearing somewhere "between a massacre and the Marx Brothers"... I'm inclined to agree with Ebert: these sequences do have tension, but they marry the humour to it, leaving you chuckling on the edge of your seat.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

TV

All Star Family Misfortunes
Because funny answers are funny.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Outnumbered
2x01 The Wedding [3rd watch]

The Voice UK
4x02 The Blind Auditions 2
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Kingdom of Heaven: Director's Cut (2005)
[#9 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

Collection Count

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

This week's sole addition is the Die Hard: Legacy Collection Blu-ray, which at £15 for all five films + an exclusive bonus disc was a bargain not to be missed. Unfortunately, the dearth of extras on the first film in this edition, plus the lack of the extended cut of the fourth, means I won't be shifting the trilogy DVD set or original release of the fourth that I already own (at least, not yet). But HD, oo-ooh!

Number of titles in collection: 1,729 [up 1]
Of which DVDs: 1,207 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 522 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 4,324 [up 6]
Number of films in collection: 1,867 [up 5]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 6,464 [no change]
Number of short films in collection: 441 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Adam Hills: Happyism Live
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Castle
4x08 Heartbreak Hotel