TV

Goodness Gracious Me
Christmas Special
20 Years Innit!
A documentary marking the sketch show's 20th anniversary by discussing some of its landmark sketches, and the Christmas special from 1998.
[Watch the Christmas special and 20 Years Innit! (again) on iPlayer.]

Watership Down
Part 1 The Journey
Part 2 The Raid
Some thoughts here.
[Watch parts one and two (again) on iPlayer.]

Collection Count

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

I thought there was going to be stuff to report this week, but some distribution errors mean nope, nothing whatsoever.

Number of titles in collection: 2,175 [no change]
Of which DVDs: 1,145 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 1,030 [no change]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 9 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 5,588 [no change]
Number of films: 2,444 [no change]
Number of TV episodes: 8,312 [no change]
Number of short films: 649 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader, for the post-Christmas end-of-year tally.

TV

Doctor Who
37x09 It Takes You Away [2nd watch]
37x10 The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos [season finale; 2nd watch]
[Watch It Takes You Away and The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos (again) on iPlayer.]

The Graham Norton Show
24x12 (21/12/18 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Doctor Who
37x08 The Witchfinders [2nd watch]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Insert Name Here
4x01 Christmas Special
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
[#258 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

TV

Doctor Who
37x06 Demons of the Punjab [2nd watch]
37x07 Kerblam! [2nd watch]
[Watch Demons of the Punjab and Kerblam! (again) on iPlayer.]

Would I Lie To You?
12x06 Episode 6 [2nd watch]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Doctor Who
37x05 The Tsuranga Conundrum [2nd watch]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Paul O'Grady: For the Love of Dogs
7x06 Episode 6
[Watch it (again) on the ITV Hub.]

Poirot
2x06 Double Sin
[Watch it (again) on the ITV Hub.]

TV

Poirot
2x04 The Cornish Mystery
2x05 The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim
[Watch The Cornish Mystery and The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim (again) on the ITV Hub.]

TV

Best Christmas Ever with Alexander Armstrong
[Watch it (again) on the ITV Hub.]

The Royal Variety Performance 2018
I used to watch this every year but haven't for yonks (this ever-handy blog informs me it was 2012). This year I only watched because it was on shortly after the aforementioned Christmas programme and I got sucked in. And it was actually rather good on the whole, I thought.
[Watch it (again) on the ITV Hub.]

this week on 100 Films

The week began with a special announcement at 100 Films in a Year...





Click the image for more.

After that, 5 brand-new reviews were published this week...


Light the Fuse... Sartana is Coming (1970)

Arrow’s blurb claims this “brings the series to a fine conclusion”; that it “sees Sartana sign off on a high [in] one of the best entries in the series”. I’d almost go so far as to say the opposite — it was one of my least favourite. There’s fun along the way, to be sure, but the plot borders on the meaningless and therefore becomes a tad boring. It’s not a bad film, as this series goes, but it certainly feels like a generic one.

Read more here.


A Monster Calls (2016)

The most immediately striking element of A Monster Calls may be that it stars a giant tree monster with the grumbling voice of Liam Neeson, but this isn’t just a fantasy adventure, it’s a powerfully emotional drama about the pain of impending loss and grief. In this respect it’s not just a good movie, but potentially an important one — I can imagine it being of great help to children who find themselves in similar circumstances

Read more here.


The Shape of Water (2017)

I still can’t quite believe a creature-feature fantasy romance won Best Picture. It remains surreal to see a genre movie conquer the Oscars like that. Even The Lord of the Rings, for all its so-Fantasy-it-defined-the-genre-ness, has a lot of the “historical war epic” in its form (not to mention the genre-transcending cultural impact that film trilogy had), and so its win seems less striking than this out-and-out monster movie. Naturally, The Shape of Water doesn’t actually conform to the commonly-understood connotations of what a “monster movie” is, and therein lies what makes it something fresh, and therefore Best Picture material.

Read more here.


Shrek Forever After (2010)

DreamWorks’ golden-goose animated franchise was running out of fairytales to subvert, so this fourth — and final (for the time being) — movie turns its attention on the series itself... The filmmakers take this as an opportunity to give us a look at how characters might’ve turned out in a Shrek-less world... and it’s in this upending of familiarity that the film finds its greatest entertainment value.

Read more here.


Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

lives up to the hype, if you give it the time to get there. It's a movie that will satisfy comic book fans in particular, I think, but also anyone who enjoys animation as an artform. This isn't your standard Disney/Pixar/Illumination/etc fare, but a thrillingly-realised vision of what animation can do.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

TV

Michael McIntyre's Big Show
4x05 Episode 5
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Strictly Come Dancing
16x25 The Final [season finale]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Would I Lie To You?
12x06 Episode 6
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Collection Count

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

Normally this post would have a running time update, because it's been four weeks since the last one, but I've decided to put that back a couple of weeks in order to do my usual "end of year" numbers post-Christmas.

For now, all there is to report is one new Blu-ray box set, its increases half wiped out by selling an old DVD.

Number of titles in collection: 2,175 [no change]
Of which DVDs: 1,145 [down 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 1,030 [up 1]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 9 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 5,588 [up 2]
Number of films: 2,444 [up 3]
Number of TV episodes: 8,312 [no change]
Number of short films: 649 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader, when (depending on the whims of Royal Mail) there may see a pre-Christmas surge.

TV

Have I Got News For You
56x08 (30/11/18 edition)
56x09 (7/12/18 edition)
56x10 (14/12/18 edition) [season finale]
[Watch these episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

The Graham Norton Show
24x11 (14/12/18 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Zatoichi the Outlaw (1967)
[#257 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

TV

Great News
2x07 A Christmas Carol Wendelson
[Watch it (again) on Netflix.]

Live at the Apollo
14x04 Episode 4
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Death Becomes Her (1992)
[2nd watch]
Rewatchathon 2018 #48

Films

The Shape of Water (2017)
[#256 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

TV

Great News
2x06 Pool Show
[Watch it (again) on Netflix.]

Films

Music in Darkness (1948)
[#255 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

Scooby-Doo (2002)
[2nd watch]
Rewatchathon 2018 #47

TV

Doctor Who
37x10 The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos [season finale]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]