RhaenysBee

I’m watching Bones (still), and I don’t understand why 

I also watched The Help on Sunday. It was heartwarmingly lovable. It was slightly oddly paced and the tension didn’t always work out as they intended, some character stories were lacking, but the (main cast) acting was superb  and the effort for nuance was there. Octavia Spencer herself is enough reason to watch this movie. She did have more opportunity to showcase her full acting prowess in the mini series about CJ Walker’s life, but she brought her usual warmth and force of nature to this movie as well. It wasn’t anything mind blowing, but it’s a sweet movie for a chill weekend. I wouldn’t rewatch it, but I do recommend it above mentioned occasions. In fact,  I might rewatch it with my mum, just because I know she would enjoy this movie for its atmosphere and being an Octavia Spencer fan.

I’m in, whichever the majority vote picks. Thanks for thinking of me!  

Well look at that… this thread is finally finished??? Cannot be.  

as for a new one, I always thought this would be the last. But hey maybe the next one will break the record again and take 5 years to off  nice to see you around, Sniffer! 

For two days it’s been 18C max. 
[Insert tears of joy] 

Turns out I didn’t even have 2.5 half episodes left, I had only the 0.5 to go. I suppose all seasons have been 8 episodes and I should have remembered that, but why the fck would you cut it off after 5 and release 3 separately? Why not halve it? 

Anyway. It had potential, but ended up going off the rails and was an eventual train wreck. Referring back to the previous point of discussion, I did have to Google at least three things the show should have made clear to make sense of what turned out to be the final episode. 

there was a lot I didn’t like and a few things that did work beautifully, so let’s start with those. 
 

And onto the myriad of problems. 
 

23 hours ago, williamjm said:

I think to schoolchildren all teachers are automatically classified as 'old' regardless of whether they're in their mid-20s or coming up to retirement.

I actually remember having “young teachers” who were great favorites with the kids because they were “young”, I think these were the 20 somethings, and early 30something men, anybody who had kids themselves counted as “old”  

On 8/5/2023 at 11:43 AM, dog-days said:

The monsoon problem was fixed. The hot water went off again a couple of days ago, with the lettings agency muttering about a new boiler. Not sure when/if that'll happen. The current one is ancient with the flue conveniently close to my bedroom window. Have applied for a new job, and will keep on applying for jobs, so I hope I won't be living here much longer. 

Primary/elementary school teachers tend to be very nice people. I'm the offspring of two of them. 

Not sure if I'd recognise the people I went to primary or secondary school with these days – it's been so long. 

That sounds like an improvement, fingers crossed for a new boiler. Household troubles that are out of your control are such a pain. I still cringe to remember the gas cutoff in the house from last autumn *shudders*. 
 

good for you, they must be amazing people! I have a special warm place in my heart for every teach I ever had. Even the ones I didn’t like as a kid. 

On 7/22/2023 at 8:33 PM, dog-days said:

It's been quiet here for almost a month since a problematic housemate left, having been served with a two-week eviction notice after smashing a neighbour's window with a hammer. 

Now water is pouring through the kitchen ceiling after someone had a shower in the new bathroom that was finally installed at the start of June. This happened a couple of hours after the hot water was fixed; it had been off for the last five days. As a result, I am an expert in sponge baths, and have another skill to add to my LinkedIn profile. 

I'm not really bothered about the ceiling...just grateful hammers don't seem to have been involved again. 

Has this water situation improved at all since?  

well well, would you know that going to the grocery store in your hometown at around 9am on a Saturday means running into every second elementary school teacher you had? I’ve got to say, these ladies are looking amazing. I want to be them when I’m…. Well I have no idea how old they are. I suppose at the tender age of 7-10 I didn’t really have a sense of what “old” meant because I remember them as being old when they taught me, but boy 20+ years later they are a little smaller, little grayer but pretty much the same? Really sweet people.
 

During  this nostalgia week here I also saw at the grocery store: my old hair dresser’s mother and daughter who had the daughter’s baby with them, the lady who used to be the school receptionist and always smoked in her cubicle and later became a postwoman, the lady who used to run the library where I read nearly every YA and children’s book from the selection and donated all my YA and children’s books after the covid clean out. And one of the cashiers is the lady whose mom used to do housework for us when my mom had been ill, and whose daughter I used to take the bus to grammar school with. Oh and I walked past a woman in front of the store, whose sister used to be in my class and whose dad used to be the school janitor. Life is weird and beautiful. 

14 minutes ago, Zorral said:

There is nothing about this show that isn't . . . baffling . . . 

Is it sad that a show feels the need to explain what happened in the show, and seems to expect the viewers are going to be thrilled they are telling us what we didn't get?

EXPLAINER
‘The Witcher’ Season 3 Ending Explainer: What Happens to Geralt?
Who ended the season in grave danger?
Who Is Falka? Freya Allan Explains Ciri’s ‘The Witcher’ Journey
Who Is Emhyr? Explaining the Mysterious Emperor in ‘The Witcher’
Etc.

https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/witcher-season-3-ending-explainer?

 

I mean the show is so bad I do need the explanation, I just stand no chance understanding their plot because they spend all the screen time on pretentious monologues instead of building a story…

they did the same with game of thrones in the later seasons when the writing got to such lows and the scenes were so dark we literally couldn’t follow events… I don’t know, twenty years ago nobody needed aftershow episodes and explainopedia because watching an episode was enough to get it… in series with a tenth of the budget the Witcher had… 

but what am I moaning about I have 2.5 episodes left, so the benefit of doubt is still kicking. 

I finished Nightshade and it was quite well done. I still love this series and Horowitz certainly delivered something adult in this book that the previous installments lacked. It was open ended, so I’m hoping for more. Or even a segue to an adult Alex novel because the environment was established for it. Very clever work. I do recommend the entire series to any preteen, early teen who enjoys action/thriller/crime genres. Also the Diamond Brothers series which I also read as a preteen and absolutely loved, because they are so funny. 

Dylan Sprouse’s an actor in the US, I don’t know what he was in, his twin brother Cole was in something popular I didn’t watch. Barbara is a model and quite loved in home country, because we really appreciate that she appreciates her origins.  

Also, Dylan Sprouse and Barbara Palvin got married in Hungary, which makes me oddly happy and proud of them.

I didn’t catch a name, but he ran across the street at relatively high speed, so maybe? 

I saw a marten on the way home. I mean I know we have rats and bats but apparently there’s a marten infestation as well. Some pest control in this city? Anybody? Elections are coming up and all… 

Rain rain rain. On the upside, I will take the 22C any day over 32C. On the downside, this was the one day I had plans to have a lakeside beach day. Oh well. 

11 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Well I think the message is that people are not really very interested in these political talking points. Studios hid that from all the marketing and I doubt most people had any idea what the movie really was before going on.

Talking to people who saw it already i think the poltics washed over them and they barely thought about it, they were there for the fun stuff 

Yep, that’s why most people don’t understand why they keep pushing it, people watch movies for entertainment and the news/documentaries/etc for politics.  Oh the marketing is the worst kind of clickbait  Not even close to the actual product. 

6 hours ago, Heartofice said:

knew that conservatives are frothing at the mouth at the politics of this movie, but I've also seen some commentary that suggests they are missing the point and that the movie is in fact far cleverer than the surface level appears. It's hard to say for sure, so much of the messaging is incredibly straightforward and on the nose that there can be no doubt what it wants to say, but as a whole there are so many bits and pieces in there that seem confused and don't gel. So I can't tell whether there is a broader, clever message in there, or there was just a fuckup in the writing and the message is all messed up.

this is an interesting one because lately we (well really just the media) like to hang on to this misguided and absurd notion that the reception of a movie is entirely dependent on political alignment. No, it’s not, let’s not underestimate the intelligence of the audience like that. I’m sure there’s a correlation because movies are more and more compulsively political. But sadly for the studios, it’s far from that simple. If you fail to build a clear and congruent narrative to get across your clear and congruent message in an adequately subtle and intelligent manner like Barbie failed to do so, your movie is lacking and people will notice it and that has nothing to do with anybody’s political alignment. 

2 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Wash your Palette with Oppenheimer 

I considered watching Oppenheimer last weekend until I saw it was 3 hours long. Plus it’s new, no telling if I like it, so no, the palette cleaning will happen with… and I want to be fair to Barbie and stay on theme, so Legally Blond or Uptown Girls. 

Oh when I talked with my mom about the movie we moaned about one thing I wanted to mention. 
 

1 hour ago, Veltigar said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Since Ryan Gosling as Ken stole every scene he was in, does that mean that this film ends up promoting the Patriarchy? 

 

1 hour ago, Relic said:

Did you wear pink? 

I did  well, some anyway, with white and blue. Barbie colors, nails, makeup. 
 

Turns out my mum saw it on the same day, we talked a sold half hour about all the ways the movie failed to work. 

I went to see Barbie. I guess I got caught up in the PR way too much, because I went in with positive expectations and looking forward to a fun chick flick. I so desperately wanted to love this movie. I can genuinely tell you, I held out hope up until the very end. When they addressed how things shouldn’t be exactly as they were about 5 minutes before the end, I watched with my fingers crossed and heart rate elevated and waited for the movie to finally be the bigger “person” and fix itself. And it didn’t. I left the theater blue and disappointed. 

Trying to pick my next audible listen. Anybody read or listened to The Earth Transformed by Peter Frankopan? I’ve seen mixed reviews. I loved Silk Roads and I have high expectations. 

Well this is the first time I hear that I should feel shit about reading books.  

I read printed books and listen to audiobooks too. Both serve different purposes and provide different experiences. Both are enriching and beautiful in their own way. I would encourage everybody to do both to enjoy the different benefits.

Footnote: I think there’s nothing wrong with bringing up provocative topics and exchanging opposing ideas in a respectful and matter of fact way. It broadens one’s horizon, makes one think and reconsider their view and maybe find at least one new idea one hasn’t yet thought about. And I also think reading isn’t and shouldn’t be luxury. 

Eventually I struggled through the first installment of season 3. With a couple of worthwhile highlights sprinkled on top, I found the first four episodes hot garbage.

Then the fifth episode rolled around and it was delightful. Not perfect at all and not early game of thrones material, but certainly five times the quality of the first four episodes combined. You can smell the sweat on the cleverness of the episode, but at least that signals the effort and thought that went into writing actually cohesive dialogue, considering cause and effect, having a purpose and direction and using basic writing tools. Maybe I’m imagining it but I could also feel that the actors shined and enjoyed a script with some flow and an actual story to tell, as opposed to having to deliver empty lines that are so disconnected, directionless and fragmented they barely feel like a story. It had an atmosphere, it went from A to B and it was possible to make sense of how and why we landed at B. 

The problem with the previous 4 episodes was the complete lack of understanding of the world, the terrible storytelling both in terms of plot, dialogue and character.

Throwaway lines of names and places and weird words littered over a rice paper thin plot isn’t world building. As an audience member (one that even read the novels but kinda forgot them), my reaction is a momentary what/who the fcks that again followed by instantly forgetting the word. There are a myriad ways to do this while building characters and/or plot but of course you would have to think about it and work on it and spend twice the time in the writing room so that you have ample time to develop every aspect of the series without trade offs for one or the other. The result is a tiny, empty, lackluster universe in which no borrowed element from the novels work for either plot, or character (eg my ugly one, lilac and gooseberries, etc). 

Characters are generally soft and lack gumption, the main characters lost themselves (well the writers rewrote them) and the supporting ones are tropes rather than anything else. Yennefer is Yen now. Just like that, because… well, you tell me. “Yen” used to be a thing in Yennfer’s story because Geralt called her that while Istredd called her Yenna. That was a thing between each duo and a source of jealousy and tension in the love triangle. But now Yennefer is generally Yen, to the council and to Ciri (rather than Madam Yennefer). I think I have said all there is to say about her. 
The last time I have seen the semblance of light in Joey Batey’s face when playing Jaskier was back in season 1. The guy looks like he would rather be anywhere else in the world and there’s nothing but anguish in his eyes in any scene he’s put in. Which also says everything that needs to be said about Jaskier. 
Henry Cavill is trying really hard to breathe life into the shell Geralt is with limited screen time and a small supporting role in the events of the story. And Ciri… ah it’s too exhausting. Let’s hope the second installment will remind her that it takes more than a childlike sense of justice and morality to make a good leader. Though tough love has pretty much evaporated from the series.

The dialogue is for the most part painful to listen to and probably equally painful to deliver for the actors. The main cast is doing the best they can, most supporting characters fail to take their lines and characters seriously. Most of the dialogue says absolutely nothing, it’s just word salad out of context. 

Overall it’s a 4/10 for me. 3ish scores for the first 4 episodes and a solid 7 for the 5th. I will watch the next installment because of Henry’s Geralt and then I’m out. And I don’t think I said anything that counts as spoiler but do correct me in case I did. 

9 hours ago, Zorral said:

Wasn't he in Spartacus as somebody or other?  

One of the better known actors who were in Spartacus is Manu Bennett (who was in the Hobbit and that dreadful D list fantasy, Shannara chronicles), maybe you’re mixing him up with Henry Cavill?