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Watch, Watched, Watching: Hindsight in 2020


Ramsay B.

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17 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

The issue for me is I dont beleive Gregg Wallace can cook better than the worst contestant. Reviews of his restaurants tend to support this. 

His restaurant in Putney was awful and was closed down as far as I know.  He’s on the show as an Everyman character I guess, but him acting like he’s a cuisine expert never comes off

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I haven’t watched Masterchef in years but i was never much of a fan of either of the judges. I always preferred the rounds where others judged the chefs, e.g. what was, i think, the quarter final round where they’d cook for the food critics. Wallace was always my least favourite though.

Always enjoyed the challenges like catering en masse, be it for the army, for a TV production, a school etc. Do they still do those?

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1 hour ago, Isis said:

Gonna have to assume you're trolling me, John.

Haven’t you seen Inside the Factory? No, I haven’t either but I have seen a dozen memes of Greg Wallace exclaiming joyfully over a biscuit vat. It’s life affirming, the guy is a diamond geezer, as I believe you Londoners say.

Anyway, my big problem with the judging on Masterchef is that every time somebody makes something that looks especially delicious they’ll bring it up to the table and the judges will be like “you’ve got a lot to learn about presentation.” A balsamic vinegar smear counts for far too much in that show.

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9 hours ago, Triskele said:

@JEORDHl

I didn't want this to be public, but apparently you forgot to kill Birdbath and delete stuff.  

You forced me to make this an out in the open request.   I just want to talk Patriot.  

Sincerely,

Un Singe Triste en Costume

Yeah, it's pretty good.

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On 2/26/2020 at 6:09 PM, Derfel Cadarn said:

My wife isnt interested in Endeavour, otherwise we’d watch it over dinner after our daughter’s asleep (I’ve most of the dvds).

I like Lewis, but LF being a tool in rl would probably spoil a rewatch. 

Okay, I'll bite. What has he done?

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I watched Parasite, which I thought did a good job of living up to the hype it has received. While I haven't seen several of the other nominees I do think it is a worthy Oscar winner. The directing was excellent, the script was intricately constructed to build up tension and had a lot of dark comedy and I thought the cast were all good.

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Random stuff I've watched in the last three x weeks:

 

Revolutionary Road - The Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio 50s melodrama directed by Sam Mendes. Never seen it before, nor read the novel by Richard Yates. It was fine, strong performances and direction of course, but I feel like I've seen better versions of this. Mendes I think was trying for Oscar bait, but failed. I'd recommend Todd Haynes's Far from Heaven for a gorgeous, 50s-set historical melodrama with beautiful production values and brilliant acting.

American Factory - Academy Award-winning documentary about Chinese investment in American factories and what it means. Nice cameo by Sherrod Brown pissing off the executives with his call for unionization when he was invited to speak at the reopening of the factory. This reminds me of a not dissimilar TV documentary here in Sweden from some years back, showing the tensions and difficulties involved in Chinese investment and importing workers from China who have very different standards of living and workplace safety.

Narcos: Mexico (Season 2) - This was not the best season of the series, IMO. Not a performance problem, more of a focus problem, I think. The fact is that Félix Gallardo is not a captivating character in the same way that Pablo Escobar was, or characters like Neto (S1 of this show) or supporting character Pablo Acosta (this season). He was basically a ruthless businessman and ... that's about it. Luna did what he could, but the show seemed lost in how to really make him interesting.

Dazed and Confused - A Richard Linklater classic that I've managed to miss until now. Feels like it'd make a fine double feature with American Grafitti. Or perhaps Everybody Wants Some to keep it in the Linklater-sphere, if you want to go that way. I enjoyed it quite a bit, this laid back, end-of-the-school-year thing that relives a very particular slice of life. Have to say, glad we moved past that level of high school hazing shown here.

The Curiuous Case of Benjamin Button  - Showed up on Netflix and I admit it's probably the only film of his I hadn't seen up to now. The premise felt twee and I'm not precisely a huge fan of Brad Pitt -- in particular he tended to be dead weight in any "prestige" things he tried his hands at for a few years, and I classed this in the same vein as Meet Joe Black -- and knowing that the story was made much more saccharine compared to Fitzgerald's original did not impress me. Still, gave it a shot, and... again, it's fine, has some lovely moments. Best thing about it was Cate Blanchett, I thought.

Downsizing - A somewhat unfocused Alexander Payne satirical film. Christoph Waltz is the best thing in this one. It was fine, funny premise (Norwegian scientists discover means to shrink people down massively as a way to address human consumption), but didn't have the punch of Election or Sideways

Cheer - Reality show from Netflix. My sister and niece sung its praises, so decided to give it a shot. It's an interesting look into a very particular, very American world. There's one bit where a teacher at the junior college is educating the out-of-state students about Texas which was ... eye-opening.

Better Call Saul - Enjoyed the first two episodes of this new season very much! One of the best written shows on TV.

Avenue 5 - This has been very rocky, but I admit the moment I turned to Linda and said, "Huh, Laurie has a hard time keeping the American accent when he's shouting" only to find out that it was all a part of the show, I was hooked enough to keep going. This has a very different vibe from Veep or The Death of Stalin, a much more ... conceptual kind of humor, not so much laugh-out-loud funny. This latest episode reveals that the new White House (in Buffalo) also has "the other president" in a scene I found very amusing.

Homeland - Been watching the final season of this more out of duty than love. I mean, I love Mandy Patinkin in pretty much anything he does, and Claire Danes too, but this show has seen better days.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off  - Rewatched an old classic. So 80s. So fun. 

Enter the Anime - A purported anime documentary from Netflix, it's more accurate to call it an hour-long advertisment for Netflix original anime series. Okay for what it was, had some decent insights from some of the creators.

Carole and Tuesday (S1) - A sweet, low-stakes anime drama about an orphan (Carole) and a runaway rich girl (Tuesday) in a future, settled Mars. It's basically a musical show, as the girls form a duo and attempt to make it big. Directed by Shinichiro Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo), it's just nice, easy watching, well-voiced, with some surprisingly good original songs (none of which are in Japanese; mostly English, with one French song and a Church Latin operatic rap(!)) given the nature of this kind of thing. The science fictional setting is sort of unnecessary and not integral, the most important aspect of which is that music in this future is almost entirely dominated by AI-created songs with performers and producers simply being "idols". Obviously a bit of commentary on modern idol and star culture, but it's surprisingly not particularly negative about it. Like I said, it's pretty sweet-minded.

Altered Carbon (S2) - Disappointing. Shared some thoughts in the (very quiet) Altered Carbon thread.

The Edge of Democracy  - Oscar-nominated documentary about political happenings in Brazil over the last decade or so, particularly the corruption scandals that took down the once-incredibly-popular Lula and then his successor Dilma Rousseff (who was, from everything I can find, basically innocent of any personal corruption and was brought down as a scapegoat to protect corrupt politicians in every other party from a crusading prosecutor's investigation) and which directly led to the election of the right-wing Bolsanaro. Scary echoes of what's happening the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, in particular with disinformation campaigns spreading over social media. The documentarian, Petra Costa, comes from a politically and economically connected family, and this seems to be why she has incredible access to Lula and Dilma as she documents what happens to them. It's pretty clear where her sympathies lie -- she rather glosses over Lula's fairly clear corruption, and dismisses the Worker's Party's campaign corruption as being simply what everyone else did and so a necessary compromise -- but it's hard not to see that the right-wing in Brazil is incredibly toxic. 

 

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Finished seasons 1 of Patriot. 
 

Hands down  favourite programme of the year. I loved every single thing about it. It is criminal how under marketed this show was. I’d never heard of it, and yet Amazon is happy to push trash at me all day.

From the fantastic soundtrack, the great acting, the incredible script, the humour, 5 minutes of just watching Rock Paper Scissors... I was just utterly hooked. 
 

It has characters that are just sticking with me forever. It’s funny but it’s sad, it’s flippant but hits me inside.

Just a great great show.

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Lots of time on flights in the last two weeks to watch:

Better Call Saul S4 was very good, provided you accept the continuing slow burn and the two unconnected plot arcs.  There’s much more tension in the arc of Mike/Gus/Nacho, but Jimmy/Kim have a good development too, albeit with lower stakes.  It’s still hard to see why Kim has stuck with Jimmy this long; yes, he fights for the little guy, and brings the exciting scams when she’s bored with her sensible choices, but would that really sustain them, and overcome his general sleaziness?

The Witcher S1 was better than I expected.  The time shifting and the self-aware humor made it better than a generic sword-and-sorcery fantasy.  The world-building Is shockingly thin for a series based on books.

Altered Carbon S2 was OK but weaker than S1.  I posted a longer review in the dedicated thread, without spoilers. 

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5 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Finished seasons 1 of Patriot. 
 

Hands down  favourite programme of the year. I loved every single thing about it. It is criminal how under marketed this show was. I’d never heard of it, and yet Amazon is happy to push trash at me all day.

From the fantastic soundtrack, the great acting, the incredible script, the humour, 5 minutes of just watching Rock Paper Scissors... I was just utterly hooked. 
 

It has characters that are just sticking with me forever. It’s funny but it’s sad, it’s flippant but hits me inside.

Just a great great show.

We actually agree on something. Huh.

I am on again-off again mad at Amazon on how they handled this series [marketing] and how much of a fail that lack of attention was in getting a bigger viewership spread [excepting some critics] I mean, it made a few of the 'greatest shows no one is watching' lists, iirc. But nawp.

They cancelled it after S2 but least it ended in a really good place. 

[pours a heartfelt libation]

 

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2 hours ago, Mexal said:

@Ran Portrait of a Lady on Fire was magnificent. Gorgeous movie on every level and the end was just stunning. Thank you for talking it up here. Wow.

Glad you enjoyed it as much as I did. That ending had me in tears. 

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6 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Lots of time on flights in the last two weeks to watch:

Better Call Saul S4 was very good, provided you accept the continuing slow burn and the two unconnected plot arcs.  There’s much more tension in the arc of Mike/Gus/Nacho, but Jimmy/Kim have a good development too, albeit with lower stakes.  It’s still hard to see why Kim has stuck with Jimmy this long; yes, he fights for the little guy, and brings the exciting scams when she’s bored with her sensible choices, but would that really sustain them, and overcome his general sleaziness?

The Witcher S1 was better than I expected.  The time shifting and the self-aware humor made it better than a generic sword-and-sorcery fantasy.  The world-building Is shockingly thin for a series based on books.

Altered Carbon S2 was OK but weaker than S1.  I posted a longer review in the dedicated thread, without spoilers. 

Witcher is turning out to be one of those shows that was perfectly average while watching but has me really wanting to see more. I Keep watching other shows and being reminded of the witcher. It's really strange. Maybe it's because it reminds me more of the shows we used to get 20 episodes a year and I'm thinking there should be more?

Altered carbon is proving difficult. Beyond having a mild cold i can't really explain how i keep falling asleep while watching. It's like there's a subliminal message being broadcast.

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5 hours ago, JEORDHl said:

We actually agree on something. Huh.

I am on again-off again mad at Amazon on how they handled this series [marketing] and how much of a fail that lack of attention was in getting a bigger viewership spread [excepting some critics] I mean, it made a few of the 'greatest shows no one is watching' lists, iirc. But nawp.

They cancelled it after S2 but least it ended in a really good place. 

[pours a heartfelt libation]

 

Yeah we should cherish this moment.. won't happen twice!

Amazon just really suck in comparison to Netflix. If a new show comes onto Netflix, you can bet I will know about it. They will email me, they will make sure it's there when I turn on the app, they will tell me people are watching it.. so many ways to let me know there is something good on their books. Amazon.. meh, they do some billboard ads for the really big shows, some tv ads.. but their software is so bad for discovery, no matter what device you are using.

I guess they don't care.

Anyway, Patriot is such a refreshing show, it has a really unique voice and vibe, you get the sense it meant a lot to those who made it. I checked out the writer / director and turns out he wrote The Weatherman.. which is one of those Nic Cage movies where you are confused because its good

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