What have you been watching lately?
You Have Been Watching
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So… the last episode of The Stand came out… I’ve never read the book, and if it’s anything like the show, I’m really not interested. The show was hum… well not very good. Funny how badly Stephen King’s books usually end up being butchered. Apparently the last episode is a “new” ending? Who knows… it’s all very mediocre.
Anyways, I do wonder, is The Stand one of those cocaine-fueled SK books? Because holy shit that story is kinda stupid. I mean, “Captain Tripps”… seriously? I couldn’t really take the show seriously after that…
Oh and Ezra Miller is in there and holy shit that must be some of the worst acting I’ve ever seen… I really don’t know how anyone involved thought that was even acceptable.
I have not seen the tv-show, but read the book long ago. Of all the books I’ve read it’s the one I have the most divided opinions about. The first half, where random plague survivors travel through a world where almost everyone is dead is really amazing. The second half, where everything turns into a lame battle between good and evil totally sucks.
And the ending was probably bad also, but by then I didn’t care anymore.
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I’ve heard this show smashes you in the heart later so I’m preparing myself for that.
Finished ‘It’s a Sin’ yesterday. Being prepared didn’t help.
It’s brilliant drama by the way. Appearing on HBO Max in the US next week.
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Hunters
Well, this was all kinds of fucked-up to rival The Boys and Preacher!
Took a bit of time to get going but from episode 3? Yep, it got good.
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So… the last episode of The Stand came out… I’ve never read the book, and if it’s anything like the show, I’m really not interested. The show was hum… well not very good. Funny how badly Stephen King’s books usually end up being butchered. Apparently the last episode is a “new” ending? Who knows… it’s all very mediocre.
Anyways, I do wonder, is The Stand one of those cocaine-fueled SK books? Because holy shit that story is kinda stupid. I mean, “Captain Tripps”… seriously? I couldn’t really take the show seriously after that…
Oh and Ezra Miller is in there and holy shit that must be some of the worst acting I’ve ever seen… I really don’t know how anyone involved thought that was even acceptable.
I have not seen the tv-show, but read the book long ago. Of all the books I’ve read it’s the one I have the most divided opinions about. The first half, where random plague survivors travel through a world where almost everyone is dead is really amazing. The second half, where everything turns into a lame battle between good and evil totally sucks.
And the ending was probably bad also, but by then I didn’t care anymore.
Yes the show took a sudden turn too. It’s a very messy show… and some of it is just excessively silly.
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So I just watched the latest Nic Cage movie, Willy’s Wonderland… very low budget and not like amazing… but it’s fun… it’s Nic Cage doing Nic Cage in good form. This time he doesn’t speak a single line despite being there the whole movie… so yeah… this feels less cash-grabby than usual. I mean, again, it’s not the best thing ever, but fun enough.
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Snowpiercer S2 has started now on netflix, hasn’t it? What’s the general verdict on the show anyway? I remember some people talking about it, but I think opinions varied a bit?
I’m pretty lukewarm on it
im watching because I love the concept and this is a way to get more of that, but it’s pretty average writing and performances for the most part
theres just about enough to keep me watching but I’ve fallen asleep a few times watching it
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We watched News of the World. It was terrific. One to savour as the sort of movie that was commonplace and watched by everyone you knew in the 90s and early 00s, but sadly few and far between now.
Greengrass and Hanks is an indication of the quality you can expect and it fully delivers on performances, script and direction. Great movie. I doubt I’ll see many better this year.
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Was surprised to see that so fast on Netflix, guess it was one they funded.
News of the World is still a $20 rental in the US, Netflix just has the international rights.
I watched Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, which is delightful.
It’s very silly, in the style of Hot Rod or Step Brothers, with some Austin Powers mixed in. I had no idea what to expect going in, based on the very odd teaser trailer. It’s probably best to go in unspoiled, and I’m sure some people will hate it.
I loved it though, and will definitely be rewatching it.
Kristen Wiig can be hit-or-miss for me, and I don’t think I’ve liked Jamie Dornan in anything since the first season of The Fall, but they’re both great in this.
If nothing else, it gave us the classic song “I Love Boobies” by Richard Cheese.
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We watched News of the World. It was terrific. One to savour as the sort of movie that was commonplace and watched by everyone you knew in the 90s and early 00s, but sadly few and far between now.
I’m very much looking forward to that one. And since it stars Helena Zengel, I’ll use the opportunity to show the trailer for the movie that started her career, the fantastic Systemsprenger (“system crasher”). Systemsprenger is apparently a word social workers here have for kids that the system can’t deal with, that keep going from foster parents to social institutions with their situation getting worse and worse. It’s a great little film, with an incredible performance by Zengel.
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She was outstanding. A star in the making.
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Continuing with Toy Story we rewatched the 3rd film on Friday night – it holds up and I guess it is stronger than the first two. The new environment and characters really take it to a new level, and set it up for what became the 4th (and future) film(s) (we haven’t seen the 4th yet).
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Binged all thirteen episodes of the WildC.A.T.S animated series.
You’ll be singing that theme song for
yearsweeksdaysa minute. -
Defenders of the Earth
Oooh! I loved that series as a kid.
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I don’t seem to have legal access to The Stand, but a friend told me not to bother as everyone he trusts says to avoid it.
Shame as I we were both looking forward to it. I enjoyed the 1994 mini-series. Also enjoyed the novel before that (been a long time, but I seem to remember it’s avoids King’s anti-climactic endings).So after typing that I immediately thought of Storm of the Century.
1999 TV mini-series, not from a novel but a King original screenplay.
Good god I was so enwrapped in the first two episodes it was all I could think of.
Small island town off the coast of Maine is about to be cutoff from the world due to a massive snowstorm. Some leave, some stay.
Stranger Andre Linoge (played perfectly by Colm Feore) shows up and shit starts happening (“give me what I want and I’ll go away”).
The 200 people that stay have a dream about a reporter commenting on the disappearance in 1587 Roanoke Island.But I had enjoyed it too much as the 3rd episode was very anti-climactic.
Although I was more forgiving on a re-watch about 5 years ago (I was prepared, and honestly don’t know if the story could change).
Wonder if it makes sense to push 2/3 and make up your own ending.Somehow I’m a sucker for that ‘closed off from the world’ and in the snow.
Hmmm, maybe a re-watch of 30 Days of Night is in order. -
Binged through the whole of the first season of Raised by Wolves last night. All but the last episodes, which I’m going to watch today. I didn’t care much for the first episode, but kept going for the sheer weirdness of it, and it got more involving once more characters were around. After a while, it felt a lot like The Terror really – soldiers stranded in a hostile environment, slowly going mad – and that’s a good thing.
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We’re nearing the end of our Leftovers binge. I’ll withhold my
rantjudgement until I’ve watched the last 4 episodes.We’re also watching Call My Agent or Dix Pour Cent (10 Percent) as it’s called in France. As you may have guessed, it’s a French comedy/drama show (on Netflix) about a talent agency. I was dubious at first, as French humour can sometimes fail to translate, but it’s actually hugely entertaining. As its reputation has grown (there are 4 seasons so far) it’s array of star cameos has grown too, with people such as Monica Bellucci, Juliette Binoche and Sigourney Weaver all appearing as themselves – or comedically exaggerated versions of themselves at least.
Highly recommended if you need something light-hearted to watch with a bunch of likeable characters, and don’t mind subtitles.
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Last night I watched King Rocker, the feature-length documentary by Stewart Lee and Michael Cummings (of Brasseye fame) about Robert Lloyd, the lead singer of Birmingham 1970s punk band the Prefects and later the Nightingales.
It’s a great film that benefits from not being the typical music documentary fare of charting a rise from obscurity to success – because Lloyd has never become a mainstream success, instead existing on the fringes of music (and the arts more broadly) with a succession of projects that have won a niche fanbase without ever really breaking into the public consciousness, despite winning acclaim from the likes of John Peel (who punctuates the film regularly with voiceover audio clips from his radio show).
But to some extent the film also acknowledges the cliches of the music documentary and has some fun with subverting them. For example, the recurrent metaphor of a giant statue of King Kong (that once stood in Birmingham city centre but later fell into disrepair before being cleaned up and rehomed) is deliberately overplayed and forced, and acknowledged as such, but becomes a fun side-story in its own right.
And there are also lots of fun touches here that would feel more at home in a comedy film – like a succession of interview retakes that get more and more absurd; an acknowledgement of the artificiality of the format, with Lee making it clear that he’s asking questions that he already knows the answers to; or sudden cuts to surprise cameos from famous figures who jump into the story to question or confirm the veracity of what we’ve just been told about them.
But most of all I enjoyed this for the glimpse it gives of the punk and post-punk culture of my adopted hometown, and for the picture it paints of an artistically uncompromising but personally warm figure who put his own integrity ahead of his desire for commercial success, and who stands up for the often unrepresented artistically-literate working-class artists that were an important part of that era.
There are some weaknesses to the film: there’s a relative lack of actual music in this documentary, partly for rights reasons but also because not a huge amount of contemporary footage of the Prefects and Nightingales exists; and there’s also a slightly repetitive quality to the interviews – a significant amount of the film is simply Lee and Lloyd chatting in various locations (mostly Birmingham pubs), and it can feel a bit undynamic as a result.
But overall it’s still a very warm and enjoyable documentary. I had virtually no knowledge of Lloyd before watching, but Lee’s enthusiasm for (and understanding of) his subject really won me over.
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Yeah, Raised By Wolves was good. I didn’t realise it was more than a single series so I was surprised how open it was left at the end. Potentially interesting stuff for next season though.
Be interested to hear how you get on with Devs – I liked it a lot.
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Yeah, Raised By Wolves was good. I didn’t realise it was more than a single series so I was surprised how open it was left at the end. Potentially interesting stuff for next season though.
Yeah, I kind of expected the first season to have more of a conclusion, but on the other hand I really liked what they did there. The scene in which that weird eel monster is born (and that in itself was the most nightmarish thing I’ve seen in ages) and you realise that she was impregnated by whatever creature is pretending to be Sol and directing Marcus’ actions was quite something and I wasn’t prepared for that at all.
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I didn’t like that ending, tbh… it was just too out there… and the show was already quite out there. It just didn’t leave me wanting for more… I actually kinda felt like I wasted my time.
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Call my agent has been on my radar since it’s been discussed for a while by one of my favourite podcasts, The Watch (general TV chat) – wife added it to her Netflix list so I might join her when she starts it.
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I love the themes and they way they are approached
I think this is really exemplified by that episode that’s largely just a long set of talking-heads conversations (is it episode 6?) – the ideas and performances are all compelling enough that it’s a high point of the season even though it’s essentially just four people sitting around talking.
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That Britney Spears documentary everyone’s been talking about was on Sky Documentaries tonight. A fascinating and troubling story. It’s a weird legal black hole Britney’s fallen into, completely at the mercy of those that should have her best interests at heart but don’t, with next to no recourse to free herself.
We saw that too. I had heard bits and pieces of her story over the years but hadn’t really paid much attention to it. Seeing the totality of what has happened to her over the years is pretty scary and saddening. A real indictment of the toxic effects of pop culture in modern times. I hope she can get the help she needs to live a happy, healthy life with her children.
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One of the best theme songs of the Eighties, if not of all time:
You obviously missed the WildCATs theme song, @Anders.
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We probably need a dedicated thread for theme songs, but this is clearly the greatest of all time:
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I just finished the Watchmen TV series after gradually working through it over the past few weeks.
I had deliberately left it a while as I wanted to watch it away from all the hype around its release, and I was expecting to not like it a huge amount. But I actually thought it was pretty good, and certainly head and shoulders above all the other Watchmen spinoff stuff they’ve done in the comics.
It was thoughtful and clearly understood how the original comic worked, but also had enough intelligence and ambition to do its own thing while also creating an interesting interplay with the original book. The part sequel and part remix approach worked pretty well and I quite liked where the story went.
It wasn’t perfect but it was much better than it had any right to be, and really showed up how unimaginative and bland the prequel/sequel comics have been.
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I think the thing I enjoyed most about Raised by Wolves is that it felt like a story from 70s/80s Heavy Metal magazine. There was the general sense of weirdness, and, damn, if it didn’t look like something that was drawn by Enki Bilal — with a little bit of Moebius on the side.
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The Watch, Episode 8
The nightmare is finally over. And it, unsurprisingly, face planted the landing. At one point, the characters identity a song they’ve heard throughout the series. They then play the song with electric guitars and saxophones and the like because that’s normal for this world in one of the most cringiest scenes in television history. You will cringe so much, you will end up compressing your spinal column and fusing vertebrae.
So what was the song played?
The show’s fucking theme. Seriously. The just played the theme over the cast “rocking out”.
Jesus
Fucking
Christ
And after resolving the season’s stories, there’s a bit more to set of Season 2. That means it ends on a cliffhanger. Because, fuck it, why not? Hear’s hoping we never see a Season 2.
This was a horribly conceived and terribly executed series. It is really an insult to Sir Terry Pratchett and his works. While previous attempts to adapt his work were not always successful, they did strive to remain true to his spirit. This show did not.
This was bad television.
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I’m watching a show on Netflix called Behind Her Eyes. So far it’s seemingly a fairly standard Fatal Attraction type thing, a young single mom is falling for her boss who is married. She befriends his wife separately who has a history of mental health issues and was previously in an institution. It’s all done rather slickly but seems very familiar and formulaic, the wife will probably go nuts when she finds out about the affair and tries to kill them or something.
The reason I am watching it is the review from the Pilot TV podcast. Apparently the book it was based on and the show has a completely batshit crazy twists in it. The author even heard their review and agreed.
This made me giggle so much listening..;-) Batshit bonkers, heightened and compelling and What the fuck am I watching? It’s like hearing people talking about the book all over again;-)
So I’m sticking with it to see how loony it gets.
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I’ve been slowly making my way through the entirety of Due South the past few months. I tried this a few years back, when I noticed Sony Channel were showing it, but it disappeared part way into season 1. This time I caught a full run of it and just finished it. It’s the first time I’d seen most of those episodes. I definitely remember watching it on BBC One back in the day, but I don’t think I saw beyond the first season. Certainly not the later ones with Fake Ray.
On the whole, it’s an interesting but flawed show, which doesn’t really live up to the promise of its first season. In some ways it becomes a victim of its own self-indulgence. It was always a series that had a sense of fun, balanced nicely with crime stories, but as it went on, it became silly in a way that undermined itself. Its tongue goes so far into cheek that it’s poking through the flesh. The humour in the early episodes comes from the fish-out-of-water nature of Fraser and a bit of dry wit, but it becomes broader and broader as it goes on. The final episode for instance has Fraser taking a modem wire, putting it to his temple while he rolls his eyes and gurns and decodes “binary data” for plot expediency, which just crosses a line for me.
It’s sort of tied into a degradation of Fraser’s character throughout the run. Initially he’s the incorruptible man in the land of the corrupt, really. A strange visitor from an another world (and in many ways, this show is the best TV version of Superman and it knows it). But eventually he’s frequently just lurching into absurdity in a way that undermines the rest of the show. In the first few seasons, he lives alone in a spartanly furnished flat in the worst part of town. It’s a nice idea that demonstrates his character – his lack of vices, his desire to assume the best of people, his slight gullibility. But later on, he’s living in his office, which now has a mystical hunting lodge in the back of his closet where he talks with his dead father (see, Superman). His odd tracking skills (tasting dirt etc) eventually becomes him just being, well, almost zany.
Another character that doesn’t fare too well is Francesca, whose crush on Fraser fades into the second series or so but then flares up again as she’s brought into main cast fully later on. And it just makes her seem a bit pathetic, really. She’s a fun addition to police station as civilian aid – better than the character originally in that role whose name I can’t remember – but the mooning over Fraser just doesn’t work.
And then there’s Fake Ray. The Ray-placement thing kinda works initially, but the show again sabotages itself. Having a different detective take the place of the undercover Ray Vecchio kind of makes sense, I guess, and the show commits to the idea. For about three episodes. It then has Fake Ray (real name: Stanley Kowalski) continually run into his ex-wife Stella, meet people who know him as Kowalski (because apparently he’s a local cop, which doesn’t seem workable for having him pose as another local cop) and then even have his real parents turn up at the station to meet him as though he’s not undercover as someone else.
It’s not that Ray Kowalski isn’t a good character – I like him and to be honest, the different dynamic he has with Fraser justifies the show running to a fourth series, which I don’t think it perhaps would have if the original Ray had stayed on past season two. But I don’t think I ever really bought him and Fraser actually becoming friends beyond the demands of the show’s format. It just sort of handwaves it and things work well enough after that, but I did find myself thinking “well, what reason as Fraser really got to keep working with the Chicago PD?”
The finale sums up a lot of the problems with the later parts of the series as a whole – it’s torn between telling a solid story about Fraser chasing down the man who killed his mother and doing silly shit with OTT gun-runners getting a Russian nuclear sub, Mounties parachuting in to save the day and an ex-schoolfriend of Fraser happening to pass by a crevice he and Ray are trapped in. It’s an unsatisfying mess that, in giving closure to its characters, treats some of them well and seemingly spites others. Ultimately it’s a show that feels like it ended at the right time. It’s very mid-90s in its essence, so that it continued until 1999 is surprising. It definitely doesn’t feel like it would have worked into the new Millennium.
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Watched Toy Story 4 tonight – neither wife nor I had seen it before, but we’ve (re)watched the previous three films over the past few weeks. It was… not great, certainly the weakest of the 4 films. Very muddled plot, and really stretching the movie logic to have the toys moving around so much in public, but unseen. It’s obviously the best looking film, and the voice acting is as good as ever, but we’d probably be better off with it staying as a solid trilogy.
Also, watched a bunch of Simpsons episodes during the day – just such solid seasons from 5-9. The “Sam Neil as cat burglar” one, the “Homer loves Mindy” one, the “I didn’t do it kid” one – all classics.
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Watched Netflix’s Cecil Hotel documentary series on the Elisa Lam case. I’ve been downtown and to the Cecil (or Stay On Main) quite a bit since the 90’s and to the Last Bookstore, and I followed developments of the case as well. The show captures all the strangest elements of the story, but in a lot of ways it does sensationalize what is honestly much more a mundane personal tragedy.
Also, the webslueths in the series come off to me as either very unhealthy obsessives deserving of a lot of sympathy and pity or… opportunistic sensationalists making a fortune off other’s misfortunes – basically, amateur tabloid reporters- and that seems even worse than traditional yellow journalism. I think the documentary missed a bit of an opportunity to really put a spotlight on the loose ethics – and general irrationality – of true crime reporting on the internet.
At the same time, the vast majority of people are basically trained to approach criminal investigations from the perspective of popular entertainment. Law and Order, CSI, The Wire, NCIS etcetera – all the way back to E. A. Poe and A. C. Doyle. People expect that if they look closely at a case, some clue will emerge that ties everything together. If it doesn’t appear in reality, they’ll invent it just to satisfy that expectation conditioned by a lifetime of detective stories.
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Watched Toy Story 4 tonight – neither wife nor I had seen it before, but we’ve (re)watched the previous three films over the past few weeks. It was… not great, certainly the weakest of the 4 films. Very muddled plot, and really stretching the movie logic to have the toys moving around so much in public, but unseen. It’s obviously the best looking film, and the voice acting is as good as ever, but we’d probably be better off with it staying as a solid trilogy.
I actually thought Toy Story 4 was alright, and better than I expected. But it’s definitely weaker than the other three, I think partly because it doesn’t have such a strong child side to the story.
All the Toy Story films are quite clever in that they have aspects of the story that appeal to kids (mainly the fun of the toys coming to life aspect, and the adventures they have), but also other aspects that appeal to parents and have something to say about the parent experience.
It’s particularly strong in the third one where Andy grows up and moves on from his mum/the toys and you feel the loss mainly from their perspective, but you also see it in the second one where the toys are considering what their life means when they’re not defined by their child, and a little bit in the first one where they’re dealing with change and how to help their kid through that.
But in the fourth one the adult angle takes prominence more than ever – it’s all about Woody finding meaning in his life again when his kid has moved on, empty nest syndrome effectively – and while it’s an interesting character development for him and probably relatable for parents, I think it’s a core story that kids find hard to relate to. Same with the lost love aspect with Bo Peep. There isn’t really a compelling story at the heart of it on the child side of things.
Having said that my kids do really enjoy Toy Story 4, but mainly for the side stuff like Duke Caboom or Bunny and Ducky (who steal the show really). They also quite like the story around the villain and the way everything turns out with her.
But it definitely feels like something is missing compared to the first three, which are pretty much a perfect trilogy.
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Stardust, which I’ve not seen since it was in the cinemas. It holds up pretty well. DeNiro’s fey voice for Captain Shakespeare maybe feels a bit dated and unnecessary now, while the Gervais cameo also feels very much of a time past.
I’m surprised Charlie Cox didn’t get bigger roles off the back of this until Daredevil. And I didn’t recognise Henry Cavill at all.
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Finished ‘It’s a Sin’ yesterday. Being prepared didn’t help.
So very, very true.
I can’t recall the last time we watched the first episode of a series, then concluded we needed to keep going and midway through the second episode probably knew we’d need to watch the entire, but only admitted that at the end of episode three…. Cue it’s now 12.30am and we just finished the last episode. Why? Because we had to.
It is fantastic work. Brilliant casting, scripting, acting, soundtrack – it is absurdly brilliant and that final monologue from Jill was searing.
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Started on the His Dark Materials TV series, and I’m quite enjoying it. The actress playing Lyra is very good; I am not as much of a fan of Ruth Wilson, but it’s alright. The series takes its time to tell the story, and the production value varies from very good to very BBC-looking (somehow, that goes mainly for the Gytian settings). But overall, it’s well done and fun to watch.
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“Death is easy. Comedy? Now, that’s hard.” – Woody Allen
He may have said it, but the origin of that quote is usually attributed to other people.
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“Death is easy. Comedy? Now, that’s hard.” – Johnny Henning
“Dying is Easy. Comedy is Hard.” – Christian Ulmke
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I’ve been watching a lot of old Law & Orders lately and one of them was a bit odd. It ends with Detective Green getting shot (so the actor, Jesse L Martin, can be written out for a while and go do the film version of Rent) but doesn’t given any closure at the end of the episode, clearly setting up for a follow up episode. Which just doesn’t come at all. Eventually, I decided to look it up online and it turns out it led into an episode of Law & Order: Trial By Jury, the very short-lived fourth L&O branch. There’s nothing to even hint at this in the episode though – no cameo by one of TBJ’s cast to set it up, just Fontana brooding and making ominous statements about stuff.
I decided to track down the TBJ episode and give it a watch, which wasn’t easy as the show is not only dead, but pretty comprehensively buried. I, ah, acquired the episode in question and I can definitely see why this show got canned after a half-season. A show about the Order half of the combo makes sense, given that Special Victims Unit tends to be more Law focused (though not always) and Criminal Intent was entirely based on that. Another show given that same focus to the legal side of things makes sense. But Trial By Jury just ends up feeling like a weak, poorly paced version of Law & Order. It still has a police investigation, albeit largely with the DA’s investigator rather the police, and then a longer than normal trial section. But the trial just feels like the second half of a normal L&O episode that they forgot to cut the boring bits out of.
And the trouble is, it’s not even telling a decent story. It massively pivots away from Green’s shooting into some stuff about a supposedly real snuff movie, with the guy who shot Green dealt with in about ten minutes. So what was the point of the “cross-over”? And it even shoves in a cameo from SVU’s Munch for no real reason too. The trial isn’t even particularly interesting, with Bebe Neuwirth as the main ADA given not much of anything to do, certainly no interesting questioning or legal strategy like you often get in the main show, she’s just made to look like an idiot by the defence. It’s maybe unfair to judge the show on just one episode, but when it’s the episode they’ve specifically set-up to lure in main L&O viewers, you’d think they’d be putting their best foot forward, instead of doing a poor man’s SVU and L&O mash-up episode. Surely set-up an arrest at the end of the lead-in episode and do a whole episode on the trial? I can see why this sank without a trace.
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And it even shoves in a cameo from SVU’s Munch for no real reason too.
No real reason? NO REAL REASON?!!
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The actress playing Lyra is very good;
She played X-23 in Logan. I like her as an actor.
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Dafne Keen is a great young actress.
I’ve been watching some true crime docs on Netflix. The latest was the one on the Yorkshire Ripper, by god they made a balls up of that case. Traced several bits of evidence back to the actual killer and interviewed him 9 times, with a photofit that looked exactly like him but all was dismissed because they had a fake tape sent in by someone with info all in the public domain with a different accent. They dismissed any suspect that didn’t have a Sunderland accent like the hoaxer on the tape, which seems super naive even if the tapes had been real, he could just have put on a fake accent.
It’s interesting because I was around 8-10 years old when this was still big news of the murders, his capture and trial, but in truth I knew nothing more than the very basic details. It’s quite interesting revisiting stories like that from the 1980s that were present mainly as background noise on the BBC news.
I still thought he only killed prostitutes which the documentary successfully debunks early on, most of them weren’t and some of them were just assumed to be because they had a drink and were out at night and was another reason the police, thinking they were still trying to find the Victorian ripper, were so fucking useless.
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We watched Wes Anderson’s GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL last night for the first time since its original release in 2014 (!)
I love Anderson’s work in general, but I think this one may be his best. The pacing, the characters, the main cast, the cameos, the cinematography — all superb. I picked a lot of subtle touches this time that I missed previously, such as the realization that Tom Wilkinson (The Author) starts out as narrator of the story in the present day, but when the story shifts to the 1930s, the narration is taken over by Jude Law as the same character when he was younger — in mid-narration, without skipping a beat. Anderson is one of those directors whose work is always consistently entertaining, even more so than the Coen Brothers.
Now I feel the need to watch MOONRISE KINGDOM again. Or maybe ISLE OF DOGS…
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Watching The Staircase, a Netflix documentary series.
Is that the one where there’s an entire episode devoted to the casket being moved from funeral home to the graveyard? That series really tried my patience.
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We watched Wes Anderson’s GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL last night for the first time since its original release in 2014 (!)
Loved Grand Hotel Budapest. The most interesting thing about it was for me that it was a political story at heart, and about real-world tragedy. In that, it was an unusual movie for Anderson, and an important step in his development.
Damn, it’s about time The French Dispatch came out, isn’t it?
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Damn, it’s about time The French Dispatch came out, isn’t it?
Fucking COVID!!
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I’ve been watching The Great the past few days, a comedy drama about Catherine The Great. One of them anyway (QI said there was two). Maybe the same one that Helen Mirren recently played. Anyway, this series has Elle Fanning as her, with Nicholas Hoult as her husband Emperor Peter. The title screen calls it “occasionally a true story” and that’s a good descriptor of it’s unusual take on period drama. There’s quite a lot in the way of casual anachronisms, from dialogue that doesn’t try to emulate historial Russian to references to the likes of salsa verde to one character wearing a pseudo-hoodie during a period of depression. It’s also got colour blind casting, which is cool. Despite this, it manages to feel authentic – or as authentic as it needs to anyway. It sufficiently creates a mood that feels valid if not accurate.
The main thing it’s got going for it though is that it’s bloody funny. Hoult is brilliant as the feckless, boundaryless man-child of an Emperor – a bit like an 18th century Tony from Skins that’s lucked into absolute power, really. Fanning anchors the show brilliantly as the idealistic and naive Catherine, who has to learn to deal with the hell of being Empress and her aspirations to modernise Russia. And Sacha Dewan is really good in a supporting role as courtier Orlo.
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Behind Her Eyes is a pretty well-done psychological thriller with strong performances by the entire cast, including Eve Hewson who, I finally realized, is U2 singer Bono’s daughter. I recommend it.
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I finally finished watching The Leftovers. I’ve honestly never felt quite so… trolled by a TV show. Not just because it didn’t resolve much of anything, but because it seemed to just dare me to stop watching with it’s obnoxious music choices, its obtuseness, and its ONE SINGLE TRICK of non-linear storytelling. That’s literally the only thing Lindeloff has in his arsenal (and he did the same thing in Watchmen too, another show that thought it was way cleverer than it actually was) – here’s some weird, seemingly unconnected thing that we’re showing you in episode 1 but hey! We’re not going to tell you what it means until episode 5! Or maybe episode 7!
And then you’re supposed to think he’s so clever because he went back to that little detail and whadayaknow! It did make sense after all!
But it’s NOT clever – he wrote the damn thing! Of course he knew what it was about!
TL;DR Fuck you, Damon Lindeloff.
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Christel and I watched the new Tom & Jerry movie on HBO Max.
It was okay. This really is for kids. Christel did chuckle a few times at some of the T&J bits, which were pretty much rehashes of ones from the classic cartoons.
It’s a very strange world. While it takes place in the “real world”, all animals are animated and seemingly sentient. That opens up a whole can of existential, metaphysical, philosophical, and ethical worms. Kids probably won’t bat an eye at it but for some adults, it may raise an eyebrow.
One thing I noticed right away and the credits confirmed, they used archival audio recordings of William Hanna, Mel Blanc, and June Foray for Tom and Jerry vocalizations. It was a bit off putting to me.
Overall, I’d say young children will probably enjoy it. For adults, I’d recommend skipping it and watch the classic cartoons. I watched the movie’s length in original cartoons and it was definitely a better experience. And if you can, seek out the ones Chuck Jones did in the 1960s. They are still brilliant.
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Patience ran out with The Staircase, and with the american justice system. Fast-forwarded through the last four episodes just to get to the end of it. And wow, was that unsatisfying. Not just the actual events, but the way it was done. Incredibly padded.
I rescind my earlier recommendation and conclude with a two-word tl;dr review:
Stay away.
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Just watched Coming 2 America. I thought it was lots of fun and a worthy sequel, and it really benefited from having rewatched the original recently. It has a lot of callbacks, especially early on, but it becomes its own thing too, although it has a similar charm to it as the original. The whole thing had a real party feel to it. Really joyful. And Snipes is a great new addition to the cast – he seems like he’s having a great time.
