Discuss your current viewing here.
What Are You Watching?
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I don’t know how closely) and look, did something happen to Martin in the 90s?
This happened.
Apparently, Martian had a kind of nervous breakdown soon after.
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I’ve been watching the new American Gigolo series on Showtime. I am four episodes in. Overall, it has been decent. Jon Berenthal and Rosie O’Donnell are definitely the best parts of the series. One thing that has gotten old very quickly is the extensive use of flashbacks. It seems like half of each episode is flashbacks. It may not be as bad if it weren’t the many of same flashbacks used over and over.. it gets annoyingly repetitive and slows the show down. There are good performances but the storytelling leaves a lot to be desired.
I wonder if Paul Shrader is involved at all directly?
It is an interesting pseudo-trilogy that you could put together out of his movies TAXI DRIVER), AMERICAN GIGILO and LIGHT SLEEPER – especially with Gigilo and Sleeper, it is like the same character but at different decades of his life.
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Finally watched Bad Times at the El Royale, by Buffy alumni Drew Goddard (yes, yes, he made a bunch of other stuff, like Daredevil and writing The Martian, and the Cloverfield movies, but he’ll always be a Buffy guy to me). Great cast, very nicely constructed episodic plot, lots of twist and turns, well-directed. Basically everything you want to see in this kind of movie. I was surprised by how quickly they started to kill characters off, and it’s probably a good sign that with pretty much all of them, I was disappointed because I wanted to see more of them. Chris Hemsworth plays Charles Manson kind of character that is, like, what if Manson actually was really good-looking and charismatic?
It’s a shame this movie flopped – there should be an audience for this kind of movie, but maybe these days you need an established name like Guy Ritchie or Tarantino to get people to watch a violent/fun neo-noir kind of film.
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Dracula. The 1931 one. Erm, the English 1931 one.
It’s a bit mince, really. The story is choppy as hell and if you hadn’t read the novel, I can’t imagine it being too easy or rewarding to follow. Lucy, for instance, is given such short shrift that you have to wonder why they didn’t just eliminate the character entirely. Some of its changes are interesting – it has Renfield as the one who goes to Castle Dracula rather than Jonathan, which I suppose is an attempt to explain his madness and make him into more of a direct stooge. Mina is made into Dr Seward’s daughter, while the other two of Van Helsing’s eventual followers (I can’t remember their names; Quincy for one?) are dropped entirely.
But it’s all very creaky, ending up more of a drawing room drama than an exciting horror or anything. The end is particularly limp. Dracula runs off with Mina but then Van Helsing and Harker find him just chilling in his coffin and kill him with no problem. Mina is freed from being turned, she and Jonathan walk off and Van Helsing says he’ll follow them shortly for literally no reason. The end.
Lugosi is… I mean, I can kind of see why his performance made a big splash at the time, but it’s very stiff and hammy. All those parodies and cartoons and swipes of it over the decades have exaggerated nothing about it, really.
It’s not particularly well shot either – very static and stagey. But there’s a Spanish language version that was shot on the same sets during production (at night, I guess) which is supposedly better in that regard and it’s in the blu-ray features, so that’s up next.
edit: I forgot the weirdest bit! In Castle Dracula, to make it seem dangerous and wild, there are various wild animals. But American ones. So there’s a possum hanging around Drac’s coffin and some armadillos (!) that have their own little entrance way. Felt very Munsters or Addams Family.
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Ok, so, Spanish Dracula is great. The difference is astounding. If you’ve ever wanted to see or demonstrate just how much a director can influence a film, this is the perfect comparison.
For a start, it’s much more interestingly shot. The camera moves! There are mid-shots and close-ups! Ok, English Dracula did that too, but only very occasionally, whereas with Spanish Drac they’re frequent. It’s the work of a much more accomplished and confident director, one that looks for interesting angles to rise above the perfunctory. You can really appreciate this contrast given the use of the same sets.
Secondly, the story makes more sense. Now, admittedly, El Drac has half an hour more running time – 1hr 45m to Dracula’s 1hr 15m – and it’s hard to know how much was lost from Dracula through later censor cuts. But there is certainly elements where Spanish Drac’s director has made better choices to more clearly convey what’s going on. There are insert close-up shots of bite wounds and actions, for instance. The script is more comprehensive – it’s made clear that Seward’s been away to Switzerland to meet Van Helsing, for instance, which also lets you know that more time has passed than English Dracula (which all sort of blends into one night) lets on.
There are less of the weird, stupid moments that litter English Dracula too. When Van Helsing notices Dracula has no reflection, in ED, the film spends ages on it and Harker sees too. Yet he then remains sceptical of the whole vampire thing. In SD, only Van Helsing notices. Later, when VH and Harker chase Dracula in the abbey, a door bars their way. In the English version, they fail to open it up until they just do. In Spanish, they break the door down. In English Dracula, VH finds Drac’s coffins and looks in both. He shows Harker that Drac is in one. They then both act like Mina could be in the other, even though they’ve looked and then look in exactly the same way again. In Spanish, Harker wonders if Eva is in there before they open it and see it’s empty.
Oh and in the Spanish version, we learn why Van Helsing doesn’t leave with Harker and Mina/Eva. He intends to deal with Renfield’s corpse. Such an easy thing to mention, yet the English version obscures it.
The Spanish cast are pretty good too. Their Dracula feels like Frank Langella mixed with Brad Garrett from Everybody Loves Raymond. It’s less austere a look than Lugosi and oddly neurotic, given his weird mouth. I’d say Spanish Van Helsing is better too, but that might just be down to him not having a weird half-Scottish half-Dutch accent.
There are so many bits in Spanish Dracula that just work better that I found myself doubting my memory of the English one. Like it actually ties up Lucy’s story by (somewhat obliquely) having Van Helsing and Harker kill her. And that made me wonder if their English counterparts had done the same and I’d somehow missed it.
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Ok, so, Spanish Dracula is great. The difference is astounding. If you’ve ever wanted to see or demonstrate just how much a director can influence a film, this is the perfect comparison.
For a start, it’s much more interestingly shot. The camera moves! There are mid-shots and close-ups! Ok, English Dracula did that too, but only very occasionally, whereas with Spanish Drac they’re frequent. It’s the work of a much more accomplished and confident director, one that looks for interesting angles to rise above the perfunctory. You can really appreciate this contrast given the use of the same sets.
Secondly, the story makes more sense. Now, admittedly, El Drac has half an hour more running time – 1hr 45m to Dracula’s 1hr 15m – and it’s hard to know how much was lost from Dracula through later censor cuts. But there is certainly elements where Spanish Drac’s director has made better choices to more clearly convey what’s going on. There are insert close-up shots of bite wounds and actions, for instance. The script is more comprehensive – it’s made clear that Seward’s been away to Switzerland to meet Van Helsing, for instance, which also lets you know that more time has passed than English Dracula (which all sort of blends into one night) lets on.
There are less of the weird, stupid moments that litter English Dracula too. When Van Helsing notices Dracula has no reflection, in ED, the film spends ages on it and Harker sees too. Yet he then remains sceptical of the whole vampire thing. In SD, only Van Helsing notices. Later, when VH and Harker chase Dracula in the abbey, a door bars their way. In the English version, they fail to open it up until they just do. In Spanish, they break the door down. In English Dracula, VH finds Drac’s coffins and looks in both. He shows Harker that Drac is in one. They then both act like Mina could be in the other, even though they’ve looked and then look in exactly the same way again. In Spanish, Harker wonders if Eva is in there before they open it and see it’s empty.
Oh and in the Spanish version, we learn why Van Helsing doesn’t leave with Harker and Mina/Eva. He intends to deal with Renfield’s corpse. Such an easy thing to mention, yet the English version obscures it.
The Spanish cast are pretty good too. Their Dracula feels like Frank Langella mixed with Brad Garrett from Everybody Loves Raymond. It’s less austere a look than Lugosi and oddly neurotic, given his weird mouth. I’d say Spanish Van Helsing is better too, but that might just be down to him not having a weird half-Scottish half-Dutch accent.
There are so many bits in Spanish Dracula that just work better that I found myself doubting my memory of the English one. Like it actually ties up Lucy’s story by (somewhat obliquely) having Van Helsing and Harker kill her. And that made me wonder if their English counterparts had done the same and I’d somehow missed it.
Paul and Chris Weitz are making a movie about the Spanish Dracula production; Lupita Tovar, who played Eva, was their grandmother: https://deadline.com/2022/02/chris-weitz-paul-weitz-the-spanish-dracula-mexican-actress-grandmother-lupita-tovar-unversal-exec-paul-kohner-1234926792/
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I’ve had The Next Generation -Patlabor- sitting in my to watch pile for ages, and finally got around to it this week. This is the 2013 – 2015 live-action incarnation of the show, and it’s an interesting thing. The idea is that it’s set in then contemporary Tokyo, and the financial crash of the late 2000s lead to a decline in the use of Labor mechs in all walks of life, military funding dried up, and as a result SV2 has been reduced to only the second section, just about managing to maintain a pair of old AV-98 Ingram Labors for the handful of Labor-related crimes that require their intervention.
As a result the team has to stand a gruelling watch where they basically get 8 hours to themselves every 2 days, but there’s very little to do in terms of police work so they spend a lot of time goofing off in their barracks. The show very heavily leans into the workplace comedy elements of the original anime, most of the characters have at least one comedic trait that’s not quite the main way they’re defined, but close to it in some cases. That, combined with the characters all being deliberately reminiscent of the ones from the original anime in both demeanour and name meant I spent a lot of the show with Labor 2’s pilot in my head as “Not-Ohta”, instead of his actual name, Ōtawara. The main characters who stood out for me were Akira Izumino, Noa’s replacement and as such the lead character in the ensemble, Kasha – Kanuka’s replacement, this time a Russian cop instead of American, and Captain Gotōda who’s naturally Captain Goto’s replacement. On that last note it’s amazing that they found a live-action actor who looks like Goto’s character design to play him. In a very nice touch Shigeru Chiba returns as Shige, now the chief of the technical division with a shrine to former Chief Sakaki in an equipment room.
The show itself is a lot of fun, often relying on broad comedy but never feeling too juvenile, even as, say Akira has to arrest a guy because the detective who’s trying to do so ate bad clams and has severe stomach cramps, or a scene where Ōtawara’s jaw drops and they CG it to comical proportions. There’s a lot of really nice open moments between Akira and
Not-AsumaYuma Sinonobe which feel almost ad-libbed they’re so natural. My favourite is int he episode where Akira loses at Tekken to a middle-aged man and goes into intense training to win a rematch and Yuma is trying to get her to drink a truly disgusting concoction. That episode also has a fantastic sequence where Akira has a deep conversation with the guy that beat her in a café, and when he stiffs her with the bill she returns to SV2 and beats the shit out of just about everyone there like she’s a Terminator.There’s also some very enjoyable action sequences, most notably one where Akira, Yuma and another SV2 member are taken hostage in a convenience store and Kasha storms it to rescue them, leading to a gunfight in the aisles, or a tense face-off with one of the same terrorists later when he gets control of a military labor and goes on a rampage.
It all culminates with a movie called GREY GHOST, which I’ve kinda settled on being a remix of Patlabor 2 – it’s both a sequel to the movie in that the antagonists are followers of Tsuge, the mastermind behind the coup attempt, but it’s also in parts a remake with a number of identical plot points, such as a suspicious member of Public Security coming to Gotōda with footage of a bridge bombing that proves it was done with an air-to-ground missile, them meeting later in an aquarium, and a confrontation between Gotōda and the Metropolitan Police leadership that’s cut short by a helicopter attack. But Mamoru Oshii seems to really like the idea of police robots fighting off a coup or other military/paramilitary attack on Tokyo, given it’s also the plot of the last few episodes of the Patlabor New Files OVA, and a Patlabor novel he wrote that uses many of the same character names as the Next Generation cast, but the personalities and in some cases gender are different. The movie has some more of the show’s humour early on but it fades away as the plot – an experimental JSDF helicopter with optical camouflage has been hijacked and is being used to strike out at the institutions of Tokyo. There’s a couple of nice setpieces – a running gunfight between the members of SV2 and the support team for the helicopter, and the final confrontation between SV2’s Labors and the helicopter on a bridge.
I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about the show, but I suspect these are a mix of the usual unpleasable fans and people who are far more familiar with the slow, thoughtful melancholy of the movies (and even then, it’s far more an element of Patlabor 2 – the first movie has a lot of comedy moments). This feels very in-line with the TV show and the manga, and I found it quite enjoyable.
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So I watched the first two episodes of The Peripheral earlier, and it’s pretty good so far. To begin with, it looks perfect. Like, it’s not exactly how I would have pictured everything, but it all looks right. The characters all feel genuine, stuff in both timelines feels right – the grimy decaying cyberpunk of Flynne’s timeline has a fantastic mix of hi-tech like the hovering roomba in Flynne’s family home, and older stuff like the actual design and decor of the house itself. The performances are all great, the script is often fantastic with a lot of literary layered dialogue (but that gets a bit on the nose in a scene where Flynne is asking questions of the people in far future London and their replies often feel like a nod and wink to how serialised TV shows tease out their revelations instead of infodumping.
My big worry for the show is that there’s a certain amount of story in the book, and at present it’s unclear if the show is trying to adapt the novel, or use it as a launchpad for a longer narrative. They’ve already changed the catalyst of the action for the story, and expanded a bunch of characters’ roles – though right now it’s mostly a case of seeing events that happened off-page in the novel and are actually shown here, but who knows if that will change?
Overall it’s off to a good start and I’ll definitely keep watching for now.
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I’m planning to watch this tonight too. Do you think we need a spoiler thread?
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I wouldn’t be opposed to it. Would it be spoilers for book and show or just show?
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I’d say just show, we had this with Game of Thrones and The Expanse before, most won’t have done both.
Put the book stuff behind spoiler text would make sense.
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Great, I’ve kicked one off. Will report back later!
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I DVR’ed Cleopatra Jones and Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold. Right now, I’m watching the former.
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I just watched The Faculty for the first time, which is a pretty cool post-modern take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers in high school. Great cast, including Jon Stewart, who is playing a non-comedic role but does get a pretty good gag in the picture credits.
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Avenue 5
“He may might have used the last two as wine stoppers.”
Oh god I was crying laughing.
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I just watched The Faculty for the first time, which is a pretty cool post-modern take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers in high school. Great cast, including Jon Stewart, who is playing a non-comedic role but does get a pretty good gag in the picture credits.
I saw this at the cinema when it came out and liked it a lot. I haven’t watched it since but from memory it was a fun romp.
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Yeah, The Faculty was great. Also, one of the first roles I noticed Elijah Wood in.
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The Shining. I’ve seen this movie plenty of times, but always the cut-down UK version. I think the original US cut only became legally available over here with the 4K release a few years ago, so I’m watching it for the first time now.
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Did you know that the Foo Fighters made a comedy-horror movie? No, really. It’s called Studio 666 and is about them moving into a haunted mansion to record an album.
I gave it a go this evening, figuring it’d either be weirdly great or pretty terrible.
Unfortunately it’s the latter. It’s not just that the band largely aren’t great actors, but the script is fairly crap, relying more on swearing than actual jokes. It’s a fairly standard “creative driven by demonic madness” tale that isn’t particularly elevated by having a real band starring in it.
It’s a very weird vanity project. The theme tune is by John Carpenter and his son though, which is… something, I guess?
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I have in fact been keeping up with the new Quantum Leap and can report that, six episodes in, the show is officially… not totally awful!
It is the mystery angle set up in the “present day” portion of the show with the project team that is the most intriguing. Some times it veers too close to early years Agents of Shield but there are some pretty big hints at tying things back to the original show in a significant way, so hopefully they manage to stick the landing.
The leaps themselves remain rather underwhelming. They tend to aim for something epic with them – a spaceship rescue, an earthquake, etc. – whereas some of the best stories of the original show were the ones in which Sam had to fix something relatively low-key and personal to the people he leapt into (to that end, the boxing leap was the most effective one the reboot has done so far). Having to make time for the project team means that the leaps get about half as much screentime as they would have done in the original show, so it makes it harder to get the episodic parts over.
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I watched The Gray Man yesterday, the thing the Russo Brothers did for Netflix. It was… okay. Ryan Golsing is really good, as he usually is, and Chris Evans does a pretty good job, too. But the script is veeeeeeeery simple, with paper-thin 2D characters (especially Ana de Armas’ agent who is, like, there, basically until at the end she’s an all-out action hero suddenly), flat dialogue and a kinda boring plot. The main bad guys, a bureaucrat (Regé-Jean Page who is apparently famous off of Bridgerton, but who delivers a terrible performance here) and his assistant (played by Jessica Henwick, who was Colleen Wing on Iron Fist and who does okay with the too little she has to work with) are obnoxious but also not the least bit interesting, so they’re very hard to watch.
The action scenes are well shot, with some spectacular moments and some very well choreographed fights, but… it’s barely enough to make it worth watching the entire movie. I also hated the ending, in which for some reason, they decided for the bad guys to not get their comeuppance, probably because they’re thinking about a sequel or something, but man it was a very bad decision not to show those guys getting theirs.So yeah. I mean, it was fun enough to watch most of the time. But not exactly a must-see.
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Watched Enola Holmes 2 today, having enjoyed the first one more than I expected.
This was similarly fun – a nice mystery romp that moves quickly, has some decent swashbuckling action, a couple of interesting twists and turns to the story, and a nice easy charm to the whole thing.
Brown is as charismatic as she was in the first movie, Cavill gets more to do here, and David Thewlis does well with his role. Plus there are some fun nods to the more classic take on Sherlock Holmes.
A fun watch.
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Might be time to finally check out Peaky Blinders.
Just finished the final season of this last month. Highly recommended.
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I finally completed Season 2 of Only Murders in the Building. I think I enjoyed this even more than the innovative first season, for the fact that we got to learn some of the backstory of the three main characters. Selena Gomez is perfectly cast as Mabel, and the performances of Steve Martin and Martin Short are effortlessly funny and poignant at the same time.
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I just watched Stage Door which weirdly also turns out to have a fourteen actress playing older. Thankfully Ann Miller remains fully clothed in her supporting role as a struggling thespian.
The film’s stars are Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers, who just about manage to stand out from the large ensemble (including Lucille Ball) of wise-cracking aspiring/out-of-work actresses. It’s incredible that this is the only film Rogers and Hepburn did together because they’re a brilliant pairing (moreso when you learn that swathes of the film were ad-libbed/cribbed from the cast’s off-screen banter). If they were men, they’d have got a string of buddy movies together like Crosby and Hope. As it is, there’s just this one quip-filled joy.
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8 episodes in to Welcome To Wrexham now and very much enjoying it. Really three different shows in one. There’s the fish out of water element of two Hollywood stars, especially these two in particular, figuring out how to run a Welsh football club from afar. There’s the underdog story of a faded football club trying to get back into the big time. And there’s the redemption story of Wrexham itself, with people boosted by the hope this venture affords them. Rob Ryan come across very well, as you’d expect from their own show (McElhaney’s exasperation with the archaic property laws of the UK was a particular highlight). I’m avoiding reading spoilers of how the team is actually doing now but hopefully they can get in top of things – and hopefully the owners don’t wind up doing more harm than good.
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I enjoyed all of Welcome To Wrexham too. But do you also really hate that one dickhead fan they keep talking to? The guy with short black hair, beard and a podcast.
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Is that the painter bloke? Yeah, I wouldn’t exactly be thrilled at getting stuck with him at the pub. Even Reynolds shut him down at one point.
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Yeah, I think he was a painter. Introduced himself by saying he did the same job as his grandad and dad did and “fucking hates it.”
And then in the bit where the different types of fans are explained he talks about the ones who moan about everything who he a) doesn’t seem to realise he is and b) then moans about.
He’s the only guy I think came out of the show poorly, encapsulating that certain type of fan that rings into 5 Live every week to complain bitterly about his team being a disgrace. Even the hooligan guy they talk to comes across better, as just a bit pathetic, lost and delusional (continuing to buy a season ticket while he’s banned from going to the stadium for years) and he cost his girlfriend a job.
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Yeah he’s a bit of a prick, he also left the ground and went to the pub at one because it got all got too much for him.
It’s kind of good though that they show all sides, it could be easier to just show the likes of the middle aged lady with the red hair who is always positive and seems lovely. I mean every club has those dicks to fill in the 5 Live phone in slots.
The show overall is much better than I expected it to be. Less sanitised than I imagined and covering a lot of different aspects which mean the 18 episodes don’t ever feel too much.
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The first ten episodes of Transformers: Earthspark have gone up, and it’s off to a fairly good start. The show revolves around the Malto family, who’ve just moved from Philadelphia to the small town of Witwicky so Dot, the mother can pursue a career as a forest ranger. In short order, the kids Robby and Mo wind up in a mysterious glowing cave, and when they touch a rock on a plinth a pair of new-born Transformers named Twitch and Thrash emerge from the earth and telepathically bond with the kids. Handily Dot was a soldier and fought alongside the Autobots in their war against the Decepticons and is friendly with Optimus Prime and Megatron – both of whom are working with a human organisation called GHOST in order to police the Transformers left on Earth since the war ended. Worried that GHOST would exploit Twitch and Thrash rather than let them learn and grow on their own, Prime decides to let them live incognito with the Maltos and asks Bumblebee – who’s been in hiding since the end of the war for reasons as yet undisclosed to train them.
The show settles into a moral of the week adventure show, it’s definitely skewing towards a younger audience than, say Transformers Prime or Beast Wars and that shows very much in the simplicity of the writing and the scope of many of the early stories. There are hints at more… I don’t want to say mature but not quite as young audience content on the way, with things like Megatron chafing at how GHOST treats Decepticons, some frank discussions of the consequences of war – Dot has a prosthetic leg, and human antagonist character Dr. Mandroid is missing an arm thanks to a stray shot in a Transformer battle, which he replaces with one he cuts off a Decepticon in the opening 2-parter. There’s also hints that Dot’s husband Alex has more of a connection to the war than being married to someone who fought in it and being a big Bumblebee fanboy.
Those hints at something more are a big part of why I enjoyed the episodes so far. It feels like they’re planning to ramp up the story after easing people into it. It’s also nice to see more than just a rehash of G1. It’s quite heavily referencing G1 at points, like when Alex tells the kids about the war, it uses the original cartoon’s designs, but Bumblebee’s robot mode takes a lot of inspiration from the redesign in the IDW comics around 2014 while his car mode resembles his Robots in Disguise (2015) one. Similarly Wheeljack is a nice blending of his G1, Prime and Cyberverse characters, and Arcee and Elita-1 get major overhauls, turning into a muscle car and a SUV respectively and having personalities and stuff. On the character front, Twitch and Thrash are really fun, they have a lot of energy and feel natural and are the right side of the charming/annoying divide. Their dynamic with the Maltos is great too, they all act like a full family with the kids and bots calling each other brothers and sisters and Dot and Alex are all their parents.
The art style is a bit of a mixed bag. I’m not a huge fan of the human designs, and some of the Transformers are better than others. Nick Roche is one of the robot designers and his stuff stands out amongst the best work on display. The animation is fluid and works very well, there’s some spectacular action scenes to boot, especially later in this batch of episodes. Another fantastic touch is that all the explosions and energy effects look hand-drawn as opposed to the rendered CG of everything else, it works really well on-screen.
Overall, it gets the thumbs up.
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I’ve been watching Upstairs, Downstairs lately. Talking Pictures are showing it one episode a week, which is feels suitably old fashioned for archival TV these days, but it’s actually quite convenient.
Anyway, I’m really enjoying the series. I’ve seen bits of the latter seasons about 10-15 years and knew it was good, but it’s properly gripped me. I’m early in season 2 at the moment and there’s a storyline about the daughter (who is an arsehole)’s husband turning out to be asexual. It’s a really interesting tack, as I thought they were going to have him be a closeted homosexual. But instead he’s asexual, in love with his wife but physically unable to bring himself to have sex with her. A surprising choice for the 70s, imo.
There’s a really fun character added in season 2: Thomas, initially the manservant of the aforementioned husband and now chauffeur to the main family. A well written character enhanced by a really likeable performance by John Alderton, who has a marvellous Welsh accent. The kind you don’t tend to hear on TV much any more, it’s usually flatten out by drama school training. But as well as sounding good it also seemed really familiar. So I looked Alderton up on IMDB and he’s only bloody Fireman Sam! I think that’s part of why I like the accent so much, it’s drilling right down to buried childhood memories.
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Alderton was actually raised in Hull, he’s not Welsh at all despite two of his most famous roles using the accent. It is a very good one though which is relatively rare from English actors, I love the film but there’s a lot of wincing for me watching Pride (especially Bill Nighy) because of the dodgy accents.
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You ever watch a film and not know if it was great or terrible? I just had that with Righting Wrongs, a mid-80s HK martial arts action movie. I first became aware of it after seeing an utterly bonzo fight scene featuring Cynthia Rothrock posted on Twitter.
Cynthia Rothrock vs Karen Sheperd in "Righting Wrongs AKA Above The Law(1986)". This is a reupload in better quality but guess what? From the @HiYAHTV upscale that is currently streaming right now in NA. Yes, they are streaming Righting Wrongs. $3.99 a month. pic.twitter.com/uNLoy2dran
— ѕнσgυη ѕυρяємє (@TimesSqKungFu) April 9, 2022
Which is pretty great. And the fight scenes generally are this good throughout the film. The rest of it though… It’s like Garth Marenghi made it. The plot is nonsense, the acting pretty bad (even allowing for it being a mouth-flap dub), the music just peak 80s cheese. The opening for instance is set at the “English Supreme Court” – which is clearly a building in Hong Kong – and sees three men with differing levels of firepower all conspiring to shoot a judge up to fuck, ending in an explosive car chase on a bridge, all of which is roughly dubbed into awkward English (the rest of the film is in dubbed Mandarin and subbed, although not necessarily). It’s peak non-horror Darkplace.
I watched this through a rental of the new blu-ray release, which is interesting in its own right. There’s three existing versions of the movie: an English release, a HK cut and Singapore cut, all different lengths. The blu-ray set has them all and adds in a new “ultimate cut”, which blends them together into an 1hr 40m cut. I’m not sure it really warrants that and, assuming they keep all the fights, I suspect the shortest cut is the best. But it also has an “ending randomiser”, where it’ll serve up one of the four different versions of the ending through seamless branching. Unfortunately, it doesn’t let you see each of those in isolation, to compare them afterwards, you have to individually pick each one (not knowing which you got initially) and skip through to spot differences. Interesting idea though.
So Righting Wrongs is a mixed bag. Great action, lots of interesting 80s relics – the hair, the car chases between boxy hatchbacks, the shoulderpads – but not a particularly good film over all.
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There’s a ton of legit fun martial arts movies in the 80s, even if the Shaw Brothers’ heyday was behind them by that point. A few years ago when I was laid up with a bad back one twitch channel was streaming a selection of Shaw movies non-stop for like a week and while there were some all time classics like the Five Deadly Venoms, one of the most fun was 1983’s Lady is the Boss, part of that trend of female-lead movies that Cynthia Rothrock was part of.
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Yeah, I’ve seen a smattering of Shaw Bros (et al) historical martial arts movies and love them. But I’ve not ventured much into the ones set in the modern day, not even Jackie Chan’s work, which I really must rectify.
Rothrock’s pretty great in Righting Wrongs. I mean, not so much acting (again, it’s a mouth flap dub, there’s only so much you can do) but in fight sequences she’s fantastic. I hear Yes Madam’s good (and Michelle Yeoh’s breakout work) and the upcoming blu-ray release of that is on my rental queue too.
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Oh, you need to get on Jackie Chan! I’d recommend Police Story, Armour of God, Wheels on Meals and Project A as major highlights
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Police Story and Armour of God are already on my list. I’ll add the other two.
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Oh, you need to get on Jackie Chan! I’d recommend Police Story, Armour of God, Wheels on Meals and Project A as major highlights
Seconded! Any HK film with the three dragons of Chan, Hung and Biao will have stunningly good action sequences.
Police Story is legendary for one of the stunts hospitalising the entire stunt team so badly the health insurance refused to cover it!
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Watched “Those Who Wish Me Dead” (whose German title is “They Want Me Dead” because the German audience couldn’t deal with the subtlety of using “those” and “wish”, apparently), which was a bit disappointing for a Taylor Sheridon movie. There was some good stuff though – some really terse moments, and I did like Aidan Quinn and Nicolas Hoult as the ruthless assassin pair. Jon Bernthal was also good as always. His character’s wife had some great moments, too, can’t remember the name of the actress, but she did a great job. It’s just that some of the movie was very predictable while at the same time stretching suspense of disbelief (a lightning bolt inconveniently hits the firefighter’s lookout just as the assassins have killed their target) and the whole thing with Angelina Jolie as the hotshot but traumatised firefighter taking care of the fugitive kid didn’t really work all that well. Nobody’s fault really, they both did a good job, but it was just the least interesting (and most cliché) aspect of the story by far. Plus, I don’t know, I like Jolie, but I’d rather have seen someone less known in that role. As it was, I was constantly distracted because she’s just too much of a movie star for that kind of role in that kind of movie.
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Yeesh, that 3rd act in Black Adam was fuckin horrible… like something out of the mid 2000’s. And you can see that movie was cut down and fiddled in post, so I guess same old same old for DC movies
It was fun enough I guess but they really need to start righting that ship. Great to see Cavill if only for 5 seconds… shame they felt the need to use that fuckin Williams score, ugh get over it for real… anyhoo…
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I found Megaforce on archive.org and am watching it now.
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Sweet Jesus, that Guardians Christmas Special is so bad it makes Guardians 2 look like Guardians 1.
We now have a clear winner for worst Marvel content.
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Sweet Jesus, that Guardians Christmas Special is so bad it makes Guardians 2 look like Guardians 1.
We now have a clear winner for worst Marvel content.
Found the actor
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I quite enjoyed the Guardians Holiday Special. Groot looked terrible though. Gunn is claiming it’s entirely CG, but I don’t buy it – its blatantly a guy in a chunky suit for most of it.
On a different note, I’m really not a Star Trek guy but I’ve been watching Strange New Worlds lately and really enjoying it. Anson Mount is really good as Pike (and shows a lot of range in the fantasy story episode). I like most of the cast but Dr M’Benga needs to speak up and stop bloody mumbling.
The final episode presents an alt timeline take on a TOS episode, so I decided to watch that for comparison last night. I’ve seen bits of TOS before and never got on with it and this was no different. But it was impressive how closely the SNW version followed the original – almost scene for scene in places.
It did underline to me how there’s more range to Leonard Nimoy’s Spock than people like to remember (I don’t know if that got ground away in later series) and it makes Ethan Peck’s version look a bit too robotic by comparison.
Because it was also on Netflix, I decided to watch the original pilot for Star Trek, which SNW is essentially adapting with Pike, Una etc. Man, it’s terrible! Pike’s a whiny loser, most of the crew are terrible actors, Spock is just bellowing all his lines like he’s in a submarine movie, there are people just hanging around on the bridge for no reason, the effects are bad even by 60s standards and the “time warp” drive thing is just laughable. I get why so many changes were made when it went to series, but I’m also amazed it even got a series order given how bad it is.
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Fantastic Beasts and how to crash a multi billion franchise. Pt.3
Sweet Jesus that was boring. Not as bad as the second one but still painfully long and every hour of it’s run time felt like 3. I’m glad they’re not making any more of them.
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Ah hell, I just realised that last week was the last episode of Avenue 5 for now, for some reason I thought it was going to be 10 episodes again.
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Ah hell, I just realised that last week was the last episode of Avenue 5 for now, for some reason I thought it was going to be 10 episodes again.
Season 1 had nine episodes.
As funny as the show is, I don’t see it getting a third season. I don’t think the ratings are nearly enough for the current regime at WBD to continue with the series.
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Apparently Armando Iannucci was saying in October that HBO were interested in a third series. But I’ll admit part of why I was assuming there’d be more episodes was so they could leave the show with a satisfactory ending instead of a cliffhanger.
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Apparently Armando Iannucci was saying in October that HBO were interested in a third series. But I’ll admit part of why I was assuming there’d be more episodes was so they could leave the show with a satisfactory ending instead of a cliffhanger.
I would love a third season that wraps everything up.
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It’s honestly so hard to tell nowadays. In the ‘good old days’ Nielsen or BARB ratings would tell you how a show would go.
Even back to the DVD days something like The Wire had awful ratings at HBO but ran to a 5 season conclusion because other metrics like new subs and aftersales were good but as you say their management have changed. With streaming we get even less clarity of what success means, Apple have a different model so seem happy to spend on quality, we have no idea how many watch, they started filming season 3 of Slow Horses before the first had aired.
Netflix are all about piling the content high so even though they release data that shows The Sandman was a big hit for hours watched we have to offset that with how much it cost compared to other shows.
Some cheap shows make a big impact (reality shows big in that area) but you also can’t sell long term subs on a ‘cheap and cheerful’ roster and nothing else. If Netflix dropped drama for easily profitable documentaries and reality shows then I am also dropping them.
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Ah hell, I just realised that last week was the last episode of Avenue 5 for now, for some reason I thought it was going to be 10 episodes again.
I only just started the second season but it’s as fun as ever, and one of the few shows that really makes me laugh out loud. I love that it isn’t afraid to be completely absurd and cartoonish. The episode with the paedo hamster tunnel and then the cannibal on the loose was hilarious.
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Netflix are all about piling the content high so even though they release data that shows The Sandman was a big hit for hours watched we have to offset that with how much it cost compared to other shows.
Similarly, we watched Wednesday recently (which I really enjoyed as a fun family watch – and Jenna Ortega is a star in the making) and even though it’s been supposedly one of Netflix’s most-watched shows ever, moreso even than the most recent Stranger Things, they still haven’t been quick to announce a renewal.
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Ah hell, I just realised that last week was the last episode of Avenue 5 for now, for some reason I thought it was going to be 10 episodes again.
I only just started the second season but it’s as fun as ever, and one of the few shows that really makes me laugh out loud. I love that it isn’t afraid to be completely absurd and cartoonish. The episode with the paedo hamster tunnel and then the cannibal on the loose was hilarious.
I just finished season 2. I think it was better than season 1, which I already liked. But this season is more consistently funny, faster-moving, and even more willing to push things into the realms of utter silliness. And it works really well, with some great big ideas and lots of very funny small moments.
I hope there’s a third season.
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Avenue 5 s2 e3 (the one with the space station) is very funny but doesn’t it entirely negate the premise of the show? Avenue 5 is a ship with limited engine power that is essentially just slaloming off the gravity of celestial objects, hence why it can’t change course properly. So how can it dock with a space station? If it’s able to arrest its motion to stay attached to the (presumably stationary) space station, can’t it just… stay there? Won’t having been attached change its momentum entirely?
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Avenue 5 s2 e3 (the one with the space station) is very funny but doesn’t it entirely negate the premise of the show? Avenue 5 is a ship with limited engine power that is essentially just slaloming off the gravity of celestial objects, hence why it can’t change course properly. So how can it dock with a space station? If it’s able to arrest its motion to stay attached to the (presumably stationary) space station, can’t it just… stay there? Won’t having been attached change its momentum entirely?
I did wonder about that myself. But like the episodes of Red Dwarf where they actually do get back to Earth, you have to just ignore it for the jokes.
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To be fair, everything is moving in space and it could be a case that Avenue 5’s orbit intersected with the space station’s orbit for long enough that they could dock and interact before going their separate ways. But that’s probably more thought than the writers put into it.
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I love that the episode also served as a bit of a Thick Of It reunion. I think there was even a gag about it in the dialogue.
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Willow, episode 3.
Before filming, they fired the lighting director.
And took the daring approach of filming everything in darkness?
(I have no idea what Willow is. Is it a reboot of the old movie?)
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Avenue 5 s2 e3 (the one with the space station) is very funny but doesn’t it entirely negate the premise of the show? Avenue 5 is a ship with limited engine power that is essentially just slaloming off the gravity of celestial objects, hence why it can’t change course properly. So how can it dock with a space station? If it’s able to arrest its motion to stay attached to the (presumably stationary) space station, can’t it just… stay there? Won’t having been attached change its momentum entirely?
See also Space:1999 where, without any engines at all, they are crossing light years of space in a few days and then lingering in a solar system long enough to spend several days on a planet before shooting off at trans-light velocities again. And that didn’t even have the excuse of being a comedy.
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Willow, episode 3.
Before filming, they fired the lighting director.
And took the daring approach of filming everything in darkness?
(I have no idea what Willow is. Is it a reboot of the old movie?)
It’s a sequel to the movie
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Similarly, we watched Wednesday recently (which I really enjoyed as a fun family watch – and Jenna Ortega is a star in the making)
The kids came to me asking to watch Wednesday today, I had to unlock it for them wit my PIN as Netflix have rated it 18 here, so I decided I might as well watch with them and ended up watching 3. I agree, it’s really good. Nice cast, good scripts, great direction. It’s nothing revolutionary but just a good quality show.
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I have no idea what Willow is. Is it a reboot of the old movie?
As Lorcan says it a sequel show with now ‘Old Man Willow’ action.
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Willow, episode 3.
Before filming, they fired the lighting director.
And took the daring approach of filming everything in darkness?
(I have no idea what Willow is. Is it a reboot of the old movie?)
You are more accurate than you know.
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(I have no idea what Willow is. Is it a reboot of the old movie?)
Man, how awesome would it be if it was a show featuring Alyson Hannigan.
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Similarly, we watched Wednesday recently (which I really enjoyed as a fun family watch – and Jenna Ortega is a star in the making)
The kids came to me asking to watch Wednesday today, I had to unlock it for them wit my PIN as Netflix have rated it 18 here, so I decided I might as well watch with them and ended up watching 3. I agree, it’s really good. Nice cast, good scripts, great direction. It’s nothing revolutionary but just a good quality show.
The rating is an interesting one, it’s basically a teen show with supernatural elements that’s not that far removed from something like Smallville (as its writers might suggest), but the scares are maybe a bit stronger than that, more in the Harry Potter ballpark. Or a bit like Buffy I guess.
So it’s kind of hard to rate age-wise as there are occasional scares and gore but it’s mostly fairly kid-friendly.
I think most kids around 10+ and certainly teens would be fine with it.
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The rating is an interesting one,
Ah it’s just bullshit we get here. I override it regularly.
In Malaysia and to be honest most Asian countries (it’s the same in India and Thailand so not necessarily a religious thing) they are used to all broadcast TV being heavily censored. It is basically no sex, nudity or F words.
Streaming has come with a different challenge as everything is based offshore and outside their control legally unless they just cut it off and ban the site. So what the streamers do to prevent that possibly happening is not actually censor anything but just crank the ratings up. I mean Merlin which was BBC family tea-time fare is 16+. Disney + do it too, Eternals and Lightyear are 18+ rated on that because they have some LGBT content. I know those movies are fine for my kids to watch.
Wednesday does have a bit of gore in it so far but funnily the broadcast censors have never cared about that, horror movies being a staple of Asian cinema but maybe the Netflix exec wherever he or she is in the US doesn’t have the cultural connection so they just set the ratings high to be safe.
So you end up with Wednesday, essentially a family show, being set the same as something like Blonde.
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Man, how awesome would it be if it was a show featuring Alyson Hannigan
I can dream…
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As Lorcan says it a sequel show with now ‘Old Man Willow’ action.
Honestly, I had to google Warwick Davis’s age because I couldn’t believe how *not* old he looks there.
Turns out he’s five years younger than me. He must have been in his teens in the original movie. And a kid when he played an Ewok.
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Yeah Davis was a kid when he played those roles. He was 11 when he answered a press add for short actors to be in RotJ.
So technically it is more Middle-Aged Man Willow.
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I’ve been catching up with season 3 of the Orville this week. It’s had some impressively weighty stories – I especially liked the one about the origin of the Kaylon – and the cameo by Dolly Parton was cool. While I appreciate the freedom from network running times gives more flexibility, it’s taking the mick a bit how many episodes are pushing 90 minutes.
I’m assuming there’s not going to be a season 4, which is a shame, but they at least seem to have been aware of that in making season 3.
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Had our annual Christmastime viewing of Scrooged tonight. I swear this film gets better every time. I genuinely feel like that final stretch is one of the all-time best Murray performances.
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