TV

Elementary
6x08 Sand Trap

Grantchester
5x02 Episode 2

Films

Fisherman's Friends (2019)
[#127 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

The Spider Woman (1944)
[2nd watch]
Rewatchathon 2020 #26

this week on 100 Films

6 new reviews were published to 100 Films in a Year this week, all in one place...


The 100-Week Roundup IV

Featuring...
- Amadeus: Director's Cut
- Becoming Bond
- Doubt
- The Florida Project
- Gaslight
- Swingers

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

TV

Elementary
6x07 Sober Companions

The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice
5x05 Episode 5
[Watch it (again) on All 4.]

Lucifer
4x08 Super Bad Boyfriend
[Watch season 4 (again) on Netflix.]

Films

The Looking Glass War (1970)
[#126 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

As promised last week, nothing new to add this week (there should be some next week, post willing). But at least I can share the (delayed) monthly running time update...

Number of titles in collection: 2,375 [no change]
Of which DVDs: 1,102 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 1,273 [no change]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 58 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 6,141 [no change]
Number of films: 2,659 [no change]
Number of additional cuts: 172 [no change]
Number of TV episodes: 8,894 [no change]
Number of short films: 734 [no change]

Total running time of collection (approx.):
448 days, 8 hours, and 10 minutes.
(Up 3 days, 9 hours, and 19 minutes from last month.)

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Elementary
6x05 Bits and Pieces
6x06 Give Me the Finger

The Great British Bake Off
9x05 Spice
[Watch it (again) on All 4.]

Lucifer
4x07 Devil Is as Devil Does
[Watch season 4 (again) on Netflix.]

Films

My Favorite Wife (1940)
[#125 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

TV

Elementary
6x04 Our Time Is Up

The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice
5x04 Episode 4
[Watch it (again) on All 4.]

Lucifer
4x06 Orgy Pants to Work
[Watch season 4 (again) on Netflix.]

TV

Elementary
6x03 Pushing Buttons

The Great British Bake Off
9x04 Desserts
[Watch it (again) on All 4.]

The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice
5x03 Episode 3
[Watch it (again) on All 4.]

Lucifer
4x05 Expire Erect
[Watch season 4 (again) on Netflix.]

Films

Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (2017)
[#124 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

TV

Elementary
6x01 An Infinite Capacity for Taking Pains
6x02 Once You've Ruled Out God
Crikey: it's three years to the day since I last watched Elementary!

Lucifer
4x04 All About Eve
[Watch season 4 (again) on Netflix.]

Films

Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears (2020)
[#123 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

TV

The Great British Bake Off
9x03 Bread
[Watch it (again) on All 4.]

The Rookie
1x20 Free Fall [season finale]

Films

Philomena (2013)
[#122 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

TV

The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice
5x02 Episode 2
[Watch it (again) on All 4.]

The Rookie
1x19 The Checklist

Films

The Saint (1997)
[2nd watch]

The Sky's the Limit (1943)
[#121 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

this week on 100 Films

Just 1 new review on 100 Films in a Year this week...


Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)

If you’ve seen any of the recent Fast & Furious movies, you should pretty much know what to expect here: physically-implausible OTT action, with a knowing wink to the audience so we can all share in the ridiculousness. ... In fact, while not ‘officially’ labelled a Comedy, Hobbs & Shaw borders on being one.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

TV

The Great British Bake Off
9x02 Cakes
[Watch it (again) on All 4.]

Lucifer
4x03 O, Ye of Little Faith, Father
[Watch season 4 (again) on Netflix.]

The Rookie
1x18 Homefront

Films

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
[2nd watch]
Rewatchathon 2020 #24

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

This week was meant to be a running time update, but I've been too busy to update that particular stat. I don't think I'm expecting any other new additions in the next week (but you never know!), so bumping it to next week will be fine.

Number of titles in collection: 2,375 [up 5]
Of which DVDs: 1,102 [down 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 1,273 [up 6]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 58 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 6,141 [up 8]
Number of films: 2,659 [up 5]
Number of additional cuts: 172 [no change]
Number of TV episodes: 8,894 [up 7]
Number of short films: 734 [up 1]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice
5x01 Episode 1
[Watch it (again) on All 4.]

The Rookie
1x17 The Shake Up

Films

Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
[#120 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

Comics

Nemo: The Roses of Berlin by Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill

Holy moly, it's six years since I read a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen-connected book. That's partly my own fault, because two volumes of Nemo have been out for almost all of that time; but between July 2018 and July 2019 they published the final League adventure, which I've recently purchased in its collected hardback form, so I'm catching up on those two remaining spin-offs before I dive into that. And then maybe a re-read of the entire series, because it's been a very, very long time since I read the first two volumes (I don't know how long exactly, but looking at my blog archives I can see I read the third book, Black Dossier, in the middle of 2008!)

As for The Roses of Berlin, it's a fun adventure, though it made for a somewhat halting read because of the amount that's in German. Maybe us English readers are meant to just skim past that, but I felt the need to translate it just in case, and so read the whole book accompanied by Jess Nevins’ annotations — interesting and insightful, but reading them alongside the book makes for a rather stop-start experience. I’m sure there’s an argument for authenticity in having the German characters speak German, but it would make for a smoother read if they didn’t. One other thing: there are clearly some plot elements of this that do make it a sequel to the first Nemo book, not just a standalone second adventure, and there are tie-ins to other League stories too, so it was a shame it’s been so long since I read those. As I said, I should re-read all of the League-universe books in a more condensed timespan.

TV

The Great British Bake Off
9x01 Biscuits
Catching up on the 2018 series.
[Watch it (again) on All 4.]

Lucifer
4x02 Somebody's Been Reading Dante's Inferno
[Watch season 4 (again) on Netflix.]

The Rookie
1x16 Greenlight

TV

Lucifer
4x01 Everything's Okay
[Watch season 4 (again) on Netflix.]

The Twilight Zone
2x25 The Mind and the Matter
5x33 The Brain Center at Whipple's
5x34 Come Wander with Me

Films

Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943)
[2nd watch]
Rewatchathon 2020 #23

TV

The Twilight Zone
4x07 Jess-Belle
+ the audio commentary by the episode's writer, Earl Hamner, and TZ expert Marc Scott Zicree, where they nonstop sing its praises. My consensus ranking places it 146th out of 156 episodes.

Films

Maelström (2000)
[#119 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

TV

The Twilight Zone
3x06 The Mirror
3x11 Still Valley
3x20 Showdown with Rance McGrew
Setting out towards a third "worst of" selection for my 100 Films TV column. I'm aiming to include the next seven worst-regarded episodes, and these are all three season 3 episodes that feature in that list.

Films

Batman (1989)
[5th watch]
Rewatchathon 2020 #22. In 4K Ultra HD, which looked superb. There's a link to my 100 Films review from 2012 above, plus some new comments on Letterboxd here. Intending to give it the full "Guide To" treatment at some point, alongside the other Batman films I haven't covered yet.

TV

Star Trek: Picard
1x08 Broken Pieces
[Watch it (again) on Prime Video.]

Films

The Goonies (1985)
[#118 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

this week on 100 Films

The schedule for my "monthly" TV column at 100 Films in a Year is all over the place these days, but I published one this week...





There was also 1 new film review...


The Head Hunter (2018)

a low-budget independent fantasy/horror movie. Such a description might conjure up images of fancy-dress-like costumes, plastic props, locations that venture no further than a mate’s back garden and a nearby bit of forest, cinematography with all the hallmarks of digital video, and some embarrassingly basic and boxy CGI. None of this is true of The Head Hunter, which marries some impressive production design to an understanding of its limits — its low budget shows only in its small scale, rather than uncomfortably forcing its reach to exceed its grasp.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

TV

Doctor Who
2x39 Checkmate [season finale]
aka The Time Meddler Part 4. This is a great episode, and almost single-handedly explains why the serial is so well-regarded. Indeed, there's a great two- or even three-parter in here, it just takes a while to get to the point.

+ listened to the audio commentary on the full story, which was entertaining and informative in places, but understandably suffers at times from the participants trying to remember something they made over 40 years earlier.

Eurovision: Come Together
The full contest was cancelled this year, so instead the BBC aired this special show of iconic performances...
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Eurovision: Europe Shine a Light
...and this official replacement broadcast, which had its moments.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Hotel Artemis (2018)
[#117 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

Another eight new additions this week (one day I'll slow down again). But in addition to that, I'm currently adding my collection to a list on Letterboxd, a process which has led me to notice some more alternate cuts and short films that I hadn't counted before. Makes me wonder how many more are hiding in there... It's probably not that many in the grand scheme of things, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are a handful more still lurking.

Number of titles in collection: 2,370 [up 6]
Of which DVDs: 1,103 [down 2]
Of which Blu-rays: 1,267 [up 8]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 58 [up 3]

Number of discs in collection: 6,133 [up 11]
Number of films: 2,654 [up 9]
Number of additional cuts: 172 [up 4]
Number of TV episodes: 8,887 [no change]
Number of short films: 733 [up 11]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Doctor Who
2x38 A Battle of Wits
aka The Time Meddler Part 3. Surely one of the series' greatest-ever cliffhangers. Less impactful today, of course, especially as most people watching will know the Monk's secret, but at the time it must've been huge. (Well, let's be honest, Doctor Who didn't have the same obsessive following then that it does now, nor were there ways to communicate like the internet; but I bet regular viewers had plenty to say about it in the school playground on Monday morning.)

Films

127 Hours (2010)
[#116 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

A Bug's Life (1998)
[#115 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]
A fun either-side-of-midnight double-bill with Phase IV. (If you don't know what they're about... look it up.)

TV

Doctor Who
2x37 The Meddling Monk
aka The Time Meddler Part 2

Films

Misbehaviour FilmBath Live Q&A
with the film's director, editor, and screenwriter. I believe you can still watch it at the above link.

Mission: Impossible (1996)
[5th watch]
Rewatchathon 2020 #21. Doesn't feel like it can be my 5th watch of this, but if that's what my records say... This time it was on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, and it looked fantastic.

Phase IV (1974)
[#114 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]
+ director Saul Bass's original ending, which adds a couple of lines of dialogue and an abstract psychedelic nightmare to the finale

TV

Doctor Who
2x36 The Watcher
aka The Time Meddler Part 1. Taking a break from watching animated missing episodes to check out the story that recently came a surprising (to me) second place in Doctor Who Magazine’s “First Doctor World Cup” Twitter poll.

Films

Misbehaviour (2020)
[#113 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]
Ready to watch the FilmBath Q&A tomorrow evening.

Stuber (2019)
[#112 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)
[#111 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

Films

Marriage Story (2019)
[#110 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]
+ the 2 three-minute featurettes Netflix offer, Directing with Noah Baumbach and An Ensemble Story. Obviously they’re really EPK promo pieces, but not wholly without insight.

TV

Archer
6x12 Drastic Voyage Part 1
6x13 Drastic Voyage Part 2 [season finale]

Films

Zero Charisma (2013)
[#109 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

Films

American Animals (2018)
[#107 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

Belladonna of Sadness (1973)
[#108 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

this week on 100 Films

6 new reviews were published to 100 Films in a Year this week, and they were...


Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)

I haven’t reviewed this until now because I didn’t have much to say about it... Even after reflecting on it, and reading other’s critical reactions, then reflecting on it some more (for over eight months at this point), I didn’t have much to contribute. Why was that? And I’ve kind of realised it’s because the film didn’t make me feel very much... I do consider Once Upon a Time to be a very good film. But at the same time, I didn’t leave the cinema feeling moved or wowed.

Read more here.


The 100-Week Roundup III

including...
Power Rangers
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
The Warriors
The Wild Bunch
The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

Films

Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold (2018)
[#105 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

Top Secret! (1984)
[#106 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

Last week I mentioned that I was going to start counting "films" and "cuts" separately, to finally settle a matter of uncertainty that's been bothering me for years (i.e. when a release includes multiple cuts of the same film, do those count as multiple films or just one film?) As I have over 2,300 titles to go through working it out (some I knew off the top of my head, some I had to check), I thought it would take a while -- weeks, maybe months -- but I've actually finished it this week! Once I started I spent altogether too much time on it (even though I've finished it between updates, it's taken multiple sessions across every day this week). I've done a lot of it from memory rather than double-checking every single title, so hopefully I've not overlooked anything in my speed. If I have, well, it'll get corrected someday.

As you can see, I found well over 100 alternate cuts ‘hiding’ among my film tally, but also quite a few that hadn’t been counted. Also, for the cuts tally I decided to only count additional cuts -- i.e. if a film only has one version it'll be listed as 1 film + 0 cuts, but if there are two versions it'll count as 1 film + 1 cut, and so on. Still haven't worked out how to square this with the running time total, nor what to do about alternative cuts of TV episodes (there are enough that I want to record them, but few enough that having a whole column for it seems daft). For now, they carry on as they were before.

And while all that is the big news this week, there were also some new additions, prime among them an upgrade of the 1989-1997 Batman movie series to UHD.

Number of titles in collection: 2,364 [up 4]
Of which DVDs: 1,105 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 1,259 [up 4]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 55 [up 4]

Number of discs in collection: 6,122 [up 5]
Number of films: 2,645 [down 119]
Number of additional cuts: 168
Number of TV episodes: 8,887 [no change]
Number of short films: 722 [up 2]

See you next week, faithful reader.

Films

Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004)
[#103 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

Ugetsu Monogatari (1953)
[#104 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]
Blindspot 2020 #5

Films

Black Angel (1946)
[#102 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]
+ all of Arrow's Blu-ray's special features, including an audio commentary (bit dry but full of trivia and biographical information), an appreciation by Neil Sinyard (the highlight being a story about a member of the supporting cast and Frank Sinatra's wig), a trailer and photo galleries

Flash Gordon (1980)
[3rd watch]
Rewatchathon 2020 #20. Inspired by the announcement of the gorgeous-looking 40th anniversary 4K edition — I thought I ought to watch my current copy before that renders it obsolete! (Though as I own this edition, its fun cover art would ensure it wasn’t a wasted purchase.)

TV

Archer
6x11 Achub y Morfilod

Films

The Head Hunter (2018)
[#101 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

Joker (2019)
[#100 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

Films

August 32nd on Earth (1998)
[#99 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]
Denis Villeneuve's debut feature.

Theatre

Frankenstein
This is the one directed by Danny Boyle and starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, in which they alternated the roles of Frankenstein and the Creature for each performance. Both versions are available on YouTube at the moment. Consensus seems to be that the one with Miller as the Creature is better, so that's what I watched.
[Watch Benedict Cumberbatch as the Creature and/or Jonny Lee Miller as the Creature (again) on YouTube.]

TV

The Twilight Zone
3x29 Four O'Clock
5x18 Black Leather Jackets
More of the series' worst episodes, which I'll be reviewing in 100 Films' next TV column.

Films

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)
[#98 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

The Green Hornet 3D (2011)
[2nd watch]
Rewatchathon 2020 #19. First time in 3D, which was pretty good overall, especially bearing in mind this was a relatively early post-conversion.

Films

Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010)
[#97 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

DC Showcase: Jonah Hex (2010)
[#96a in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

this week on 100 Films

It's once again time to look back over the past month at 100 Films in a Year -- and it's a record-smasher...





In other news, 2 reviews were published this week...


The Lunchbox (2013)

This week the world heard the sad news that the actor Irrfan Khan had passed away aged just 53. An award-winning film star in India, Khan also had a noteworthy presence as a supporting actor in Western films... I’d seen those films and noted Khan’s presence — he’s the kind of actor who turns up and elevates the film almost just by being there, bringing a depth and interest to even the smallest roles. But I’d never seen any of the many films in which he played the lead, so it seemed appropriate to turn to one of the most internationally acclaimed of his films in tribute.

Read more here.


Zatoichi at Large (1972)

The 23rd film in the Zatoichi series is also the worst according to Letterboxd users, who rate it below even the ’00s spinoff, Ichi. But as with all things in this crazy, mixed-up world of ours, there are those who disagree: The Digital Bits give it a B+, which puts it in the series’ top half (to be precise, it makes it =7th, but with seven other films). You can add me to that (very short) list. It’s not an exceptional Zatoichi film by any means, but it is a middle-of-the-range entry, and a long way from the worst the series has to offer.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

TV

The Twilight Zone
4x15 The Incredible World of Horace Ford
+ the audio commentary by TZ expert Marc Scott Zicree (who here talks a mile a minute, seeming to just pour out everything he knows and thinks) and TV writer/producer Jeff Vlaming. They’re much more fond of the episode than I was; but rather than illuminating for me what’s good about it, I felt like they were trying to make up justifications for why bits that aren’t good are good.

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

This week's additions include another classic season of Doctor Who on Blu-ray, which replaces some of my DVDs but not all (due to missing special features, titles in box sets, etc). At some point this series of re-releases is going to start including that missing stuff, and it'll swing from "upgrading fewer DVDs than it should" to "upgrading more DVDs than it should". That'll be nice. I also got the complete Samurai Jack on Blu-ray, so together they marked a big increase on the TV episode count.

Also this week: 3-for-£30 4K UHD titles, so the Ultra HD tally jumps up a bit. Two were upgrades: one from DVD (American Gangster), one from Blu-ray (Gladiator), but I'm keeping the original Blu-ray for the time being because it's in a digibook. I really ought to read that book and see if it's worth keeping...

Number of titles in collection: 2,360 [up 4]
Of which DVDs: 1,105 [down 3]
Of which Blu-rays: 1,255 [up 7]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 51 [up 3]

Number of discs in collection: 6,117 [up 20]
Number of films: 2,764 [up 6]
Number of TV episodes: 8,887 [up 80]
Number of short films: 720 [up 1]

Those UHD titles also highlighted a dilemma I struggle with regularly, because both contain theatrical and extended cuts of the movie. Does that count as one film each or two? Some would say one, because the different cuts are alternatives, not different films. On the other hand, on a list of "films I have to watch" I would list both cuts, because they're different, so that count should include them, right? Often these days I side a bit more with the former, but in the past I've done the latter, and now my film count is a mess of contradicting points of view. It's finally gotten to me enough that I'm going to add a "cuts" column next to the "films" one, kind of like how Blu-ray.com will list a release as having "1 movie, 2 cuts". It'll take a lot of work (I'll have to go through all 2,360 titles and figure them out), but it might be worth it in the long run.

Of course, that still doesn't settle how I should count it for the running time -- all cuts or just one? Eesh. Oh, and what about TV shows with multiple variants of some episodes? Arrgh...

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

The Graham Norton Show
27x04 (1/5/20 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]