TV

Downton Abbey
1x01 Episode One
Rather good, that, as you'd expect from writer/creator Julian Fellowes and such a talented cast, really. The only mystery is what it's doing on ITV -- surely such classy material is the domain of BBC One?
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

QI
8x02 H Anatomy (extended repeat)
"H Anatomy"?! When Fry begins the episode with a list of parts of the anatomy that begin with H -- hands, head, heart, etc etc -- one wonders why it couldn't've been named after those instead.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Hercules (1997)
[#99 in 100 Films in a Year 2010]
One to go!

Articles

Muse beat The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash to win best cover song of all time
(from NME)
Don't disagree with the winner -- or with Mark Ronson featuring in any "worst of" list -- but more interesting are some of these covers I didn't even know existed. Ronan Keating doing Fairytale of New York? Take That's take on Smells Like Teen Spirit? I have to hear these...

Stephen Fry to play Mycroft in Sherlock 2 by Simon Reynolds
(from Digital Spy)
The Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes sequel, that is, not the second series of Sherlock. Tsk.
With further apologies to Mr Gatiss, then, I'll say that this is rather perfect casting. Though I still want to see a Fry/Laurie Holmes/Watson at some point, please.

The Walking Dead: brilliant fan-made opening credits

I'm somewhat excited for the forthcoming TV adaptation of Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore's zombie comic The Walking Dead -- I've never read any of it, nor followed news of the TV version particularly closely, but the comic's meant to be good and there are good people involved in the TV production.

This opening credit sequence was made by a fan -- to stress the point, they're not what we'll be seeing on screen when the series airs -- but they're rather cool, undoubtedly to a professional standard (unlike the vast majority of fan-produced videos, of course) and, I suspect, unlikely to be topped by the final sequence.

Which is a shame, because they've actually made me even more interested.

The Walking Dead Opening Titles
by Daniel Kanemoto on Vimeo

this week on 100 Films

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

Night at the Museum (2006)

everything in said museum comes alive at night. This results in largely comical hi-jinx. These are fine — the easily-impressed will love it, the highly cynical will probably despise it, and the rest of us can sit in the middle, being adequately entertained while the film plays but require nothing else from it ever again.

Ocean's Eleven (1960)

It does have its moments [but] this would definitely be for Rat Pack fans only had it not been for the remake… and, really, there’s no reason the remake should change that.

Also this week, a review of a short film...

The Met Ball (2010)

Culled from footage shot while making The September Issue, The Met Ball clearly had no place in the finished film but does work as a piece in its own right... The interest for us normal, sensible folk lies in what it exposes about the fashion world; the ludicrous lengths they go to, the shockingly inflated sense of self importance.

More next Sunday.

TV

Grand Designs
10x02 Cotswolds: The Stealth House
I have often seen parts of Grand Designs -- mostly the ending -- but not usually enough to make it worth a mention. But this episode promised something unusual: an 'invisible' house, built underground below a barn that couldn't be demolished. It didn't live up to all expectations -- it was quite thoroughly visible on one side -- but the stuff with building under the barn was rather nifty.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

How I Met Your Mother
5x18 Say Cheese
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Merlin
3x03 Goblin's Gold
Considering how daft and puerile this looked, I thought it was a largely entertaining episode. Nice to have a bit of lightness after the very heavy opener.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow
2x02 Sunderland
I would say it was a particularly good episode, but every episode seems to be particularly good. Which is nice, because 'undiscovered' stand-ups -- as Russell Howard's series proved week-in-week-out -- can be bloody awful.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Articles

Moffat On The Doctor Who Christmas Special And Season Six by Dave Golder
(from SFX)
Title says it all. Just a couple of snippets, hints and teases, mind, nothing astoundingly huge or new.

TV

Dragons' Den
What Happened Next 2 Duncan Bannatyne
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Gareth Malone's Extraordinary School for Boys
Part 2 (of 3)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Review Show
03/09/2010 edition
...though, if I'm honest, not all of it -- just the bits covering Tamara Drewe, Jonah Hex and CLiNT, and half of This is England '86 (before I got bored of it, having not seen the film or the series).

Articles

How To Reboot Resident Evil by Nathan Ditum
(from Total Film)
This whole article is worth reading just for the comments form "CthuluGonnaCall.com" on page 10. I laughed probably more than it deserved. Also amusing: page 13 on, where the article switches from "largely plausible (if fans were extraordinarily lucky)" to "not gonna happen. Ever."

Collection Count

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

This week, a few new Blu-rays give a little boost to the numbers. One is technically a DVD upgrade -- Psycho -- but as I own the DVD in a box set it won't be going anywhere. (Plus I think the DVD still has some special features that aren't on the BD, so...)

Another is... well, also a DVD upgrade, actually -- the wondrous Firefly. Somehow, they've stuffed the entire series into one of those slim US Blu-ray cases -- if/when I buy Serenity on (UK) Blu-ray, it'll be in a bigger box than the whole of the TV series. That's madness. Anyway, at the minute I'm keeping hold of the DVD for it's proper-sized, shiny-slipcased, nostalgia-filled loveliness, so Firefly just increases numbers rather than replacing them.

Number of titles in collection: 1,220 [up 4]
Of which DVDs: 1,105 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 115 [up 4]

Number of discs in collection: 2,979 [up 6]
Number of films in collection: 1,284 [up 3]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 4,195 [up 14]

Statistic of the week:

Total running time of collection (approx.):
209 days, 17 hours, and 49 minutes.
(Up 1 day, 20 hours, and 21 minutes from last month.)

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Family Guy
8x20 Something, Something, Something, Dark Side [season finale]
Having spoofed A New Hope (which, as I noted before, I watched before this blog began), the Family Guy team latterly turned their attention to The Empire Strikes Back. It's as hit-and-miss as you might expect, effectively retelling Empire with a bunch of non sequiturs and humorous criticisms thrown in.
The Family Guy version of Return of the Jedi, titled It's a Trap!, is due later this year. Wonder if they'll do the prequels...

Mock the Week
9x09 (23/9/10 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The South Bank Show
37x01 Andrew Lloyd Webber Revisited
aka The South Bank Show Revisited for the series' final run of ten programmes, which all (unsurprisingly) revisited past subjects. It aired back in March/April/May and I've had half of them on my V+ box ever since. About time I got round to them, I thought. So, um, I am...

Articles

The 33 Greatest Movie Trilogies by Helen O'Hara, Ian Freer & Alastair Plumb
(from Empire)
It's an odd list in places, which is what happens when you ask The Public, but not an uninteresting one.

A knock on Betjeman’s door by David Allen Green
(from The Staggers at New Statesman)

Why the CPS prosecution of Paul Chambers matters.

aka #TwitterJokeTrial. The appeal is tomorrow. And it really does matter.

TV

Law & Order: UK
3x02 Hounded
A rather good episode, I thought -- yes, it succumbed to 'justice' at the end, but it was never definitively cleared up who committed the central crime (though I'm sure some more simplistic viewers assumed it was by dint of what occurred in the end).
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Mad Men
4x02 Christmas Comes But Once a Year
Aww, poor Don's Secretary (Whose Name I Don't Even Know).
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Films

It Happened Here (1965)
[#98 in 100 Films in a Year 2010]
Plus the extras, including a US trailer that cost more than the film itself(!) and an extended newsreel, in which the production team faked footage of a tank driving by filming it being transported backwards with the camera upside-down, then turning the film the other way up. Don't get much of that sort of ingenuity these days.

TV

Cheetah Kingdom
1x02 Episode 2
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Spooks
9x01 Episode 1
They're back! It's all a bit daft now! Some things will never change, I suspect. Until they cancel it, naturally.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (1996)
[#97 in 100 Films in a Year 2010]

Articles

Traffic wardens 'advised to issue illegal tickets' by Liz Webb
(from the Express & Echo, via this is Exeter)
I always knew they were a shifty, untrustworthy, immoral lot 'round here. And 'round most places, I suspect.

TV

8 Out of 10 Cats
10x04 (17/9/10 edition)
I think I missed the last series or two of this, largely because it had become thoroughly rubbish. Either I've recuperated or it's improved. (Incidentally, I swear the Radio Times billed this as the first of a new series, while C4 insist it's episode four. That said, episode one was on in June, episode two was a Big Brother special, and episode three doesn't exist, so what do they know?)
This episode, they seem to be going a bit QI: it's series 10 -- or, in QI World, J -- and the guests appearing alongside regulars Jimmy Carr and Jason Manford are Jack Dee, Jack Whitehall, Dr Christian Jessen and Jamelia. Suspicious.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Articles

Doctor Who: Adventure Games to return by Matthew Reynolds
(from Digital Spy)
Well, I hope they make them better next time!
In fairness, I've still only played the first one. I know I forgot to leave comments -- suffice to say, I didn't like it (repetitive, old-fashioned, full of soul-sapping 'stealth' segments rather than intelligence-requiring point-n-click style adventuring like proper 'adventure games'). Maybe games two and three improve it? I ought to find out. I'm not optimistic.
And, based on the comment that "the feedback we've had has been overwhelmingly positive", I don't expect we'll see an improvement in quality any time soon.

Top 10 'unanswerable' questions revealed
(from BBC News)
This list is funny, because it starts out profound ("What is the meaning of life?"), continues to be stereotypical ("Do blondes have more fun?"), and then gets specific with something you might assume was answerable but isn't (#9). Well, it made me chuckle.

TV

Dragons' Den
What Happened Next 1 Peter Jones
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow
2x01 Glasgow
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]