DVD Extras

Dunkirk Special Features
The three featurettes under "Land", about how they staged the beach scenes, and the two under "Air", about how they achieved the aerial sequences. The latter was particularly interesting, because they basically invented a load of new techniques -- as well as reviving some very old ones -- to do things that have never been done before. Quite incredible.

TV

Blue Planet II
Episode 2 The Deep
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Celebrity Mastermind
2017/2018 Episode 2 (of 10)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Doctor Who
37x00 Twice Upon a Time [Christmas special; 2nd watch]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Blue Planet II
Episode 1 One Ocean
Finally watching this in UHD via iPlayer (only available via certain devices). It looks absolutely stunning.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Celebrity Mastermind
2017/2018 Episode 1 (of 10)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong
[2nd watch]
Enjoyed this more a second time, actually.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Not Going Out
9x00 The True Meaning of Christmas [Christmas special]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Tim Vine Travels Through Time
Christmas Special [2nd watch]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

this week on 100 Films

With the new year only just underway, the past week over at 100 Films in a Year has been entirely concerned with looking back at 2017.

It started with the monthly progress report for December...





And continued with these four posts looking over the year in its entirety...


My Top 5 Most-Read New Posts in 2017

This year, all five of my most-read posts are from my TV review column... But this is a film blog (it’s in the title), so this year I’m doing two top fives: the genuine top 5 most-read new posts in 2017, which is also the top 5 most-read new TV-related posts, and then the top 5 most-read new film-related posts.

Read more here.


2017: The Full List

2017 — the 11th year I’ve been doing this 100 films challenge, and the fifth consecutive year I’ve surpassed that goal. Below is the full list of new films I watched this year, all linked up to reviews and that.

Read more here.


2017 Statistics

In today’s post we do the fun stuff: look at all sorts of statistics about 2017's viewing. Hurrah!

Read more here.


The Best & Worst of 2017

Having listed all I watched in 2017 and analysed it thoroughly, it’s time for the finale: what I thought were the best films I saw last year.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

TV

Death in Paradise
7x01 Murder from Above
I once complained that Death in Paradise should have episode titles. According to Wikipedia, it's had them all along. Hm. Anyway, henceforth I'll be using those, wherever they derive from.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Would I Lie To You?
11x05 At Christmas
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Collection Count

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

I was unable to do an accurate year-on-year increases post last time because I was away from home. Although we're now nearly a week into 2018, I've not purchased or received anything new since December 31st, so this post will serve just as well.

Number of titles in collection: 2,075 [up 3 this week; up 154 in 2017]
Of which DVDs: 1,166 [no change this week; down 27 in 2017]
Of which Blu-rays: 909 [up 3 this week; up 181 in 2017]

That's my highest number of new titles in a year since records began (i.e. 2013). And I was meant to be trying to buy less!

Number of discs in collection: 5,325 [up 11 this week; up 374 in 2017]
Number of films: 2,314 [up 7 this week; up 193 in 2017]
Number of TV episodes: 8,005 [no change this week; up 426 in 2017]
Number of short films: 599 [no change this week; up 91 in 2017]

Not quite sure how I acquired so many short films. As far as I'm aware that's all made up of odd ones here and there included with feature films.

Total running time of collection (approx.):
393 days, 17 hours, and 40 minutes.
(Up 1 day, 12 hours, and 18 minutes from last month.)
(Up 27 days, 7 hours, and 3 minutes from last year.)

Despite that whopping number of new titles, that's not the highest yearly running time increase (that belongs to 2015, probably because I acquired nearly 50% more TV episodes that year).

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

University Challenge
Christmas 2017 The Grand Final
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

DVD Extras

Dunkirk Special Features
The four featurettes under the heading "Creation". I intend to watch the remaining 12, just not all in one go (altogether they add up to just under 2 hours -- slightly longer than the film itself).

TV

University Challenge
Christmas 2017 Semi-Final 2
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Bright (2017)
[#1 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]
It begins again...

Dunkirk (2017)
[2nd watch]
Rewatchathon 2018 #1. This, too, begins again...

TV

University Challenge
Christmas 2017 Brunel University v Reading University
Christmas 2017 Semi-Final 1
[Watch Brunel v Reading and Semi-Final 1 (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Michael McIntyre: Happy & Glorious
Thought I'd seen this -- I recognised the start -- but it's not in my records and there were bits I didn't remember, so...
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Mrs Brown's Boys
CSI: Mammy [New Year special]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

University Challenge
Christmas 2017 Queen Mary College, London v Cardiff University
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

The Graham Norton Show
22x13 New Year's Eve Show
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Little Women
Part 2 (of 3)
Part 3 (of 3)
[Watch parts two and three (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Airplane! (1980)
[2nd watch]

Rewatchathon 2017 #52

this week on 100 Films

As it's the new year tomorrow, this week over at 100 Films in a Year has ended with a review of 2017's Christmas TV...





Aside from that, there were 8 brand-new film reviews...


The 39 Steps (1935)

This adaptation of John Buchan’s adventure novel is one of the best-known among director Alfred Hitchcock’s early works, and for good reason. Galloping briskly along with a running time under 90 minutes, it’s a film where mood, tone, and the wonderful execution of individual sequences are all allowed to trump plot, which is somewhere on the spectrum from unexplained to nonsensical.

Read more here.


Dances with Wolves Special Edition (1990/1991)

the near-four-hour extended one certainly feels its length. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — this is an epic in the truest sense of the word, with a large story to tell on a grand canvass; although it’s concurrently a drama about just a couple of people from different cultures coming to interact.

Read more here.


Gran Torino (2008)

I imagine it would play very nicely as a companion piece and/or counterpoint to his earlier Oscar-winner, Unforgiven — both are stories about old men in one final fight, essentially. Here, that comes with a subtext about the price that’s paid for standing up for yourself. It may be the right thing to do, and maybe it ends up with the right result, but the good guys really suffer to get to that point.

Read more here.


Jackie Brown (1997)

Some people argue that Jackie Brown is secretly Tarantino’s best movie. I add “secretly” there because it gets a lot less attention than the aforementioned movies that came either side of it. That’s not a bandwagon I’m prepared to jump on. To me, it feels a little like QT was trying to emulate what worked about Pulp Fiction without just making a rip-off of his own movie, and therefore it’s a bit of an inferior copy.

Read more here.


A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

It’s a grandly romantic film — it is all about the triumph of love over everything else, after all — but with a particular fantastical bent that I think remains unique. It has the wit to present a mildly irreverent stance on the afterlife, not taking the whole “life and death” thing too seriously.

Read more here.


Nashville (1975)

Robert Altman’s low-key epic about 24 characters and how their stories interact, overlap, and collide across five days in the city of Nashville, Tennessee. The sheer scope of that makes it a tricky film to interpret. There’s a lot going on, much of it in snatched conversations and moments that leave it up to the audience to piece together what matters and why.

Read more here.


Planet of the Apes (1968)

Coming to Planet of the Apes for the first time almost 50 years after its release, there’s an unavoidable quaintness to some of it, mainly the monkey makeup. It was for a long time iconic, but it’s been abandoned in favour of hyper-realistic CGI in the new movies and therefore shows its age.

Read more here.


Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

Screenplay (first two acts) — 3/5
Screenplay (bit where it suddenly gets plot-heavy and all exposition-y to set up the third act) — 1/5
Screenplay (third act that seems to be from a completely different, much more conventional movie) — 2/5

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

TV

A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Little Women
Part 1 (of 3)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

A Few Good Men (1992)
Stumbled across this on TV and watched chunks from the second half, including the famous climax. Not something I'd do normally, but when having Christmas at other people's houses... It's not like my viewing of it first time round was perfect, having to wait over two months between most of the film and the final half-hour. I really ought to re-watch it properly.

Scrooged (1988)
[#174 in 100 Films in a Year 2017]

Collection Count

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

Technically the monthly running time update isn't due until next week, but this is the last update of 2017 so I thought it would be better to bring it forward a week and do all my past-year increases... but I'm away from home at the minute, and home is where my full records are, so it'll have to wait after all. On the bright side, I'm not expecting any new additions in the next week that aren't technically already here (they're waiting for me when I get home), so it'll still be accurate for my 2017 increases.

Aaaanyway! On with the stats for what I got for Christmas...

Number of titles in collection: 2,072 [up 2]
Of which DVDs: 1,166 [down 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 906 [up 3]

Number of discs in collection: 5,314 [up 3]
Number of films: 2,307 [up 2]
Number of TV episodes: 8,005 [no change]
Number of short films: 599 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

The Late Late Show Carpool Karaoke Primetime Special
Mistook this for a Christmas special in Sky One's listings, but it's actually from the summer. Despite the title, it's really just a Late Late Show special -- presumably they put Carpool Karaoke in the title because it's famous and therefore a draw.

Live at the Apollo
13x07 Christmas Special
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

QI
15x09 O Christmas (XL edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Tim Vine Travels Through Time
Christmas Special
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

University Challenge
Christmas 2017 St John's College, Cambridge v St Edmund Hall, Oxford
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942)
[2nd watch]

Rewatchathon 2017 #51, although this time I watched the colourised version, just out of curiosity. It wasn't bad, but it doesn't look quite real -- everything's too washed out, too pastel-y, without enough nuance in the shades and range of colours, despite their best efforts. It's not distracting, at least, but it's ultimately pointless.