Flavours of the Month: May 2015...

This month I polished off the excellent "South Park: The Stick of Truth" (shame about the constant loading screens, though), gave the show's 18th season a quick second spin, and indulged in the superb "6 Days To Air: The Making of South Park" documentary ... there's also been an awful lot of Rob Zombie, plenty of writing, crackin' telly, and the glamorous thrills of the Monaco F1 weekend among the flavours of my May 2015...

Flavours of the Month: May 2014...

LOOKS:

Twin Peaks - finishing off season two. There were about eight episodes after the reveal of Laura Palmer's killer where the show went off the rails and didn't have a new main story and threat to pick up the ball. Various subplots and side stories didn't really work, so for those iffy episodes only parts of them are working. It stopped being strange, it got safe and even a bit plain. That said, in the last few episodes it swung right back up again and found the groove for a grand finale. Good news too about the imminent release of 90 minutes worth of deleted scenes from Fire Walk With Me.

South Park Season 13, 14 and 15 - when South Park hits a home run, it really goes all out, but then you end up (unfairly) expecting every episode to be like the one where the Internet goes down, or the Facebook episode, or the World of Warcraft episode etc. However, watching these episodes for a second time on their own terms really frees them of any first-watch expectations you originally had. What was a tad underwhelming the first time becomes a rather good run of episodes with some forgotten gems hidden away.

Click "READ MORE" below for the other looks, sounds, vibes & flavours of my May 2014...

Flavours of the Month: April 2013...

LOOKS:

Scott Pilgrim vs The World (Blu-Ray) - yet another visit to Edgar Wright's film adaptation of Brian Lee O'Malley's graphic novel series (which I re-read last month). It's a tall order to cram six volumes worth of material into one film; the compressed time frame doesn't leave room for the more expansive experience of the books, and Ramona is just a touch too aloof - but these are mere quibbles - the film is a jam-packed cult classic.

Storage Hunters - I've gone and got myself addicted to this 'reality/unscripted' show about people who bid on storage lockers that are being auctioned off. It appeals to the innate yearning in all of us - what's in the box?! How much will it be worth?! Will they earn a profit?! These questions simply must be answered!

Mad Men Season 6 - the welcome return of Matthew Weiner's superb 1960s-set drama. Richly textured and moreish in equal measure.

Click "READ MORE" below for the other looks, sounds, vibes & flavours of my April 2013...

Flavours of the Year: 2012...

For the last few years I've done monthly run-downs of what's been flavouring that past four weeks - the sorts of things I've been watching, listening to, reading, playing, or doing that have been most prominent - and so I figured I'd do a retrospective of the fullest flavours of the year of 2012.

Click "READ MORE" below to see the Flavours of the Year 2012...

YouTube Finds: All Star Celebrity Bowling...

I've been a fan of this web show since it first started, and recently I re-watched all the episodes, and I figured it was about time I flagged them up to anyone not in-the-know about them yet. Created by the Nerdist crowd, who have their own podcast network, Nerdist-in-Chief Christ Hardwick started All Star Celebrity Bowling in which teams of bowlers (e.g. musical comedians, cast & crew of TV shows, etc) would face off against Team Nerdist (featuring Hardwick, son of professional bowler Billy Hardwick) in a tournament to try and win $10,000 for charity. Taking part would get them $1,000, beating Team Nerdist in a game would get them a further $1,000, and whoever would come out victorious over all other teams would win the big money for their chosen charity.

I do rather enjoy bowling - although I'm rubbish at it as I never go regularly (not even remotely so) - and I found these to be bloody entertaining, even the episodes featuring people I either didn't know or barely knew who they were. There's a really fun and relaxed atmosphere to these videos too, so the show is doubly enjoyable to watch. Below are the three episodes that I enjoyed the most (and have re-watched several times a-piece)...

1) Team Nerdist vs. Team Mad Men

2) Team Nerdist vs. Team Walking Dead

3) Team Nerdist vs. Team Breaking Bad

Flavours of the Month: June 2012...

LOOKS:

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (Blu-Ray) - the second time around it's still great, and it still spins my head when the Burj Kalifa segment comes up.

Mad Men Season 5 - the last few months have had a decidedly Mad Men flavour to them, and now I'm finally all caught up on Don & Co's adventures in advertising ... roll on season 6!

2 Broke Girls - sometimes E4's relentless advertising of new shows really grates (I almost didn't start watching Lost specifically because I hated how often they trailed the first season on Channel 4), but now and then that doesn't factor in so much and you give a show a fair chance on its own merit. It took me a few episodes to get into it, but I've found myself somewhat curiously into this show, which is like a strange clash of 'ever-so-sitcommy' and 'post-modern-malaise'.

Hell On Wheels - all I knew of this show before reading an article in Total Film about it, was the title, and I'd just assumed it was a rip-off of Sons of Anarchy or something. However, having got utterly obsessed with Deadwood earlier this year, I was up for more western drama, and AMC are delivering. It's not in the same league as Deadwood (the first two seasons of which were downright perfect, while the third season lost its sense of pace until the final episodes), but I'm still watching it - so it must be doing something right. You gotta love the opening titles too - I've had Gustavo Santaolalla's toe-tapping, hard-edged themetune in my head for weeks.

Leon (Blu-Ray) - it's been a very long time since I saw this excellent flick, and I have to say the Director's Cut (133 minutes in length) is a superior effort. It delves much more into the ever-so-strange relationship between the eponymous assassin (Jean Reno) and his young ward (Natalie Portman).

Jackass 3 & 3.5 - the last time I saw these was a few weeks before Ryan Dunn was killed in a high speed car wreck along with Zachary Hartwell in 2011, and until now it felt a little strange watching anything Jackass knowing that Dunn was gone ... however it was about time I gave these another spin, and they're still hilarious. Dunn may be gone, but he ain't forgotten.


Click "READ MORE" below for the sounds and flavours of June 2012...

Flavours of the Month: May 2012...

LOOKS:

Shameless Screen Entertainment - "Phantom of Death", "Who Saw Her Die?", and "The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh" - follow the links for full DVD reviews.

Mad Men Seasons 2 through 4 - TV time, and the small hours of the morning as temptation took over, was entirely replaced for a couple of weeks with an obsessive catch-up with Don Draper and the gang. Next up, season five.

Blue Velvet (Blu-Ray) - preposterously, the release in the UK does NOT feature the 52 minutes of newly discovered deleted scenes! Fortunately, the American release is Region FREE on Blu-Ray, so I imported it. For any fan of Lynch's darkly twisted vision of the hell that lies beneath the white picket fences of Americana, it's well worth investing in.

The Real Ghostbusters: Season 1 - I used to adore this show as a child, so having spotted this on the cheap, I decided I'd sprinkle a daily dose of nostalgia into this month.

The Inbetweeners Movie (Blu-Ray)

Click "READ MORE" below for this months sounds, vibes, and flavours...

Favourite TV show title sequences...

Television shows are often well known for their opening title sequences, indeed they clue you into the whole tone of the show in anywhere between 30 and 90 seconds. However, you don't always watch the intro sequence, oftentimes you might skip them entirely, but there are some that you find yourself watching every single time - and in this day-and-age when DVD boxsets are ever-so popular, that really shows true quality. Indeed, a really good title sequence makes you want to be a part of the world you're about to enter, whatever that world may be.

So without further ado, off the top of my head, some of the opening title sequences that I watch every single time without fail are:

The A-Team:
One of the greatest theme tunes for a television show ever, even people who have never watched a single episode know exactly how it goes and where it came from, but as someone who has poured over all five seasons on DVD (after watching the show as a child), you can't help but dig the fun-loving, boy's-own-adventure sense of fun this intro sequences inspires. Even the re-vamped season five intro grew on me.




The A-Team: Season 5 intro here.

Deadwood:
An excellent show that I came to very recently, but which sports an opening titles sequence that perfectly got me into the mood for a fresh episode. The choice of shots, almost all of which are in seductive slow motion, perfectly define the atmosphere of the setting of the show - a gold rush pioneer settlement where money, power, sex, corruption, gold, and booze run free and cross borders with each other routinely.




Continue reading after the jump...

Flavours of the Month: March 2012...

LOOKS:

The Walking Dead Season 2 - the second half of season two has been a storming success with Glenn Mazzara as the new showrunner. The scale of the look of the show has expanded, the pacing has been perfected, the drama has been ramped up even more, and boy-oh-boy did we zed-heads get some amazing zombie action too. I absolutely cannot wait for season three!

Deadwood - spotted it on sale, so figured I'd give it a spin and now I love this show. The first season is superb, as is the second (even if the dialogue became overly complicated and verbose ... as if the writers ran every word through a thesaurus), and while the third season lacks some of the propulsion and intrigue of the first two seasons (until the final three episodes when it gets nail-bitingly tense), you're so invested in the town and its residents, you don't mind that the final season has been a slower-paced affair with several vague subplots that never really developed. An excellent show all-round and I dearly hope we can finally get the much-talked-about, but never realised (thus far), TV movies that were intended to wrap up the storylines properly.

The Evil Dead - I've got it twice on VHS (cut & uncut), once on DVD (the 'Book of the Dead' edition), and now I've got it on Blu-Ray. It's a bit of an annoyance that we in Region B didn't get the original aspect ratio and a few other additional extras (as found on the now out of print limited edition that Region A got), but it's a spiffing way to catch up on some missed extra features from releases past, and get a remarkably good-looking spruce-up of the print.