What Are You Currently Watching (on tv/dvd)?

[fish]

The Ninth Gate...

Polanski and Depp is a pretty formidable combination.
I saw the film a few years ago and remember it as being very good.

I'll have to arrange another viewing, I think.

[Ian]

Saw Red Dwarf: Back to Earth again last night (director's cut). Liked it 3 years ago, liked it even more this time (not watching a crap YouTube copy probably didn't hurt). Not perfect (the lack of any audience does feel very weird and takes a while to get used to) but it's a strong story with some very funny moments and it's great to back to the classic Dwarf line-up and scenario. Also great to see the actual real ship back instead of that awful imposter in series 8 (whose dumb idea was that?).

Perhaps not up there with the best, but miles better than the dreadful series 8 and I really enjoyed it. Looking forward to the new series.

[fish]

It was good to have series 8 though.
Even if just to make everything else seem much better.

[Ian]

You got that right!

[Rebecka Fan]

The Secret Circle. There were a few episodes I'd missed. It's sad it's been cancelled. I've signed all the petitions I could find and have written and emailed the CW (the network) with a letter of appeal.

[katka]

because I'm a big fan of the FA...YouTube always offers me a selection of ''what would you like it'' so sometimes I can get such a piquancy's videos from the world of L films. So purely by ''accident'' (what else... ) I came across a Spanish film from 2009 - Eloïse. I quite liked it even though the film was riddled with various love cliches and also including the music that was at times too, climbed - progressively - lovely (piano). But the overall impression is conciliatory, I think. Definitely worth seeing. What struck me most about this movie enjoyed was watch the artistic career of one of the girls. The artist, with of course charming beauty begins to draw her classmate and has her as a model.... I know it very well Well, of course, this girl - artist, they conceived it (and even her looks) as bohemistic wild girl that can has anyone. I really enjoyed seen this cliche in artistic world by a young girl, which is about my age and from the same field. But the ending was really stupid. As a technical - vocational aspect but also the narrative, scenery, point page. End is quite too failed, all is so weird, almost I would said, full of paradoxes. And then I thought ... damn it's really sucks to die so young, fall in love and then so stupid die... if you look you will see why. Then of all you will gets such an ambivalent feeling like it missed. But still better than Summer storm or My friend from Faro. What really nicely surprised me that I understand almost everything and on YT it's in Spanish. I don't know very well Spanish language, but something quite I do. And there was easily dialogs, but some too lyric - wise bullshit or too special I naturaly didn't understand. I even recognized Catalan language (at the very beginning I knew that with the Spanish there is something wrong:-D) and it is similar enough to Portuguese, some words. Interesting.

[Ian]

Whitechapel season 3 final. Very scary and ultimately heartbreaking. I do hope there's a season 4. It's so Gothic.

[sydney]

Just returned from Sweden.

Currently watching the series of Irene Huss.

[Ian]

Red Dwarf extras. The doco on the failed pilot for a US version was fascinating, as were the clips from the actual show. We-ird. Though it was fun to see Jane Leeves (Daphne from Frasier) as Holly the computer!

[Ian]

A Team pilot. Good fun. But Face ain't Dirk Benedict!

[Ian]

Friends season 5.

[Ian]

Saw the Dragonfire (Who) extras last night. Good stuff. The occasional mini-feature "The Doctor's Strange Love" are rather fun. Dragonfire summed up in one sentence? "Ace is here, thank God!"

[Ian]

Saw 2 Who stories over the weekend. Saw The Happiness Patrol again on Saturday. Something of a mixed bag, but plenty to enjoy. The Kandy Man is a fabulously bonkers creation and Dominic Glynn's score (as writer Graeme Curry and script editor Andrew Cartmel note in the making of documentary) is absolutely fantastic - wonderfully appropriate and atmospheric and almost DannyElfmanTimBurtonmovieesque. Sylv and Soph are also on form, with Sylv having some terrific scenes - he's charming and funny and mercurial but he can turn on cold and sinister with great effect; the bit where he forces the sniper to back down by getting in his face and telling him to look him in the eye while he kills him is brilliant, and there's that wonderfully near-sinister moment with Ace when she goes mental at the callous Patrol guard and he grabs her and tells her to calm down because "you're no good to me like this". Fab.
On the downside, the lack of budget often shows (though the Kandy Kitchen set is fantastic, like something out of a fairytale) and it feels a little rushed as a 3 parter when another ep would have let the story and characters breathe a little more. It's a shame they didn't go the whole film noir skewed angle route too, as the director wanted to. Still, enjoyable.
The extras on the dvd were great too. There's an excellent 45 minute doco about politics in DW (Patrol being a very political story, not least with Sheila Hancock totally riffing on Thatcher as Helen A) and the making of is fab too, with some lovely rare behind the scenes footage on the set. Splendid.

Saw The Sun Makers again last night. Long been a fave though for some reason I started watching it late last year and turned it off. Clearly I just wasn't in the mood, as I watched it again last night and thoroughly enjoyed it all over again. Smart, satirical and funny, with Tom and Louise Jameson as Leela on top form, and a great turn from Henry Woolf as the 'orrible troll-like Collector.

[Ian]

The Bill: Witch Hunt. DCI Wray is convinced that a local primary school caretaker is the man responsible for the murder of two children in Sun Hill, and he's determined to prove it - but is he just conducting a witch hunt against an innocent man? I don't remember this child killer story arc at all, but it's resulting in some gripping episodes.

[Ian]

Started Dexter season 6.