Watch, Watched, Watching: The San Diego Sneak Preview Version

[HexMachina]

Started 3% on Netflix (it's Portuguese I believe, so subtitles for me). First episode was interesting, will be continuing this one I think  

 

eta: my mistake, Wikipedia tells me it is Brazilian. Whatever, it's really grabbed my attention. Seems like the kind of show that would appeal to a lot of people on this board, so get watching folks

[Veltigar]

First I saw the latest episode of My mother and other strangers on BBC1. I don't know why I'm still watching this to be honest. On paper it sounds like the kind of series that no one can do better than the BBC, but it's bland to the extreme and totally bereft of any charm whatsoever. I wouldn't recommend it.

I also finished Paolo Sorentino's The Young Pope. Let me tell you folks, anyone who isn't watching this is doing themselves a great disservice. I'd say this first season has got to be one of the strongest seasons of television I ever had the pleasure to watch. It's visually exciting, stars great thespians and is very profound. It's both an intellectual and emotionial delight of the highest order. 

[SkynJay]

After finishing The Wire I am not sure what is going to stand up to it.  Sons of Anarchy is what I went for.  Fun show, but at times has felt like a live cartoon this season.  Most the way through season one though and have mostly enjoyed it so I think it will keep.

[RedEyedGhost]

3 hours ago, Leap said:

Watched The Nice Guys, which was awesome. I've wanted to see this since it came out, and today it was in the 99p rental section at Amazon Video/Black Friday deals. Anyway, I really enjoyed it. Gosling and Crowe were great, but so was the kid. It was consistently funny, with some pretty strong action too. Kind of disappointed Keith David + Partner didn't have a bigger role, though. 

That was my biggest movie disappointment this year.  I thought I would love it, and found it just okay.  Maybe I need to watch it again.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

7 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

That was my biggest movie disappointment this year.  I thought I would love it, and found it just okay.  Maybe I need to watch it again.

Possibly one of my favourite movies this year. I thought it managed to be a bit off the wall, but at the same time keep me hooked on the mystery in a way that movies haven't managed to do to me since the 90's!

[Kindly Old Man]

I am enjoying this Dirk Gently series. Maybe Landis is better at TV than movies.

[Week]

21 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Started 3% on Netflix (it's Portuguese I believe, so subtitles for me). First episode was interesting, will be continuing this one I think  

 

eta: my mistake, Wikipedia tells me it is Brazilian. Whatever, it's really grabbed my attention. Seems like the kind of show that would appeal to a lot of people on this board, so get watching folks

I think I posted in the 'international watching thread' - watched this over the last weekend and really enjoyed it. Characters are well put together and the overall conceit is entertaining. Definitely recommend.

[C Rutherford]

5 hours ago, Kindly Old Man said:

I am enjoying this Dirk Gently series. Maybe Landis is better at TV than movies.

 

This has been a stand out for me.  It has a simplicity in set and even tone that at times reminds me of friends film school projects at university.  But in a really good way.  And I'm finding myself fully engaged to find out what happens as well as finding it quite funny at times.  The right times.

 

I'm settling into the Medici series.  Its not great.  By a considerable amount.  Dustin Hoffman is giving some weird acting and either delivers his lines like he is reading them for the first time or has this sing song delivery that is a mix of Yoda and Grover and is all muppet.  The filming special effects of Florence is wonderful even if it seems to really bear no resemblance to the city that I lived in for three years.  The Arno seems to bot exist whenever they do a scene from the top of the Duomo. 

The casting is a bit odd too.  No matter of makeup can make Cosimo or Contessina look anything but a year or two older than their son or daughter-in-law.  I'm not sure why they didn't go for a couple of actors that actually look a bit more fresh faced to play the younger generation.

The writing is a bit cheesy and as usual the writers seem to think they can plot with more machination and intrigue than actual history.  I hate that since this is a time that is so rife with what would be the fertile fields that would spring forth Machiavelli a few generations later as well as the Pazzi plot and of course the last Visconit marrying his daughter to Sforza. 

Spoiler

I think it didn't help that I found the entire kickoff with Cosimo and his tender little feels for the artist model being his lost love and his emo angst over having to giving up being an artist and being a banker instead -- it feels incredibly trite and way too anachronistic -- there is no way he would have grown up thinking he had the choice or even really wanted it.

Still, it does have some entertainment value and at least is not as terrible as Versailles was.

[HexMachina]

3 hours ago, Week said:

I think I posted in the 'international watching thread' - watched this over the last weekend and really enjoyed it. Characters are well put together and the overall conceit is entertaining. Definitely recommend.

I particularly like Joana's character as she is very complex in hiw calculating, cold and pragmatic she is while at the same time making me find her very compelling.

Without spoiling stuff does it seem like there will be a second season? I know its not a long first season and not sure they can do justice to the characters and premise in that time

[Week]

5 minutes ago, HelenaExMachina said:

I particularly like Joana's character as she is very complex in hiw calculating, cold and pragmatic she is while at the same time making me find her very compelling.

Without spoiling stuff does it seem like there will be a second season? I know its not a long first season and not sure they can do justice to the characters and premise in that time

Each character has some really interesting qualities - Joana was a favorite of my wife and mine too.

Yes, it is reasonably set up for future seasons. Without spoiling, the show does a nice job in each episode of a character background exposition - so I would say the show is more successful in fleshing out the characters instead of the premise. That comes off as an intentional choice, though, to leave further story for subsequent seasons.

[Castel]

Saw Neon Demon..it was eh. Maybe I just don't get Winding Refn but he never seems to captivate me as he seems to have some critics and viewers since Drive.

His movies are pretty and he's a talented director but I find myself unmoved with that, at this point. 

[SpaceChampion]

15 hours ago, Kindly Old Man said:

I am enjoying this Dirk Gently series. Maybe Landis is better at TV than movies.

Loving it.  Also loving People of Earth.

[Isis]

4 hours ago, Castel said:

Saw Neon Demon..it was eh. Maybe I just don't get Winding Refn but he never seems to captivate me as he seems to have some critics and viewers since Drive.

His movies are pretty and he's a talented director but I find myself unmoved with that, at this point. 

Did you see it at the cinema? I really feel that his films work better on the big screen as they are a kind of all encompassing sensory experience.

Watched a couple of cuisine-ish docs this weekend. For Grace, which is about a chef who was opening his own restaurant in Chicago after having worked at Alinea. Initially I thought it was quite a poorly thought out/structured documentary as I tend to get annoyed when we are expected to have a strong emotional connection to a person we have only seen on the screen for five minutes and don't really know anything about. However, there is plenty of material there and it all came out pretty well in the end. Definitely more of a personal story than your typical Chef's Table type doc. Good stuff though.

Also saw The Birth of Sake, which was fascinating stuff - trying to join the dots and make the connections between brewing sake and brewing beer. If you're into brewing and/or traditional methods of creating things then you might enjoy it.

 

[SpaceChampion]

I'm shocked how good Frontier is.  Didn't expect that from the Discovery Channel Canada show.  Apparently it is also Netflix co-produced, so I suppose that makes sense.  The theme song/credits is not the only thing that reminds me of The Last Kingdom.

Zoe Boyle as Grace Emberly

It's a great role for Jason Momoa too.

On the 4th episode.  Two more to go for the season, and it's already been renewed a month ago for a season 2.

Hits Netflix (except in Canada) January 20th.

 

[matt b]

On 11/23/2016 at 10:22 AM, matt b said:

Just watched the first episode of Soundbreaking, a docu-series about recorded music, which airs on PBS in the U.S., not sure if it's available elsewhere or not. Just outstanding. From Sam Phillips to George Martin, to Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, and they didn't even forget about Dre. I think the finale airs tonight, I'm looking forward to diving into the rest of the series.

Don't mean to quote myself, but I just finished this show and I cannot reiterate enough how truly amazing it is. If you enjoy music at all you owe it to yourself to check this show out. So often these shows fall back on the '60s and '70s and resist the urge to move forward, this one did not. Sure they talk about The Beatles and The Stones, but they also talk about Devo and Annie Lennox and the Wu Tang Clan and everything else. Over the course of the series sampling gets as much, and probably more, attention than the guitar does. Just a phenomenal and truly insightful look into what recorded music was and is.

[Leofric]

5 hours ago, matt b said:

Don't mean to quote myself, but I just finished this show and I cannot reiterate enough how truly amazing it is. If you enjoy music at all you owe it to yourself to check this show out. So often these shows fall back on the '60s and '70s and resist the urge to move forward, this one did not. Sure they talk about The Beatles and The Stones, but they also talk about Devo and Annie Lennox and the Wu Tang Clan and everything else. Over the course of the series sampling gets as much, and probably more, attention than the guitar does. Just a phenomenal and truly insightful look into what recorded music was and is.

I've only seen one episode, the one on the history of recorded music formats and how people buy music, going through singles, to albums, to cassettes, to CDs to MP3 and live streaming.   Really enjoyed it.

[Zorral]

6 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

I'm shocked how good Frontier is.  Didn't expect that from the Discovery Channel Canada show.  Apparently it is also Netflix co-produced, so I suppose that makes sense.  The theme song/credits is not the only thing that reminds me of The Last Kingdom.

Zoe Boyle as Grace Emberly

It's a great role for Jason Momoa too.

On the 4th episode.  Two more to go for the season, and it's already been renewed a month ago for a season 2.

Hits Netflix (except in Canada) January 20th.

 

I read some histories of the North American fur trade this year -- which of course is quite depressing reading in a lot of ways, but certainly foundational in the history the U.S. and Canada from the earliest colonial eras through the age of railroads and plutocrats.  I'll surely check it out when it's on netflix.

 

 

[SpaceChampion]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

I read some histories of the North American fur trade this year -- which of course is quite depressing reading in a lot of ways, but certainly foundational in the history the U.S. and Canada from the earliest colonial eras through the age of railroads and plutocrats.  I'll surely check it out when it's on netflix.

Get a taste of the intro theme here:

 

[Isis]

Saw the Frank Darabont version of The Mist (the Stephen King story) at the weekend. Had really bad deja vu throughout out. Felt convinced that I had either seen that exact version or a different version quite recently. Is there even a different version? Is that the only version? I am so confused...

According to imdb there has only been one version so I must have watched it twice. It's an ok film, pretty grimdark (it has a couple of quite nice moments with creature effects*). But I'm just a bit narked that I wasted my time watching it twice.

*It also has one of the few screaming performances in film which even begins to approach Newt in Aliens

[Zorral]

14 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

Get a taste of the intro theme here:

 

That was, well, -- cheesy. A cheap mimic of some the intros of our favorite series of the last few years. Surely it's no accident that the intro is made of toy soldiers.  

Unless the execution is different?

I was hoping for a narrative arc out of the Ibervilles and 17th century French Canada,(same era as Dumas's Trois Mousquetaires) in which they founded New Orleans.  They were fascinating figures and lived such adventurous lives.  They were also smart, and got rich too.