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).