What Are You Watching?

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Discuss your current viewing here.

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Thread is fucking shit up again. Bump bump bump

Bittersweet to have Better Call Saul back as it is always great to watch but I really don’t want the show to end. We’re in endgame territory now, though. My hope is that it turns out that Jimmy and Kim were playing a long con all throughout the Breaking Bad years, so they can be safely reunited as Gene and his wife. Can we give them a happy ending, Mr Gilligan? Pretty please?

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Dave

I’ve rewatched all of the Transformers movies over the last couple of days. Short reviews:

The Transformers: The Movie: Awesome. Just pure unadultered fun. And not without some dramatic merit.

Transformers: If Michael Bay wasn’t such a good director, this would be almost unwatchable. Effects are cool but it’s the camera work and composition that really stands out. Story is pretty crap though.

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen: See above, but story is worse.

Transformers: The Dark Of The Moon: See above.

Tranformers: Age of Extinction: See above, but the presence of Mark Wahlberg and TJ Miller make this nigh unwatchable.

Transformers: The Last Knight: See above minus TJ Miller (thank fuck).

Bumblebee: I want the scenes on Cybertron injected right into my fucking veins. They’re some of the most awesome film scenes I’ve ever seen. More of this please. The rest of the movie is pretty good, actually. By far the best live-action entry into the Transformersverse.

In conclusion, Bumblebee stands out as the movie that turns the ongoing downward spiral of (pretty-looking) stupidity into something precious.

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Todd, Andrew, Dave

I thought all the Transformers movies were pretty awful except for Bumblebee, which I liked. And not just for the G1 designs (although they were very good) but also for the likeable lead, the tone and the all-ages appeal. Plus you could follow the action much more clearly than the Bay movies.

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Martin Smith

Dave wrote:

I thought all the Transformers movies were pretty awful except for Bumblebee, which I liked. And not just for the G1 designs (although they were very good) but also for the likeable lead, the tone and the all-ages appeal. Plus you could follow the action much more clearly than the Bay movies.

I agree with all of this. Weirdly, the action is (apart from the story) the weakest parts of Bayformers. While the effects are kinda cool, the fights are almost nauseating, and interpunctuated by some inexplicably stupid one-liners.

It’s the choppy editing and ultra-close-up angles that I remember most from the Bay Transformers movies that I saw. You don’t get any sense of the geography of an action scene, just lots of fast-cutting chaos.

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Andrew

Add in some unpleasant feelings thanks to a disjointed mix of slow-motion reaction shots.

The Transformers series suffers from too much Shia LaBoeuf and too little Megan Fox. There, I said it.

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Chris-S, Rocket, Todd, Uncle Retrospective

njerry wrote:

The Transformers series suffers from too much Shia LaBoeuf

This is true of everything Shia LaBoeuf has appeared in.

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Rocket, Todd, njerry

Fuck you guys, Shia Labeouf is one of my favourite actors. If you doubt him, watch Peanut Butter Falcon.

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Uncle Retrospective, njerry

Anonymous wrote:

I’ve rewatched all of the Transformers movies over the last couple of days. Short reviews:

The Transformers: The Movie: Awesome. Just pure unadultered fun. And not without some dramatic merit.

Transformers: If Michael Bay wasn’t such a good director, this would be almost unwatchable. Effects are cool but it’s the camera work and composition that really stands out. Story is pretty crap though.

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen: See above, but story is worse.

Transformers: The Dark Of The Moon: See above.

Tranformers: Age of Extinction: See above, but the presence of Mark Wahlberg and TJ Miller make this nigh unwatchable.

Transformers: The Last Knight: See above minus TJ Miller (thank fuck).

Bumblebee: I want the scenes on Cybertron injected right into my fucking veins. They’re some of the most awesome film scenes I’ve ever seen. More of this please. The rest of the movie is pretty good, actually. By far the best live-action entry into the Transformersverse.

In conclusion, Bumblebee stands out as the movie that turns the ongoing downward spiral of (pretty-looking) stupidity into something precious.

What, you skipped Lio Convoy In Imminent Danger?

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Martin Smith

Another great show in Westworld last night. They are messing with time again Aaron Paul did a fantastic job last night. Jeffrey Wright is also doing a great job slow playing what he knows and doesn’t knows. Tessa Thompson started slow this season but last night’s episode she hit her stride. contrasting this role with her role in T:L&T is a trip. Val being a great and compassionate leader and Hale is such an evil bitch

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Sean Robinson

Thanks for the spoiler tags this time Don.

I just watched the first episode of this season (and have the rest to catch up on) but it started better than I expected. My main worry was remembering all the backstory/characters from the past seasons, and who was who at this point, but it seems like they’re giving us enough information to remind us of that as we go along.

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Rocket

The latest Better Call Saul is, again, fantastic.

One of this show’s strengths has always been its ability to treat its characters like real people and actually explore the effect that the plot would have on them, in detail, and all the ripples that flow out from that. And this episode is a perfect example.

Quietly devastating in its own way – with fantastic performances from the leads – and just as dramatic as last week while being totally different.

I’m going to miss this show.

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Sean Robinson

And we also have a new spinoff set up: Gus-tronomic delights, in which Giancarlo Esposito leads wine-tasting sessions that all have unmistakeable undercurrents of tragic unconsummated impossible romance.

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Sean Robinson

It was a great episode. I’m pretty sure that it was the only time in the show those two have actually said “I love you” to one another, which… damn.

But are we done with the nude Odenkirk scenes now?

saga wrote:

But are we done with the nude Odenkirk scenes now?

They’ve got to fill these final four episodes somehow.

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Todd

[saga]

Apparently the big photos they used at the memorial service were vacation pictures that the actor had on his Instagram.

Also, the big transition at the end begins with him waking up in bed straight after his big scene with Kim – implying that said scene is haunting him in his dreams? Nice touch.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by saga.

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Dave

saga wrote:

Apparently the big photos they used at the memorial service were vacation pictures that the actor had on his Instagram.

Yeah, hilariously one of them had to have a smiling Tony Dalton cropped out.

Thinking about it further and the episode was a great reflection on how the main characters deal with tragedy.

Gus can only live in hate as anything else is… unacceptable. Jimmy buries it way, way, way deep down and hopes to live in artifice. Mike tries to do what he can to help the innocent bystanders but it is really to make himself feel better, like one of the good guys somehow. And Kim, try as she might, takes after her mother and runs.

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Dave

I’m three episodes into Westworld season 4 now and really enjoying it. It feels like a return to form, and is much more similar to the first season than any other season of the show so far.

In some ways it’s almost the anti-BCS in that the characters all feel like pretty bland ciphers that exist as vehicles for the show to explore the ideas that it’s interested in. But I think those ideas are really interesting – particularly the ones stemming from the world of gaming, in terms of repetitive experiences, predictability of patterns of behaviour and interactive/responsive/branching narratives and suchlike.

I also think the storylines and motivations are much clearer this time around – there’s less reliance on “who’s a robot?” for the twists, and they’re even playing fair with the timeline/reality puzzle aspects in a way that allows you to piece certain aspects together ahead of time if you’re paying attention.

I hope it keeps up this level of quality.

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Rocket, Sean Robinson

Watched the first episode of Westworld season 4. Too early to say anything yet, except that it’s nice with a science fiction show where a person dies when he’s impaled by a sword!

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Rocket, Dave

Rocket wrote:

Another great show in Westworld last night. They are messing with time again Aaron Paul did a fantastic job last night. Jeffrey Wright is also doing a great job slow playing what he knows and doesn’t knows. Tessa Thompson started slow this season but last night’s episode she hit her stride. contrasting this role with her role in T:L&T is a trip. Val being a great and compassionate leader and Hale is such an evil bitch

Definitely enjoying this more than last season. It actually feels like we’re getting mysteries set up then payed off, rather than waiting to reveal everything in a rushed finale.

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Rocket, Dave

Yeah, I’m up to date now and liking the way it’s all coming together. I had already worked out that Bernard was in a future timeline and was working with Caleb’s adult daughter from hints in the previous episodes, but I like the mystery that remains around Christina (I presume she’s in one of the many “construct” worlds that Bernard sampled earlier) and I thought the scenes with Caleb and Maeve were good this episode.

I’m watching Daredevil (the Netflix one) and it’s, as expected, very very good.

Loving the Kingpin, loving Matt, loving the supporting cast. All great.

But the whole premise of one of the key plots, Matt working with Urich to take down the Kingpin through the Not-Daily-Bugle newspaper? That shit doesn’t work. If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the last decade it’s that truth means nothing to people in power and that people aren’t going to “tear someone to shreds” if they know the truth about them.

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Ben

Anonymous wrote:

If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the last decade it’s that truth means nothing to people in power and that people aren’t going to “tear someone to shreds” if they know the truth about them.

If you haven’t watched The Boys, it sounds like you’d enjoy it.

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Ben

Dave wrote:

If you haven’t watched The Boys, it sounds like you’d enjoy it.

Only as long as you don’t listen to what I thought about season one and two.

Anonymous wrote:

Dave wrote:

If you haven’t watched The Boys, it sounds like you’d enjoy it.

Only as long as you don’t listen to what I thought about season one and two.

You didn’t like it?

Dave wrote:

You didn’t like it?

I don’t, no. Not because it’s bad, but because I am unable to separate film from source and thus view properties that are translated into film fairly. I really like The Boys (comic). I really don’t like what the show did with that material.

It doesn’t matter if it’s somehow better. It’s not The boys. It’s too different. I can’t view it fairly. I don’t like it. And it sucks ass.

I have forever given up on watching anything like this. I lasted two episodes or something of Preacher before I realised it wasn’t to my liking. Y The Last Man? Didn’t even need to bother trying it.

I gave The Boys season two a fair chance to start but I watched the last half of that season in 45 minutes skipping ahead to watch the big moments, and then noping out forever.

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Chris-S

Ah fair enough. I can understand that perspective. I think it was probably the Watchmen movie that first really forced me to separate the source material and adaptation in my mind and treat the two as completely separate things.

Also, on The Boys specifically, I actually didn’t really like the comic that much until later on – the early arcs felt very much shock-value driven rather than the slightly more sophisticated and emotionally rewarding stories that came later – so for me it feels welcome that the show skipped ahead rather than emulating the tone of the early comics.

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Ben

Dave wrote:

Ah fair enough. I can understand that perspective. I think it was probably the Watchmen movie that first really forced me to separate the source material and adaptation in my mind and treat the two as completely separate things.

I am either unable to do it or unwilling to try it. I am actually not sure which one it is.

Dave wrote:

Also, on The Boys specifically, I actually didn’t really like the comic that much until later on – the early arcs felt very much shock-value driven rather than the slightly more sophisticated and emotionally rewarding stories that came later – so for me it feels welcome that the show skipped ahead rather than emulating the tone of the early comics.

I agree with your comments on the first couple-or-so arcs about the comic, and given that I can totally understand your perspective on the adaptation (without sharing it). This is what I mean by “somehow better” in my original response. I get that it probably IS better in some ways, but my sense of enjoyment isn’t budging.

Anonymous wrote:

I’m watching Daredevil (the Netflix one) and it’s, as expected, very very good.

Loving the Kingpin, loving Matt, loving the supporting cast. All great.

But the whole premise of one of the key plots, Matt working with Urich to take down the Kingpin through the Not-Daily-Bugle newspaper? That shit doesn’t work. If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the last decade it’s that truth means nothing to people in power and that people aren’t going to “tear someone to shreds” if they know the truth about them.

To be fair, that does kind of cone into play as the show continues on.

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The Gray Man

After this and 21 Bridges, which is OK, I’m concluding the Russos were definitely boosted as directors by Marvel Studios. On their own? They’re just not that good.

This one goes along OK, some nice action sequences but from the point a pair of trained assassins go all Queensbury Rules, it falters badly.  With the rubbish ending being all but a confession they didn’t know how to end it.

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lorcan_nagle

Ben wrote:

After this and 21 Bridges, which is OK, I’m concluding the Russos were definitely boosted as directors by Marvel Studios. On their own? They’re just not that good.

They didn’t direct 21 Bridges, just produced. The other film they directed was Cherry, the Tom Holland movie that looked incredibly depressing. They also produced and wrote the screenplay for Extraction, another very bland-looking Netflix movie.

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lorcan_nagle

Oh, they did Extraction? That one worked for me, unlike The Gray Man.

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lorcan_nagle

I got on a bit of a Gerry Anderson vibe last week, and wound up looking up Thunderbirds 2086, an anime loosely based on his work. The production history is probably more interesting than the show itself, it was originally going to be an alien invasion story called Thunderhawks, a full collaboration between Anderson and a Japanese producer named Banjiro Umemura, but it fell apart, with the core idea of the show becoming Terrahawks and Umemura producing a Thunderbirdsalike anime called Scientific Rescue Team Technovoyager, which was then localised by ITC, and here we are. Being a kid when I originally watched it, I had no idea how many episodes there were and apparently only 13 of the total 24 episodes aired over here (then again, 18 aired in Japan before the show was dropped so ehhhh)

Anyway, I watched a couple of episodes and they were decent, if nothing special. The character designs are probably the most dared element, it was originally produced in 1982, with the characters heweing close to the kind of look you’d have seen in say, Gundam or Space Battleship Yamato from 5-8 years prior. But the mechanical designs are pretty cool, especially the way Thunderbirds 1, 2 and 3 link up to form a single spacecraft, and I was quite impressed with how much real-world physics the show portrayed. Like the first episode I saw was about an orbital colony threatened by asteroid debris – the local defences can’t stop them all and one member of the crew stays behind to keep the station running long enough for everyone else to escape, and the Thunderbird team defies orders to go save him because he’s a close friend. The colony is an O’Neill Torus (again drawing from Gundam which popularised the look and concept in anime), microgravity is portrayed with some level of realism, and the crux of the action is an attempt to cut a reactor out of the station to get it into space before it melts down. They even mention that the colony is orbiting in L5, one of the best places in the Earth-Moon system to place a permanent structure.

What’s very interesting is that the show uses the original Japanese theme, just with the lyrics removed in favour of narration – not unknown in localised anime but a bit odd, but this show also includes an eyecatch – a little snippet of animation that forms a logo/promo art piece, intended to run before and after ad breaks. There are a lot of edits to the show elsewhere, like adding technical schematics to the opening credits, and some “high-tech” visuals and text to the episodes at points.

Overall it’s an interesting curiosity, but not necessarily essential viewing.

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DavidM, Todd, Martin Smith

[Rocket]

Dave wrote:

I hope it keeps up this level of quality.

It has, in my opinion. Episode 5 dropped last night.. I thought it was funny finding out who Christina’s college roommate was. MiB has to think and is frustrated because he does not like to. It is a very thoughtful episode. Hale starts an musical interlude in the middle of the ep which is beautifully done. Here is the music

https://lnk.to/WestworldS4

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Rocket.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Rocket.

The Kingpin is the most compelling character of Daredevil. Fantastic villain. I’m really glad I stayed away from this series this long, because I can experience it now instead of seven-to-five years ago.

Just done with season 1, will go season 2 before I decide/find out what to do with The Punisher series and DD s3.

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lorcan_nagle, Dave

[Rocket]

Rocket wrote:

Dave wrote:

I hope it keeps up this level of quality.

It has, in my opinion. Episode 5 dropped last night.. I thought it was funny finding out who Christina’s college roommate was. MiB has to think and is frustrated because he does not like to. It is a very thoughtful episode. Hale starts an musical interlude in the middle of the ep which is beautifully done. Here is the music

https://lnk.to/WestworldS4

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Rocket.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Rocket.

Yeah I agree, I’m still enjoying it so far, even if this episode felt slightly less spectacular than the last one. Some interesting ideas at play and the storytelling feels clearer than in the last season.

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Rocket

Anonymous wrote:

The Kingpin is the most compelling character of Daredevil. Fantastic villain. I’m really glad I stayed away from this series this long, because I can experience it now instead of seven-to-five years ago.

Just done with season 1, will go season 2 before I decide/find out what to do with The Punisher series and DD s3.

There’s also Defenders to factor in, which pretty much killed my interest in Netflix-DD single-handed.

Dave wrote:

There’s also Defenders to factor in, which pretty much killed my interest in Netflix-DD single-handed.

I’ve already decided to completely skip that. I may go back in for some Jessica Jones after I’m done with DD/Punisher, but only that.

One of the reasons DD works so well is because he’s barely a super hero. No-one is. A guy with, say, unbreakable skin would break the spell of being grounded that this series has so effectively cast. I’m not going to willingly give up on that.

Daredevil and Punisher are certainly the best shows of that Netflix-verse, even with Karen Page. Jessica Jones and Luke Cage are okay but they never realise the potential they had in the early goings. Defenders is, somehow, just dull. Iron Fist is so bad that it can’t even enter so-bad-it’s-good territory.

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Chris-S, Todd

If Iron Fist had just been about Colleen Wing it would have been infinitely better. I basically just watched it for her.

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Uncle Retrospective

Iron Fist s1 and Defenders killed my interest in the Netflix Marvel shows at the time, but I’m been slowly going through them all the past year or so and they do get better again after that. Punisher was much better than I expected. Daredevil s3 was almost as good as s1. I’m a couple of episodes into Jessica Jones s3 now and that’s pretty good. Even Iron Fist s2 wasn’t entirely awful.

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Chris-S

Problem with Kingpin in Netflix Daredevil is he’s so easy to trigger:

Yo Fisk, your Mum (insert as applicable)

Fisk goes for the guy in a rage and gets a shotgun blast to the guts.

Ben wrote:

Problem with Kingpin in Netflix Daredevil is he’s so easy to trigger:

Yo Fisk, your Mum (insert as applicable)

Fisk goes for the guy in a rage and gets a shotgun blast to the guts.

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Uncle Retrospective, Rocket, Todd, njerry, JRCarter, Dave

Unfortunately, Kingpin in the Hawkeye show was about one blunder away from Otis in Superman: The Movie. Hoping the MCU does him better going forward.

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Uncle Retrospective, njerry, Dave

Interesting episode of Better Scheme Gene this week. Not sure that it is what I want from the show at this stage of the final season but the craftsmanship cannot be denied. It also adds a certain tension to finally spend time in the ‘present’ rather than in the prequel time zone, since anything could happen to any of the characters at this stage.

Also – dammit, Jerry!

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Dave

saga wrote:

Interesting episode of Better Scheme Gene this week. Not sure that it is what I want from the show at this stage of the final season but the craftsmanship cannot be denied. It also adds a certain tension to finally spend time in the ‘present’ rather than in the prequel time zone, since anything could happen to any of the characters at this stage.

Yeah I agree. It feels like a bit of a left-turn for the series, but at the same time I’m not really desperate to see anything further from the BB era either.

But I do hope these final episodes don’t just feel like an extended epilogue for the show.

Anonymous wrote:

Dave wrote:

You didn’t like it?

I don’t, no. Not because it’s bad, but because I am unable to separate film from source and thus view properties that are translated into film fairly. I really like The Boys (comic). I really don’t like what the show did with that material.

It doesn’t matter if it’s somehow better. It’s not The boys. It’s too different. I can’t view it fairly. I don’t like it. And it sucks ass.

I have forever given up on watching anything like this. I lasted two episodes or something of Preacher before I realised it wasn’t to my liking. Y The Last Man? Didn’t even need to bother trying it.

I gave The Boys season two a fair chance to start but I watched the last half of that season in 45 minutes skipping ahead to watch the big moments, and then noping out forever.

I am in the exact same boat with all of these shows for the same reason.
It’s particularly difficult with source material I have really strong attachment to.
I switched Sweet Tooth off after 15 mins, Y The Last Man I didn’t finish the first episode (although, it was also dire), I sat through the whole first season of Locke and Key because I’d asked my wife to watch it with me and I felt I was punishing myself.
I just can’t do it. I’ve tried. I gave Preacher 2 seasons and spent the whole 2 seasons wishing it was closer to the comics.
I hated Kingsman because they took all the rough edges out of Secret Service, which was all the stuff I enjoyed about the comic.

Having watched the trailers for Sandman I know there’s no point in me even trying the first episode, regardless of what reception it gets.

I do plan to go back to The Boys (I’ve watched season 1) but generally speaking I feel i need to accept that tv and movie adaptions of comics are not for me, particularly TV which they tend to pad out with a bunch of their own, less interesting guff.

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Todd, Dave

Last week was Saul saying goodbye to Jimmy. This week appeared to be Gene saying goodbye to Saul. Next week Jimmy says goodbye to Gene?

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Dave

Chris-S wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Dave wrote:

You didn’t like it?

I don’t, no. Not because it’s bad, but because I am unable to separate film from source and thus view properties that are translated into film fairly. I really like The Boys (comic). I really don’t like what the show did with that material.

It doesn’t matter if it’s somehow better. It’s not The boys. It’s too different. I can’t view it fairly. I don’t like it. And it sucks ass.

I have forever given up on watching anything like this. I lasted two episodes or something of Preacher before I realised it wasn’t to my liking. Y The Last Man? Didn’t even need to bother trying it.

I gave The Boys season two a fair chance to start but I watched the last half of that season in 45 minutes skipping ahead to watch the big moments, and then noping out forever.

I am in the exact same boat with all of these shows for the same reason.
It’s particularly difficult with source material I have really strong attachment to.
I switched Sweet Tooth off after 15 mins, Y The Last Man I didn’t finish the first episode (although, it was also dire), I sat through the whole first season of Locke and Key because I’d asked my wife to watch it with me and I felt I was punishing myself.
I just can’t do it. I’ve tried. I gave Preacher 2 seasons and spent the whole 2 seasons wishing it was closer to the comics.
I hated Kingsman because they took all the rough edges out of Secret Service, which was all the stuff I enjoyed about the comic.

Having watched the trailers for Sandman I know there’s no point in me even trying the first episode, regardless of what reception it gets.

I do plan to go back to The Boys (I’ve watched season 1) but generally speaking I feel i need to accept that tv and movie adaptions of comics are not for me, particularly TV which they tend to pad out with a bunch of their own, less interesting guff.

I understand where you are coming from.

I have long ago accepted that changes from the source material have to be made when an adaption is made in a different medium. Certain things that work in the source medium sometimes just don’t translate at all into another. Costs and budgets are also another limiting factor. Books, prose and comics, have “unlimited budgets” where the creators can literally do anything. While SFX has progressed considerably, there are still cost and technical limitations with that.

I have also accepted that many times, the source material has its own shortcomings and adaptations do fix those on occassion. Fight Club the movie is far better than the book. Hell, even the author says so! I love that FX and Noah Hawley took the character of Legion and did something so completely different from what was done in the comics.

And then there are times the adaptation goes full Amber Heard and shits the bed. I’m looking at you, Jupiter’s Legacy.

Everyone has different thresholds and biases when it comes to adaptations, especially with their favorite source material.

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Chris-S

I’m at the cinema. Moment of truth for that movie I was an extra in last year. (Göta Kanal – Vinna eller Försvinna).

Be interesting to see if I’m in it.

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DavidM, Todd, lorcan_nagle

Todd wrote:

Everyone has different thresholds and biases when it comes to adaptations, especially with their favorite source material.

Yup. It’s not even consistent. We’re just human and our lines are drawn based on emotion as much as logic.

I really liked what they did with the Watchmen TV show until the nonsense at the end means I haven’t even been able to watch the last episode. It’s because I have a strong belief that ‘that blue character’ they keep wanting to bring back doesn’t make any sense based on the motivations in the comic. He doesn’t care any more, whether that be a love interest or being curious about how Batman behaves in the DCU, he doesn’t care, he’s moved to a different plane and it doesn’t make narrative sense to pretend he does again.

With other stuff I can be pretty blase about it all. I often quite like it if they veer away from source material since it makes it fresher, I quite like that the MCU almost never does straight adaptation but uses a pick and mix approach of lifting scenes and ideas. In Justice League The Flash is nothing like in the comics, he’s more Peter Parker than Barry Allen, I still think he’s the most interesting bit of the film.

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DavidM, Chris-S, Todd

garjones wrote:

In Justice League The Flash is nothing like in the comics, he’s more Peter Parker than Barry Allen, I still think he’s the most interesting bit of the film.

You’re one of them Ezra Miller stans?

Jokes aside, I’m with you in that the Flash is the most interesting, or at least the most entertaining part of both the og JL and the Snyder cut. Even more so in the Snyder cut, because of that pretty cool looking ftl shit he pulls at the end.

Anonymous wrote:

Even more so in the Snyder cut, because of that pretty cool looking ftl shit he pulls at the end.

Yeah he is better in the Snyder cut. I like his bit at the end and his bit in the street with the girl at the start, it’s cute catching hotdogs and all that.

I know we like to tease Jon on the whole Snyder shit and I really still don’t love that movie at all, it’s better than the Whedon version but still slow and bland. I liked the Flash bits quite a bit.

Not an Ezra stan though, they seem like quite the twat in real life.

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Chris-S wrote:

Having watched the trailers for Sandman I know there’s no point in me even trying the first episode, regardless of what reception it gets.

It seems more influenced by the comic, but there is too much in the comic to really be faithful.

Lucifer was funny. It’s like someone read a few pages of the comic and then said, “yeah, nope. Let’s just do a police procedural where the detective is the devil.”

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DavidM, Todd, Chris-S

Anonymous wrote:

I’m at the cinema. Moment of truth for that movie I was an extra in last year. (Göta Kanal – Vinna eller Försvinna).

Be interesting to see if I’m in it.

I was in it. More visibly than I had imagined. Yay – 15 seconds of fame!

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Rocket, Bruce, Todd, njerry, Martin Smith

Todd wrote:

I have long ago accepted that changes from the source material have to be made when an adaption is made in a different medium. Certain things that work in the source medium sometimes just don’t translate at all into another.

I’m quite okay with changes as long as they’re handled well, and the whole thing is handled well… A good example is Wanted… that movie has barely anything to do with the comicbook, yet, despite all the changes, the end result strangely enough feels very much like a Mark Millar story, and it’s a pretty fun (if stupid) movie… same can be said for most Millar adaptations… but then again, yeah Jupiter Legacy just fell short, not because of the changes, but because it just wasn’t good enough and fell flat on its face. Hell, maybe it would’ve benefited from more changes, but probably not 

Anonymous wrote:

Chris-S wrote:

Having watched the trailers for Sandman I know there’s no point in me even trying the first episode, regardless of what reception it gets.

It seems more influenced by the comic, but there is too much in the comic to really be faithful.

Lucifer was funny. It’s like someone read a few pages of the comic and then said, “yeah, nope. Let’s just do a police procedural where the detective is the devil.”

Lucifer is a perfect example.

Yeah I put that on for a bit, relapsed it resembled nothing of the comic which I was really fond off – and put it back off

It might be a good show in its own right, but we are going into these things with massive preconceptions.

Although I do like episodic tv, because it’s rarer now, so I might check it out one day when I’ve totally detached from the series

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Rocket

Speaking of episodic tv, I’ve been watching Supernatural from the beginning (a massive gap for me).

I watched season 1 episodes ‘Scarecrow’ and ‘Faith’.
It was obviously a bit predictable (moreso because I’d seen them before) – and it might be elevated because what I’d started watching just before it was so utterly unwatchable that by contrast Supernatural was a tonic; but what they do they do so well.

It’s old enough now to give that same warm buzz of nostalgia I get from the likes of X-Files, Buffy and Angel. It’s also really competent tv that tells an engrossing story each week in 40 mins, with good characters, cast and atmosphere.

Currently watching SPIDERMAN: NO WAY HOME while working from home. The first time I saw it was on a small screen on an airplane flight, so not an ideal setting. Much more powerful on a bigger screen with better sound. My favorite moments are the ones where the three Peters are together, sharing tragedies, talking shop, and working together to take down Osborn.

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Todd, Dave, Uncle Retrospective

Today I learned there are four episodes of What We Do In The Shadows season 4 out. I did the sensible thing and downloaded them for a binge watch immediately. Really weird that I didn’t know it was back.

What the fuck @todd. I thought friends alerted friends on their favourite shows? This is all your fault! AS USUAL. -_-

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

Today I learned there are four episodes of What We Do In The Shadows season 4 out. I did the sensible thing and downloaded them for a binge watch immediately. Really weird that I didn’t know it was back.

What the fuck @todd. I thought friends alerted friends on their favourite shows? This is all your fault! AS USUAL. -_-

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Todd wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Today I learned there are four episodes of What We Do In The Shadows season 4 out. I did the sensible thing and downloaded them for a binge watch immediately. Really weird that I didn’t know it was back.

What the fuck @todd. I thought friends alerted friends on their favourite shows? This is all your fault! AS USUAL. -_-

Apology accepted.

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Five minutes in to the first episode of What We Do In The Shadows s4 and I’m already crying of laughter. I’ve missed these guys.

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Todd

Jon wrote:

yeah Jupiter Legacy just fell short, not because of the changes, but because it just wasn’t good enough and fell flat on its face.

Yes that’s the crux of it. The changes weren’t the real issue, and it didn’t differ that much, it was more on pacing, the plot heated up in the last episode and clearly a lot of people had given up before then (it launched at number 1 globally so I think it’s fair to make the assumption that Netflix pulled the plug because a lot of those didn’t stick with it).

It’s interesting because one key element of Millar’s writing is he doesn’t mess about at all. His stories, good and bad, are generally economically told and short and sharp. The show was the opposite.

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Todd

garjones wrote:

and short

Short in length, not in publication time.

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Todd

Started watching Paper Girls. So far very faithful to the comics, but also very enjoyable. Plus, the episodes are short.

Looking forward to watching the rest of it.

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lorcan_nagle

Anonymous wrote:

Short in length, not in publication time.

To be fair to uncle Mark I think he got better on that and most of the time it wasn’t directly his fault. Old school Hitch (he’s changed his method and perfectionist approach now) and Quitely were not a good bet on hitting deadlines. He even stockpiled Jupiter’s Legacy issues and there’s a reason that hit big delays which to me isn’t particularly controversial but for some reason Quitely doesn’t want to discuss in public so I won’t.

Maybe indirectly because of who he picks, he has a Travis Charest book in the works who I don’t think has completed a project this century. I’d try not to solicit that one until the last page is in. 😂

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Todd

garjones wrote:

To be fair to uncle Mark I think he got better on that

It’s good that he has improved somewhere.

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Martin Smith, Todd, Rocket, garjones

I’m very close to abandoning Daredevil season 2 mid-season, mostly because I absolutely hate Elektra.

Not because of any of my usual “this isn’t MY Elektra” stuff, it’s just that the character is so annoying and frustrating that I don’t want to watch it. She disrupts my enjoyment of the show just as much as she disrupts Matthews life. I absolutely hate her. I mean, that’s partly to the showrunners credit, I suppose, seeing as they didn’t exactly make her likeable. Mission accomplished, you made a character I dislike so much I now dislike (parts of) the show.

I’m now at the point where I skip scenes she’s in, I don’t care half as much about the yakuza (it’s going to turn out to be The Hand, I’m sure) as I do about The Punishers trial. I want more Karen, Nelson, Matthew… Less Elektra.

I’ve already surmised from imdb that she’s only in something like ten episodes, but that enough for me to consider abandoning the show altogether and skip right to Punisher.

Yeah, my memory of DD season 2 is that all the Punisher stuff is pretty good but then it goes to shit with the stuff involving Elektra and everything relating to that. I watched it all but it was a big step down from the first season. And I didn’t even get to Defenders afterwards.

Maybe I should go back to it and at least finish off season 3 before Born Again comes out.

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Is season 3 better than season 2? I might skip it if it’s got more Elektra, Stick and The Hand. I’m really not interested in that superstitious ninja shit, I want Daredevil, Kingpin, Nelson & Murdock, Karen, Frank, Melvin, The Bulletin, etc.

It’s really weird of me to type these things out, because normally I’d be all over “superstitious ninja shit”, and no less so if it was in a Daredevil comic. That said, it feels as if the show has broken some sort of trust I’ve invested in it by leaving the street crime of Hells Kitchen behind (apart from the Punisher plot, which was very well handled) and make this massive yet vague fairy tale ninja stuff with Stick and his war against The Hand the central plot.

They did hint at it in earlier episodes, with the “black sky” being taken out by Stick and such… But I still feel that this isn’t the show I was enjoying.

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Dave

Anonymous wrote:

superstitious ninja shit

There it is – the name of my band.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

Is season 3 better than season 2? I might skip it if it’s got more Elektra, Stick and The Hand.

From memory I think that stuff is resolved in the Defenders miniseries and DD s.3 is more of a Matt/Kingpin story again.

From what I saw of it, season 3 was better than the back half of season 2.

Sure was. It never really got back to season 1 levels but it was still a pretty good watch.

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As I recall, Daredevil was like this:

Season 1: Great!
Season 2: Everything with the Punisher, really good. Everything with Elektra and the Hand, really boring.
Season 3: Great again.

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Chris D, Chris-S, Dave

Thanks for the encouraging words, lads! I’ll stay with it!

S3 was Bullseye & Kingpin no? I recall it being a slower burn than S1 but still pretty good all things considered. If you’re gonna skip Defenders you only need to know Matt is presumed dead at the end of that… oh and they defeat the Hand’s dumbshit plan in NY, but who cares.

I have been beyond impressed with The Orville: New Horizons. Top notch writing and performances. The content evokes Star Trek at its best but still paving its own way. It hasn’t always taken the easy way out and if it appears to, a later episode will show the consequences.

Next week is the finale, and it is may be the series finale. Supposedly, everyone has been released from their contracts. I hope it sticks the landing because this season has been great.

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Sean Robinson, Chris-S, Martin Smith

I must remember to catch up with that.

Watchmen is on in the background. I’m one of the people that like it, and still do.

What I’ve always been impressed with is the casting inside the budget.
Except for Matthew Goode as Ozymandias.

Now it’s on and I just wanted to say that Matthew Goode is not the devil.
But I started typing and now I think it’s hard to defend that choice.
Ahh! Still say not a bad choice, just not a good one for the role’s importance.
Jeremy Irons back in the day would’ve been awesome

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DavidM

Sean Robinson wrote:

Now it’s on and I just wanted to say that Matthew Goode is not the devil. But I started typing and now I think it’s hard to defend that choice. Ahh! Still say not a bad choice, just not a good one for the role’s importance.

I think he’s okay, but could’ve been better… role needed more presence I guess. Ackerman and Goode are the weaker spots of the cast, but man, the rest of them, what a cast… I can forgive it =P

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Sean Robinson

I agree with both of you. While Åkerman isn’t shit, she isn’t exactly memorable either. Crudup is an excellent choice for Manhattan, and likewise Earle Haley embodies Rorschach about as well as could be expected in a movie.

I do think the movie has numerous glaring issues but the casting is not one of them, and the movie is still somehow enjoyable.

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Sean Robinson

I’ll be honest, I haven’t loved the last couple of BCS episodes. It feels like the show has naturally peaked and its story concluded – you could have ended the whole thing two weeks ago and it would have been fine – and these latest episodes feel like unnecessary noodling.

I get that there’s a certain amount of fan expectation they want to meet with this final season, but none of what we’ve seen in the past couple of weeks feels essential or even terribly compelling compared to the earlier stretch of the season.

Maybe I’m wrong and this is all leading up to a finale that feels perfect and retrospectively justifies the direction of these most recent episodes. But for now it feels like the show has a certain number of episodes still to fill and is spinning its wheels.

Todd wrote:

Everyone has different thresholds and biases when it comes to adaptations, especially with their favorite source material.

Yep. I loved what they did with The Boys and thought Preacher was a really good adaptation, even if it fell short when it came to some important aspects of the comic book. But with both shows, I was able to enjoy them for what they were and for their appreciation of the source material even while they were doing their own thing.

But I am unsure about the upcoming Sandman adaptation. This one is very close to my heart, and maybe that’ll make it impossible for me to enjoy the adaptation. But I do like that, in the trailers, you can see the moments and story beats from the book. So maybe it’ll just be brilliant. I’m hoping for that, obviously.

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Chris-S, Todd, Uncle Retrospective

The dilemma is that from all I have seen The Sandman will be more faithful than most adaptations.

Fans usually ask for that but then maybe ask for more that it is just as they envision it.

The Ennis adaptations of Preacher and The Boys have been more in the vein of ‘inspired by’, they don’t really follow the same plot but keep to the same spirit.

It struck me a little in conversation elsewhere about the ‘Andor’ Star Wars series due out soon. It has a lot less pressure because generally nobody gives a shit about this character even if they liked Rogue One as I did , you can do what you want without the baggage of expectation.

Well, the good news is I never read Sandman, so I can go in with fresh(ish) eyes… so I’m just hoping it’s a good TV show.

Dave wrote:

I’ll be honest, I haven’t loved the last couple of BCS episodes. It feels like the show has naturally peaked and its story concluded – you could have ended the whole thing two weeks ago and it would have been fine – and these latest episodes feel like unnecessary noodling.

I get that there’s a certain amount of fan expectation they want to meet with this final season, but none of what we’ve seen in the past couple of weeks feels essential or even terribly compelling compared to the earlier stretch of the season.

Maybe I’m wrong and this is all leading up to a finale that feels perfect and retrospectively justifies the direction of these most recent episodes. But for now it feels like the show has a certain number of episodes still to fill and is spinning its wheels.

Fair enough. I’m still enjoying the show as much as ever but the Gene timeline is almost an altogether different series, so could see how it might not catch on for some.

I think that after all this time it is reasonable to want to see what actually wound up happening to the character and for that we need to move into the post-BB timeline. For a while now I’ve been hoping that he managed to get a happy ending somehow but this episode seemed to ask the very valid question of why should he get one? As the flashback scenes reiterated, he’s never been able to leave well enough alone. That’s gotten him into more and more trouble and yet he just keeps repeating the pattern, much to the detriment of whoever else winds up worse off as a result of his antics. Kim thought that her and Jimmy together were too toxic. She was right but Jimmy by himself is just as problematic.

Intrigued to find out more about the phone call that sent Gene off the deep end.

The first mark at the bar was the big brother from Home Alone!

Shout out to Cranston, who seamlessly stepped back into season 2 Walter White (quite a different character from what he became as the show progressed) without missing a beat.

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Dave

saga wrote:

The first mark at the bar was the big brother from Home Alone!

I knew I recognised him but couldn’t place him.

garjones wrote:

It struck me a little in conversation elsewhere about the ‘Andor’ Star Wars series due out soon. It has a lot less pressure because generally nobody gives a shit about this character even if they liked Rogue One as I did , you can do what you want without the baggage of expectation.

I’ll be honest, I can’t even remember which character Andor was.

 

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Chris-S

DavidM wrote:

garjones wrote:

It struck me a little in conversation elsewhere about the ‘Andor’ Star Wars series due out soon. It has a lot less pressure because generally nobody gives a shit about this character even if they liked Rogue One as I did , you can do what you want without the baggage of expectation.

I’ll be honest, I can’t even remember which character Andor was.

 

He’s called and/or so I guess he was an optional extra.

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Chris-S, DavidM, garjones

Huh. I thought Andor was a place.

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Maybe Andor was really the friends we made along the way.

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Bruce, Chris-S, Uncle Retrospective, Todd

The Gene story doesn’t really grab me in these last two episodes. It just seems a repeat of what we’ve seen before, slippin Jimmy doing a scam. And I don’t buy it as a development of the character. It’s just kinda boring. This is why I stopped watching this a while back.

 

I’ll keep watching it though, maybe the next episodes will be better. The focus should probably have been on Saul and Kim getting back together and we just got a little hint of that story.

I see character development here. Gene has spent most of his time being deathly afraid of getting caught – to the extent that he just let himself get locked in the dumpster room at the mall rather than open the emergency exit door because it would set off an alarm. Now he’s breaking and entering in a blunt, unsubtle way without so much as a face covering. His Slippin’ Jimmy antics were largely cheap scams to mess with people or swindle them out of some quick cash. Now he’s running an intricate criminal operation that requires drugging men, breaking into their homes and stealing their identities in order to sell it onto other crooks who can completely clean these men out and ruin their lives. So far as we know he doesn’t even have some form of justification for any of it. He just appears to have realised that he’s all out of hope, has nothing to live for and is determined to crash and burn no matter what.

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Arjan Dirkse

saga wrote:

I see character development here. Gene has spent most of his time being deathly afraid of getting caught – to the extent that he just let himself get locked in the dumpster room at the mall rather than open the emergency exit door because it would set off an alarm. Now he’s breaking and entering in a blunt, unsubtle way without so much as a face covering. His Slippin’ Jimmy antics were largely cheap scams to mess with people or swindle them out of some quick cash. Now he’s running an intricate criminal operation that requires drugging men, breaking into their homes and stealing their identities in order to sell it onto other crooks who can completely clean these men out and ruin their lives. So far as we know he doesn’t even have some form of justification for any of it. He just appears to have realised that he’s all out of hope, has nothing to live for and is determined to crash and burn no matter what.

Fai enough, if you like it that’s great. It just didn’t grab me.

[Martin Smith]

I’m belatedly watching the Neighbours finale. I only really watched Neighbours semi-regularly between about 95 and 05, so fall into a weird spot where I don’t have a clue who any of the current characters are and don’t recognise most of the people they got back (I mean, I just about recognised Guy Pearce as Guy Pearce, but I never saw him on it originally).

But then, I spent half the episode thinking “who’s that bald guy with Susan? Has she remarried? But then why are they being called the Kennedys?” Turns out it was Karl Kennedy, who was in it for almost all the period I watched (and just is super bald now and looks totally different for it) so maybe I never stood a chance. There were loads of names I recognised in the credits that I swear weren’t in the episode (Natalie Bassingthwaite, Natalie Imbruglia, Jacinta Stapleton, Stephanie McIntosh)

Most of the people from my era were relegated to Zoom cameos and even then I’m still not 100% on who they all were.

Anyway, it’s a weird thing bringing closure to a 40 odd year old soap. It leans heavily into a street-centric community spirit vibe (through a chronicle of the street) that I think is utterly alien to most people. Or maybe that’s my itinerant childhood showing. And it has to tread a weird balance between pandering to the nostalgia of lapsed viewers back for the end and not just binning off all the current characters that regular viewers (presumably) care about.

 

edit:ok some of those are down to me not recognising people (Natalie Bassingthwaite’s in most of the episode, Natalie Imbruglia is the total stranger Flick Scully runs into) but at least one (Stephanie McIntosh) was cut for the UK broadcast.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Martin Smith.

Watched the first episode of Sandman. It’s very ok. Not good enough to be great, not bad enough to be terrible, just a pretty faithful translation of the story to the screen, albeit without quite as much visual style.

Having said that the production values are pretty good. There’s just a kind of TV flatness to it that comes from not having made any really daring choices visually.

It’s quite po-faced and pompous in places, but that’s true of the source material too. Hopefully it gets more interesting as it adapts the later (and better) stories from the comics.

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Chris-S