TV

Friday Night Dinner
6x02 The Plastic Bag
[Watch it (again) on All 4.]

The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice
6x06 Episode 6
[Watch it (again) on All 4.]

Lucifer
5x01 Really Sad Devil Guy
[Watch it (again) on Netflix.]

The Rookie
2x10 The Dark Side
2x11 Day of Death

Collection Count

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

It's much later than usual this week thanks to several big additions to factor in, and just in time for the monthly running time update, making it that much more thorough.

So, this week's biggest addition is Arrow's complete Gamera box set -- big physically (it's an over-sized box set including two big books) and in terms of content (8 discs with 12 films and 4 alternate cuts, plus bags of extras, including an audio commentary on every film). It's going to take me a while to get through that! Well, I'm still working my way through the Criterion Zatoichi set I bought years ago, and I haven't started their Godzilla set I got for Christmas, so... yeah.

Also from Arrow this week is a 4K release of Pitch Black, which I thought upgraded my DVD copy, but I own the Riddick Collection Blu-ray and, of course, got rid of the DVD when I bought that (why I thought I'd kept the DVD, I don't know). The Riddick Collection also includes short film Dark Fury in SD, which the new Pitch Black includes in HD, and The Chronicles of Riddick film, which means I still need to hang onto it for now.

I also bought another new DVD set this week (silent films again)... but then I upgraded an old DVD set to Blu-ray copies, so they cancel each other out.

Number of titles in collection: 2,436 [up 4]
Of which DVDs: 1,089 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 1,347 [up 4]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 71 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 6,267 [up 13]
Number of films: 2,750 [up 16]
Number of additional cuts: 184 [up 6]
Number of TV episodes: 8,958 [no change]
Number of short films: 760 [up 1]

Total running time of collection (approx.):
456 days, 4 hours, and 43 minutes.
(Up 3 days, 9 hours, and 38 minutes from last month.)

It's a year of big increases, because that's second place for the year (behind March) and the fourth to have an increase over 3 days (that means 50% of months this year have seen increases that large). The final tally for 2020 might be a huge one...

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

The Great British Bake Off
10x06 Dessert Week
[Watch it (again) on All 4.]

Jonathan Creek
4x01 The Coonskin Cap [2nd watch]
We're getting into the era of Jonathan Creek where I accidentally stopped watching, so I can't remember for certain which of these episodes I've seen; but I'm pretty sure I at least started series 4. (I appreciate this matters to no one but me.)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Rookie
2x09 Breaking Point

this week on 100 Films

2 new reviews were published to 100 Films in a Year this week...


The Man Who Laughs (1928)

Perhaps because of the connections to other horror films, and because it inspired such a violent character in the Joker, and because of the publicity stills that inspired that look, and because its production studio (Universal) would shortly become renowned for their iconic interpretations of the cornerstones of horror (Dracula, Frankenstein, et al), The Man Who Laughs has often been cited as a horror movie. It isn’t. It's a romantic melodrama, with a bit of antiestablishment satire and a swashbuckling climax thrown in for good measure.

Read more here.


Yes, God, Yes (2019)

It would be easy to label this a “cumming of age movie” (such a pun is certainly not below my level of humour), but it would feel slightly inaccurate. Put another way, if you’ve come to see Nancy Wheeler cum, you’ll be disappointed... Indeed, despite it providing the plot hook and title, wanking is only one part of the film’s exposure of religious hypocrisy.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

TV

Red Dwarf: The First Three Million Years
1x03 Playing Pool with Planets [finale]
[Watch it (again) on UKTV Play.]

TV

The Twilight Zone
3x21 Kick the Can
5x01 In Praise of Pip
+ the commentary on Kick the Can by Marc Scott Zicree and the episode's writer, George Clayton Johnson, and the one on In Praise of Pip by Zicree and Neil Gaiman

TV

Red Dwarf: The First Three Million Years
1x02 In Studio Space No One Can Hear You Scream
[Watch it (again) on UKTV Play.]

The Twilight Zone
3x01 Two

Films

Bad Boys for Life (2020)
[#194 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020)
[#193 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

TV

The Twilight Zone
2x16 A Penny for Your Thoughts
+ audio commentary by Marc Scott Zicree and the episode's writer, George Clayton Johnson

Films

The Assistant (2019)
[#192 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

TV

Derren Brown: 20 Years of Mind Control
I've been a fan of Derren's since the start, so this special was both a welcome celebration and made me feel old (20 years!) The reminiscences and clips were nice (it makes me want to go back and properly rewatch so much stuff), but the new live trick was a bit of a damp squib. The ‘subliminal’ messages were so obvious (it seems like all of Twitter spotted them) that I assumed there was a double-bluff coming... but no, it was what it appeared. Ho hum. (Of note, the version on All 4 last night omitted all the live bits (fortunately I recorded it because I wasn't free to watch live), but it has now been updated.)
[Watch it (again) on All 4.]

Films

Yes, God, Yes (2019)
[#191 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

Articles

Derren Brown on 20 years of blowing our minds and why he’s planning to do less TV in future
by Simon Hattenstone (from Radio Times)
A long-ish interview tied to Derren's 20th anniversary TV special.

Films

Pearl Harbor (2001)
[#190 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

Fiction

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1 A Scandal in Bohemia [2nd read]
The first Sherlock Holmes short story (after two novels), and it reads like it -- it feels quite like an introduction (not a total introduction, but a bit of one) compared to the other stories I've been reading lately. Also, I suspected I might've actually read this one before, and now I'm fairly sure I had. It's good though, so not exactly harm done reading it again!

this week on 100 Films

I suppose I could call this post "this fortnight on 100 Films in a Year", because I didn't do a post last week; but that was because there was nothing to share, so it is still a week's worth of stuff.

Anyway, just 1 new review was published this week...


Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)

plays with a lot of the same comedic ideas as its predecessor — i.e. the mismatch between real-life person and in-game persona — but mixes up who’s imitating who. [Then] they head off on an Indiana Jones-type adventure — again, much like the first movie. For many, this repetition of ideas has been a stumbling block. [But] to me, it feels like they took what worked in the first movie and polished it. It’s still fundamentally the same kind of comedy action-adventure — if you disliked the first movie, there’s no reason this should appeal to you more — but refined.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

Films

The Dancing Pig (1907)
[#189a in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

The Man Who Laughs (1928)
[#189 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]
+ reading the booklet accompanying Masters of Cinema's new Blu-ray release

Collection Count

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

I actually bought two DVDs this week! Both silent serials, one of which I very much doubt will ever end up on Blu-ray (if it were going to, it would've been released at the same time as this DVD edition), the other of which might but, well, there's no sign of it. Both were second-hand bargains on eBay -- the pair cost less than just one would have new. I'm very pleased.

But I also upgraded a DVD to 4K, so the DVD total only increases by one. Still, that's the first time it's actually gone up in over a year -- although it was over 40 titles higher back then.

Number of titles in collection: 2,432 [up 4]
Of which DVDs: 1,089 [up 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 1,343 [up 4]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 70 [up 2]

Number of discs in collection: 6,254 [up 11]
Number of films: 2,734 [up 3]
Number of additional cuts: 178 [no change]
Number of TV episodes: 8,958 [up 23]
Number of short films: 759 [no change]

FYI, the serials are counted under TV episodes. Although they're really films (what with TV not existing at the time), they're also all under feature-length, making them shorts... but they're not really shorts, because they're episodes. So, yeah, not really TV, but that still seems the fairest place to count them. (It's also what I've previously done for other serials whose episodes are below feature length.)

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Hannah Gadsby: Nanette
[Watch it (again) on Netflix.]

Films

Color Out of Space (2019)
[#188 in 100 Films in a Year 2020]

Frankenstein (1910)
[#188a in 100 Films in a Year 2020]
The first screen adaptation of the novel. There's a restored HD version on YouTube here if you're interested.