Watch, Watched, Watching: Three Monkeys Edition

[BigFatCoward]

9 hours ago, Mexal said:

You should. One of the best shows ever.

I really should do a rewatch of the shield. I watched it just after the wire and feel It didnt get the credit i should have given it because of the comparison.

Great ending, though not best ever for me. That would be a tie between blackadder and six feet under. 

[3CityApache]

19 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Great ending, though not best ever for me. That would be a tie between blackadder and six feet under. 

Totally agree, six feet under finale is an ultimate one. But i very much enjoyed the ending of The Shield and Justified too. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I know I have a lot of shows to catch up on, but has anyone seen Santa Clarita Diet? A friend recommended last night.

[Derfel Cadarn]

3 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

I really should do a rewatch of the shield. I watched it just after the wire and feel It didnt get the credit i should have given it because of the comparison.

Great ending, though not best ever for me. That would be a tie between blackadder and six feet under. 

I assume you’re referring to the end of Blackadder season 4 and disregarding the millennium special?

Chronologically, of course, the show ends in the very distant future with Grand Admiral Blackadder killing Queen Asphyxia’s triple-husbandoid, marrying her and assuming control of the galactic empire.  Amusing, but less of an emotional impact than the season 4 finale.

[Heartofice]

40 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

I assume you’re referring to the end of Blackadder season 4 and disregarding the millennium special?

Chronologically, of course, the show ends in the very distant future with Grand Admiral Blackadder killing Queen Asphyxia’s triple-husbandoid, marrying her and assuming control of the galactic empire.  Amusing, but less of an emotional impact than the season 4 finale.

Christmas Carol sort of counts, anything that happens after that should be erased from history 

[Nictarion]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I know I have a lot of shows to catch up on, but has anyone seen Santa Clarita Diet? A friend recommended last night.

It’s funny. I gave it a shot because I pretty much have a man crush on Timothy Olyphant, but I ended up liking it more than I thought I would. 

[Nictarion]

5 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

I really should do a rewatch of the shield. I watched it just after the wire and feel It didnt get the credit i should have given it because of the comparison.

Great ending, though not best ever for me. That would be a tie between blackadder and six feet under. 

 

5 hours ago, 3CityApache said:

Totally agree, six feet under finale is an ultimate one. But i very much enjoyed the ending of The Shield and Justified too. 

The Shield and Six Feet Under are 1 and 1A as far as series finales go for me. The Americans had a pretty great one, too. 

[Isis]

3 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

I assume you’re referring to the end of Blackadder season 4 and disregarding the millennium special?

Chronologically, of course, the show ends in the very distant future with Grand Admiral Blackadder killing Queen Asphyxia’s triple-husbandoid, marrying her and assuming control of the galactic empire.  Amusing, but less of an emotional impact than the season 4 finale.

Always considered this as simply a 'Christmas Special'. It has never occurred to me that it was a millennial special. My older brother and sister and I could quote big chunks of this. I still use dialogue from this on a pretty much weekly basis. It's fantastic. 

[williamjm]

54 minutes ago, Isis said:

Always considered this as simply a 'Christmas Special'. It has never occurred to me that it was a millennial special. My older brother and sister and I could quote big chunks of this. I still use dialogue from this on a pretty much weekly basis. It's fantastic. 

Blackadder : Back and Forth was commissioned to be shown initially inside the Millennium Dome with TV broadcast at a later date.

[Veltigar]

I have watched a few good things lately. First, I was finally able to see The Two Popes. It's a nice film. Nothing earth-shattering, but Hopkins and Pryce are always great and the Catholic Church remains fascinating, so I enjoyed it. Still, as fas as Pope related entertainment goes it cannot hold a candle to The Young Pope of a few years back (although it is far better than The New Pope, the more I think about that series, the more my dislike for it grows).

I also caught up with most of BBC's The Serpent. It's based on the crimes of serial killer Charles Sobhraj, who murdered young tourists between 1975–1976 in Asia and who was finally caught by the dogged pursuit of a Dutch diplomat. Again nothing transcend, but it was a genuine good time. I particularly liked how they nailed down just how different the times were. The Seventies aren't that long ago, but the crimes Sobhraj commits (or rather the methods he employs) would be unthinkable in today's world.

I finally finished Showtime's The Reagans... The fourth and final episode was just bat shit insane. Ronnie apparently let Nancy decide a lot and she used a fucking astrologer to determine policy? I feel like it's quite hard to hate them for their malign influence on American democracy, as they were clearly idiots. The onus here is clearly on the general public who really have no clue what qualities make a good POTUS. 

My favorite watch of the weekend however, was definitely News of the World with Tom Hanks. I just like westerns, so that definitely biases me, but I thought this was an excellent outing. A real Sunday afternoon movie of the type they don't make enough of nowadays. I wouldn't be surprised if I return to this in the years to come.

[Zorral]

You know what is really good and we keep forgetting to mention?  David Simon's Treme, about the music and musicians and culture of post-Katrina New Orleans.  It is just splendid.  For The Big Project we just reviewed all 80 of the LIVE music scenes in just the first season of the four.  There has never been tv like this before or since.  Alas, though, it does seem that only the people with deep emotional connection to New Orleans, musicians and music lovers loved it.   Still, that's a lot of people.  I am more in awe what the directors and crew pulled off the longer time goes by.  This was anything but easy shooting.  Some the most difficult shooting there is, in fact. In, I think the second season, there's a looooooooooong, expanse of a second line -- it's a real second line too, which if anyone has even tried to photograph things like second lines and parades, which I have done, you know how very difficult this is.  And this was shooting video for HBO quality, that had to cover, like second lines do, the air above the crowd, and what's going on there, as on the ground, within, in front and behind the crowd. 

And like Gomorrah, and so much of The Wire (though definitely not all of it like the police station and so on) Treme isn't sets or CGI.  It's almost all the real thing -- most of which is still there. It was there before Katrina, and still there now, in spite of pandemic and everything else.

[Zorral]

On 2/25/2021 at 10:37 AM, Astromech said:

Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan, the new Netflix documentary on feudal Japan

This was your rec, I believe?  So I'm watching an episode a night.  It's informative all right.  Thank you. This is the historical "prequel," so to speak, to the 1600 Japanese world into which Richard Chamberlain, er, I mean James Clavell's John Blackthorne crashes for Shogan?  Though by the time this series begins, the Portuguese priests have been there for a while and have churches.

I tend to dislike this phony dramatized documentary-teaching format which is getting more common all the time -- Netflix particularly likes it, it seems. But this one is a superior production in the mode, as is Netflix's on the Rise of the Ottoman Empire, and the one that I think is on amazon prime that includea Roger Crowley as expert commentator on the fall of Constantinople.  As well they should have.; in English, Crowley OWNS that historical material.

But Netflix's Roman Empire series on Commodius is so annoying with the endless repetition of the same scenes, I just couldn't get through it.

[Nictarion]

I enjoyed that Battle for Japan doc. I wanted to see more episodes when it was over. 

[williamjm]

I watched Jackie Brown which I had last seen so long ago that I'd forgotten most of the film. It does feel as if it might be Tarantino's most straightforward film but it still manages to tell a compelling story. It had a good cast, particularly Pam Grier in the lead role although I think it's fair to say that Jackson and De Niro didn't have the chemistry that Jackson and Travolta did.

[DMC]

42 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I watched Jackie Brown which I had last seen so long ago that I'd forgotten most of the film. It does feel as if it might be Tarantino's most straightforward film but it still manages to tell a compelling story.

I'm not sure if I would describe it as his most straightforward but I do think Jackie Brown is considerably underrated.  As far as Tarantino films go - and I don't mean that in a bad way - it is one of the most crisp..both well structured and well executed.  It's also, perhaps by far, his least indulgent.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, Veltigar said:

I finally finished Showtime's The Reagans... The fourth and final episode was just bat shit insane. Ronnie apparently let Nancy decide a lot and she used a fucking astrologer to determine policy? I feel like it's quite hard to hate them for their malign influence on American democracy, as they were clearly idiots. The onus here is clearly on the general public who really have no clue what qualities make a good POTUS. 

Heard this is really good.

[RumHam]

How do people feel about Bojack Horseman? I'm wrapping up a re-watch and while it's hard to compare an animated comedy(?) to say, The Sopranos or Deadwood I would rank the show up there in that top tier. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

On 2/27/2021 at 2:15 PM, Tywin et al. said:

I have to see the second season of Rome, so I'm watching that first. And I forgot that The Knick was now on HBO, so I'll check those two out first, but then I'm going in this order: Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire and then Lost. I'll be done with that in approximately 72 years.

Rome, BrBa and Sopranos all good, but honestly just drop all of that till you've seen The Wire all the way through first.

Its.........just.........that........damn..........good.

[DireWolfSpirit]

I'm almost through the first season of-

Soviet Storm: WW2 in the East.

It's fantastic, covers the German invasion the siege of Leningrad, the siege of Stalingrad, the Battle for Moscow and so much more in just the first season (it's 2 seasons).

I highly recommend this. It's on Amazon Prime as well as Tubi.

https://g.co/kgs/7spvME

[Veltigar]

7 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Heard this is really good.

It is. I watched it faithfully every week on live TV, but had to tape the final episode. It really has pretty much everyone who was part of the Reagan administration and still alive in there. Pretty much everyone, even the unrepentant Reaganites like James Baker seem to believe Reagan didn't have the intellectual qualities desired of a president. But hey, he was a great communicator and a better actor than people gave him credit for, as he was able to fool the population into thinking he had their best interest at heart, while his cronies were really shitting all over them released as they were from a POTUS who didn't understand what they were doing.

I was watching a discussion show about Trump's appearance at CPAC and the guests in the studio (so called America experts) situated the beginning of the rot in the rise of Newt Gingrich. I am however, convinced by this series that you really have to look at Reagan's rise to explain for the sad state of American democracy and discourse. He lowered the bar for what was to come.

4 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I'm almost through the first season of-

Soviet Storm: WW2 in the East.

It's fantastic, covers the German invasion the siege of Leningrad, the siege of Stalingrad, the Battle for Moscow and so much more in just the first season (it's 2 seasons).

I highly recommend this. It's on Amazon Prime as well as Tubi.

https://g.co/kgs/7spvME

 Oh no, not another streaming service  I haven't even heard about this one.