Last night I watched the first episode of Tremé the much anticipated offering from David Simon, creator of the greatest television show ever made: The Wire.  Like the first episode of The Wire, Tremé was rather slow as it introduced characters and story arcs but nevertheless it was fascinating, engaging, beautifully made television; everything we come to expect from HBO.  My favourite moment in the first episode was a brilliant cut montage set to the song Buona Sera by the King of Swing Louis Prima.  Prima is probably most famously known for voicing the character King Louie in the Disney film The Jungle Book (1967).  However, Prima, born in New Orleans, is without doubt a key figure in the development of rock and roll.  I am looking forward to seeing how Tremé develops over the coming weeks.  Over to Louis...

British television has been severely lacking in imagination and variation for a number of years.  A quick surf of the channels will undoubtedly result in numerous reality television shows, reruns of Only Fools and Horses, lifestyle shows and Friends.  This is probably down to channels not wanting to take any economic risk, instead continuing to rely on the cheap production costs and reliable audiences offered by reality television programming.  However, if you want good quality television you have to look no further than the US.  HBO, Showtime and AMC continue to produce engaging and entertaining programming that trump everything the UK has to offer.  Here are some of my television highlights of 2010.

Breaking Bad

It is refreshing to see a television show that breaks convention; how can something that is so downbeat be so humourous and compelling?  Season three of Breaking Bad was broadcast in 2010 and it continues to be one of the best episodes on television. Bryan Cranston's portrayal of Walter White is deserved of the accolades he has so far received.  Season three had a number of standout episodes, particularly the Rian Johnson directed episode Fly.  Season four will be broadcast in the US in summer 2011.  Surely time must be running out for Walter White? 

Boardwalk Empire

Could the Martin Scorcese produced television show live up to the hype?  It most certainly did.  To say that the production values of Boardwalk Empire are high would be an understatment; it is easy to see how the budget for the show was spent.  The sets, costumes and acting are simply excellent.  Steve Buscemi is great, as expected, but Micheal Pitt certainly appears to be an actor to keep an eye on.

Modern Family

A lot of online reviewers surprisingly compare this sitcom to the hilarious Arrested Development.  Personally, I do not think that Modern Family comes close but it is still a consistently entertaining sitcom that has the least precocious child actors I have seen.

Carlos

I was tempted to include this in my list of favourite films but as it was initially a three part television mini-series that was edited into a film I am more inclined to include it here.  Highly engaging, this series delves into the life of terrorist Carlos the Jackal. After the fast paced two episodes the final episode is a lot slower, mirroring the life of Carlos as he becomes less significant.  Best viewed via Optimum's Blu-Ray that offers complete mini-series as well as the theatrical version.

Weeds

The best thing about Weeds is that it has not been afraid to change the situation of its characters in each season.  For me, season six has been one of the best seasons with many standout moments.  Justin Kirk as Andy Botwin, continues to to steal the screen and my imaginary love affair with Mary Louise Parker continues.  It will be interesting to see what the writers decide to do in the seventh season.

Eastbound and Down

Still working my way through this one.  Kenny Powers is one of televisions best characters.  'Nuff said.

The Trip

So far I have watched The Trip twice.  I had though that it was nothing more than an excuse for Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan to travel to the North of England, eat overpriced food and stay in good hotels.  This might be so but it is incredibly funny and beautifully directed by Michael Winterbottom.  The series has been edited into a film that will be released in the US.  I am curious to see how the film will be paced.

Entourage

After season six I had thought that Entourage was running out of steam.  Season seven was a pleasant surprise, dealing with the long expected crash of Vincent Chase as he dates porn star Sasha Grey and develops a a drug addiction.  Season eight will definitely be the last series and a feature film will follow.

The Walking Dead

Online buzz would have you believe that this was the greatest television show ever.  Well, it is not, but, it is still a good quality show that developed nicely over six episodes.  The Walking Dead was at its when the walking dead were used sparingly in episodes.  I was pleased to see the capable Brit actor Andrew Lincoln finally reach the big time. 

Mad Men

The much lauded show deserves all the praise it receives.  Season four continued to match the high standard of the previous seasons.  What will happen to the enigmatic Don Draper in season five?

How to Make It in America

This enjoyable Mark Wahlberg produced show was a pleasant surprise.  I am very much looking forward to season two.

In Treatment

I was surprised that HBO made a third season.  Season one was one of the best seasons of television I have ever seen but season two did not compare well.  Season three was better but still not reaching the high standards of the first season.  I do not expect to see HBO make fourth series.

The Inbetweeners

Not as consistent as the first two series but still incredibly funny in places. The forthcoming film which will follow the exploits of the characters as they go on holiday to Malaga promises many laughs.

Disappointments of the year

True Blood

Season one was great, season two was good, season three was awful.  The only highlight was the crazed, dandy vampire Russell Edgington portrayed by Dennis O'Hare.  The clip below was one of the funniest things I saw on television last year.

Big Love

What was one of the most original shows on television took a sudden turn for the worse in season four.  The change of the excellent credit sequence should have been an indicator.  Season five will be the final season, hopefully it will return to the quality of the first three seasons.

I have just finished watching season three of Breaking Bad and firmly believe that it is the best television show currently being aired.  The show focuses on high school chemistry teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston) who upon learning that he has lung cancer decides to 'break bad' and cook crystal methamphetamine with a former student in order to provide money for his struggling family.  The show has similar production values to AMC's excellent Mad Men and is brilliantly written, lensed and acted.  I am not quite sure I have ever felt such unease when watching a television show; it is never clear what could happen next and places the viewer firmly on the edge of the seat.  It is also extremely funny and also touching.  Cranston's performance is currently unmatched on American television and the supporting cast is equally as strong.  The episode 'Fly', directed by Rian Johnson, director of the film noir inspired Brick (2005), was a particular stand-out for me.  Season three has ended on an unsurprisingly tense cliffhanger.  I am not looking forward to waiting eight months for the next episode to air in the US.  At least season three of True Blood has now started and will help make the wait more bearable. 

Source: TV Shows on DVD

I couldn't resist.  I have ordered a four-pack from the UK HBO store and with a bit of luck they will arrive in time for the weekend.  Hyperreal or what?

The show was aired in the UK on the Sci-Fi Channel in 1995, two episodes were shown each weekday.  Having read about the show in fan publications purchased from comic book shops I was eager to see what the fuss was about.  I was surprised to find that the early episodes had nothing to do with the vampire Barnabas Collins, as I had been led to believe, but still found the show compelling.  I had to dip in and out of the episodes due to school and then college but anticipated the first appearance of Barnabas Collins.  I recall purchasing the magazine Cult Times in order to keep up to date with the episodes aired, waiting for this episode to air.  When it finally did, I was pleased to find that it was not an anti-climatic experience, the infamous shot of Barnabas' hand shooting out the coffin and wrapping round Willie Loomis' throat caught me by surprise.  The ensuing storyline of Barnabas stalking the town of Collinsport and subsequent kidnapping of waitress Maggie Evans who resembles his long lost love Josette Du Pres is extremely engaging.  Future storylines featured Governess Victoria Winters travelling back to 1775 and being accused of Witchcraft, a Werewolf, a Frankenstein inspired storyline and constant time shifting between future, past and parallel time.  Fans of the HBO show True Blood will see many similarities between the two shows, True Blood appearing to be heavily inspired by Dark Shadows right down to the to the melodramatic acting performances.  I stopped watching sometime in the late 1990s, for no apparent reason, just after the show moved from black and white to colour.

In the mid noughties I began to purchase DVD sets of the series released in the US by MPI.  Disappointingly, MPI decided to start the collection with Barnabas' arrival in Collingwood but they thankfully corrected this by releasing the early episodes in 2007 as Dark Shadows - The Beginning.  The sets are very expensive so completing the set of 32 is a costly exercise.  I have attempted to purchase secondhand sets where possible or take advantage of occasionally discounted box sets.  I currently have sets one to twelve and all of six of The Beginning sets.  I had made my way to set seven but have decided to start from the beginning; they are an excellent background accompaniment when working on my PhD and also perfect bed time viewing.  I am now on disc three of set two of The Beginning and engrossed in the 'who killed Bill Malloy' storyline. 

Before the promotion machine starts on the Burton and Depp remake I recommend seeking out the original first.  Yes, some may find it dated, camp and will giggle at the unintentional bloopers (this show was recorded live) but you cannot deny it's unique atmosphere. 

For further details on Dark Shadows see the Wikipedia entry for the show.

You can find the American Region 1 DVD sets for sale on eBay and on Amazon.com where the sets are currently reduced. 

Apologies for the delay, I have not been feeling too great as of late, but without further ado here is the final part of my media review of 2007. In this post I will look at the music, books, software, television shows and hardware that impressed me the most last year.

Television

British television and especially British comedy continues to decline as reality shows dominate the channels. The only two British shows of any worth last year were the BBC comedies The Armstrong and Miller Show and Steve Coogan vehicle Saxondale. American television continues to impress. My favourite two shows of the year were The Shield, which is ever brilliant as it moves towards its final season, and the wonderful David Duchovny comedy Californication. Last year I finally got round to watching The Sopranos after having almost everyone I know recommend it to me. This is one show that really does live up to all the hype is has receives and whilst the final season was a little surprising in places the conclusion was very clever indeed. Other shows worthy of a mention are:

Dexter (yes, the second season contained a number of plot holes and may not have been as perfect first but it was still good television)
South Park (after numerous seasons this show is still one of the funniest, and most clever, animated sitcom on television)
Weeds (a disappointing third season yet still very funny in places)
Entourage

Music

Not an outstanding year for my kind of music unfortunately but there were still some good albums released. My favourite album of the year was Cassadaga by Bright Eyes followed very closely by the Grinderman’s debut album. LCD Soundsystem’s album Sound of Silver also deserves an honourable mention even though it is not the kind of music I usually listen to.

Books and Magazines

As I mentioned in my previous post 2007 was the year of Italian director Mario Bava. Not only were we lucky enough to have the majority of his films released on DVD but Tim Lucas went one further by surprising the Euro-Cult fan community and finishing his major tome Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark. This monster of a book is without doubt the finest work on a Euro-Cult director. It is beautifully produced and contains 1128 pages of meticulously researched information. Even though it is difficult to read because of its immense weight it is a must own for any fan of cult cinema and well worth the retail price.

I was very happy to see Jeff Rice’s long out of print books The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler finally be republished by Moonstone. I was a little disappointed by the numerous errors and the overall quality of the book but was very happy to see these available again.

On the magazine front the aforementioned Tim Lucas comes out on top with Video Watchdog. Even though the overall quality of the magazine has slightly dipped while Lucas has focused on other projects such as the long awaited Bava book it is still head and shoulders above all other competition. Midnight Media’s Is it Uncut? comes in at a very close second continuing to be the best British magazine on horror cinema.

Software

The best software this year was undoubtedly Slysoft’s AnyDVDHD program which proudly stuck two fingers up at the all the unnecessary DRM that surrounds the Blu-Ray format. Until region hacked Blu-Ray players become available the only way to enjoy region-free Blu-Ray is by building a powerful Blu-Ray media centre with AnyDVDHD running. Whilst on the subject of this great piece of software it conveniently allows me to move on to the worst software of last year – Cyberlink’s PowerDVD Ultra. Rushed on to the market in time for Christmas 2006 to satisfy those who had found that the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive would offer HD-DVD playback on high-end computers, PowerDVD Ultra is an over expensive, buggy piece of software. It cost me around £75 to buy what was in essence a beta piece of software. If it wasn’t for AnyDVDHD I would not have been able to watch HD-DVDs released by Studio Canal. After many frustrating months I purchased a stand-alone HD-DVD player and was finally rid of PowerDVD. I am not sure if these bugs have been resolved, does anyone know?

Hardware

Whilst I have been very impressed with the Toshiba HD-A20 HD-DVD player and, to a greater extent, the Toshiba 42” HD 42X3030D LCD television I purchased last year, the best piece of hardware I used in 2007 was the Xbox Media Center. This fantastic piece of kit has completely transformed the way I watch television and is a great way to store all your media files. You can find a second-hand Xbox for around £30 these days, add a 500GB hard drive, an Xecuter modchip and an Xbox HD lead and you have an unrivalled media centre than can do almost everything you ask of it. I really cannot recommend it highly enough.

So there we have it, 2007 the year that was. Looking back on my review of 2007 I have already found that I forgot to include Disturbia and American Gangster in the favourite film section and have no doubt neglected to mention other worthy DVD releases. Does any agree or disagree with my choices? I would love to hear your thoughts.

So what am I looking forward to in 2008? I would love to see a number of unreleased gialli appear on DVD. We already have Nothing Underneath (1983), Sister of Ursula (1978) and Red Rings of Fear (1978) announced and rumours of Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971) being officially released by Koch Media in Germany but what else could be unleashed on DVD? It would be good to see HD-DVD rise from the dead and bury Blu-Ray and all of its pathetic DRM (we can dream can’t we?) and have some HD releases of gialli.

Expect to see this site move to Wordpress in the very near future. I have recently built a Wordpress site for the B1G Idea and was very impressed with its ease of use and numerous features. Expect to see, and listen, to my first foray into audio commentary production over the coming weeks as I provide one for the first episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker and expect more fan composites to appear over the year. Here’s to a good 2008!