TV

30 Years of the Comic Strip
Everyone goes on about Five Go Mad in Dorset, and indeed that's the only one I've seen, so it was nice to get this thorough overview of some of the Comic Strip's other greatest hits.

Hebburn
1x03 Dressing Up Fancy
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Hunted
1x05 Ambassadors
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

TV

Frankenstein: A Modern Myth
Well-made overview of the ongoing impact of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, featuring footage from Danny Boyle's theatrical production (which apparently ended its run 18 months ago! Time flies). Lots of analysis of the continued relevance of the tale; lots of clever editing with archive footage, often drawing comparisons and parallels of its own. Good stuff.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Spy
2x03 Codename: Lie Hard

Yes, Prime Minister
2x05 Power to the People

TV

Cuckoo
1x06 The Wedding [season finale]
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Have I Got News For You
44x04 (2/11/12 edition; extended repeat)
[Watch the extended version (again) on iPlayer.]

Nick Nickleby
Part 1 (of 5)
BBC daytime gets all clever-like with this modern-day adaption of Charles Dickens' novel The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. It does feel conspicuously like a Victorian novel relocated to the present day, in spite of updates to the story to make it more relevant (transposing private boarding schools for elderly care homes, for instance); and despite their aim to make primetime-worthy drama for daytime, it looks quite cheap and, for want of a better word, daytime-y. Valiant effort though.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

Around-the-World Roundup: Skyfall Adds Incredible $156 Million Overseas
by Ray Subers (from Box Office Mojo)

One of the many great things about the James Bond series is it makes a mockery of American websites' US-focused view of film box office stats. Unlike, say, Tintin (which a lot of sites were aware America had never heard of and so was a much harder sell in the US than the rest of the world), they know Bond; people in the US do go to see Bond films; and so they think it'll follow the pattern of a regular blockbuster... and it never, ever does.

Latest example: Skyfall has yet to take a penny in the US and it's already the seventh highest-grossing Bond film of all time worldwide.

The US market will be important to what its final total is, obviously, but... well, I was going to say "nothing like as important as with most other big films", but that's not actually that true. The top ten highest-grossers of all time (worldwide) have roughly a 34/66 average split between the US / the rest of the world; conversely, the first two Daniel Craig Bond films come out at 28.5% from the US versus 71.5% from elsewhere. Not that out of step, really, and in the Brosnan era the States accounted for a closer-to-average 35%.

I suppose the difference is Skyfall has had two whole weeks to boost that always-big international box office, which is normally lost under stories about the US gross because it comes out everywhere else first. And actually, if you look at the top ten highest grossing films of all time in the US alone, the list is quite different (only half match up), so, y'know, there's that. (Look, this is going on, you probably don't care, let's take a look at the next article.)


How do you solve a problem like Potemkin?
by Michael Brooke (from BFI)

On the issue of presenting frames with atypical frame rates on home media formats (mainly silents, but potentially a problem in the future too). That might sound dry, but for film/tech fans it's an interesting issue, and one that deserves to be more mainstream (a little bit, anyway) so that whatever replaces Blu-ray doesn't miss the same opportunity. If more and more films begin to be shot at 48fps or 60fps, perhaps the need for a solution will become more pressing, and will retroactively aid the presentation of silent films. Fingers crossed.

TV

Derren Brown: Apocalypse
Part Two (of 2)
That... was kind of lacklustre. Best bit was the "28 Days Later" 'gag' when he went to meet him a month later.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

The Men Who Made the Movies: Alfred Hitchcock
1973 documentary about the Master of Suspense, mixing interview snippets with analysed film clips. Quite good; very spoilersome for a variety of his movies.

Monroe
2x05 Episode 5
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Rolf's Animal Clinic
1x02 Episode 2
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Top Gear
Fifty Years of Bond Cars
Aside from passing references to James May, the Stig and Top Gear's poor track record at building things that work, this could just be a solid Richard Hammond-fronted guide to the notable cars featured in Bond films down the years. So that's good then, because it's pretty much the right tone and content for part of the series' 50th anniversary celebrations.

Films

Tiny Furniture (2010)
[#88 in 100 Films in a Year 2012]

Comics

Legends of the Dark Knight #1

Batman-starring anthology comic collecting the digital-first series in print. Three stories in this first issue, headlined by The Butler Did It, written by Damon Lindelof and drawn by Jeff Lemire. It's a very effective little tale, actually, a perfect example of the short comic story form. If only most modern writers could show such economy! This achieves so much in just 10 pages, whereas your typical comic arc ekes proceedings out for six issues or more.

The remaining two stories aren't quite as iconic, but fun and concise stories nonetheless. All of the Above, by Jonathan Larsen and JG Jones, manages an amusing use for the oft-referenced Bat-Shark Repellant from the 1966 movie. Finally, The Crime Never Committed by Tom Taylor and Nicola Scott doesn't come with a "Batman learns something" twist likes the other, which is probably to its benefit.

The variety of type of story this format allows, plus the chance to get a self-contained tale, certainly marks it out from the vast majority of essentially-samey multi-issue arcs most comics trade in. Appreciated.



Star Trek: The Next Generation / Doctor Who: Assimilation² #3 by Scott & David Tipton (with Tony Lee), J.K. Woodward & the Sharp Brothers

This is the last issue of this I've bought, partly because it's been so dreadful and partly because it looked like the collected edition was going to be a helluva lot cheaper than continuing to collect individual issues. But then it turned out they were intending to publish this dreck across two volumes, at least doubling the price! So at the minute I have no further parts on order, because it was barely worth what they were asking for just half of it. So why am I reading this? Well, I did buy it, so I thought I should still read it. And I can always acquire the remaining five issues (five more?! God!) by... other means...

Anyway, there's actually a slight improvement in quality here: an extended flashback to an adventure featuring the Fourth Doctor and the crew of the original USS Enterprise (Kirk, Spock, that lot) is rendered in a crisp, clear, '60s-cartoon-esque style by the Sharp Brothers, and it looks glorious. The Tiptons' dialogue is still appalling, but by telling a self-contained tale in about ten pages the story finally moves at a decent rate. Bookending this are more scenes on the TNG ship, featuring Woodward's sloppy, indistinct, drab art and a snail's crawl of plot to match the clanging dialogue. Even the speech bubbles are badly placed (also a problem in the flashback bit.)

How this is still selling, God only knows...

Articles

Cool Stuff: Here’s What A Star Wars Theme Park Might Look Like
by Germain Lussier (from /Film)

Title pretty much has it covered.

TV

Regular Sunday viewing, it would seem... plus The Mentalist...

Downton Abbey
3x07 Episode 7
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Dragons' Den
10x08 Episode 8
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Mentalist
5x01 The Crimson Ticket (aka The Red Glass Bead)
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Never Mind the Buzzcocks
26x06 Episode 6
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

this week on 100 Films

This week on 100 Films in a Year sees November kick off, which means my review of October is here. Fascinating reading as ever.

You may remember from last week that I was re-posting all my old Saw reviews. Those continue below, but as part of it I wrote a new overview of the series. You can read that here.

And so to regular business: two new reviews were published to the blog this week, and they were...


Serpico (1973)

it certainly has a biographical feel. That came as a bit of a surprise, to me at least — I was expecting a thriller about a good cop exposing the corrupt ones, but instead got Frank Serpico’s life story from the time he left training on... More than a corrupt cop thriller, it’s a biopic about someone involved in that world.

Read more here.


The Beast Stalker (2008)

As a Hong Kong-produced thriller, you’d expect the focus here to actually be on the action sequences, but that’s not the case — there’s a real effort to look at the characters and the investigative side of the story. It’s by no means a procedural, and the character drama isn’t as deep as it might like to be, but the intentions are good.

Read more here.


And new to the new blog...


Saw IV (2007)

too complex, ultimately descending into the realms of incomprehensibility. There are around four different plot threads, at least two of them jumping around in time like a TARDIS with ADD. Goodness knows how many different time zones are included, how many progress in a linear fashion, and whether they have any bearing on each other. Even references to previous films are confused.

Read more here.


Saw V (2008)

Saw Part 5 might be a more apt moniker for this film: it picks up directly from the end of Saw IV — which, you may remember, took place concurrently with Saw III, ultimately appending about 30 seconds to that film’s climax. Even if you wanted to start your Saw viewing here, you wouldn’t have a hope of following what’s going on.

Read more here.


Saw VI (2009)

It doesn’t start well. The opening sequence is awful, sinking to torture porn levels again... And then, almost suddenly, it gets good. It’s probably the best Saw movie since the first.

Read more here.


Saw 3D (2010)

it isn’t so much stupid as disappointing. The problem is that there are some good ideas, but few are executed as well as they could be or paid off appropriately. The setting for the opening trap is a marvellous twist on the format [but] it’s a one off. It doesn’t even have any bearing on the rest of the plot.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

TV

Elementary
1x02 While You Were Sleeping

Friday Night Dinner
2x04 The New Car
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

The Great British Bake Off
3x12 Revisited
Looking back at series two and what the contestants have done since.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Merlin
5x05 The Disir
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Films

Thunderball (1965)
[3rd or so watch]
I'll be reviewing this as #87a in 100 Films 2012, alongside the other '60s Bond films, at a later date.

Collection Count

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

Small updates this week, but the star attraction is the ever-exciting running time update. You may remember that last month it went down, much to my surprise -- I think that was the first time, and I have no idea what I removed from the list to cause such an occurrence. Can't help but feel I must've mis-listed something somewhere... Anyway, it's up again this time. See how much longer my collection has become in the past month at the end of the post.

Number of titles in collection: 1,497 [up 1]
Of which DVDs: 1,142 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 355 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 3,737 [up 5]
Number of films in collection: 1,538 [up 4]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,689 [up 3]
Number of short films in collection: 370 [no change]

And the running time update tells us...

Total running time of collection (approx.):
271 days, 13 hours, and 4 minutes.
(Up 2 days, 12 hours, and 24 minutes from last month; and up 2 days, 5 hours, and 52 minutes from the month before.)

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Miranda
2x06 The Perfect Christmas [season finale; 2nd watch]

Happened to be watching BBC One when this began and it's addictively, un-turn-off-able-ly good. And rather than an out-of-season Christmas special making me feel it was stupid to air it, I genuinely feel a bit Christmassy now. Impressive.

There are some quarters keen to dismiss the entire show, and sometimes you begin to wonder if they might be right with some of their criticisms... but then you happen across just one episode and immediately recall just how bloody good it is. So sod them all. Can't wait for the third series, which surely must be arriving soon.

[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]


Person of Interest
1x15 Blue Code


Red Dwarf
10x05 Dear Dave

Articles

Skyfall Biggest Ever First-Week Box Office Earner In The UK
by Dave Golder (from SFX)

Skyfall has now taken an extraordinary £37.2 million in its opening week, overtaking Deathly Hallows Part 2 to secure the biggest seven day gross of all time in UK box office history.

Plus a list of the current UK top ten highest grossers. Skyfall's currently 39th, but only £20m from overtaking Star Wars Episode I and cracking the top ten.

TV

Hebburn
1x02 Ghost Town
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Horror Europa with Mark Gatiss
Having covered the development of British and American horror cinema pretty thoroughly in his 2010 series A History of Horror, here Gatiss turns his attention to nearly a century of European horror movies, from 1920's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to 2006's Pan's Labyrinth (with nods to even more recent fare, hence my "nearly a century" comment). It's equally as compelling and informative as his earlier series, the only downside being it's a single 90-minute episode -- there's clearly enough to be said here to fill another series.
There's a related article, in which he lists his five favourite European horror movies (one of which isn't even featured in the programme), here.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Hunted
1x04 Kismet
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

QI
10x07 Journalism (XL edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Suburgatory
1x22 The Motherload [season finale]

TV

The Great British Bake Off
3x13 Masterclass 2
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Have I Got News For You
44x03 (26/10/12 edition; extended repeat)
[Watch the extended version (again) on iPlayer.]

Pointless Celebrities
3x02 (27/10/12 edition)
"We've had four answers. Three of them have been incorrect. The one correct one... was from a duck."
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Adam Buxton's Bug
1x07 Episode Seven
1x08 Episode Eight [season finale]

Arrow
1x01 Pilot
The modern, contemporary, urban, all-that-jazz take on DC Comics' Green Arrow. It's basically Batman Begins: The Series (with a different superhero, obviously). Sounds good to me, and this is a fairly promising start.

The Graham Norton Show
12x02 (26/10/12 edition)
aka The James Bond One, featuring Daniel Craig, Judi Dench and Javier Bardem.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Person of Interest
1x14 Wolf and Cub

Spy
2x02 Codename: Riding High

Articles

Rust and Bone: Marion Cotillard and the spoiler debate
by Tim Masters (from BBC News)

Despite the title implying it's about one film, that's just a topical place to hang a general discussion* of when a spoiler's a spoiler, and at what time becomes OK to discuss a film's (or a TV show's) major plot points. And it's quite good and sensible, actually.

* As you can tell from the fact it's a BBC News article with a credited writer, it's a proper article rather than just a news piece.

TV

Comedy World Cup
1x07 Final [season finale]
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Cuckoo
1x05 Connie Sings
I love how all of Cuckoo's episode titles sound like they're just the two- or three-word pitch the writer gave for the episode.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Monroe
2x04 Episode 4
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Suburgatory
1x21 The Great Compromise