Category Archives: My Week in Movies

My Week in Movies, 2016 Week 22

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I’m trying to get back onto the reviewing horse one small step at a time, and I think what is most important it to try and review more films each week than I’m adding to the pile to review. Hence, this past week saw just 2 relevant films watched, but three reviewed. If I keep this up, I should be caught up in a little over four months. Jeez that seems like ages. I’m not going to worry about the maths of it all, I’m just going to write some reviews now and then, and try to stay sane. After all, I’ve got a wedding to plan now. Here’s what I watched this week:
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My Week in Movies, 2016 Week 20 & 21

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There’s a lot to catch you all up on this week, but given the proximity of the end of the month I’ll save it for the monthly round-up. Instead, let’s dive straight into what I’ve been watching recently:
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My Week in Movies, 2016 Week 19

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This will be a short one this week folks, as I’ve watched little and written even less. Don’t expect a great deal from me this coming week either, as I’m off on holiday in a few hours. Please insert the usual apologies and concessions of my uselessness and failures.

However, something I will take a moment to note is the passing of a friend and fellow blogger. Chip Lary, of Tips From Chip, passed away almost three weeks ago. He had been ill for a while, and had recently undergone an operation to remove his gall bladder, but it is unclear as to whether this was the cause of his passing. Either way, Chip was one of my first ever followers back on my Blogspot site, and was a very active member of the 1001 Movies community back when that was more of a thing, when The Film Vituperatum was more active. There were a few occasions when I became tempted to throw the whole 1001 List thing and blogging in general out the window, and Chip was always there with a helpful and motivational comment of some sort, or a suggestion to take a break for a little bit and come back refreshed, which I’ve done a few times and ordinarily works a treat. In all honesty I’ve not read much on Chip’s site for a while, but that’s more because I struggle to find the time to read anyone else’s site, which is something that desperately needs to change for me. Regardless, I’ll always be grateful for the help Chip gave me, the community he never failed to participate in, the endless spreadsheets he created for the 1001 List and beyond, and the kindness he showed to a writer just starting out. He will be missed. If you’d like to donate to a collection for flowers for his funeral, being arranged by Steve Honeywell of 1001 Plus, please head here: https://www.gofundme.com/2xkqxxjs.

Last year, when I asked some of my blogging friends to suggest some films on the 1001 List for me to watch, Chip submitted a not-at-all surprisingly really long list. I’ve still got 17 of those films to review, so I’ll be making an effort to watch those as a priority, despite them including some of the longer films on the list. Also, Chip is one of the few people I know to have completed the entirety of the 1001 List, so I’ve asked him what films were bad on there too. I’ve still got 18 of those to go (jeez) so those will be my priority “Bad” movie picks too. Steve, I’ll get back to your suggestions next year, I’m sure you’ll understand. You and Chip had a lot of crossover anyway.

So here’s what I watched this week:
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My Week in Movies, 2016 Week 18

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Wait, is it Friday already? Has it actually been an entire week since the last one of these was (supposed to be) posted? I refuse to believe this. 2016 is rolling past way faster than it should be, and that’s the only reason I can think of for why I’m behind on everything. There’s no possible way that seven whole mornings, days, evenings and nights have just happened. Nope. Something is seriously wrong here.
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My Week in Movies, 2016 Week 17

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This is one of those weeks where I’ve not got anything to say other than the usual lamentations on my lack of progress or the woes of international podcasting, so instead I’m going to highlight a podcast I’ve started listening to recently that you might like. I don’t watch a great deal of TV, but one of the few shows I’ve not only seen in its entirety but have revisited at least once is The West Wing, and one of its latter-season stars, Joshua Malina (he played Will Bailey), has recently begun a podcast called The West Wing Weekly, which he hosts alongside Hrishi Hirway, a self-proclaimed big fan of the show. On this show Joshua and Hrishi discuss an episode of The West Wing every week, in chronological order, occasionally with guests who were in some way involved in the TV show. So far they are six episodes in, and their guests have been Dulé Hill (who played Charlie Young), Janel Maloney (Donna Moss) and Eli Attie, a writer/producer who was also Al Gore’s chief scriptwriter. Whilst I’ve never been terribly interested in politics, especially that of another country, and one that seems to become more of a literal circus every year, my love of The West Wing stems from the characters, their interactions, relationships and dialogue. I discovered the show after watch Aaron Sorkin’s follow-up, Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, which was criminally cancelled during the first season, and remains one of my favourite shows ever, one season or not. When I was denied further episodes, I sought out the next best thing. After recently lending the whole boxset to a friend, who returned all seven seasons in a matter of weeks, my partner has also shown an interest so I’m introducing her to the show whilst re-watching it myself, and at one-a-week it shouldn’t be too hard to keep up with the podcast.
westwing
Anyway, enough of TV, here are the films I watched this week:
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My Week in Movies, 2016 Week 16

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I love podcasting, I really do. Recording the weekly Lambcast is amongst the highlights of my week, even when the calls drops a dozen times and Skype needs everyone to update at varying points during the show, I still love doing it. So much so that I often think about starting new podcasts. I think it’s a common issue once you’ve caught the podcasting bug, and the trick seems to be keeping that desire contained and constantly reminding oneself that there’s just not enough time in the day. Fortunately I’ve never been one to let my desire to do something have any impact on whether I’ll do it or not. If I could though, oh if I could. I’d podcast for a living if I could make it work. I’m particularly a fan of the Movie Minute podcast format, wherein films are looked at a minute at a time on a daily basis. So far I’ve listened to Star Wars Minute (Episodes 4–6, currently nearly finished The Phantom Menace) and Goodfellas Minute, and I’m 40+ minutes into Back To The Future Minute. Gutterballs looks at The Big Lebowski a minute at a time, always spending well over an known looking at each minute with the various tangents that come along, and they don’t release that on a daily basis (they’ve been going since 2012 and haven’t finished yet) so I’ve not listened to much of that one just yet. Obviously I’d love to start Jurassic Park Minute. I think about this often, daily sometimes. But I just do not have the time. As with Star Wars and Back to the Future, the plan would always be to move onto the sequels, and as much as I dislike Jurassic Park 3 I’d still love to spend months really digging into my problems with it and trying to find positives. And once I’d finished Jurassic World Minute I’d move on to something else. Probably Pixar Minute, starting with Toy Story Minute and continuing right through them all, even Cars 2 Minute.
Toy Story Minute
The other show I’d love to do, and this is one that got closer to happening – we even recorded a jingle – is Jay and Robert Talk Time Travel (JARTTT). The jingle was the title, sung to Troy and Abed in the Morning from Community. This would have been a show recorded every 2 weeks, looking at a different time travel movie each show. My co-host would have been Robert Zerbe from To The Escape Hatch, who was my co-host for a spell over on the Lambcast. He and I both obsess over time travel movies, and there’s a heck-load of them we could talk about, from Primer to Looper through Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3. Again, it’ll never happen, at least not whilst I’m hosting the Lambcast and running this blog. Sometimes I think I’d have just about enough time to stay on top of everything if I dropped the blog and the podcast. That might give me a chance of keeping the dog walked and fed, house tidy, DIY in hand, garden in order and possibly even allow me the chance to go for a run now and then and go out once in a while. Instead all of the above, including the podcast and this blog, receives a rotating degree of being ignored every now and then. Such is my life. Anyway, here’s what I’ve watched this week:
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My Week in Movies, 2016 Week 14

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Watching so many films I sometimes find myself going through completely unintentional themed periods, often discovered after the fact. For example, a lot of films I’ve watched recently have featured Italian or Italian-American families with lots of brothers in, and these all arrived to me through different means. Brooklyn cropped up on my LoveFilm list and got dispatched immediately. Then Rocco and His Brothers needed reviewing for Blueprint: Review. And this past week I’ve watched Three Brothers, also for Blueprint: Review, and I watched The Godfather for this weekend’s Lambcast. Even more bizarrely, the past few weeks have seen not one but two films in which someone submerges themselves in a large quantity of grain (Three Brothers and The Dressmaker). Weird. Anyway, here’s what I watched this week:
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My Week in Movies, 2016 Weeks 12 & 13

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The problem with having goals is my time gets spent trying to achieve them, and I often find myself striving to fulfil these predetermined tasks instead of doing something I want to do now. Thus, most of the movies I watch are ones I need to for the task at hand – be it to meet a goal, or in preparation for a podcast. And so it was that this past week I found myself longingly looking at a LoveFilm DVD of Robin Hood: Men In Tights, a film I’ve never seen but would probably enjoy, but which I did not have the time to watch. My partner had no interest, though to be fair she’d already sat through two Robin Hood movies in recent weeks and doesn’t much care for parodies or musicals, and my time to watch films outside of her presence is filled with the ones I’ve yet to cross off my many numerous lists. All was not lost though, as some unplanned and unlisted movie watching was accomplished this week, and of a film I’d owned for years without ever popping into the player. What film was that exactly? Well read on to find out.
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My Week in Movies, 2016 Week 11

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Nothing much to report this week. Work has been busy, time has been limited, and few films have been watched, although I have been working my way through seasons 4 and 5 of The Walking Dead, which remains interesting enough for me to keep watching it, but not quite enough for me to blitz through the rest of the available episodes. Here are the films I saw this past week:
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