LOOKS:The Angelos Neil Epithemou Show - seemingly just a pilot at this stage (
along with Milton Jones' "House of Rooms"), but being a huge fan of his character as-seen on the now cancelled
Shooting Stars, I loved it. Hopefully Channel 4 pick it up for a full series.
Apocalypse Now (Blu-Ray) - Franis Ford Coppola's Vietnam war epic just got even more vast - on 3-disc collector's edition Blu-Ray. It's crammed with extras too.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Blu-Ray) - Jason Siegel wrote a killer script and gave a brilliant comedic performance. I loved it when I saw it in the cinema, and I figured it was about time to give it another spin.
The Golden Globes 2012 - last year Sky Movies broadcast them in the UK. This year it was E! Entertainment - and boy did they make a pig's ear of it. The feed was all over the place in the first 30 minutes, missing half of Gervais' intro speech, an entire category, half of a winner's speech, and it kept cutting away to the same glitchy package of adverts that just seemed to keep coming back like a friggin' zombie. Add in the incessant, wimpy bleeping out of every punchline (
and even entire sentences!), and it was just a weak sauce showing all round.
Shameless Slasher Nasties Box Set DVD - as you'll have seen already, this month I've been reviewing this excellent 3-disc box set of 1970s Italian genre flicks.
Killer Nun, Torso, and
Night Train Murders.
Kevin Smith -
Too Fat For 40 (
his latest stand-up Q&A DVD) finally makes an appearance more than a year after it happened, but in an unexpurgated form. Hilarity ensues as he once again manages to capture my imagination with well told yarns from his personal life (
the main feature is 3 hours and 20 minutes long!) Plus at long last, a full year-to-the-day after it's Sundance Premiere, Smith's deeply twisted realist horror movie
Red State comes to a wide UK release on DVD and Blu-Ray - it has some flaws, but I really dug it. Finally, another viewing of
Clerks: The Animated Series.
YouTube hopping - my love for
The Big Bang Theory has excelled thanks to it being on constant repeat on E4 nowadays (
since they let Friends go to the Paramount Comedy Channel), and I've found myself skimming around YouTube watching numerous gag reels, interviews and Comic-Con panels to do with the show. What's more I've also got into watching various small clips from season five of
Robot Chicken - a season that, at this time anyway, has no release date on DVD (
even though it's been out in America for ages - before it's even finished airing on Adult Swim).
SOUNDS:Chase Status ft. Liam Bailey "Blind Faith" - as heard in
Dirt 3.
The Walker Brothers "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" & Wye Oak "Civilian" - the time is nearing for the second half of season two of
The Walking Dead (
the best show currently on TV in my view), so I've been psyching myself up with these tracks which appeared on the full trailers for seasons 1 and 2.
Red Dead Redemption OSTRingo Deathstarr "Colour Trip"Alessandro Alessandroni "Suor Omicidi" - otherwise known as "
Killer Nun". Like so many stand-out pieces from the soundtracks of Italian genre flicks, this one gets pleasingly lodged in your head.
Stelvio Cipriani "La Polizia Sta A Guardare" - as heard in the flick "
What Have They Done To Your Daughters" (
and briefly heard in "Death Proof").
M83 "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming"Drive OST - Kavinsky ft. Lovefoxxx "
Nightcall", Desire "
Under Your Spell", College ft. Electric Youth "
A Real Hero", Riz Ortolani "
Oh My Love", and The Chromatics "
Tick of the Clock"
Kavinsky "Pacific Coast Highway"VIBES & FLAVOURS:Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - a nice rounding off of a trilogy arc. The third act isn't quite as thrilling or epic as the first two acts, but as a fan of the franchise I really enjoyed myself. The additional "
Special Ops" content has also been tweaked for the better (
although I do find it strange that "Recruit" mode isn't included for the Spec-Op missions).
Dirt 3 - the '
mini pyramids' felt a bit like a chore after a lengthy career mode, but then on the other hand you aren't left wanting for content. It's still been a spiffing racer to play, mind you.
The Walking Dead: Volume 9 & 10 - slowly but surely I'm catching up on Kirkman's excellent comic series. Still another five to go, however.
Damned by Chuck Palahniuk - the author's latest book, and it's his most inventive outing since
Rant. The central character is a 13 year old daughter of a celebrity couple, who is damned to hell after suffering an apparent '
marijuana overdose' and bands together with a veritable '
Breakfast Club' cast of teenage stereotypes to plead her case to the authorities of Hell itself. I enjoyed it immensely - if you're a fan of Palahniuk's work, you definitely need to check this title out.
The Top 50 List - it was an exhaustive process re-jigging the list (
less-so than creating the list from scratch back in 2009, mind you) but I had been meaning to do it for ages. Well -
I've compiled my own Top 50 list of personal most favourite-favourites ... but even still a beloved title or two is going to slip your mind (
such as the utterly arresting The Shawshank Redemption, or the endearingly laid back and meandering The Big Lebowski).