Films

Justice League 3D (2017)
[2nd watch]
Rewatchathon 2018 #45

Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (2018)
[#246 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

TV

Great News
2x03 Honeypot!
[Watch it (again) on Netflix.]

Would I Lie To You?
12x05 Episode 5
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Dad's Army (2016)
[#245 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

TV

Crisis on Earth-X
Supergirl 3x08 Part 1
Arrow 6x08 Part 2
The Flash 4x08 Part 3
Legends of Tomorrow 3x08 Part 4

I gave up on Arrow and The Flash almost a whole year ago, just before this big four-show crossover arrived (I stopped with episode 6 and the crossover was, as you can see, in episode 8). I'd aimed to at least make it through this event before maybe stopping, but my interest just petered out before that. Anyway, I've been intending to watch the crossover anyway for the best part of a year now (even though I didn't think much of the last one), and with a new one imminent it was about bloody time I got round to it.

On the whole, it was a lot better than the last one -- this actually felt like it was conceived as one long story, rather than three separate-but-connected episodes with a rushed conclusion -- but I'd forgotten how soapy these shows can be. I'm not going to be starting to watch them again regularly.

Films

Boy (2010)
[#244 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

Films

Danger: Diabolik (1968)
[#243 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

TV

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

Films

Creed (2015)
[#242 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]
+ the Blu-ray's short selection of special features (a commentary would've been nice)

this week on 100 Films

It was already time for another TV roundup at 100 Films in a Year this week...





Plus, there were 2 brand-new film reviews...


Rocky Balboa (2006)

Writer-director-star Sylvester Stallone returns to his boxing saga to give it the ending he fluffed 16 years earlier. Even as someone who didn’t dislike Rocky V, I don’t think it’s a great send-off for the character. Stallone felt the same, which is why he conceived this as a proper capstone for the series.

Read more here.


Zatoichi's Pilgrimage (1966)

the ‘lost’ Zatoichi movie: at some point the Weinsteins bought the rights to it because Quentin Tarantino was considering a remake, with the side effect of making it unavailable legally for years. Clearly it was felt to be worth the wait, because it’s a highly-regarded instalment in the series... As Bill Hunt and Todd Doogan of The Digital Bits put it, Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage is “one of the crown jewels of the series.” It’s little wonder Tarantino was considering a remake.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

Collection Count

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

Absolutely nothing to report this week. Various things on their way for next time, though.

Number of titles in collection: 2,165 [no change]
Of which DVDs: 1,149 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 1,016 [no change]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 5 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 5,551 [no change]
Number of films: 2,424 [no change]
Number of TV episodes: 8,294 [no change]
Number of short films: 641 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

The Graham Norton Show
24x08 (23/11/18 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Great News
2x02 Squad Feud
[Watch it (again) on Netflix.]

TV

Great News
2x01 Boardroom Bitch
[Watch it (again) on Netflix.]

Films

Redline (2009)
[#240 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

Zatoichi's Cane Sword (1967)
[#241 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

Films

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013)
[#239 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

Thor: Ragnarok 3D (2017)
[2nd watch]
Rewatchathon 2018 #44. Looks fantastic in 3D, doubly so with the frequent shifts into an IMAX ratio.

TV

Live at the Apollo
14x01 Episode 1
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Music

Simulation Theory by Muse
[2nd listen]

A more attentive second listen, though I can't say it changed my opinion. Still, listening to it twice within a week is better than I managed with The 2nd Law, which I recently realised I'd listened to once when it came out in 2012 and then never again!

Films

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
[#238 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

TV

Doctor Who
37x07 Kerblam!
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)
[4th watch]
Rewatchathon 2018 #43
+ the audio commentary. As it went on, I began to realise I'd listened to it before -- and I hardly ever listen to audio commentaries, so that was weird; and this is a weird one to have listened to twice! It's a comedy one, though, y'see, and doesn't even last the whole length of the film, so that's a bit different to re-listening to a regular commentary, I think.

this week on 100 Films

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


Bao (2018)

This short film from Pixar played before Incredibles 2 in cinemas, so naturally it accompanies it on Blu-ray too. In it, a Chinese-Canadian woman is steaming dumplings (the titular bao) when one comes to life and grows into a little dough boy, who she begins to raise as a son.

Read more here.


The Hunt (2012)

one of the film’s great strengths is how plausibly the matter is handled. There are no screaming histrionics and no raging against the world from Mikkelsen, as slowly the entire town turns against him based on a few misguided and poorly-understood words from a confused child. Instead, he mainly conveys a lot of quiet desperation — a man who knows he’s innocent but can’t work out how to prove it, and is increasingly hurt as people he called friends almost all turn against him.

Read more here.


Incredibles 2 (2018)

At its most basic, Incredibles 2 is a gender-reversed do-over of the first movie… to a fault, in fact. The closing moments of the first film suggest a “family of superheroes” future for the Parrs, with them battling crime together. The sequel immediately works to put everything back in its place: the kids aren’t allowed to use their powers (until they must for the climax, natch); one of the parents gets to go off and be a superhero, while the other has to stay at home. The difference is it’s the man staying at home, and where Helen was consummate at looking after the kids, Bob finds it a challenge — because Men, amirite?

Read more here.


They Shall Not Grow Old (2018)

Commissioned by 14-18 NOW (the UK’s arts programme for the First World War centenary) and the Imperial War Museum to see what he could do to make their old World War One footage more engaging for a modern audience, director Peter “Lord of the Rings” Jackson’s initial tests at restoring the footage were so successful that the project was eventually worked up into this feature-length documentary. It tells the story of the Western Front from the point of view of ordinary Tommies living and fighting on the frontline, using only footage from the period (plus photos, posters, artwork, maps, and so on) and narration taken from interviews with men who were really there — no historians to provide context or analysis here.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

Collection Count

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

Another funny one this week: three new single-disc titles and a box set that replaces some old sets, but... well, this happened...

Number of titles in collection: 2,165 [up 2]
Of which DVDs: 1,149 [up 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 1,016 [up 1]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 5 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 5,551 [up 6]
Number of films: 2,424 [up 3]
Number of TV episodes: 8,294 [no change]
Number of short films: 641 [no change]

It's also time for a running time update, which goes like this...

Total running time of collection (approx.):
409 days, 21 hours, and 14 minutes.
(Up 1 day, 7 hours, and 6 minutes from last month.)

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Children in Need 2018
I can't remember the last time I actually watched Children in Need — well, this blog tells me it was 2014 — and I didn't even watch all of it this year, but I saw a fair bit (including the Mastermind special, which might've been the best bit). It was… fine. I swear there used to be more special sketches and stuff...
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

The Greatest Showman (2017)
[#237 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

TV

Great News
1x09 Carol Has a Bully
1x10 Carol's Eleven [season finale]
[Watch it (again) on Netflix.]

We Are Most Amused & Amazed
[Watch it (again) on the ITV Hub.]

Music

Simulation Theory by Muse

Muse are one of the few bands where I'll still buy any new album they release, but this... wasn't great. I mean, it has some decent tracks, but overall... it's okay-ish. Ah well.

TV

Great News
1x08 Celebrity Hacking Scandal
[Watch it (again) on Netflix.]

What Do Artists Do All Day?
Peter Jackson
About the making of They Shall Not Grow Old.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015)
[#236 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

TV

The Great Model Railway Challenge
1x06 Grand Final: A Journey Through Time [season finale]
[Watch it (again) on My5.]

Films

Paper Moon (1973)
[#235 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

TV

Doctor Who
37x06 Demons of the Punjab
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Bao 3D (2018)
[#233a in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

They Shall Not Grow Old (2018)
[#234 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

this week on 100 Films

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


Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

[There has been] a huge divide in the opinions of critics and audiences: whereas the former gave it a Rotten Tomatoes rating of just 55% when it released, audiences have driven it to be the #1 film at the worldwide box office and placed it on the IMDb Top 250 (at #126 as of writing). Well, there’s a scene in the film where Bohemian Rhapsody debuts on the radio, and as it plays the screen gradually fills with quotes from contemporary reviews, all of them mercilessly slagging it off — the irony, obviously, being that we all know what a ginormous hit the song would become. Some things never change, eh?

Read more here.


Darkest Hour (2017)

The Dunkirk connection was certainly played up in the film’s marketing (the trailers made it look like Dunkirk 2), but while that situation does have a significant role to play, it’s only part of what this film’s actually about. Which does actually make it quite a neat companion piece to Nolan’s movie: it expands on the political backdrop surrounding Dunkirk, placing those events in a wider context. In doing that, it presents a different perspective on familiar events.

Read more here.


Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Fallen Kingdom is built on decent ideas and concepts, and it’s executed with some stylish direction by franchise newcomer J.A. Bayona, but it’s all let down by a terrible screenplay from Jurassic World co-writers Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow. The story is poorly constructed — not in the sense that it’s unfollowable, but in that it’s wonkily put-together, frequently showcasing scenes that are nothing but exposition, with a pace and emphasis that feels unbalanced. [...] If they’d bothered to hire some solid writers, instead of just People Who Have Ideas, then maybe those ideas could’ve been turned into a cohesive whole that’d be a worthy sequel.

Read more here.


Outlaw King (2018)

Outlaw King kicks off in style, with a superb eight-minute single-take that moves in and out of a candle-lit tent during daytime (a feat of camera operating to seamlessly handle the changing exposures required… assuming it wasn’t faked), during which we take in important scene-setting political discussions, a playful (but not really) sword fight, and the siege of a distant castle by a gigantic trebuchet. As opening salvos go, this is first rate.

Read more here.


Persepolis (2007)

Adapted from co-director Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel, this is the story of an Iranian girl coming of age in the ’70s and ’80s, during and after the Iranian Revolution. Such a broad description is probably the only way to succinctly summarise it, because it’s kind of a sprawling film, about many different things — just like a life, I suppose. As well as being part biography, it’s also part history lesson, with a normal-family’s eye-view of the revolution and what followed.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

TV

The Great Model Railway Challenge
1x05 Heat Five: Waterworld
[Watch it (again) on My5.]

Great News
1x06 Serial Arsonist
1x07 The Red Door
[Watch it (again) on Netflix.]

Films

Incredibles 2 3D (2018)
[#233 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

Collection Count

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

Four new titles this week, but it's one of those times when they play silly buggers with the stats. Mainly, the acquisition of a box set (as mentioned last week) which replaces five DVDs with one Blu-ray set containing fewer discs. The disc count evens out to "no change" thanks to two of the other newcomers, while the fourth is a Blu-ray-to-Blu-ray upgrade that changes nothing but my bank balance.

Number of titles in collection: 2,163 [down 2]
Of which DVDs: 1,148 [down 5]
Of which Blu-rays: 1,015 [up 3]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 4 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 5,545 [no change]
Number of films: 2,421 [up 3]
Number of TV episodes: 8,294 [no change]
Number of short films: 641 [up 2]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Great News
1x05 Snowmageddon of the Century
[Watch it (again) on Netflix.]

Mars
1x01 Novo Mundo
With a second season of this coming at the weekend, I thought it was about time I got round to my Blu-ray of season one (which aired two years ago!) Turns out, it's not that good. Maybe it'll improve...

Films

Attack the Block (2011)
[#231 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]
Blindspot 2018 #11
+ the audio commentary with writer/director Joe Cornish and executive producer Edgar Wright... though not all of it, because I dozed off (not because of the quality of the track, just because it was late and I was, clearly, tired!)

Outlaw King (2018)
[#232 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

Films

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
[#230 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

Have a Good Funeral My Friend... Sartana Will Pay (1970)
[#229 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]
+ the audio commentary on Arrow's Blu-ray release

TV

Great News
1x03 Chuck Pierce Is Blind
1x04 War Is Hell
[Watch it (again) on Netflix.]

TV

The Great Model Railway Challenge
1x04 Heat Four: Fire and Ice
[Watch it (again) on My5.]

Films

Jodorowsky's Dune (2013)
[#228 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]
+ the 46 minutes of deleted scenes included on the Blu-ray. Some were interesting and could've been kept in the film. Others... less so.

TV

Batman: The Animated Series
1x14 Heart of Ice
2x19 Deep Freeze
The complete series was released on Blu-ray in the UK today, and now I own it -- hurrah! So why am I starting with this random selection of episodes? Well, the box set also includes the two films that are canon with the TV series, Mask of the Phantasm (which I watched relatively recently*) and SubZero (which I've never seen). The SubZero disc also includes four TV episodes to present the whole story of Mr Freeze in chronological order. I decided to inaugurate my set by watching SubZero, because I've been meaning to get round to it for years, but it seemed to make sense to watch all the lead-up episodes first. As well as these two, there's the New Batman Adventures one and the Batman Beyond one (see below!), which are both set after SubZero. I'll watch all of these again when I reach their respective places in the series proper... whenever I get round to watching that (goodness knows when that'll be!)

Batman Beyond (aka Batman of the Future)
1x05 Meltdown
I've arranged everything in alphabetical order here as normal, and SubZero is of course in a separate post, so here's the order they actually go in (and the order I watched them in): Heart of Ice, Deep Freeze, SubZero, Cold Comfort, Meltdown. Sorted.

Great News
1x01 Pilot
1x02 Bear Attack
[Watch it (again) on Netflix.]

The New Batman Adventures
1x03 Cold Comfort
This is counted as season three of B:TAS by the box set, but everywhere online (well, Wikipedia and IMDb, at least) count it as a separate series, for various reasons I won't go into here. On the evidence of this episode, it's not as good as the prior series.

* It turns out "relatively recently" here means "a whole year ago this week"! Where does time go?!

Films

Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero (1998)
[#227 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

The Other Side of the Wind (2018)
[#226 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

+ a 40-minute documentary about how The Other Side of the Wind was finally put together, A Final Cut for Orson: 40 Years in the Making, which is hidden under the "trailers" tab on Netflix and is definitely worth a look.

TV

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

Would I Lie To You?
12x04 Episode 4
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom 3D (2018)
[#225 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

this week on 100 Films

This week, 100 Films in a Year looked back at October...





...and there was 1 brand-new review too...


The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (2011)

for all the terribleness, I sort of feel I can’t hate it, because the rubbish bits are too funny, and the mad bits too bonkers (for a movie that is primarily aimed at romantically-inclined teenage girls, at least). While I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it, it was entertaining to sit through — kind of like The Room, for example, only still not quite as transcendently appalling.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

Films

Going for Golden Eye (2017)
[#224 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

Jurassic World 3D (2015)
[2nd watch]
Rewatchathon 2018 #42

Articles

Nudity on screen matters, so why are we afraid of it?
by Abby Robinson (from Digital Spy)

Shockingly, it turns out Digital Spy is still capable of decent writing sometimes, with this article presenting an interesting discussion of the topic.

Collection Count

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

Two new titles this week. Should've been more, but something seems to have been lost in the post.

Number of titles in collection: 2,165 [up 2]
Of which DVDs: 1,153 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 1,012 [up 2]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 4 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 5,545 [up 4]
Number of films: 2,418 [up 2]
Number of TV episodes: 8,294 [no change]
Number of short films: 639 [up 3]

Next week: a big box set turns up... but it's a Blu-ray upgrade from DVD, so it might actually push some numbers down. See you then, faithful reader.

TV

Doctor Who
37x04 Arachnids in the UK [2nd watch]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Their Finest (2016)
[#223 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

TV

Doctor Who
37x02 The Ghost Monument [2nd watch]
37x03 Rosa [2nd watch]
[Watch The Ghost Monument and Rosa (again) on iPlayer.]

Paul O'Grady: For the Love of Dogs
7x01 Episode 1
[Watch it (again) on the ITV Hub.]