TV

Robot Chicken
3x06 Endless Breadsticks
3x07 Yancy the Yo-Yo Boy
3x08 More Blood, More Chocolate
3x14 Robot Chicken's Half-Assed Christmas Special

Films

X-Men: First Class (2011)
[#60 in 100 Films in a Year 2011]

Articles

BBC confirms fourteen new episodes of Doctor Who by Chuck Foster
(from Doctor Who News Page)
Hurrah! One would assume this means a Christmas special plus a regular thirteen-episode series, but rumblings seem to suggest it may mean something else...

First Conan Doyle novel to be published by Emma Saunders
(from BBC News)
Written before he created Sherlock Holmes, the first novel penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is to finally be published for the first time. This bit of the article amused me:

Rachel Foss, lead curator of modern literary manuscripts at the British Library, is set to publish The Narrative of John Smith this autumn. She said it had been part of the British Library's Conan Doyle collection since 2007 and realised it would make a good publishing project.

So, how long did it take them to realise an unpublished novel by an immensely and enduringly popular novelist would make a "good publishing project"?!

TV

Have I Got News For You
41x08 (3/6/11 edition; extended repeat)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Robot Chicken
3x01 Werewolf vs. Unicorn
3x15 Tubba-Bubba's Now Hubba-Hubba
3x02 Squaw Bury Shortcake
3x03 Rabbits on a Roller Coaster
3x04 Tapping a Hero
3x05 Shoe

Fiction

Carte Blanche by Jeffery Deaver
Tuesday: Death in the Sand, Chapters 25-31
Picking this back up after an accidental near-week-long break. This time: a twist! Ah-ha! While it's moderately effective, it also makes the whole escapade feel like an aside and so much padding... but maybe it has some as-yet-unrevealed significance. We shall, of course, see.

Articles

How Much Do Music Artists Earn Online? by David McCandless
(from Information is Beautiful)
The revolution in downloading music is often painted as being great for artists and consumers alike, but this infographic handily shows how it isn't great for artists at all. And that's not to do with whether or not they can strike it rich like superstars of old (or new), but whether they can even earn minimum wage. The answer, as you might've guessed, is "not easily".

If the internet gave free back rubs, people would complain when it stopped because its thumbs were sore by Charlie Brooker
(from Comment is free at guardian.co.uk)
Similarly (because it's launched from people moaning about music service Spotify), Brooker on how people moan about stuff that is ridiculously free/cheap on the Internet; or, "kids today don't know how good they've got it".

I ranted about precisely this on Twitter the other day – using that precise line about back rubs – and a couple of people told me to shut up because I was annoying them. Since Twitter is a) free and b) only displays commentary from those you chose to follow, this, too, is madness – like tailing someone down the street only to complain about the tune they've chosen to hum.

The Monday Muse: Too many movies by ghostof82
(from Musings of the Ghost Of 82)

Sometimes I feel like I’m hitting some kind of saturation point regards movies. There’s just too many of them, too much availability, too much access. Feels like there’s too many new films coming out and too many old films that I want to watch again, and too little time.

TV

French Open 2011
Men's Final: Rafael Nadal v Roger Federer
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1: Behind the Magic
With Part 2 imminent, I figured it was about time I cleared this off my V+ box. Surprisingly interesting (for a TV-broadcast promotional making-of).

How I Met Your Mother
6x14 Last Words
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Articles

A Good Man Goes To War - UK Press reaction by Chuck Foster
(from Doctor Who News Page)
"Not so positive" would be my summary, based just on these quotes.

Review of A Good Man Goes to War by Patrick Mulkern
(from Radio Times' Doctor Who Blog)
A witty and insightful look back at the mid-season finale.

this week on 100 Films

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

Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

this version is certainly more Hollywoodised. Some hate it, and I can see their point… but it is fun, and it’s plain to see why men and women alike have fallen for Hepburn’s Golightly. A more sordid adaptation of the book might be interesting, but that doesn’t negate the unique qualities of the film.

Funny Face (1957)

a surfeit of excellent humour, choreography, cinematography, light satire of both the fashion world and the intellectual world… Indeed, dishing out said satire in both directions means the film never comes across as either snobbish or anti-intellectual… it takes fair jibes at both equally.

Sabrina (1954)

Then there’s Humphrey Bogart… At least his character is pretending to fall for [Hepburn] in order to get her away from his wastrel brother. But it actually feels very mean-spirited — Sabrina is likeable enough that we dislike his machinations. Which means that there’s no truly supportable lead character.

As these are three Audrey Hepburn films there's also a little summary post here.

Plus May finished in the middle of the week (in case you didn't notice), so there was the regular monthly update.

More next Sunday.

TV

Doctor Who
32x07 A Good Man Goes to War [mid-season finale]
Answers! But also, many questions!
And on that note, Doctor Who returns later this year. I believe someone said September...
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Doctor Who Confidential
6x07 The Born Identity [mid-season finale]
That episode title still doesn't appear on the BBC website's episode guide. I'd assumed it was spoilersome, but... well, it's not really, is it.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Mentalist
3x23 Strawberries & Cream Part I
This aired as a two-hour season finale in the US; here, Channel 5 have decided to split it in two. Boo. They made a two-hour season finale out of two completely unrelated episodes either last year or in season one (I forget; maybe both), but when it's an actual two-parter... tsk.
[Watch it (again) on Demand Five.]

The National Lottery: Who Dares Wins
4x06 (4/6/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Robot Chicken
2x16 Drippy Pony
2x12 The Munnery
2x11 Adoption's an Option
2x17 Day at the Circus
2x18 Lust for Puppets
2x19 Anne Marie's Pride (aka Donkey Punch)
2x20 Book of Corrine [season finale]

TV

Archer
2x05 The Double Deuce
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

The Graham Norton Show
9x07 (27/5/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Paul Merton's Birth of Hollywood
Part 1 (of 3)
Merton's a solid documentary maker, and here he tells the story of the beginnings of Hollywood -- how did America come to dominate the film world, why in the middle of nowhere in California, etc etc. Very good.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

$#*! My Dad Says
1x13 The Better Father
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Collection Count

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

This week my DVD total lands on 1,111. Which doesn't really mean anything, it's just... well, you can see what it is...

Number of titles in collection: 1,320 [up 4]
Of which DVDs: 1,111 [up 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 209 [up 3]

Number of discs in collection: 3,260 [up 4]
Number of films in collection: 1,393 [up 4]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 4,840 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Lead Balloon
4x01 Pig
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Mentalist
3x22 Rhapsody in Red
[Watch it (again) on Demand Five.]

Scott & Bailey
1x01 Episode 1
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Films

Jonah Hex (2010)
[#59 in 100 Films in a Year 2011]

DVD Extras

The Inside Story of Jonah Hex
Featurette on the Jonah Hex Blu-ray that takes a quick look at the history of the character in comics.

TV

The Culture Show
The Sounds of Hugh Laurie [special]
Laurie seems to have been everywhere promoting his album -- we've already had a whole hour-long special in ITV's culture series, for instance -- and here one of the Beeb's culture strands sits him down for a brief chat with a couple of singsongs. Nothing hugely new or hugely revelatory after all those other appearances, but nice enough.

The Shadow Line
Part 4 (of 7)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

TV

The Event
1x22 Arrival [series finale]
So that's that for The Event, cancelled post-finale in the US -- which means we get a cliffhanger here. Fortunately a lot of threads are wrapped up first, so it doesn't make for a wholly unsatisfying ending. It's a shame the series never really latched on with viewers (both Stateside and here, where C4 ended up burying it around midnight), because it got a lot better as it went on. Aside from Leila's clichéd pregnancy reveal (they could really have done with killing her off when they had the chance), the handful of last-minute revelations were all very intriguing for where they'd've gone next. Shame.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Have I Got News For You
41x07 (27/5/11 edition; extended repeat)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Fiction

Carte Blanche by Jeffery Deaver
Tuesday: Death in the Sand, Chapters 19-24

Articles

The Hobbit Films Get Official Titles by James White
(from Empire)
It's official: they're to be called The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again. Which is nice.

TV

Britain's Next Big Thing
Episode 7 (of 7)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Family Guy
9x07 Road to the North Pole [Christmas special]
5x09 Road to Rupert
BBC Three had a night of Family Guy's Road to... episodes last night, which I V+d and watched in the early hours. Sadly, they chose to only show five of the six (skipping Road to Germany), two of which I'd watched quite recently, and then my recording of the last one mucked up -- so their 'night' turns into 'two episodes'. Hey-ho.
The first one is last Christmas' hour-long (in the US) special and is all kinds of sick and twisted. I loved it. New favourite Christmas TV special! Yay!