In the second episode of his new series Human Universe, Brian Cox travels to India and Japan to try answering one of the biggest questions of humankind – how we came to be here on this planet. The main themes of this episode are actually random chance paired with the laws of nature and how they are responsible for just the right coincidences to make the evolution of humankind possible. The approach is somewhat less scientific and a bit more philosophical and unfocused than in the first episode, with the many examples and analogies missing a common thread.

Brian Cox had already tackled the Wonders of the Solar System, the Universe and Life in his previous three brilliant BBC documentaries and this year he has been filming his fourth series, focusing on human evolution. Made by the same great team that worked previously with Brian Cox, Human Universe walks firmly in the footsteps of its predecessors and the first episode, broadcast on Tuesday by BBC2, has already been amazing. This will be the first of a series of short reviews of each episode which I hope to continue in the next weeks.

Although I have to admit that I had only made a fleeting acquaintance with the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show and their time-travelling duo of Sherman and Mister Peabody, because they had never made it to German television, I was eagerly looking forward to Rob Minkoff’s big-screen adaption. The concept seemed a lot of fun and with Dreamworks behind it, Mr. Peabody & Sherman was bound to be a success – which it turned out to be. It’s the best time-travel adventure in a long time and one of the most wonderful movies of the studio, modernizing the original cartoon carefully without ignoring its beginning. The German home video release was a world premiere, although the DVD edition leaves a lot to be desired in the extras department despite the flawless technical representation. Today’s review, as usual, concentrates more on the movie than on the DVD itself, so I’m going to have an in-depth look at what makes Mr. Peabody & Sherman tick. The German disc has been out since September, the UK release is today and North America will follow next Tuesday on the 14th.

Continue to Review »

More good stuff on the British television fall schedule – the first air date for Brian Cox’ new science series Human Universe has been announced by the BBC on Twitter and on the Program’s website for Tuesday October 7th at 21:00 British time on BBC2. The five-part series, which was filmed over the course of the year, will tackle the question how humanity became what it is today. Brian Cox has frequently been dropping hints about the shooting of the series on his website Apollo’s Children and on his Twitter stream like posting photos from the Soyuz landing in the snowy Kazakhstan steppe this March. Like his previous three series, Wonders of the Solar System, Wonders of the Universe and Wonders of Life (of which I wrote a full review here), this is going to be fascinating to watch and not to be missed.

[Update: A trailer has been airing in the last few days and is also available on Youtube together with a preview clip!]

Okay, fingers on buzzers everyone, I’ve just noticed that Stephen Fry’s and John Llody’s amazing television quiz show QI is returning soon! This year it’s a bit later than usual, but starting on Friday, October 3rd at 22:00 GMT / 23:00 CEST the twelfth series with the letter L is going to start broadcasting on BBC2. As in previous years, the half-hour versions will apparently be shown on Fridays and the 45-minute XL edits will follow on Sundays. Wikipedia already has a preliminary episode list and judging from the guests it should be again a lot of fun even for the 12th time.

You can read more about QI on the official website, the Facebook-Page and the Twitter-Stream. Since this spring there has also been the podcast No Such Thing as a Fish by the QI research elves which already has spawned 25 episodes and is an amazing audio companion for the series. The QI radio sister series Museum of Curiosity will also be back this fall with more episodes on Radio 4 with John Lloyd and his new co-host Phil Jupitus, but no air dates have been announced yet, so keep watching their Curiositwitty stream!

First an apology – I had plans for some new reviews, but I just don’t have the time to sit down and write at the moment, so I’ll have to postpone that a little bit. But I assure you that I have something cooking with some discs lying around which really desperately need to be written about, and I’m going to do it sooner or later. Instead, I can only urge you to wander over to DVD Savant, where Glenn Erickson is always writing up a storm with two sets of reviews each week – I don’t know how he does it! But meanwhile a quick little news update, because I really want to keep up with what’s going on: Dreamworks’ two 2014 movies are coming to home video in the very near future, but first there’s a surprising announcement about one of my favourite musicals (plus another update from Criterion!)… 

Before I write anything else, I have some unfinished business with a certain master detective – this is the final part of my Quest for Sherlock Holmes and round two of Holmes vs. Holmes! Which Sherlock is the best? There were two great television adaptations of The Hound of the Baskervilles in the 1980s, one with Ian Richardson and the other with Jeremy Brett. In today’s double-header of reviews, which are based on earlier German-language articles, I have looked at both movies in detail and found some surprising differences. Both have their advantages and disadvantages and I tried to be neutral in the reviews, but my favourite version is, of course, the one with Jeremy Brett. Maybe there’s a bit of that coming through in the articles, which are less about the DVDs than about the movies themselves.

Continue to The Hounds of the Baskervilles (Ian Richardson) »
Continue to The Hounds of the Baskervilles (Jeremy Brett) »

Note that this will probably be the last of my Sherlock Holmes reviews – there are three other movies from the Granada series, but I have already written about them a little in the review of the third boxset and since they are the least successful parts of the series, I will skip them for now.

The sad news keep coming… the British actor and filmmaker Richard Attenborough passed away yesterday. The older brother of David Attenborough was 90 years old and his work both in front and behind of the camera was so vast that I won’t even begin to describe here it when the Guardian’s obituary and their film clip collection does it so well. He was one of the great ones of the British film industry, but at the same time a really humble man with many charity projects who never wanted to be just a movie star.

Richard Attenborough popping a champagne bottle in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park in 1993.

After some extensive slacking off, I decided to write more news articles and re-open the DVD News Index, now with three date columns for US, UK and German releases. To make things easier, I’m not only going to include the discs I intend to buy myself, but also some others as well, regardless in which format they come. The DVDLog “headquarters” are still standard-definition only and probably still will be for some time, but that doesn’t have to mean that I can’t give a few recommendations. I’m also going to muck out the Wanted List and add some new entries with movies which really need a transfer upgrade. I can’t promise that I will be able to keep this up, but I’ll try to read the usual suspects of websites more often and do at least one news update every month or so, depending on how much interesting news there is to share. But now finally for some news…  

More sad news from Hollywood – Lauren Bacall has died at the grand age of 89. While she will be mostly remembered by her professional and private partnership with Humphrey Bogart, she had a very distinguished film career in her later life and was even active until shortly before she passed away. She was an actress with attitude and never held back when it came to voice her opinions. Read the Guardian Obituary all the way to the end for a lovely anecdote about her feelings for the modern film industry.

Lauren Bacall presenting the murder weapon in Sidney Lumet’s Murder on the Orient Express in 1974.