What Are You Watching? New Season!

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Time for a new ‘watching’ thread!

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Finished the second half of S2 of The O.C., which was mostly a mess, but still enjoyable.

The pacing of the storylines is all over the place: the Marissa/Alex relationship is over almost as soon as it’s begun, while the awful Seth/Summer/Zach love triangle carries on for the entire season for some reason.

The big storyline in the last batch of episodes is bringing in Ryan’s brother Trey, played by a young Logan Marshall-Green, who looks less like Tom Hardy and more like young Timothy Olyphant at this point.

It’s one of the season’s better storylines, though the resolution does feature one of the most inadvertently hilarious music cues I’ve ever seen.

The song’s a callback to a funeral scene from earlier in the episode, which I think makes it worse. I love most of the music on the show, but for some reason, the timing of this just made me crack up this time around. I think it was a meme for a while?

The last few episodes of the season have Seth point out that he’s acted like a self-involved asshole for a lot of the season, which I found reassuring at the time, but now I know that he’s even worse in the third season. I remember very little of S3, except not liking a lot of it, especially the Sandy storylines.

Steve Sensible wrote:

We’ve been bingeing The Leftovers, and have just finished season 1. If anyone else has watched it, without spoiling it, are any answers ever forthcoming, or is it another Lost?

No.

Maybe unfortunate coming in much later but they said from the opening publicity that the show would never be about ‘why’ the 2% disappeared but rather the effects of the event. In truth a lot like The Walking Dead which was never about why the zombie shit happened but how people would adapt over a very long term. Very probably a reaction to people being pissed off by Lost that they spelled that out early.

I went in understanding that was the approach and really enjoyed it on that level.

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Will_C

Watched Kill List, a British folk horror film directed by Ben Wheatley. I didn’t like the other films of his I’ve seen (Sightseers, High-Rise) but this was really good. It starts off as a family melodrama, morphs into a story of two hitmen (their occupation was only hinted at in the first section), then warps into an occult nightmare in the final twenty minutes. It’s always very watchable and the cast of characters is well drawn, you really get to care for them even though they’re objectively monstrous. Even the wife of the main hitman is totally aware of what he does and urges him to take more assignments. But they’re a tight-knit group who really look out for each other.

I do have a couple small complaints, though. First, there’s too much shaky-cam in the horror segment so it’s difficult to get a bearing on where the characters are. It also could’ve stood to have been about 5-10 minutes longer just to build up a bit more to the scariest moments. But the preceding segments are so good these flaws are easy to forgive.

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Chris-S

Kill List is my favourite of Wheatley’s films.

 

Have you seen A Field In England?

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Will_C

Kill List creeped me out.. it creates a genuine sense of dread. I’ve disliked (or in the case of High-rise, downright hated) everything Wheatley’s done since though.

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Will_C

Chris-S wrote:

Kill List is my favourite of Wheatley’s films.

 

Have you seen A Field In England?

I haven’t but I plan on watching it soon. My dad has been on a British folk horror kick lately and recommended both films to me.

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Chris-S

[JRCarter]

Watching Batman and Robin. Is it safe to say that, of all the performances in the movie, Uma Thurman’s performance was perhaps the worst?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by JRCarter.

[JRCarter]

JRCarter wrote:

Watching Batman and Robin. Is it safe to say that, of all the performances in the movie, Uma Thurman’s performance was perhaps the worst?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by JRCarter.

In any other movie, maybe, but there are at least three other villains that give a worse performance in that film.

I think you might enjoy it

 

It contains  of the most memorable scenes from recent movie history

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Will_C

I have HBO Max but for some reason it won’t play WW84. There is so much more on the streaming sight. I will catch up on a few episodes of the Sopranos, Girls, GoT, but they are dated.

I will get into Warrior and might binge on… The Wire.

As am I watching The Watch so y’all don’t have to, the latest episode was not any better. At one point in the episode, the song “Wake Me Up Before you Go-Go” was played in universe. The whole setting is horrible enough, but things like this don’t do the show any favors.

Something that really isn’t working is the actress who plays Lord Vetinari. I’m sure Anna Chancellor could do better if she was given better but, she plays the character stern and gruff. She lacks that intelligent dryness the character has in the books.

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DavidM

I finished binge-watching all three seasons of Cobra Kai over the past few weeks. It is indeed tremendous fun but mainly when it focuses on Johnny as Mr Eighties struggling to deal with modern day life. Unfortunately, the show veers too far away from that as the seasons roll on. Season 2 is bogged down in bargain basement teenage melodrama. Season 3 veers off the deep end and essentially becomes Buffy the Vampire Slayer by the end, with even their Xander character becoming a fighter unfazed by routinely being kicked in the head. Season 1 had the right approach by focusing mostly on Johnny calling everyone out on their shit while also rolling around in his own filth. Not coincidentally, the downturn began with the arrival of Kreese and it looks like that story is going to dominate season 4 whenever it comes. That said, the absurdity of this world in which a regional karate tournament is on par with the Super Bowl and a character like Johnny, who furiously tries to return his Windows XP laptop to a pawn shop because he never plugged it in and now it is not working, has a strange, cheesy appeal.

The OC Season 3 is mostly as disappointing as I remember.

It kicks off with a stupid, pointless storyline about Jeri Ryan as a con artist that goes nowhere, then follows that up by giving Sandy a storyline where he’s put in charge of his wife’s family business for some reason and it’s so, so, boring and goes on all season.

The “Marissa goes to public school” storyline is just an excuse to bring in a bunch of awful new characters. Johnny the surfer dude is boring, and yet another character pining for Marissa is tiresome, and his sidekick Chili is annoying as hell. He’s supposed to be annoying, but the actor is dialled up far too high for it to be enjoyable.

The one good addition to the show this season is Autumn Reeser as Taylor Townsend, possibly my favourite character on the show. She’s a delight, and I wish Reeser was in more things.

I’m just up to the point where they brought back Marissa’s sister after almost two years, now played by Willa Holland and an actual character.

I’d always assumed it was an old-fashioned age-up of a kid character, but the original actress, Shailene Woodley, is the same age as Holland – the only reason she was recast is that she hadn’t gone through puberty yet.

I hope the second half of the season is better, but I’m not getting my hopes up, as I remember there’s still the incredibly silly “Seth gets addicted to pot” storyline to come.

So I switched to another browser and HBO Max was then able to play WW84.

Al-x wrote:

So I switched to another browser and HBO Max was then able to play WW84.

Too much effort for that movie…

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Todd

Saw “Lara”, a German movie about a woman who has just turned sixty and whose life is in shambles because she has worked pretty hard on actively estranging everybody from her. Most importantly she’s pushed her son to became a pianist, a career she always wanted to pursue but didn’t, and on the day of her sixtieth birthday he’s playing his own composition, something she is very critical of (because she finds it hard to believe he could compose something worthwhile when there’s so much great music out there).

It’s a great psychogram of a fascinating character, and beautifully filmed. But damn it’s hard to spend so much time with that woman; she’s just so unlikeable!

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Will_C, DavidM

We finished Netflix’s “Pretend it’s a city” tonight, the last three episodes – it’s a 7 part documentary/interview by Martin Scorsese of Fran Lebowitz, very much about their shared home of New York. It’s really, really good. Very interesting, funny, and enlightening. I could watch hours and hours of this.

Neither wife nor I knew much about Fran, but we related to her and wife especially felt a real connection – she looked it up; same birthday.

Jon wrote:

Al-x wrote:
So I switched to another browser and HBO Max was then able to play WW84.

Too much effort for that movie…

I partly agree… I will say a few words in the WW84 thread and in the Storytelling threads where we are discussing rewriting bad stories and trying to improve them.

We watched the Peanuts Movie (2015) as our oldest has been reading a lot of the old comic strips lately. The movie really just plays the greatest hits from the strip, which worked for him. Our youngest was cracking up anytime Snoopy turned up. Perfectly charming family movie. Also just found out that the movie was written by Schulz’s son and grandson, which is pretty sweet. Shame there are apparently no plans to do a second one.

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Dave

I really liked the art style in the Peanuts movie. It’s one of the few times an adaptation like this has made a transition from a 2D to 3D design style without losing the essence of the original look and feel.

Finished Season 3 of The O.C., and the back part of the season mostly just felt like they were killing time waiting for the season to end. It’s a 25-episode season, which is too long.

There’s a bunch of storylines, none of which are very memorable. Volchok is the most one-dimensional villain in the show’s history, without a single redeeming quality. He’s just an asshole dirtbag, because the show needs him to be, with nothing deeper going on.

There’s a drawn-out storyline where Seth lies about getting into college, which goes on far too long. All the college stuff feels pointless, because we know they’re not actually going to send the characters to the East Coast permanently.

There’s also a bunch of stuff mid-season that was clearly supposed to set up a spin-off about Kaitlin Cooper at boarding school, which never happened. The way the show ogles Willa Holland, who was literally 14 years old at the time, is fairly gross.

Anyway, finally on to Season 4, which I remember being very into at the time.

Have you seen this, Paul?

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paul f

Not yet! I started the rewatch when he announced he was making that video; I’m saving it to watch when I finish the series.

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lorcan_nagle

[Will_C]

Watched two 90s Nic Cage action classics: Face/Off and Con Air. Both gloriously over the top and filled with as many shootouts and explosions as there are awful one-liners. Cage is great in both, totally committed to the silliness and bending it to his natural charisma. The action in both is top notch, especially the speedboat chase that ends Face/Off. John Woo is at the top of his game as an action director and stylist in Face/Off but I think Con Air edges it out simply by packing in more action setpieces and intriguing bad guys and side characters. The whole thing is a chase that never lets up while Face/Off is more of a drawn out game of cat and mouse. Both highly recommended if you enjoy this kind of campy blockbuster filmmaking.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Will_C.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Will_C.

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Chris-S, Andrew, Ben, Dave, Bruce

Will_C wrote:

Face/Off and Con Air. Both gloriously over the top

I can’t say I’d ever noticed…

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Todd, Will_C, Ben, Uncle Retrospective, Dave

Well, so I finally watched Dark Phoenix.

I don’t have the time to list everything that’s wrong with that movie, but it’d make for quite a long list. The short of it is that it was just a mistake to have everybody be all mopey and hating each other because that’s fucking dire to watch; the plot relies on everybody being very dumb, the dialogue is really bad, the Skrull stand-in villains are way boring (with Chastain adding precisely nothing at all – they really would’ve needed someone who can chew the scenery a little, and apparently that’s not her thing). It’s all not helped by my dislike for what they’ve done with Mystique with Jenniger Lawrence, and the fact that Sophie Turner isn’t exactly a great actress (movie might be somewhat bearable if Jean’s performance was watchable at least).

There were some decent action scenes.

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JRCarter, Todd

[Will_C]

Will_C wrote:

Watched two 90s Nic Cage action classics: Face/Off and Con Air. Both gloriously over the top and filled with as many shootouts and explosions as there are awful one-liners. Cage is great in both, totally committed to the silliness and bending it to his natural charisma. The action in both is top notch, especially the speedboat chase that ends Face/Off. John Woo is at the top of his game as an action director and stylist in Face/Off but I think Con Air edges it out simply by packing in more action setpieces and intriguing bad guys and side characters. The whole thing is a chase that never lets up while Face/Off is more of a drawn out game of cat and mouse. Both highly recommended if you enjoy this kind of campy blockbuster filmmaking.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Will_C.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Will_C.

These two and The Rock were the holy trinity of ridiculous Nic Cage action movies in the 90s. I liked all of them but I think The Rock might be my favourite.

I do love the aspect of Face Off that lets the two leads impersonate each others acting style though. It’s a better movie if you know Travolta and Cage a fair bit already.

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Will_C, Ben, Bruce

Liked Face/Off, didn’t care for The Rock, loved Con Air. I laughed so hard at that montage at the beginning of Con Air, when Cage is doing all those ridiculous exercises in his cell.

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Will_C, Ben

The problem Face/Off has is Woo has to work under Hollywood constraints, whereas on the insane Hard Boiled he wasn’t.

Ben wrote:

The problem Face/Off has is Woo has to work under Hollywood constraints, whereas on the insane Hard Boiled he wasn’t.

I remember him getting very bent out of shape about having to show his protagonists reload their guns.

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Ben

I watched the new Blithe Spirit last night. I’ve not seen the earlier film version nor the stage version (I was hoping to last year, but… well), so I’ve nothing to judge it against but itself. And by that measurement, it’s ok, I guess? Leslie Mann is fun as the ghost Elvira but it’s generally a bit predictable and plodding. Judi Dench’s character feels dialled way down from where it probably needs to be, with a load of pathos grafted on that is an odd counter-point to screwball supernatural stuff. As soon as Julian Rhind-Tutt (who I like) turned up as a stiff upper lip doctor, I feel like I got the measure of the production and its scale of ambition.

Also, I wasn’t particularly counting, but it seemed like the film had Executive Producer credits for about 14 people at the end. It spends more time listing them than the cast.

I recommend the associated episodes of “The Rewatchables” podcast for both films.

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Will_C

[Will_C]

I watched The Rock, which I enjoyed although not as much as Con Air and Face/Off. Connery was great, though. This and The Island are the only Michael Bay movies I’d rewatch.

I also watched Snake Eyes, which is now my second favorite De Palma (after Body Double) and one of Nic Cage’s best roles. It’s fun to think of it as a prequel to another movie where he plays a sleazy corrupt cop, the brilliant Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans by Werner Herzog.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Will_C.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Will_C.

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Chris-S, Andrew, Uncle Retrospective, Dave

I’m concerned about you, Will. I feel like watching this many Nicolas Cage movies in such a short time-frame might be detrimental to one’s mental health.

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Rocket, Uncle Retrospective, Dave, Will_C

It’s true, Will: you need to put the bunny back in the box.

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Dave, Will_C, Ben

But I’ve got Raising Arizona lined up for tonight!

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njerry, Christian

A Toy Store Near You is a new series on Amazon Prime by the makers of The Toys That Made Us that focuses on toy shops. I don’t know if it was pitched because of covid or if that was a coincidental to its commission, but either way, it’s really shaped the series. The show is mainly about how each store is dealing with the pandemic and, to be honest, it’s a massive downer.

I don’t want to seem unsympathetic to the people struggling, it’s shit all round, but the base premise for the show is fundamentally frivolous – “hey, look at this cool shop and its cool stock” – so being crowbarred into twenty minutes of employees literally crying on camera because they can’t go into work or their family’s been laid off or caught covid or their pets have been ill… it’s not really what I think anyone wants or needs from this kind of show, at least not one that’s brand new.

Will_C wrote:

But I’ve got Raising Arizona lined up for tonight!

Yeah, don’t listen to the haters! May I suggest Bringing out the Dead up next?

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Andrew, Uncle Retrospective, Will_C

Anonymous wrote:

Will_C wrote:

But I’ve got Raising Arizona lined up for tonight!

Yeah, don’t listen to the haters! May I suggest Bringing out the Dead up next?

I watched that a month or two ago. Really good film, underrated Cage but also underrated Scorsese.

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Andrew

Will_C wrote:

I also watched Snake Eyes, which is now my second favorite De Palma (after Body Double)

My personal favorite De Palma film is Phantom of the Paradise (1974). It’s a childhood favorite.

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Will_C

Todd wrote:

Will_C wrote:

I also watched Snake Eyes, which is now my second favorite De Palma (after Body Double)

My personal favorite De Palma film is Phantom of the Paradise (1974). It’s a childhood favorite.

I’ve gotta watch that one. He’s hit or miss with me but that one sounds wonderful.

Right now I’d say my top 5 De Palma is: Body Double, Snake Eyes, Carrie, Sisters, Blow Out.

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Todd

Steve Sensible wrote:

I’m concerned about you, Will. I feel like watching this many Nicolas Cage movies in such a short time-frame might be detrimental to one’s mental health.

 

This happens.

 

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Rocket, Will_C, Christian, Martin Smith

Steve Sensible wrote:

I’m concerned about you, Will. I feel like watching this many Nicolas Cage movies in such a short time-frame might be detrimental to one’s mental health.

Why? He’s one of our finest actors.

Con-air, Face/Off, Lord of War, Adaptation, Snake Eyes, Leaving Las Vegas, Bringing out the dead, Wild at heart – what a career.

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Chris-S, Will_C, Uncle Retrospective

Andrew wrote:

Steve Sensible wrote:

I’m concerned about you, Will. I feel like watching this many Nicolas Cage movies in such a short time-frame might be detrimental to one’s mental health.

Why? He’s one of our finest actors.

Con-air, Face/Off, Lord of War, Adaptation, Snake Eyes, Leaving Las Vegas, Bringing out the dead, Wild at heart – what a career.

You forgot to mention his greatest role ever — as “Brad’s Bud” in FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH. Maybe you blinked and missed him.

Raising Arizona is as good as I remembered. It’s one of those comedies that’s rarely laugh out loud but you watch it with a grin on your face the whole way through. Cage, John Goodman, William Forsythe, Trey Wilson, and Tex Cobb are all great in it, as is Holly Hunter but the movie’s one flaw is that she doesn’t have as much screen time as Cage. She’s probably the funniest one of the bunch. It’s also nice how heart-warming the ending is. A rarity in Coen bros films.

Gonna take a short break from the Cage fest to rewatch Slither during my daughter’s nap. I barely remember this movie at all but I’m pretty sure I liked it and I’m in the mood for some body horror today.

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Chris-S, Christian, Uncle Retrospective

The O.C. Season 4 is as good as I remembered. I can’t think of another instance of a TV series bouncing back from some sub-par seasons so successfully.

The big thing they do is to swing the show back towards comedy. There’s still inter-character drama, relationship stuff, etc, but none of the angsty or boring stuff that dragged down the show in the middle seasons. There’s still conflict, but the biggest villains are people like Taylor’s cartoonishly French ex-husband.

They completely ignore the entire season-long storyline of Sandy taking over the family business and just have him back as a lawyer again with no explanation, and Kirsten’s relapse into drinking at the end of S3 is never mentioned. They do take a few episodes to wrap up the storyline around Marissa’s death, and then move on from it entirely.

The show also stops caring too much about logic when it doesn’t matter. Julie Cooper breaks up with her fiancé, Summer’s father, at the start of the season, but her and her daughter Kaitlin just keep living in his house with his daughter, and her friend Taylor moves in too, just because it’s fun to see all of those characters interact.

Autumn Reeser is promoted to the main cast for the final season, and it’s well deserved. Her relationships with all the characters are great, and they even do a decent job of setting her up as a replacement love interest for Ryan, only a few episodes after Marissa’s death in the previous season. Willa Holland’s Kaitlin works slightly less well, just because her being years younger than everyone else means she’s often out on her own without the other main characters.

The new characters they bring in mostly work too. Chris Pratt is great as Ché, Summer’s new hippy activist friend, in the first thing I ever saw him in. His character is fairly similar to his Parks and Rec one, though less dumb. There’s also Gary Grubbs (who I mostly remember as Fred’s dad on Angel), who is delightful as Bullit, an absolute cartoon of a Southern businessman.

Not everything in the season works. The show has the bad luck that one of the only notable black characters happens to be played by future domestic abuser Chris Brown, as a love interest for Kaitlin. The storyline with Kevin Sorbo as Ryan’s father mostly feels like it’s just there because he’s Ryan’s only relation we hadn’t met yet, without any real purpose for Ryan’s arc. Also, a bunch of episodes open with dumb “x hours earlier” cold opens for no reason.

One big thing I’ve realised during this rewatch is how many of my favourite bands and musicians have their music featured on the show. Some of them I listened to before watching, but I’m sure there was definitely a lot of music I got into through the show.

Anyway, super happy I rewatched the show. Even in the weaker seasons I found parts to like, and the good parts absolutely still hold up for me.

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Martin Smith

paul f wrote:

I can’t think of another instance of a TV series bouncing back from some sub-par seasons so successfully.

The West Wing after that awful season 5?

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Ben

garjones wrote:

paul f wrote:

I can’t think of another instance of a TV series bouncing back from some sub-par seasons so successfully.

The West Wing after that awful season 5?

The West Wing Season 7 is decent, but it’s not on the same level as the first few seasons. It’s also basically a spin-off of itself, with half of the original cast, including Martin Sheen, barely around anymore.

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Christian

Maybe Community after season 4, but it’s never the same show again. Even visually, it’s relatively drained of colour and joy.

Friends, perhaps? It hits rock bottom in season 5 but gets better towards the end, though never as good as s1-4.

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Todd, paul f

garjones wrote:

The West Wing after that awful season 5?

Yeah, I’m with Paul, West Wing became somewhat watchable again especially when it was all Alan Alda vs. Jimmy Smits, but it never even played in the same league again as under Sorkin.

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Uncle Retrospective

I wouldn’t disagree but I’m not sure that’s what was being asked.

Frasier took a downturn after Niles and Daphne got together but they turned it around for season 11 to go out on a high note.

garjones wrote:

I wouldn’t disagree but I’m not sure that’s what was being asked.

Heh. Yeah, admittedly the question when a show has bounced back successfully leaves a pretty broad field, depending on what you see as a success.

Episode 5 of The Watch

They have some talented actors on the show but they really have been given nothing to work with. Richard Dormer is doing his best to ham it up and do something and Lara Rossi is trying to stand out but against the rest of the cast with what they’ve been handed, it all feels so sad and depressing.

Well, three more episodes to go and this shitshow will be over.

Take it easy on yourself, dude. Leave the show be and use the time to re-read one of the books!

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Ben, Todd

I watched Apokolips War the other day. It was a New52 version and took a weird turn from Darkseid war in the comics. It was dark. Most of the JL got turned into cyborg furies, Bats becomes an Evil Metron, Flash and Cyborg are powering Apokolips and Supes gets a Kryptonite tattoo. The they bring Raven and her struggle to keep Trigon chained in her mind. Nightwing goes insane from a trip to the lazarus pit and Kory becomes a cyborg fury. there is mass carnage on Earth and the hero of the day is Constantine who is actually voiced by Matt Ryan.

saga wrote:

Take it easy on yourself, dude. Leave the show be and use the time to re-read one of the books!

Nah, don’t listen to him, Todd. We are counting on you to make it through this for all of us. We need to know how bad the shitshow gets in the finale!

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Todd

I’m actually watching it too… but since I haven’t read the books I can only say that it’s just weird, not particularly funny as it’s probably trying to be, and very mediocre in the end.

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Todd

Christian wrote:

Nah, don’t listen to him, Todd. We are counting on you to make it through this for all of us. We need to know how bad the shitshow gets in the finale!

yea, Todd. It is like David Meadows and his Legion reviews. We need you to suffer then come here and tell us all about it.

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Todd

Christian wrote:

Heh. Yeah, admittedly the question when a show has bounced back successfully leaves a pretty broad field, depending on what you see as a success.

It’s a complete cheat as it’s a movie series but nothing can beat this, not a return to form but better in every way:

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Christian, Uncle Retrospective, Todd

I finally watched Bill And Ted Face The Music. It’s…OK.

It hits a lot of beats from the first two movies and the leads are still charming and likeable (and the casting for their daughters is spot on) but otherwise the story all feels a bit cobbled together, which wasn’t what I expected for a film so long in the writing.

Ultimately it’s a nice send-off and a final chance to catch up with these characters, but it’s not a patch on the first two. Unlike Bogus Journey it plays it safe and essentially revisits ideas from the first two movies when something fresher and different might have worked better.

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Uncle Retrospective

I watched A Field in England, which Chris had recommended, and loved it. Haven’t seen anything quite like it before (although the nature photography brings to mind the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and King Hu, high praise indeed). The plot is simple but told in an abstract manner that takes some getting used to. And the title’s apt as the action never leaves the field the characters end up in after fleeing the English Civil War. They have been lured there by an Irish sorcerer who wants to use one of the four, an alchemist’s apprentice, as a kind of divining rod to locate a mystical treasure buried somewhere in the field. Oh, and all of them are constantly eating the magic mushrooms that grow there. Eventually the meek apprentice rebels, and what follows is a hallucinatory headtrip as the two magic users duel for control of the mystical energies contained within the field. Or maybe they’re all just tripping balls. The whats and whys don’t really matter in a film like this, it’s all about the experience, one I very much enjoyed. Thanks for the rec, Chris!

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Chris-S, lorcan_nagle, garjones

Watched Resident Alien with Alan Tudyk, where he plays an alien who has crash landed on Earth and has disguised himself as a doctor in a remote American town. Unsurprisingly, Tudyk is great, he really sells the fish out of water thing very well. It looks like it will be fun, even if it’s much darker than the original comic.

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njerry, Dave

Uncle Retrospective wrote:

. It looks like it will be fun, even if it’s much darker than the original comic.

Oh, it does? That’s a bit of a shame really, I mean, there’s enough “dark” comic adaptation shows out there, I was looking forward to more of a Gilmore Girls approach to the whole aliens-amongst-us thing. But hey, glad to here it looks like fun. I’ll definitely watch it when I get the chance.

Uncle Retrospective wrote:

Watched Resident Alien

Thanks for the reminder — I have to put this on my list of things to watch.

So, like two years ago now I talked about series 1 of Bonding, and while I enjoyed the interpersonal relationship stories, the portrayal of sex work and the BDSM lifestyle in it was incredibly problematic – an observation a lot of people had. In a refreshing turn of events, the show’s writer took this criticism on board and picks up the story a few months after the series 1 cliffhanger, the characters have become persona non-grata in the kink scene and are taking consent classes in an attempt to get back into their fellows’ good graces.

As a result, the show becomes more an exploration of what Pete and Tiff are learning and how that informs their personal lives. Pete channels it into his standup and gets more into the leather scene in a gay bar with his boyfriend, while Tiff tries to open up with her boyfriend, leading largely to more drama. And the show remains funny, reminding me in a lot of ways of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s brand of cringe comedy where it’s about adding more layers of incredulity to a situation as opposed to making you laugh at someone for being embarrassing.

At only 8 half-hour episodes it’s a very quick watch again, and one I enjoyed. It mostly resolves its stories but is open to expansion, so I’d be happy if there was more to come along this trajectory of improvement.

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Todd

I have no idea how The Murdoch Mysteries are on season 14, but incredibly I seem to be watching season 14 of The Murdoch Mysteries

The best thing about a long-running series is when they reach a point where they just don’t give a damn about taking themselves seriously anymore, and Murdoch 14.01 has to be one of the best of the entire series so far in that respect. It features young Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel and Buster Keaton on the jobbing vaudeville circuit, and literally ends with the entire cast acting out a silent movie scene and giving Chaplin, Laurel, and Keaton ideas for how their future careers should go. This is right up there with George giving Albert Einstein the idea for General Relativity last season when they were kidnapped by a villain who wanted them to create a death ray

 

I got a kick reading this article about fans of the Victorian drama BRIDGERTON spotting yellow lines along the curb in some scenes even though cars didn’t exist in those days.

Bridgerton Yellow Traffic Lines

Fans are apparently willing to accept the alternative version of that time period (such as the presentation of numerous people of color as members of the upper crust of British society, and other deviations from historical accuracy), but they’re shocked at yellow stripes. Go figure.

I do kind of get that though.

What we find unrealistic is often a little idiosyncratic and based on context. Bridgerton has entered openly with the idea it’ll do colour blind casting in a period piece, which is something done for a while in Shakespearean theatre (because otherwise you have an inherent bar to people getting  jobs). So we get past that as the premise and then the bloody yellow lines should never be there!

I remember similar with Doctor Who, a show that deals with all sorts of fantastical elements and an episode set in London had a brief glimpse of the word “ARAF” painted on the road outside a school –  which is the Welsh word for ‘SLOW’. So never mind the soul sucking parasite attached to the companion of a 1000 year old time traveller who can regenerate new bodies – that sign was definitely not in London!

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Todd, Rocket, Dave

Yeah, it’s the Starbucks cup in Game of Thrones isn’t it. You can have outrageous or unrealistic elements if they fit with the world that the show has created. But when it’s an invasion of the real world into that fantasy, then even a mundane detail that’s out of place – sometimes especially a mundane detail – can really stand out and break the spell.

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Andrew, Todd, garjones

garjones wrote:

Bridgerton has entered openly with the idea it’ll do colour blind casting in a period piece, which is something done for a while in Shakespearean theatre (because otherwise you have an inherent bar to people getting  jobs).

It’s interesting that a lot of people struggle to get past this. Armando Iannucci’s David Copperfield was a wonderful example, with a great cast of diverse actors; but my dad couldn’t get over the logical problems that that introduced in terms of the character relationships and the period in which the story was set.

Like you say, you wouldn’t bat an eyelid in the theatre but for film and TV it still seems to be a real barrier for some people. I wonder whether that’s because of the clearer sense of artifice in theatre – everyone in the room is keenly aware that it’s a cast of actors bringing an imaginary story to life – whereas with film and TV it feels more like trying to pass it off as the real thing.

It’s a quite tricky area in may ways. It started because in the UK the traditional way into acting is via the theatre and a lot of that is period work, a lot of the actors we know and love came through the RSC, one theatre has been playing the Mousetrap for 60 years or however long. So directors like Branagh came the conclusion that unless you just ignore period demographics the system is inherently shutting out everyone else. So he, like Shonda Rhimes who makes Bridgerton, just ignored it. She makes more concessions for family links, unlike Branagh casting Denzel and Keanu as brothers, but outside of that every character on Grey’s Anatomy was conceived with no ethnicity.

I remember an interview with Eddie Marzan a couple of years back and his best pal from drama college, that he shared a house with, was Benedict Wong. He said he was the best actor of his class but he could never get any work, not through direct prejudice but just the tiny number of roles that asked for a Chinese guy. Because Chinese guys make up a very small proportion of not just the UK today but through history.

Outside of that specific thing, we’ve just had this debate here, in a movie with a set of gems resurrecting people I’ve written a defence of a mobile phone working after 5 years. That is the inherent context of what Stan Lee set up though, the incredible mixed into our world. The latter requires its own logic however much the cast includes a talking racoon.

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Todd, Dave

Dave wrote:

Like you say, you wouldn’t bat an eyelid in the theatre but for film and TV it still seems to be a real barrier for some people. I wonder whether that’s because of the clearer sense of artifice in theatre – everyone in the room is keenly aware that it’s a cast of actors bringing an imaginary story to life – whereas with film and TV it feels more like trying to pass it off as the real thing.

Yeah, I think that’s a big point there. If you can imagine a cardboard box as a house, you can go with a black woman as Hamlet, as well. Not that you won’t find people in the audience who’d still complain about that, at least when the play starts, but that’s where you can also see that it’s a matter of tradition – if you go to the theatre regularly and have done so for the last two decades, you’ll be used to that kind of thing, and have in all likelihood learned to appreciate it. But not everybody does that.
Maybe Bridgerton is the start for a similar tradition in TV, possibly.

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Dave

[Chris-S]

Will_C wrote:

I watched A Field in England, which Chris had recommended, and loved it. Haven’t seen anything quite like it before (although the nature photography brings to mind the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and King Hu, high praise indeed). The plot is simple but told in an abstract manner that takes some getting used to. And the title’s apt as the action never leaves the field the characters end up in after fleeing the English Civil War. They have been lured there by an Irish sorcerer who wants to use one of the four, an alchemist’s apprentice, as a kind of divining rod to locate a mystical treasure buried somewhere in the field. Oh, and all of them are constantly eating the magic mushrooms that grow there. Eventually the meek apprentice rebels, and what follows is a hallucinatory headtrip as the two magic users duel for control of the mystical energies contained within the field. Or maybe they’re all just tripping balls. The whats and whys don’t really matter in a film like this, it’s all about the experience, one I very much enjoyed. Thanks for the rec, Chris!

Hi Will,

Glad you enjoyed it, I thought you might. I still watch the possession/human divining rod scene all the time, it’s mesmerising, creepy and the music is incredible.

You probably have done already, but since you are on a Nic Cage tip, I heartily recommend Mandy  if you have not watched it. It was my favourite movie of the year when it came out a coupe of years ago.

And also the Colour out of Space the lovecraft adaptation by Richard Stanley, it’s pretty unique and a real experience to watch.

i think knowing your tastes you may have already watched both, but if not I think they will at least be of interest to you.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Chris-S.

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Will_C, Dave

Uncle Retrospective wrote:

Watched Resident Alien with Alan Tudyk, where he plays an alien who has crash landed on Earth and has disguised himself as a doctor in a remote American town. Unsurprisingly, Tudyk is great, he really sells the fish out of water thing very well. It looks like it will be fun, even if it’s much darker than the original comic.

I’ve got this recorded

I really liked the comic. I just need to find time to watch it

question for you: is this suitable for young kids? My 6 year old has a great attention span and will sit through most stuff but I don’t want him to watch it if there’s any disturbing scenes or sex. I don’t mind mild swearing. My 4 year old just potters about watching bits and pieces, I just don’t want them looking at anything gruesome.

We need something to watch together as a family after we finish Cobra Kai; we’ve been spoiled by that, Mandalorian and Stargirl but I’m running out of ideas.

Chris-S wrote:

I’m running out of ideas.

Might I suggest the Adam West Batman series?

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DavidM, Chris-S

I watched the third ep of S3 of American Gods, and it was actually pretty good. Odin is doing things that are actually interesting and that you can’t tell what’s going on from the get-go, Lakeside is a pretty intriguing setting and this episode contains some fantastic scenes from Laura’s afterlife (Browning isn’t gone after all, yay!). Not only are the visuals great there, but this is actually some very good character work (once again, Laura is the standout character really – the episode focusing on her in S1 was one of the best).
Most of all, there’s a whimsical sense of humour that the show had lost for a long time.

To my surprise, I am beginning to look forward to this show again. Huh.

Also noticed that The Magicians season three and four is on amazon prime now, so I’ve started on that one. It’s very good fun. I think the only one watching it apart from me back then was Tim though.

Anonymous wrote:

Chris-S wrote:

I’m running out of ideas.

Might I suggest the Adam West Batman series?

I’m waiting for that to appear on a streaming service I already pay for; good shout though.

My 4 year old loves batman and he liked Batman the movie

 

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Chris-S wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Chris-S wrote:

I’m running out of ideas.

Might I suggest the Adam West Batman series?

I’m waiting for that to appear on a streaming service I already pay for; good shout though.

My 4 year old loves batman and he liked Batman the movie

 

I have the Blu-Rays and watched them with the kids around that age. They enjoyed it. But I think the movie is the best example of Adam West Batman, just so much fun.

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Chris-S

The only thing is, my wife won’t watch it. I have a bunch of stuff to watch with the kids, just the 3 of us.

We’ve been absolutely spoiled this past year with the 3 shows I mentioned earlier. I’m almost ruining their future by letting them watch Mandalorian and Cobra Kai, as sadly most of what they watch for the rest of their lives will not be able to live up to them.

Chris-S wrote:

question for you: is this suitable for young kids? My 6 year old has a great attention span and will sit through most stuff but I don’t want him to watch it if there’s any disturbing scenes or sex. I don’t mind mild swearing. My 4 year old just potters about watching bits and pieces, I just don’t want them looking at anything gruesome.

We need something to watch together as a family after we finish Cobra Kai; we’ve been spoiled by that, Mandalorian and Stargirl but I’m running out of ideas.

I actually quite enjoyed watching the Guillermo del Toro animated stuff, Troll Hunters and 3Below, on Netflix. It’s more openly aimed at kids than the series you mentioned, but it’s well enough made that I enjoyed watching it. Kinda like Buffy light. For something the four-year-old might already be able to follow, Ninjago was another one I watched with my kid when he was little and he still loves it. That one is less enjoyable for adults, but still kinda cute.

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Chris-S

Chris-S wrote:

question for you: is this suitable for young kids?

No idea, I don’t have them. There isn’t any sex but there is some domestic violence, I don’t know how that will play in your house.

It is SyFy so there’s no language to worry about.

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Chris-S

[Chris-S]

Chris-S wrote:

Will_C wrote:

I watched A Field in England, which Chris had recommended, and loved it. Haven’t seen anything quite like it before (although the nature photography brings to mind the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and King Hu, high praise indeed). The plot is simple but told in an abstract manner that takes some getting used to. And the title’s apt as the action never leaves the field the characters end up in after fleeing the English Civil War. They have been lured there by an Irish sorcerer who wants to use one of the four, an alchemist’s apprentice, as a kind of divining rod to locate a mystical treasure buried somewhere in the field. Oh, and all of them are constantly eating the magic mushrooms that grow there. Eventually the meek apprentice rebels, and what follows is a hallucinatory headtrip as the two magic users duel for control of the mystical energies contained within the field. Or maybe they’re all just tripping balls. The whats and whys don’t really matter in a film like this, it’s all about the experience, one I very much enjoyed. Thanks for the rec, Chris!

Hi Will,

Glad you enjoyed it, I thought you might. I still watch the possession/human divining rod scene all the time, it’s mesmerising, creepy and the music is incredible.

You probably have done already, but since you are on a Nic Cage tip, I heartily recommend Mandy  if you have not watched it. It was my favourite movie of the year when it came out a coupe of years ago.

And also the Colour out of Space the lovecraft adaptation by Richard Stanley, it’s pretty unique and a real experience to watch.

i think knowing your tastes you may have already watched both, but if not I think they will at least be of interest to you.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Chris-S.

Love Mandy, it’s an incredible film and I hope Panos Cosmatos makes another one soon. There too long a wait between it and Beyond the Black Rainbow.

Speaking of watching media with young kids, at the theater I saw Mandy in a woman brought her two kids, both around the ages of 9 or 10. Not only is Mandy super violent but there’s a long scene where a completely nude Linus Roache gives a speech to his cult followers, his genitals in full view. Watching that knowing there were kids in the theater was one of the most uncomfortable experiences of my life. The mother didn’t take her kids and leave either. Bizarre.

I saw Color Out of Space too but didn’t like it as much. It’s gorgeous to look at and there are some good scenes but it’s a bit slow and long which I thought kind of deflated the horror. But I’m glad I watched it and would give another Lovecraft adaptation by the director a shot for sure. I think he plans to do more.

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Chris-S

I thought that might be the case Will

Mandy is the far better of the two, but I did enjoy the weirdness of the latter.

i have the TV to myself when the kids are down for the night, as missus S has a zoom chat for her friend’s birthday

Saint Maud was my plan but it’s  not out till Monday!!!

i need to rethink my plans!

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Will_C

[Chris-S]

I watched Rent a Pal tonight

 

If it left about 20 more mins on the editing room floor it could have been great

There was a lot to like though and it was a very good idea. Just not enough to keep the viewers attention throughout. It really didn’t merit being that long, I think 80-90 mins run time would have been about right for the idea

 

well filmed and well acted though and a superb soundtrack

 

 

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Chris-S.

Watching a lot of movies lately. Rewatched Inception and while I might not think it’s especially good as neither story nor as food for thought, it is very well-acted and well-filmed. There’s definitely a theme of pastiche characters pushing paper-thin plots as a device to deliver some spectacular roller-coaster cinema with Nolans films. Tenet was about ten(et) times better at it though. Interstellar too. On to new stuff:

Eastern Promises: Not what I expected. Small story, pretty slow and with some unexpected twists along the way. The suspense and tension is great, Cronenberg excels at this. And Viggo is always a treat.

Nightcrawler: Might’ve mentioned this a week back or so, but this movie was a lot better than I expected. Gyllenhaal is absolutely great, and Riz Ahmed is even better. The movie left a very strong impression on me, it felt… real. Weird that I haven’t heard about this movie before now.

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Todd

[Christian]

Anonymous wrote:

Nightcrawler: Might’ve mentioned this a week back or so, but this movie was a lot better than I expected. Gyllenhaal is absolutely great, and Riz Ahmed is even better. The movie left a very strong impression on me, it felt… real. Weird that I haven’t heard about this movie before now.

Nightcrawler is great.

The director/writer made a Netflix movie last year that I really enjoyed. It was an art satire meets horror thing.

(That trailer shows way too much, just watch a minute of it!)

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Christian.

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Todd

I rave about Nightcrawler every chance I get. It’s why I consider Jake Gyllenhaal to be the best actor around at the moment.

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Christian wrote:

The director/writer made a Netflix movie last year that I really enjoyed. It was an art satire meets horror thing.

Thanks for the tip! I watched none of the trailer since going in blind on Nightcrawler worked so very, very well. Will watch this later tonight or tomorrow!

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Christian

Rewatched T2 last night prompted by a very fun Rewatchables podcast episode – it holds up.

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Ben, Will_C, Christian, Dave

I really want to rewatch T2 one of these days. Have to remember to put it on the list for me and the kid.
(I don’t really have a list, but I should start one.)

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Andrew, Dave, Will_C

Andrew wrote:

Rewatched T2 last night prompted by a very fun Rewatchables podcast episode – it holds up.

Yeah I watched it gain maybe 6 or so months back and it very much holds up, still a great movie

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Andrew, Dave, Will_C

T2 might be one of my most rewatched movies. I watched it again just before the last one came out and thought it was as great as ever.

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Andrew

Because I’m a glutton for punishment sometimes, I’m watching Batman vs Superman.

Ultimate Edition, I hope =P