Each year around this time, I usually try to post some Easter-themed reviews, but since this year I unfortunately don’t have anything new to post, so something from the archives has to do. Because the sheep have stormed the cinemas this spring, how about a bit of Shaun the Sheep? I’ve already reviewed the first two series a long time ago and I would aleady have done so with the current episodes if the BBC had released a proper boxset in the UK! But I guess that will come when Shaun the Sheep – The Movie is going to be released – which, incidentially, will be on June 1st in the UK and on August 6th in Germany. Until then, here’s some classic Shaun – Happy Easter everyone!

Continue to Shaun the Sheep Series 1 »
Continue to Shaun the Sheep Series 2 »

This year, the BBC has delayed the fifth Stargazing Live series until March to coincide with Friday’s solar eclipse. Brian Cox and Dara O Briain will be joined at the Jodrell Bank Observatory by Rosetta lead scientist Matt Taylor and none other than Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who has already arrived in England according to the program’s Twitter stream. As before, this will be very much worth watching and every bit as interesting as in the previous four years. Because there will be a live broadcast of the eclipse on Friday morning, the schedule will be a bit different this time with one additional program.

Wednesday March 18th
• 20:00-21:00 GMT: Episode 1 on BBC2
• 21:00-21:30 GMT: Back to Earth 1 on BBC2

Thursday March 19th
• 20:00-21:00 GMT: Episode 2 on BBC2
• 22:00-22:30 GMT: Back to Earth 2 on BBC2 (note the different time)

Friday March 20th
• 09:00-10:00 GMT: Eclipse Live on BBC1 (note the different station)
• 21:00-22:00 GMT: Episode 3 on BBC2 (note the different time again)
• 22:00-22:30 GMT: Back to Earth 3 on BBC2

Unfortunately the series has, typically for a BBC live production, never been released on DVD, but all episodes from 2011 and 2012 are still up on Youtube at these links:

• Stargazing 2011 – Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3
• Stargazing 2012 – Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3

Update: The highlight of this year’s series, the view of the total eclipse from the plane that the Stargazing Live team sent up, has been uploaded by the BBC on its own channel and Episode 1 and the first after-show chat Back to Earth have also been uploaded by somebody else, albeit in a bit of an unusual fashion with a large border around the image. Although if even the ESA links to this video in a Google+ post, it should not be a problem here too!

On Thursday, there were even more sad news with the passing of the great Terry Pratchett, the inventor and curator of the Discworld. I had posted the review collection of the Discworld adaptations only shortly before Christmas and now sadly the creator of one of the greatest satirical fantasy worlds of them all has left us. But I am sure the turtle will continue to move without him. I also wrote a longer post over on the main blog, but it’s only fair to mention his passing here too.

Terry Pratchett playing a short guest role as a postman in Going Postal.

More sad news – Harve Bennett, the producer and writer behind the Star Trek movies of the 1980s, has passed away only a short time after Leonard Nimoy. Bennett, a former television producer, came to Star Trek knowing nothing about the series and ended up knowing everything about it – without him The Wrath of Khan or The Search for Spock would not have existed. Together with Leonard Nimoy and Nicholas Meyer, he was the one who transformed the Star Trek franchise into the classics they have become today.

Harve Bennett and Leonard Nimoy working on Star Trek III.

Sad news are coming in today that the great Leonard Nimoy has passed away. He will always be the only and only Mr. Spock, the role that made him famous, but he was also so much more – a wonderful storyteller, writer, director and even photographer and poet. But above all, even though he played one of the most famous aliens in television and movie history, he was a wonderful human being with a great sense of humour and wisdom. Goodbye, Leonard – you were truly one of a kind.

Leonard Nimoy’s final scene in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Good news, everyone! Last year, I completely forgot about the 15th anniversary of Matt Groening’s other animated series Futurama, but this year I’m going to make up for it by translating all the existing reviews and, of course, write about the final series, which I had not even gotten around to yet. But today’s review goes back to where it all started – Futurama Season One is still one of the most impressive debuts of an animated television series and although it shares the same drawing style as The Simpsons, it has always been its completely independent entity. The series only arrived three years after its US television debut on DVD, first in Europe while North America had to wait another year. This article is both an introduction to Futurama and a review of the DVD boxset that was released in Europe in Spring 2002, which still holds up reasonably well even until today.

Continue to Review »

Note: The next reviews are going to follow when they’re ready, that means not necessarily in weekly installments. But they’re coming, I’m just taking things slow – stay tuned!

Time flies, January is already gone and I’m still working on getting something new for the website done! Plus there was a certain frustration over a highly anticipated movie we watched over the holidays that turned out a terrible disappointment – to the point that I actually shelved its review indefinitely.  So there will be some archival stuff first in 2015 with a whole planned series of translated articles and maybe some other shorter ideas which I still have to figure out. Bbut to show that this site is not dead and will be still alive this year, here is a short-ish article with some news – the only ones I’ve been able to find so far – and a bit of general news observation about what’s going on in the business at the moment. Overall, it’s rather slow and unexciting from my viewpoint, but let’s see…

My plans for getting at least one new review up before the end of the year were completely foiled – but at least I managed throw something festive together: the Discworld Collection, five reviews I translated last year for the 30th Anniversary of Terry Pratchett’s brillant satirical fantasy world. There are Cosgrove Hall’s two animated series from the 1990s and the three television miniseries made for Sky One between 2005 and 2010 – all of them very much worth watching. The articles are mostly about the series themselves, the technical reviews of the discs are, as usual, not the main focus. Here they are, in order the books  they are based on were originally released:

★ The Colour of Magic (SkyOne 2008) »
★ Wyrd Sisters (Cosgrove Hall 1997) »
★ Soul Music (Cosgrove Hall 1997) »
★ Hogfather (SkyOne 2005) »
★ Going Postal (SkyOne 2010) »

Plus some bonus Youtube links:
★ Trailers for The Colour of Magic and Going Postal (sorry, no proper one forHogfather to be found)
★ Wyrd Sisters & Soul Music (because the DVDs are very hard to find nowadays)

This posting also concludes the year 2014 for DVDLog, so I wish everyone happy holidays! More season’s greetings are over in the traditional end-of-year blog post. This website will go into the usual Winter hiatus now until roughly the end of January, when I’ll be back with some new stuff. Happy Hogswatch! :-)

Another week later and I have to admit again that I had neither energy nor time to write something new, but at least I managed to pull something out of the archives again. Continuing the classic television theme, we’re going over to England, where one of the most intriguing and fascinating series ever was created: Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner. I have written numerous times about it and today’s article is yet another improvement of the existing review with a couple of added sections. Sadly, the original boxset including a thick book about the series does not seem to be available anymore, but the DVDs or Blu-Rays still are. It’s an amazing and unique series that deserves to be watched and belongs into every collection!

Continue to Review »

It does not look like I will be getting much writing done in the rest of the year except maybe one or two new reviews, so I thought I’d pull some old favourites out of the archives and make some improvements. For this Monday, I had another look at Get Smart, the one and only spy parody series from the late 1960s. I originally wrote this in 2010, but it’s still a great way to get acquainted with Maxwell Smart, Agent 99 and the Chief because I put tons of background information about the making of the series, which is still one of the great classics of American television.

Right now, you can get the whole series, all 138 episodes on 25 discs with tons of bonus material for only £42 from Amazon.co.uk (the boxset I reviewed in this article) and for $44 from Amazon.com (the US boxset is now finally affordable, too and apart from some differences in the image quality, basically identical with the UK version.)!

Continue to Review »