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[Veltigar]

 

This cracks me up so much 

[Mentat]

23 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I watched Howls Moving Castle the other day , hasn’t seen it for years. My main take away is that it has a lot of very creepy men creeping over young girls.. for a cartoon.

Really? I rewatched it about a month ago, and I can't begin to imagine where you're coming from. The film doesn't even have a lot of men in it which you could dub creepy in the first place (the only traditional male in the film is Howl himself, other than that there's the scarecrow and the child, any other male character is background) and only one young girl (the protagonist, who spends a lot of her screen time as an old lady). Like most Ghibli films, any romance is decidedly low-key and sexually coded behavior is very scarce to non-existent.

Would you care to elaborate?

As an aside, I hate the word creepy. It could mean anything from 'behaves sexually inappropriately towards young women' (which is what I understood in the context) to 'transforms into a monstrous bird creature' or 'has an unsettling outwards appearance'.

[RumHam]

7 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

  Reveal hidden contents

He didn't slip. he was practicing holding breath underwater. 
The point of the scene was to make the mother realize she's too tired and unable to take care of him all the time.

Why would people ask for paternity tests if they are not doubting that they (or their kid) is the father? It's not something people normally do just because.

 

I thought when she was sleeping he was standing and then suddenly fell under the water. I really thought he was going to die or be brain damaged they got me good. 

As for the paternity tests I really don't know what's normal. I just figured since he didn't want the kid or to pay money for the kid he would have made sure he was legally obligated before paying up. But maybe I'm just a heartless untrusting person!

 

[Ran]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

Spoiler

I thought when she was sleeping he was standing and then suddenly fell under the water. I really thought he was going to die or be brain damaged they got me good. 

 

Spoiler

They "cheated" a bit by very clearly changing his skin color, via makeup or in post, to make him look blue-ish for a split second before she woke up. Obviously, it's supposed to represent her foggy brain processing things to the worst scenario, so the viewer sees what she "sees" in that moment. 

 

[Mindwalker]

Watched the first 3 or 4 episodes of Resident Alien and I'm enjoying it more than I probably should. I guess I needed some shallow, quirky fun.

Is People of Earth equally funny?

Spoiler

I'm totally team Harry and his noble mission, but of course he'll change his mind when he realizes how Special And Awesome humans are...

 

[SpaceChampion]

5 hours ago, Mindwalker said:

Is People of Earth equally funny?

 

Yes.

[Lord Varys]

I'm going to binge Domina tomorrow (if I like the first couple of episodes, that is). Has anybody seen that so far? If so, do you like it?

It is a show about Livia Drusilla and Augustus from Livia's perspective.

[WarGalley]

Finished a fast re-watch of Bosch (skipping past most of the personal, non-investigation scenes) in preparation for the new season.

I also finally cancelled my Netflix account in preparation of signing up for HBO Max. No real regrets there though I never did watch Beasts of No Nation which I think was one of the very first movies I subscribed to, even when it first premiered. It's one of those movies that I'm sure I would have liked, but like Schindler's List, never got around to it as I never found the right mood to watch it.

[DireWolfSpirit]

Binged through first season of Get Shorty.

Really enjoyed this, great actors and writing. Had a Ozark feel to the plot, some witty humor with some underworld and money laundering plot points. I will watch more of this eventually.

[RhaenysBee]

I watched The Dig and didn’t particularly love it. Genius acting and breathtaking cinematography but it didn’t do much beyond that for me. 

[Greywolf2375]

Finally was able to watch The Walking Dead - working at home has its advantages.  Not that I was surprised but everything I heard about the story/characters getting weaker in S8+ were right on.  It's easy to question decisions in a TV show, but I really did enjoy the first 7 or so seasons - I can suspend disbelief for enough things to let the cars still work, etc.

Interested in seeing what they are going to come out with for the three movies that are being talked about, especially since the all will have Rick back in.

[Zorral]

13 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I'm going to binge Domina tomorrow (if I like the first couple of episodes, that is). Has anybody seen that so far? If so, do you like it?

It is a show about Livia Drusilla and Augustus from Livia's perspective.

Don't subscribe to? is it, EPIX? which show it here, alas. But how many subs can a person have?

I wonder when / if I do get to see it in some way at some time whether I'll be able to get past my imprinting of Livia from Robert Graves's novels? and the 1970's the Derek Jacobi as her tireless surveillant on the BBC series from way back when, which is available on AcornTV.

~~~~~~~~~~

Tails of Iceland (2019) amazon prime. The wonderful Icelandic horse, one of the only two breeds who possesses 5 gaits naturally; the other is the Mongolian horse, who is one of the Icelandic’s ancestors, which does not surprise me, because Russia was ruled by one of the Hordes for a long time, and they continued the long established trade routes from that part of the world, "the Amber Road." 

The Icelandic is a natural pacer, which makes watching a long stream of Icelandics heading out for the open lands such a pleasure.  Due to their pace this looks like an extremely long bolt of silk being unfurled, floating, streaming.

The Icelandic people love their horses and the horses love back. These are the most relaxed, friendliest, easy-tempered, nicest, calmest horses I’ve ever seen.  Perhaps because at least the ones we see in this documentary get to spend so much time outside – not in a paddock, but in extensive lands that aren’t in the least manicured – and with other horses, as well as with people, doing training, competition and just running.

The Icelandic horse is not popular either in the UK or the US – too short.  Considered a pony, not a horse. We do BIG here.
 

[WarGalley]

11 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Binged through first season of Get Shorty.

Really enjoyed this, great actors and writing. Had a Ozark feel to the plot, some witty humor with some underworld and money laundering plot points. I will watch more of this eventually.

Next 2 seasons are solid.

[Isis]

On 6/1/2021 at 3:32 PM, Heartofice said:

I watched Howls Moving Castle the other day , hasn’t seen it for years. My main take away is that it has a lot of very creepy men creeping over young girls.. for a cartoon.

Bit like Spirited away I didn’t massively care for anyone. A lot of these Ghibli movies don’t quite connect with me, they have all the component parts to be magical and entrancing but mostly leave me kind of cold. I think the only one that really had any emotional effect on me was My Neighbour Totoro. Maybe it’s the same problem I have with Anime in general , in that I feel there is a cultural barrier that is just preventing me connecting fully, or I don’t get it. 

I recently did a rewatch of Howl's Moving Castle. I saw it on its original UK cinema release and was left nonplussed by it (I LOVE the book). I liked it a little better the second time around but I feel that most of the charm and humour and heart of the book was not in the film.

Having been bed-ridden for a couple of days I have been watching things as a distraction...

I finished watching Cursed. At first I wasn't really invested in this. But as it went on I realised that they were going all in with the turning the Authurian myth and characters on its/their head and I actually really dig what they are doing with it. The characters you expect to be the big names in the story...aren't? I think it is admirably done and I really like Katherine Langford (13 Reasons Why). I hope it gets its second season.

Also watched We Have Always Lived in The Castle, which was very well done but I felt totally rubbish while I was watching so I find it a bit slow going - which it wasn't I don't think. It was just me.

Then I binged Panic on Prime. Adapted from a book, this is about a not-quite-survival game played by teens in a small town. Again, I thought it was going to be quite lightweight but it kept me engaged through 10 episodes. Recommended if you like that sort of thing.

[Mindwalker]

20 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I'm going to binge Domina tomorrow (if I like the first couple of episodes, that is). Has anybody seen that so far? If so, do you like it?

It is a show about Livia Drusilla and Augustus from Livia's perspective.

Hmmm.. This, from Wikipedia, turns me off a little bit:

Suzi Feay in The Financial Times dubbed the series “Game of Romans”.^[6] Historian Tom Holland in The Times agreed that “The echoes of Game of Thrones in the first two episodes are strong, and surely deliberate...the rest of the series approximates more closely to a political thriller”. Holland praised the show “the meat of the show is so enjoyably done that the odd anachronism hardly matters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domina_(TV_series)

[Veltigar]

I finally got around to finishing the last season of Justified. I'm going to miss this show. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for westerns and this is the best contemporary set Western that I have ever seen. It's remarkable how consistently good it has remained over its entire run. With the exception of season 5, which really sticks out as a sore thumb in retrospect, all of them have been excellent. 

I do find it hard to critique it however. This series occupies a bit of a weird niche. I don't think it ever aimed to be a serious prestige show in the way that The Wire or Breaking Bad or The Sopranos was, but given the tremendous quality of this show (reflected in some of the best damn casting on TV ever) you can't throw it in with regular television series.

In that sense it occupies a bit of a hybrid position between traditional television and that new wave of Golden Era TV shows. Not unlike the other great Walton Goggins' show The Shield, which also perfectly straddled the divide between the two extremes (although I'd argue that The Shield is leaning more towards prestige, while Justified is leaning more towards traditional TV). 

As to the final season itself and particularly the final episode, there are criticisms to be made. There are two things that didn't sit entirely right with me, but I think my major remark would be that I wish they had had more time. A 16 episode final season like Breaking Bad or even better, just excise season 5 out of the canon and give the season 6 villains more time to grow into even more emotionally resonating threats would have made this show even better. 

My three criticisms are all from the epilogue, which in the beginning definitely gave me flashbacks to Peter Jackson's Return of the King which like Jason Voorhees refuses to go away.

Spoiler

1. I didn't like that Winona and Raylan were separate again. What's the point of all those long seasons of relationship drama if you end it up first with a scene where Winona finally accepts who Raylan is and indicates she wants to be with him and then all of a sudden in the epilogue they just break up? 

That's definitely something that can happen in real life, but I felt it was a cheap curve ball here. Either remove the scene where she finally accepts Raylan or remove her appearance in the epilogue and leave it open that would have made it a lot more satisfying. If I ever do a rewatch of this show, I'm guessing I'll skip over the relationship bullshit if this is the pay-off.

2. Ava having Boyd's son was handled rather strangely. Thematically it makes sense, given how this show really juxtaposed Raylan and Boyd (indeed, I was actively wondering before the reveal how come Ava and Boyd hadn't really discussed children yet) but the way the show handled it makes me wonder what the timeline was. Did it happen in the cabin in bullet vile or had she been pregnant before and does that explain her constant back and forth between supporting Boyd or not?

3. I didn't like Raylan's new hat. It's probably more appropriate to the book character, but I really loved that white stetson. Thematically I don't like him wearing a black one

They are all  relatively minor however, there was so much more to like. For starters, Sam Eliot really is the quintessential Justified seasonal villain. The man's gravitas and voice lent itself so well to the role of Avery Markham. I get why he shaved his mustache to appear in this. 

The rest I'm going to reserve for spoiler tags:

Spoiler

The character of Boon was also a pleasant surprise. He's not my favorite, but it's a remarkably efficient character. Given how late he was introduced on this show, it's really impressive how the actor's weird energy and the writing managed to establish him.

I guess it helps that he came across a bit like a Justified fan gone mad. In fact, he often reminded me of a better version of the ninja villain from John Wick 3. The obsession with the main character, the black hat, etc. Even the final duel. I like how Raylan basically survived because he was lucky, not necessarily better. If Boon had gone for the chest Raylan would have been a goner.

I also liked how they brought every important Justified side character back to play a part (although Dewey Crowe will forever be missed). Given how incestuously this show revolves around Harlan, I thought it was great to see Bob, Loretta and Arlo again. They also handled their roles in this season very tactfully. They never overstayed their welcome or felt absolutely shoehorned in. 

I was surprised by how much I felt touched by the resolution to the Grady bunch subplot. Never really though I'd care much for Wynn Duffy and Mickey (were they a couple? I was so sure that was implied until Mickey death scene), but the way they took down Katherine and then the implications that had down the line (e.g. Markham's speech to her corpse which was a master class in acting from Eliot and Wynn Duffy's unexpected agreement with Ava, that was all brilliant).

The best thing was the Raylan and Boyd resolution however. The antagonistic friendship between them has always been the heart of this show. I can imagine that some were disappointed that Boyd wasn't merged with Boon and had gotten a final showdown with Raylan, but it fits so perfectly with the character. Boyd has never been sold to us as an extra-ordinary shot like Raylan and Boon. More importantly however, unlike Boon or the guy Raylan shot in the pilot, Boyd is too sophisticated to be drawn into something as moronic as a pointless gunfight. He works best as a tempter daring Raylan to cross a line he can't come back from.

One other thing I would like to comment on is that a few threads ago I declared that Dewey Crowe was the best actor on this show, despite all the other stellar performances. I want to retract that statement and say that Walton Goggins jumped ahead in that final season. This show is a strong contender for having my favorite final scene of all time and that has everything to do with Walton Goggins:

Spoiler

"We dug coal together"

Has ever a show conveyed so much meaning with just four simple words? 

His final scene here outshines even his devastating final scene in The Shield for me. What an actor!

Does anyone know whether they are trying to make a Justified movie? I am already writing fan fiction in my head about

Spoiler

a movie that picks up 21 years later and that has Raylan and Boyd team up to save their children who have eloped together from some unforeseen horror  I know, very schlocky, but I can't help but think that it's awfully convenient that Raylan has a daughter and Boyd a son.

 

[Ran]

@Veltigar

Yost is creating a new series for FX with Olyphant rumored to return as Raylan. Early days yet, though, it's not set in stone.

 

[Zorral]

8 hours ago, Veltigar said:

I do find it hard to critique it however. This series occupies a bit of a weird niche.

This could be due to the factors of the source material and its creator.  Leonard was always about writing for reader, not to critics.  Both he and his son were heavily involved with the series' production at the beginning at least, before Elmore Leonard died (full of years and a good life).  Moreover, Elmore Leonard had many of his works successfully adapted for films (including Get Shorty, 3:10 to Yuma -- Leonard did the western genre too -- Hombre, Jackie Brown, among many others) long before Justified became a project, and one that was green-lit. Nor did Leonard ever take things seriously in the way that Simon does, including himself, or so the story goes.

https://www.indiewire.com/2013/05/from-best-to-worst-elmore-leonard-movie-adaptations-98187/

Concerning Dewey Crowe and actor, Damon Herriman, is Herriman plays Dewey as the "Character Role" that Dewey is, in so many US pop culture plus crossover works.  You find this "white trash", hapless, feckless, whining, never-learning figure, whose only successful play is finding his own dick with his own two hands, played for laughs throughout all kinds of fiction (especially that set in New Orleans and Florida) written by people who are aspiring literary writers, and those who just write what they know, whether as journalists or fiction writers, like Carl Hiaasen -- who has also had films made from his work.

http://www.carlhiaasen.com/

What is impressive is that Herriman plays a Character Role so very well, when he is not categorized as a "stock character" actor. Ya, iow, this actor is very good!

[RumHam]

8 hours ago, Veltigar said:

 

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"We dug coal together"

Has ever a show conveyed so much meaning with just four simple words? 

His final scene here outshines even his devastating final scene in The Shield for me. What an actor!

 

I didn't like that as much as most people.

Just because on Raylan's end at least it's meaningless bullshit. That is not the reason he traveled back to Kentucky to tell Boyd in person. What he's telling him isn't even true. So... 

[Veltigar]

8 hours ago, Ran said:

@Veltigar

Yost is creating a new series for FX with Olyphant rumored to return as Raylan. Early days yet, though, it's not set in stone.

 

This news really made my day  Thanks Ran! I hope it materializes and leads to more content. It's clear that Olyphant was really open to do this as soon as the show ended. This is from an interview with him and Walton Goggins by the FT:

Spoiler

OLYPHANT: Now is not the time to ask me because this time, every season, it’s like thank God, it’s nice to take a breath. Talk to me in six months when it’s supposed to be time to go back to work. But there’s very little doubt in my mind that we got off the air when we should have, or at least in that setup with those people. Because I’m going to put an asterisk by it: If someone calls me a couple years from now and asks me if I want to do another Raylan, I bet the answer would be yes. There’s a follow-up question, which is for how much? [Laughs.]

Q.

So would this theoretical new Raylan show be set in Miami?

A.

OLYPHANT: You’re thinking too small. U.S. marshals are federal; they can go anywhere. I’ve been pitching this for six years now — I kept saying, “You know, Raylan could go to Paris.” They’re like, “Hey this year Ava’s going to run,” and I was like, “Great, to … Paris?” And they said, “No, just up the hill.” Look, it would be a lot of fun to do some sort of whatever they call it these days — limited series, mini-series. I’d gladly take the gig.

 

2 hours ago, RumHam said:

I didn't like that as much as most people.

 

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Just because on Raylan's end at least it's meaningless bullshit. That is not the reason he traveled back to Kentucky to tell Boyd in person. What he's telling him isn't even true. So... 

 

Oho, I think I strongly disagree with you there.

Spoiler

The fact that Raylan told Boyd a lie didn't lessen the poignancy of that moment from Raylan's POV. He could have told another deputy to go or he could have delivered the news by phone, but he chose to make the long trip down to Kentucky and risk Boyd seeing through the lie to deliver the news in person.

That harks back to Zachariah's comment to Carl after the death of Pig in the mine shaft earlier in the season. When a man died in the mine, all the people who worked with him, who bonded with him, had to go to his house to tell it to the man's kin in person. To offer their support and condolences.

The fact that Raylan told a lie is not what matters in the scene. It's the fact that he came to comfort Boyd in person that shows you were his heart really lies. They stood for different ideals, but they were still brothers.

 

3 hours ago, Zorral said:

This could be due to the factors of the source material and its creator.  Leonard was always about writing for reader, not to critics.  Both he and his son were heavily involved with the series' production at the beginning at least, before Elmore Leonard died (full of years and a good life).  Moreover, Elmore Leonard had many of his works successfully adapted for films (including Get Shorty, 3:10 to Yuma -- Leonard did the western genre too -- Hombre, Jackie Brown, among many others) long before Justified became a project, and one that was green-lit. Nor did Leonard ever take things seriously in the way that Simon does, including himself, or so the story goes.

https://www.indiewire.com/2013/05/from-best-to-worst-elmore-leonard-movie-adaptations-98187/

I think I'll add Elmore to my ever-growing pile of books that I have still to read. It's a great list that he has been responsible for, so I'm curious about the original.

Which also reminds me, hereby a warm invitation to share reviews or retrospectives of Justified. One thing that is frustrating about TV-shows is that it's never that easy to find good comprehensive reviews for them once their done.