Brett-Butler

The Internet Movie Database (imdb.com), the repository of film information on the internet, has a list of the top rated 250 films on its system which has gained the most high ratings over the years. It is a dynamic list, which means that the listing can change over time, with new films being added if they're popular on release, with older films either dropping out if they fall out of favour, or start climbing up if they gain a cult following years following its release. There are some rules involved to make sure that really obscure films only a handful of people see don't make the list (only films that have been giving a rating more than 25,000 times can be included), and only the votes of "regular" voters are counted to make sure than those people who do troll voting don't have their ratings counted (although how they determine that with their algorithm is somewhat unknown). It's not perfect - someone giving a film a 10 rating in 1997 carries the same weight as a 10 vote in 2021 for example), and there's been controversies over whole countries worth of films being excluded from the list (for a long time Indian films were excluded from the list and given their own stand-alone list, although now they've been integrated into the top 250, there's about 10 there at the moment), and it's a lot more superhero-y in some places, but by and large it's a decent barometer of what is judged to be some of the greatest films of all time. Since my university days, I've made it my goal to "complete" the IMDb top 250 films, or to get as close to completing it as possible, as by the time I started studying Film I'd only seen about 70 of the 250 films that made the list at the time, knowing that it would be a long term project and may take me over a decade to get there, especially given the dynamic nature of the rating service. more than 10 years on, I've hit a major milestone in that I've now watched 150 of the films on the list, and I've only got 100 more left to watch - at least until some of the films I've seen drop out and are replaced by new ones (although hopefully not for a while - the lowest ranked film that I have seen is currently "The Princess Bride" at #243, which should hopefully be safe from the drop in the short term). So, how many films in the IMDb top 250 have you seen, and what are the highest rated films you are yet to see? I thought it would be nice to keep track of this for the cinephiles among us. You can track your own watched films directly on the IMDb's website HERE. Date - 29/8/21 Films in the IMDb Top 250 Seen - 150 Films in the IMDb Top 250 Yet To See - 100 Top 5 ranked films still to see: Seven Samural (19)Saving Private Ryan (26)The Green Mile (29)Parasite (30)Leon: The Professional (31)

Woo. Will need to get an entry in for this - amazing that it's been over 10 years since the first Unknown Pleasures.

I've enjoyed the first two series of this. Since Watchdog was folded into The One Show it's the leading stand-alone Consumer Rights programme left on national TV.

The reason he didn’t call it “Minus” is because if you put two copies of the album together it becomes a copy of “Plus”.

People thinking that Minus sounds too negative seem to have forgotten he released an album called Divide. Disappointed he didn’t go for Parenthesis, but that would probably have annoyed the Sigur Ros fans.

They're leaning into the disco-rock sound they had elements of on their last album. I approve.

I was wondering if BBC iPlayer would be showing a match from each round of the FA Cup starting with the Prelims this year, and thankfully they are - it's Sheffield FC against Sherwood Colliery on Saturday (the former laying claim to being the oldest football team in the world, an honour I'd always assumed went to Notts County).

Aspire is the latest party from Lutfar Rahman, the former Labour council leader who became the first mayor of Tower Hamlets (first as an Independent, then as Tower Hamlets First), until being disbarred for electoral fraud (the wonderful Britain Elects has a good rundown of this corruption both in the mayoralty and at council level in their weekly by-election rundown). Rahman-affiliated politicos had dominated Tower Hamlets local politics for the past decade, although in recent years they've declined to the point that after this by-election, they have 2 sitting councilors under his current banner, Aspire. He's apparently allowed to run for office again from this year, so will probably try another crack at elected politics, although any results will be viewed with expected suspicion. Surprisingly given his apparent "success" locally, we haven't seen this transfer over to national politics, with both the constituencies Tower Hamlets finds itself in being firm Labour strongholds - it doesn't look like any Lutfar affiliates have stood there in the past 10 years. Although it's worth noting that one of them, Bethnal Green & Bow, is the former constituency of George Galloway when he ran as a Respect candidate. Whether either him or Aspire-ites would try to unseat the Labour candidates there remains to be seen, but it would take quite a swing to unseat either of Labour's MPs.

Definitely in for this again!

Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo has resigned the week after a damning report was published alleging that he sexually harassed multiple women. The news comes a day after the leader of the Time's Up campaign, a group set up to fight for gender equality in the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein scandals, resigned after she allegedly used her position to discredit one of the women who made allegations against Cuomo. He was already under pressure before that when it was revealed that despite his apparent success of tackling Covid in New York (even being awarded an Emmy for it), he signed an order that "nursing homes should readmit residents who had tested positive for the coronavirus, in order to free up hospital space" which led to increased deaths in that setting, and undercounted the number of deaths.

Like so many female pop stars, people have a tendency to see Peppa Pig as nothing more than a piece of meat.

Bring back the tug of war, and remove synchronised swimming.

They picked up a bit of blog attention back in 2019 with a separate song (they made the weekly Fresh Faves on Fresh on The Net, a website I occasionally contribute to, at the time), which I presume garnered them enough attention to get signed to Domino. I presume if it wasn't for the pandemic they would have been building up a live presence over the course of 2020 instead of focusing on recording.

I first noticed this song a few months ago when it was being hyped up by people I follow on Twitter that I would never have expected to be commenting on new music, which is usually a good sign that it has the potential to have a crossover hit appeal. It's been hovering around the iTunes download chart the past few days, so I think it could turn into an actual chart hit by the end of the year. It's a great little song.

Gigs and concerts can return in Northern Ireland from tomorrow. Yay.

Give me Japan please. 🇯🇵

An article in Music Week announcing the news that Suede would be releasing their 9th studio album on BMG Records also included a tidbit about sales figures for their biggest selling album. From the article - As expected, it's their 3rd album, "Coming Up", which is their biggest seller. It was certified platinum for 300k sales/shipments in January 1997, which would suggest that it's sold approx. 135k of those sales in the past 24 years. Their albums "Suede", "Dog Man Star" and "Head Music" are all certified Gold for 100k sales/shipments, as is their 2003 Singles Collection. Their 2010 Best Of has been certified Silver.

Looks like Atomic Kitten won't be going top 40 then.

The Northern Ireland COVID dashboard has good information showing hospital numbers. It does show that in NI that admissions to hospital are rising slightly, but still with reduced numbers, and they seem to be spending less time in hospital than before. Also, being in hospital with COVID doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the COVID itself that warrants the hospitalisation. One of the people I know who is hospitalised had a heart attack a few months ago, and even though after catching COVID the doctors don’t think that she is at any risk from COVID, they kept her in hospital just to be on the safe side due to the other underlying condition.

The less said about the 2010 version (officially credited to "The Squad) the better.

Congratulations to Kim Leadbeater for coming through in the end. As discussed, the fact the Tories' candidate barely campaigned in person during the campaign cost him a fairly decent chance of a victory, whilst George Galloway once again showed his ability to build up support of a large amount of a electoral population in a short length of time. Of course, the biggest winner of all is me, given I've won £80 from the various bets I made on this income. Now looking forward to hearing from those who would have demanded Keir Starmer to resign if Labour didn't win this election to claim that this victory was due to Kim Leadbeater and Kim Leadbeater alone.

70% turnout means that either the result will be less clean-cut than expected, or that one particular group of voters have managed to get more fired up than usual and the winner will get well over 50% of the vote. Either way, with that sort of turnout, at least Batley & Spen will at least get a representative that large swathes of the population actually want.

Stuck another tenner on Labour to win at odds of 4/1, so I've raised the stakes on this. Will be watching the bookies with interest tomorrow to see if the odds shorten during the day.

East Enders have put all the episodes on iPlayer in advance, so would be interesting to see what their ratings are like once this is taken into account. Either way, not good.

Future years will likely see this as the ugliest by-election since Bermondsey back in 1983. Seeing the vile Chris Williamson campaigning with George Galloway doesn’t help things. Labours odds have lengthened to 4-1, so Inshould have waited a few days before putting my wager on.