TV

Dexter
4x03 Blinded By the Light
I believe it's tonight season four started on FX over here. Tum tee tum...

Joanna Lumley's Nile
Part 2 (of 4)

Films

Snake Eyes (1998)
[#86 in 100 Films in a Year 2010]

Articles

The lexicography of Starbucks by Jon Kelly
(from BBC News Magazine)

An English professor's stubborn refusal to use a coffee chain's terminology has struck a chord around the world. But why are brands so keen to impose their jargon on us?...

Tony Thorne, King's College London's former language centre head... believes the impact of such marketing techniques is insidious. "Some of this stuff is ludicrous in its complexity," he says... "It's intended to bamboozle and intimidate. I see it as a form of corporate bullying."

Ultraviolet light reveals how ancient Greek statues really looked by Esther Inglis-Arkell
(from io9)
Well I never.

Collection Count

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

Nothing this week. Not a sausage. I currently have quite a number of DVDs and BDs on their way from various places around the globe; I imagine they'll all turn up in one batch, just... because...

Number of titles in collection: 1,201 [no change]
Of which DVDs: 1,102 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 99 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 2,941 [no change]
Number of films in collection: 1,258 [no change]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 4,176 [no change]

Statistic of the week:

Collections of short films:
12
(1.0% of the total)

I don't actually have a total for the number of short films I own across these collections (and the odd couple on other sets too). Maybe I'll make that a stat-creating task for the future...

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Dexter
4x02 Remains to Be Seen

How I Met Your Mother
5x13 Jenkins
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Films

The Damned United (2009)
[#85 in 100 Films in a Year 2010]

Articles

Box Office Bob-omb: 5 Reasons Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World Failed To Find An Audience by Josh Tyler
(from Cinema Blend)

Here's what it all comes down to: There were big expectations for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, but only from the handful of people who'd already seen it. But it was always a movie without a specific audience. It's a broad movie built on a lot of different niche elements, and as much as we'd like to believe moviegoers are open-minded enough to step outside their comfort zone, most of the time they won't. The mistake was in thinking that all the different audiences Scott Pilgrim speaks to were the same audience, when they're not.

First 100 days: David Cameron and Nick Clegg lose buddy movie script by Marina Hyde
(from Comment is free at guardian.co.uk)

if even the terminally artless wing of the Conservative party are now viewing the coalition through the prism of Hollywood movies, the rest of us will be miles ahead. We can see that what we are dealing with is a malfunctioning buddy movie.

Star Wars on Blu-ray: George, don't do that… by Joe Utichi
(from Film Blog at guardian.co.uk)

Turns out George Lucas isn't just a fan-irritater with his CGI'd-up Star Wars 'special' editions, but also a great big hypocrite:

A 1988 congressional hearing heard that colourising old black-and-white films would constitute "destruction of our film heritage". The speaker's statement continued: "In the future it will become easier for old negatives to become lost and be 'replaced' by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten."

It's hard to believe now, but that speaker was George Lucas.

TV

Grandma's House
1x02 The day Simon decided it might be a nice idea to surprise his mother with a gift
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Normans
Part 3 Normans of the South [final episode]
I've said all I need to about this series, really -- the concluding part is just as good as the first two.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Vexed
1x01 Episode 1
In their review, the Radio Times seemed to imply this was the most horrendous thing to blight our screens for decades. Conversely, I really enjoyed it. It's not flawless, but mostly it's entertaining, funny, and I think most of the bits that RT complained about were actually misinterpreted by them.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Films

Matchstick Men (2003)
[#84 in 100 Films in a Year 2010]

TV

The Deep
Part 2 Into the Belly of the Beast
Still risible. It looks like it might have enough central plot to sustain a two-hour film, which has then been padded with problem-of-the-episode bits and dull emotional subplots to make a five-hour series. And the problems are compounded by poor dialogue, stupid characters, illogical plot jumps, and weak acting.
I'm beginning to wonder if it was written as a deliberately bad B-movie-style kind of thing, before the director & cast took it seriously. I hope for the writer(s)'s sake it was...
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Dragons' Den
8x06 Episode 6
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

That Mitchell and Webb Look
4x05 Episode 5
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Would I Lie To You?
4x04 (13/8/10 edition)

Articles

The greatest rant you'll see this week: World War II is full of plot holes, and the writers should all be fired by Charlie Jane Anders
(from io9)
Saw this a little while ago, forgot to mention it. It's very funny. The full rant can be found here.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The Lamentable Weekend Gross — what happened? by Cyriaque Lamar
(from io9)
Geeks don't equal cash, as we've seen. This suggests three things that may have gone wrong, complete with amusing video.

TV

Joanna Lumley's Nile
Part 1 (of 4)

The World at War Blu-ray is a travesty

I think I may have bemoaned this in the past, but my anger has been provoked again, so here we go.

A quick summary: The World at War is a classic documentary series about World War 2. It was made in 4:3 (fullscreen). The forthcoming remastered DVD and Blu-ray has cropped it -- i.e. cut out a significant chunk of the image -- to 16:9 (widescreen).

That's not on.

The company behind it, Fremantle (also behind plenty of other pop culture travesties, like everything that stars Simon Cowell), have recently (or, recently enough that I've only just noticed) issued their reasons for this bastardisation. Essentially, "because 4:3 is old and 16:9 is modern". They have more specifics than that, but they're all rubbish.

Normally I don't like Amazon reviews about an unreleased product that the reviewer hasn't seen/read/heard... but sometimes there are exceptions, and this is one of them -- especially when there are a bunch of misguided five-star reviews saying how great it is the series is now in widescreen. So I've joined the one-star review crowd.

My review can be found here. I'd copy & paste it, but I'd hate for Amazon to delete it on the assumption I'd nicked it from my own blog (as it were). I'd appreciate if you'd go click "Yes" at the bottom, to say it was helpful, even if you don't really care. I appreciate that by posting it here I'm also chancing people clicking "No" just for the hell of it, but... well, please don't.

And it would also be good to click "Yes" on these two well-informed reviews as well. And, just for good measure, a "No" on this one and, particularly, this one (as you can see in the comments, the guy who wrote the latter is a right idiot).

You're allowed to disagree with me, of course, but if you do then (in this instance) you're just plain wrong.

TV

Dexter
4x01 Living the Dream
Season 4 starts on UK TV sometime this week, I believe -- plus season 5 kicks off before long in the US -- so what better time to get round to it for myself. Somehow I doubt I'll have the patience to make it last 12 weeks, but you never know.

Films

Bride & Prejudice (2004)
[#82 in 100 Films in a Year 2010]

Final Destination 3 (2006)
[#83 in 100 Films in a Year 2010]

Articles

Expendables Explode, Eat Pray Love Carbo-Loads, Scott Pilgrim Powers Down by Brandon Gray
(from Box Office Mojo)

Scott Pilgrim scored a modest estimated $10.5 million [to come 5th for the weekend], which was less than Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist's $11.3 million opening weekend. It also paled compared to the launches of Kick-Ass ($19.8 million) and Zombieland ($24.7 million), among recent fan boy affairs.

So much for all that Comic-Con-based hype, then.

this week on 100 Films

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

Final Destination 2 (2003)

Final Destination 2 is daft. The concept’s daft, the new additions are daft, the characters are daft, and most of all the deaths are daft. And that’s why it’s an awful lot of fun.

True Lies (1994)

True Lies is unusual on director James Cameron’s CV in that it’s a funny, daft comedy, a spoof of other action films. Where it differs from most spoofs is that it’s also a proper action movie.

More next Sunday.

TV

Robin Hood
3x13 Something Worth Fighting For Part 2 [series finale]
And that's that for this version of Robin Hood. It's a shame the series got cancelled after it was made -- a lot of the ending is very definitive, but with the chance of a fourth run they had to leave it open somehow; if the news had come sooner they could've just rounded it off properly. Oh well.

Roger & Val Have Just Got In
1x02 The Unglamorous Row
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Sandbaggers
3x07 Opposite Numbers [series finale]
And that's Sandbaggers over forever too, sadly -- and on a cliffhanger, damn 'em. Brilliant as ever though. I guess I'll just have to get my hands on Queen & Country for my political/spy fix.

Films

Ocean's Eleven (1960)
[#80 in 100 Films in a Year 2010]
All those people who say the remake is better... are right.

Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943)
[#79 in 100 Films in a Year 2010]
The 6th film in the Rathbone/Bruce series (I've previously reviewed the preceding five). It's a good entry, moving away from the WW2-spying Nazi-fighting tales of the last three films and back towards proper Holmesian detective work. Apparently the next couple are even better, so I look forward to those.

Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
[#81 in 100 Films in a Year 2010]

TV

How I Met Your Mother
5x12 Girls Vs. Suits
Three recognisable (ish) guest stars, a great big song-and-dance number, and a mother-related plot? That's the kinda palaver you wheel out for a) the first ep back after a Christmas break and b) the 100th episode. And there I was thinking it must've been a sweeps one.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]