TV

A Comedy Roast
1x03 Chris Tarrant [season finale]
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

The Graham Norton Show
7x01 (12/4/10 edition)

Over the Rainbow
Show 5: Results
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Articles

This is What a Tweet Looks Like by Sarah Perez
(from ReadWriteWeb)
"Yes yes, a message only 140 characters long, I know." But oh no no, dear reader, no no -- there's a lot more to a tweet than you might think. And this explains it. Moderately interesting, I thought.

TV

Have I Got News For You
39x03 (15/4/10 edition; extended repeat)
I had a specific comment to make about this episode, but it's completely gone now. Just watch it, laugh lots, and I'm sure you'll've seen whatever it was I had to say.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Russell Howard's Good News
2x04 (15/4/10 edition)
Despite setting a recording for the extended repeat, it seems BBC Three did Something Funny and I wound up with the last 20 minutes of Herbie-whatever-with-Lindsay-Lohan and a half-an-hour-early edition of Family Guy. There's no explanation for this that I can find.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Wallander [Swedish]
2x01 Hämnden (aka The Revenge)
The Swedish Wallander series returns for its second and reportedly final series. This episode was originally released in cinemas, so counts as #40 on 100 Films in a Year 2010. Click here to read my review.

You Have Been Watching
2x01 (15/4/10 edition)
Hurrah for another excellent programme returning.
This edition featured clips from Spartacus: Blood and Sand, a series I'd been a little looking forward to because it looked like it might be Rome Mark 2. Sadly, this appears to not be the case. Where Rome was high-budget and underpinned its sex and violence with an awful lot of character and intelligence, Spartacus: BS (the most apt title abbreviation) has CGI in every scene that's so bad it makes everything look like a 15-year-old computer game. The quality of the script and acting suggest they've been dragged from the same.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Articles

By Zeus! The version of Clash of the Titans you didn't see by Devin Faraci
(from CHUD.com)
Whether you've seen the new Clash of the Titans or not (I haven't), this makes for an interesting read -- basically, how they took something half-decent and completely buggered about with it to make the film as released.

Cook-book misprint costs Australian publishers dear
(from BBC News)

An Australian publisher has had to pulp and reprint a cook-book after one recipe listed "salt and freshly ground black people" instead of black pepper.

Marvellous!
Over here, this would no doubt lead to all kinds of outrage and demands for refunds and apologies and probably the closure of the company or at least resignation of all involved in the book's creation. In Australia, however...

"why anyone would be offended, we don't know," head of publishing Bob Sessions is quoted as saying... "proofreading a cook-book is an extremely difficult task. I find that quite forgivable," Mr Sessions said. If anyone complains about the "silly mistake", they will be given the new version

Argh! Common sense! Run away!

How did you find Victory of the Daleks? by Neil Wilkes
(from Digital Spy)
I turned on BBC HD at the scheduled time and there it was!
Ho ho ho. But you can read some bafflingly sarcasm-free idiotic comments here.

this week on 100 Films

Just 1 new review again this week at 100 Films in a Year. I really ought to post more...

Elektra (2005)

The plot starts out as sub-Leon assassin nonsense, before turning into sub-X-Men superhero nonsense. The connection to Daredevil is actually minimal... she reverts to a bright red get-up that’s slightly more reminiscent of the comics. “It builds the legend,” she semi-explains. How can a legend be built if everyone who sees her in it is promptly killed?

More next Sunday. Hopefully.

stupid Digital Spy readers on Doctor Who episode 3

These are hilarious. Honestly, the amount of stupidity on display is... well, it's a little troubling, actually; but it does make for funny reading.

I'm not trying to say Victory of the Daleks was a great episode or anything (though I did think parts of it were fun and others conveyed good ideas), and I'm not adverse to a difference of opinion... but there's a big difference between conflicting opinions and pure idiocy, which many of these comments display.

Here's a selection:

Dalek plot always seems to be the same

Yes, in every new-series episode so far they've pretended to be good guys.
Except they haven't. Not once.

Steven Moffat wrote such amazing episodes... he seems to have forgotten how to write/direct over the last year.

Two things: Moffat didn't write this episode, and he's never directed an episode. One might argue this is a little geeky, requiring behind-the-scenes knowledge -- but if you're going to criticise someone's work, at least attribute it to the right person. You may as well say Twilight isn't as good as Great Expectations because, well, they're both by authors writing in English.

I found that the new doctor... didn't interact with the audience properly.

It's not theatre, love. What do you want him to do, turn to camera and invite us to share the jokes? Or suggest we should be scared? Maybe ask if we'd like a cup of tea too?

The storyline was well thats just it, it was a bit far fetched

So, you're watching a series in which a two-hearted alien travels through time and space in a little blue box that is infinitely bigger on the inside fighting all kinds of aliens and monsters... and you think an episode set in our own history is "a bit far fetched"?

But this takes the prize for the very best -- or, rather, very worst...

doctor who, season 1, episode 9/10. the doctor visits WW2 and encounters gas mask children. doctor who, season 5, episode 3. the doctor visits WW2 and encounters daleks. how does he not meet himself? ... very, very, VERY, silly.

That's right, readers: the Doctor visiting a 6-year-long continent-spanning war twice and not meeting himself is "very, very, VERY, silly."

If you can stand the pain, the whole darn lot can be read here.

TV

Doctor Who
31x03 Victory of the Daleks
Looks like Character, the main Doctor Who toy licensee, is now in charge of the series itself. Why else replace the excellent 2005 Dalek re-design with a selection of merchandise-friendly multi-coloured bubble bath bottles?
The actual story was by-and-large pretty good though, particularly their escape at the end -- truly, a victory for the Daleks. And it also means that when they inevitably return they won't have to resort to the now-tired "one of us survived and happened to fall through time" malarky they've used goodness-knows-how-many times over the past five years (including this episode).
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Doctor Who Confidential
5x03 War Games
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Mentalist
2x08 His Red Right Hand
Dark episode. Though not sure what his right hand had to do with it. His leg, yes, but not his hand.
[Watch it (again) on Demand Five.]

Over the Rainbow
Show 5
For the first time in weeks/months/years, I've finally watched all of the BBC's Saturday night line-up when it was actually on! Though I watched it on BBC HD, so most of it was late. Still...
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Articles

Mark Gatiss talks Who, Sherlock by Neil Wilkes & Nick Levine
(from Digital Spy)
Probably best to read this after his episode as it contains minor spoilers, but it's mostly nice to hear an update on Sherlock -- looking forward to that one. (See also: interview with Ian McNeice, aka Winston Churchill, about the same episode (but not Sherlock. Obviously.))

Matthew Weiner Says Mad Men Is Half-Over by Christopher Rosen
(from Movie|Line)
i.e. they're hoping for six seasons, no more (and, be default, no less). So that's... good... I guess...

TV

Archer
1x09 Job Offer
[Watch it (again) on Demand Five.]

Ashes to Ashes
3x02 Episode 2
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Outnumbered
3x02 Programme 2
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

Confession: I Can't Tell the Actors Apart on HBO's The Pacific by Kyle Buchanan
(from Movie|Line)
I haven't been watching The Pacific (partly because I object to Sky shoving it on Movies; partly cos I may as well just wait for the Blu-ray to get it in the best quality), but this article makes it look hard. Just look at the three pictures at the top... and remember that they aren't the same guy. Seriously.

Sutherland confirms 24 movie series by Simon Reynolds
(from Digital Spy)
All information we already knew, just reiterated. But noteworthy for this:

The film will be a two-hour representation of a 24-hour day

says Sutherland. That's all well and good, but the main thing about the show is less that it all takes place in one day (though, obviously, that's the title) and more that it takes place in real time. Note that the one-off circa-90-minute TV movie special didn't try to include 24 hours, but simply it covered a (real-time) two.
Previously producers intimated that the movie might make half the film cover 23 hours and the last hour occur in real-time -- this is a little half-arsed, but at the same time is probably the only way to cover both the titular period and the franchise's primary gimmick.

Zac Efron in Firefly
(from Serial Bus)
Holy moly, so it is!

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week. Slight increases this week thanks to some new Doctor Who DVDs.

Number of titles in collection: 1,164 [up 2]
Of which DVDs: 1,089 [up 2]
Of which Blu-rays: 75 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 2,827 [up 5]
Number of films in collection: 1,222 [no change]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 3,890 [up 16]

Statistic of the week:

Number of titles in the 'Drama' genre:
183
(15.7% of the total)

Genre is a rather subjective thing and many titles cross several -- is Back to the Future Comedy or Sci-fi? Which Bond films are Thrillers and which are just Action? -- which is why I've thus far avoided any stats around it. Nonetheless, I group every title on my list into one genre, and the largest of these is the suitably generic 'Drama'.

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

A Comedy Roast
1x02 Sharon Osbourne
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Articles

Review of Kick-Ass by Roger Ebert
(from rogerebert.com)
I don't agree with Ebert in the slightest -- I loved Kick-Ass -- but, at the same time, his arguments are moderately well-reasoned. Certainly better than the Daily Mail's laughable claptrap, anyway.

TV

The Mentalist
2x07 Red Bulls
[Watch it (again) on Demand Five.]

Over the Rainbow
Programme 5 (of 20)
Programme 6 (of 20)
[Watch programmes 5 and 6 (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

FlashForward tipped for season two renewal by Oli Simpson
(from Digital Spy)

Despite performing poorly in the US, apparently "it actually does fairly well overseas". Really?! The world has poor taste... (Says he who still intends to keep watching season one. When I get round to it.)
Still, the story is actually more interesting for this reason:

"This is a rare case where a low domestic performer could get a surprise pickup."

Rare indeed.

TV

House
6x16 Black Hole
Well, that's certainly some... unusual science...

Mad Men
3x12 The Grown Ups
[Watch it again in HD on iPlayer.]

Articles

Survivors axe confirmed by BBC by Paul Millar
(from Digital Spy)
Cheerio Survivors! Though they clearly wanted a third run, they'd at least wrapped up most of the major plot threads. It's no surprise it's gone, really.
But bless Digital Spy for thinking the largely-criticised opinion of their often-criticised TV reviewer counts as "a roasting by critics".

Doctor Who's 10 best cliffhangers

For no reason other than I have, I've written a list of my favourite 10 cliffhangers from the 00s revival of Doctor Who -- yes, this makes the post's title slightly misleading... but also slightly catchier.

With Moffat's reign only just underway -- and no proper cliffhangers yet -- this is really "the best cliffhangers from the RTD years", but there you go. I was going to do the classic series too, but there are just too many to try to remember.

And so, in a loosely ranked order, here they are...


10) Bad Wolf
This is 10th because, really, technically, it's not a cliffhanger. Forget "Rose, I'm coming for you" or whatever -- very dramatic speech, yes; cliffhanger, not really -- the Next Time trailer does the real work here, getting us all excited in a way the 'cliffhanger' didn't. And the key is the closing dialogue: an extra-deep Dalek voice booms, "THEY SURVIVED THROUGH ME". Through who, through who? I can't even remember the details of the revelation, but the tease is immense and the speculation ran rampant.

9) Evolution of the Daleks
This one was thoroughly ruined in advance: it was all over the cover of that week's Radio Times. But if you play the game of pretending you don't know... holy crap, it's a Human Dalek! That's new!

8) Last of the Time Lords
"Something strange enters the TARDIS" became the staple for end-of-season Christmas-special teases -- though it just felt that way, because in fact they only did it twice (well, three if you count the first season's regeneration; and it was almost a fourth, but they (wisely) cut that scene from Journey's End). So Doomsday gets points for doing it first, and it certainly did it well... but Last of the Time Lords did it better. This wins out for how it does it: it's the Titanic! And it's broken through the side of the console room! Repetitious or not, that still earns maximum points for originality, thanks.

7) Silence in the Library
Donna's one of those help droid things! By nuWho standards this is gloriously understated -- no monsters surrounding our heroes, no twist-tastic reveal, no oh-no-it's-all-lost moment for the Doctor -- he's just running away, and mid-chase spots his friend's face glued to a computer, and we know what this means -- she's sucked inside and there's no hope for her. Well done Mr Moffat, much better than The Empty Child's "they've surrounded us" cookie-cutter closer.

6) The Sound of Drums
Whatever you think of the choice of music, or the ageing of the Doctor, this is a helluvan ending: the villain isn't about to win, as per usual in cliffhangers, he has won. Never-ending hordes of floating metallic spheres descend on the Earth, decimating it, and the Doctor can only stand by and watch, helpless, as the Master celebrates like a loon. How the hell are they gonna get out of this one?!

5) Army of Ghosts
Now, personally, on first viewing, I just thought "oh typical, it's the bloody Daleks again". But if you weren't expecting RTD to pull such a stunt, or if you think the Daleks are actually pretty cool and should be in every season, then I imagine this is pretty amazing. Indeed, if one switches off and believes the lies -- i.e. the Daleks were all wiped out at the end of Parting of the Ways and so we shall completely ignore the possibility they might ever return -- then this would be a shocking surprise.

4) Turn Left
It's less an actual cliffhanger more a hint that Something Big Is Coming, but the key to this is context. Bad Wolf was a huge part of nuWho's return -- fans spent the whole of the first season debating what it might mean and what it was all building to. Many were let down by the eventual revelation, but that doesn't detract from its significance. And then it kept cropping up, right until Bad Wolf Bay, appending a whole extra set of heightened emotion onto those words. So they mean a lot to fans, and they also mean Rose -- so factor in that we've seen her two or three times already this season, and that we know Donna's meant to convey a message, and that it says Bad Wolf EVERYWHERE... Christ it's exciting.

3) The End of Time, Part One
It's the Master again, and again he's won. This cliffhanger is both hilariously funny and gloriously tense: John Simm, on the face -- and in the body -- of every man, woman and child on the planet is at once amusing and, when you think about it, utterly terrifying; and there's no obvious way that the Doctor can just fix it and undo everything. Once again, the Master's won, and the Doctor's screwed. Oh noes.

2) The Stolen Earth
In the middle of an over-stuffed story full of Everything We Ever Did In New Who, Russell picks up on one more: regeneration. For one whole week, the nation genuinely believed the Who production team might've pulled off the greatest coup in modern TV history by filming a major twist that no paper or magazine had got its grubby little hands on. The fact that he ultimately didn't regenerate almost didn't matter: viewers genuinely believed he might have, and that's the important bit. Now, of course, when any viewer knows the 10th Doctor definitely survives for another six episodes, it might not have quite the same effect.

1) Utopia
He's the goddamn Master! Even if you'd suspected, the writing, editing and music make the end of this episode the most thrilling 10 minutes nuWho had produced to this point (arguably, it still is). Plus the actual cliffhanger bit -- that the Doctor & co are stranded in the Far Future, with enemies baring down and the TARDIS stolen -- is pretty neat too. But it's that reveal that's the real classic here.


And, to extract maximum value-for-money from this post, the worst cliffhanger in all 60 episodes of Russell T Davies-managed Who is...

The Poison Sky
"Oh my God, the TARDIS is suddenly and randomly pulling us off into the future to a different story! Why?!" Well, um, simply because someone decided Martha should be in another episode… Rubbish.

TV

Archer
1x08 The Rock
[Watch it (again) on Demand Five.]

Have I Got News For You
39x02 (8/4/10 edition)
No extended edition this week, sadly; especially a shame as it was a particularly good edition, I thought.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

House
6x15 Private Lives

Russell Howard's Good News
2x03 (8/4/10 edition; extended repeat)
[Watch only the shorter version (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

Johnson: 'Kick-Ass controversy is mad' by Catriona Wightman
(from Digital Spy)
Despite his embarrassing uncomfortableness in interviews, Aaron Johnson has some very sensible things to say about what's considered 'controversial' and what should be.