March 2012 DVD Round Up!

Seems to have been a while since I did a DVD round up, even though we are still watching through our lovefilm list with a good speed. A lot of these films have been 12 certificate too, which means we are OK with Ewan watching them (supervised) which makes for some nice family afternoons through the cold spells we've been having. Not going to go back too far, but some quick thoughts on the last couple of months movies follow after the cut...

Box Set Blues: Misfits, Season 2

We seem to be on a roll with box-sets at the moment, although this is in many ways an illusion. After all, getting through Community was a burst of crazy obsession, and as we tend to watch several series in parallel its just a nice coincidence that we seemed to have finished a few fairly close to each other. Another factor is of course that UK tv runs for much, much shorter seasons, which can be pretty frustrating, but at least we tend to wind up wanting more of a truncated show, than slowly losing patience with something going on for too long. I'm starting to think that the 10- or 13-episode run, being both the longest a UK show seems to run, and the shortest US one does, is about the right balance between breathing room and decent pace. But thats for another day. Today we talk about Misfits.

Box Set Blues: Community, Series 1

One of the great advantages of being behind in your consumption of culture is that when you find something you like, you can often burn through a lot of it very quickly. This is why I read all of A Song of Ice and Fire in a four month burst, for example, or watched four series of House at the rate of an episode a day until we'd ran out of actually produced episodes. I'm fond of bemoaning that I'm often behind, and have to play "dodge the spoiler" across the internet but it does mean that recommendation from up-to-date people acts a filter against some real dross and often means we can pick up whole TV series on the cheap.

All that said, I wish I'd seen Community sooner.

Movie Review: The Artist

The Artist has been this years "little movie that could" - a french-made, black and white silent movie that accelerated through the awards season to win 5 Oscars in what felt, by Oscar-night, a crushing inevitability. It was so critically lauded, so acclaimed, that before the opening credits even start to roll there is a burden of expectation upon it to deliver, and the worry is always that that it won't manage that, because the bar has been set for it so high. But we went to see it anyway, and this is what we thought. 

Comics Review: Into the Woods

It feels like I woke up one day and Fairy Tales were "in" again. There are two Fairy Tale-based shows on the TV, two versions of Snow White approaching cinemas, Stephen Moffat cites them as a big influence on his flavour of Doctor Who, and there is just generally a more indefinable "zeitgeist" in air. I would say something off-the-cuff about Fairys being the new Vampires, but as I'm not a huge fan of the current Vampire craze it would be unnecessarily cruel. Moving Fairy Tales into the modern world (or modern sensibilities) isn't a new idea, of course - but its a concept that is suddenly front and centre.

Box Set Blues: Justified, Series Two

Justified's first season was one of these shows that we watched almost by chance, and instantly regretted that we hadn't been watching it sooner. Whilst displaying some "first season" choppiness, it was a slick, entertaining and clever show that left you wanting more, and waiting for it's second season to arrive (it was on my xmas list for santa) was slow, at times. But you have expectations, when a show starts as well as Justified did, that it can build on it's foundation, and deliver on that promise of future quality. So, does it manage it?