You Have Been Watching

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Share your latest viewing here.

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paul f wrote:

Yeah, I didn’t like the second season much, and the reaction to the third season was so negative that I’ve never bothered.

Season 3 is better than season 2, a lot better but it’s still a long way behind season 1.

Shrinking season 2 has been pure gold though. Such a great show.

Hero is such a brilliantly esthetic movie but it is pure CCP propaganda.

We saw Sonic 3 today. It’s ok, a pretty uninspired kids film that’s elevated by a bit of fanservice and by Jim Carrey doing weird late-stage Jim Carrey stuff every 10 minutes. Pretty much what I expected but I won’t be too unhappy if they don’t make any more of these movies.

Squid Game 2

Overall, it was just okay. SG2 and SG3 are going to tell one continuous story, and SG2 ends on a bit of a cliffhanger. You can tell Netflix wanted to milk this to the last drop. Otherwise, I think the story could have been wrapped up in a single 10-episode season. SG2 has seven episodes and I assume SG3 will have a comparable number. (SG1 had 9 episodes.) There’s a lot of fluff, but there are some great character moments and performances. Despite being only 7 episodes, it takes its time to get where it needs to be.

SG1 was a great story that really didn’t need a sequel. It could have ended with 456 in the airport getting the call then fading to black, leaving the veiewer to decide if he went to his daughter or stayed to fight the game.

It’s not horrible by any means and can be compelling, but it does feel a bit “been there, done that”.

The Equalizer 3

This is a great sequel with a cast of utter irredeemables that it is immensely satisfying to see get very creatively offed.

The final act demonstrates this in spectacular fashion with a deliciously fitting end for Vincent, the head honcho villain. He’s gone on this villain monologue of what he is going to do tomorrow, oblivious that he won’t have that long.

So, I watched the Simpsons’ Disney+ exclusive Christmas special “O C’Mon All Ye Faithful”.

It was double length and basically told two separate stories. Each half of the special told a different story, connected with a framing device. The first half had Homer thinking he was Santa, and the second half had Ned having a crisis of faith.

The whole really wasn’t good. While the show has been flying on vapors for decades, this special actually felt like it was below the currently established par. The Homer story was tolerable, but the Ned story was just plain terrible. Everything felt forced, and a bit too preachy. The story just did not work.

FYI, Derren Brown appeared in the framing device that sets the stories in motion. I had never heard of him before. I had to look him up on Wikipedia. I think my not knowing him also took a bit away from the show.

I really can’t recommend the special, unless you are an absolute completist.

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Uncle Retrospective, Dave

I haven’t seen a Simpsons episodes in like a decade, I expect there’ll be a few good ones if I ever decide to catch up. But it’s just crazy how long they’ve kept this going.

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Sean Robinson

I’ve not watched regularly in decades either. I’m tempted to pick a season or two at random and watch them on D+ and see how they stack up. But as I understand it, Al Jean’s been showrunner since after Mike Scully left, so there’s not even variation like the Golden Years had (which shook things up slightly every few seasons).

Super Eyepatch Wolf did a pretty interesting video about the purported return to quality for the Simpsons last year

(tl dw? It’s not as good as the golden age, but better than it’s been for a long time)

I still watch it regularly out of habit. I will say the best they’ve put forth in recent times is the two-part “A Serious Flanders” (Season 33, episodes 6 and 7). It’s parody of prestige TV shows and the Coen Brothers. I actually laughed out loud with these episodes.

If you want to dip back in, I’d recommend these two episodes.

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njerry

lorcan_nagle wrote:

(tl dw? It’s not as good as the golden age, but better than it’s been for a long time)

I really can’t say that, overall, S33, S34, and beyond were better. Outside of the “A Serious Flanders” episodes, I genuinely don’t remember any of the episodes. That includes the one that aired last week! I had to look it up to jog my memory.

It’s been almost three years, so I rewatched all of Severance ahead of the second season finally starting.

It’s a great show, but I’m less than confident in their ability to pay everything off properly, especially they’ve been fairly public that a big reason for the delay is that they couldn’t decide on what should happen in the second season.

I watched Love Lies Bleeding. I thought it was good, the two leads were solid and Ed Harris is always great. Nice to see a good straightforward crime/romance thriller with a fair amount of sex and violence and very little flab.

It made me think that the TV adaptation of Brubaker/Phillips’ Criminal could actually be pretty good if they treat it the same way, character-oriented crime stories that don’t shy away from the more brutal aspects.

It kind of reminded me of Tarantino in some ways, and Bound too (in terms of being a gay female romance mixed in with a constantly tense and escalating crime plot). Good company to be in

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Christian, Uncle Retrospective

Also finished Black Doves on Netflix today. It’s the best thing I’ve seen on there in a while, a Christmastime spy thriller with Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw that’s slick and funny and violent and doesn’t outstay its welcome at six episodes. Some of the twists and coincidences reminded me a bit of 24 in that they make for good cliffhangers without bearing close scrutiny, but it all moves fast enough that you don’t have time to think about it for long.

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Martin Smith, Uncle Retrospective

And, you’ll be glad to know, darling, there’ll be a second series.

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Dave

Ben wrote:

And, you’ll be glad to know, darling, there’ll be a second series.

Ah, I didn’t know that – but I suspected due to the ending. It sets up a situation that’s potentially even more interesting than the first.

I watched Calamity Jane last night, the 50s musical Western, which, frankly, I didn’t think was particularly good. Doris Day’s performance is dreadful, like something out of the Beano, though possibly she’s just doing what was written.

Weirder though is all the reviews on Letterboxd by people who watched it and then unfavourably compared it to Deadwood, which also had Calamity Jane in it. And yeah, they’re both (very loosely!) based on the same person, but who the hell goes into a 50s musical expecting a similar depiction of a character to a 00s HBO drama?

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Uncle Retrospective

Martin Smith wrote:

I watched Calamity Jane last night, the 50s musical Western, which, frankly, I didn’t think was particularly good. Doris Day’s performance is dreadful, like something out of the Beano, though possibly she’s just doing what was written.

Weirder though is all the reviews on Letterboxd by people who watched it and then unfavourably compared it to Deadwood, which also had Calamity Jane in it. And yeah, they’re both (very loosely!) based on the same person, but who the hell goes into a 50s musical expecting a similar depiction of a character to a 00s HBO drama?

It’s just a good job they never read the Beano.

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njerry, Uncle Retrospective

Creature Commandos

I watched the last episode last night and I have to say, this series was not very good at all.

If you are a die-hard James Gunn fan, you will absolutely love it. Otherwise, it’s very James Gunn and that gets old real quick.

Almost all its characters are unlikable, but SURPRISE!!! they have tragic origins that instantly makes them sympathetic. Not.

The inclusion of the Frankenstein monster, supposedly as comic relief, was a waste of space. He did nothing to really move the plot forward. He was also pervy creepy, which made his inclusion even more unnecessary.

Of course, each episode has very deep cut music that 99% of the population has never heard before. While there are interesting songs, but it does get old fast and a lot of the songs really don’t work for the set pieces.

The story was okay. Each episode feels like it follows the same pattern, so it gets repetitive and predictable. Like I said, the Frankenstein monster subplot could have been dropped completely and it wouldn’t have affected the main plot.

For me, the Gunn era of the new DC cinemaverse is not off to a good start.

Hasbro Pulse has been livestreaming Season 3 and 4 of The Transformers:

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Todd

The wife and I saw The Last Showgirl today. It wasn’t good.

It wanted to have an indie, art house feel, but it all came off as incredibly pretentious. It was like the director, Gia Coppola, saw ten minutes of a Terrence Malick film and said, “Yeah, I’ll do something like that!” Direction and cinematography were way overdone. There were a few times I had close my eyes because the “style” was so annoying and irritating.

As to the performances, everyone seemed to be holding back. The performers, who actually are a talented lot, seemed to be restrained. They weren’t phoning it in, they just weren’t giving it their all. I think that is due to Pamela Anderson. She is really not a good actor at all. I think if the rest of the cast performed at full power, she would have been overshadowed completely and her performance would have looked even worse. I salute her for trying to do something serious and with depth, but she just doesn’t have the talent to pull it off.

I know the film is getting raves, Christel and I thought it was adequate at best.

Todd wrote:

I watched the last episode last night and I have to say, this series was not very good at all.

Y’know, I’d really like to form an opinion on this one, but it is not available anywhere in Germany. Not even to buy, for fuck’s sake.

Which reminds me, I also still need to see Doom Patrol season 4.

Oh, uh, I did see quite a few episodes of Next Level, the computer game adaptation anthology on amazon. Some of it is good, some of it is just okay. The D&D one was pretty boring. The Warhammer 40k one managed to convey the super-dark atmosphere of that setting quite nicely. The Pac-Man one was surprisingly good (and surprisingly dark). There was one in which Arnie voiced a wannabe king, which was pretty fun simply because it was Arnie’s voice (I first thought it was somebody doing a parody).

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lorcan_nagle

Harley Quinn Season 5 Episode 1 dropped yesterday. The new season finds Harley and Ivy in Metropolis.

I really enjoy this series. The writing and performances are fantastic. While it does poke fun at the DC characters, you can tell there is genuine love behind. I love the development of Harley and Ivy as a couple. It never felt forced, and it feels real. And the show is funny as hell! When I compare HQ to Creature Commandos, everything in CC just feels so forced. HQ feels effortless.

I can’t wait for the next episode!

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lorcan_nagle

[Martin Smith]

I’d never heard of the film Polite Society before I got it off Sky the other month. Watched it tonight and it is fucking rad.

It’s about Ria a teenage martial artist whose older sister Lena, an art school drop out, starts dating a seemingly perfect doctor. Ria doesn’t trust him, so she decides to break up the engagement. It’s funny, got a great cast, is stylish as hell and has excellent fight scenes.

 

edit: oh and I’ve just seen it’s by Nida Manzoor, creator of We Are Lady Parts, which makes total sense.

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

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Uncle Retrospective, lorcan_nagle

I’ve been meaning to watch that for ages, the trailer looked great.

Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. I saw it in the cinema, but I don’t think many did.

I watched the new Wolf Man, which I found very disappointing.

There are a few cool visual moments and some nice pieces of sound design during the transformation, but the script is awful. In his first scene, Christopher Abbott literally tells his daughter he doesn’t want to be the type of father that his dad was, in case we didn’t get the theme of the movie.

Julia Garner is seriously wasted. The advertising sells the movie as a mother/daughter story, which it isn’t at all. The only interactions they have are talking about what’s happening to Christopher Abbott.

The wolf transformation is fairly weak: from a distance it looks silly, close-up it looks gross, never scary. There’s not much tension; it tries to play off an incredibly obvious plot development as if it were a twist, and once the movie hits the midpoint everything plays out almost exactly as I expected, there were basically no surprises.

The mythology of the movie, what little of it is explored, doesn’t make much sense either. Is there just the one wolf creature? How did nobody kill him in the ten years or so since he was transformed? It doesn’t seem hard. If there are more, are the surviving characters just going to get brutally killed five minutes after the movie ends?

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Uncle Retrospective

Watched The Fall Guy, which was perfectly entertaining. Just a really well done, old-fashioned action comedy movie, with some romance thrown in. Charismatic stars, a script that is very, very cleanly structured and has fun dialogues… it’s a mystery to me why this movie was a dud. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it.

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Uncle Retrospective, Martin Smith, lorcan_nagle, Dave

Christian wrote:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with it.

I watched earlier this year, and I enjoyed it, but I don’t remember a single thing about it. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with it?

Yeah, I mean, it’s not a movie that’ll stick in your mind forever, but that’s not what people want most of the time, is it? It’s perfectly legitimate to be just some fun for an evening, and this movie is very good at that.

Also, shame on you for not remembering the drugged nightclub fight scene. That was actually a pretty great sequence.

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Uncle Retrospective

So I watched one and a half episodes of Dune:Prophecy and I think that’s it for me. Apart from this not being anywhere near Frank Herbert’s Dune’s league, it also suffers from the same problems that House of the Dragon does: it just goes through the motions of plot without making me care about any of the characters or their world. These characters are all made of cardboard, and one of their decisions make sense to me. There is no incentive to watch this at all.

So yeah. I guess I’m out.

Also, I watched Dan da dan on Netflix and that’s an incredibly fun anime. Fantastic animation, great characters and somehow sometimes the story gets really touching. There is also, however, the typical sexual obsession with the teenage protagonists.

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lorcan_nagle

Talking of Netflix animes, I finally went back and finished up Terminator Zero.

It’s a weird one – whereas most Terminator stories use the complex time-travel plots and philosophical ideas as little more than the background setup for a tense, violent chase involving an unstoppable machine, this series is the opposite – it uses the chase plot as a pretext to support an exploration of complex time-travel storylines and philosophical ideas.

And on its own terms it works pretty well, although it takes quite a while to get to the point and to unspool its plot, which means that the early episodes aren’t as good as the later ones when you have a better idea of the bigger picture.

The animation is OK without being spectacular and it’s never going to be more than an interesting spinoff, but it at least takes the core ideas of the franchise and does something a bit different with them, which the movies have struggled to do over the years.

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Todd, Christian, lorcan_nagle

Couple of films I watched last week.

Lisa Frankenstein. Directorial debut of Zelda Williams with a script by Diablo Cody. It’s about a teenage girl who is depressed after the death of her mother (killed by a slasher movie type guy in their house) and subsequent remarriage of her easy going father to a horrible woman (who has a mostly very nice daughter). The occupant of her favourite grave at the bachelor’s cemetery she hangs out in is struck by lightning and revived and she ends up bonding with him and procuring parts to fix him up. Absolutely does not work. Lovely colour palette and set design (it’s set in 1989 and manages to avoid a lot of the easy cliches while still feeling authentic) and seeing Kathryn Newton in increasingly stylish goth outfits is a treat, but the story is all over the place and it’s not particularly funny. I bailed after 25 minutes, reconsidered so went back and finished it and I’m not sure that I didn’t make the right choice the first time.

Bad Times At The El Royale. Four people arrive at a motel that straddles the Nevada-California border at the same time, all harbouring secrets. They end up intruding on each other and everything goes to shit, as the name suggests. Really good. Maybe a tad too long, but it’s got a great cast (even Dakota Johnson is passable in it) and the non-linear structure works really well. I’ve seen people compare it to 90s Tarantino and I can kind of see that, but it’s better than that comparison might have you suspecting. It’s written and directed by Drew Goddard, which I didn’t know til the end credits hit and I immediately went “oh yeah, I can definitely see that”.

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Todd, Uncle Retrospective

Yeah, I really liked Bat Times at the El Royale.

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Todd

Christian wrote:

Yeah, I really liked Bat Times at the El Royale.

I recognize the slight typo there, but Bat Times at the El Royale gets my attention a lot quicker.

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Dave, Uncle Retrospective, Christian, Todd, Sean Robinson

Drew Goddard could make a damn good Bat-show, that’s for sure.

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Martin Smith, Uncle Retrospective

I saw A Real Pain tonight. I liked it, fairly low-key but with some good central performances and several fun moments. Weirdly the film it reminded me of most is Lost In Translation, with that same reflective and slightly untethered feel to it but arguably a stronger relationship at the heart of it.

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Christian, Todd

I saw A Complete Unknown tonight. I liked it quite a bit.

Chalamet is great and inhabits Dylan without it feeling too much like an impersonation, Ed Norton is very good (and in any other year would probably have a shot at a best supporting actor win, but it’s a more understated performance than Culkin in A Real Pain), and the music is obviously great – there’s a section towards the middle that plays like a half hour of Greatest Hits but you don’t care as it’s all so good.

But at the same time there isn’t much of a shape to the movie, the story is full of standard music-biopic clichés, and I didn’t come out of it feeling like I knew or understood Dylan any more than I did going in. We all know he’s an enigmatic genius who can also be a bit of a stubborn asshole, and that’s all the film gives you really.

But it’s a well-made if fairly safe movie.

[Christian]

Saw Furiosa. It’s good that this movie is divided into chapters because it took me like a week to watch it (what with our having the bloody influenza at home and everything) and I was kind of sorry I wasn’t watching it on a big screen, because it’s fucking beautiful (of course). I don’t think I’ve had as much fun with an action movie, and been as fascinated with action in a movie, since Fury Road. It’s quite amazing. I could also watch this world endlessly, with its violent, beautiful freakishness. The story is also very strong; especially Young Furiosa’s story is very involving, and there are some really heartbreaking moments there (which I think isn’t the case in other Mad Max movies). And the young actress there does a fantastic job; it’s quite unfair that only Anya Taylor-Joy is credited as a lead on posters and the like when Alyla Browne is playing the main character for almost half the movie. Honestly, I think she does better than Taylor-Joy (who is doing a perfectly decent job, of course). And Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus is a great scene-chewing panto villain kind of character.

One thing I noticed this time around is that there is this really weird quality to the Mad Max movies. Things happen incredibly fast, of course, but more importantly, the characters’ actions are also very fast and almost feel sped up – they aren’t, but they’re just doing everything very quickly and there’s also this kind of choppy quality to it. What this does, for me, along with something about the composition of the images, is that it gives the whole thing a weirdly silent movie kind of quality. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was watching a silent movie homage.

I really want to go back into this world and rewatch Fury Road now.

EDIT:
Ah. It’s not just me. Miller says he kind of wanted the Mad Max movies to be silent movies.

“Kevin Brownlow’s book The Parade’s Gone By wielded a big influence on me when I first started asking myself what film is,” the Australian director started, “He said this new language, this new syntax, is basically defined pre-sound by the silent filmmakers, the closeup, the chase, the montage, cutting it together. The masters Buster Keaton and the Russians put pieces of film and fitted them together, all pre-sound”.

Continuing, he explained: “These were really the prime movers of the first Mad Max. I wanted to make a movie, as Hitchcock said, ‘where you didn’t have to read the subtitles in Japan.’ You could read it as a silent movie and still get most of what you needed in terms of the story. I really took that seriously. I remember living near a drive-in in Melbourne on top of a hill; I’d drive past it outside and watch the movie purely silently. I got into the habit of turning off the sound on my favorite movies if they come up on television, and realized how the film had to read first as a silent movie before the advantage of information came to you sonically”.

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/george-miller-how-silent-cinema-inspired-mad-max-fury-road/

• This reply was modified 5 months ago by Christian.

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Todd, Sean Robinson, Martin Smith, Dave, lorcan_nagle

I watched a couple of anime movies yesterday:

Gundam SEED Freedom was in cinemas for like one weekend last year, but I was working a con that weekend so I missed it, and it hit Netflix this week.  Dub-only, boo!  As the name suggests, this is a follow-up to the Gundam SEED corner of the franchise, which for me was a mixed bag.  The first show was a loose remake of the original Gundam with elements from Wing added in (mainly a bevvy of colour-coded Gundams piloted by pretty boys), and the second was initially trying to be a remake of 0083 and Zeta, but it seems to have gone through a lot of rewriting on the fly, relying increasingly on extensive callbacks and compilation episodes as it went on, to the point that the compilation movies heavily edited the story to change the focus and flow, and had a wholly new ending.

The movie picks up about a year after Destiny’s end, and Blue Cosmos, the billionaire-backed conspiratorial group who are incredibly rascist against the genetically-enhanced Coordinators are popping up all over Eurasia, attacking nations aligned with ZAFT in an attempt to goad them into attacking Earth Alliance aligned nations.  Kira and most of the old Three-Ship Alliance people are now members of Compass, a peacekeeping group who wade into the fights in their Mobile Suits to disable the belligerents. A small nation called Foundation proposes a joint operation against Blue Cosmos, but when the Compass members arrive at Foundation’s royal palace, their Mobile Suit pilots are hostile, and their prince is coming on to Lacus like nobody’s business, despite her and Kira being an item since like, the end of SEED.  In predictable fashion, the leaders of Foundation are up to no good, blah blah blah, big fights ensue.

My friend Karl, whom people may remember from the Wildstorm boards and early Millarworld as Authorised went to see this in the cinema, and he described it as “attack of the space incels”, and that feels right. Orphee, the main antagonist is some sort of super-coordinator and claims that Lacus is one too and they’re genetically designed to love each other. Meanwhile Lacus and one of Orphee’s female henchpeople have these portentuous conversations about love and using people and it really does feel like the kind of stuff Incels come out with.  Blue Cosmos are really only in the movie so the actual antagonists can be introduced, but we get a whoel bunch of Fantastic Rascism and Eugenics from Orphee and the other Foundation leaders, because they liked the Destiny plan from the second show, which was all about determining one’s place in society from their genetics.  It’s trying to say something but I don’t think it all comes together properly.

A big part of this problem is the movie is stuffed to the gills with stuff. Just about every surviving character from the TV show is back, and most of them get to have a moment in the limelight, and that’s a lot!  A lot of this is references back to events in the prior show, like Mu deflects a blast from a Requiem cannon with a Mobile Suit designed for the purpose – after he was killed doing this in the original show (it was later edited to hint he survived to set up a plot point in Destiny) – it still looks cool if you don’t know what this is a reference to, but a lot of them are more opaque.

So yeah, if you’re a fan of SEED? You’ll probably like this or love it, it got a lot of positie reviews and they all seem to be from people familiar with the saga.  If you like mech action there’s some fantastic fight scenes.  But it’s very much not an accessible entry point into Gundam.

 

I also went to see The Colours Within in the cinema.  It had a few screenings in my local place over the weekend, and I went based on that they tend to screen good anime movies and the description seemed interesting.  It’s centred on Totsuko, a teenage girl who can see colour-based auras around people, and she tends to be drawn to the people who’s colour she likes.  And as she notices the colour of Kimi, a girl she shared gym class with, Kimi beans her in the face with a dodgeball.  Kimi drops out of school shortly after this and Totsuko becomes obsessed with finding out what happened, to the point of searching for her in bookshops when she hears she’s working in one.

And because Totsuko is an absolute dork, when she finds Kimi she panickedly picks up a book on playing the piano and claims she was looking for it.  And then a boy named Rui walks over to them and asks if they’re in a band because Kimi was noodling on her guitar behind the counter, and Totsuko says “yes” and he asks to join and then they’re a band!

Most of the movie is just a year in the life of Totsuko, Kimi and Rui as they practice as a band and deal with their problems – Kimi lives with her grandmother and hasn’t told her she’s dropped out of school, Totsuko is kinda adrift, Rui’s family runs the only clinic on a small island and he’s expected to become a doctor and take over, and he’s feeling the pressure but hasn’t told his family about his love of music even though it’s helping him cope. The stakes are low, there’s very little tension or drama, but the movie is really enjoyable as a slice of life affair.  The characters are all really cute and sweet and you definitely feel for them all by the end.

When the movie started up, one of the production logos that came up was Science Saru, who worked on Space Dandy, Ping Pong The Animation, Devilman Crybaby, Keep Your Hands of Eizouken!, Dandadan, and perhaps most seen by people on here, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off.  So I knew that if nothing else I was going to have a visual feast.  And damn, they delivered on the technical elements.  This movie is gorgeous to look at, the designs are all wonderful.  One thing I espeically like is the wealth of body types on display.  Like Kimi is incredbily slender, looking like she walked out of a shojo manga, but Totsuko is broader with less of a defined chin, without being overweight.  One of Totsuko’s friends is overweight but isn’t drawn or animated to be a figure of comedy or ridicule, she’s just a bit bigger.  Everything moves wonderfully as well, especially the scenes of the musical performances.  The three kids in the band bop around and tap their feet to keep time, and while I’m not familiar enough with musical instruments to be sure they’re hitting the right notes, the animation of them playing definitely feels authentic. This is a movie with multiple intricately animated theremin solos.

I had a fantastic time and I can’t recommend it enough.

By chance, I happened upon Drew Goddard’s latest project (which Rob Thomas is also part of – I assume the Veronica Mars one, not the Matchbox 20 one) on D+ this week: High Potential. It’s another entry in the venerable genre of “people other than the police solving crimes”, adapted from a French series. In this instance it’s Dee from Always Sunny, here an unspecified probably autistic savant who works as a cleaner at the police department until she “corrects” a murder investigation board and ends up getting hired as a consultant. A potentially very tiresome premise, it’s saved by sharp scripts and some fun direction. There are lots of cut-aways to hypotheses – half soviet montage, half Family Guy cutaway gags – which are a lot of fun.

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd, lorcan_nagle

I watched the Disney+ exclusive episode of The Simpsons, “The Past and the Furious”.

The very short version: Lisa quantum-leaps 100 years into the past into the body of a distant relative and encounters a very different Monty Burns.

It really wasn’t very good. It just felt tired, in story and execution. I mean, the show has been on for 36 seasons, so I understand it isn’t easy to come up with new material. This just felt a bit lazy and uninspired. If this and the double episode Christmas special had been aired on Fox, it would have had a “meh” reaction and people would just move on. But by making them D+ exclusive specials, you would think they were going to be “something more”. They weren’t.

If you don’t see it, you haven’t missed anything.

[Sean Robinson]

Oh my god, the SNL – 50 special
Kate McKinnon owns that scene with Pedro Pascal and Woody Harrelson.
Martha Stewart joins and chews it up with Kate.
I was crying laughing.
(There Jon Hamm and Aidy Bryant too.)

Edir: Oh my god, sorry
That’s Meryl Streep (not Martha).
Ha!

• This reply was modified 4 months, 2 weeks ago by Sean Robinson.

Stuff watched on the flights:

The Beekeeper

A guy keeps bees, but is played by Jason Statham, so no way does he stay as that. Cue a very fun yarn of a con operation leading all the way to the heart of US politics, which sees Jeremy Irons turn up as a dodgy ex-CIA director. Along the way, many, many very deserving crapbags receive what is due to them. A very fun action movie.

Transformers One

Didn’t expect much from this, just a good way to spend time. Well, that was a wrong call. The voice cast really works, especially Hemsworth and Tyree as the bots who become Prime and Megatron. Add in a great style of animation and a well-paced story and it’s a very good time.

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Uncle Retrospective, JRCarter, Martin Smith, lorcan_nagle

Other stuff watched on the flights along with Beekeeper and Transformers One:

Wolfs – Didn’t care for this, couldn’t care about either character and bailed after 45 minutes.

The Penguin – Couldn’t really do this without subs, but episode 1’s pre-credits sequence sold me it, so definitely bagging the blu-ray set.

Slow Horses – Couldn’t get into this, although word is the first ep isn’t its best. Did like the performances, that I want to defenestrate Jackson is testimony to Oldman’s portrait of him. And he did have a point: A pilot who crashes in the simulator ain’t flying a 747

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lorcan_nagle

I’m watching the 4th season of Barry. This is a series that just keeps working. The motif of the autistic or somehow mentally weird/Forst-Gumpy genius killer savante isn’t exactly knew (what with The Professional and The Accountant and whatnot), but it’s still a fun trope to me, and in Barry, it’s coupled with the world of (semi-professional) acting, and that combination really works for this series. Good stuff.

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Todd

[Martin Smith]

Lately I’ve been watching a Canadian series called The Collector. It’s about Morgan, a former monk from the 14th century who sold his soul to save his girlfriend from the plague and ended up becoming the devil’s immortal agent on Earth, collecting the souls of other people who made deals when their ten years is up. Now (or 2004, when this was made) in Vancouver, he’s decided that these people should have a change at redemption, so has convinced the devil (who finds it amusing) to let him spend their last 48 hours trying to redeem them by rebalancing the good luck they got from their deal against the bad luck that went elsewhere.

It took a couple of episodes to get into the swing of things, but it’s pretty good and there are a couple of episodes that are straight up excellent (The Ice Skater and The Roboticist in season 1). And being a show from Canada, where there are only ever about 50 working actors at any one time, it’s great for spotting familiar faces. So far the highlights have been the admiral from Strange New Worlds as a rapper, the voice of Tigatron from Beast Wars as one of the devil’s guises and Five from Dark Matter, when only about six years old, as another guise of the devil (a different actor plays them each episode). It’s not perfect, there are some questionable elements: there’s a running plot thread about the non-verbal autistic son of Jeri, the journalist investigating Morgan being able to see the Devil and having visions of things relating to Morgan’s cases etc, which is a bit borderline “autism is really divine something or other”. One of the main supporting cast is Maya, a drug addict prostitute Morgan finds near death in episode 1 and tries to save, who then falls for him but he can’t tell her what it is he does (apparently if anyone learns of someone’s deal with the devil, they also immediately go to hell) and the devil keeps messing with her to taunt Morgan. Potentially a bit sad power fantasy, but it works well enough.

I’ve just started season 2 and the show has to recast Maya, as original actress Carly Pope became busy with something else. So it does something interesting with this by having her relapse and OD. Dead, the devil finds her and decides to take her soul and put it in a different body, one that might distract Morgan more (“blonde with bigger tits” I think the Devil says, as he picks it out from a line-up of replacement Mayas). So Maya comes back to life, thinking she’s just had a bad trip and near death experience and no-one notices that she’s now physically different. A picture of her as a kid changes to match. But she starts having hallucinations of her original appearance and nightmares of her original childhood self rather than the revised version. It’s a clever way to deal with losing an actor.

On the other hand, the show decides to make a supporting character out of Jeri’s sister, who helps look after her son. She first appears in the last episode of season 1, is called Rachel (who Jeri had spoken to on the phone a couple of times previously) and is played by Erica Durance, who then became a main cast member on Smallville. So in season 2, rather than recast Rachel, Jeri suddenly has a hitherto unmentioned second sister, Taylor, who acts exactly the same as Rachel did and Rachel is explained away as having just got a new job that prevents her from helping out with the kid. It’s really a strange choice – I don’t think anyone would have begrudged them recasting a guest character who had appeared once when making them a main character.

• This reply was modified 4 months, 1 week ago by Martin Smith.

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Todd, njerry

Martin Smith wrote:

It’s a clever way to deal with losing an actor.

Sounds a lot better than what happened to Ray Vecchio.

Dave wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

It’s a clever way to deal with losing an actor.

Sounds a lot better than what happened to Ray Vecchio.

It’s exactly what they should have done with Ray Vecchio.

The final season of Cobra Kai. The whole thing started out 80s nostalgic and it ended on a good note.

The SNL 50th has quietly appeared on Sky’s On Demand. I’m not sure they’re even going to linearly broadcast it. I enjoyed the special; nice to see Eddie Murphy get stuck in this time and him as Tracy Morgan was a highlight. As ever, I wished they acknowledged the cast of the Dick Ebersol years a bit more. Christine Ebersole would have been good in the New York musical number.

Oh, I watched the first of the four documentaries too (well, the one about auditions – the numbering is contradictory on Sky so it may well not be the first). That was good too. Interesting to see the auditions of people who didn’t make it, like Jim Carrey and Stephen Colbert.

Rewatching some Banshee (Anthony Starr before The Boys). Next might be Warrior.

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd

I still need to watch Warrior season 3. Love the show. (Not quite as much as Banshee though.)

I saw Robert Eggers’ The Northman. Liked it a lot. I remember seeing the trailers when it came out, but I hadn’t realised that this was basically Robert Eggers’ version of Hamlet. Basically, it’s a What-If-Hamlet-Wasn’t-Such-a-Fucking-Pussy version of that story. Kinda like this:

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Dave

(Just as a by the way, I tried to watch Hundreds of Beavers last night, but I got the day wrong. Damn. I really would’ve liked to see this in the theatre. Ah well.)

There’s a screening of it with a Q&A session in my local cinema but it sold out so fast!  They’re doing a Lynch season right now so I’m going to as many of his movies as possible right now.

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Christian

Christian wrote:

I saw Robert Eggers’ The Northman. Liked it a lot. I remember seeing the trailers when it came out, but I hadn’t realised that this was basically Robert Eggers’ version of Hamlet. Basically, it’s a What-If-Hamlet-Wasn’t-Such-a-Fucking-Pussy version of that story.

Well, it’s his version of the Norse myth Amleth that originally inspired Hamlet, right?

I also didn’t know that was the basis before I watched it, and I loved gradually realising that as I started to watch.

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Christian

Dave wrote:

Well, it’s his version of the Norse myth Amleth that originally inspired Hamlet, right?

Yup. And, I mean, the movie certainly does its own thing, as well – the plot doesn’t include a lot of the details that are in both the original source and in Shakespeare. But it did feel to me like Shakespeare’s Hamlet was also on Eggers’ mind quite a few times. The dialogues certainly had a Shakespearean tilt to them. And there was the scene in which Amleth talks to a skull. And Amleth’s single-minded desire for revenge that he enacts persistently also felt like a direct answer to Shakespeare’s dithering, doubting Hamlet.

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Dave

Christel and I binged the Netflix series Running Point yesterday.

It stars Kate Hudson as Isla Gordon, a reformed party girl gets the shot of a lifetime to prove herself as she’s left in charge of her family’s pro basketball team, but she soon quickly learns that running a basketball team comes with its own set of problems and surprises both on and off the court.

It’s fine. It is nothing new or groundbreaking. It has a lot of characters but due to the half-hour format and 10-episode length, a lot simply don’t get much exploration beyond a scene or two. One advantage network shows have over streaming and cable ones is the episode count. Networks will do 20+ episode seasons, which allows for more character development.

Kate Hudson does have good comedic chops, and she uses them well. It does have funny bits, and the cast is good on delivery.

It’s entertaining if you don’t have very high expectations. It’s a fun, breezy sitcom that is enjoyable.

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njerry

I’m starting on Veep because the streaming service I currently subscribe to has it, and it is exactly what I expected it to be. Great fun.

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Dave

By the way, I’m very annoyed that I still can’t watch the last season of Doom Patrol. It’s not available to stream in Germany in any way, not even to buy on amazon or anywhere else. I could buy the English/American physical DVD, of course, but… I mean, what is this, the fucking middle ages? This came out over a year ago!

I saw Mickey 17 last night.

It was fun but just okay. I think if it had been about 20-30 minutes shorter, it would’ve been better. It’s still entertaining and worth a watch.

I did forget that Robert Pattinson is actually a really good actor. He was excellent in the movie. The first movie that saw him that made me take notice was 2008’s Hard To Be. He’s at his best when he’s allowed to cut loose with a character.

[WonK]

DaveI watched Love Lies Bleeding …the two leads were solid and Ed Harris is always great. Nice to see a good straightforward crime/romance thriller with a fair amount of sex and violence and very little flab….It made me think that the TV adaptation of Brubaker/Phillips’ Criminal could actually be pretty good if they treat it the same way, character-oriented crime stories that don’t shy away from the more brutal aspects… It …reminded me of Bound too (in terms of being a gay female romance mixed in with a constantly tense and escalating crime plot). Good company to be in.

Agreed on all counts: along with Emily the Criminal, Love Lies Bleeding; were my two favorite crime thrillers of 2024.

And if you like the Brubaker/Philips’ Criminal, check out their Reckless series. T’was one of my favorite reads of last year.

• This reply was modified 3 months, 2 weeks ago by WonK.

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Christian

Yeah, Reckless was excellent. All of their OGNs are worth checking out, but the Reckless series is really good. Hopefully they come back to it.

WonK wrote:

Agreed on all counts: along with Emily the Criminal, Love Lies Bleeding; were my two favorite crime thrillers of 2024.

WON!!!!!!!

I watched the first episode of Adolescence on Netflix. Pretty gruelling and unrelenting, but it felt very realistic and obviously socially relevant, and was technically excellent with some great performances, particularly the kid at the centre of the story.

I’m looking forward to more, although it feels like the kind of show I’ll need to steel myself for.

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Andrew, lorcan_nagle, Todd

Episode three of Adolescence is one of the best single episodes of TV I’ve seen in a long time. Probably since the Bill & Frank episode of The Last Of Us. Great writing and performances, the whole episode is like a short play and works really well – virtually a two-hander with some subtleties brought out cleverly in the writing without being too heavy-handed, and both actors really holding their own (the child actor in particular is very impressive).

Episode two wasn’t quite as good as the first one and this one, so we’ll see how things wrap up – but either way it will have been worth it for this third episode.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

I just watched the last episode (not sure I’ve binged a full series in 24 hours since Chernobyl) and it ends well enough, but episodes 1 and 3 are definitely the standouts.

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Andrew, njerry, Todd

I watched the first episode of the UK Last One Laughing on Prime Video. Never watched one of these before, but the UK one has a lot of people I like in the cast (Bob Mortimer, Daisy May Cooper, Joe Lycett, Judi Love, Rob Beckett, Sara Pascoe, Lou Sanders, Joe Wilkinson, Harriet Kemsley, and Richard Ayoade), so I gave it a try.

It’s fun so far, I’ll definitely watch more, and maybe try some of the international ones. I know they did an Irish one recently which I might check out.

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Martin Smith

Dave wrote:

I just watched the last episode (not sure I’ve binged a full series in 24 hours since Chernobyl) and it ends well enough, but episodes 1 and 3 are definitely the standouts.

We watched all four in one sitting tonight. It’s maybe more of a technical achievement than anything else. Still leaves you with plenty to think about and talk about but maybe the single-take approach is a bit distracting (it was for me).

I agree that the first and third episodes are better than the second and last.

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Dave

Christel and I watched The Substance.

We thought it was okay. The visuals and direction were fantastic. It made me think of David Lynch. But it just didn’t stick the landing. It’s like they simply didn’t know how to end it, and just went for the most over the top thing they could think of.

Overall, the story made me think of this episode from the 1980s Twilight Zone:

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Andrew

I liked the crazy stuff at the end, too. It felt like an hommage to 90s B-movies.

Friend of mine at the theatre pointed out that this was also The Picture of Dorian Gray before I got there.

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Todd

I’m watching The Sandbaggers, a British spy show from the late 70s. It’s very slow and mostly just scenes of middle-aged British men having conversations, but it’s very good.

One of its main legacies is probably that it’s very clearly the main inspiration for Greg Rucka’s Queen and Country, a series that’s now even older than The Sandbaggers was when Q&C started.

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Uncle Retrospective

Christian wrote:

Friend of mine at the theatre pointed out that this was also The Picture of Dorian Gray before I got there.

I hadn’t even thought of that comparison, and now I feel stupid for missing it.

They even have that gigantic portrait in the movie!

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Todd

Christel and I also watched Anora last night.

Overall, it was a good movie, but I wouldn’t say a great movie. I’m not sure I would say it was worthy of all the Oscars it received.

It wanted to be a comedy and a drama but for me, neither aspect really landed well as it could have. The humor was more amusing than funny. The drama never really felt like it had enough weight behind it. The stakes in the movie never felt well defined or set up properly. Mickey Madison was good in it, but I’m not sure her performance was Oscar-worthy. (I also didn’t think Demi did anything groundbreaking in The Substance to warrant a nod.) I think the Best Actress category this time around turned into an offscreen shitshow, and Madison was probably the “safe” choice. She’s a good actress, though, and I think she has a bright future.

Overall, it was a decent movie, but I doubt I’d ever watch it again.

Dave wrote:

I hadn’t even thought of that comparison, and now I feel stupid for missing it.

They even have that gigantic portrait in the movie!

I’m glad I’m not alone in that, then :)

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Todd

We watched The One That Got Away, a Welsh-set whodunit/murder mystery on BBC Four.

It’s a good series with a decent hook – the two middle-aged detectives are exes who have to team up again to solve a new mystery linked to one of their old cases – it feels quite adult and no-nonsense in its outlook, and it’s mostly pretty well-written and acted.

But there are a few moments across the six episodes that feel a bit forced and coincidental, a few too many side-characters and red herrings that don’t go anywhere, and the solution is a bit too messy and complicated to really land.

I still enjoyed it, but mostly for the relationships and characters than the murder mystery itself.

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lorcan_nagle

The Residence

Watched this over the last few days. Probably one of the best new series I’ve seen in ages. It had pace, plot, characters and, most of all, confidence. Which it demonstrated by not doing a final end-of-series cliffhanger in the last 5-10 minutes.

At the same time it was a very smart dissection of power relationships, sexism, racism, social and political hierarchies. But it did all of this with a very fine sense of balance, it had an edge, but it was never too nasty an edge.

I needed a comfort watch, and after liking Kripke’s comic adaptations on amazon, I decided to watch a bit of Supernatural – which for some reason I didn’t get into back then. First episodes are alright.

I watched the first episode of The Pitt last night, which was really good. The real time aspect makes for a nice pace that doesn’t feel too artificially amped up – though I imagine that will change through the day/series – and I like the prospect of minor characters weaving in and out through that span (the guy with chest pains complaining that he’s not yet been seen, for instance, is presumably going to be a running thing).

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Christian

The Losers – I’ve not seen this in a while. If you’d asked, I’d have said it was made in 2007, but it’s actually 2010. It feels older than that both stylistically and in the way that it uses comic book aesthetics to show off that it’s based on a comic. I don’t think it really needed that, frankly, and it just feels a bit try hard in that regard now. The story’s decent – though it’s very weird that the nonsense sci-fi sonic disintegrator doomsday weapons are called “snukes” when that’s blatantly a suitcase nuke – and the characters good, though elevated by the cast. Chris Evans especially shines as Jensen and it reminds me of why I was so amped to see him as Captain America the next year. The direction isn’t great though, just full of lots of annoying gimmicks. I can see why Sylvain White hasn’t been trusted with another feature film since and is doing TV shows of a similar ilk.

The Kid Detective – Like Brubaker and Martin’s Friday, this is based on Encyclopaedia Brown, asking the bold question of “what if he became a burnt out adult”. I’m sort of reaching my limit on that kind of concept, but this does do it mostly well. Abe Applebaum was a kid detective who solved various cases in his school and across his small town – to the point that the town clubbed together to buy him an office – but burnt out when his best friend and assistant disappeared when they were about 14. Now 32 and struggling for meaningful detective work, he’s hired by a high school girl to investigate the murder of her boyfriend. For an indie comedy, it is actually funny in places, which is nice. It’s also quite dark but it balances those well, I think. It’s not spectacular, but it is entertaining.

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lorcan_nagle, njerry

Martin Smith wrote:

I watched the first episode of The Pitt last night, which was really good. The real time aspect makes for a nice pace that doesn’t feel too artificially amped up – though I imagine that will change through the day/series – and I like the prospect of minor characters weaving in and out through that span (the guy with chest pains complaining that he’s not yet been seen, for instance, is presumably going to be a running thing).

Yes, The Pitt has been very good and I’m looking forward to the finale tonight.
Episode 15, an hour a day (one long work day!).

Lots of twists and turns and the cast is very good.
Helps to have front line workers give two thumbs up to this series.

Good news as Season 2 will start shooting in June and the plan is to arrive in January 2026.
They also plan for future seasons and want it yearly (no large gaps between seasons).
Sounds good and hope they keep the quality of season one!

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Todd, Martin Smith

I finished the Pitt off this weekend and it’s really great TV. I won’t go too into depth on it, because I want others to see it unspoilt, but one thing I thought it did excellently was build up a believable world of characters in that hospital that we’re only getting a glimpse of. As people from other shifts come in later in the season/day, they all feel like as natural, established and important parts of the staff as the ones we’ve been following til now and the show treats them as such. It’s not like a typical “oh and there’s SG-2, who are a load of glorified extras” or “here’s a super famous person that sticks out like a sore thumb doing a cameo for two minutes”. It’s “here’s Dr Shen, he’s at work now and if this show had happened to be set a few hours later, he’d be a main character and you wouldn’t question it”. Very well done.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle, Sean Robinson, njerry

Huh. Currently, no streaming service in Germany has The Pitt.

Man, this is getting really annoying.

Christian wrote:

Huh. Currently, no streaming service in Germany has The Pitt.

Man, this is getting really annoying.

Yeah, nowhere in the UK/Ireland yet. Sky had originally advertised that they were co-producing it and it was supposed to air back in January, but something happened and they pulled all the press releases, etc mentioning it.

People have assumed Max are saving it until they launch their own streaming service here, but that won’t happen until the show’s second season has finished.

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Martin Smith

paul f wrote:

Christian wrote:

Huh. Currently, no streaming service in Germany has The Pitt.

Man, this is getting really annoying.

Yeah, nowhere in the UK/Ireland yet. Sky had originally advertised that they were co-producing it and it was supposed to air back in January, but something happened and they pulled all the press releases, etc mentioning it.

People have assumed Max are saving it until they launch their own streaming service here, but that won’t happen until the show’s second season has finished.

I didn’t realise Sky had said they were co-funding it. Their mass deal for HBO content with Sky Atlantic surely would have been enough to get it on. And you’d think Max/HBO/WB/Disco would want people watching the first season so they’re familiar with it when they then launch Max over here saying “and you need to subscribe to see the second season of that show you love!”

Which I’m not for, but it would be quite seeing that happen to Sky, given they used to do it to terrestrial broadcasters with US imports a lot in the 90s and 00s.

Martin Smith wrote:

. Their mass deal for HBO content with Sky Atlantic surely would have been enough to get it on.

I think the deal is still only for shows that air on proper HBO. So Sex Lives of College Girls went to ITV, Tokyo Vice and Our Flag Means Death went to BBC, Hacks went to Prime Video before Sky eventually bought it, etc.

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Martin Smith

By the way, Al, I’ve started watching Warrior season 3. Great fun as usual.

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Al-x, Todd, njerry

Finally watched The Lighthouse. Expected to love it, and yep, I did. Just such a wonderful movie to get lost in.

And now I’ll go and read some interpretations to see how my half-formed thoughts fit in.

I bought Million Dollar Baby on DVD from a charity shop about 13 years ago-ish, thinking “I’ll want to watch that again some time” and some time finally came about yesterday. First time I’ve seen it since I guess 2005.

The film opens and there’s a guy boxing and I thought “is that Mike Colter?”. Then “well, I’m just saying that because it’s a bald black guy, that’s probably a bit racist on my part.” Anyway, turns out it’s Mike Colter. Also Michael Pena and Anthony Mackie are in it. Who know? I’d say I’d forgotten that, but I didn’t know who they were back then. I did somehow entirely forget Morgan Freeman is in it though, which is impressive given he’s the narrator and third main character.

That narration is properly awful though. I don’t go in for those rules of screenwriting (as brought up in the film Adaptation) saying that VO narration is cheap and hacky and shouldn’t be used, but man, it is used as an absolute crutch in this movie. So much of the plot is just told through the narration rather than shown. And the reveal at the end that it’s a letter to Eastwood’s estranged daughter makes no sense. I’m sure she was hooked reading about the sub-plot with the intellectually challenged guy getting beaten up while her dad was in Vegas for Maggie’s final fight.

I expected better from the creator of Due South, really.

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Todd

Watched Sinners, easily the best movie of the year so far. I’m glad Coogler is free from doing Marvel movies (loved Black Panther, Wakanda Forever was a chore). Lots of gore and action, along with a good story and great characters.

Not many laughs aside from Delroy Lindo, I did get a chuckle after hearing a not-very-mumbled “What the fuck?” from someone in my Irish crowd after the scene where the vampires all sing “The Rocky Road to Dublin.”

Stay for the mid-credits scene, most of my audience were on the way out and were left standing for the (quite long) epilogue scene.

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd, Martin Smith

Christian wrote:

By the way, Al, I’ve started watching Warrior season 3. Great fun as usual.

As I’m moving towards the last third of the show, a thought strikes me: I sometimes get impatient with all the plot when there’s, like, two episodes in a row without any proper fights. But you do have to give it to them, they’re really good at making you root for everyone. These characters are all on opposite side, everyone is the antagonist to the others, but somehow you want them all to win.

I’m up to date with episode two of the new season of The Last Of Us now, and I’m not sure I’m enjoying it quite as much as the first.

That’s partly because I thought the one weak link in the first season was Bella Ramsey’s performance as Ellie – she’s somehow more two-dimensional than the videogame character, all teenage snark with none of the depth and charm of the game version – and she has a lot more work to do in carrying the show in the second season.

But also it feels like they’ve lost the heart of the show by shifting the focus away from Joel and Ellie’s relationship and showing so little of that compared to everything else that’s going on.

Plus I think new characters like Abby are a bit of a struggle to engage with and sympathise with here (and like Ellie, I think she’s miscast).

I know the games of course, so I know how the story goes, but it feels like some of the ideas they explored in the second game in particular aren’t going to resonate so much in a passive medium like TV, compared to a videogame experience where you become the characters in a more meaningful way.

Dave wrote:

That’s partly because I thought the one weak link in the first season was Bella Ramsey’s performance as Ellie – she’s somehow more two-dimensional than the videogame character, all teenage snark with none of the depth and charm of the game version – and she has a lot more work to do in carrying the show in the second season.

Oh, the second ep is out? Have to watch that tonight.

I wouldn’t blame Ramsey, but Ellie’s constant abrasiveness in the first episode of this season did wear me out a bit.

But I didn’t think the show shifted the focus from her and Joel’s relationship as much as showing how that suffered from the fallout of what happened last season. They’re both very clearly suffering under the strain in their relationship, but Ellie’s anger at Joel for not telling her the truth and his fear to do so doesn’t allow them to heal. I haven’t played the game and thus don’t know the story, but I expect when the unavoidable doom comes, they will come together again.

Dave wrote:

I know the games of course, so I know how the story goes, but it feels like some of the ideas they explored in the second game in particular aren’t going to resonate so much in a passive medium like TV, compared to a videogame experience where you become the characters in a more meaningful way.

How did you feel about the first season where that is concerned? I imagine the problems must’ve been similar there.

Christian wrote:

How did you feel about the first season where that is concerned? I imagine the problems must’ve been similar there.

It isn’t the same thing in the first game/season, because the second game is really about something very different as its central idea. But it’s probably something that’s better discussed once we’re a little further into this season of the TV series.

I also just watched the penultimate episode of the new Black Mirror series, Eulogy, and it’s a high point for the series. A beautiful, simple and sincere story that (like the best Black Mirrors) plays pretty lightly on the technology gimmick, but uses it to unlock an emotional, bittersweet narrative that unspools at just the right pace.

And it’s all anchored by a lead performance from Paul Giamatti that is just heartbreakingly perfect.

Worth a watch even if you aren’t usually a big fan of the show.

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Todd

paul f wrote:

Watched Sinners, easily the best movie of the year so far. I’m glad Coogler is free from doing Marvel movies (loved Black Panther, Wakanda Forever was a chore). Lots of gore and action, along with a good story and great characters.

Not many laughs aside from Delroy Lindo, I did get a chuckle after hearing a not-very-mumbled “What the fuck?” from someone in my Irish crowd after the scene where the vampires all sing “The Rocky Road to Dublin.”

Stay for the mid-credits scene, most of my audience were on the way out and were left standing for the (quite long) epilogue scene.

I was really intrigued by the use of that song. Irish trad as a tool of the opressors isn’t something I’ve seen before and there’s going to be a lot of media studies papers on that scene. Unfortunately I didn’t realise that the main vampire was meant to be Irish because his accent kept slipping between American and Irish and I though the actor was fucking it up. (He’s got a great Irish accent in SAS rogue heroes though)

But Yea, Sinners is the best film I’ve seen this year, and thanks for the mid credits warning, I would have left with out it.

Christian wrote:

I haven’t played the game and thus don’t know the story, but I expect when the unavoidable doom comes, they will come together again.

Uh, spoilers for ep 2 of The Last of Us.

Well, for two seconds or so at least.
Shit obviously went down faster than I expected here. But for what it’s worth, and again not knowing the games, I thought this was incredibly exciting TV. Can’t wait for the next episode.
(Oh, and I am glad Joel’s brother and his wife survived. Wouldn’t have been surprised if everybody except for Ellie had just fucking died this episode. Jesus Christ.)

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Dave

Dune Parts 1 and 2
First, do I know the books? No. It’s not a series that I’ve ever been drawn to. Denis Villeneuve, however, is a director whose SF work I’ve enjoyed. Arrival was a great little picture and Blade Runner 2049 was an intriguing piece. The other draw was the very smart casting.
One major success is it has the time to both set up and explain its world so it all makes sense. At the same time it uses all of that to convey what a galactic power struggle might look like, what the scale of resources being devoted to it might be.
That gives the story a rare level of grandeur. Much of that stems from the superb world and technology designs.
It’s notable that Dune is, at least here, rarely, if ever, a soft power galaxy. It all operates through hard power and violence. The other side will not back down, unless forced to. This is not a good state of affairs for anyone.
The gradual inversion of the chosen saviour concept is well done. From Paul, pre-water of life, resisting the utiltaruan road that beckons to him, embracing it fully after drinking the water of life. To Chani’s unease over a religion taking over her people and the changes she sees in Paul.
Talking of, you can have all the design and effects and cash in the world, but your film doesn’t fly without actors. These films have a cast where it’s easy to suspect that no one had to be won over before saying yes. And they all really make it fly.
The ending of Part Two feels rather inconclusive in some respects, but it also the end of the road for the story that the films are telling. That story never made any claims it’d be a complete history. Nonetheless, I suspect Part 3 will have to address it somehow.
Overall? Very ambitious film-making that I think succeeds in what it is going for. Feel-good SF? Well, it’s not that, but it is perhaps simply more honest about its dysfunctional galaxy.

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd, lorcan_nagle

I ended up watching all of Last One Laughing UK in one go this weekend. It’s a good concept and they certainly stacked it with a good cast. That said I think Harriet Kemsley was kinda screwed over. She didn’t laugh at other people (or herself like Daisy May Cooper) but through stress at doing non-joke things. Having seen her on game shows and some of her stand up, she has trouble mentally processing some tasks, like the rock-paper-scissors thing.

Just watched the final episode of the latest Black Mirror season, which is a movie-length sequel to their earlier USS Callister episode.

Black Mirror hasn’t done sequels before and I wasn’t particularly looking forward to this, as I felt like the full story was told in the earlier episode. But I was wrong to think the sequel was a bad idea, as they take the concepts of the original episode and do some new and interesting things with it. Great effects and a great cast, and the whole thing is only 90 minutes.

It feels like this latest season of Black Mirror hasn’t got that much traction – like a lot of Netflix shows it seemed to get a blip of attention and then everyone moved on – but this season has been one of the best and most consistent in quite a long time.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle