TV

Top Gear
15x03 (11/7/10 edition)
It sometimes amazes me how entertaining Top Gear still is -- you'd think they'd've run out of decent stunts by now.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

Hipster Priest: A Quietus Interview With Alan Moore by John Doran
(from The Quietus)
Interviews with Alan Moore are always interesting, if often odd. And they remind me that I still haven't read the first issue/book of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen III. Not sure where I've left it either...

Mr. Sherlock Holmes by Dr. Joseph Bell
(from Wikisource)
Bell was Conan Doyle's inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, not something he mentions in this essay, which is more generally about the detective's appeal. And its ending is a pretty fine summation of why Holmes and his adventures endure:

in addition to the creation of his hero, Dr. Conan Doyle in this remarkable series of stories has proved himself a born story-teller. He has had the wit to devise excellent plots, interesting complications; he tells them in honest Saxon-English with directness and pith; and above all his other merits, his stories are absolutely free from padding. He knows how delicious brevity is, how everything tends to be too long, and he has given us stories that we can read at a sitting between dinner and coffee, and we have not a chance to forget the beginning before we reach the end. The ordinary detective story... really needs an effort of memory quite misplaced to keep the circumstances of the crimes and all the wrong scents [in mind]. Dr. Doyle never gives you a chance to forget an incident or miss a point.

Muse: 'We sold our soul to Twilight' by Clare Wiley
(from Digital Spy)
It's a little bit reassuring that they feel that way about it.

You Can't Appreciate How Completely Apple Has Humiliated The Cellphone Industry Until You See These Charts by Henry Blodget
(from SAI (Silicon Alley Insider) at Business Insider)
Does what it says on the tin. Thoroughly.

the double rainbow saga continues...

The funniest take on "Double Rainbow" so far

-- Stephen Friz Frizzle

(For the start of this double rainbow thingamie, look here.)

TV

Stand Up for the Week
1x03 (9/7/10 edition)
I have come to the only reasonable conclusion for my continuing Jack Whitehall dilemma: he must be getting funnier. This explains why I've been finding him funny of late without meaning I've lost my sense of (good) humour. Win-win!
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Fiction

A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Part 1, Chapter 1
Giving iBooks a test run on my iPhone, a sample chapter from the complete Sherlock Holmes seemed a good a choice as any.
I tried several different editions: two showed why reading books on your phone is as ridiculous as it sounds, one was excellent and showed why it can actually work. Goes to show how care and attention to your product can make all the difference. Not to mention that the book itself is a great opening to Holmes' first case.

Articles

Today seems to be Steven Moffat Press Release Day at the BBC...

Father who? The Doctor crashes Christmas
(from the BBC Press Office)
Interesting casting for the Doctor Who Christmas special. Still no title or plot details though.

Sherlock press pack
(from the BBC Press Office)
Soon to be Moffat's Other Series, I'm rather excited for this present-day re-imagining of Sherlock Holmes. Page two has a great interview with Moffat and co-recreator Mark Gatiss about their thinking behind the series and how they've gone about adapting various elements of the original adventures.

TV

The Mentalist
2x21 18-5-4
Why, in dramas, are people's email addresses always something like "beastslayer646"? I don't know anyone that has [generic gamer name]+[random numbers] for their address -- and I don't believe the kind of people who have them in dramas would settle for that either.
[Watch it (again) on Demand Five.]

Murderland
Part 3 Carol's Story [final episode]
Despite ITV's promotion claiming this final part follows the murdered mother, the title gives away the truth: it's actually the tale of the grown-up girl, part one's Carrie with the adult version of her name. Hard to say if that's marketing trying to cover something perceived as a twist, or just trying to liven up an otherwise unexemplary flashback structure with the idea that the final episode followed the deceased victim.
Still, the plot itself manages a couple of final reveals that subvert where it seemed to be leading you, although the ultimate culprits aren't that surprising really -- it's the kind of end that pulls of moderately unexpected twists without making them properly shocking or raising the level of the series above "good". Ho hum.

Rev.
1x02 Episode 2
I'm not particularly a fan of Christians, but these 'iChristian' types must be the worst by a country mile.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

this week on 100 Films

3 new reviews were posted to 100 Films in a Year this week, and they were...

Guess Who (2005)

The plot isn’t a direct copy of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, preferring to take the gist of the concept and a few of the story beats and surround them with a bunch of Funny Situations. I won’t bother you with details; suffice to say, the film does manage the odd laugh or smile. The ending is suitably lovey-dovey, sentimental, and, I think many would add, hogwash.

Insomnia (1997)

Watching this Norwegian original after having seen Christopher Nolan’s American version, it feels like someone watched the remake then was asked to retell it: it hits most of the main plot beats and memorable sequences, but seems to gloss past the nuances and character.

Pale Rider (1985)

Pale Rider is, in many ways, a pretty stock Western. The plot is likely to be familiar even to those who haven’t seen a great deal of the genre: in rides a mysterious stranger, sees injustice, climactic shoot-out, mysterious stranger rides into the sunset/from whence he came/forever on. Eastwood offers only one significant addition to this concept. The mysterious stranger is, on the one hand, a preacher — “surely a man of God is opposed to violence?”, etc. And on the other, is he even human?

More next Sunday.

this is so double rainbow

As Nathan Fillion said, watch this...



...then this...



(Please let me know if these don't work. They can always be found via Fillion's tweets here and here (and here).)

TV

Murderland
Part 2 Hain's Story
Astonishingly, some of the more obvious 'twists' have been avoided, while at the same time managing to pull a few interesting ones. Thus far, though, the notion of re-presenting the same flashbacks from different perspectives has only resulted in going back over stuff we've already seen, and I wouldn't even believe they'd shot from different angles for each person's viewpoint if I hadn't read so.

Top Gear
15x02 (4/7/10 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

How I Met Your Mother
5x07 The Rough Patch
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

The Mentalist
2x20 Red All Over
[Watch it (again) on Demand Five.]

The Sandbaggers
3x01 All in a Good Cause [2nd watch]
It's been over a year since I last watched The Sandbaggers (sadly in that time just missing out on the third series' 30th anniversary, which would've been neat), so, as with Dexter before it, it made sense to re-watch this first episode.

Articles

Firefly: The Credits Sequence It Deserved! by Garrison Dean
(from io9)
I'm not sure "deserved" is the right word. "Would've had in the '80s" is the concept. Also, be amused by the dim-witted comments that miss the joke.

Survey provides hints on the new Back to the Future game by Ian Fisher
(from Shogun Gamer)
I saw this earlier in the week and somehow forgot to post it. Telltale -- makers of the forthcoming Back to the Future games, amongst many other great things (sadly not including the Doctor Who 'Adventure ' Games) -- have been surveying fans on what they'd like to see included. Which firstly provides hints at what might be in there, but, more importantly, "it’s nice to see a developer be upfront and ask gamers what they want to see". Too true.

Collection Count

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

This week, a Blu-ray replaces a two-disc DVD, a new single-disc DVD is added, and some more Blu-rays turn up to make it look like nothing unusual happened at all. Thrilling.

Number of titles in collection: 1,188 [up 3]
Of which DVDs: 1,095 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 93 [up 3]

Number of discs in collection: 2,923 [up 3]
Number of films in collection: 1,251 [up 3]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 4,111 [no change]

Statistic of the week:

Number of music DVDs:
56
(4.7% of the total)

I don't buy music DVDs too often, but (obviously) occasionally I do -- including this week, hence the inspiration for the stat. Do note that by this I don't mean Musicals, but concert DVDs, making-ofs attached to albums, that kind of thing.

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Gareth Malone Goes to Glyndebourne
Part 3 (of 3)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Battlestar Galactica [2004]
2x15 Scar

Friday Night With Jonathan Ross
18x23 (2/7/10 edition)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Gareth Malone Goes to Glyndebourne
Part 2 (of 3)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Stand Up for the Week
1x02 (2/7/10 edition)
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Films

Metropolis 2010 reissue trailer
Eureka's rather lovely trailer for their forthcoming release of the (almost-)complete Metropolis. It's in cinemas from September 10th, and on DVD & Blu-ray before the end of the year.

Pale Rider (1985)
[#67 in 100 Films in a Year 2010]

fix

Seems the TV post on July 1st was completely mucking up the page. This has now been fixed, so you can see the quite interesting Roger Ebert article properly now.

TV

Gareth Malone Goes to Glyndebourne
Part 1 (of 3)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

How I Met Your Mother
5x06 Bagpipes
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Articles

Back To The Future 'hoax' - we confess! by Dan Goodswen
(from Total Film)

Total Film 'Future Day' shenanigans cause Twitter chaos

Ha!

International Number Ones: Because every country is best at something by David McCandless
(from Information is Beautiful)
And we're best for... CCTV. Typical.
(It falls down slightly because not every country has a label.)

Review of Inception by Nev Pierce
(from Empire)
If you didn't think the excitement/anticipation levels for Inception could be ratcheted any higher... well, Empire's review may surprise you. (In a good way.)

Some overused Doctor Who plot devices we'd like a moratorium on by Charlie Jane Anders
(from io9)
Some of these are stretching things a bit -- they've only been used twice, for example, and it's only because they're so good that we've even noticed -- but Anders also has a point about many of them.

TV

Murderland
Part 1 Carrie's Story
I've had this miniseries sat waiting to be watched for almost nine months(!) It is, as you may guess from the title, about a murder; but each episode is told from the perspective on a different character -- in part one, it's the teenage daughter of the victim. It's a very good performance from young Bel Powley as the titular Carrie, and it's quite amazing just how much like The Past the mid-'90s now look, but the mystery is thus far only mildly intriguing. Perhaps things will click together in the next two episodes.

Mock the Week
9x03 (1/7/10 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]