TV

Ghosts in the Machine
Documentary about the supernatural on TV.

The Graham Norton Show
6x05 (2/11/09 edition)
Yes, last week's.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

House
6x06 Brave Heart

Russell Howard's Good News
1x03 (5/11/09 edition, extended repeat)
Why don't they put the extended one on iPlayer, hm?
[You can only see the shorter version on iPlayer.]

Magazines

Inside Empire

Special edition of Empire celebrating their 20th anniversary. Yes, you're right, they did a 20th Birthday issue earlier this year (guest edited by Steven Spielberg, no less. I still haven't read it.) This issue focuses in on the magazine itself, however.

That might seem a little self indulgent, but Empire is an internationally respected magazine (c'mon, Spielberg guest edited it!) Perhaps because they already did a birthday issue, but at times it feels a little slight -- the list of regrettable mistakes (e.g. giving Attack of the Clones five stars, or Pearl Harbor four), for example, only manages 20 entries, which after some 246 issues seems unlikelily brief.

Other features fail to live up to their promise: What Might Have Been... doesn't present as well-realised an alternate history of the last 20 years in movies as you'd've hoped, for instance, while the focus on the 'directors who define Empire' are just old quotes (though some at least are interesting), and the profile of the readership is as silly as you'd hope but at just two pages feels lacklustre. Several articles merely relive former glories in a watered-down version, such as the six pages dedicated to the Lord of the Rings photo supplement they did in 2003.

It's not all bad -- some of the features are worth a read, like the editors' reminisces or the summary of the Real World in the last 20 years (not as thorough as could be, but wins points for noting Doctor Who was 2005's most defining TV series and GoldenEye 1997's most defining game. Some of the album choices are thoroughly suspect though -- if I've not even heard of them, how defining can they really be?)

Perhaps the 20th birthday issue was a more worthy celebration. I really ought to read that...

new review at 100 Films

Alone in the Dark (2005)

I could go through every scene in the film describing what’s wrong, 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 Read as some kind of scientist?) and the story entirely vacating proceedings... It's laughable for all the wrong reasons. Sadly, none of it’s laughable in a charming way — this is not So Bad It’s Good territory.

Read the full review at 100 Films.

There are currently 16 feature films and one short in the review pipeline at 100 Films. As ever, updates here as and when they're posted.

TV

Charley Boorman: By Any Means - Sydney to Tokyo
Part 2 (of 6)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Have I Got News For You
38x04 (6/11/09 edition; uncut repeat).
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

It's Only a Theory
1x05 Episode 5
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

The AristoCats (1970)
[2nd watch]

The World of Tomorrow (1998)
[#69a in 100 Films in a Year 2009]
The short that led to the commission of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Not necessarily that good in its own right, but as an extended trailer / proof of concept it works nicely.

TV

How I Met Your Mother
2x19 Bachelor Party
2x20 Showdown

Merlin
2x06 Beauty and the Beast Part 2
The cast and crew clearly had a ball producing this episode, which makes it great fun to watch too.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance
On at the same time as The X Factor. Oh ITV...
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Alone in the Dark (2005)
[#69 in 100 Films in a Year 2009]
The first Uwe Boll film I've seen. I can now confirm that he certainly lives up (or, rather, down) to his atrocious reputation.

Articles

Comedy Central orders Onion pilot by Mike Moody
(from Digital Spy)
The Onion: The Series? Sounds like a great idea, considering how funny the videos on the ONN are. So it's a shame to learn it's focusing solely on sports.

Tarantino: 'Kill Bill 3 will be out in 2014' by Simon Reynolds
(from Digital Spy)
Read the article -- that's not really what he said.

new review at 100 Films

Pushing on with yet another review this week at 100 Films...

The Apartment (1960)

It begins almost as a farce, with Jack Lemmon playing up the near-misses inherent in lending your apartment to adulterous men, and though this comedic vein never goes away the film also develops a dark side. Alongside the affairs and underhand dealings — in which our hero is closely involved — there’s an attempted overdose, discussion of other suicide methods, and respectable men getting divorced.

Read the full review at 100 Films.

There are currently 17 films in the review pipeline at 100 Films. As ever, updates here as and when they're posted.

TV

The Armstrong and Miller Show
2x03 Episode 3
A brilliant return for "kill them".
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Friday Night with Jonathan Ross
17x09 (30/10/09 edition)
It seems that Christopher Walken makes for an awkward interview, but his spoken word rendition of a Lady Gaga song was TV gold.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

House
6x05 Instant Karma

How I Met Your Mother
2x18 Moving Day

The Sarah Jane Adventures
3x08 The Eternity Trap Part Two
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Avatar Trailer 2
I was thoroughly underwhelmed by the first Avatar trailer -- as were many, despite the media's insistence that it was the best thing since someone invented moving pictures. This, on the other hand, actually looks quite good... but you have to ignore the hype. The CGI doesn't look completely lifelike, as we've been repeatedly told it will, but it is very good CGI; and overall it looks like a potentially entertaining sci-fi action/war movie, but not The Greatest Most Important Movie Ever Made Ever, as some are still insisting. So if you ignore all that -- don't take it on its own terms, as it were -- it looks like it might be quite good.
Still keep thinking of this though.

Exiled (2006)
[#68 in 100 Films in a Year 2009]

Sherlock Holmes Trailer 2
Feels less like a trailer and more a semi-randomly assembled series of clips. But they're really cool clips. No, it's not 'proper' Sherlock Holmes, but it does look like a great big entertaining action/adventure film, and that's fine by me.

Articles

How Scary Should Kids Movies Be? by Helen O'Hara
(from the Empire Blog)
An excellent point -- essentially, that a bit of a scare is good for kids. It's certainly the ethos that Doctor Who operates on, and that's just one of the reasons it's so good.

Ian McKellen has read The Hobbit! by James White
(from Total Film)
The screenplay, that is, not the book. Though he's probably read the book. But that's not news, is it. Of course, this is barely news, because he can't actually say anything about it. Still, it's exciting that it's getting closer.

Kick-Ass Character Posters Now Online by Chris Hewitt
(from Empire)
Much coolness.

Collection Count

It's the third week of Collection Count, tracking my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics. If you don't know what this is you can read my initial post here.

Another week of increases here, and a very adult statistic of the week...

Number of titles in collection: 1,072 [up 6]
Of which DVDs: 1,037 [up 6]
Of which Blu-rays: 35 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 2,633 [up 8]
Number of films in collection: 1,117 [up 15]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 3,653 [no change]

Statistic of the week:

Number of titles rated 18:
171
(15.9% of the collection)

Any particularly anal readers may like to note that as my collection includes discs from around the world, I have 154 titles without a BBFC classification, some of which are/would be rated 18 if I had the UK edition.

See you next week, faithful reader.

new review at 100 Films

Stranger on the Third Floor (1940)

so imbued with the recognisable calling cards of noir in its cinematography, characters and plot points that it feels more like an entry in a well-established genre than a formative inclusion. At only just over an hour it is, on the one hand, too brief to dig into its characters or complicate its story, but on the other, it rattles past quickly enough that the good bits impress and the weak bits are only briefly registered

Read the full review at 100 Films.

There are currently 17 films in the review pipeline at 100 Films. As ever, updates here as and when they're posted.

TV

Argumental
2x10 (3/11/09 edition)

Defying Gravity
1x04 H2IK
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

How I Met Your Mother
2x16 Stuff
The episode I accidentally skipped. Not that it matters, and it seems this links more directly into the next one anyhow.

The Sarah Jane Adventures
3x07 The Eternity Trap Part One
Ooh, spooky! Some kids'll be having nightmares tonight.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

Buffy creator bids for Terminator
(from BBC News)
Ah Joss, funny as ever. It's sometimes hard to tell if the journalist writing the article has twigged it's a joke...

new review at 100 Films

Babel (2006)

The quickest way to assess Babel is to say that it is about something — or, About Something. The plots, such as they are, aren’t really the point; nor is how they connect, or what chronology they actually occurred in... Naturally, because it is About Something, the Something it is About isn’t made blindingly clear, though there are many contenders

Read the full review at 100 Films.

There are currently 17 films in the review pipeline at 100 Films. As ever, updates here as and when they're posted.

TV

Charley Boorman: By Any Means - Sydney to Tokyo
Part 1 (of 6)
No detail on the preparation? No running vehicle count? No Russ accompanying? Have to say, so far, series two is lacking some of the first's charm.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Generation Kill
Part 5 A Burning Dog
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Never Mind the Buzzcocks
23x06 (4/11/09 edition)
Winkleman's a poor host, of course, but this episode did manage to pick up once it got going.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Ross Noble's Australian Trip
Part 6 (of 6)
[Watch it (again) on Demand Five.]

Spooks
8x01 Episode 1
Over-written, over-directed, over-acted, and over-wrought -- makes for a distinctly underwhelming return for the spy series. Must do better, or the whole show should be retired.
(Incidentally, with episode titles now turning up on Wikipedia, I've updated all my entries for series 7. And, as predicted here, this is the first time I've watched an episode of Spooks on its first broadcast since 1x02 in May 2002.)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

Gibbons Gabs
and
Gibbons Galore
(from WatchmenComicMovie.com)
Nice interview with Watchmen co-creator/illustrator Dave Gibbons. In part one he discusses the film, its reception and the various cuts, while part is a general grabbag of broadly related topics.

new review at 100 Films

Eastern Promises (2007)

director David Cronenberg widened his appeal somewhat with the excellent crime thriller A History of Violence. Here he reunites with star Viggo Mortensen for another grim tale, switching the bright searing heat of the American Midwest for the rain-drenched nighttime streets of our fair capital. But despite some similarities in plot and theme, Eastern Promises failed to engage me in the same way as the earlier effort

Read the full review at 100 Films.

There are currently 18 films in the review pipeline at 100 Films. As ever, updates here as and when they're posted.