TV

The Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2016
[Watch it (again) on All 4.]

Peter Pan Goes Wrong
Best thing on TV this Christmas? Quite possibly.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Suicide Squad: Extended Cut (2016)
[#195a in 100 Films in a Year 2016]

Not really that different to the theatrical cut, which I watched in November.

Collection Count

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

It's time for the monthly running time update... and it's also, as you may've noticed, the end of the year! So as well as my usual week-by-week monitoring (or month-by-month for the running time), there are figures for how much my collection has changed over the last 12 months. Exciting times.

Number of titles in collection: 1,921 [up 6 this week; up 96 in 2016]
Of which DVDs: 1,193 [no change this week; down 19 in 2016]
Of which Blu-rays: 728 [up 4 this week; up 115 in 2016]

I think that's the first time one of these tallies has gone down over the course of a year! (The discrepancy between number of titles and DVD/BD additions must be due to a mistake from a previous week.)

Number of discs in collection: 4,951 [up 21 this week; up 286 in 2016]
Number of films: 2,121 [up 5 this week; up 128 in 2016]
Number of TV episodes: 7,579 [up 38 this week; up 516 in 2016]
Number of short films: 508 [no change this week; up 43 in 2016]

Total running time of collection (approx.):
366 days, 10 hours, and 37 minutes.
(Up 2 days, 20 hours, and 50 minutes from last month.)
(Up 25 days, 12 hours, and 30 minutes from last year.)

Last year's yearly increase was a little over 29 days, making this the first time the year-on-year increase is less than the year before since I started (though it's not as low as it was the year-before-last, so...)

Anyway, see you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Peter Kay's Comedy Shuffle
1x07 Christmas Comedy Shuffle
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

The Last Dragonslayer (2016)
[#195 in 100 Films in a Year 2016]
Sky1's big Christmas Day drama, which I'm counting as a film because a) it's feature-length and b) my Tivo says it's a film. It says that about a lot of one-off feature-length TV dramas, but still.

The Tale of Zatoichi Continues (1962)
[#194 in 100 Films in a Year 2016]

TV

Bob Monkhouse: The Last Stand
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Celebrity Mastermind
2016/2017 Episode 2 (of 10)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Revolting Rhymes
Part One (of 2)
Part Two (of 2)
[Watch parts one and two (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
[#193 in 100 Films in a Year 2016]

What Do You Mean You Haven't Seen...? 2016 #12

TV

Celebrity Mastermind
2016/2017 Episode 1 (of 10)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Witness for the Prosecution
Part 1 (of 2)
Part 2 (of 2)
[Watch parts one and two (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Mr. Nobody (2009)
[#192 in 100 Films in a Year 2016]

TV

Insert Name Here
2x01 Christmas
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Paul O'Grady: For the Love of Dogs
5x08 Episode 8 [season finale]

Would I Lie To You?
10x10 At Christmas
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Dragon (2011)
aka Wu Xia
[#190 in 100 Films in a Year 2016]

Our Kind of Traitor (2016)
[#191 in 100 Films in a Year 2016]

TV

Blankety Blank
Christmas Special
[Watch it (again) on the ITV Hub.]

Grantchester
3x00 Christmas Special
[Watch it (again) on the ITV Hub.]

The Great Christmas Bake Off
Episode 2 (of 2)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

+ Goodbye Bake Off

Films

Partners in Crime… (2012)
[#189 in 100 Films in a Year 2016]

aka Associés contre le crime… "L'œuf d'Ambroise" (Partners in Crime… "The Ambroise Egg")

TV

Alan Carr's 12 Stars of Christmas
Episode 5 (of 5)
[Watch it (again) on All 4.]

Doctor Who
36x00 The Return of Doctor Mysterio [Christmas special]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Great Christmas Bake Off
Episode 1 (of 2)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Disney's A Christmas Carol (2009)
[#188 in 100 Films in a Year 2016]

Fiction

The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part V: Christmas Adventures edited by David Marcum
The Ballad of the Carbuncle by Ashley D. Polasek

Oh dear.

Music

Amy Macdonald's Christmas Special
Scottish songstress Amy Macdonald plays a few songs wearing a Star Wars Christmas jumper. Awesome.

this week on 100 Films

Merry Christmas, dear readers! As it falls on a Sunday this year, it remains time for my weekly update on goings on at 100 Films in a Year -- which at least includes a couple of seasonal features among the 4 brand-new reviews that were published this week...


Come Together (2016)

Anderson pitches the tone just right. Rather than making a four-minute festival of sappiness that rots your brain with its generic sugary sentiment, or a music video for a slow breathy cover of a once-famous song, or a long build-up to a cheap punchline, Anderson instead brings his own familiar style to a brief narrative that comes to a surprisingly heartwarming conclusion.

Read more here.


The Present (2014)

The simple story sees a videogame-obsessed boy given a mysterious box by his mother. Distracted long enough to open it, inside he finds a puppy, and… well, the film’s only four minutes long — you’re better off watching it than having me describe the story.

Read more here.


Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

The first live-action non-saga movie to take us to a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, this initial entry in what is sure to be a never-ending series of so-called “Anthology” movies really puts the “War” into Star Wars.

Read more here.


Wizardhood (2016)

So how exactly do you go about making such a huge reduction? Is it just a really, really long “previously on”-style montage? No, thank goodness, it isn’t. What editor Tim Stiefler has produced is less an abridgement and more a complete retelling of the Potter story. His cut doesn’t even attempt to tell whole swathes of the story, instead ditching them entirely. Stiefler has clearly tried to make a film out of this material, not just a long précis of the story.

Read more here.


Also, my 100 Favourites series continued with 1 more posts...


Young Adam (2003)

Part murder mystery, part beat character study, part erotic drama, Young Adam is an enigmatic, moody, conflicted film — in a good way. It presents a grimily realistic view of life and sex, around which writhes a murder mystery that, as it turns out, doesn’t contain a murder and, relatively quickly, isn’t much of a mystery.

Read more here.


And that's #100! It's not over, though, because I'll be posting some kind of wrap-up.


As always, more next Sunday.

TV

Alan Carr's 12 Stars of Christmas
Episode 4 (of 5)
[Watch it (again) on All 4.]

Junior Bake Off
4x13 The Semi-Final
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Mock the Week
15x13 Christmas Special
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Paul O'Grady's Favourite Fairy Tales
[Watch it (again) on ITV Hub.]

Collection Count

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

Well, I say "every week" -- circumstances mean it's been a whole month since my last update. And it being a whole month would normally mean it's time for a running time update, but as tomorrow's Christmas and next week will be the last day of the year, I'm going to push it back 'til then and do my usual year-long counts, too.

But you'd think Christmas had already been with the amount of stuff I've had to add this week -- though that's not as obvious in the final figures because the many additions are offset by having sold a few titles just before I went away. That led to drops across the board, most of which are recovered by the 11 new titles I actually added this week. I wager Christmas is going to look underpowered compared to that...

Number of titles in collection: 1,915 [up 2]
Of which DVDs: 1,193 [down 4]
Of which Blu-rays: 724 [up 6]

Number of discs in collection: 4,930 [up 15]
Number of films in collection: 2,116 [up 3]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 7,541 [up 58]
Number of short films in collection: 508 [up 8]

See you next week, faithful reader.