Whiggles.com Compact

See a sneak preview of Whiggles.com v9

whiggles@whiggles.com (Michael Mackenzie) — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 08:25:00 +0000

A new version of Whiggles.com is coming!

That's right: after sticking with this incarnation of the site for over a year, I've decided once again to go back to the drawing board and cook up something fresh. This time, I'm going back to Movable Type as my news platform. Blogger has been fun, but I've come to the conclusion that I would prefer to have my own site design rather than a pre-fabricated template. That's not to say that I can't do that with Blogger, but I figure that, if I'm going to, I might as well have something that allows me complete control and isn't reliant on Blogger's notoriously unreliable servers being stable in order to post.

The new design, which at the moment is entirely hand-coded, and also 100% CSS and HTML 4.01 Transitional compliant, borrows heavily from the "blog" look of the templates offered by Blogger, WordPress and the like. As such, the design is hardly revolutionary, but it is at least functional and something that I can actually claim I made myself. It's also slightly more streamlined than the current incarnation of the site, which means that more material fits on the screen at any one time, and it loads slightly more quickly.

I'm aiming to make this transition as smooth as possible. As such, all the files for the current design will remain in place until they're no longer needed, and all the page URLs will remain the same, which means that I can move the site over to the new design bit by bit, without any extended downtime. I'll also be retaining the current layout as a means for archiving my Blogger posts. When I switch over to the new design, I'll disable comments on the Blogger posts, but everything will remain for archival purposes - "locked", as it were.

Anyway, you can see a preview of it here. Bear in mind that it's not yet complete, so the news posts are just placeholders designed as a mock-up of their intended look (I haven't actually implemented Movable Type yet, but will probably do so in the next few days), and the only pages currently working are the Blogger (2005-2006) and Vintage (2001-2005) news archive indexes. Still, I'd love to get feedback from anyone who's willing to give it. Let me know if there are any major niggles that leap out at you, or just offer your general thoughts on the design.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 6, Episode 5: Life Serial

whiggles@whiggles.com (Michael Mackenzie) — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 19:03:00 +0000

Written by David Fury & Jane Espenson; Directed by Nick Marck

It's official: Buffy is now making gay jokes. It's astounding that a show that once prided itself on its witty repartee would stoop this low in order to elicit some laughs. And I'm serious, the Trio have been in the show now for a grand total of two episodes, and already I never want to see them again. The worst offender is Andrew: I assume that the fact that he has a whiny voice, speaks with a lisp and is a dork is meant to be funny. It's not - it just makes him annoying. Sadly, he is around for the rest of the show's duration, becoming a regular in all but name in Season 7 and actually getting more screen time than the likes of Xander and Willow.

Having said that, Life Serial is not without its merits. It consists of three "tests" that the Trio put Buffy against. The one on the construction site, where she has to fight some generic demons, is just lazy writing, but the other two are pretty interesting. Indeed, a case could be made for these being some of the toughest challenges Buffy has ever faced - she certainly never had to deal with time being manipulated before. I also like drunk Buffy. "Bleeeeeeegh!"

Overall rating: 6/10.

Next time: All the Way.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 6, Episode 4: Flooded

whiggles@whiggles.com (Michael Mackenzie) — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 14:39:00 +0000

Written by Douglas Petrie & Jane Espenson; Directed by Douglas Petrie

How's this for fun: an entire episode of Buffy having wacky adventurous dealing with such problems as... a flooded basement and financial issues. Sound exciting? Good, 'cause it ain't. This is one tedious piece of crap, and it also has the misfortune of introducing our "villains" for the season: the Trio. These are single-handedly the worst bad guys ever created for the show. As a one-off they would have been bad: as Buffy's arch-nemises for an entire season, they're downright appalling. Look, I get it: this season is supposed to be about how mundane and unremarkable real life is. Unfortunately, I like to watch Buffy for its escapism and great characters. Take these away and what do you have left?

Oh, and it occurs to me that Willow and Tara have spent all summer living in Buffy's house, eating her food and spending her money. So why is the total lack of money Buffy's problem? Why don't these two have jobs? At a push, one could make a case for Tara serving as a surrogate mother to Dawn, but Willow doesn't have a leg to stand on. (And who's paying their college bills? Is that Buffy's job too?) Speaking of Willow, why is she wearing a crucifix in this episode? That goes completely against her character on multiple levels.

There are some good moments in this episode - Buffy's reunion with Giles, Willow's loaded confrontation with Giles... actually, all the good moments involve Giles. But this is still the worst episode in over a year.

Overall rating: 5/10.

Next time: Life Serial.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 6, Episode 3: After Life

whiggles@whiggles.com (Michael Mackenzie) — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 14:23:00 +0000

Written by Jane Espenson; Directed by David Solomon

This episode has some strong things going for it, namely its genuinely creepy portrayal of possession, but it's just too slow and uninvolving for me to rate it highly. It's almost entirely devoid of humour, and way too much time is spent following a catatonic Buffy around the house as she reacquaints herself with it. Look, we get it: being resurrected is probably a fairly traumatic experience, especially if you were ripped out of a heavenly dimension against your will, but we really don't need 45 minutes of this. Sadly, this is just the beginning - we get an entire season of it.

By the way, it occurs to me that, despite being dead, Buffy somehow managed to dye her hair between Seasons 5 and 6.

Overall rating: 6/10.

Next time: Flooded.

Blu-ray Ben gets the boot

whiggles@whiggles.com (Michael Mackenzie) — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 11:51:00 +0000

Source: High-Def Digest

Benjamin Feingold, head of Sony Home Video and the man commonly nicknamed "Blu-ray Ben" due to his prominent role in garnering industry support for the format, has stepped down. Whether he did so voluntarily or was pushed is unknown, but I certainly wouldn't trust the man who allowed turkeys like the terrible transfers for the Blu-ray releases of The Fifth Element and House of Flying Daggers to be put out under his watch to be in charge of anything video-related. Stepping in is former MGM Home Entertainment boss David Bishop.

Update, 12:53: He was fired. And he was also in charge of the UMD line - sort of speaks for itself.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 6, Episodes 1 and 2: Bargaining

whiggles@whiggles.com (Michael Mackenzie) — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 21:15:00 +0000

Part 1
Written by Marti Noxon; Directed by David Grossman

Part 2
Written by David Fury; Directed by David Grossman

And so Buffy begins its sixth season, considered by many to be, at the time, the worst. Season 7 pretty much put paid to any notion that Season 6 was as bad as it could get, but that's certainly how it looked back then. I have to admit that the two-part opener has a lot in its favour, although the fact that it's too long, with too much padding and exposition, is certainly not in its favour. It's pretty clear that a lot of this episode was clearly designed to clue UPN viewers into what was going on in a show they might not have been familiar with. Willow and Tara are sticking their tongues down each others' throats all the time (because, hey, they're gay, and do gay things with each other), Xander is wacky and silly but not particularly funny, Anya is inappropriately cheerful and likes money, and at one point Tara actually utters the line "He used to live there, remember?", when the gang are wondering if Giles will be okay back in England. Good god, I know UPN was supposed to attract a big stoner crowd, but I find it hard to believe anyone couldn't work out that Giles came from England.

Yes, Giles leaves. Anthony Head was fed up hanging around with anorexic American brats, so he decided to go back to England to hang around with his own brats (i.e. his children). That's fair enough, and the writers had to work around this problem, but they sure as hell did a terrible job with the character's motivation. Basically, despite the fact that the gang are severely struggling to keep the local vampire population down in Buffy's absence, Giles decides he isn't needed and so buggers off. Guess they now know who his favourite was, huh? I recently read a post on a Buffy-related forum that pointed out an interesting parallel between Joss Whedon and Giles in this season. Both "fathers" watched their "child" (Buffy the character; Buffy the show) die (when Buffy leapt into the portal; when the WB cancelled the show); the child was then brought back to life (Buffy by her friends; the show when it found new life on UPN); the father then didn't stick around to serve as a dutiful parent (Giles abandoning Buffy to return to England; Whedon going off to do other things).

Oh, and if they want to pretend to the local demons that Buffy isn't dead (using the Buffybot as a stand-in), it would help if there wasn't a giant tombstone in the graveyard saying "Buffy Anne Summers, 1981-2001" on it.

Otherwise, there are a number of definite good points about this two-parter. Once it gets going, it's pretty exciting, and the "hell on earth" that the resurrected Buffy finds herself faced with is effective. The biker demons that invade Sunnydale are also kinda neat, but slightly naff at the same time - are we really to believe that these hideous monsters drive around the highways of California, whooping and playing loud music, and no-one finds the sight strange? And the ordeal Willow goes through during the resurrection is strong stuff, despite the sometimes naff special effects. So yeah, as season premieres go, this is one of the better ones, although the dodgy character motivations and plot holes are already creeping in.

Overall rating: 7/10 for Part 1, 8/10 for Part 2.

Next time: After Life.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 5, Episode 19: Tough Love

whiggles@whiggles.com (Michael Mackenzie) — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 14:37:00 +0000

Written by Rebecca Rand Kirshner; Directed by David Grossman

Okay, Bad Writing 101: Willow's argument with Tara comes out of nowhere and makes absolutely no sense. These are the sort of problems that plagued the final two seasons, especially Season 7: the writers know where they want a character to go, but they can't accomplish it convincingly so end up making them do things that are out of character. In this case, they need to separate Tara from Willow long enough for Glory to attack her, but was an argument about Willow's "lesbo street cred" the only way they could do it? Okay, I get that Tara's an insecure person, but that argument? Badly written and completely out of character. Which is odd, because, as I've said before, Kirshner usually does good dialogue.

On a side note, it occurs to me that the death of Tara in Season 6 and Willow's ensuing campaign of destruction are in fact nothing more than an exaggerated repeat of what happens in this episode. Here, Glory brain-sucks Tara and Willow goes after her with a bunch of pyrotechnics. Were the writers really that bereft of ideas in Season 6 that all they could do was take the exact same idea from the same episode number (Seeing Red is Season 6's 19th episode) and do it all over again with none of the subtleties?

Anyway, the second half of this episode is definitely better than the first. It essentially sets in motion the chain of events that will lead to the final confrontation with Glory and Buffy's death. For its final three years, each season of Buffy concluded with a drawn-out four-episode arc, and of the three, this is undoubtedly the best. It's not perfect, and it becomes a tad exhausting without any pit stops along the way, but the way that the impending doom is piled on is commendable.

Overall rating: 8/10.

Next time: Spiral.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 5, Episode 20: Spiral

whiggles@whiggles.com (Michael Mackenzie) — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 16:12:00 +0000

Written by Steven S. DeKnight; Directed by James A. Contner

What an utterly stupid episode this is! Quite apart from anything else, we have the sight of Buffy and the gang in a camper van being chased through the streets by a bunch of medieval knights on horseback. What, that not enough for you? Well, get this: these knights are part of an ancient order devoted to the destruction of the Key. The Key that has only existed for about six months. Ooooo-kay.

We get a whole lot of banal exposition and doom and gloom, and not a whole lot else. The cast is on form as always, and most of the dialogue is fine, but I can't get round the knights. I mean, seriously, who thought they were a good idea? I also can't get over the fact that Glory's less-than-evil alter-ego, Ben, knowing full well that Dawn is the Key, agrees to head out to the garage in which the gang are holed up to tend to the injured Giles, knowing that he is effectively bringing Glory straight to Dawn. It's nothing like as bad as the worst episodes of Seasons 1 and 2, or Seasons 6 and 7 in general, but it's definitely the weakest of this season.

Oh, and Buffy violates her "I don't kill humans" rule in this episode. Odd that the writers didn't make a big deal out of it.

Overall rating: 6/10.

Next time: The Weight of the World.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 5 (2000-2001)

whiggles@whiggles.com (Michael Mackenzie) — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 18:55:00 +0000

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 5

Season 5 reviews:

- Episode 1: Buffy vs. Dracula 7/10
- Episode 2: Real Me 7/10
- Episode 3: The Replacement 8/10
- Episode 4: Out of My Mind 8/10
- Episode 5: No Place Like Home 9/10
- Episode 6: Family 9/10
- Episode 7: Fool for Love 10/10
- Episode 8: Shadow 8/10
- Episode 9: Listening to Fear 7/10
- Episode 10: Into the Woods 7/10
- Episode 11: Triangle 8/10
- Episode 12: Checkpoint 9/10
- Episode 13: Blood Ties 8/10
- Episode 14: Crush 6/10
- Episode 15: I Was Made to Love You 6/10
- Episode 16: The Body 10/10
- Episode 17: Forever 7/10
- Episode 18: Intervention 9/10
- Episode 19: Tough Love 8/10
- Episode 20: Spiral 6/10
- Episode 21: The Weight of the World 7/10
- Episode 22: The Gift 10/10

Phew! 100 episodes down... 44 to go, if I decide to keep this up. To be honest, I'm not sure. As I already said, I think The Gift is the perfect way to end the series, and I'm not convinced that I'll get much pleasure out of Seasons 6 and 7, unless I can distance myself from them enough to laugh at how ludicrously bad they are, rather than becoming depressed by how hollow and soulless all the characters become.

In any event, it now seems clear that Season 5 is my favourite season. Before I started these personal Buffy reruns way back when, I had Season 2 pegged as my favourite and Season 5 as my second favourite. I was somewhat thrown when Season 3 overtook Season 2 not only in the average "out of 10" ratings, but also in terms of personal enjoyment. I wasn't too surprised that Season 4 had a lower average rating than either Seasons 2 or 3, but I wasn't expecting Season 5 to come out the clear winner both numerically and personally. With an average of 7.91/10, which can be rounded up to 8/10, it has the highest rating of all the first five seasons (and, somehow, I doubt Seasons 6 and 7 are going to steal the crown!). The characters, acting, writing and directing are of an almost uniformally high standard, with no episode dropping below a 6/10 rating, and more episodes rated higher than that than any other season. Yes, it's not perfect, but TV never is, is it?

I think I've said everything I want to say about Season 5 in the individual episode reviews. The only question now, to quote Once More with Feeling, is "Where do we go from here?" Do I watch Seasons 6 and 7 or not. I think perhaps I will - it's been a long time since I saw them, and there a number of episodes that I've only seen once (gee, I wonder why). In any event, I want to see if they're as bad as I remember them being. Who knows? Maybe I'll have an epiphany and proclaim them to be misunderstood classics.

I somehow doubt it, though.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 5, Episode 22: The Gift

whiggles@whiggles.com (Michael Mackenzie) — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 18:39:00 +0000

Written and Directed by Joss Whedon

This is it: the 100th episode, the intended series finale, and what the previous 99 episodes were building towards. At least, that's the theory. In practice, we all know that Buffy was renewed for a further two seasons of extremely dubious quality - two seasons that, personally, I could have done without. The Gift's ending is, for me, perfect. Buffy embraces her purpose - which, it has to be said, is not a particularly pleasant purpose, but it's what she knows she has to do, and she goes out a hero, rather than the dismal wreck to which she was reduced in Season 6. And despite the sadness inherent in ending any series with the death of its lead character, it has to be said that The Gift contains enough optimism for it not to be a monumentally depressing experience. Willow restores Tara's mind, Spike proves his worth, Xander proposes to Anya... A year later, of course, all of these points would be negated in spectacular fashion, but hey, I said all along I might just pretend Seasons 6 and 7 didn't exist, and given the choice of dead Buffy, or dead Tara, dead Spike and dead Anya and two seasons of crappy episodes, I'd take dead Buffy any day.

It has to be said that this episode is filled with as many plot holes as the ones leading up to it. In typical Buffy fashion, a bunch of McGuffins are brought out at the last moment to help turn the tide in Team Buffy's favour, including the Dagon Sphere which was brought up in Episode 5 and then never mentioned again until now, and Olaf the troll's enchanted hammer from Triangle, which has now suddenly become Olaf the troll god's enchanted hammer, so the writers can justify it doing damage to Glory. And, of course, we have the whole debacle regarding the fact that, in reality, Buffy giving her life to save Dawn's would not have closed the portal. After all, the phrase is "Until the blood stops flowing, it will never stop", not "Until someone with the same blood jumps into the portal and is zapped to death, it will never stop".

But I think these are minor details. The Gift is a fantastic episode through and through. It has doom and gloom, it has rampant emotions, it has laughs, it has the Buffybot, and it even has a bad CGI dragon (those sort of things are something of a Buffy staple). In his commentary for the final episode of Season 7, Chosen, Joss Whedon pretty much admitted that he'd said everything he wanted to say in The Gift. That, straight from the horse's mouth, pretty much sums up my opinion of everything that followed Season 5: redundant. We got some good episodes (Once More with Feeling being the highlight), but when I ask myself if the monotony, bitterness and plain bad writing, acting and directing, mixed in with the odd decent episode, was worth it to get a further two seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, my answer is a big fat "no".

PS. This was the last episode of Buffy to be shot by the show's original cinematographer, Michael Gershman. All subsequent episodes were shot by his second in command, Raymond Stella, who tended to cover the episodes Gershman was directing himself.

Overall rating: 10/10.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 5, Episode 21: The Weight of the World

whiggles@whiggles.com (Michael Mackenzie) — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 18:35:00 +0000

Written by Douglas Petrie; Directed by David Solomon

Tonight, Willow enters the semi-comatose Buffy's mind to persuade her to return to the real world and do what must be done, in an episode that almost works, but not quite. It's fairly obvious that it's just marking time until The Gift, building up the atmosphere but not actually doing anything earth-shattering. We know that Buffy's deeply depressed, doesn't think she stands any chance of winning against Glory and believes that her own actions will have led to Dawn's death - but really, we knew all that already. Still, at least the "inside Buffy's mind" sequences are interestingly-done, even if the girl playing child Buffy is a pretty bad actor.

Overall rating: 7/10.

Next time: The Gift.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 5, Episode 18: Intervention

whiggles@whiggles.com (Michael Mackenzie) — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 14:05:00 +0000

Written by Jane Espenson; Directed by Michael Gershman

Normally I don't like it when Buffy does technology, but I'm going to make an exception in this case because the Buffybot is so damn funny. It makes a change to see Sarah Michelle Gellar actually smiling, given that Buffy does precious little of that from hereon in, and the Buffybot certainly does smiles with abundance.

This is initially a deceptively lighthearted episode, which comes as a great relief after The Body and Forever (the reason Season 5's doom and gloom works is that the writers were able to mix the serious with the not so serious, something they utterly fail to do in Seasons 6 and 7), but it's a crucial episode for two reasons. One, the First Slayer tells Buffy that "death is your gift", which will have major implications for both the way Buffy sees herself and for the season finale, The Gift. Two, it proves unequivocally that Spike has changed, since he allows himself to be tortured by Glory to the point of verging on death (excellent make-up effects, by the way) rather than tell her the identity of the Key. Of course, that doesn't do much good, given that Glory finds that out in the very next episode, but as a gesture it speaks volumes.

Overall rating: 9/10.

Next time: Tough Love.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 5, Episode 17: Forever

whiggles@whiggles.com (Michael Mackenzie) — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 12:53:00 +0000

Written and Directed by Marti Noxon

No episode is going to look particularly great coming hot on the heels of The Body, but this is a reasonably assured follow-up that, for all its flaws, works quite well. Given the number of resurrections that have taken place in the Buffyverse (Buffy, Angel and Darla spring to mind), I'm glad they approached the issue of bringing Joyce back, given that, in a fantasy world, the natural reaction would be to attempt a resurrection spell. The sight of the shadow of Joyce (or some perversion of her) knocking at the door is actually a pretty unsettling sight, and I'm glad the writers had the sense to leave her dead, given the extent to which resurrections tend to cheapen the original death. I also like that the song Giles is playing on his record player, "Tales of Brave Ulysses", is the same one that he and Joyce listened to in Band Candy. It's a nice bit of continuity that doesn't scream for attention. In the post-Season 5 environment, he would probably have mused "Joyce always loved this song", or something like that.

For all its strengths, though, there is some piss-poor dialogue on display ("We're witches, we know stuff" - I don't know about you, but to me that just sounds silly), and the overly mawkish treatment of the funeral, with its swelling music, slow motion montage and people sobbing their hearts out, is a big step down from the mature and realistic treatment of death in The Body. Noxon was trying, I'll give her that, but if ever there was a clear demonstration of the differences between her method of storytelling and that of Joss Whedon, it's this double bill of episodes. Hopefully we'll see a return to the fun and games of vampire slaying in the next episode, because all this doom and gloom is threatening to turn into Season 6 lite.

Overall rating: 7/10.

Next time: Intervention.

One on Top of the Other

whiggles@whiggles.com (Michael Mackenzie) — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 12:07:00 +0000

Italy/Spain/France: Lucio Fulci, 1969

Of all Fulci's gialli, the one most crying out for a release is arguably One on Top of the Other. While his others have all been released somewhere in the world in editions of varying quality, this, his first, is the only one that has yet to see an official DVD. I had the good fortune of watching a VHS copy this morning, and, having now seen all of Fulci's gialli, I must now join the ranks of people clamouring for a legitimate digital release.

Susan Dumurrier (Marisa Mell), the invalid wife of the eminent Dr. George Dumurrier (Jean Sorel), dies as a result of suffocation during a violent asthma attack, with her husband inheriting a sum of $2 million in insurance. An anonymous tip-off leads George to a nightclub, where he is entranced by a dancer, Monica Weston, who is a dead ringer for his wife. The two strike up an affair, but when the insurance company's investigations lead to the assumption that Susan and Monica are one in the same, the police begin a full-blown investigation into what seems to be a case of insurance fraud on a grand scale.

There is, of course, more to all this than meets the eye, although the actual explanation is fairly predictable. The allusions to Vertigo are umissable. the San Francisco setting, the blonde doppelganger of a dead woman, the truth about her identity - all of them recall Hitchcock's acclaimed thriller, but Fulci is more interested in sex and the sordid details of his characters' corrupt lives than on the psychological breakdown of his protagonist. Not that this is in itself a problem - the film is well-plotted and the revelations suitably engaging - but we never really get inside George's head, nor is he likeable enough for us to care about his fate. So much could be made of his state of mind - this is, after all, a man who instigates a relationship with a woman who looks just like his dead wife, a subject surely ripe for psychoanalysis - but in the end Fulci chooses to keep us in the dark. Likewise, those expecting a post-Bird with the Crystal Plumage style giallo will be disappointed, as this film, made a full year before Argento's daring debut, is, as Stephen Thrower says, "a melodrama first and a murder thriller [...] second". The closest points of comparison, therefore, would probably be the domestic paranoia gialli of the late 60s, such as Umberto Lenzi's Orgasmo and Luciano Ercoli's The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion.

Provided you can accept that not all gialli are about black-gloved serial killers, therefore, One on Top of the Other should be a rewarding experience. Jean Sorel, in the lead role, is a bit wooden, but the leggy Marisa Mell gives a stand-out performance as his dead wife's striptease doppelganger, and Fulci captures perfectly the air of middle class decadence he seems to have been going for. These characters seem to inhabit a world in which no-one cares very much about anyone else, and partnerships are entered into only to do harm to others. Likewise, the power games people play with each other as fascinating, especially Monica's relationship with George, who, when he enters her life, is demoted to the status of a "whore's manservant", mirroring the manner in which he previously dominated Susan (again, the credit for this observation goes to Stephen Thrower).

The film unfolds slowly, conducting itself at a leisurely pace even when, by conventional logic, the tension should be rising (especially in the case of the race to save George from the gas chamber in the final act). Still, Fulci knows exactly what he's doing, and his directing is assured. We get the impression that these characters are playing god with each others' lives, and even when George is being led to his death, no-one, not even him, seems to be in any great hurry to do anything about it.

8/10

So where's the Blu-ray Kingdom of Heaven?

whiggles@whiggles.com (Michael Mackenzie) — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 08:57:00 +0000

Back when 20th Century Fox originally announced its initial slate of 8 Blu-ray titles, I made the prediction that their release of the director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven, which, due to its length, would require one of those phantom dual-layer discs that Sony would love us to believe can be reliably replicated, would end up being delayed. And now I'm beginning to suspect that I was right. You see, Fox this morning unveiled the cover art for these releases. Care to guess the one title whose cover art wasn't included in the line-up?

Obviously it's not conclusive, but it is highly suspicious. There's been no outright announcement of delay or cancellation, but the fact that Fox are saying nothing about it says a lot. At this stage, I'd be willing to put money on it not seeing the light of day this year. Which means that the number of Blu-ray titles with a confirmed release date that I'd actually be interested in just fell from one to zero.