TV

The Children
Part 1 (of 3)
Surprisingly good drama, considering it's on ITV. It's about a group of separated and re-partnered adult couples, whose selfish actions have horrific effects on their children and new step-children -- actions which will, as we know from dramatic flash forwards (placed just before every ad break, of course), eventually lead to a murder. The thriller aspect works brilliantly, because almost any of the characters could conceivably have done it; plus it's a well-written piece about the problems of parenting, especially when the kids aren't yours and you're a self centred git.

God, the Devil and Bob
1x04 The Devil's Birthday

Merlin Cinema Trailer
This looks like it'll be about as good as Robin Hood, at best. On the other hand, the involvement of Anthony Head, Richard Wilson and John Hurt bodes well, and the dragon CGI looks great. I suspect the BBC still needs to try harder if it wants a Doctor Who stand-in of equal quality though.

Spooks
5x09 The Criminal
The biggest problem with this episode is that the mystery of who was in charge of the Black Op is a complete non-event: there's only one other guest character, so who the hell do you think it's going to turn out to be?! Elsewhere, the exact circumstances may be different, but Adam has basically followed Tom's "unfit for duty?" storyline... except he gets to stay at the end of it.

Films

The Wizard of Oz (1939)
[#60 in 100 Films in a Year 2008]

Articles

BBC to offer "series stacking"
(from the BBC Press Office)
"The BBC is to offer viewers the chance to catch up on every episode of some of their favourite series as 'series stacking' is introduced to BBC iPlayer and programme sites from 13 September 2008. Viewers will be able to enjoy any episode, after it has first been broadcast, for the duration of the entire series." Wonderful news, if you ask me.

The Dark Knight Breaks $500 Million by Chris Hewitt
(from Empire Online)
Yep, that Batman flick just keeps on rolling. "The Dark Knight passed the $500 million mark (that's US domestic, we're talking over $919 million worldwide) on Sunday... it still looks like the superhero phenomenon won’t hit the most-successful-film-of-all-time number one slot presently occupied by James Cameron’s watery epic, which grossed $600 million in the States back in 1997/98. Current estimates are that The Dark Knight will finish around $60 million short of that target... it won't even come close to beating Titanic's $1.8 worldwide haul." Not unexpected, but still a shame.

Film Review: Babylon A.D. by Jonathan Crocker
(from SFX)
"It’s only after some seriously clunky action scenes that it finally hits you: Kassovitz might have directed incendiary cult-fave La Haine... But that was 13 years ago. His last film was Gothika."

Mark Millar Talks Wanted 2 by Glen Ferris
(from Empire Online)
Reassuring, I must say.

Spooks Viewers Give Up the Ghost by Dave Golder
(from SFX)
"Spooks spin-off Code 9 is proving an almighty flop, with episode four having lost nearly two thirds of the viewers who tuned in for episode one. The series debuted on BBC3 with 810,000 viewers, but last Sunday only 288,000 tuned in. That’s fewer than anything that makes it into the top ten on Dave, and they’re all repeats."

Websites

Merlin Official Website
Have a nose around the official site for the BBC's forthcoming Merlin (to air on NBC in the US sometime in the future -- oo-ooh!) As the series isn't on for a few weeks there's little there -- just the cinema trailer and some character profiles (good guys only), really -- but later there'll be the now-usual array of episode guides, photos, games and online-only video thingies.

James Bond Ultimate Editions

My geekiness -- or, as some would surely say, sadness -- knows no bounds:

Two years ago -- or, if we're precise, 25.5 months ago -- MGM released the first 20 James Bond films as Ultimate Edition DVDs. These re-releases featured remastered picture and sound, as well as an array of new special features, creating two-disc releases for every film (previously only Die Another Day had been rewarded with one). As well as being released individually, there was a box set -- packaged in a rather stylish Bond-like 007-logo-embossed briefcase -- that housed all 20. I bought this on release. It is rather lovely.

The point of all this is that now, 25.5 months on, I've finally finished going through all 40 discs... not watching them, you understand, just having a general look through. And counting up what's on them. And as I've done all that legwork, I'm now going to share some of my findings with you.


The Films

We'll start with the films themselves. Assume that I'm leaving the 21st film (that's Casino Royale, by-the-way) out of things unless I say otherwise.

So there are, as I've said, 20 Bond films, and if you wanted to watch them all back to back from UK DVD it would take you 40 hours, 3 minutes and 27 seconds. Except of course you'd have to change discs and sit through menu load times and what have you -- not to mention sleeping and eating -- so in reality it would take notably longer, but you know what I mean. I specifically say "on UK DVD" because they of course feature PAL speed-up; if you were to watch all 20 from a film print, it would take more like 41 hours, 43 minutes and 36 seconds. But that's just an estimate. (Additionally, throw Casino Royale into the mix -- from the first, slightly cut UK DVD (hopefully the new one will be uncut, but don't bank on it) -- and it'll take you 42 hours 22 mins.)

The longest Bond film is 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service, at 2 hours 16 mins. (Casino Royale now pips it by 2 minutes 10 seconds.) The shortest is the first, 1962's Dr. No. Only eight of the films run under 2 hours, and in 1997 Tomorrow Never Dies (1 hour 54 mins) was the shortest Bond for 30 years. And two final pointless statistics: the actor who's got the longest total running time as Bond is Roger Moore (beating Sean Connery by just under 3 hours), while the longest average length belongs to one-time Bond George Lazenby -- entirely logically, if you think about it. (He'll probably keep hold of that too, as reports say Quantum of Solace will be shorter than Casino Royale, thereby keeping Daniel Craig's average down.)

The Commentaries

Moving on to the only first-disc extras for these films: commentaries (apart from two exceptions that I'll mention in a minute). There's no way I'm going to do something crazy like list all of the commentary participants -- while some stick to only using a couple of people (especially the specially-recorded ones on later films), many compile interviews with several people. What I can say is that, across the 20 films, there are a total of 35 commentary tracks. That's just over 70 hours of people yapping away over the top of movies. The additional 15 are provided for as follows:

Goldfinger has a "director & cast" track and a "crew" track

Thunderball has a "director & others" track and a "crew" track

Live and Let Die has three tracks: "director & others", the screenwriters, and Roger Moore solo

For Your Eyes Only also gets three: "director & cast", "crew", and Roger Moore solo

Timothy Dalton's second (and final) film, Licence to Kill, features "director & cast" and "producer & crew" tracks

Tomorrow Never Dies has one from the director and one from the producer & 2nd unit director

The World Is Not Enough has one by the director and one by three members of the crew

Die Another Day features one with the director & producer, and one with star Pierce Brosnan and sporadic contributions from Bond girl Rosamund Pike

And finally, the number is rounded out by an additional five solo Roger Moore commentaries -- that's one for each of his films.

I mentioned two exceptions. They are an 'isolated score' track on Tomorrow Never Dies, featuring David Arnold's wonderful score unobscured by sound effects or dialogue (it makes some awkward edits painfully obvious however), and an "MI6 Datastream" on Die Another Day. The latter is a silly name for a trivia track, where random bits of info are displayed in boxes on screen throughout the film. This one also occasionally branches out to featurettes (19 of them), during which the film is minimised to a tiny box while the behind-the-scenes footage plays in a larger one. It makes the film impossible to follow if you're not familiar with it, and also makes the featurettes awkward to find (or quantify the length of) without sitting through the whole thing.

"007 Mission Control"

I'll get to the extras proper in a minute, but first I have something stupid to mention. In what seems to be an effort to pad out the content of the second disc, each film contains something called "007 Mission Control". This is merely a selection of clips from the relevant film, divided up into six sections: 007, Women, Allies, Villains, Mission Combat Manual, and Q Branch. It is in every way pointless and just a waste of space, especially on Die Another Day (more on that in a moment).

The only worthwhile bit of it is a seventh 'category', called Exotic Locations. These are in fact short featurettes (three to five minutes long), narrated by a couple of different actresses from the series, that detail some of the locations featured in their relative films. In total they run 1 hour 19 minutes, which is clearly far from insubstantial... but it doesn't justify the 18 hours total wasted by Mission Control! Bloody stupid idea that was.

The Extras

So to the extras themselves. I'm not going to attempt to list all of them -- there are 250+ separate items across the series -- but there are a variety of things included: original documentaries, including specific Inside... 'making of's on each of the first 16 films, as well as broader ones that cover specific elements or contributors; vintage featurettes from the time of the film's release; newly-uncovered behind-the-scenes footage; deleted scenes (though not on Die Another Day, despite various sources having confirmed their existence); storyboards; image galleries; music videos; trailers, for every film (except Die Another Day), and TV and radio spots for many... I think that broadly summarises what's there.

You'll undoubtedly have noticed me having several jibes at Die Another Day throughout this post. Well, they're with good reason. The first 19 films all receive well-deserved re-releases: the image quality on all of them is immeasurably better than the dirty, standard definition transfers from the old releases; and all have been treated to new extras, as well as retaining everything that was already there. Not so Die Another Day. Apparently the picture quality of the film is improved from the original release -- which, incidentally, was only three years old when this new one appeared -- but the extras have been ransacked! True, there are a handful of new elements that reuse some of the old material... but they only total 40 minutes, and one of the things now missing is the 81 minute Inside Die Another Day feature! Not to mention other bits and bobs, including multi-angle sequences, shorter featurettes and music videos. Plus, as mentioned earlier, the deleted scenes still aren't present and the trailers and TV spots -- surely easily available just three-and-a-half years after release? -- haven't been added to the package.

It's especially galling because there's clearly room on the disc. Die Another Day's extras total 2 hours 10 mins; with "Mission Control" wasting space, that's 3 hours... but the three other Brosnan films have around 3 hours 45 minutes of material on disc two, as do several of the older films (Thunderball for one). How ludicrous is that? Especially when there's the Ultimate Edition label slapped on it -- all things considered, it's not really as good as the first release, never mind better than it! Of all the Bonds, this is clearly the one to hold out on -- I'd wager that, when it comes time to re-release them on Blu-ray (the first releases, coming soon, will just duplicate these Ultimate Editions), Die Another Day will regain some of that missing documentary material, and maybe even rediscover its deleted scenes (the other three Brosnan films all have deleted scenes that weren't on their original releases).

Totals

Rant over, I'll get to the final point of this thing: the total running times for the extras and the collection as a whole.

But first... The best film in the extras department is GoldenEye, with 2 hours 59 mins of the stuff. The weakest is For Your Eyes Only, which only scrapes together 1 hour 19 mins. The amount of new material on each release varies wildly, from as little as 18 minutes to as much as 1 hour 40 mins. Several have over an hour of new stuff, and it's only a few that sink below 30 mins.

But what of that grand total? Well, I can tell you that the running time of all those extras exceeds that of the films themselves, topping out at 43 hours, 4 minutes and 37 seconds!

So, when you put all of this stuff together, how long would it take you to get through the whole damn lot? You're going to need plenty of time, because the total length of these 20 Ultimate Editions' content is 173 hours, 50 minutes and 18 seconds!

I'm so never going to watch all of that. It's over seven solid days for crying out loud!

Casino Royale

Just to finish up, a note on Casino Royale.

As I said way back at the start of this post (do you remember that? It must seem a long time ago now...), it's about to be re-released in a three-disc edition bursting with extras. I say "bursting" -- it bloody better be as I'm going to be buying it again. Anyway, the initial release wasn't quite as shoddy as some might suppose: as well as containing a good-looking (and sounding) copy of the film, it also manages 54 minutes of film-specific extras plus a 49 minute documentary on Bond girls. That's not a bad tally really, even though the new edition should easily top it. That considered, I won't be including those numbers in a total here... so expect an update before long.

Incidentally, if you're an extras fan and want the re-release, but already own the old one, I suggest selling it sharpish -- you've got 49 days til the new edition hits shelves...

TV

Cathy Come Home
[#59 in 100 Films in a Year 2008]
Ken Loach's 1966 Wednesday Play about a family's descent into homelessness, which directly led to the formation of the charity Shelter and, later, changes in British law.

Fiona's Story
One-off drama starring Gina McKee as the wife of a man who is found to have downloaded child porn. It's Jeremy Northam who gives the piece's stand-out performance as the layered, complex husband, an ultimately nasty character who is consequently much more interesting than the rather stock Worried Wife character McKee's landed with.

Outnumbered
1x05 Episode 5 [2nd watch]

Spooks
5x08 Agenda
Bloody Christians. Nice to see them as the villains for once. Brilliant. Down side: Adam seems to be following almost exactly the same plot arc that Tom travelled along in the run up to his dismissal from the show, and the trailer for the next episode suggests a total rehash of those elements from Tom's penultimate storyline. Oh dear. Still, at least I know Adam doesn't leave.

TV

Gilmore Girls
5x02 A Messenger, Nothing More
"Huzzah!"

Outnumbered
1x04 Episode 4 [2nd watch]

Spooks
5x06 Hostage Takers Part 1
5x07 Hostage Takers Part 2
Presumably one of the reasons Spooks don't bandy their episode titles about is that they sometimes give the game away -- the twists at the end of part one are virtually nonexistent if you know it's going to turn into a hostage situation! On the other hand, part one is subpar across the board, so maybe it wouldn't've matter. Part two wasn't too bad though.

Films

Beauty and the Beast (1991)
[3rd or so watch]
It's hardly a little-known piece of trivia, but Beauty and the Beast was the first (and, 17 years on, is still the only) animated film to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. Well-deserved it was too.

Articles

Review of Robot Chicken: Star Wars DVD by James Gray
(from DVD Times)
"Never, I would hazard to guess, has a single twenty-minute episode of anything been the focus of so much comprehensive coverage [but] it’d be daft to criticise a DVD for having too many extras [though] there's still a good argument to be made that no single episode is worth an entire DVD release"

100 Films on a Cover

Empire, not content with conducting a ludicrously huge reader poll to find the 500 greatest films ever made, have also roped in 150 (as yet unnamed) "key directors and producers" and "the world's most influential film critics" to have their say.

And Empire, not content with conducting a ludicrously huge reader poll and gathering the opinion of key directors, producers and critics to find the 500 greatest films ever made, have gone and created a "magazine milestone" -- 100 different covers for the issue featuring the list! In fact, it's 101, with the 101st being a subscriber-only cover that's currently secret. I'm currently quite glad that Empire's the only magazine I've bothered to keep up my subscription to.

I'm a bit of a collector and hoarder, but even I'm not made enough to fork out £150 to get all 100 covers. That said, at just £1.50 an issue it's a pretty reasonable deal, all things considered, and certainly better than the one Total Film offered when they did their 21 different Bond covers a short while back. Nonetheless, I'll surely try to get my hands on a few different ones, and here's my current pick of the bunch -- mainly, films I love that have especially cool covers, but also some that just look good.

Click to enlarge.

TV

God, the Devil and Bob
1x03 Date From Hell

The Tudors
2x05 His Majesty's Pleasure
After three opening episodes that continued the first season's model of going nowhere fast, these last two have seen The Tudors finally pick up the pace. Thank God! No, do -- He's what most of the plot's about right now.

Would I Lie To You?
2x08 (29/8/08 edition) [season finale]

Films

Bond from the Beginning #10:
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
[2nd watch]
See here for my thoughts on this film.

Articles

Australia Pushed Back To Thanksgiving by Chris Hewitt
(from Empire Online)
More amusing witterings: "Looks like Harry Potter And The Shift Into Next Summer has had a real impact on the November schedules in the States... Australia has just moved back by a whopping 12 days, to November 26. [It] remains to be seen how a film that could only become more Australian if Rolf Harris showed up will play on the weekend when America is celebrating its most patriotic holiday. Australia is still scheduled to open here on Boxing G’day."

Duchovny enters sex rehab clinic
(from BBC News)
Well that's... unusual...

Interview: Quantum of Solace Game Co-Design Director Adam Gascoine by Devin Zydel
(from CommanderBond.net)
"Daniel Craig was actually the most reluctant [to lend his voice and likeness to the game]. He’s a big gamer himself and didn’t want to be in a poorly made licensed game, so we sat him down and let him play an early build. He loved it and came back to us to say “Okay, I’ll do it.” Since then he’s been a very important part of making the game what it is."

Young Bond computer game aims to get boys reading by Alison Flood
(from guardian.co.uk)
If you haven't heard about The Shadow War online game, you may also want to check out links such as this and this; but I mention the Guardian article more for this little snippet: "Higson said there had also been "a lot of film interest" in the books. "It's just finding the time to get it right – it's very difficult to find a kid with the charisma to pull off the character of Bond at that age.""

Super Bond interviews

No, it's not a new super-powered direction for the franchise, but rather interviews that are super about Bond -- and, specifically, Quantum of Solace. They're from a German site, but don't worry, they're in English.

So, check out the latest utterances of...

Gemma Arterton ('Agent Fields')
She's in bloody everything nowadays, y'know. "I’m glamorous but I don’t think I’m hot glamorous. There was this thing with my character where we wanted to make her really retro and a bit of a throwback. I can’t reveal her first name yet but it’s typically Fleming and quite cheeky and a little bit tongue in cheek."

Barbara Broccoli & Michael G. Wilson (producers)
"Bond is pursuing the people behind Vesper’s betrayal and her death. He is tracking them down and the mystery unfolds. He runs into CIA people later who are very ambivalent about their role in all of this." Americans are bad! Yay!

Marc Forster (director)
"Judi Dench is one of the greatest actresses living today... personally I could watch her read the phone book... I wanted to give her more scenes and have her interact with Bond more because she is the only woman Bond doesn’t see in a sexual context... The relationship between them is fascinating and I think it’s really important so I wanted more scenes between them and to go into that relationship with more depth."

Quantum of Solace hits UK cinemas on October 31st and the US on November 14th (allow my to say, "ha ha!"). For a full list of release dates by country, look here.

A new trailer is due in the next couple of weeks.

TV

Big Cat Week
2x02 (4/1/2005 edition)

God, the Devil and Bob
1x01 In the Beginning
1x02 Andy Runs Away
I loved this when it first aired back in 2000, and I'm pleased to say that, unlike Hot Shots, it's still funny to me today. Hurray!

Mock the Week
6x08 (28/8/08 edition)

The Tudors
2x04 The Act of Succession

Articles

Quite a few today -- maybe I should start breaking these down / posting them throughout the day?

Documentaries Being Screened In Empty Auditoriums In N.Y.
(from Studio Briefing)
"Nine documentary films are being screened in mostly empty theaters at a New York arthouse this week in order to quality for Oscar consideration... The New York Times reported that when its reporter looked into the 7:00 p.m. screenings, it found two theaters with not a single person in the seats and one with just three."

Filming under way for new series of Torchwood
(from BBC Press Office)
Press release announcing the third season of Torchwood, a single five-part story entitled Children of Earth. One of the main guest stars is Peter Capaldi, from Doctor Who's The Fires of Pompeii. Another case of spatial genetic multiplicity in Cardiff?

Ghostbusters Tops Funny Films Poll
(from WENN)
I love Ghostbusters, so this is worth reporting. Follow the links for more of the list.

Movie Reviews: Hamlet 2
(from Studio Briefing)
While the trailer looked surprisingly good, it seems the film itself is as bad as you'd expect.

Pitt and Clooney at Venice debut
(from BBC News)
"Pitt picked up an award that he won in Venice last year -- the best actor's prize for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. "You can run but you can't hide," Pitt joked as he accepted the award. "It was an honour to receive this last year and it remains an honour to accept this this year.""

The Strangers Set For A Sequel by Chris Hewitt
(from Empire Online)
Don't even really know what it is (and the article contains spoilers), but it makes this valid point: "Rogue is hoping that the [sequel] might see The Strangers develop into a Saw-like franchise. With the best will in the world, we hope not, for very few horror franchises have suffered from the law of diminishing returns like the Saw series. Isn’t it best to burn out with a couple of really good, strong efforts, than to fade away with increasingly awful sequels?"

Torchwood Season Three Revealed
(from Torchwood Official Site)
Mentioned purely for this quote: "Russell T Davies outlined his vision in a tone meeting with key production staff where he told them, 'I usually give you all one or two tone words when we have a meeting like this, but if I were to give you two words this time, they would be "Euros Lyn". More than ever before, this series of Torchwood will be director-led, and it will look absolutely amazing.'" How unusual, and therefore intriguing...

West Wing writer tackles Facebook
(from BBC News)
"Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has agreed to make a film about the founders of social networking site Facebook... "I have a fairly specific idea of what the first 15 pages of the screenplay will be and no idea what will happen on pages 16 thru 130," he wrote. "I have very strong feelings about the internet and its effect on our national culture, but frankly those feelings are being countered by the sophistication, kindness, curiosity and wit of the posts in this site. You people are screwing me up with your civility and intelligence.""

Also:
Get Ready For Facebook: The Movie by Chris Hewitt
(from Empire Online)
Mentioned for these two somewhat amusing comments: "Empire has to ask: who is sad enough to start a fake Facebook page for Aaron Sorkin? ... should Sorkin’s next status update read, ‘Aaron was only kidding about the Facebook thing – it’s a very bad idea’?"

"sing the theme toon..."

James Bond Theme (Casino Royale Trailer Version) by Pfeifer Broz. Music
Nearly two years on, I finally found the damn thing! And it's brilliant. You can download it for yourself here (less than legally, I should add, but there's no way to purchase the music as it's never been officially released).

TV

Gilmore Girls
5x01 Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller

The Tudors
2x03 Checkmate

Who Do You Think You Are?
5x03 Jerry Springer

Films

Texas Across the River (1966)
[#58 in 100 Films in a Year 2008]
Now eight films behind with my reviews...

Articles

Alicia Keys And Jack White May Perform On James Bond-Themed X Factor by Devin Zydel
(from CommanderBond.net)
I hate The X Factor as much as the next person with any taste, but this could be fun. Well, a chance to hear the new theme would be good at least.

Hellboy defeats Batman in cinemas
(from BBC News)
"Comic book movie Hellboy II: The Golden Army has knocked The Dark Knight off the number one spot in the UK and Ireland box office chart. [It] took £2.97m on its opening weekend." Hardly a huge haul, but then TDK (which finally dropped from first down to fourth) is in its fifth week.

New Pics From Oliver Stone’s W by Glen Ferris
(from Empire Online)
A preview of Empire's preview of Oliver Stone's forthcoming film W.. Stone says that Bush is "a circular character; even now he harkens back to who he was in 2000. His speeches are the same. There doesn’t seem to be a growth. There’s a fundamental inability in the man, a King Lear kind of hubris, where he can’t admit to any fault, whereas Nixon [the subject of Stone's previous Presidential biopic] seems to have been genuinely haunted by doubt and uncertainty. As a result, this is a very different type of movie. While Nixon was a very rich meal, this is more of a soufflé. And with a soufflé, you never quite know until it bakes." And it will be baked & served on November 7th in the UK.