TV

24 Hour Panel People
Episode 5 (of 5)
As the highlights series reaches its end, we've had clips from every game played except for two. I can only presume Room 101 and What's My Line just weren't funny enough.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

$#*! My Dad Says
1x02 Wi-Fight
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Silk
1x04 Episode 4
Tough night for Clive in this episode! I imagine it'll all work out in his favour though, it usually seems to.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Twenty Twelve
1x02 Episode 2
I won't be surprised if this turns out to be the best thing to come of next year's London Olympics.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

TV

The Event
1x11 And Then There Were More
1x12 Inostranka
A few people still seem to slag off The Event. Not entirely sure why -- it's not the greatest show ever, but it's better than something like FlashForward and it moves at a fair lick. I've missed it a little bit these past three months, and this double-bill return (only a week behind the US, as it turns out) certainly hits the ground running and keeps the pace up, so hurrah.
[Watch And Then There Were More and Inostranka (again) on 4oD.]

The Graham Norton Show
8x20 (11/3/11 edition) [season finale]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

House
7x14 Recession Proof

Law & Order: UK
4x02 Denial
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Yes Minister
3x02 The Challenge

Films

Death Race (2008)
[#33 in 100 Films in a Year 2011]

TV

Family Guy
2x11 A Picture is Worth a 1,000 Bucks
2x12 Fifteen Minutes of Shame
2x13 Road to Rhode Island [2nd watch]
2x14 Let's Go to the Hop
2x15 Dammit Janet!

this week on 100 Films

5 new reviews were posted to 100 Films in a Year this week, including three from 1953 (for no particular reason). And they were...

The Big Heat (1953)

The cast are excellent. Glenn Ford is a suitably square-jawed lead; Alexander Scourby a detestable gentleman-villain; Lee Marvin a truly brutal thug. The best part goes to Gloria Grahame however, in a role that moves from a ditzy minor broad to so much more. In the performance stakes, it’s certainly her film.

Genevieve (1953)

The titular Genevieve is a classic car — bearing in mind this was made in the early ’50s, we’re talking properly classic — that takes part in a two-day drive from London to Brighton and back again. It’s not a race, though competing friends turn it into one. That’s about the gist of it.

Let Me In (2010)

The nighttime scenes are bathed in the orange glow of street-lighting, a nice choice of colour scheme as it’s evocative of the real world, especially as it’s not unnaturally overdone: the colour is abundant where there is such lighting, but more natural tones are used in forests, etc.

Let the Right One In (2008)

We’re used to vampire films being Dark, visually, due to the necessity of a nighttime setting, but here the snow-covered locale makes most of the night scenes bright and white. Alfredson emphasises this with wide compositions that fill the frame with the white stuff.

Roman Holiday (1953)

Hepburn seems to be effortlessly likeable, and it’s easy to sympathise with the idea that seeing the sights and having fun in an iconic city is a lot more better than meeting a bunch of stuffy old men.

Having posted reviews of both Let the Right One In and its remake, I also did a bit of a comparison, which you can read here.

More next Sunday.

TV

Comic Relief 2011
The post-midnight bit, obviously, which (unlike Children in Need) actually includes new, good stuff. Particularly liked the celeb version of Newport State of Mind.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Jack and Kevin's Comic Relief Lock In
Comic Relief's regular "the main show's over so here's a pre-recorded clip show" bit, featuring some familiar sketches/sitcom clips alongside some never-shown-on-TV-before bits. Personally I hadn't see the majority, so that was nice.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Outcasts
1x08 Episode 8 [series finale]
And that's that. I shan't really miss it, and neither will most people, though it did get better towards the end. Nonetheless, I'm sure it'll be largely forgotten. Some mysteries left hanging though -- damn the makers' assumption they'd get a second run! Maybe someone will answer them at some point, somehow...
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Yes Minister
3x01 Equal Opportunities

Articles

The First Films by Peter Bogdanovich
(from Blogdanovich)

Today is the 116th anniversary of the first day ever a film was shot: March 19, 1895, in Lyon, France.

Good piece on this subject, basically.

TV

Comic Relief 2011
Very good one this year, I think -- lots of entertaining sketches and powerful films.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)
[#32 in 100 Films in a Year 2011]

Collection Count

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

A couple of numbers go a couple up this week. Lovely.

Number of titles in collection: 1,283 [up 3]
Of which DVDs: 1,101 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 182 [up 3]

Number of discs in collection: 3,192 [up 3]
Number of films in collection: 1,353 [up 4]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 4,737 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

10 O'Clock Live
1x08 (10/3/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

24 Hour Panel People
Episode 4 (of 5)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Extraordinary Dogs
1x07 Instinct: The Sixth Sense 1
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Friday Night Dinner
1x03 The Curtains
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Films

The Damned (1963)
[#31 in 100 Films in a Year 2011]

TV

24 Hour Panel People
Episode 3 (of 5)
Including Celebrity Juice, which is even worse than I always thought it was, something I didn't think possible. People actually watch this for pleasure? Really? Seriously? Seriously?
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Family Guy
2x08 I Am Peter, Hear Me Roar [2nd watch]

Let's Dance for Comic Relief 2011
Episode 4 (of 4)
Very pleased about the winner. Made even better by seeing how annoyed the runner-up was, especially as he clearly thought he was going to win when the final two were announced. (In all honesty, I don't like him at the best of times, but that was especially satisfying.)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Monroe
1x01 Episode 1
Very good. I can see why there are constant comparisons to House in the press -- it's about a genius doctor, after all -- but they're also a tad unfair, because as a programme it's not really very like House.
I didn't like the music though; bit too far down the jolly route.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

TV

24 Hour Panel People
Episode 2 (of 5)
A very game-show-y episode, in some cases a bit too cut-down. Oh well.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

How TV Ruined Your Life
1x06 Knowledge [final episode]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

$#*! My Dad Says
1x01 Pilot
Hm, well, we'll see.
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Silk
1x03 Episode 3
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Stand Up for the Week
2x01 (12/3/11 edition)
Slightly surprised to see this back. Still not sure if I like it or not.
Though Micky Flanagan's material is typically out of date. A routine about Gok Wan? Really? His show started five years ago and Flanagan begins, "there's this guy on TV now called Gok Wan". Ugh.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Twenty Twelve
1x01 Episode 1
As it turned out, very topical. They couldn't've asked for more.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Articles

Quarantine 2 Trailer Goes Viral by Owen Williams
(from Empire)
So the first film was criticised for being a shot-for-shot remake of the original, but the sequel -- sequels of course being known for their repetitive derivativeness -- is nothing like the plot of either the first film or the original's sequel? Mind = blown.

Steven Spielberg on Tintin: ‘It made me more like a painter than ever before’ by Rachel Abramowitz
(from Hero Complex at Los Angeles Times)
A brief, interesting piece on why Spielberg chose motion capture to realise his forthcoming Tintin film.

TV

24 Hour Panel People
Episode 1 (of 5)
Remember when this happened live? Well now here's the highlights.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

House
7x13 Two Stories
An exceptionally entertaining episode, I thought.

Law & Order: UK
4x01 Help
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Yes Minister
2x07 A Question of Loyalty [season finale]

Articles

Interview: Ben Richards, writer/creator of Outcasts by Dan Owen
(from Dan's Media Digest)
A lot of discussion about what did (or didn't) go wrong with Outcasts. I don't agree with a lot of it -- especially what's said in the last two paragraphs -- but it's interesting to see the creator's perspective. (And, in case you haven't heard/guessed, it's been cancelled.)

TV

Outcasts
1x07 Episode 7
That was actually quite good. Still marred by myriad niggles, but better than most of the series. Too little too late, mind.
The last episode was on tonight. I read it doesn't contain all the answers, mainly because the makers hoped they'd get another series. Oh well.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

South Riding
Part 3 (of 3)
Well that turned out surprisingly grim...
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

this week on 100 Films

Back to just 1 new review being posted on 100 Films in a Year again this week...

Melinda and Melinda (2004)

If it wasn’t for the framing device that clearly tells us not only the thematic point of the film but also which bit is the comedy and which the tragedy, I don’t think it would be immediately possible to tell which was which. Indeed, one might think that was Allen’s point: life is neither tragedy nor comedy, but both at the same time, so of course you can’t tell the difference.

More (hopefully, more than one) next Sunday.

TV

The Killing [aka Forbrydelsen]
1x14 Day 14
How are there six episodes left?! Surely all is nearly solved? It's ever so tense, exciting and moreish. This is what 24 used to feel like back when it was good.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Let's Dance for Comic Relief 2011
Episode 3 (of 4)
That largely felt like watching a parade of irritating also-rans. Why are some of these people allowed to befoul my television screen? At least watching on iPlayer allows one to fastforward crap 'music' like The Wanted.

Top Gear
16x07 Best of Top Gear
I say I watched this -- I ended up fastforwarding the whole thing as, unlike what the listing said, it wasn't so much "the best of 2010" as "the best of a few week's ago". Indeed, they'd actually taken the start & end of one episode and the middle of another and just glued them together. Lazy. And, when the whole series is still on iPlayer, pointless. There's another "best of" this week -- probably not worth bothering with either.
[Watch it (again), if you really want, in HD on iPlayer.]

Yes Minister
2x06 The Quality of Life