Articles

Ang Lee: A Visionary Director Comes Face-To-Face With 3D’s Dimming Prospects
by Geoff Boucher (from Deadline)

Good long-ish read on Ang Lee's new movie and how he hopes to push technological boundaries in cinema.

TV

Catherine the Great
Part 1 (of 4)
Not a promising start. It looks suitably opulent (especially in UHD), but the writing and acting (despite a starry, talented cast) are thoroughly mediocre.

University Challenge
2019/20 Episode 11
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Strictly Come Dancing
17x06 Week 3 Results (aka Movies)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

this week on 100 Films

We begin with a look back at last month on 100 Films in a Year...





After which, 1 new review was published...


Colossal (2016)

you’d be forgiven for thinking this is just another indie rom-com. Anne Hathaway moves back to her Nowheresville hometown, reconnects with childhood friend Oscar (Jason Sudeikis), and romance is surely in the air. But Colossal has a couple of surprises up its sleeve. Concurrent with Gloria’s return home, a giant monster begins to rampage around Seoul, and she comes to realise these two disconnected events are, in fact, connected. Meanwhile, the relationship storyline has a few twists in store too.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

Collection Count

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

As intimated last week, there's a whole pile of additions this time. Most of which arrived right at the end of the week, and several required some real working out about what they upgraded or didn't from my existing collection -- hence why this post is on Sunday (not that there's anyone to notice).

So, those additions include:
- the Spider-Man: Legacy 4K box set, containing Spider-Man 1-3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 1&2, which replaces a variety of editions I own on DVD and Blu-ray, but not all my existing copies(!) I may let go of some more in future, if I find this new set duplicates the old one's contents after all.
- the latest release in Doctor Who: The Collection, which as it's Season 23, aka Trial of a Time Lord, is just a one-for-one DVD-to-BD upgrade
- Arrow's Oldboy / the Vengeance Trilogy on Blu-ray, which replaces my standalone Oldboy Special Edition DVD but not my Vengeance Trilogy box set (only because that's a nice box with some swag in it)
- Criterion's release of The Magnificent Ambersons, which replaces a DVD I had bundled with the US BD of Citizen Kane
- and two other titles, with four films between them.

Whew!

And yet, as you'll see, the net number of new titles is... zero. Eesh.

Number of titles in collection: 2,258 [no change]
Of which DVDs: 1,127 [down 3]
Of which Blu-rays: 1,131 [up 3]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 35 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 5,885 [up 14]
Number of films: 2,620 [up 8]
Number of TV episodes: 8,640 [no change]
Number of short films: 674 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

QI
17x05 Questions & Qualifications
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Strictly Come Dancing
17x05 Week 3 (aka Movies)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

Joker May Represent The Post-Avengers Future For Comic Book Superhero Movies
by Scott Mendelson (from Forbes)

Excellent broad-sweep analysis of recent superhero era(s) and what the immediate future may hold for mainstream cinema as a whole -- i.e. "everything's a superhero movie".

Films

An array of shorts...

Allan + Waspy (2019)
[#130e in 100 Films in a Year 2019]

Cumulus (2018)
[#130b in 100 Films in a Year 2019]

Fifteen (2018)
[#130a in 100 Films in a Year 2019]
aka Quince

Pleased to Eat You! (2019)
[#130c in 100 Films in a Year 2019]

Special Delivery (2018)
[#130d in 100 Films in a Year 2019]

TV

QI
17x04 Queasy Quacks
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

University Challenge
2019/20 Episode 7
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco
1x03 Charlotte's Web
1x04 Madhouse

Films

Howards End (1992)
[#130 in 100 Films in a Year 2019]

TV

The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco
1x01 Presidio
1x02 Wake
American-produced sequel/spin-off from The Bletchley Circle. And it certainly feels like cheap US TV rather than a properly British show, unfortunately.

Films

Agatha and the Truth of Murder (2018)
[#129 in 100 Films in a Year 2019]

Collection Count

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

Ah, a lull -- there's absolutely nothing to report this week. Next week will, I think, be a different story.

Number of titles in collection: 2,258 [no change]
Of which DVDs: 1,130 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 1,128 [no change]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 34 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 5,871 [no change]
Number of films: 2,612 [no change]
Number of TV episodes: 8,640 [no change]
Number of short films: 674 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Lewis
7x05 Intelligent Design Part 1
7x06 Intelligent Design Part 2 [season finale]
[Watch both parts (again) on the ITV Hub.]

Fiction

Shōgun by James Clavell
Chapter 30

TV

University Challenge
2019/20 Episode 10
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Hannibal (2001)
[2nd watch]
Rewatchathon 2019 #23

this week on 100 Films

3 new reviews were published to 100 Films in a Year this week, and they were...


Battle at Big Rock (2019)

Set one year on from the cliffhanger-ish ending to the last film, this short presents a vignette in the Jurassic world that will help bridge the gap between the previous feature and 2021’s third/sixth instalment. But aside from that large franchise-minded goal, it’s also a chance to see some different characters have a different kind of encounter within the films’ universe.

Read more here.


Downton Abbey (2019)

As the 2020s loom, with the world in a scary old place for a whole host of reasons, why not retreat to the safety of the 1920s, when posh toffs ran the country because their birthright had put them there rather than because the hoi polloi had actually chosen to vote for them in some act of retrograde nationalism. Downton Abbey does actually feature a subplot where a group of working-class servants secretly plot to overthrow the system… but the system in question is the one about who gets to serve the King and Queen their dinner. The working classes fighting amongst themselves about something fundamentally unimportant while the upper classes carry on serenely above them? It’s almost allegorical, although I suspect not on purpose.

Read more here.


John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)

The action-man with the second most quotable line about being back is, er, back — again — for the third chapter in the ongoing saga of what happens if you kill a man’s dog. Basically, lots of people die. Quite right too.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

Fiction

Shōgun by James Clavell
Chapters 26-29

End of Book Two.