desert island discs

Desert Island Discs: Mark II

Posted on April 17, 2010 by Darren

Cool. When I put together this bad boy last week, not everyone was quite on board, so I went back over it this weekend to add in those I missed. I think I got everyone (as of 6pm on Saturday), but please let me know if I didn’t by leaving a comment. Anyway, here’s the revised list, for those OCD people like myself who want an easy place to follow who took what. Enjoy!

Some more trivia (I like trivia!):

Lotsa people cheating and bringing whole trilogies. Mostly The Lord of the Rings, although all three individual movies have been brought separately as well.
Some more people bringing television shows, with The Wire, Arrested Development and The X-Files along for the ride.
The original Star Wars trilogy has been rounded out.
X-Men II is the only non-Batman superhero film on the list.
The Dark Knight is still the most ‘desert-island-able’ film in blogdom.
Red over at Anomolous Materials wanted to bring The Hobbit on preorder (I assume both movies), but I didn’t count it (in my defence, he’s taking all three Lord of the Rings).

Click the above for a larger image. Thanks again to Andy for all his hard work.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: desert island, desert island discs, desert island dvds, films, lists, Movies | 6 Comments »

Desert Island Discs: Who is Taking What…

Posted on April 11, 2010 by Darren

Congrats again to Andy on running such a fantastically successful Desert Island Discs.

I took the liberty of compiling the selections from the sites that went live this morning to give you an idea of who would be taking what to their desert islands (in case you needed to borrow… or were just curious). The picture is below. Click for a larger version.

Note: Not all the blogs went live this morning – and it’s possible I missed one or two (though I did it methodically). If I did, or if you’ve since added a list, please let me know. If there’s enough interest, I’ll update the list next weekend to give a more comprehensive view.

EDIT: And here it is.

Some notes (because I like trivia):

Between us all, we’ll have the completed Indiana Jones trilogy. Because Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull totally doesn’t count. We’ll have incomplete copies of the Lord of the Rings (missing The Return of the King) and the original Star Wars (missing A New Hope) trilogies.
There was a bit of hubbub about what we could and couldn’t take – is the list just movies or are other media forms allowed? Various castaways tried to smuggle The Wire and Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog on to their island. I acted under the assumption it was just movies, but am not sure if I’d change anything if I could take TV shows or miniseries.
The Godfather Part II does not appear on anyone’s list, which surprises me.
The Dark Knight is the most essential movie in blogdom (appearing on five islands), though we’ll likely all be borrowing the single copy of Batman Begins out with us.
Only one blogger admitted to bringing porn. And possibly imaginary porn at that.

If you’re bored, you can also try ‘island hopping’ or ‘six degrees of desert island discs’ the idea is basically like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, where you pick two movies on the list and try to connect them by jumping from list to list where titles overlap. It’s a little nerdy, but still fun.

My own list is here.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: analysis, blogging, desert island discs, events, movie blogs, The Dark Knight | 17 Comments »

Posted on April 11, 2010 by Darren

The ever wonderful Andy over at Fandango Groovers has put together a rather excellent little project among film bloggers where we’re all essentially playing ‘desert island discs’. For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, it sees the person in question stranded on a desert island somewhere with only a handful of items – in this case films. Each person will then choose their own eight films that will presumably see them through the rest of their lives in something resembling tranquility. Of course, the kicker is if we arrive on the island and there’s no DVD player.

The Losties were less than pleased when Darren phoned ahead with his movie choices...

Note: I’ve also compiled a list of movies and bloggers, so you can see if anyone else shared your picks.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: best movies, brazil, castaway, desert island, desert island discs, fandango groovers, films, gattaca, heat, lists, Movies, the big lebowski, The Dark Knight, the godfather, the good the bad & the ugly, the truman show, top tne | 31 Comments »

March in Review

Posted on March 31, 2010 by Darren

It’s been a hectic month. A fun month, but a hectic month.

We somehow made the finals of the Irish Blog Awards. Don’t ask us how. Culch.ie were the deserving winners, but we were just thrilled to be nominated. We also published our 500th post.

We celebrated the 75th birthday of DC Comics with a week reviewing the still rather young medium.

The twin releases of Alice in Wonderland and Shutter Island got us pondering if we gave established directors like Scorsese and Burton too much kudos. We had the pleasure of an evening with David Cronenberg. Yes, it was awesome. We even took the opportunity to ponder whether Alice, as reimagined by Tim Burton, was a feminist icon.

Outside of that, we wondered if moral guardians were overreacting to Kick-Ass and mourned the loss of the glimmer of darkness in animation (what might be deemed “Dark Disney”).

The Hurt Locker (seemingly against its own stupidity) won the Oscar. Sandra Bullock won me over. Is she indicative of a trend of older leading ladies?

It was a good month and a fun month, and we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. There were some very good movies released over the course of March, which has traditionally been seen as a dumping ground for crap movies, but I’ll post about that next month.

Next month, on the 11th of April, you can look forward to Desert Island DVDs, a cross blog promotion being organised by the amazing Andy (see, it’s alliterative!) at Fandango Groovers asking bloggers to pick their must-have movies. If you’re interested in taking part, let him know. It’s nice to see that sort of community. Now, if I can figure out what my eight films will be…

Filed under: Months in Review | Tagged: desert island discs, fandango groovers, irish blog awards, march, march in review, month in review | 2 Comments »