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.

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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!

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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.)!

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Nothing much positive might have happened in 2014, but there was at least one event that this year will certainly be remembered by – the reunion of the British comedy group Monty Python, who had not been together for over thirty years despite never officially splitting up. Everyone was skeptical if the could really do a great big stage show one more time as a last hurrah, but it worked marvellously and Monty Python Live (Mostly) – One Down, Five to Go became a rousing success and a wonderful farewell show full of their old favourites performed in a fresh and original way. Luckily, the last of the only ten stage shows at the O2 Arena in London was preserved as a film and now has been released on DVD and Blu-Ray all over the world. As a long-time Monty Python fan, I had no way around this disc and while it has some image quality issues, it’s still highly recommended for the show itself!

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In What is our Future, the final episode of his new series Human Universe, Brian Cox takes a look both forwards and backwards in time to ask what will become of humanity in the near and distant future. This maybe inevitable question the overall theme leads itself to takes the astrophysicist again literally from apeman to spaceman and beyond, going to amazing places from caves in Spain, one of the most northern places on Earth, an underwater training facility, the remains of the mighty Apollo rockets in Florida and many more. It’s a wonderful conclusion to the whole series with a mostly positive and hopeful message, although Brian Cox does not shy away from delivering some stern warnings.

The penultimate episode of Brian Cox’ new documentary Human Universe was again a return to the old form. Called A Place in Space and Time, this time the astrophysicist takes a look at how humanity found out about its locations in the universe. As usual, this again involves travelling to a lot of exotic locations, but not without very good reasons – this time the journey goes to England, Morocco, Italy, the USA and Poland. It’s one of the most epic, but also most amazing and entertaining episodes of the series so far with many surprises and a wonderful surprise guest.

Are we alone? This is what Brian Cox asks in the third episode of his documentary Human Universe – an uneasy question not only because of its conspirational undertones. But the astrophysicist does not wax lyrical about UFOs or goes alien hunting, but remains with two feet squarely on the ground and answers the question in his usual rational and scientific manner. In contrast to the previous episode, this one is again much more solid and centers around the probability of life other than ours in the universe. There is much traveling to exotic locations and there are even swimming pigs, but this time it is all held together by a strong common theme.