TV

London 2012 Olympics
Day Fifteen

It's the penultimate day of the Olympics (don't worry, there's the Paralympics later this month), which today saw me watch diving twice (this morning's semis and the evening's final), a bit of mountain biking, a bit of gymnastics, and finally the usually evening routine of athletics.

And to round it off, the final edition (boo!) of Olympics Tonight. Where will I get my summary of the final day?! I know it's the closing ceremony, but surely they could follow it with a sports-related round-up.

[Watch Saturday's Olympics Tonight (again), as well as loads of live coverage from the BBC.]

Articles

Another Twittter Storm: BMW
by PME200 (from The Blog That Peter Wrote)

When twitter found out BMW were giving free cars to Team GB's male medal winners, but not to the female ones, everyone naturally got Very Upset And Angry. But they should've bothered to check their facts first...


BBC Books: The Exodus Code
by Chuck Foster (from Doctor Who News)

BBC Books have released details on the next book in their hardback range of novels, the first to feature spin-off series Torchwood; The Exodus Code is written by "Captain Jack" himself John Barrowman with his sister Carole

More at the link.

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week. Which I've decided to move to Saturday 'officially', because I doubt anyone will notice and if they do I doubt they care. And also Saturday is the last post day, so it makes sense as I can't remember the last time I bought a DVD or BD anywhere but online.

This week, one DVD-to-BD upgrade. Other than that, the monthly running time update is the other side of the regular stats.

Number of titles in collection: 1,507 [no change]
Of which DVDs: 1,161 [down 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 346 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 3,734 [down 1]
Number of films in collection: 1,591 [no change]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,618 [no change]

As promised, the running time update...

Total running time of collection (approx.):
268 days, 8 hours, and 50 minutes.
(Up 1 day, 2 hours, and 37 minutes from last month.)

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

London 2012 Olympics
Day Fourteen

Mainly an evening of athletics, where several British hopes were dashed, and diving, where Tom Daley just scraped through to tomorrow's semi-final (final also tomorrow).

Before that, scraps of synchronised swimming, gymnastics, and BMX.

Finally, the return of Ian Thorpe (hurrah!) on Olympics Tonight, with a look at why Australia have done relatively poorly these Games.

[Watch Friday's Olympics Tonight (again), as well as loads of live coverage from the BBC.]

Articles

5 Ways You Don't Realize Movies Are Controlling Your Brain
by David Wong (from Cracked.com)

Although structured to fit into Cracked's usual "X Things..." format, this is actually an interesting article on the way stories have been designed and evolved to influence the way we think and perceive the world. Naturally it still has Cracked's regular humorous bent, but (like quite a few of their articles, actually) it's also genuinely informative and interesting.

TV

London 2012 Olympics
Day Thirteen

After yesterday's lull, definitive diversity today: a bit of swimming (another medal miss), a bit of synchronised swimming, a bit of dressage (two medals!), a bit of gymnastics, and a bit of athletics; all wrapped up with a bit of Olympics Tonight.

[Watch Thursday's Olympics Tonight (again), as well as loads of live coverage from the BBC.]


Parents
1x06 Episode Six [season finale]
Well... that's that over.

Articles

London 2012: 20 lesser-spotted things of the Olympics so far
(from BBC News Magazine)
Meant to mention this a few days ago; forgot (obviously). It's a fun/interesting list of "some of the less asked questions and lesser-spotted oddities of the Games so far."

Doctor Who drama to mark show's 50th birthday
(from BBC News)
A lot of people predicted they'd do something like this; then genuine rumours began to emerge; and no it's been confirmed: Mark Gatiss is writing a 90-minute drama about the creation of Doctor Who, provisionally titled An Adventure in Time and Space. Exciting times.

Superheroes and the law: How would Batman or Captain America fare in court?
by Matthew Huisman (from Law.com)

A new book asks the questions most comic fans haven't — how would superheroes, and villains, manage if they had to legally answer for their actions? This slideshow provides some educated guesses.

Both interesting and fun it is too.

TV

London 2012 Olympics
Day Twelve

It felt like there wasn't a great deal going on today, like things were winding down. That's presumably just some kind of fluke, because there were still 16 golds awarded... just no medals for Team GB. But we're still positioned for some later in the Games, both as favourites and as 'guaranteed at least silver's, so it's not over yet.

Nonetheless, watched a bit of BMX, a bit of athletics, and of course found out what had been going on thanks to Olympics Tonight.

[Watch Wednesday's Olympics Tonight (again), as well as loads of live coverage from the BBC.]

Articles

Luther creator eyes Alice spinoff
by Jon Weisman (from The Vote at Variety)

Didn't really expect that, though it was nice to know why Alice disappeared in the last series. Sounds like Luther has a very intriguing future: third (and final) series, an almost-definite film version, and now a spin-off. Crazy.

TV

London 2012 Olympics
Day Eleven

A less varied day today -- just cycling and athletics -- though with glimpses and smidgens of gymnastics and triathlon; and all wrapped up and summarised, of course, by Olympics Tonight.

[Watch Tuesday's Olympics Tonight (again), as well as loads of live coverage from the BBC.]

Articles

Joe Carnahan Close to Daredevil, Fantastic Four Characters Could Go Back to Marvel
by Silas Lesnick (from SuperHeroHype)

Well now here's a twist! Everyone was assuming Fox would have to either rush a new Daredevil film into production or let the rights slip back to Marvel, something they clearly don't want -- he's a popular character and we're still in an age of incredibly successful superhero movies. But instead it looks like they're offering Marvel selected characters from the Fantastic Four licence (which they also want to hang onto) in return for longer to make Daredevil.

But other reports say it may be something completely different, and much more normal, that they're considering: co-funding. Blah. Be interesting to see how this plays out.


Joss Whedon Signed for The Avengers 2 and Marvel Live-Action TV Series
by Peter Sciretta (from /Film)

Hurrah! And for a clarifying Disney statement too, see here.

Now just gotta see the first one...

TV

London 2012 Olympics
Day Ten

An increasingly eclectic selection of viewing, it feels like: starting with Beth Tweddle's bronze (hurrah for her!) in the gymnastics and continuing with synchronised swimming (weird); then there was Jason Kenny's gold in cycling, and finally a largely disappointing evening of athletics.

Today also saw Team GB take a team gold on the horsies. Didn't see that live, but such things are what Olympics Tonight is for.

[Watch Monday's Olympics Tonight (again), as well as loads of live coverage from the BBC.]

Websites

Medals Per Capita

Subtitles Olympic Glory in Proportion, this site includes all sorts of ways of looking at one piece of data: the amount of Olympic medals won by each country. There are all sorts of ways to cut it up, and you can do it by every individual Olympics or an All Time list.

Current favourite has to be London 2012 Weighted Medals per Capita, which shows how well every nation is doing in the current games relative to the size of their population. Britain places 8th; the next nearest country with a population comparable to ours is France, in 22nd; the next nearest nation with a similarly high weight score is the USA, in 30th (I say "similarly" -- it's still much higher).

Basically, it proves how bloody amazingly we're doing.

TV

London 2012 Olympics
Day Nine

Big day for those of us focused on the tennis as it came to an end with three finals (and their respective bronze medal play-offs). So gutted for Federer that he was denied a career Golden Slam, but Murray did play exceptionally well. Thank goodness he's not had real success until after becoming a Nicer Person and Better Sportsman with Ivan Lendl's training -- his previous stroppy attitude has not been vindicated. A shame that Murray and Laura Robson didn't quite manage victory in the mixed doubles, too. My tennis supporting day didn't go so well.

Also today was gymnastics, where two of our guys did extraordinarily and still didn't quite get gold. I don't think it's possible to miss out by any smaller margin, poor guy.

Finally, athletics, Usain Bolt, blah blah blah; and, of course, Olympics Tonight.

[Watch Sunday's Olympics Tonight (again), as well as loads of live coverage from the BBC.]


Twenty Twelve
2x07 Loose Ends [series finale]

Generally very good last ever (presumably) episode. The bell-ringing thing seemed unnecessary, but I suppose they needed something for Siobhan to do. And the cheek of that ending...!

this week on 100 Films

Just one brand-new review was posted to 100 Films in a Year this week...

Cars 2 (2011)

why is the police car wearing a giant hat?!

Read more here.

But there were also a few archive reviews, including...

Cars (2006)

I’ve often heard people criticise the world of the movie for not making sense... it does play on your mind while watching, and because it shouldn’t matter I think it’s indicative of faults elsewhere: if the characters and story were keeping your attention, if the film was consistently funny or exciting or engrossing, you wouldn’t be wondering who built these cars, or where their builders went, or how they reproduce… It’s like a child’s game writ into film

Read more here.

Citizen Kane (1941)

As of 1st August 2012, Citizen Kane is no longer the greatest film of all time. Here’s some brief, aimless thoughts I had about it when I saw it for the first time, almost exactly five years ago…

Read more here.

The Hitchcock 4
The new Greatest Film Of All Time is a Hitchcock, so here I bring the four Hitch films I've reviewed over to the new blog. Those being Rebecca, Notorious, Marnie and The Birds. Really need to watch some more Hitchcock...

And finally, now that we're in August, there was also my round-up of July, including some extra stuff on something the BFI tweeted recently.

More next Sunday.

TV

London 2012 Olympics
Day Eight

Super Saturday! Rowing in the morning; tennis and cycling in the afternoon; swimming and athletics in the evening; Olympics Tonight to round it all off -- and medals throughout! A great day for British sport, that's for sure.

[Watch Saturday's Olympics Tonight (again), as well as loads of live coverage from the BBC.]

TV

London 2012 Olympics
Day Seven
Tennis as ever, particularly the nail-biting record-length match between Federer and Del Potro. Tough for the latter to lose it, but so happy the former one -- guaranteed medal, and hopefully it'll be gold... although the home crowd will be against him. Hey-ho.
Also, various successes (and disappointments) in rowing, cycling and swimming. Plus some rapid-fire pistol shooting, which turned out to be surprisingly boring so I stopped.
Finally, I've taken to half-watching the Gabby Logan-hosted (never mind) post-news round-up programme, Olympics Tonight, which is handy for an overview (today, for instance, saw things kicking off for athletics in the main stadium -- a major thing I pretty much skipped live). So that's... way more than I was ever expecting.
[Watch loads of live coverage from the BBC.]

Parents
1x05 Episode Five

Collection Count

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

Number of titles in collection: 1,507 [up 1]
Of which DVDs: 1,162 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 345 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 3,735 [up 1]
Number of films in collection: 1,591 [up 1]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,618 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

How I Met Your Mother
7x24 The Magician's Code Part 2 [season finale]
Well, that was intriguing. Barney's bride was no surprise at all, but didn't really expect Ted's ending. How many seasons has these got left now, though? Getting time for an ending...
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

London 2012 Olympics
Day Six
Tennis. Swimming. Cycling. Even a little bit of judo.
[Watch loads of live coverage from the BBC.]

Suburgatory
1x03 The Chatterer
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Articles

The First Class Sequel is Officially X-Men: Days of Future Past
by Silas Lesnick (from SuperHeroHype)

I loved First Class. I used to love the X-Men animated series (I probably still would, but I've not seen it for nearly 20 years -- can still hum the theme tune though), and the Days of Future Past adaptation is one of the storylines that really stuck in my head. Ought to get round to reading the original comics.

Anyway, what this combination of factors means is -- I'm incredibly excited for this sequel. Be interesting to see how faithful it is though, and if they bring in characters/actors from the first three X-Men movies, and if they do how big a part they play.

Ooh, it's exciting!