TV

8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown
8x02 (16/1/15 edition)
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Brooklyn Nine-Nine
2x01 Undercover
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

The Newsroom
3x05 Oh Shenandoah

Room 101
15x03 Episode 3
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled
2x02 The Pig Knows You're Frightened
[Watch it (again) on Dave OD.]

Broadchurch
2x02 Episode 2
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Celebrity Mastermind
2014/2015 Episode 10 (of 10)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Castle
4x09 Kill Shot

Outnumbered
2x02 The Dead Mouse [4th watch]
Contender for the best Outnumbered episode. Certainly, the mouse's funeral is one of the best bits of the entire series.

Films

The Sugarland Express (1974)
[#10 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

The Thin Man Goes Home (1945)
[#11 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

Fiction

The Adventures of Tintin: The Seven Crystal Balls by Hergé

I bought a complete Tintin box set a couple of years ago, but hadn't got round to reading any of them until the other week. Having enjoyed the last two so much, I decided to continue -- though not in order, as the last two weren't. The Seven Crystal Balls is another fan favourite, a possible contender for the second Jackson/Spielberg Tintin movie, and was adapted for one of the animated films I intend to watch soon (as mentioned last time), so it seemed a good choice.

It's also "Part 1 of 2", so I'll read the follow-up sometime in the next few days.

this week on 100 Films

Four brand-new reviews were published to 100 Films in a Year this week, and they were...


Always (1989)

Released the same year as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and followed by Hook, Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List in his filmography, Steven Spielberg’s remake of 1943 fantasy drama A Guy Named Joe is sandwiched between several all-time classics (and Hook), which probably explains why it’s been widely overlooked and, consequently, underrated.

Read more here.


American Movie (1999)

A behind-the-scenes making-of with a difference, American Movie: The Making of Northwestern is a documentary about wannabe-filmmaker Mark Borchardt attempting to produce a horror feature film with little more than some mates and good intentions, battling against a lack of money, interest, and dedication.

Read more here.


Frankenweenie (2012)

Even if the narrative is no great shakes, there’s plenty of fun to be had along the way. The dog, Sparky (ho ho), is very well observed; indeed, all of the animation is naturally top-notch. It retains an indefinable but desirable stop-motion-ness, something I felt Burton’s previous animation, Corpse Bride, lacked

Read more here.


Snake in the Eagle's Shadow (1978)

quite a slight story, but that’s OK: we’re here for the action, and it delivers that in droves. There are more fights than you can shake a stick at; and not just minor skirmishes littered between two or three headline bouts: regular highly-choreographed duels make up the bulk of the running time.

Read more here.


Plus a full seven archive reviews were reposted this week too...


Alone in the Dark (2005)

I could go through every scene in the film describing what’s wrong in this way, but no one wants to suffer that. Suffice to say it only gets worse — none of the initial flaws improve, but are compounded by more weak performances (Tara Reid as some kind of scientist?) and the story entirely vacating proceedings.

Read more here.


The Aristocrats (2005)

The Aristocrats is, apparently, an incredibly famous joke, well known to all comedians -- and, generally, only told to each other, not to audiences -- that is flexible enough for anyone to tell in their own way and still have it work. It's also incredibly vulgar; in fact, the point is often to make it as vulgar as humanly possible. To explain much more would ruin the point of the film, which aims to expose and explain this cultish joke to the masses.

Read more here.


Churchill: The Hollywood Years (2004)

What if the Americans made a movie of Winston Churchill's life, prone as they are to re-write World War 2 history to show they won it all by themselves?

Read more here.


Exiled (2006)

features several impressive action scenes. They're Leone-like in the way there's often an extended pause, the threat of violence hanging in the air -- then a sudden burst, over quickly. But within this style there's a lot of visual flair -- unlike Leone, slow motion makes the moments last minutes, underlined by the entire climatic shoot-out taking place in the time it takes for a can of Red Bull to be kicked in the air and drop back down.

Read more here.


Frankenstein (2004)

According to the blurb on my DVD, it's a "contemporary retelling of Mary Shelley's gothic horror classic". I guess no one in the publicity department actually watched it. In actuality it's more a sequel: Dr Frankenstein has somehow survived to the modern day and emigrated to New Orleans, where he continues his experiments, while his original monster... has tracked him down in the name of justice.

Read more here.


Holiday (1938)

not the funniest of comedies — though I did think it was funny — instead hitting a level of dramatic/character interest that I didn’t predict. I think it’s more a personal favourite than an objective Great Film (but then, one might argue, what is?), so the best I can do is encourage you to seek it out

Read more here.


Ripley's Game (2002)

the Radio Times criticises the humour included in the murders and thriller sections, viewing it as a failure of director Liliana Cavani; conversely, Roger Ebert approves of it, praising them as appearing somewhere "between a massacre and the Marx Brothers"... I'm inclined to agree with Ebert: these sequences do have tension, but they marry the humour to it, leaving you chuckling on the edge of your seat.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

TV

All Star Family Misfortunes
Because funny answers are funny.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Outnumbered
2x01 The Wedding [3rd watch]

The Voice UK
4x02 The Blind Auditions 2
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Kingdom of Heaven: Director's Cut (2005)
[#9 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

Collection Count

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

This week's sole addition is the Die Hard: Legacy Collection Blu-ray, which at £15 for all five films + an exclusive bonus disc was a bargain not to be missed. Unfortunately, the dearth of extras on the first film in this edition, plus the lack of the extended cut of the fourth, means I won't be shifting the trilogy DVD set or original release of the fourth that I already own (at least, not yet). But HD, oo-ooh!

Number of titles in collection: 1,729 [up 1]
Of which DVDs: 1,207 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 522 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 4,324 [up 6]
Number of films in collection: 1,867 [up 5]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 6,464 [no change]
Number of short films in collection: 441 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Adam Hills: Happyism Live
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Castle
4x08 Heartbreak Hotel

Films

The Big Knife (1955)
[#8 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

TV

Atlantis
2x06 The Grey Sisters
All caught up! Now when's it back?
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Outnumbered
1x06 The Dinner Party [season finale; 3rd watch]

Films

Persona (1966)
[#7 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

What Do You Mean You Haven't Seen...? 2015 #1

TV

Castle
4x07 Cops & Robbers

Celebrity Mastermind
2014/2015 Episode 9 (of 10)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Newsroom
3x04 Contempt

Films

Last Passenger (2013)
[#6 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

TV

Death in Paradise
4x01 Episode 1
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Last Leg
6x01 (9/1/15 edition)
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Films

Machine Gun Preacher (2011)
[#5 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

TV

Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled
2x01 Simple People Eating Complex Carbohydrates
[Watch it (again) on Dave OD.]

Broadchurch
2x01 Episode 1
Has it really been almost two years? (Yes.) Interesting new direction -- an area rarely (if ever) explored in TV dramas before -- but a bit less of the obvious "we both know secrets about the past, but let's not tell the audience"-type dialogue, please.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Outnumbered
1x05 The Mystery Illness [3rd watch]

Fiction

The Adventures of Tintin: The Calculus Affair by Hergé

I recently bought a box set of three animated Tintin movies from the '60s and '70s. One of them is an original story and one a faithful adaptation of The Seven Crystal Balls/Prisoners of the Sun, but the first is a version of The Calculus Affair that reportedly bears no resemblance to the book whatsoever... so I thought I ought to read the original first, especially as "some, such as Benoit Peeters in his book Tintin and the World of Hergé, consider this as the greatest and most "detective-like" of the whole series" (so says Wikipedia).

And it is a very good one, actually; a kind of Cold War spy thriller, but through a Tintin filter of course -- there's still plenty of slapstick and so on. Considering the next Spielberg/Jackson film is being scripted by Anthony Horowitz, of Alex Rider and Foyle's War and the next Bond novel, this would seem to be a good candidate to base it around...

TV

8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown
8x01 (9/1/15 edition)
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Castle
4x06 Demons

Room 101
15x02 Episode 2
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]