Films

A Christmas Carol (2018)
[#260 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

The Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2018
[Watch it (again) on All 4.]

University Challenge
Christmas 2018 Pembroke College, Cambridge v King's College, London
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)
[2nd or so watch]
Rewatchathon 2018 #49. I rewatched the first film last Christmas, and intended to get round to this sequel too. Well, it's only taken me 371 days…

TV

The Dead Room
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Mrs Brown's Boys
Exotic Mammy [Christmas special]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

University Challenge
Christmas 2018 Westminster University v University of East Anglia
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Upstart Crow
3x07 A Crow Christmas Carol [Christmas special]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Click & Collect
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Not Going Out
10x00 Ding Dong Merrily on Live [Christmas special]
10x00 Ding Dong Merrily on Live [Christmas special; 2nd watch]
So good I watched it twice.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

University Challenge
Christmas 2018 Brasenose, Oxford v Bristol
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Hachi: A Dog's Tale (2009)
[#259 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

TV

The Chase
The Bloopers
[Watch it (again) on the ITV Hub.]

Have I Got News For You
56x11 Have I Got 2018 News For You [special]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow
1x01 Edinburgh [2nd watch]
[Watch it (again) on Netflix.]

Murder on the Blackpool Express
[2nd watch]
[Watch it (again) on UKTV Play.]

Watership Down
Part 3 The Escape
Part 4 The Siege
[Watch parts three and four (again) on iPlayer.]

this week on 100 Films

Not too much to report in the past week at 100 Films in a Year, but it did include the monthly TV review...





...and just 1 new film review...


Ready Player One (2018)

Steven Spielberg’s latest foray into the style of popular moviemaking he helped create in the ‘70s and ’80s — the summer tentpole action-adventure mega-blockbuster — is an adaptation of a novel so bedded in the popular movies of the ‘70s and ‘80s that the whole thing is a bit too meta: it’s a movie obsessed with the brilliance of ‘80s pop culture, made by one of the primary creators of that culture. At least Spielberg insisted that all references to his own work be cut, otherwise it could’ve become a mite self-congratulatory. Though it does mean that Spielberg becomes conspicuous by his absence in a Spielberg movie. Oh, it’s enough to make your head spin…

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

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.