TV

The Armstrong and Miller Show
2x04 Episode 4
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Collision
Part 2 (of 5)
More intrigue, more potential cliches. Can Collision overcome them? I fear we'll have to wait til part five to find out.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Generation Kill
Part 6 Stay Frosty
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

How I Met Your Mother
2x22 Something Blue [season finale]
Well, that was inevitable. They did have some fun with it though, in typical HIMYM time-bending fashion -- hurrah!

It's Only a Theory
1x06 Episode 6
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Spooks
8x02 Episode 2
In which the good guys spend most of the episode being the bad guys, morally. A bit of a return to form after last week though.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

new review at 100 Films

High Anxiety (1977)

Mel Brooks pays comedic tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, but those unfamiliar with the Master of Suspense’s output need not apply... I can’t remember many laughs that didn’t spring from a Hitchcock reference of some kind. Indeed, whole chunks pass by without a laugh. At other times, bits that are clearly meant to be funny just don’t hit home, while some gags are almost reassuringly familiar

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

Collision
Part 1 (of 5)
ITV muscle into BBC territory with a five-part thriller showing every night this week. It's rather epic and with a ridiculously star-laden cast (cries of "oh it's him/her!" abound throughout), but already threatening to tip over into cliche. If Dean Lennox Kelly is smuggling drugs or David Bamber turns out to be a paedophile, or every person in the crash turns out to be somehow connected, I'll be most disappointed at the thorough lack of twists and reasonable logic.
(I realise it started last night -- I'm 24 hours behind, cos this way I can fast-forward the ads. Hurrah!)
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

The Graham Norton Show
6x06 (9/11/09 edition)
David Tennant! Hurrah! Revealing nothing significant about the remaining eps of Who, of course, and giving the usual answers to the usual questions, but he's always entertaining and it's worth watching if you're a fan.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

How I Met Your Mother
2x21 Something Borrowed

Films

Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)
[#70 in 100 Films in a Year 2009]

Magazines

Radio Times 14-20 November 2009

Two very good articles this week (not counting the Who one on p17-18, that is, which is always excellent): Stephen Poliakoff espouses on the ludicrous BBC Safeguarding Trust (It's time to set writers free and trust the viewers, p12) and both of Alison Graham's pieces (so I guess that's three then), one about the way documentaries are now over-directed (Stand still, calm down and just let 'em speak, p49) and one about the disappointing guessability of most modern thrillers (Crime dramas need subtlety, also p49).

There's also a feature on Channel 4's so-called '3D Week' (3-D TV, p24) that rather highlights how lacklustre it is. With one two-part programme, one other programme, and two films, it's less a Week and more a Night someone thought they could string out. There's not even an attempt to make it last all week, with Wednesday and Thursday featuring no related programming and Friday being mainly a repeat (and one of the films). Disappointing, C4.

Articles

First pic of David Tennant's last Who story by Neil Wilkes
(from Digital Spy)
This has to be the must underwhelming 'first pic' ever. Honestly, it could be from almost any Tennant story -- the only requirement would be he was wearing the brownish suit.

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.