Flavours of the Month: January 2012...

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 OST

Ringo 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).

Flavours of the Month: December 2011...

LOOKS:

Glove And Boots - a new favourite YouTube channel of mine, I discovered it via their video "The Walkie Talkie Dead". If you like puppets, you're going to love Mario, Fafa, and Gorilla. Fantastically funny stuff!

Carnivale - I finished up the second season this month on Sky Atlantic and well, they certainly cancelled it back in 2005 on a bit of a cliffhanger, didn't they? I preferred the first season, especially as the second seemed to get a bit too lost and a bit too plodding at times ... and you can't beat that first season closer.

Ross Kemp On Afghanistan - a new run of the hard-hitting documentary on Sky 1. Illuminating, fascinating, chilling.

Black Mirror - from the mind of Charlie Brooker (which says a lot already), comes this trio of darkly twisted tales. The first episode was perhaps the most caustic, bleak, and ultimately haunting dose of satire I've seen in a long old while (perhaps ever). The second episode was overlong and lacked focus, but there were impressive ideas, and a strong cast. The third episode picked things up again by taking a brilliant little sci-fi 'what if' idea and spun it against the backdrop of a classic plot about adultery.

Charlie Boorman: Extreme Frontiers Canada - for a very long time now I've had this fascination with Canada (indeed I one day hope to visit the country), and being a fan of all the sorts of journeys that Boorman has undertaken over the years, I quite enjoyed this four-part series on Channel 5 ... but it would be nice if they put an extended version out on DVD.

Boardwalk Empire Season 2 - this richly detailed, masterfully written, deeply considered series is one of the best shows on television. The second season ramped up the complex motivations, suspicions, and double-dealings of all the well drawn and perfectly performed characters, and bloody hell - don't worry, no spoilers - the season finale is not only a brave move, but one that literally dropped my jaw and made me sit bolt upright in shock. I eagerly await the third season of this utterly engrossing drama - and if you haven't checked it out, then for goodness sake get yourself in on it.

Prometheus - the teaser trailer finally appeared and oh, the intrigue of it all. This is my most anticipated movie of 2012, with The Dark Knight Rises coming in second, and The Avengers in third on the anticipation scales.

Super 8 (Blu-Ray) - I loved it when I saw it in the cinema, and a second viewing confirms my love for this wonderful film. It's got real heart, real spectacle, a great range of adult and child characters, and well, it's just so damned nifty.

SOUNDS:

M83 "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" - sometimes you need the right time to listen to an album properly, especially a double album, and I finally got a chance to return to this great record that I've not been able to listen to enough for my liking. Top stuff.

Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross ft. Karen O "Immigrant Song" - a driving, pulsing, thumping cover of Led Zeppelin's track, as featured in David Fincher's version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. This track provided the backdrop for the superb teaser trailer.

Saints Row The Third - numerous tracks, but particularly "Pepper" by Butthole Surfers, "Angry Elephants" by Junkie XL and "Slow Revolution" by Tugboat.

Prometheus - the music from the trailer ... ooh, it's spine-tingling. That aural call-back to the trailer for the very first Alien movie just makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end in an instant.

Dick Figures "Bath Rhymes (Instrumental)" - from the excellent YouTube cartoon series "Dick Figures".

Alice Cooper "Spark In The Dark: The Best Of" - nearly two-and-a-half hours of excellence.

VIBES & FLAVOURS:

Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky - after weeks of pouring through this deep, dense, dramatic novel, I finally got it finished. It was a demanding read at times - for good reasons and bad at different times - and despite some sections around the middle where it seems to get a bit lost and lumpen in its storytelling, once we arrive at Polis the pace picks right back up again. Fascinating, extremely detailed, and very atmospheric.

The Festive Season - Christmas adverts on the telly (including that old one from Coca Cola that everyone of my age loves and considers the kick-off for the season once they've seen it), mince pies fresh from the oven, decorations, wrapping (with a nifty little tip I learned from James May's Man Lab Christmas Special on BBC2), and all the assorted festivities. 2011 has been a bit of a rough year - indeed at times it's been utterly awful - but then again there were good times and productive times, so it wasn't a total write-off ... but I do hope 2012 proves to be far better than 2011 was.

Dirt 3 - nabbed it on sale. The first non-shooty-or-sandboxy game I've bought for four ruddy years; I'm gradually getting the hang of this spiffing rally racer which features an entertaining Gymkhana section.

Ross Kemp On Afghanistan - I was given this book for Christmas two years ago, and I never got around to it until now. Fresh from the latest series on Sky1, and in search of (relatively) lighter reading after the demanding-yet-involving Metro 2033, I ploughed through this. Like the series its connected to, it proved to be a fascinating, illuminating, and at times sombre read. It really makes you better appreciate - from the comfort of your living room, admittedly - what the soldiers fighting on our behalf go through.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - one of my presents this year. I've only done the first act of the story mode, but so far it's rather enjoyable. Nothing that changes the formula, but it's good to return to this particular story arc. More on it in next month's Flavours of the Month.

Until then - I hope you've all had a spiffing holiday season, and here's to 2012!