Collection Count

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

After last week, which had increases across the board -- and some of them huge -- this week there's nothing to report. There's a pre-order in the post for next week, though; and it's also the running time update, which should be a big'un.

Number of titles in collection: 1,798 [no change]
Of which DVDs: 1,209 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 589 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 4,521 [no change]
Number of films in collection: 1,946 [no change]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 6,801 [no change]
Number of short films in collection: 455 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

Films

Filmed in Supermarionation (2014)
[#135 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

TV

The Great British Bake Off
6x08 Patisserie
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Ed Wood (1994)
[#134 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

Films

The Informant! (2009)
[#133 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

TV

Duck Quacks Don't Echo
3x03 Episode 3

Mock the Week
14x07 (10/9/15 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Yonderland
2x08 Careful What You Wish For [season finale]

Films

Willow (1988)
[#132 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

this week on 100 Films

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


How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)

Part of its success stems from being bold with the concept. Rather than just rehashing the first film’s story, or taking it in only a slightly different direction, returning writer-director Dean DeBlois jumps the story forward five years, in the process changing the status quo of the film’s world enough to keep it fresh.

Read more here.


The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014)

If you’re not au fait with the first two Hunger Games movies, there’s nothing for you here... Even for those of us who are, Mockingjay Part 1 throws us in at the deep end, starting a little while after the end of the last film and challenging us to keep up. It’s a little frustrating at times — if you’ve not watched the previous movies into the ground, there are points where you wonder if you’ve forgotten something or just not been told it yet — but ultimately helps make for an engrossing, mature movie.

Read more here.


John Wick (2014)

John Wick is an action movie. I know you know that, but what I mean is, that’s kind of all it is. There’s no transcendent deeper meaning here; no attempt to explore the real life of a hired killer. If anything, this is an ultra-heightened universe, where the criminal underworld has an entire society and set of rules unto itself, including a raft of familiar faces in cameo-sized roles.

Read more here.


North West Frontier (1959)

I caught a few seconds and thought it looked fabulously shot — I confess, that’s the only reason I’d got hold of a copy. I’m so glad I did though, because it’s excellent stuff — a rollicking, action-packed, old-fashioned (in the good sense) adventure, full of peril, derring-do, chases and shoot-outs.

Read more here.


Plus 11 archive reposts begin the story of 2007, the blog's first year...


Weeks 1-7

The aim of the original idea from which this blog is adapted is to read 50 books this year and list them here. There’s no way I’d manage that, to be honest. Yes, I’m an English Lit student — that doesn’t mean I read! So my version is to try to watch 100 films this year... we begin here, covering weeks one to seven of this year.

Read more here.


Week 8

Number of films per week required to achieve 100: 1.93. Current average number of films seen per week: 2.63. More than on target. Excellent.

Read more here.


Weeks 9-11

I’m not doing too badly — not yet a quarter of the way through the year and I’ve passed the quarter point in my total. There is hope yet!

Read more here.


Weeks 12-13 (Statistics)

The end of the second week here marks the exact quarter-way point of my filmic quest (in time terms anyway) and so it seems an appropriate point to reflect a little on my quest so far. So here are some numbers, all totalled up to the end of week thirteen

Read more here.


Week 14

this week I’ve hit an exact average of three films per week — if that were to continue I’d easily pass 150 films by the end of the year! It’s really beginning to seem that 100 is a rather easy mark to cross, while 150 would be more realistic… though only if I kept this rate up, and if I slipped I would fail. That’s never fun.

Read more here.


Weeks 15-18

After a glut of movies during the middle of the holiday things have slowed down a tad again. I say “a tad” — you can see how much by the sheer volume of weeks included in this entry and the relatively sparse number of films! (To be technical, the average-films-per-week in this entry is 1.75, compared to 2.72 overall and 6 (yes, 6!) last time.)

Read more here.


Weeks 19-20

In which I don’t see Spider-Man 3, because I don’t care enough to brave the huge opening weekend crowds (and it’s not meant to be very good anyway).

Read more here.


Weeks 21-23

This time I do see Spider-Man 3!

Read more here.


Weeks 24-26

I’m halfway through! For anyone who can’t remember how many weeks there are in a year… well, there’s 52; and half of 52 is 26; and the week of June 25th is week 26 of 2007, meaning that July 1st is just about halfway through the year (though, to be precise, there’s actually 52 weeks and one day in a year… well, actually, 52 weeks, one day and a quarter day… anyway…)

Read more here.


Weeks 27-28

I've done really pathetically in the last couple of months -- my average number of films per week has dropped from 2.7 for weeks 1 to 18 to just 1.5 for weeks 19 to 26! I ain't gonna get to the end that way... Actually, I'd hit exactly 100 by the end of the year if I carried on that way. But still, reaching 'only' 100 when I was more on track to hit 150 does seem like a slight disappointment.

Read more here.


Weeks 29-30

Another two week stretch on my quest to see 100 new films by the end of the year. I'm just not seeing enough films per week to warrant entries that often, it would seem. This time round I blame TV -- so many new things have started, as well as continuing shows, that I spend most of my time keeping up! During these two weeks I've been watching...

Read the list here.


More next Sunday.

TV

Doctor Who
35x00b Prologue
35x00c The Doctor's Meditation
35x01 The Magician's Apprentice
Two short 'prequels' (viewable at the above links, and via various services like Amazon Instant Video) and the season premiere proper. I enjoyed it on the whole, though as with all two-parters, you can't judge it properly until next week's conclusion.
[Watch The Magician's Apprentice (again) on iPlayer.]

The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice
2x07 Episode 7
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

American Sniper (2014)
[#131 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

Collection Count

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

Last week I mentioned that a complete TV series box set would provide a numbers boost this week. It did... and then I bought another one (both were thanks to great offer prices), and so the number of TV episodes gets a massive boost. As does the number of discs, of course.

The running time update in a couple of weeks should be pretty hefty 'n' all...

Number of titles in collection: 1,798 [up 3]
Of which DVDs: 1,209 [up 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 589 [up 2]

Number of discs in collection: 4,521 [up 58]
Number of films in collection: 1,946 [up 2]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 6,801 [up 167]
Number of short films in collection: 455 [up 1]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Top Coppers
1x03 The Venom of Dr Schafer
1x04 The Twist of the French Nicker
[Watch The Venom of Dr Schafer and The Twist of the French Nicker (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Duck Quacks Don't Echo
3x02 Episode 2

The Last Leg
7x09 (21/8/15 edition)
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

TV

Castle
5x03 Secret's Safe With Me

The Great British Bake Off
6x07 Victorian
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Top Coppers
1x01 The Chill of the Cockney Freezer
1x02 The Girdle of Randall Rodgers
[Watch The Chill of the Cockney Freezer and The Girdle of Randall Rodgers (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Duck Quacks Don't Echo
3x01 Episode 1

Films

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
[#130 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

TV

Castle
5x02 Cloudy with a Chance of Murder

The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice
2x06 Episode 6
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Would I Lie To You?
9x07 Episode 7
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

What Dreams May Come (1998)
[#129 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

Films

Superbad (2007)
[#2015 in 100 Films in a Year 2015]

this week on 100 Films

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


Contagion (2011)

Director Steven Soderbergh takes the methodology he used to depict the drug trade in Traffic — an ensemble cast divided among a portmanteau of colour-coded storylines to examine different aspects of the theme — and applies it to the outbreak of a devastating global pandemic.

Read more here.


The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

If you’ve read or seen a previous version then you know the story, which hasn’t succumbed to a massive reworking for this American remake — it’s still set in Sweden, even. If you don’t... The novel’s original title translates as Men Who Hate Women, and that’s a pretty succinct summary of the grim, violent, nasty places the stories take us.

Read more here.


Shivers (1975)

The first commercial (i.e. non-student) feature by horror maestro-to-be David Cronenberg, Shivers depicts the sexually-charged chaos that erupts after the spread of a man-made sexually-transmitted parasite in an isolated hyper-modern tower block.

Read more here.


Plus six archive posts were reposted on the new blog...


Audrey Hepburn, er, ‘Week’…

Channel 4 attempted a week of Audrey Hepburn films. Except for some reason they didn’t schedule one for Monday. And then Friday’s, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, was replaced by delayed horse racing. And for my part, I forgot to record Thursday’s film, Funny Face. So following Valentine’s Day, Channel 4 showed a pair of Audrey Hepburn films

Read more here.


Hercules’ New Groove

Hercules and The Emperor’s New Groove are connected by two things: firstly, they’re among the first Disney films I didn’t see because I’d Grown Up; secondly, I’m not sure I’d’ve wanted to see them anyway because I always thought they looked rubbish... Finally seeing this pair now, I find that my expectations were surprisingly flouted in one case, and sadly vindicated in another.

Read more here.


A pair of comedies — one with snow!

It’s Christmas Eve!... As I have no Christmassy films stacked up in my big pile of things I need to get round to reviewing, I’ve decided the nearest I can offer to the Christmas spirit is a pair of British comedies (comedies being kinda jolly, see), one of which has snow, which is always Christmassy. Except when it’s just at the North Pole. Like in this film. Oh shh, it’s the best I could do.

Read more here.


Robin Hood, without the realism

By the vagaries of chance, I wound up watching two classic (read: old) Robin Hood-related films around the time Ridley Scott’s new realistic (read: still all made-up, but ‘gritty’) film was in cinemas. So for those who felt Scott's Robin Hood lacked the necessary swashing of buckles, what about this pair?

Read more here.


A week of vengeance

Each day this week I’ll be posting a new review of a film about vengeance... The films I’ve picked out are British thriller Harry Brown, flop comic book Western Jonah Hex, classic ’70s Western High Plains Drifter, and violent action-thriller Law Abiding Citizen.

Read more here.


What price a 'Definitive Cut'?

The question of a ‘definitive version’ comes in the multitude of Director’s Cuts, Extended Cuts, Harder Cuts, Extreme Cuts — whatever label the marketing boys & girls slap on them, Longer Versions You Didn’t See In The Cinema is what they are. But are they better? Or more definitive? Does it matter?

Read more here.


More next Sunday.