You Have Been Watching

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Share your latest viewing here.

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  • #105550

    The Last of Us episode 3

    That was really good. Had a bit of everything. A nice side story that could’ve easily had more episodes.

    It’s not like I cried or anything, but I bet that friend of mine did.

    https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/29/entertainment/the-last-of-us-episode-3-review

    • This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by Sean Robinson.
  • #105551

    Going by my Twitter feed, TLoU ep 3 slayed the internet!

  • #105553

    I FINALLY got around to finishing Welcome to Wrexham. It was a great series. I think what made the show for me was that it focused on the players and the residents. It also didn’t pull punches. It had the right amount of Rob and Ryan and it showed they had to make tough, serious decisions. But most of all, it really celebrated the people of Wrexham and what the club means to them and the city.

    I’m looking forward to Season 2.

    It surprised me how good it was. I was always going to watch anyway because of the Welsh links but I often have issues with US documentaries as they (and some British ones) have a habit of trailing what’s coming up and sensationalism. None of that happened in this show and the focus on the players and the community over the celeb element was refreshing. Even the stuff with Rob was often quite relatable, watching live streams in his pyjamas at 5am with his son. They have good self deprecating humour, the translator they use is a journalist based in the US who answered an ad for a Welsh speaker and they came up with the gags to have her insulting them.

    I know a lot of people who have never watched a game of football in their lives really enjoy it.

    An interesting omission is ‘The Captain’. He’s a Wrexham fan I have known about on Twitter even before the club was bought, his face appears briefly but they didn’t feature him. He’s quite a funny character who posts a lot of videos online and has thousands of followers and they even named a Wrexham brewery beer after him. My suspicion is they didn’t use him because he has a relationship with alcohol that they probably don’t want to promote, he does seem to be drinking and drunk most of the time.

     

     

    I appreciated how positive it was without being sickly sweet. It hit emotional beats without being cloying or maudlin. It just felt genuine.

    And full credit to Rob for trying to learn Welsh!

    Here is an interview Ryan Reynolds did with ESPN that was posted the other day:

    https://www.espn.com/soccer/wrexham/story/4861910/wrexham-fa-cup-run-has-deadpool-star-ryan-reynolds-talking-more-soccer?appsrc=sc

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  • #105555

    I have been watching Netflix’s Lockwood and Co with the family.

    I’ve finished the second episode and really enjoyed it so far. Loving the use of the Cure and Bauhaus on the soundtrack.

  • #105577

    The Last Of Us episode 3 was pretty great. Brilliantly written and acted and very moving at times. A high point for the series so far.

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  • #105584

    And full credit to Rob for trying to learn Welsh!

    I saw a Welsh TV show about Wrexham and they spoke to the lady who does the comedy translations on their promo vids. Rob’s actually hired her to give him weekly lessons and they are good pals now. His pronunciation is really bad but fair play to him for trying.

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  • #105609

    Wasn’t expecting the last of us to make me cry 😭

    What an episode!

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  • #105620

    Also on The Last Of Us, I read some interesting online comments related to the flour explanation. Looking back, there’s a running thread in the first episode of inadvertently dodging bullets, with Joel’s daughter saying they’re out of pancake mix, then refusing her neighbour’s cookies, then Joel forgetting to buy a cake. Retrospectively those all become a lot more meaningful now. I thought it was a pretty cool detail.

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  • #105681

    We watched The Devil’s Hour, the six-part Amazon mystery/thriller series with Peter Capaldi this week. While it doesn’t start strong, it’s that rare series that gets better as it goes along and explains its premise a bit more fully.

    I was quite hooked by the end in seeing how all the various threads came together and everything was explained – it was produced by Moffat and it shows, as it definitely has that sense of his complex mysteries that are deliberately told in an obscure way at first.

    It does feel like a lot of the central ideas are derivative of other things – it would give too much away about the supernatural premise of the show to say what specifically, but I was reminded of a couple of books and comics – but despite that it’s an enjoyable watch and wraps up well.

    A couple of duff performances aside it’s generally quite well-acted and directed, with the quality of the episodes directly proportional to how much Capaldi is in them.

    Apparently a second and third series are on the way. I felt this one was quite complete in its own right but there are definitely avenues for expansion, so we’ll see where it goes.

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  • #105694

    Finally saw Glass Onion. The murder mystery aspect of it wasn’t really all that strong, but it told its story very well, and the cast clearly had a lot of fun. Very entertaining.

    4 users thanked author for this post.
  • #105695

    I found series 1 of Drop the Dead Donkey on Amazon Prime a couple of weeks ago. Having not watched the show since it was actually on TV in the 90s I was curious about how it would stand up, and it was still pretty good. to the point that I sought out series 2-6 and watched them between then and now.

    For anyone who doesn’t know, this is a classic 90s British sitcom, set in the offices of a British TV news network that’s just been bought by a media magnate who bears no resemblance to Robert Maxwell or Rupert Murdoch, and has installed a new hatchetman as chief executive who’s trying to make the news more exploitative and sensational, clashing with the more traditional and moralistic members of staff. It was very notable in the day for being shot the week an episode would air, often with the final scenes being completed the day before or sometimes on the day of transmission, to the point that series 1-4 now have notes at the start explaining what was happening in the news that week to clue people in on a lot of the jokes.

    It’s interesting how many jokes in the show are still incredibly topical today. Police outreach – here about crackdowns on Irish people (especially in series 1 which coincided with the truth coming out about the Birmingham 6 and Guildford 4) rather than ethnic minorities, mocking Labour for moving away from its socialist roots after Tony Blair’s rise to power, Tory heartlessness and incompetent power struggles… it continues. And interestingly the humour hasn’t dated in the same way other 90s show has – probably the most badly dated story is an early episode where a creepy fan corners prissy newsreader Sally in the office, and when she later discovers her purse missing she accuses Dave, an editorial assistant with constant money problems due to his gambling addiction, but when it turned out to actually be the creepy fan Dave essentially blackmails her into not having the fan arrested and the show largely takes Dave and the fan’s side, but it feels very icky today. One thing that’s actually quite impressive for the day is in series 3, after Hadyn Gwynne’s character Alex departs and is replaced by Ingrid Cooper as Helen who is quickly revealed to be a lesbian. She and Dave end up drunkenly sleeping together (she was married to a man and had a child with him so it isn’t out of nowhere) and while it only reinforces her sexual orientation, Dave spends over a year mooning over her and trying to convince her to go straight for him but it never happens.

    The last two series move away from the established formula into a less topical and more general political/news/workplace sitcom for series 5, and a bit more of a drama/comedy in series 6, where it’s announced early on that the news channel is shutting down and there are various attempts to keep it around or for the characters to forge a new future to varying degrees of success. It’s a very British ending with a lot of bittersweet moments. I’m not sure if it’d appeal a huge amount to someone who wasn’t around for the events the show references but it’s certainly worth checking out if you are of that age

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  • #105699

    I loved Drop The Dead Donkey at the time and have rewatched parts of it a couple of times over the years. I agree it holds up well, and balances a lot of different types of humour quite well – obviously the topical humour, but also the cynical commentary on the news/media presentation of certain issues, the more character-based stuff (Damien Day is a brilliantly awful creation) and also some of the 90s laddish stuff, without tipping over into being too crude.

    I think it was ahead of its time in many ways, partly the handling of issues like sexuality but also the number of well-realised female characters with strong personalities who could hold their own against the men. And it benefited from a great ensemble cast.

    I don’t know if you ever read the spinoff novel but it’s quite a fun read, albeit a bit odd in places as it was set at the turn of the millennium but written several years earlier, which meant that it had been overtaken by events in places.

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  • #105701

    My prominent memory of Damien from watching the show was the bits where he’d report in from some dangerous place and his cameraman would get horribly injured and while it was a running joke, I was surprised at how relatively seldom it happened. There’s at least as many moments where he fucks up a report, especially by trying to sensationalise. And he really does become a monster as the show progresses, like breaking up Helen and her girlfriend to get back at her for returning a jeep he’d been “loaned” by the car company in a clear breach of ethics. And his arc in the last series where he starts ranting about weakness very much feels like a commentary on what we’d now call toxic masculinity.

    Another thing I really liked was the natural feeling of the scenes in the office where everyone was discussing current events, and as these scenes would be shot late in the running order the cast would frequently be reading their lines off notepads or computer screens, and you can frequently see people corpsing at the jokes in the background.

    Not read the spinoff book, but I might see if I can track down a copy. I saw on the wiki page that it predates the end of the TV show and has a different ending for Globelink.

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  • #105702

    My prominent memory of Damien from watching the show was the bits where he’d report in from some dangerous place and his cameraman would get horribly injured and while it was a running joke, I was surprised at how relatively seldom it happened. There’s at least as many moments where he fucks up a report, especially by trying to sensationalise. And he really does become a monster as the show progresses, like breaking up Helen and her girlfriend to get back at her for returning a jeep he’d been “loaned” by the car company in a clear breach of ethics. And his arc in the last series where he starts ranting about weakness very much feels like a commentary on what we’d now call toxic masculinity.

    Yeah, from memory he kind of becomes more unhinged as the series goes on.

    For me the Damien joke that stuck in my mind was the “this child’s Teddy bear” gag that I think is in the first episode, and definitely rings true from war/disaster reporting of the late 80s and early 90s.

    Re. the book, yeah I think it isn’t compatible with where they went in the later series, more like an alternate reality take on similar ideas like the Red Dwarf novels.

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  • #105703

    Also, “gegs” has stuck in my mind forever since that episode.

    1 user thanked author for this post.
  • #105704

    For me the Damien joke that stuck in my mind was the “this child’s Teddy bear” gag that I think is in the first episode, and definitely rings true from war/disaster reporting of the late 80s and early 90s.

    Might not have been the first episode, but it was very early on. And when I mentioned to friends I’d been rewatching the show, one person said “was that the one with the reporter who’d put a teddy bear in rubble and do videos about it?” so it was clearly a very memorable moment.

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  • #105874

    Lockwood and Co is rather good.  It’s the usual mix but smartly put together, with the right level of scare to hit that Dr-Who-hide-behind-the-sofa aspect without being too scary.

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  • #105933

    I just watched the Breakfast Club for the first time in ages, thanks to Criterion finally releasing their blu-ray in the UK last month (on my birthday no less).

    It is the quintessential John Hughes film. Not just because it’s arguably the most well known or best but because it’s a microcosm of his entire output; by turns its funny and cool and insightful and then somewhat laughable due to how tragically self-involved the teens are (Andy: is it bad [what your parents do to you]? Allison: Yes. They ignore me.), it’s set in Illinois, people get high and it makes some terrible choices (the make-over! Claire somehow becoming interested in Bender! Brian ending up doing the essay for all of them!) and yet, I can’t deny that I love it. Weirdly, despite the fact that I probably wouldn’t put any of his films in my top ten, I’d say Hughes is my possibly favourite film-maker, because his work always has that certain something to it.

    Except maybe Baby’s Day Out.

    Really keen to dive into the plethora of special features for this release, especially the deleted scenes.

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  • #105939

    I just watched the Breakfast Club for the first time in ages, thanks to Criterion finally releasing their blu-ray in the UK last month (on my birthday no less).

    It is the quintessential John Hughes film. Not just because it’s arguably the most well known or best but because it’s a microcosm of his entire output; by turns its funny and cool and insightful and then somewhat laughable due to how tragically self-involved the teens are (Andy: is it bad [what your parents do to you]? Allison: Yes. They ignore me.), it’s set in Illinois, people get high and it makes some terrible choices (the make-over! Claire somehow becoming interested in Bender! Brian ending up doing the essay for all of them!) and yet, I can’t deny that I love it. Weirdly, despite the fact that I probably wouldn’t put any of his films in my top ten, I’d say Hughes is my possibly favourite film-maker, because his work always has that certain something to it.

    Except maybe Baby’s Day Out.

    Really keen to dive into the plethora of special features for this release, especially the deleted scenes.

    Christel and I were driving home yesterday when “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” came on the radio station she was had on. The first thing both of us thought of was The Breakfast Club. Being a teen in the 1980s, Hughes’ movies really connected. I think he was THE director for Generation X.

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  • #106158

    Binge-watching When Things Were Rotten on YouTube. Mel Brooks’ Robin Hood parody before Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

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  • #106162

    Been watching The Old Man. It’s kind of a standard story – Jeff Bridges as an ex-CIA agent who’s retired/gone rogue and disappeared and now the CIA is hunting him again because something from his past has come back to bite him in the ass yadda yadda. It’s very well made though, and Jeff Bridges is always just such a joy to watch. As is John Lithgow as the antagonist/former best friend/possibly still ally. Also, they did a really good job casting/working with the actors playing their young versions; this is one of the rare cases in which you can actually see the old actors in the younger versions of their characters. Especially Christopher Redman does an incredible job emulating Lithgow’s speech pattern.

    As these things go, it’s a good show. Not as ridiculous as Homeland was, and even if it’s a bit predictable it works very well.

    And now because I’ve mentioned Lithgow’s name, I have to post his performance performing Newt Gingrich’s statement on the Colbert Report:

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  • #106255

    The Gold

    A robbery I knew nothing about took place in 1983.  This is the story not of the robbery but its aftermath. It’s a story of corruption at all levels of society, the class system and of a world gone.

    The story becomes about far more than the robbery, planting the seeds of what would became anti-corruption and anti-money laundering policing.  There’s stunning sequences where a guy walks into a bank, asks to withdraw an absurd sum in cash and its batted through.

    Properties, front companies, foreign bank accounts, extradition or the lack of it, the timeshare con – it’s all here.

    Add in an excellent cast with writing to match and you’ve a good, compact series.

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  • #106258

    I’ve mentioned this in the DC thread, but just for good measure: I’m almost done watching Peacemaker and it’s fucking perfect.

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  • #106259

    It really is and Robert Patrick is the scariest he’s been since T2.

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  • #106260

    Yeah, I love Patrick in this. It’s always a joy to see him, and he’s clearly having a ball with the role.

    4 users thanked author for this post.
  • #106263

    We Own This City is David Simon’s most recent mini-series, returning to the familiar territory of crime and law enforcement in Baltimore. While I was aware he was working on a new show, I lost track of it and it’s been out for almost a year! But like, it did mean I was able to watch the whole thing over two days so swings and roundabouts really.

    Like most of Simon’s shorter shows, it’s an adaptation of a journalistic book, in this case an account of the fall of Baltimore’s Gun Trace Squad, arguably the most corrupt police unit in American history. The narrative moves between different timeframes, primarily centred in the aftermath of Freddie Grey’s killing by members of the BCPD and the acquittal of the cops who did it. In this charged environment many Baltimore cops refused to even get out of their cars for fear of being caught on camera and being accused of brutality, but the Gun Trace Squad continued to perform, making arrests and confiscating guns and drugs… Because they were also planting evidence to make bogus arrests and under-reporting confiscated money and drugs to keep or sell. The main character is Wayne Jenkins, the squad’s final commander played by Jon Bernthal. The show follows him through vignettes of his early days as a beat cop, up through shifting to plainclothes, promotion and assignment to the squad and how quickly and easily he embraces the corruption he finds in the department. His actions are interspersed and illustrated with flashbacks to testimony from other members of the squad after they’re arrested by the FBI and questioned for their crimes, members of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice investigating the police and working to implement a Consent Decree, and a former associate of Jenkins who’s working in Homicide when Jenkins is arrested.

    There’s no suspense here – Jenkins is arrested at the end of episode 1 and you’re more shown the puzzle coming together as opposed to setting up a game of cat and mouse or anything. There’s more than a few moments where you see a sequence and some events are implied but are later filled in to provide more clarity. And even with this it’s still compelling viewing. You’re presented with a number of moral issues that are made complex less by shades of grey and more by the logistics of fixing them in the modern context. Like the city of Baltimore agrees to a consent decree, and then there are questions of how to pay for bodycams and other associated costs – but the new Mayor refuses to cut funding to social programs and keeps pushing on the Police department to cut their budget instead.

    And of course the elephant in the room is that the consent decree doesn’t fix the institutional issues, it’s the same cops on the force. There’s a common talking point that the cops are refusing to get out of their cars for fear of being caught on video, and to a degree that’s fair because the video might not catch everything or be cut to make the cops look bad – but at the same time one of the people who repeats this line is one of the corrupt cops who’s literally stealing money from the wallets of people he’s frisking!

    The other thing I personally found compelling is the eye being cast over Baltimore as a city. It’s interesting how many locales seem modern and much nicer than the city as shown in The Wire or The Corner – even the upmarket areas in the earlier shows – but the rundown residential areas are almost identical in terms of the look and feel and sense of decay. In a lot of ways the shows most damning moments are the background details that are indicative of the further hollowing out of the middle class in America and the utter disdain of the authorities towards public services. The places that were problems in 80s and 90s are problems today for the same reasons and nothing has been done to fix them. It’s also deeply ironic that Jon Bernthal played the Punisher and here plays the exact kind of cop who’d idolise Frank Castle for all the wrong reasons.

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  • #106266

    Booted up the pilot episode of The Orville and it’s kicking the crap out of Picard.

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  • #106267

    Luther: The Fallen Sun

    Absolute shite. Luther was never a very good show, outside of a great Ruth Wilson performance in the early years, and moving it to the big screen doesn’t help at all.

    The plot is ridiculously rushed, like they’re trying to get through five episodes worth of plot in two hours. The villain, a terribly over-the-top Andy Serkis, is shown to be alternately a criminal mastermind and manipulator and to make incredibly dumb mistakes, depending on what the scene requires (he has a mole inside the investigation, but is conveniently not tipped off when the police are about to ambush him in the middle of London). Some of his actions don’t make any sense other than as something to give him more screen time.

    Likewise, Luther is able to figure things out about the villain that don’t make any sense and are only there to make Luther look smart, and have no effect on the plot. The film is hamstrung by the ending of the series finale with Luther being arrested, but also completely undermines it by having him break out on his second day in prison.

    Cynthia Erivo is completely wasted as the cop in charge of the investigation, and gets little to do other than the standard “be annoyed by Luther.” The bigger budget Netflix offers seem to mostly be spent on having the conclusion take place in the snow in Norway for some reason. The film ends with a tease for new direction for possible sequels, but I hope they just let it die already.

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  • #106268

    Hadn’t realised that was a feature film straight to Netflix, had thought it’d be on iPlayer.

    Not that it’s sounding good.

  • #106269

    I never watched the first season of FARGO when it debuted years ago. I did watch seasons 2 through 4 when each of them arrived, but never got around to streaming Season 1….until today.

    Based on the first episode, this feels like I will easily enjoy this as much as I did the other seasons. I loved this episode so much that I’m probably going to end up watching all the other seasons as soon as I get done with this one. Dammit!

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  • #106270

    Better watch out for dragons Jerry.

    1 user thanked author for this post.
  • #106271

    We Own This City is David Simon’s most recent mini-series, returning to the familiar territory of crime and law enforcement in Baltimore. While I was aware he was working on a new show, I lost track of it and it’s been out for almost a year! But like, it did mean I was able to watch the whole thing over two days so swings and roundabouts really.

    Like most of Simon’s shorter shows, it’s an adaptation of a journalistic book, in this case an account of the fall of Baltimore’s Gun Trace Squad, arguably the most corrupt police unit in American history. The narrative moves between different timeframes, primarily centred in the aftermath of Freddie Grey’s killing by members of the BCPD and the acquittal of the cops who did it. In this charged environment many Baltimore cops refused to even get out of their cars for fear of being caught on camera and being accused of brutality, but the Gun Trace Squad continued to perform, making arrests and confiscating guns and drugs… Because they were also planting evidence to make bogus arrests and under-reporting confiscated money and drugs to keep or sell. The main character is Wayne Jenkins, the squad’s final commander played by Jon Bernthal. The show follows him through vignettes of his early days as a beat cop, up through shifting to plainclothes, promotion and assignment to the squad and how quickly and easily he embraces the corruption he finds in the department. His actions are interspersed and illustrated with flashbacks to testimony from other members of the squad after they’re arrested by the FBI and questioned for their crimes, members of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice investigating the police and working to implement a Consent Decree, and a former associate of Jenkins who’s working in Homicide when Jenkins is arrested.

    There’s no suspense here – Jenkins is arrested at the end of episode 1 and you’re more shown the puzzle coming together as opposed to setting up a game of cat and mouse or anything. There’s more than a few moments where you see a sequence and some events are implied but are later filled in to provide more clarity. And even with this it’s still compelling viewing. You’re presented with a number of moral issues that are made complex less by shades of grey and more by the logistics of fixing them in the modern context. Like the city of Baltimore agrees to a consent decree, and then there are questions of how to pay for bodycams and other associated costs – but the new Mayor refuses to cut funding to social programs and keeps pushing on the Police department to cut their budget instead.

    And of course the elephant in the room is that the consent decree doesn’t fix the institutional issues, it’s the same cops on the force. There’s a common talking point that the cops are refusing to get out of their cars for fear of being caught on video, and to a degree that’s fair because the video might not catch everything or be cut to make the cops look bad – but at the same time one of the people who repeats this line is one of the corrupt cops who’s literally stealing money from the wallets of people he’s frisking!

    The other thing I personally found compelling is the eye being cast over Baltimore as a city. It’s interesting how many locales seem modern and much nicer than the city as shown in The Wire or The Corner – even the upmarket areas in the earlier shows – but the rundown residential areas are almost identical in terms of the look and feel and sense of decay. In a lot of ways the shows most damning moments are the background details that are indicative of the further hollowing out of the middle class in America and the utter disdain of the authorities towards public services. The places that were problems in 80s and 90s are problems today for the same reasons and nothing has been done to fix them. It’s also deeply ironic that Jon Bernthal played the Punisher and here plays the exact kind of cop who’d idolise Frank Castle for all the wrong reasons.

    I watched it when it came out. (I believe I posted some of my thoughts in the Watching threads.) It was a great, tightly done series. Bernthal was phenomenal in the series.

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  • #106272

    I never watched the first season of FARGO when it debuted years ago. I did watch seasons 2 through 4 when each of them arrived, but never got around to streaming Season 1….until today.

    Based on the first episode, this feels like I will easily enjoy this as much as I did the other seasons. I loved this episode so much that I’m probably going to end up watching all the other seasons as soon as I get done with this one. Dammit!

    While I truly enjoyed the subsequent seasons, the first season is probably the best.

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  • #106275

    Booted up the pilot episode of The Orville and it’s kicking the crap out of Picard.

    Season 3 of The Orville, AKA New Horizons, was simply excellent and the best season to date.

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  • #106280

    While I truly enjoyed the subsequent seasons, the first season is probably the best.

    I thought so, too. The second got very close to the first one, but the third was a bit of a drop-off, and the fourth was the weakest.
    (Still better than most other shows though. Weak Fargo is still excellent TV.)

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  • #106292

    Lupin III vs Cat’s Eye

    So these are two of the most popular older manga/anime franchises about thieves with hearts of gold. Lupin is probably best known in the West for Castle Cagliostro, one of Hayao Miyazaki’s early movies (and indeed Miyazaki worked on the TV show too), while Cat’s Eye is more obscure, but it’s kinda a What If Charlie’s Angels Were Sisters and Cat Burglars dealie. And there’s a new crossover movie between the two franchises and it’s on Prime, so I watched it.

    We’re in standard crossover territory, where Lupin, the Cat’s Eye sisters, and a shadowy group are going after three paintings (the motivation for Cat’s Eye is that they’re tyring to retrieve all the artwork made by their missing father). Lupin and his companions Jigen and Goemon wind up in direct confrontation with the sisters before the inevitable betrayal of a supposed ally and team up while Lupin’s sometime ally Fujiko plays her own game and the hapless detectives Zenigata and Utsumi try and apprehend their nemesis. And it’s OK, I guess?

    The movie has two big problems – as I outlined above the story is very standard, there’s no real flair or innovation on display. There’s very little fun, which feels wrong for Lupin especially. The animation is that flat cell-shaded CGI stuff as well, which is good in terms of dynamic camera moves and action sequences, but the faces have a very limited set of expressions and it’s not as… animated as traditional anime, or even some other shows or movies using CGI. Unless you’re a big fan of Lupin or Cat’s Eye and really want some new material, I’m not sure how much you’d get from this instead of, say watching some of their older adventures again? Especially when Castle Cagliostro is right there on Netflix.

  • #106371

    I was sort of at a loss of what to do tonight so half-heartedly put on one of the many films cluttering up my DVR. The Tin Star starring Henry Fonda and Anthony Perkins. And man, it definitely grabbed me.

    That opening, as Fonda rides into town with a body on a second horse, the populace all coming out to glare at him, is incredibly well shot. Helped no end by an absolutely gorgeous restoration/transfer to HD. Perkins is great too as a useless naive warm body that’s been shoved in the dead sheriff’s boots simply to stop the local racist getting the job. He doesn’t half look like Andrew Garfield here and is clearly channeling Jimmy Stewart (who the director, Anthony Mann, had worked with previously) which is an interesting mix.

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  • #106433

    Finished the last season of Brooklyn 99. They gave it a really good send-off, bringing in as many recurrent roles as possible and harking back to previous episodes without degenrating pure nostalgia. It was a solid season overall, and it was cool that they decided to go for some political themes – they tackled police reform over the course of the season and filmed a very long, passionate kiss between Holt and his husband (which was the first time they did this, I think, in spite of being very pro-queer for the entire run, obviously). They also managed to wrap up every character’s arc very nicely, showing care and love for each one of them.

    I’m also watching the second season of Carnivale Row, a show that has really come into its own (judging on the first two episodes). It’s a shame it took them four years to make this season – if it’d been out quicker, maybe they would’ve gotten a shot a continuing the series.

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  • #106439

    Which one has B99 last season? Netflix has 1-7

  • #106440

    Which one has B99 last season? Netflix has 1-7

    Season 8 will be on Netflix UK on April 20th: https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/news/when-will-brooklyn-nine-nine-season-8-be-on-netflix/

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    Ben
  • #106442

    Netflix Germany has already had it for a month or so. Looks like someone else was occupying the rights for a bit there in the UK.

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    Ben
  • #106452

    Christel and watched Chris Rock’s live show on Netflix last night (it’s available to watch now).

    It started a bit slow but once it got going, he was on fire. The Will Smith slap bit is the finish and he holds nothing back. Overall, a pretty good show.

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  • #106460

    Started on The Orville: Bigger Budget – ahem – New Horizons.

    The second series really upped its game.  The Kaylon bombshell was particularly effective

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  • #106464

    Cocaine Bear

    The movie was just okay. Even at 95 minutes, it felt long. The first 30 minutes was pretty much getting the players on the field and that really dragged the film down. The humor was amusing but no real laugh out loud moments. It really could have done more with the premise. It really needed more Cocaine Bear-related humor. It’s supposed to be a comedy-horror movie, but never really lives up to either. This is going to sound odd, but I think it would have worked better as an adult animation movie on Netflix.

    This is definitely a wait for cable/streaming movie. It’s one you’ll watch once and probably never again. It’s not bad by any means but just good at best.

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  • #106479

    Yyyyeah… as I mentioned before, the writer of Cocaine Bear also wrote the Babysitter sequel on Netflix, which was just okay (as opposed to the first one that was surprisingly good).

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  • #106483

    Yyyyeah… as I mentioned before, the writer of Cocaine Bear also wrote the Babysitter sequel on Netflix, which was just okay (as opposed to the first one that was surprisingly good).

    It didn’t take itself seriously which was a definite plus. It just could have been funnier.

    It wasn’t the disappointment that Snakes on a Plane was. The hype was definitely bigger than the actual product. I don’t think Cocaine Bear had that level of hype so it didn’t overshadow the movie.

  • #106484

    I mean, cocaine bear is such an evokative title. You’ll expect quite a lot from that.

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  • #106494

    Didn’t know where to put this, but…

    The Big Lebowski turns 25!
    I gotta rewatch this soon.

    https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/the-big-lebowski-25-anniversary-jeff-bridges-1235335996/amp/

  • #106500

    The Dude abides

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  • #106505

    I accidentally watched the last half of The Martian because it happened to be on TV. I didn’t intend to watch it, but once I started I was engrossed all over again. It’s better than an SF blockbuster has any right to be.

    I might say it’s my favourite SF movie of all time, except Blade Runner exists.

     

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  • #106563

    the Babysitter sequel on Netflix, which was just okay (as opposed to the first one that was surprisingly good).

    it was a disappointing sequel(not enough Sam Weaving). While i loved Jenna Ortega in Wednesday, her role in the sequel was meaningless. She was a tack on like Oliver in the old Brady Bunch.

    • This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Rocket.
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  • #106613

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  • #106633

    I watched Luther: Fallen Sun on Netflix today. It’s a decent enough movie version that basically just feels like a long episode of Luther, but Elba is solid as ever and Serkis is decent as the villain.

    It does push things into slightly silly territory by the end though, even for Luther, and there’s lots of stuff where the bad guy’s plan has to be ludicrously precise for everything to work. It also pushes the grim/violent stuff far enough that it feels kind of gratuitous at times.

    I still thought it was OK though.

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  • #106645

    Started on the second season of Alice in Borderland, which – like the first one – is very entertaining.

  • #106650

    It does push things into slightly silly territory by the end though, even for Luther, and there’s lots of stuff where the bad guy’s plan has to be ludicrously precise for everything to work. It also pushes the grim/violent stuff far enough that it feels kind of gratuitous at times.

    I heard an interview with the creator of Luther this week. I’ve always enjoyed it while acknowledging it’s often ridiculous and he seemed very aware of that too saying his angle was always to make a hyperbolic show over a realistic one. A bit more James Bond than Happy Valley.

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  • #106653

    The Orville: New Horizons – that is how to conclude a series!  Would it be good to get a fourth series? Yes, it would but if it doesn’t happen this winds things up really well.  There’s no irritating end of series cliffhangers, no obviously flapping plot threads.

    The shift to 70-90 minute episodes also allowed for far more ambitious episodes, with 3.09 being the example, but not the only one. The aftermath of the Kaylon revelations, changing alliances, time travel, Moclans – they all add up to a hard hitting but also very entertaining set of episodes.

    The ninth episode, Domino, is where they clearly decided to blow the budget and go for broke.  The episode has fleet fighters and shoot outs, fought on the ground, sky and space and it is all stupidly ambitious.  It also succeeds brilliantly, with everyone getting time in the spotlight. It is the finale of the series big plots.  3.10 is a quieter, more contemplative, character focused affair.

    I hope this does get another series but if not? These 30 odds episodes form an excellent set.

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  • #106660

    The Orville: New Horizons – that is how to conclude a series!  Would it be good to get a fourth series? Yes, it would but if it doesn’t happen this winds things up really well.  There’s no irritating end of series cliffhangers, no obviously flapping plot threads.

    The shift to 70-90 minute episodes also allowed for far more ambitious episodes, with 3.09 being the example, but not the only one. The aftermath of the Kaylon revelations, changing alliances, time travel, Moclans – they all add up to a hard hitting but also very entertaining set of episodes.

    The ninth episode, Domino, is where they clearly decided to blow the budget and go for broke.  The episode has fleet fighters and shoot outs, fought on the ground, sky and space and it is all stupidly ambitious.  It also succeeds brilliantly, with everyone getting time in the spotlight. It is the finale of the series big plots.  3.10 is a quieter, more contemplative, character focused affair.

    I hope this does get another series but if not? These 30 odds episodes form an excellent set.

    It is honestly the best “Star Trek” series since DS9. It has the action and adventure but also asks tough questions.

    I would love more but I’m very happy with what I got.

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  • #106666

    It does push things into slightly silly territory by the end though, even for Luther, and there’s lots of stuff where the bad guy’s plan has to be ludicrously precise for everything to work. It also pushes the grim/violent stuff far enough that it feels kind of gratuitous at times.

    I heard an interview with the creator of Luther this week. I’ve always enjoyed it while acknowledging it’s often ridiculous and he seemed very aware of that too saying his angle was always to make a hyperbolic show over a realistic one. A bit more James Bond than Happy Valley.

    Yeah definitely. You have to buy into that heightened reality but on its own terms it works fine, it’s really not that different from a James Bond or comicbook movie (and there are a couple of cheeky nods to Bond here).

  • #106671

    Watched The Last Of Us season finale and I thought they handled it pretty well and nailed the final scenes in particular. The show hasn’t been perfect but it’s been very good and one or two episodes in particular have hit some high points.

    It’ll be interesting to see how they adapt the second game – apparently they’re planning for it to span multiple seasons.

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  • #106688

    I’m also watching the second season of Carnivale Row, a show that has really come into its own (judging on the first two episodes). It’s a shame it took them four years to make this season – if it’d been out quicker, maybe they would’ve gotten a shot a continuing the series.

    I take it all back. I mean, it’s alright, still fun enough to watch but also very annoying (as it was in the first season at times). Mainly it’s infuriating that the characters never talk about the stuff that they obviously should talk about. Nobody is clever, everybody sucks. Buuuuuut still, it’s cool that there’s been a communist revoluation in that fantasy world.

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  • #106698

    Five episodes into Shrinking and it’s great. There is a Scrubs feel to it as it swings from funny to emotionally heavy, sometimes in the same scene and the jokes can be surprisingly dark. Harrison Ford seems to be having the best time, which is worth watching, just on it’s own.

  • #106699

    Watched the first season of The White Lotus after a friend recommended it. It was quite funny in places and the characters were well sketched initially, but it kind of fizzled out as it went along and never quite fully articulated some of the big ideas it danced around.

    I was expecting things to ratchet up with a murder plot, but then it didn’t really go anywhere as interesting as that, like they didn’t really have as much to say with these characters as I thought. Still some funny scenes though.

    Thinking of trying the second season but not sure whether it will be diminishing returns.

  • #106736

    I recently binge-watched the WildC.A.T.s animated series on Nelvana’s Retro Rerun YouTube channel. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible, either. They made a few changes to the story. Some were understandable. For example, Voodoo was an exotic dancer in the comics, and obviously, that wouldn’t fly on Saturday morning TV.

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  • #106737

    I recently binge-watched the WildC.A.T.s animated series on Nelvana’s Retro Rerun YouTube channel. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible, either. They made a few changes to the story. Some were understandable. For example, Voodoo was an exotic dancer in the comics, and obviously, that wouldn’t fly on Saturday morning TV.

  • #106741

    I recently binge-watched the WildC.A.T.s animated series

    When my kids were young we watched WILDC.A.T.S, X-MEN and BATMAN cartoons together on Saturday mornings. They loved the latter two, but I think they only watched ‘C.A.T.s because they knew I liked it.

  • #106831

    I watched the first two episodes of Evil, which seems like a pretty good show.

    Also, hey, It’s Michael Emmerson! That’s awesome, I absolutely love him. Can’t understand why he isn’t on every fucking show on TV.

  • #106839

    I watched the first two episodes of Evil, which seems like a pretty good show.

    You’re in for a good time. Season 1 is amazing. It falls off a bit in later seasons as the characters start acting stupidly as the plot requires but it’s never less than batshit insane. Far more peole should be watching it.

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  • #106874

    Finally getting into “Wednesday”. Ortega is killing it and it is great to see Christina Ricci in there too.
    Gwendoline from GoT, Zeta, and Luis Guzman… all good so far.

    The show sneaked in notions that what is taught now is not the real history.
    There are social commentary articles on why the character’s cynicism strikes a chord.

    I could tell that it was Danny Elfman (80s Oingo Bingo frontman) who also did the score for Batman 1989.
    His music scores all sound the same though. (Lazy recycling?)

    And now I see the criticisms that Burton is great for the offbeat material like this and “Edward Scissorhands”
    but not for comics movies.

    And I want Jenna Ortega and Aubrey Plaza together in some future project!!!

    • This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by Al-x.
    • This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by Al-x.
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  • #107004

    John Wick: Chapter 4

    It’s a John Wick movie. Really what more is there to say? Incredibly choreographed fights and action. That’s what you’re here for, right? The plot is paper thin and just an excuse to string together insane fight scenes. It was fun and entertaining. I had a good time.

    My biggest issue was the 169 minute runtime. (And you will need to stay to the very end for the post credits scene.) they really could have shaved 30 minutes off of it and made a tighter movie. It did drag in a couple of places but I still enjoyed it.

    This movie is more of the same so if you liked the first three, you should enjoy this one.

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  • #107010

    I watched the first two episodes of Evil, which seems like a pretty good show.

    Also, hey, It’s Michael Emmerson! That’s awesome, I absolutely love him. Can’t understand why he isn’t on every fucking show on TV.

    I love that show. Good chemistry between the main actors and the episodes are inventive and fun.

    I also love that xfiles influenced format, keeps things interesting from week to week even with the overarching plot.

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  • #107034

    The fourth and final season of Succession has begun and this is some damned fine television. High quality dysfunction at it’s best.

    Succession Season 4 Review-It Doesn’t Get Better Than This

    Here’s a ranking of 100 Best F-words in Succession History

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  • #107036

    The fourth and final season of Succession has begun and this is some damned fine television. High quality dysfunction at it’s best.

    Yeah, I just watched the first episode and enjoyed it, some fun moments and Cox is as great as ever and really anchors the whole thing. Plus the Tom/Greg chats feel like a sitcom all of their own, almost a Frasier/Niles feel to them at times.

    Having said that I do think the show has pretty much run its course at this point, so I’m glad they’re bringing it to a close with this season. I wonder if they’ll look back and think they should have ended things with the season three finale as it feels like a lot of this season is just going to be playing out the fallout from that. We’ll see I guess.

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  • #107047

    Watched “Nobody”, which is basically Bob Odenkirk as John Wick. Which is a fun enough idea in and of itself, but the movie doesn’t really do anything that’d make it special beyond that. It was an alright action movie overall, but not exactly a must-see.

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  • #107055

    I finally finished Wednesday a few weeks ago.  It was great. The story was good. It had a good mystery. The cast was great too. There were a lot of young talent that shined on the show. I was a little iffy on the romance stuff but it was scarce enough that it didn’t really bother me. I know that the show is set in a high school so that’s going to be part of the story.  I’m also slowly watching Lockwood and Co. and Suits. I’m probably going to finish Suits first. Both series are good. I’m enjoying it for the most part.

    I’m still need to get around to watching Peripheral. I’m also looking forward to Reacher season 2. I enjoyed the first season and the second season is probably going to be good (hopefully).

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  • #107096

    I could tell that it was Danny Elfman (80s Oingo Bingo frontman) who also did the score for Batman 1989. His music scores all sound the same though. (Lazy recycling?)

    All of Elfman’s scores sound literally interchangeable to me. I can’t understand why everybody loves his scores so much. (Or maybe it’s only Tim Burton who loves them :unsure: )

     

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  • #107097

    I watched the first two episodes of Evil, which seems like a pretty good show.

    You’re in for a good time. Season 1 is amazing. It falls off a bit in later seasons as the characters start acting stupidly as the plot requires but it’s never less than batshit insane. Far more peole should be watching it.

    I’ll second this. Season 1 was one of the best things I’ve ever seen. Season 2’s plots started to lose my interest (but still had enough good episodes to be watchable overall).

     

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  • #107116

    I finally finished Wednesday a few weeks ago.  It was great. The story was good. It had a good mystery.

    I got a start on that finally.

    Suits really was a very good show. Practically the only thing I didn’t like about it was Meghan Markle. Other than that, the cast was fantastic and the writing very sharp. At its best, it got pretty close to Sorkin’s dialogue (which I will always content that show deliberately aimed for, as evidenced in the smart-ass secretary being called Donna).

    For some reason, I never finished that show. Probably should, one of these days.

  • #107131

    I’ve started watching the original series of UK Gladiators. It’s a strange beast.

    It definitely works and it’s easy to see why it lasted the decade, but there are odd choices. The stars of the show are clearly the Gladiators, yet in these two episodes there’s only one interview with any of them and that’s just following up a DQ in one event. What makes this more notable is that 1992 is before the point at which most regular people became naturally media-trained to a basic degree. So you get lots of interviews with contenders, most of whom aren’t very articulate (not least because they’re usually knackered).

    The other surprising thing is how many events are packed into each episode. Six and the Eliminator. Given how long each one took to set up (a friend of mine went to a recording back in the day and said it took about seven hours for one episode – you can see the arena is mostly empty by the end of the show), you’d think they’d have paced it out a bit more.

  • #107141

    I’ve started watching the original series of UK Gladiators. It’s a strange beast.

    It definitely works and it’s easy to see why it lasted the decade, but there are odd choices. The stars of the show are clearly the Gladiators, yet in these two episodes there’s only one interview with any of them and that’s just following up a DQ in one event. What makes this more notable is that 1992 is before the point at which most regular people became naturally media-trained to a basic degree. So you get lots of interviews with contenders, most of whom aren’t very articulate (not least because they’re usually knackered).

    The other surprising thing is how many events are packed into each episode. Six and the Eliminator. Given how long each one took to set up (a friend of mine went to a recording back in the day and said it took about seven hours for one episode – you can see the arena is mostly empty by the end of the show), you’d think they’d have paced it out a bit more.

    You may find this interesting:

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  • #107142

    Speaking of UK versions:

    I just might check out a few episodes (sample size) of the original Skins (UK).
    It has Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out) in a very early role as he was starting out.

    It was recommended in a few sites: “If you like “Euphoria” you might be interested in…”
    It is surprising to know that the Skins cast were actual teens (the lead actress was 14 at the time).

  • #107144

    Speaking of UK versions:

    I just might check out a few episodes (sample size) of the original Skins (UK).
    It has Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out) in a very early role as he was starting out.

    It was recommended in a few sites: “If you like “Euphoria” you might be interested in…”
    It is surprising to know that the Skins cast were actual teens (the lead actress was 14 at the time).

    I’ve not watched any of it since it aired, but I remember the first few seasons of Skins being entertaining. I was only a couple of years older than the characters, although I didn’t find it particularly relatable (it felt like it was on the other end of a spectrum from the Inbetweeners in exaggerating teenage life imo). There’s loads of actors in it that went onto bigger things after and a lot of established British comedy actors playing the parents too, so you might get a kick out of that Al.

    Kaluuya’s only got a supporting role – rather than being one of the PoV characters – but he was pretty good as far as I remember.

    • This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by Martin Smith.
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  • #107186

    Speaking of UK versions:

    I just might check out a few episodes (sample size) of the original Skins (UK).
    It has Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out) in a very early role as he was starting out.

    It was recommended in a few sites: “If you like “Euphoria” you might be interested in…”
    It is surprising to know that the Skins cast were actual teens (the lead actress was 14 at the time).

    Skins was absolutely fantastic, it’s well worth checking out. And a good few of the people who started out on that show have become very successful actors now – Nicholas Hoult (okay, he’d already done About a Boy at that point, but Skins was an important stepping stone for him, I think), Dev Patel, Daniel Kaluyaa (who indeed was very good on the show, as were all of them), Kaya Scodelario…

    It’s well worth your time. First episode starts out with a bit “Ohhhh, let’s shock the adult with the bad things the kids are up to!”-vibe, but it gets better and better the more the show digs into the actual characters.

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  • #107243

    History of the World Part II

    I watched the first two episodes and that’s as far as I got. It is not good at all. I know Mel Brooks had some help creating this with some contemporary comedy talent but the jokes felt old and stale. Even jokes that referenced current culture felt dated.

    I’m passing on the rest of the series.

  • #107245

    Watched the first couple of episodes of Amazon’s The Power, and after getting over my initial disappointment that it wasn’t a biopic of darts legend Phil Taylor it feels like there’s some potential there even if it isn’t being fully realised yet.

    It’s about young women all over the world suddenly getting the ability to shoot powerful electricity from their bodies, and how that changes the power balance in their various situations, often turning the tables on powerful men in their lives and reversing the real-life gender dynamic.

    So it’s a bit X-Men, a bit Noughts and Crosses, a bit Handmaid’s Tale, a bit Y: The Last Man and a bit fucking boring unfortunately.

    That’s because the show takes a big-picture approach that’s made up of lots of separate vignettes playing out all over the world, so far with only fairly tenuous connections between them, which means that there’s only incremental progress in each of them and often they’re quite repetitive/duplicative of each other. So you end up in a situation where the viewer is ahead of the characters and waiting for them to catch up, which is frustrating.

    It’s a shame as the cast is sometimes pretty good – Toni Collette and John Leguizamo do well in a story strand about a politician and her doctor husband, and Eddie Marsan plays a UK gangster whose daughter looks like she might have an interesting storyline.

    But so far it’s almost like every episode is an anthology, with you getting little five-minute slices of various plotlines, some of which are much more interesting than the others. It hasn’t come together into something coherent yet, and it feels like the kind of show where that might not happen until the end of the season.

    Which is a bit of an irritating trend in TV, full first seasons that are almost like #0 issues setting up the real story to come. Although some of that sense might be based on the source material as my wife read the novel when it came out and said it had similar weaknesses.

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  • #107281

    I watched the rest of the first series of Gladiators last week  (and then the first episode of season 2). This has all been spurred by listening to the Gladpod podcast that Jet co-hosts, interviewing other Gladiators. The last one I listened to was with Phoenix, one of the three original Gladiators dropped from the show after the first series. And by “dropped” I mean “unceremoniously fired”. She’s still quite bitter about it, understandably, not least because she only found out that she, Hawk and Flame were off the show from a journalist calling for a quote. She was then told by the guy on the production team that was the handler for the Gladiators that they “didn’t have a personality”.

    Which is a pretty odd and vicious reason given that, in the first series, the show doesn’t really seem particularly interested in letting the Gladiators have personalities. Despite the show being named after them, they very much take a back seat to the contenders and they’re treated as barely more than an obstacle, like the actual events themselves, rather than people. They’re rarely interviewed – I can count on one hand how many times across that first series they’re actually spoken to (and one of those is Warrior on a sickbed after he’s fucked his knee up). So to dump three people for “not having a personality” when the show hasn’t really given them an opportunity to show one is odd.

    Yet, on the other hand, it’s undeniable that other Gladiators managed to put themselves across better in the same circumstances. Although hindsight and retrospect colours this, Jet and Lightning stand out early on simply because they do some flips when the camera’s on them. Cobra does some martial arts posing to get attention, Panther has that cat claw pose thing too. It’s not much, but it puts them apart from some of the others who just raise an arm to the crowd. And then there’s Wolf. It was apparently entirely his idea to be the angry, mean one, against the producer’s wishes and you can really see that. He doesn’t wait for the show to let him start doing that schtick, he just goes for it from the off. It’s not until midway through the series that the producers catch up to him and think to actually play into it, “attempting” to interview him, specifically asking contenders what they think of him etc. So I guess it requires a bit of self-starting.

    But then he’s also given, a few episodes in, entrance music, which feels like the producers giving him a leg up over the others. I think it becomes a staple later on in the show’s run, with each Gladiator given their own, but early on, it’s just for Wolf and maybe a couple of other by the end (Saracen, I think). Is that just capitalising on the work he’s put in? Some of the other Glads are also favoured by production. Shadow is massively talked up on commentary for Duel, though his record is about on par with Flame. As the series goes on, Scorpio and Saracen are given multiple interviews (compare to even Jet, who doesn’t speak on camera at all until season 2). And then there’s the opening rollcall, which has a distinct “starring THESE GUYS and some other people” feel to it as it goes.

    Anyway, this all seems to improve for season 2, when the producers have actually twigged who the stars of the show are and actually treat them like it.

    Some other stray thoughts: the music is incredibly good on the show. Not just the bits played in the arena – which Queen does incredibly well out of – but the event specific music that was presumably only heard on the broadcast edit. The themes for Hang Tough and Tilt are great.

    But man is John Fashanu bad. He basically relies on shouting “awooga” to get by and he didn’t even have that in s1. He’s wooden doing links and just dreadful interviewing people, giving the impression he’s never spoken to another human being before and can’t think of anything to talk about. Ulrika’s not brilliant (she’s a bit stiff in s1) but she’s at least able to banter. There’s a fireman as a contender in s1 and Fashanu says to him “how long have you been a fireman?” “Four years”. “Wow, you must have seen some horrific things.” Jesus, John, it’s a Saturday night shiny floor show, keep it light!

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  • #107282

    John Fashanu

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  • #107293

    I saw John Wick 4 yesterday. Loved it. Very little story. Amazing amounts of action. Early parts were set in Osaka so lots of Asian Martial Arts. Ended up in Paris with huge car chase/warfare. Donnie Yen was his very cool self. Shamier Anderson from Wynonna Earp played Nobody and he was great as a mercenary tracker.

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  • #107343

    The Mario movie was lots of fun. Just a straightforward, colourful kids movie with tons of stuff from the games, and a nice short runtime that doesn’t outstay its welcome.

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  • #107344

    And Pratt as Mario?

  • #107349

    Surprisingly okay actually. They explain away the voice discrepancy upfront in a way that kind of makes sense. Ultimately I think the movie is probably better off for giving him a different voice to the games.

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  • #107385

    Saw the finale of season one of the new Quantum Leap. Overall, it wound up being just okay. It starts off very shoddy, steadily improves but winds up succumbing to the same flaw as most time travel stories in that nothing can actually be explained in a way that holds up to scrutiny. That renders the season-long story arc focusing on the Project characters and the mystery they’re trying to solve rather unsatisfying. However, when the show just focuses on the Leap of the week it can definitely work. Without spoiling anything the episodes on the Indian restaurant, the country singer, the priest, the boxer and the transgender kid were really enjoyable episodic TV (some episodes aim for more elaborate stakes and the show again struggles to handle the excess). I hope the show focuses more on that side of things for season two. Kudos also to Raymond Lee for his performance as Ben, the leaper. He’s a perfect blank slate, which is precisely what the role calls for.

    Surprised that this has still not been picked up for broadcast in the UK by any service yet. Firestick + VPN + Peacock certainly helps.

  • #107392

    Saw the finale of season one of the new Quantum Leap. Overall, it wound up being just okay. It starts off very shoddy, steadily improves but winds up succumbing to the same flaw as most time travel stories in that nothing can actually be explained in a way that holds up to scrutiny. That renders the season-long story arc focusing on the Project characters and the mystery they’re trying to solve rather unsatisfying. However, when the show just focuses on the Leap of the week it can definitely work. Without spoiling anything the episodes on the Indian restaurant, the country singer, the priest, the boxer and the transgender kid were really enjoyable episodic TV (some episodes aim for more elaborate stakes and the show again struggles to handle the excess). I hope the show focuses more on that side of things for season two. Kudos also to Raymond Lee for his performance as Ben, the leaper. He’s a perfect blank slate, which is precisely what the role calls for.

    Surprised that this has still not been picked up for broadcast in the UK by any service yet. Firestick + VPN + Peacock certainly helps.

    Do you know which episode number roughly it starts getting better?

    I’ve got to part of the way through episode 5, but it’s taking me 2 and 3 goes to get through each episode as I’m finding it borderline unwatchable. I’m trying to persist in the hope that I find my way home it gets better, as QL was such a big show for me growing up.

    Just to qualify a bit with my complaints –
    I find Raymond Lee to be generally fine and I’m delighted Ernie Hudson is in it, so it’s not really the casting that’s the problem for me. It’s more how bland it is, some really uninteresting writing and it’s a bit too on the nose already.

    Did you feel that about the earlier episodes and notice an uptick?

  • #107396

    Yeah, the early episodes are quite weak. I can’t say the show gets great but it does get pretty good for a light sci-fi. Episode 7 was the first one that had a notable upturn in quality and felt like it could have been from the original show (which certainly had its share of clunkers too). I think that was the first they produced since getting picked up for a whole season, so they likely started fine tuning things around then.

    Agreed it was great to see Ernie Hudson again.

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  • #107399

    Yeah, the early episodes are quite weak. I can’t say the show gets great but it does get pretty good for a light sci-fi. Episode 7 was the first one that had a notable upturn in quality and felt like it could have been from the original show (which certainly had its share of clunkers too). I think that was the first they produced since getting picked up for a whole season, so they likely started fine tuning things around then.

    Agreed it was great to see Ernie Hudson again.

    Thanks, that’s not too far away, I’ll persevere 👍

  • #107407

    I’ve not watched any of it since it aired, but I remember the first few seasons of Skins being entertaining.

    The first two series of Skins are brilliant in my view. Peak TV. Russell T Davies wrote a letter to the showrunner on how well they finished the first run.

    There are some diminishing returns after that but still some great moments. It’s based on A-level education in the UK which meant the cast had to be (almost) entirely changed after each two year run.  As Christian says a lot of the PR was always ‘hey kids going crazy’ from C4 but the show was always much deeper than that.

     

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  • #107425

    I’ve started on the Last of Us and am up to that episode 3. That was a really wonderful episode I’m looking forward to the rest, the show is great.

    2 users thanked author for this post.
  • #107435

    Wow.  Decided to give Justified a go.

    Did not like the pilot and sure, pilots aren’t always representative of the series that follow them, but the gap here is huge.

    Everything is far better, characters, plots, writing, story flow.

    5 users thanked author for this post.
  • #107441

    So I’ve finally seen Solo:a Star Wars Story (on free TV with commercials).
    Actually enjoyed it, but went in with lowered expectations.

    Did not mind the cast at all, yet it’s a fair critique to say thats not a young Harrison Ford. If you don’t go there, you’re fine.

    3 users thanked author for this post.
  • #107473

    Yeah, I enjoyed Solo a lot. Perfectly fine space adventure movie.

    2 users thanked author for this post.
  • #107481

    Justified s1 finale – that was one ballsy episode.

    Just about any other show would have kept Bo and Johnny alive, somehow keeping the various relationships with the other characters in some weird, contrived fashion.  This one? Nope. No hesitation on pulling the trigger

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