TV

The Persuaders!
1x16 Anyone Can Play

Pitch Battle
1x06 Episode 6 [season finale]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

this week on 100 Films

This week on 100 Films in a Year, this month's second 'monthly' TV review...





Also, 2 brand-new reviews...


Dunkirk (2017)

the main effect Nolan was aiming for is intensity. Not of war, so much, but of survival. That this is a PG-13 war movie caused some to balk — how can you depict war nowadays without blood and gore? But this isn’t a war movie per se, it’s an escape movie. It’s not about the reality of someone getting their arm or head blown off, it’s about escaping a sinking ship, or running out of fuel, or keeping going when the odds are against you. Couple this with the aforementioned visual spectacle, and a thunderous sound mix, and Dunkirk is definitely an Experience.

Read more here.


Ocean's Eleven (2001)

Apparently Soderbergh said that he saw this as an opportunity to give audiences “pleasure from beginning to end… a movie that you just surrender to, without embarrassment and without regret.” Well, he nailed it. It’s a film packed with likeable characters, memorable lines, snazzy direction, cool music cues, and the raison d’être of a heist movie: a final act that pulls the wool over the audience’s eyes.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

TV

Line of Duty
3x06 Episode 6 [season finale]

Collection Count

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

Number of titles in collection: 2,002 [up 2]
Of which DVDs: 1,178 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 824 [up 2]

Number of discs in collection: 5,156 [up 24]
Number of films: 2,227 [up 2]
Number of TV episodes: 7,910 [up 111]
Number of short films: 582 [up 1]

Since the last running time update I've added 34 films and 126 episodes of TV, which means quite a bump this month...

Total running time of collection (approx.):
384 days, 14 hours, and 38 minutes.
(Up 6 days, 20 hours, and 28 minutes from last month.)

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Line of Duty
3x05 Episode 5

Films

The Driver (1978)
[#101 in 100 Films in a Year 2017]

Dunkirk (2017)
[#102 in 100 Films in a Year 2017]

TV

Line of Duty
3x04 Episode 4

TV

Line of Duty
3x03 Episode 3

Films

Ocean's Twelve (2004)
[2nd watch]

Rewatchathon 2017 #23

TV

Line of Duty
3x02 Episode 2

Twin Peaks
3x10 The Return Part 10

Films

Finding Nemo 3D (2003)
[3rd watch]

Rewatchathon 2017 #22

TV

Game of Thrones
7x01 Dragonstone

Line of Duty
3x01 Episode 1

TV

The Persuaders!
1x15 Someone Waiting

+

Films

Joining the likes of Citizen Kane, Lawrence of Arabia, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in my #100 club, it's...

City of God (2002)
[#100 in 100 Films in a Year 2017]

this week on 100 Films

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


Contact (1997)

Contact is 20 years old this week. I don’t remember it going down particularly well on its release (Rotten Tomatoes backs me up on that: it scores just 62%) and I’ve largely paid it no heed, other than it still comes up now and then. I can’t remember what gave me a sudden urge to watch it last month, but doing so was a bit of a “where have you been all my life?!” experience.

Read more here.


Nocturnal Animals (2016)

Although the story is black as night, it’s a beautifully constructed film — as you might expect from someone with a background in design like writer-director Tom Ford. It’s not just the visually appealing work of cinematographer Seamus McGarvey or the film’s various designers that is so striking, though. The three narrative strands are expertly handled. There’s never any doubt about which is which, even when Ford at times intercuts between all three in one sequence, but he hasn’t resorted to simplistic tricks (like vastly different colour grading, say) to pull that off. It’s subtler, and more effective, than that.

Read more here.


Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

As everyone well knows by now (thanks to it being repeated ad infinitum in the previous Spidey movies), the catchphrase of the Spider-Man franchise is “with great power comes great responsibility”. However, it’s not said once in this film. Instead, it’s threaded through the very core of the film’s story and character arcs. It’s the lesson everyone comes to learn. It’s what Stark is trying to teach Peter by giving him a fancy suit with a lot of its special features disabled, and by discouraging him from biting off more than he can chew. When Peter gets himself in too deep, as he does repeatedly, it always comes close to costing innocent lives. It’s a lesson Stark learns too, though.

Read more here.


War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

This is not a war movie in the sense of it being two hours of epic battles. There’s a set-to at the start (one which reminded me of the opening of Saving Private Ryan without in any meaningful way being a rip off of it), and a big battle forms the backdrop to the climax, but in between the film is something else. Or, rather, somethings else: there are multiple genres one could cite as an influence on the film as it transitions betweens phases of its story. There’s a bit of the “men on a mission” thing going on, with an edge of the Western in there, before it turns into a POW camp movie of sorts, with a healthy dose of Apocalypse Now for good measure.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

TV

Pitch Battle
1x05 Episode 5
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Wallander [British]
4x01 The White Lioness
So, it's over a year since this was on and five years since I watched the last series. Where does time go?! Anyway, this was a particularly good one, with absolutely stunning location photography in South Africa.

Collection Count

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

This week, my collection lands on exactly 2,000 titles. Crikey. When I started this weekly update, almost 8 years ago, I'd only fairly recently crossed 1,000. (I say "fairly recently" -- that first edition counts 1,057 titles, which, based on my acquisition rate over the last 8 years, means I actually passed 1,000 around 5 or 6 months earlier.)

What interests me is how much things have increased -- not just the plain number, but on a percentage basis. For instance, I assumed there would be way more discs in the newer 1,000 titles, due to the proliferation of DVD copies in Blu-ray releases and probably buying more box sets, but that's not completely the case: the number of films and TV episodes have both more than doubled, but the number of discs hasn't. That said, where there was an average of 2.475 discs per title back in 2009, now the average is 2.566, so it has gone up on the whole.

Anyway, here are the actual stats, with the percentage increase since that first edition also included. (I didn't count shorts until later, so no increase stat there.)

Number of titles in collection: 2,000 [up 4] [up 89.21% since 2009]
Of which DVDs: 1,178 [no change] [up 15.04% since 2009]
Of which Blu-rays: 822 [up 4] [up 2,390.91% since 2009]

Number of discs in collection: 5,132 [up 16] [up 96.18% since 2009]
Number of films: 2,225 [up 10] [up 103.38% since 2009]
Number of TV episodes: 7,799 [no change] [up 113.55% since 2009]
Number of short films: 582 [up 1]

Look at that Blu-ray percentage! Mad.

Anyway -- see you next week, faithful reader.

Films

22 Jump Street (2014)
[#99 in 100 Films in a Year 2017]

TV

The Persuaders!
1x14 Element of Risk

Films

Ocean's Eleven (2001)
[3rd watch]
Rewatchathon 2017 #21

War for the Planet of the Apes 3D (2017)
[#98 in 100 Films in a Year 2017]