Year: 2012

What did you watch this week (w/e February 10)?

13 February 2012 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

(Yet again), belated time for “What did you watch this week?”, my chance to tell you what I watched this week that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case we’ve missed them.

First, the usual recommendations: Archer, Being Human (US), The Daily Show, House, Modern Family, Happy Endings, Portlandia, Ringer, Royal Pains, Shameless (US), Southland, Spartacus, Suburgatory and 30 Rock. Do watch them (if you can and they happen to be on TV this week).

And here are a few thoughts on the regulars and other shows:

  • Shameless (US): Great to see (spoiler)Steve back, since he’d left something of a narrative gap.
  • House: The first decent episode of the season so far
  • Happy Endings: The One With All The Friends References In It
  • Spartacus: Episode two was a definite improvement over episode one, but it’s still not yet firing on all cylinders.
  • 30 Rock: The best season since the second one, I reckon.
  • Ringer: Nice to see Ioan Gruffudd given something to do apart from simper all episode. And the trouble with Juliet(te?) is that the actress is so terrible, it’s hard to tell if the character is a bad actress, too.
  • The Almighty Johnsons: Not quite as fun or as action-packed as the first episode, but still promising and most of the brothers get a little depth in episode two. Not sure what’s happening with the women or even if they’re goddesses now.

But has anyone been watching Being Human (UK) and Bomb Girls over in Canada, by any chance?

And in movies:

  • Red Balloon: Surprisingly effective and affecting French movie about a boy who makes friends with a balloon. Is the balloon a metaphor for Jesus? A pet? Does it matter? It’s just lovely:

“What did you watch this week?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

Competitions

Competition: Win Doctor Who – The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe on DVD

13 February 2012 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe

BBC Shop Badge
Starring: Matt Smith, Karen Gillan
Writer: Steven Moffat
Director: Farin Blackburn
Price: £10.20 (Amazon price: £6.49; BBC Shop price: £6.99)
Released: January 16th 2012

Well, those nice people at the BBC Shop have sent me some more DVDs to review, and as always, I’m giving away the ones I don’t want. First up, it’s The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe, which I reviewed briefly a while back:

Quite nice, but nothing too remarkable. Some nods to continuity (Androzani Major) and a few tears were elicited towards the end, but this was just a bit of Christmas fun and loveliness really.

If you’d like a proper review, Stuart has a good one.

Anyway, the DVD contains not only the whole episode but also two hours of bonus features, including a prequel and three ‘The Best of Doctor Who‘ features. I haven’t watched them. They might be good. Okay, I have watched the prequel because it’s on YouTube and here:

But I don’t want the DVD. However, if you want it, now’s your chance to enter the first TMINE competition of the year!

To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment below or email me! Usual competition rules apply and you have to live in the UK. Closing date is Sunday 19th February 2012 at 11.59pm.

Question of the week: should people use CGI to improve effects in old films and TV shows?

13 February 2012 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

It can’t have escaped your notice that computer graphics have improved a lot over the last few decades. Not only are they better than the graphics that computers could create in the 80s and 90s, they’re also better than some of the physical effects that people used to use. Not always (cf The Thing), but sometimes.

Now, some companies – particularly the BBC with its Doctor Who range, but also George Lucas with Star Wars – instead of releasing the original films and TV episodes as they were when they were first made, have been releasing DVDs and Blu-rays with improved versions of the original special effects.

Sometimes, this has been for a good reason: in the case of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the effects needed to be redone for Blu-Ray since they were mastered on video and so were too low quality for Blu-Ray:

But in some cases, it’s purely because the producers of the DVD or Blu-Ray think the effects look bad, need improving, or will improve sales:

To be fair, there’s usually an option to watch a version with the new effects or one with the old. But not always. So this week’s question is:

Would you like to see old films and TV shows improved with modern effects when they’re released or do you want to see something that’s as close to the original as possible?

Monday’s “Who/Trek crossover, not quite a West Wing reunion, and Legion and Lawrence of Arabia: the TV series” news

13 February 2012 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Film

Comics

  • Doctor Who and Star Trek: The Next Generation to cross over

Theatre

British TV

US TV

US TV

Review: The River (ABC) 1×1-1×2

10 February 2012 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

The River

In the US: Tuesdays, 9/8c, ABC
In the UK: Available on iTunes. Not yet acquired by a network

‘Found footage‘ is a storytelling method that’s become very popular over the last decade or so in horror movies, mainly thanks to the success of one particular film: The Blair Witch Project. Although you can trace FF’s roots back to Cannibal Holocaust in the 70s, it’s largely because of the worldwide success of the TBWP that the likes of REC, Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield, Apollo 18, Diary of the Dead et al were given the green light over the last few years.

In essence, FF is simple – a found footage story is one that purports to be real TV or film footage recovered from cameras, usually after the people taking the footage have died, and what you’re watching is purely a documentary record of how they were haunted, hacked to death, eaten by zombies, attacked by monsters or whatever.

But despite the popularity of the genre at the movies, it’s somewhat surprising to discover that The River, ABC’s newest show, is only about the fourth TV show to ever exploit the style. It’s maybe not that surprising to discover, though, that it’s from Oren Peli, creator of Paranormal Activity, Michael R Perry, co-writer of Paranormal Activity 2, and Steven Spielberg (exec producer of Paranormal Activity).

The plot looks relatively simple at first: famed explorer and TV host Dr Emmet Cole (Bruce Greenwood) has got lost up the Amazon, so his wife (Leslie Hope) and son (Joe Anderson) go looking for him. The only catch is that to get the funding for the trip, they have to agree to have the whole thing filmed by a documentary producer (Paul Blackthorne). And we get to watch what they filmed.

Suffice it to say that what they find isn’t just a slightly derivative, not very frightening combination of Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project, it’s like American Horror Story. Maybe they should have called the show Amazon Horror Story, since that would at least have been more interesting than The River.

Here’s a trailer. It’s misleadingly exciting.

Continue reading “Review: The River (ABC) 1×1-1×2”