Saturday, 14 June 2025

Films

Hardware (1990)
[#54 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]

Comics

2000 AD
Prog 2397

Collection Count

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

Three new purchases this week, all new releases — two from this week, one ahead of next week — with two of them being splashy UHD Collector's Editions, and one of those an upgrade to an existing Blu-ray.

Number of titles in collection: 3,556 [up 2]
Of which DVDs: 986 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,570 [up 2]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 475 [up 2]

Number of discs in collection: 8,566 [up 7]
Number of films: 4,512 [up 2]
Number of additional cuts: 446 [up 2]
Number of TV episodes: 10,154 [up 2]
Number of short films: 1,239 [up 1]

It's also time for the monthly running time update, which passes a milestone...

Total running time of collection (approx.):
601 days, 17 hours, and 21 minutes.
(Up 1 day, 20 hours, and 37 minutes from last month.)

Yes, I've now passed 600 days! I passed 500 days back in March 2022 (with no fanfare). That's 3 years and 3 months ago, fact fans. I'd passed 400 days in July 2018, which was 3 years and 8 months before 500 — so the speed at which my collection increases is increasing. That doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

Purely in running time terms, my collection has doubled in size in just under 11 years. The number of titles has more than doubled in that time (makes sense, as the amount of TV thats gets released/bought by me has steadily decreased, and that has much higher running times per title). My DVD colleciton has shrunk by 17.9% in that time, while my Blu-rays have increased five-fold. I now own almost as many UHDs as I did Blu-rays back then. Considering I described 300 days as "madness" and I now have doubled that, I do have to wonder when (if) it will ever stop... Well, if I continue as I have been, logically I'll reach 700 hours around March 2028 — so let's see!

On a more immediate scale: I'll see you next week, faithful reader.

Wednesday, 11 June 2025

Fiction

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
Timewyrm: Revelation by Paul Cornell
Chapters 5–6

Games

Batman: Arkham Knight

It's over six months since I got my Luna controller — crikey, so long? Yeah, I've barely used it. To be honest, I didn't have the greatest experience with A Plague Tale — it was ok, but I've never really felt like going back to it. Things went better with Everything or Nothing, but I think my iffiness with the analogue sticks prevented me from revisiting it beyond the tutorial stages (I do still want to, though). And then I tried Final Fantasy VII, which... I sort of didn't get on with? The lack of free saving annoyed me, especially as I ended up having to play for hours when I didn't actually want to just to get to another save point. Maybe that's because I was still early in tutorial-esque bits and it gets better? It is a revered classic, after all.

Anyway, I finally whipped the controller out again today, to have a go at this Batman game that's currently available through Luna to regular Amazon Prime members (there's also an additional Luna+ sub that gets you even more, but I don't use it enough for that — evidently). This was the fourth in the series of 'Arkham' Batman games. I don't normally like I starting with the last, but this is the one that's free, so...

I ended up playing for about two hours — not because a lack of save points forced me to, but because I was actually enjoying it. I can certainly feel I'm out of practice at this type of gaming (aside from the aforementioned tests at the end of last year, I guess the last time I properly picked up a controller was pushing 20 years ago? Jesus, time flies...), but the game wasn't so punishing that I couldn't get somewhere (I did put it on 'easy' mode, but I feel no shame about that — like I said, I'm terribly out of practice. And, frankly, dying over and over and getting nowhere has never been part of the fun of gaming for me). Also, it looked pretty great. It's 10 years old, but when I haven't really played games since the GameCube / original Xbox (I did dabble with the Wii, but not enough give the amount of stuff I bought for it), I guess I feel the jump more! Imagine what I'd think of a new game...

Anyway, I can't promise I'll stick at this too much, because there are plenty of other demands on my free time (films, books, comics, podcasts, audio dramas, self-learning, card games, board games... eesh!), but I'm definitely more inclined to return now. The only possible downside is, the game is due to expire on Luna on the 1st of July — there's no way I'm going to play it enough to finish it by then. It's listed as being about 17 hours just for the main story, but I'm so out of practice that I suspect it will take me longer; and I'm always a completist, so the 31-hour-plus higher estimates seem more like it.

Tuesday, 10 June 2025

Videos

Critical Role
2x107 Devoutness and Dicks [2nd half]
[Watch it (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]

Monday, 9 June 2025

Films

La Scorta (1993)
aka The Escort

Videos

Critical Role
2x107 Devoutness and Dicks [1st half]
[Watch it (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]

Sunday, 8 June 2025

Films

The Untouchables (1987)
[#52 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]
"What Do You Mean You Haven't Seen...?" 2025 #6

Podcasts

The Empire Spoiler Special Film Podcast
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One The Live Spoiler Interview with Christopher McQuarrie

I didn't listen to this fifth and final part of Empire's epic deep dive into M:I-7 back when it came out because it took so bloody long to be released: it was recorded in July, Part Four came out in September, and this last instalment wasn't released until Christmas Day — that's almost four months later. The Empire spoiler podcast costs money — I would've wasted three or four months of sub fees just waiting for this to turn up. Anyway, I've just re-subbed to listen to the new Final Reckoning episode(s), so before that I've gone back for this one.

More importantly: what McQ has to say is fascinating and insightful, so this is as brilliant as usual.

Fiction

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
Timewyrm: Revelation by Paul Cornell
Chapter 4

Comics

2000 AD
Prog 2395

Videos

Age of Umbra
Session Zero Creating Characters Matt Wants to Kill
You feel like a Session Zero should be a great tool for players, but probably not much fun to actually watch. Not so here — it's a delightful mix of learning about the background to the world of the miniseries (whether or not, and how much, that will also be covered in the series proper, who knows) and just getting to hang out with these guys. Yeah, I'm one of those people who enjoys that.
[Watch it (again) on YouTube or Beacon.]

Fireside Chat LIVE With Matthew Mercer and Elise Rezendes!
Answering questions about Daggerheart — or, quite often, not being able to answer them while clearly being excited for what they can't reveal yet.
[Watch it (again) on Beacon.]

this week on 100Films.co.uk

Continuing where last week left off, I completed my look back at May on 100Films.co.uk by listing my "failures"...





More next Sunday? One day it'll happen.

Saturday, 7 June 2025

TV

Doctor Who: Unleashed
3x09 20 Years of New Who in Wales [special]
A nice hour-long tribute to 20 years of nuWho.
(I'm numbering this as being in "Season 3" because I numbered the 60th anniversary specials episodes as Season 1 of Unleashed, which would mean Season 2 covered Season 1, and Season 3 covered Season 2, and this comes at the end of that season. Right?)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Predator: Killer of Killers (2025)
[#51 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]