Thursday, 6 March 2025

Videos

Critical Role
2x90 Bathhouses and Bastions [1st half]
Welcome to 2020! I'm sure it's going to be a great year...
[Watch it (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]

Critical Role Cooldown
Daggerheart Ep 2: The Menagerie Returns!
[Watch it (again) on Beacon.]

Wednesday, 5 March 2025

Videos

Critical Role
The Menagerie Returns! [2nd half]
Cliffhanger ending! Good thing there's a third one.
[Watch it (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]

Tuesday, 4 March 2025

Videos

Critical Role
The Menagerie Returns! [1st half]
Watch the Menagerie level up to L4 on YouTube or Beacon (if you like basically just hanging out with the CR cast for 25 minutes), which is where they start this second adventure. (I watched the first almost six months ago — where does time go?!)
[Watch it (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]

Monday, 3 March 2025

TV

The 97th Annual Academy Awards
aka the Oscars — the actual ceremony this time. I thought it was fine — nothing bad happened; nothing really great or surprising. Conan was an adequate host: some jokes landed, some didn't; nothing really bombed, but nothing really shone.
[Watch it (again) on ITVX.]

Friends
6x03 The One with Ross's Denial [5th or so watch]
6x04 The One Where Joey Loses His Insurance [5th or so watch]
6x05 The One with Joey's Porsche [5th or so watch]

Films

The Sinister Man (1961)
[#26 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]

Sunday, 2 March 2025

TV

The 97th Annual Academy Awards
aka the Oscars... though not the ceremony itself, because that starts at midnight, but an hour-and-a-half of build-up on UK TV.
[Watch a selection of Oscars-related programmes and films on ITVX.]

Friends
6x01 The One After Vegas [5th or so watch]
6x02 The One Where Ross Hugs Rachel [5th or so watch]

Towards Zero
Part 1 (of 3)
Part 2 (of 3)
Part 3 (of 3)
[Watch the whole series (again) on iPlayer.]

Saturday, 1 March 2025

Films

Hooray for Hollywood (1982)
[#25 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]

Never Back Losers (1961)
[#23 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]

Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962)
[#24 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]

Videos

No actual videos watched today, but I wanted to mark the occasion nonetheless, because today is the first anniversary* of my getting into Critical Role. In that time, I've watched 356 hours of Campaign 2, 105 hours of Talks Machina, multiple Daggerheart-based one-shots and related levelling-up videos, and untold hours of clips and other bits & pieces on YouTube that I don't log on here because, c'mon, that would be insane (even more insane than the entire exercise of this blog is in the first place).

As I mentioned last time I actually watched an episode, I've still got a long way to go until I'm caught up (over 200 more hours of C2 itself, never mind Talks, one-shots, and miniseries that I want to watch) — but with Campaign 4 on the horizon, it may not be too long before I just jump ahead to 'live' so I don't feel so out of touch.

* Something I regret about that inaugural post: "I’ll spare you my usual long-winded explanation of how I first heard of it and what made me decide to start now." It seemed smart at the time, but I've long since forgotten what exactly drove me to start watching it (and how much I'd heard of it before), and I wish I could remember. Thwarted myself there.

Collection Count

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

Fun times with maths this week: six new titles arrived, including a DVD-to-4K upgrade, a BD-to-4K upgrade, and a classic Doctor Who season set that upgrades a Blu-ray and a DVD, but is questionable about two other DVDs. Here's how that panned out...

Number of titles in collection: 3,482 [up 2]
Of which DVDs: 987 [down 2]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,495 [up 4]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 441 [up 5]

Number of discs in collection: 8,391 [up 9]
Number of films: 4,417 [up 3]
Number of additional cuts: 439 [no change]
Number of TV episodes: 9,871 [up 13]
Number of short films: 1,224 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

Thursday, 27 February 2025

TV

Friends
5x20 The One with the Ride-Along [5th or so watch]
5x21 The One with the Ball [5th or so watch]

Videos

Daggerheart First Look: Worldbuilding with Critical Role - Live from PAX Unplugged
Funny to call this a "first look" when it came after the massive open beta and multiple CR Daggerheart streams, but there you go — it's kind of an introduction, though kind of assume viewers already have some knowledge of the basics of the system. Anyway, it's quite a fun mini-adventure (the panel lasts about 90 minutes, including some intro to the game and character building).
[Watch it (again) on YouTube.]

Wednesday, 26 February 2025

Videos

Critical Role
2x89 Lingering Wounds [2nd half]
The final episode of 2019 — which is noteworthy because it more-or-less coincides with the end of my first year of watching Critical Role! I started out 6 years & 2 months behind, and have now caught up to 5 years & 2 months behind. Catching up one year in one year sounds like nothing, but it means I've actually caught up on two years (because if I'd only watched one year in one year, I'd still be the same amount behind). If I carry on at that rate, I'll be caught up fully in... 2030. Yeesh. Or I could just jump on to Campaign 4 when it starts (or as soon as I finish C2, whatever). I can always start on Campaign 1 and/or 3 when brand-new content isn't coming out often enough to satiate me.
[Watch it (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]

Tuesday, 25 February 2025

Videos

Critical Role
2x89 Lingering Wounds [1st half]
[Watch it (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]

Monday, 24 February 2025

Saturday, 22 February 2025

Films

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
[#19 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]
"What Do You Mean You Haven't Seen...?" 2025 #2

Videos

Critical Role
2x87 Punishment and Politics [1st half]
This is the first time Matt has a "how do I want to do this?" Not actually the first time he's sort of said it to himself (that was 28 episodes ago; clip here), but back then the others sort of just treated it as comical that an NPC had dealt the killing blow, whereas this time they make a big deal of Matt achieving it and saying the catchphrase to himself (clip here).
[Watch the whole episode (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]