You Have Been Watching

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What have you been watching lately?

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Jon wrote:

Fast & Furious 9 or whatever they’re up to now… wow what a garbage movie. They should just stop… shit, they should’ve stopped with the last one.

I have devised a devious solution to the shortcomings of Fast and Furious films. I’ve just never watched them.

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lorcan_nagle, njerry, Sean Robinson, Dave

Christian wrote:

Rocket wrote:

I think they were at the point where they did not care anymore and did whatever they liked. WHICH I ADORED.

Yeah, it’s always great when a show comes to the point where they just don’t give a shit anymore and go with whatever crazy ideas they have. Agents of Shield got to that point, too.

AoS was so much fun. It leaned into the crazy and just embraced it.

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Rocket, lorcan_nagle, njerry

garjones wrote:

I have devised a devious solution to the shortcomings of Fast and Furious films. I’ve just never watched them.

There was nothing else. I mean, I was expecting something silly, but this one was waaaaaaaaaaay beyond that. The writing is bad, the dialogues are fuckin’ attrocious, the “acting” is bad, the “story” is bad, the action sequences are bad and boring and even the VFX is quite bad (for this kind of thing). It’s like everysingle person working on this was phoning it in.

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Todd

Watched the first few episodes of Sweet Tooth. As others have noted, it feels like it’s aimed more at children than the book is, but it’s well made and it’s got heart and it’s fun to watch. I’m watching it with my kid, who is almost fifteen now, and I feel like it’s a bit of a shame that this wasn’t here yet four years ago or so. That would’ve been a really great age to watch this series.

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Sean Robinson, Todd

Yeah mine are 10 and 12 and they loved it.

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Christian, Todd

Yesterday it rained all day so I just watched Netflix. The first thing I watched was Nezha reborn, a Chinese Anime. The art was very impressive. One of the prettiest Animes I have seen(is it still called anime if it is Chinese not Japanese?) The story was good too. It was about a motorcycle courier, who is the reincarnation of a Chinese God, and gets in trouble with a powerful clan run by a Dragon who takes human form. The courier’s interaction with the God is different than most of these type of stories. It is a nice twist. The other characters in the story were fun. The courier’s family and workmates as well as the supernatural characters were fun.

The next movie I watched was a French film How I became a Superhero. The background was that people with superpowers live among normal people. The Lead was sort of non descript and bland. The people who he interacted with made the movie. The conceit of the film is the lead who is a cop who stopped using his powers after a tragedy and the villain who had his powers removed as a child and was driven mad. The villain poses as a crime boss and drug runner. the drugs he runs are made from the blood of powered individuals he has kidnapped.

Rocket wrote:

The conceit of the film is the lead who is a cop who stopped using his powers after a tragedy and the villain who had his powers removed as a child and was driven mad. The villain poses as a crime boss and drug runner. the drugs he runs are made from the blood of powered individuals he has kidnapped.

Sounds like an unlicensed adaptation of Bendis & Oeming’s POWERS series, particularly the lead character.

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Christian

njerry wrote:

Sounds like an unlicensed adaptation of Bendis & Oeming’s POWERS series, particularly the lead character.

It does have a few Bendis elements – like the MGH in his Marvel work as well. Similar to Project Power as well – though that also reminded me of THOSE WHO WALK IN DARKNESS.

I watched Ben Wheatley’s new movie IN THE EARTH. It fits in with his movies like KILL LIST and A FIELD IN ENGLAND. It could even be considered something like a combination of both those movies. Maybe all of his original films take place in the same world – even SIGHTSEERS. I did find myself laughing a bit at not only the amount of injury the main character suffers from simply walking in the woods, but also his reaction to those injuries. I have to admit that even though no one really acts like you’d expect a person to act in these circumstances, they don’t seem unnatural and I did connect with the main two.

It reminds me a bit of ANNIHILATION and another much smaller movie called THEY REMAIN. Also, seems like there are a couple of “the woods are evil” movies with similar premises and themes like GAIA as well. I think GAIA even has an intelligent fungus as its “monster” though nothing is going to beat Matango’s #1 spot in the Monster Mushroom Movie genre.

 

njerry wrote:

Sounds like an unlicensed adaptation of Bendis & Oeming’s POWERS series, particularly the lead character.

The Lead character and his partner barely speak. Do you think the movie writers said it can’t be a Bendis remake, the lead characters don’t talk nonstop.

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Ben, njerry

Finished Mare of Easttown tonight. It’s a good series even if it slightly runs out of steam in the final hour. I’d watch more of it – it feels like there’s more to explore with those characters.

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Andrew, njerry, Sean Robinson

Finished Sweet Tooth and wow, that ended in a dark place. It’s weird how this series is so kids-oriented in many ways and then sometimes does stuff that… would be a challenge to younger kids. Poor lizard boy! And there were some really grown-up laugh out loud moments, like when the horse kills Horrible Neighbour so suddenly or that great “How could you not see me?! I’m so yellow!” line. And on the other hand, the hybrids are way too cute, like they’re really from a children’s book. (Bobby and the way he was used kind of turned me off, because that was just like a fucking Disney movie for six-year-olds.) When it comes to the other hybrids, you could also feel the budget of the show – they kept them off-camera almost all of the time, and when they did show them in the tunnels, it was pretty bad costumes. But Gus and Wendy look amazing, of course.

I reread the first of the comics trades yesterday. Man, comparing this to the TV series, it’s immensely bleak. It’s almost funny if you look at some of the moments there, like how they turned a fucking scary vision of Gus talking to his father who turns more and more into a rotting corpse each panel and keeps saying worse and worse, horribly scary things into this sweet afterlife reunification of father and son.

Both work on their own terms, of course, so I suppose it’s a good example for how the adaptation process can work.

We watched Spider-Man 2 again last night. Still a perfect superhero movie.

I really felt this time around just how much the performances make it – Harris and Molina together give the movie its heart, particularly the scene early on where May is trying to give Pete money and the later scenes where they talk about Ben’s death and the importance of heroes.

All the action is great too, and the Raimi horror touches are perfect. Ock is a great visual and the mix of CGI and practical effects for the arms works great and makes it all feel really real.

Watching it again has got me really excited for the Raimi Strange movie, and has also made me realise what an easy mark I’m going to be when the next MCU Spidey reveals Maguire and Molina in the trailer.

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Sean Robinson, njerry

Myth & Mogul: John DeLorean is a good little three part doc on Netflix. I’ve only ever know the car from the BTTF films, but didn’t actually know the story behind if until now.

Also watched F9…..The best thing about it is it opens with a 90’s universal logo. Other than that it’s just very very silly. And not in a fun way unfortunately.

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Todd

Been watching some of the new Lupin series; I’m up to episode 3. It’s pretty good. The cons and plots of the individual episodes range from clever and well done to silly and Why is he being stupid now?, but the main character/actor is always very entertaining to watch. Also, it’s nice to listen to some French again.

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Ben, lorcan_nagle, Andrew

I’ve been watching The Good Wife from the start. There’s so many people I forgot were on this, who weren’t famous yet a decade ago.

Pedro Pascal is in a bunch of episodes as a standard lawyer with no character to fill out court scenes, Sonequa Martin-Green is basically a background character as an assistant in the office (replacing Gillian Jacobs, who had to leave to do Community after the pilot), and the episode I just watched has Melissa Benoist as Cary’s teenage cousin who seems to want to sleep with him.

I’d forgotten all of them were in it. I’ve been meaning to rewatch the whole series myself for a while. Is it holding up?

Martin Smith wrote:

I’d forgotten all of them were in it. I’ve been meaning to rewatch the whole series myself for a while. Is it holding up?

Yeah, I’m really enjoying it. The legal stuff far more than the family stuff, but I think that was probably true at the time as well.

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Martin Smith

Been watching those Fear Street things. Not quite done with the third one. They’re quite decent slasher movies, and the 1666 one actually has a very engaging story.

Watching the old movie GHOST STORY based on the terrific book by Peter Straub from back in the heyday of horror paperback novels.
It’s a very old fashioned movie even for the time it was made. Except for the casual nudity and sex scenes. I have to admit sex scenes are generally ridiculous in movies no matter when they were made.

in this case the real downfall is the score which is very much like a Hitchcock film and it kinda kills  any build up of dread and terror. Otherwise, it would be a very good classic horror story.

It is strange but there are really not that many effective ghost stories in film. Especially those based on the best stories and books.

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Todd

Watched Fast & Furious 9, or whatever the specific title is. These movies are always about Big Dumb Fun, of course, but they’re really focusing on the Dumb at the expense of the Fun. We’re very much into the late Roger Moore Bond movies now. Compared to The Rock and Jason Statham quipping their way through their spin-off movie, this one really lacks a certain charm. Funnily enough, it’s like comparing John Cena’s wrestling career to that of The Rock – very similar, yet always just that little bit less entertaining. Still, as someone who has spent a lot of time trying to get through the streets of Edinburgh, I can at least appreciate that big chase scene.

Unfortunate circumstances, of course, but I appreciate how they’ve positioned Paul Walker’s character as a man who foregoes the adventure to be a stay-at-home dad instead and that everyone is cool with that.

Ted Lasso – it was a Christmas ep, and yep it made me tear up (the wife too). Just seeing people in a big group all together having a good time. It won’t have the same effect in a few years (I hope!) but during our current lockdown, following a semi-lockdown Christmas last time, it was felt.

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njerry

Watched a few episodes of CHAPELWAITE on Epix. It is based on the Stephen King short story JERUSALEM’S LOT from the NIGHT SHIFT collection. The story is one of King’s Cthulhu Mythos stories, but the show is really just “Salem’s Lot” set in the 1850’s. It’s not bad, but it isn’t terrifically good and there’s nothing really new or innovative or particularly scary about it.

It also uses the tired trope of the main character hallucinating something horrible, but at no time do you think that it’s not a hallucination so the tension isn’t there.

I watched the three Beverley Hills Cop movies. I’d seen the first one before, and don’t love it as much as most people, but it’s very watchable. Murphy’s schtick is just laid on a bit too much for me in it.

The second one has a slightly more toned-down Murphy, and is more of a standard ’80s cop movie. I enjoyed it a lot though; Tony Scott directed a lot of incredibly watchable movies, and this is right up there.

The third movie is awful though, and completely squanders being an action movie mostly set in a theme park. It’s incredibly boring, and what few jokes there are fall completely flat. Almost none of the supporting cast are back, and I don’t blame them. Dreadful film.

I did see Akira on the big screen tonight, which was great. Still holds up, unsurprisingly.

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Andrew, Martin Smith, Todd, lorcan_nagle

I watched Maverick tonight, which I’ve not seen in a long while. Damn this is a great movie (even despite featuring Mel Gibson, who, you have to admit, despite being an asshole, is charismatic as hell).

The plot’s good, the cast’s great (Jodie Foster! James Garner! Alfred Molina! James Coburn! Graham Greene!), it’s funny and gorgeously shot.

I watched it on the blu-ray, which is unfortunately a pretty bare bones release. It also feels more letterboxed than I remember. Supposedly the print in Warner’s archive is damaged and instead of repairing it, they just cropped the bottom off (though I don’t know if that was done through a more severe letterbox).

There’s a fair bit of stuff I didn’t remember or hadn’t noticed before. The music is by Randy Newman, so feels very reminiscent of Toy Story in places. Corey Feldman is one of the bank robbers with Danny Golver. The woman with the stolen wedding dress is a barely recognisable Margot Kidder. Most of the river boat gamblers are actors from old Western series, like the Virginian but also Bob from That 70s Show (though even after seeing that on imdb, I couldn’t spot him). Waylon Jennings and Reba McIntyre are on the riverboat too. I swear I recognise the distinctive voice of the dealer from the final round of the poker tournament, but he’s got only one other IMDB credit.

The thing that’s really impressive about the film though is the way the twist with James Garner’s character holds up to repeat viewings. It’s quite cute on a surface level to have Garner (original star of the Maverick TV series) in the film in a supporting role as a new character. Then revealing him to actually be the original Maverick from the series at the end is the kind of twist that could easily be great in the moment but fall apart  when thought about, a stray bit of fan service. But it’s clearly been deeply woven into the plot. And when you rewatch the film knowing that Coop is Maverick Sr and that both he and Maverick obviously know each other, it adds to those scenes between them rather than detracts. Garner deftly plays a father patiently indulging his son’s bullshit. The apparent immediate disdain between Coop and Maverick is really a well-worn, playful dynamic between the two though there’s definitely a lot of old grudges being exploited through the pretence during the stagecoach scene especially. It’s really a superb bit of film-making all round.

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DavidM, Todd, lorcan_nagle

If I remember correctly, the name “Zane Cooper” is an homage to legendary Western novelist Zane Grey and actor Gary Cooper, who starred in a fair number of Westerns including High Noon.

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lorcan_nagle, Martin Smith

I’ve been meaning to rewatch Maverick for the longest time. I don’t know if I’ve seen it since the cinema and I remember loving it at the time.

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Martin Smith

paul f wrote:

The second one has a slightly more toned-down Murphy, and is more of a standard ’80s cop movie. I enjoyed it a lot though;

I found 2 to be one of the most “let’s just make the same film again’ examples of any sequel. There are much worse films because the talent is good but it is very close to a beat for beat replica.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

paul f wrote:

I watched the three Beverley Hills Cop movies. I’d seen the first one before, and don’t love it as much as most people, but it’s very watchable. Murphy’s schtick is just laid on a bit too much for me in it.

The Rewatachables podcast episode on the first film was really interesting and fun, if you’ve the chance to listen.

Watched Netflix’s Brand New Cherry Flavor over the weekend, having heard very little about it. It’s a slightly silly but very watchable schlocky supernatural horror series set in LA in the 90s that starts off feeling a bit Lynch and ends up feeling more Raimi, with a bit of Cronenberg-style body horror along the way.

It’s fairly short at 8 episodes of 30-40 minutes each and it held my attention even though horror isn’t a favourite genre. The lead actress is very expressive and obviously game for the weirder aspects of the story, and Catherine Keener has some fun in a supporting role.

The ending is left fairly open which makes me wonder if there will be more, despite it being billed as a limited series.

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Martin Smith

[Rocket]

Just started SAS: Red notice (rise of black swan). I would like to pose a question. Who would you pick in a fight: Dutch from Killjoys or Kate Kane from Batwoman? Me I’d go Dutch all the way.

Finished the movie. Ended weakly. Dutch ends up just saying the same line over and again. Umbrella academy guy just gets shafted by either the powers that be within the movie or the writer who decides he needs a big “twist”. Dr Who Perv Mickey would have been a much better mole. Gollum was ok as the fixer but have no clue what happened to him at the end. the showdown between Romance Novel guy and Kate Kane was a big “HUH” . The action was good and there was a perverse pleasure watching the pretty boy RN guy get the utter crap beat out of him so it was not all bad.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Rocket.

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Ben

Dutch, no question.

Last weekend, I finished up Godzilla Singular Point on Netflix.

It was just okay at best. It was way too long and had its head way too far up its own ass. I wasn’t wild with the kaiju redesigns, especially Godzilla’s. They tried to make them look like something from traditional Japanese art but it ended up looking out of place and disconnected. The story really drags and probably would have worked if it had been half as long.

I really can’t recommend it unless you are an absolute Godzilla completist.

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lorcan_nagle

garjones wrote:

I found 2 to be one of the most “let’s just make the same film again’ examples of any sequel. There are much worse films

Yes, like Beverly Hills Cop III.

It’s sort of interesting how so many 80s and 90s movies just fall apart in the third sequel.

Poltergeist. Beverly Hills Cop. Robocop. Alien 3. Batman. Hell, even the Godfather.

Generally speaking, the fist one is a classic, the second one is often a retread (though not with Godfather II as such), and the third one is just a mess.

Sort of makes me glad we didn’t get that third Ghostbusters movie.

Even Return of the Jedi and Last Crusade are the least of their trilogies.

And sometimes you get crap with the second movie like Caddyshack II, Highlander II, and Blues Brothers 2000.

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Todd

Last Crusade? The 3rd Indy movie with Sean Connery in it?
Far better than the 2nd one.

Oh, maybe you meant Last Jedi. You were referencing Star Wars after all.

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Dave

I’m still bummed we never got Gremlins 3: Mo Gizmo Mo Problems.

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DavidM, Todd

Rewatched Superbad on the weekend, on the wife’s suggestion – we’ve both seen it many times before, but had listened to a podcast ep on it a few weeks back – it holds up. Still so funny, and with real heart. McLovin and the cops are hilarious throughout and like the podcast suggested we need a sequel about the two police officers.

Jason wrote:

garjones wrote:

I found 2 to be one of the most “let’s just make the same film again’ examples of any sequel. There are much worse films

Yes, like Beverly Hills Cop III.

It’s sort of interesting how so many 80s and 90s movies just fall apart in the third sequel.

Poltergeist. Beverly Hills Cop. Robocop. Alien 3. Batman. Hell, even the Godfather.

Generally speaking, the fist one is a classic, the second one is often a retread (though not with Godfather II as such), and the third one is just a mess.

Sort of makes me glad we didn’t get that third Ghostbusters movie.

Even Return of the Jedi and Last Crusade are the least of their trilogies.

And sometimes you get crap with the second movie like Caddyshack II, Highlander II, and Blues Brothers 2000.

Have to say I really like Poltergeist 3 and Batman Forever. Hell I’d even give Alien 3 a pass. I think a lot of people jump on the hate train for that film just because Fincher dosent like it.

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Dave

The workprint of Alien 3 is really good, far better than the cinematic edit

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Todd, Dave

Something that popped up on my YouTube recommendations today was the original 1984 Transformers miniseries. It has probably been 30+ years since I last watched it. It was a lot of fun and brought back a lot of good memories. So much of the dialogue came back to me.

Two observations:

– I honestly forgot there was not a single female voice or character in the entire miniseries.

– I saw more on-screen transformations in those three episodes than I did in all 18 episodes of recent Netflix trilogy. I’ll say this, they knew how to sell fucking toys back in the 1980s.

It was a fun nostalgia trip.

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Rocket, JRCarter, Martin Smith, lorcan_nagle, Ben

Todd wrote:

Something that popped up on my YouTube recommendations today was the original 1984 Transformers miniseries. It has probably been 30+ years since I last watched it. It was a lot of fun and brought back a lot of good memories. So much of the dialogue came back to me.

Two observations:

– I honestly forgot there was not a single female voice or character in the entire miniseries.

– I saw more on-screen transformations in those three episodes than I did in all 18 episodes of recent Netflix trilogy. I’ll say this, they knew how to sell fucking toys back in the 1980s.

It was a fun nostalgia trip.

The entirety of series 1 is on the Hasbro Pulse YouTube channel, and I think they’re putting series 2 up now.

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Todd

lorcan_nagle wrote:

The entirety of series 1 is on the Hasbro Pulse YouTube channel, and I think they’re putting series 2 up now.

That was the channel I watched it on. And it’s funny, I have recently been wanting to watch some of the old cartoons. That scratched the itch I’ve had. I may watch more but my current priority is the Evangelion movies. Two down and two to go!

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lorcan_nagle

Can confirm, all of series 2 is up on Hasbro Pulse now.

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Todd

So I watched the last two Evangelion Rebuild movies.

I enjoyed them and really liked this ending over the original one. I liked that even with the all the crazy mecha stuff going on, the conflict was truly resolved on a very human level. I think the third movie did an excellent job of really setting this up.

This was definitely worth the wait.

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lorcan_nagle

Looking back, it is astounding that they went to such extreme lengths to get the older toys out of the way with Transformers The Movie by having so many of the original characters be brutally murdered.

There’s a Paw Patrol movie out now. I can’t fathom the idea that the first act would see Mayor Humdinger maniacally shooting the pups to death just so Ryder can go fetch some new dogs.

Admittedly, the reaction videos would be quite something…

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lorcan_nagle, Uncle Retrospective, Todd

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Can confirm, all of series 2 is up on Hasbro Pulse now.

You’re going to watch “Kremzeek!” first, aren’t you?

Todd wrote:

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Can confirm, all of series 2 is up on Hasbro Pulse now.

You’re going to watch “Kremzeek!” first, aren’t you?

I don’t need to answer your questions!

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Todd

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Todd wrote:

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Can confirm, all of series 2 is up on Hasbro Pulse now.

You’re going to watch “Kremzeek!” first, aren’t you?

I don’t need to answer your questions!

I think you just did.

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lorcan_nagle

It just had its twentieth anniversary, so I’ve been watching the first season of The Amazing Race.

I didn’t start watching until about six years in, and it’s interesting how different the show was at the start. There’s a lot more emphasis on travel logistics and racing than in later years. It was filmed pre-9/11, so there’s a lot of last-minute flight-grabbing, negotiating with travel desks, etc, all of which is usually handled by the production team these days.

There’s also much more of the contestants driving from place-to-place (actual racing), and the tasks they have at each spot are a much smaller part of the episodes, and the tasks are much simpler than in later seasons (one was literally “go up the Eiffel Tower and find the flag we put on the Arc de Triomphe”).

Also, given this was CBS in 2001, I was pleasantly surprised one of the main teams competing was a gay couple (they seem to have spent a lot of time in half the places the show visits, which gives them an advantage).

I had assumed the pandemic would have killed the show for now (they abandoned S33 midway through), but it was reported yesterday that the show is due to be back this season. https://tvline.com/2021/09/09/ncis-los-angeles-season-13-spoilers-callen-anna-eric-christian-olsen/ Maybe a US-only season, like the Canadian version is?

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Martin Smith

So I just saw Kate… funny, it’s the third streaming service female led action flick this year, behind Jolt and Gunpowder Milkshake… the three of them were actually pretty good, albeit pretty similar, which is unfortunate because they came out very closely together, I reckon they will fly under a lot of people’s radar.

But anyways, yeah Kate was pretty much what I expected from the trailers, a combination of John Wick and Crank… still though, again perfectly enjoyable if nothing original.

I kinda wish these type of movies wouldn’t go so under the radar because that’s how you get people thinking that Captain Marvel is first female led action movie… u_u

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Todd

Now, Season 3 of Transformers has been uploaded.

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Todd

JRCarter wrote:

Now, Season 3 of Transformers has been uploaded.

I watched a few of episodes last night:

– Call of the Primitives
– Grimlock’s New Brain
– Money is Everything

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lorcan_nagle, JRCarter

Jon wrote:

But anyways, yeah Kate was pretty much what I expected from the trailers, a combination of John Wick and Crank… still though, again perfectly enjoyable if nothing original.

It’s not that new either — it’s practically it’s own sub-genre and, like action movies in general, all very similar from the Milla Jovovich movies of the 90’s to the Kate Beckinsale movies today. I was surprised Atomic Blonde wasn’t more successful though.

Todd wrote:

JRCarter wrote:

Now, Season 3 of Transformers has been uploaded.

I watched a few of episodes last night:

– Call of the Primitives
– Grimlock’s New Brain
– Money is Everything

I heartily recommend Webworld. The Burden Hardest To Bear is good too.

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lorcan_nagle, JRCarter

I’m clearing through my Netflix queue a bit.

First Dead To Me. Didn’t really do much for me in its first episode and its twist that Linda C’s character is the person who killed Christina Applegate’s husband in a hit and run was the most engaged it had me, simply in rolling my eyes.

Next: The Floor Is Lava. God it’s very… American. I’m surprised the floor has real liquid on it – I thought they’d CGIed it (I think maybe I got it confused with that Community episode). I guess it adds more real peril. How they got away with not giving the contestants knee pads at least is mind-boggling. It really feels like a kids show that’s been miscommissioned.

Martin Smith wrote:

Todd wrote:

JRCarter wrote:

Now, Season 3 of Transformers has been uploaded.

I watched a few of episodes last night:

– Call of the Primitives
– Grimlock’s New Brain
– Money is Everything

I heartily recommend Webworld. The Burden Hardest To Bear is good too.

I almost watched those two last night but I was too tired.

It’s been fun watching them. I haven’t seen the show in over 30 years.

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lorcan_nagle, JRCarter

presumably they’re going to put The Rebirth up next week to complete the English-language series. I kinda hope they do the Japanese ones too, it’d be cool to add Victory while the Star Sabre crowdfund is going on

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Todd

Yeah, hopefully “Season 4” will be going — all three episodes of it. (Someone  already has it up on Youtube, but it’s in poor quality.)

Regarding season three, it’s too bad they uploaded “Dark Awakening” with the revised ending instead of the original one.

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Todd, JRCarter

After the total disaster that was Lupin Part 2 ep 1’s cliffhanger ending – so much so I stopped watching it for a couple of months – upon returning to it episode 2 did one hell of a very unexpected recovery.

After that the next three eps are back on form and it concludes really well.

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lorcan_nagle

Wow, Staged is really living up to its rep – so damn good.

I don’t have netflix or anything like that, but sometimes there are good movies for free on youtube. “Downfall” and “Felidae”, a brilliant animated detective movie about cats, are on there.

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Todd

The main point of the documentary is how crazy the campaign tricks and crimes were back then. You know it hasn’t changed much today.

 

Now, “The Rebirth” has been posted on Hasbro Pulse.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

Oh awesome, Heavenly Creatures is on youtube. My number two favorite of all time.

 

CRIATURAS CELESTIALES || Sub ESPAÑOL. – YouTube

Watched the new He-Man and the Masters of the Universe animated series on Netflix. It’s definitely a kids show, but I though it was quite fun and I really liked the animation style and character design.

And for something completely different I watched Candyman (2021). I thought it had a good creepy atmosphere at times. But at 90 minutes it feels too long and somehow too short at the same time. It kind of ends just as I was getting interested after its quite slow start. I did like just  how much of a direct sequel it is to the original though.

JRCarter wrote:

Now, “The Rebirth” has been posted on Hasbro Pulse.

I watched it last night. It’s still just okay. The animation is still not good. But the appearance and transformation of Fortress Maximus still brings a smile to my face.

Christel and I watched Clint Eastwood’s newest movie Cry Macho on HBO Max. It was just okay. A lot of the acting and writing was not great. Eastwood was 90 when he filmed it (he’s 91 now) and his age really shows. At times it was hard to buy him as the the lead. He does offer some lines toward the end that may be him rethinking his “macho” image and legacy. It was okay but don’t expect anything great.

I also watched Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets. This really is a great film. It has a low key, grounded feel that is enhanced by the actors’ performances. The way the camera follows the characters at times really enhances their perspective. Definitely worth watching.

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Andrew, lorcan_nagle

Todd wrote:

I watched it last night. It’s still just okay. The animation is still not good.

It’s AKOM animation, so that’s a given.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

SQUID GAME on NETFLIX is very good. Korean series can be often cliche and sentimental, but this is on the higher end with a sensative hero confronting life’s cruel absurdity and meaningless suffering in the sort of survival game drama common in a lot of action thriller and science fiction. Though, this is not really sci-fi in any way.

It seems to me like there are increasingly a lot of good Korean shows and movies on Netflix, Prime and Hulu, but that could just be because my wife watches them all on my accounts so that’s what pops up whenever I go to those channels.

 

 

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lorcan_nagle

Anonymous wrote:

SQUID GAME on NETFLIX is very good. Korean series can be often cliche and sentimental, but this is on the higher end with a sensative hero confronting life’s cruel absurdity and meaningless suffering in the sort of survival game drama common in a lot of action thriller and science fiction. Though, this is not really sci-fi in any way.

It seems to me like there are increasingly a lot of good Korean shows and movies on Netflix, Prime and Hulu, but that could just be because my wife watches them all on my accounts so that’s what pops up whenever I go to those channels.

 

 

I haven’t seen a lot of Korean stuff, but Sympathy for mr Vengeance is one of my all-time favorite movies.

Anyone watching Y the Last Man? What’s your thoughts so far?

Jon wrote:

Anyone watching Y the Last Man? What’s your thoughts so far?

It comes out in the UK on Disney+ tomorrow I think, so I’ll give it a look then.

Anonymous wrote:

It seems to me like there are increasingly a lot of good Korean shows and movies on Netflix, Prime and Hulu, but that could just be because my wife watches them all on my accounts so that’s what pops up whenever I go to those channels.

I still haven’t watched much since I got really into Extraordinary You earlier in the year. Or last year. Who knows. I tried The Fiery Priest, but it couldn’t really sustain my interest. Definitely interested in Squid Game, which seems to have a broken a barrier in terms of getting Western attention.

Never Mind the Buzzcocks is back, with Greg Davies hosting, and Daisy May Cooper replacing Phill Jupitus. It still basically feels like the same show, with most of the same rounds as the old show, and a lot of the same jokes.

I was surprised it had been gone since 2014, it doesn’t feel that long at all.

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Martin Smith

I’m surprised it came back without Phil Jupitus really, given he was the sole constant through the original run. And yeah, it really doesn’t feel like seven years since it ended.

The original show peaked with this:

 

 

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garjones, Ian Smith, lorcan_nagle, Dave

Anonymous wrote:

t seems to me like there are increasingly a lot of good Korean shows and movies on Netflix, Prime and Hulu, but that could just be because my wife watches them all on my accounts so that’s what pops up whenever I go to those channels.

It may be regional perhaps but my wife is similarly a fan and there are literally hundreds of Korean shows on Netflix when I open her account. Mostly soapy stuff but a lot of other genres too.

I’m always intrigued by formats. When I was growing up in the UK most drama was fairly short run, 6 episodes normally, while in the US syndication system they had as many as 24 – in the cable and streaming era they have merged a bit to both doing 6-13 episode runs.

In Korea pretty much everything, including soaps, is one fairly long but finite run. Once the story is told, it’s gone.

I was listening to an interview with an actress from Borgen a few years back and she was saying the Scandinavian norm was everything get 2 seasons, if it’s really successful they add a 3rd but that’s it.

Jon wrote:

Anyone watching Y the Last Man? What’s your thoughts so far?

I watched the first 2 episodes. I thought it was pretty well done, but nothing really standout yet for me. There’s already plenty of deviation from the comic in those episodes too, so I’m curious to see where the show goes and if it lasts long enough to tell a complete story.

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Uncle Retrospective

garjones wrote:

I’m always intrigued by formats. When I was growing up in the UK most drama was fairly short run, 6 episodes normally, while in the US syndication system they had as many as 24 – in the cable and streaming era they have merged a bit to both doing 6-13 episode runs.

But weirdly, UK seasons were once longer than the US standard. I’ve just finished watching Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) from 1969/70 – a 26-episode season. Before that I watched The Champions from 1968/9 – a 30 episode season. I’m not sure when or why we moved away from that to short-season format. Blake’s 7 had 13-episode seasons from 78-81. I can’t recall the numbers of anything else from the 70s though.

I’m going to take a guess at it being due to some kind of industrial action.

I wonder if the “one and done” method of Korean TV makes it more conducive to “auteurs” (as much as I dislike that concept) or if they still get as much interference across that one season from executives etc.

DavidM wrote:

garjones wrote:

I’m always intrigued by formats. When I was growing up in the UK most drama was fairly short run, 6 episodes normally, while in the US syndication system they had as many as 24 – in the cable and streaming era they have merged a bit to both doing 6-13 episode runs.

But weirdly, UK seasons were once longer than the US standard. I’ve just finished watching Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) from 1969/70 – a 26-episode season. Before that I watched The Champions from 1968/9 – a 30 episode season. I’m not sure when or why we moved away from that to short-season format. Blake’s 7 had 13-episode seasons from 78-81. I can’t recall the numbers of anything else from the 70s though.

Yeah we do get those shifts and oddities along the way. In the late 1960s there were a lot of co-production from the likes of ATV that tried to appeal to US and UK audiences. The Persuaders being a prime example. It’s actually closer to what we typically see today.

Another oddity that The Muppet Show was a British programme originally. That Sesame Street as a kid taught me to count in Spanish for no good reason.

In the 1980s US TV shows like The A-Team or Dallas were shown on prime time BBC and ITV a lot but by the 90s that pretty much stopped and never really returned.  They are all there somewhere in the schedules across hundred of channels but look at tonight’s schedules and that doesn’t happen.

We’ve mentioned it before here how Superfriends influenced so many people but as someone brought in in a 3 channel era I know nothing about it.

I saw The Many Saints of Newark, the prequel to The Sopranos, which I found fairly underwhelming.

A lot of movies based on TV shows have the problem of feeling like extended episodes of the show; this doesn’t even have that, it just feels like two loosely connected flashback episodes of the show, set several years apart.

The best stuff is in the first half, mostly focused on characters not from the TV show, and set against the backdrop of the 1967 Newark riots. The lead is Dickie Moltisanti, Christopher’s father, and he’s a fairly compelling character, played by the excellent Alessandro Nivola. Even in its stronger parts though, the movie sets up a bunch of pieces that don’t ever get satisfactorily paid off.

The weaker parts are the most prequel-y. We get a lot of Tony and Livia, more because they’re main characters from the TV show than them having much to do with the plot of the movie. If you watched the movie without seeing the show, you’d wonder why we’re spending so much time with this annoying teenager.

The movie also seems to misuse the fact that we know Dickie dies at some point, with a bunch of “is this how he’ll die?” moments throughout, all of which fall flat because we know it’s not the end of the movie yet.

The movie has a framing device of Christopher speaking to us from beyond the grave, which makes some sense as it’s about his father, but he also never knew the man, and half the movie takes place before he was born. Most of his handful of voiceover moments are just him lashing out at Tony for killing him at the end of the series, which is sort of funny.

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njerry, Dave

Watched the first episode of Y: The Last Man. It’s ok but kind of boring – an entire episode of setup basically. I’ll have to give it another episode before I can judge whether it’s for me.

I am surprised there’s so little charisma among the main cast though – with a couple of exceptions, this doesn’t feel like a group of people I want to spend time with.

We’ll see how it goes.

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Todd, njerry

I agree the first episode is particularly slow. I didn’t have any issue with the cast, though. I feel like my issue is more with the expansion of the scope of the show from the comic. I understand why they’re doing it, I think, but shifting the focus away from Yorick and 355 to a bunch of other characters has meant it’s harder to fully connect with anyone (and some I just don’t want to). Yorick actually felt like almost an afterthought in that first episode. The end of the third episode probably piqued my interest the most. But there are elements to the show that I’m still not sold on.

My girlfriend is really enjoying it, though. She’s in the process of reading the comic for the first time so she’s having a good time comparing it to the show. And I’m happy enough to continue with it to see where they take things for now.

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Dave

I’ve now watched all three of the Y: The Last Man episodes that are on Disney+ and ultimately I feel like it’s a bit of a letdown given the concept. It’s quite slow and there’s only one really engaging character who holds your attention – Agent 355, who in fairness is very good.

The rest of the show just feels meandering and uninteresting, and doesn’t capitalise on what feels like a lot of potential for drama for a series like this.

My wife put it an interesting way and said that it feels like watching a historical recreation of events that never happened, where they somehow feel beholden to telling the story a certain way rather than adding more drama and intrigue where there’s the opportunity to do so.

It’s how I feel about it too – not terrible, but pretty boring and plodding when it should be a lot more exciting and dramatic, especially in these early stages.

Also, there are some technical aspects that are really off – out-of-focus shots especially – which is disorienting sometimes. One technical aspect that is good though is Ampersand: impressively realised for a TV show budget.

 

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Rocket

[Rocket]

Dave wrote:

there’s only one really engaging character who holds your attention – Agent 355, who in fairness is very good.

i watched the first ep and I thought she was very good but it seems that she is it for good things to say about the show.   O Well. Plenty of other shows to watch. I still worry though when a show based on a well known book fails because i don’t want negative attempts to pile up over a tipping point so new attempts aren’t made.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Rocket.

Anonymous wrote:

SQUID GAME on NETFLIX is very good. Korean series can be often cliche and sentimental, but this is on the higher end with a sensative hero confronting life’s cruel absurdity and meaningless suffering in the sort of survival game drama common in a lot of action thriller and science fiction. Though, this is not really sci-fi in any way.

It seems to me like there are increasingly a lot of good Korean shows and movies on Netflix, Prime and Hulu, but that could just be because my wife watches them all on my accounts so that’s what pops up whenever I go to those channels.

 

 

Finished this last night and absolutely loved it. I’m rarely shocked by anything these days, but the casual executions were genuinely quite disturbing to watch.

Yesterday I tried two new shows.

On The Verge, the Julie Delpy Netflix series, had been recommended to me by a friend. And it’s going to be a difficult conversation when I next see them, as I thought it was dire: smug, boring unfunny, middle-class toss. Four fortysomething women navigating their lives and relationships is something that on paper could be interesting, but this was just so nothingy and up its own arse. It was like Sex and the City but without the sex, the likeable characters, the jokes or the story. Or the city.

But then I watched the first episode of Only Murders In The Building and thought it was absolutely great. I already had a lot of affection for Steve Martin and Martin Short so I wanted to like it, but even then I was impressed by the fact that it was well-written, tight, had a good concept and immediately engaging characters. And Martin and Short were nicely restrained and if anything underplayed their parts a bit. Already there are depths being teased out of the characters and the mystery at the centre of the story is a decent one so far. Looking forward to more of this.

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Ben, Andrew, njerry

Watched a bunch more of Only Murders In The Building. Still really enjoying it – they make it look so easy to create these likeable-but-flawed lead characters, and the mystery takes some fun turns.

It’s gentle and a bit silly but it’s proper Sunday-evening comfort TV. Albeit with some quality swearing from Steve Martin.

Going to have to slow down with it soon though as I’m almost caught up with all the episodes that Disney+ has and there are still a few weekly instalments to go.

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Ben, Andrew

MIDNIGHT MASS on NetFlix starts off slow. Episode 3 is the real turning point though.

It’s pretty gripping almost all the way to the end, but like a lot of horror movies and shows in general, it does have the inclination to just drag out the ending. The show ends about 15 minutes later than the story actually ends, and the last episode is filled with a lot of plot development that only happens because characters are stupid.

It seems very influenced by certain specific Stephen King novels and stories, but keeps your attention even though it is a bit frustrating that characters tend to be way behind the audience and that the show really avoids anyone simply saying the most obvious single sentence to explain everything.

We watched Free Guy on Disney+. It’s a fun movie that feels like a mashup of the Truman Show, Groundhog Day, The Matrix and Westworld. Some decent ideas in there and some great effects sequences.

The usual complaint about it being too long though – the kids got a bit restless in places and it could have been tightened up easily by 15-20 minutes at least without losing much. A film like this doesn’t really need to be two hours long.

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Todd, Ben

I watched The Day Reagan Was Shot this evening. It’s on Sky Cinema, but I’m fairly sure it’s a TV movie rather than a film and from an era (2001) when that was a big distinction. It’s a fairly frustrating film because it had the potential to be so much better.

The situation around Hinckley’s shooting of Reagan and the White House’s muddled response is a farce of epic proportions. All the elements are there to make an excellent black comedy out of it. Unfortunately, this doesn’t manage it. The direction seems torn between committing to that black comic farce and trying to be a serious docu-drama, so it never achieves either satisfactorily.

It really does look cheap and it’s hard to credit that it’s from two years after the West Wing started, because it feels like it’s from an entirely different generation of Tv at times. It definitely makes you appreciate how well scripted and directed the West Wing was. It’s especially janky when it’s crowbarring in lines they’ve been told were actually said (like one of the surgeons assuring Reagan “we’re all Republicans today” which just falls flat). This is like the Gobots to the West Wing’s Transformers.

I would love to see Armando Iannucci tackle this same material in the style of Death of Stalin.

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Martin Smith wrote:

I watched The Day Reagan Was Shot this evening. It’s on Sky Cinema, but I’m fairly sure it’s a TV movie rather than a film and from an era (2001) when that was a big distinction. It’s a fairly frustrating film because it had the potential to be so much better. The situation around Hinckley’s shooting of Reagan and the White House’s muddled response is a farce of epic proportions. All the elements are there to make an excellent black comedy out of it. Unfortunately, this doesn’t manage it. The direction seems torn between committing to that black comic farce and trying to be a serious docu-drama, so it never achieves either satisfactorily. It really does look cheap and it’s hard to credit that it’s from two years after the West Wing started, because it feels like it’s from an entirely different generation of Tv at times. It definitely makes you appreciate how well scripted and directed the West Wing was. It’s especially janky when it’s crowbarring in lines they’ve been told were actually said (like one of the surgeons assuring Reagan “we’re all Republicans today” which just falls flat). This is like the Gobots to the West Wing’s Transformers. I would love to see Armando Iannucci tackle this same material in the style of Death of Stalin.

Yes, I’d much prefer he stick with that sort of material. Though DEATH OF STALIN received a lot of criticism from the Russian government but that was like the absurdity of the movie really being imitated in modern politics.

TOO BIG TO FAIL about the housing collapse is similar in that they’d have a scene where the various heads of the Treasury, SEC and the multiple other Banking and Real Estate committees would all see some terrible financial disaster coming, then someone would offer a radical solution and they would all say “we absolutely, positively will not take that course of action because it violates the principles of the free market.” Then they would try every other possibility until the terrible disaster actually happens, and then they take the action that they absolutely refused to take before it happened because that’s the only thing left (and the first thing they should have done).

Then it happens again! And again! And again! All the way up to the big bail out, the same scene is repeated over and over… and these are the “heroes” of the financial crisis?

It was entirely comical and entirely unintentionally so. It reminded me of what Churchill supposedly once said about the United States. “The Americans always do the right thing,” he said. “After they try everything else first.”

It also reminded me of the Enron documentary “The Smartest Guys in the Room.” One thing about these “smartest guys” in the room is that they tend to surround themselves with idiots so it’s not really that much of an appellation except when used ironically.

Watching Fargo Season 1, 7-8 years later and it is far sharper now than it was then.  Watching it in 2015 was excellent, but with the changes since then, it hits a lot harder now.

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Sean Robinson, Todd

So last night I re-watched 3 movies that are 90 minutes long each.
Gravity (2013), Dredd (2012), and Green Room (2015).

Gravity held up on my second watch, and it’s been long enough in between viewings.
Probably need another 8 years before I see it again. Not a diss, just saying.
I did enjoy it.

This was my 4th or 5th time watching Dredd.
Still great, and a crying shame we aren’t 4 movies deep into a franchise that has no end in sight.
Bastards! Especially when this is so much worthier than some of the crap thrown at us.

My 4th time watching Green Room, and still very much enjoyed it, but on a 4th viewing I know what’s coming and can never get that feeling I had the first time. Still a great movie.

There was a face in Green Room that I had to stop and look for on my phone.
Macon Blair, who was the main guy in Blue Ruin (2013) that a friend gave me last X-mas and I watched earlier this year.
Good movie! The quote on the front is “It’s a brilliant, slow-burning American revenge thriller” and the quote on the back is “A film of almost unbearable tension” and that says it better than I could.
Another 90 minute very re-watchable movie.

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DavidM

Currently watching Mike Flanagan’s new miniseries MIDNIGHT MASS on Netflix. I really enjoyed his two previous horror projects HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE and HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR, and I’m loving this new one even more. Flanagan smartly explores the characters very deeply through dialogue and actions and superb acting by the cast. Each episode is packed with numerous character threads and mood, but never feels too overwhelming. And, refreshingly, the lighting allows you to see what’s happening even during night scenes (too many shows we’ve watched recently are just TOO dark and murky). The series seems to have been overlooked in favor of SQUID GAME (which debuted on Netflix a week earlier than MIDNIGHT MASS), but I strongly recommend watching this one now!

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Dave

My wife watched Midnight Mass over the weekend and really enjoyed it. From what I saw it looked pretty decent.

I just watched the first episode of Guilt, a dark comedy drama from a couple of years ago about two brothers who try to get away with a drunken hit-and-run where they kill a man, but their cover-up starts to spiral out of control. Mark Bonnar is one of the leads and I think he’s pretty great. Lots of story packed into this first episode alone so I hope they can maintain the standard across all four episodes.

I caught up with the first episode of the new season of SNL last night. The end of the previous series hinted that it might be the end of the road for a lot of the long term regulars – Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Cecily Strong, Pete Davidson, even Kenan. So it was a bit surprising to watch this episode and see that the only people who have left are featured player Lauren Holt (who never really got a fair shake and was basically just a stand-in for Aidy Bryant in her one season) and Beck Bennett. Bennett leaving is a shock because he was pretty much the most dependable person in the cast last season. He was nigh-on a modern Phil Hartman in being able to hold sketches together and play straight man roles in an interesting way.

It’s also a bit surprising because Strong, Bryant and Kenan all have sitcoms going on the side, which used to get you booted out the door (quite fairly – SNL is a show to make a career on, not sustain one, generally). I wonder if they’re all sticking around just to keep a deep roster in case COVID takes out swathes of the cast?

There’s three new featured players, one of whom (Aristotle Athari) got to do next to nothing in this episode, which is pretty standard for a featured player. One (Sarah Sherman) was, I think, in the last sketch as one of the main characters but I’m not sure because she looks so much like Melissa Villasenor (in fact she looks like Tina Fey doing an impression of Melissa Villasenor) that as soon as either of them is wearing a wig, I can’t really tell which it is. And then the third newbie, James Austin Johnson, has taken over playing Biden, which I think is a first for a featured player. It’s unusual enough to have the President played by a cast member these days (Biden was previously played by Jim Carrey, Trump was played by Alec Baldwin of course) but a featured player? Anchoring the cold open on their first show? That’s pretty impressive.

Speaking of featured players, Bowen Yang’s been promoted to regular cast now, which makes sense given he was nominated for an Emmy. I was a bit dismayed to see Andrew Dismukes kept on. There’s just something about him that’s not right. It’s as though he’s trying to do an air of punkish disaffection, like he doesn’t care about anything “oh I’m on TV, big whoop”. But it just comes across as kinda petulant and spoilt and like he’s definitely watched something be on fire for just too long to be normal before moving to put it out.

Martin Smith wrote:

Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Cecily Strong, Pete Davidson

I thought I read something to the effect that they may have have a reduced presence this season.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some kind of deal was made where they wouldn’t be used regularly in exchange for not all of them leaving at once and gutting the show. This may be a transition season where they build up other performers to take over where the others leave.

I think Kenyan has said he doesn’t plan to leave anytime soon.

Martin Smith wrote:

And then the third newbie, James Austin Johnson, has taken over playing Biden, which I think is a first for a featured player. It’s unusual enough to have the President played by a cast member these days (Biden was previously played by Jim Carrey, Trump was played by Alec Baldwin of course) but a featured player? Anchoring the cold open on their first show? That’s pretty impressive.

He seemed to have made his name on Twitter via a spot-on vocal impression of Trump last year.

Todd wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Cecily Strong, Pete Davidson

I thought I read something to the effect that they may have have a reduced presence this season.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some kind of deal was made where they wouldn’t be used regularly in exchange for not all of them leaving at once and gutting the show. This may be a transition season where they build up other performers to take over where the others leave.

I think Kenyan has said he doesn’t plan to leave anytime soon.

Yeah, that could be the case. I don’t think McKinnon was even in this week’s episode.

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Todd

njerry wrote:

Currently watching Mike Flanagan’s new miniseries MIDNIGHT MASS on Netflix. I really enjoyed his two previous horror projects HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE and HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR, and I’m loving this new one even more. Flanagan smartly explores the characters very deeply through dialogue and actions and superb acting by the cast. Each episode is packed with numerous character threads and mood, but never feels too overwhelming. And, refreshingly, the lighting allows you to see what’s happening even during night scenes (too many shows we’ve watched recently are just TOO dark and murky). The series seems to have been overlooked in favor of SQUID GAME (which debuted on Netflix a week earlier than MIDNIGHT MASS), but I strongly recommend watching this one now!

I thought the show was generally solid. It’s slow but kept me interested, especially when it reveals what type of show it is around episode 3. And the long takes with characters spouting off lengthy monologues was interesting to see at first. But towards the end, mainly when the cop starts giving his origin story, and a death scene in the finale. It did feel like it was disappearing up its own arse a little bit too much.

It’s still a very good piece of tv, but for me Hill House feels like it’ll be pretty hard for Flanagan to top. But I really hope he does.