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...