Sunday, 15 September 2019

Films

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
[3rd watch]
Rewatchathon 2019 #22

Fiction

Shōgun by James Clavell
Chapters 20-21

this week on 100 Films

Just 1 new review was published to 100 Films in a Year this week, and it was...


The Predator (2018)
it was quite a poor film… but I also sort of enjoyed it. Not in a Gods of Egypt way (that was kinda “so bad it’s good”; or maybe “so strange it’s good”), nor in a “I can see what they were going for, they just couldn’t quite get there” way, but in a… well, there’s the rub. The film undoubtedly has its problems, but it also has bits I was okay with; liked, even. What it feels like is a decent, middle-of-the-road-ish sci-fi actioner… that they then, for some unfathomable reason, deliberately dicked around with to make it kinda bad.
Read more here.


More next Sunday.

Saturday, 14 September 2019

TV

Stranger Things 3
3x05 Chapter Five: The Flayed
3x06 Chapter Six: E Pluribus Unum
[Watch it (again) on Netflix.]

Films

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)
[#127 in 100 Films in a Year 2019]

Fiction

Shōgun by James Clavell
Chapter 19

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week. And this week, almost out of the blue (or, should I say, Blu), there's a mass of additions!

Four are sale/offer titles, two new releases that aren't out officially until next week. One upgrades a Blu-ray from 2D to 3D, so only adds a single disc to the totals. Another upgrades a Blu-ray from 2D to 3D, but I'm keeping the old one for a special features disc, so it effectively doubles that film's numbers. Another upgrades a Blu-ray from HD to UHD, adding a new cut of the film and a whole raft of extra discs in the process, more than doubling that film's presence in this numbers.

Not that any of that actually matters. I mean, Apocalypse Now going from making up 0.085% of my discs to 0.187% doesn't really make much difference, does it?

Number of titles in collection: 2,257 [up 5]
Of which DVDs: 1,130 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 1,127 [up 5]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 34 [up 2]

Number of discs in collection: 5,871 [up 15]
Number of films: 2,611 [up 7]
Number of TV episodes: 8,640 [up 3]
Number of short films: 674 [up 1]

Finally, one of the other new acquisitions is the miniseries Shogun, which is noteworthy because it presented something of a dilemma for my episode count. It was originally screened over five nights in the US, but I believe has been shown in as many as ten episodes elsewhere (it's long enough for ten one-hours). However, on home media it's always edited into one long feature spread across multiple discs. On DVD, that made it into four parts; on Blu-ray, it's in three; and either way you could argue it's just one long film, with one set of opening titles and closing credits. So, how to count it? In the end, I've gone with three episodes. I can't imagine I'll watch it in three three-hour chunks (well, I might), but that's how it's presented (thanks to the disc breaks), so...

See you next week, faithful reader.

Friday, 13 September 2019

Wednesday, 11 September 2019

Tuesday, 10 September 2019

TV

Stranger Things 3
3x01 Chapter One: Suzie, Do You Copy?
Finally getting round to this! Thought it was a really good opener -- reminded me why the show's so enjoyable. Well, one of the reasons: in this case, the characters, which is good because the episode spends quite a lot of time hanging around with them.
[Watch it (again) on Netflix.]

Films

Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler. Zweiter Teil: Inferno. Ein Spiel von Menschen unserer Zeit. (1922)
[#125 in 100 Films in a Year 2019]

aka Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler. Part Two: Inferno. A Game of People of Our Time.

Blindspot 2019 #9b

Fiction

Shōgun by James Clavell
Chapters 10-12

Monday, 9 September 2019

Films

Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler. Erster Teil: Der groBe Spieler. Ein Bild der Zeit. (1922)
[#124 in 100 Films in a Year 2019]

aka Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler. Part One: The Great Gambler. An Image of the Time.

Blindspot 2019 #9a

Fiction

Shōgun by James Clavell
Chapters 8-9

End of Book One. Not really sure why, but maybe the structural reason will become clearer as I read on. It's undoubtedly a long, complicated book (I'm on page 187, just 15% of the way through, and there are already dozens of characters, but there are major ones we've not yet met), but it's a good read.