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[briantw]

40 minutes ago, Ran said:

@Veltigar

I would definitely recommend Deadwood, just to keep the Timothy Olyphant streak going. I can't speak to FNL, never having watched it (but I know it's very critically acclaimed), but Deadwood is way better than Warrior and you won't suffer too much waiting on that one.

I think it depends what you're in the mood for.  Deadwood is absolutely better than Warrior, but Warrior is a hell of a lot more fun than Deadwood.  If I'm smoking a bowl and want to shut my brain off and watch some cool fight scenes, it's Warrior every time.  If I want to watch a legitimate Western drama, obviously Deadwood is the way.  

I loved Warrior, by the way.  It took a few episodes for it to really click for me, but I love a good martial arts film and Warrior scratches that itch admirably.  It's basically kung fu Peaky Blinders.  Strangely, though, the two best episodes in the series are when the characters leave San Francisco and the main plot behind and have a little stand-alone adventure.  There's an episode like that in both of the first two seasons and they are both absolutely phenomenal.  

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, briantw said:

It's basically kung fu Peaky Blinders.

But w/o the magnificent horses that are to be seen in each of Peaky's seasons!  

I'm not sure I'd go as far as 'kung fu Peaky Blinders,' though I know what you mean, particularly as the Shelbys are Roma and thus almost as much outsiders in the English world as the Chinese are in San Francisco. But not quite, of course.

 

[briantw]

2 minutes ago, Zorral said:

But w/o the magnificent horses that are to be seen in each of Peaky's seasons!  

I'm not sure I'd go as far as 'kung fu Peaky Blinders,' though I know what you mean, particularly as the Shelbys are Roma and thus almost as much outsiders in the English world as the Chinese are in San Francisco. But not quite, of course.

I think it's the closest comparison I can make.  It's obviously not identical, but it has a lot of the same visual style to me, like the slow mo shots of guys walking in front of sparking furnaces and a similar setting/period.  

[Ran]

@briantw

I enjoyed it as well, to a point. But given the choice between the two, I'd pick Deadwood any day of the week and twice on Sunday. It's not totally dour and serious, there's some real humor at times.

[briantw]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

@briantw

I enjoyed it as well, to a point. But given the choice between the two, I'd pick Deadwood any day of the week and twice on Sunday. It's not totally dour and serious, there's some real humor at times.

Again, totally agree that Deadwood is the better show.  It's one of my top ten ever. 

Warrior is just a fun kung fu show.  It's like Banshee.  Sometimes, I'm in the mood for a great show.  Sometimes, I'm in the mood for a trash show with great fight scenes.

[Heartofice]

14 minutes ago, Zorral said:

But w/o the magnificent horses that are to be seen in each of Peaky's seasons!  

I'm not sure I'd go as far as 'kung fu Peaky Blinders,' though I know what you mean, particularly as the Shelbys are Roma and thus almost as much outsiders in the English world as the Chinese are in San Francisco. But not quite, of course.

 

The show is a bit confused from what I’ve seen  on whether the Shelbys are Roma or Irish travellers, the two things are not the same. 
 

I do know that the show lazily had characters speaking actual Romanian instead of Roma language at one point.

 

[HoodedCrow]

Deadwood is like Shakespeare’s Wild West. WS uses history, great characters, profane and sublime, comedy and tragedy. Impotence by too much alcohol is in it. If memory serves, doesn’t one play make a point that the only reason that it ended happilyis that the artist made it so?

Miranda, ( a sheltered girl in the Tempest), looking at some rough characters and a dude “Oh brave, new, world that hath such creatures in it!”  and another character comments “tis new to thee”

WS uses c words and jokes. 

Deadwood has some sort of record for swear words per time unit. They simplified it because they didn’t want it to sound Fog Horn Leg Horn:)

[Zorral]

https://brummedout.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-peaky-blinders-but-were-too-lazy-to-google/

https://entertainment.ie/tv/tv-news/cillian-murphy-lived-with-gypsies-to-prepare-for-new-drama-peaky-blinders-221240/

https://peaky-blinders.fandom.com/wiki/Shelby_Family

[Mindwalker]

I watched the second episode of Schitt's Creek, but while the premise is great, the humor is a bit too... basic for my taste. Sooo... not sure what to watch next. Is it just me or is almost every new show about superheroes or people with superpowers?

[HexMachina]

1 hour ago, Mindwalker said:

I watched the second episode of Schitt's Creek, but while the premise is great, the humor is a bit too... basic for my taste. Sooo... not sure what to watch next. Is it just me or is almost every new show about superheroes or people with superpowers?

Schitt's Creek is more about the characters and performances I think, so it can take some time to warm up to it and fall in love with the characters. Its a show i found pretty easy to binge watch, I don't know if I could have stuck through weekly watching from the beginning.

I'm watching Halston, which is not bad, but not Good. It feels very surface level and I want to know more. It feels like the show tries to check off so many things and so only manages to do so in the most cursory way. I'll finish the last two episodes though, and most likely go look up more info on Halston.

Has anyone watched the new season of Master of None yet? Its next on my list 

[RumHam]

10 hours ago, HoodedCrow said:

Deadwood is like Shakespeare’s Wild West. WS uses history, great characters, profane and sublime, comedy and tragedy. Impotence by too much alcohol is in it. If memory serves, doesn’t one play make a point that the only reason that it ended happilyis that the artist made it so?

Miranda, ( a sheltered girl in the Tempest), looking at some rough characters and a dude “Oh brave, new, world that hath such creatures in it!”  and another character comments “tis new to thee”

WS uses c words and jokes. 

Deadwood has some sort of record for swear words per time unit. They simplified it because they didn’t want it to sound Fog Horn Leg Horn:)

I missed so much the first time I watched it because the dialogue is just so...dense. It's my number 2 behind The Wire but dialogue wise there is nothing in its league. 

@Veltigar If you haven't seen Deadwood yet, you should see Deadwood. Bonus reason to see it next: a lot of the main Deadwood actors ended up appearing on justified. 

also as much as I love both Boyd Crowder and Goggins, Ian McShane should have killed him at the end of season five!

I mean they must have asked him before Sam Elliot. 

 

[ithanos]

On 6/5/2021 at 7:50 AM, Ran said:

I will be watching when this comes to fruition:

 

I think of Peter Weir equally with Crowe and Bettany, whenever Master and Commader is brought up. 

Too bad Weir hasn't helmed a feature film since The Way Out in 2010, and his last before that was M&C in 2003!  (I can't recall if I've ever watched The Way Out, will have to look it up.)    

So I'll hold off on any enthusiasm until a director is assigned to the project.

------------------

Army of the Dead was an OK time filler - but some things irked me about it,

Spoiler

primarily the lack of urgency when there's an imminent deadline.

So I doubt I'd voluntarily watch it again.   

However I'd re-watch Snyder's Dawn of the Dead again, easily his best.

 

[polishgenius]

The Wire is more revolutionary, in the way the story is told long-form for TV (in some ways Deadwood comes off like a really long stage play whereas The Wire does a lot of stuff that really only works for TV) but Deadwood is my no1 tv show. Season 2 being my favourite ever season of tv. It's so good.

 

 

[Ran]

Watched the final season of The Kominsky Method, which starts with the funeral of Norman (Alan Arkin) who apparently died between seasons (it was not setup at all in the 2nd season finale, because it was unclear if there would be a third season, but apparently it was long planned that Arkin would only be around through the 2nd season). Kathleen Turner’s character becomes more prominent, subsequently, as does Paul Reiser’s sad-sack character Martin. All in all, an enjoyable season, even if it wraps everything up with a bow rather too nicely. The best running joke is Sandy dealing, as executor, with  Norman’s greedy daughter and grandson. 

Also rewatched David Cronenberg’s Crash as it ended up #1 on Screen Draft’s James Spader film drafts. I forgot quite how perverse the film was, as well as how controversial — it won the Jury Award at Cannes over the apparent objections of jury president Francis Ford Coppola, who was so put off by the film that he had someone else hand Cronenberg the award. It is indeed a very, very perverse film. Spader does a lot in the film, but it really feels to me like Elias Koteas’s character Vaughan is the real exemplar of the film’s meditation on sex and death.

[Veltigar]

I'm going to disappoint a lot of people given the fact that I decided to go with Warrior in the end. In my defense, I made the choice based on availability. It was easier to get that second season of Warrior than either Friday Night Lights or Deadwood, so that was that.

Know that I already rue the decision, I'm like seven episodes in and I remember why I didn't bother watching that second season sooner  I'm not sure whether it has actually gotten even worse than I remember or that it's just the contrast with Justified, but this show must be a strong contender for worst dialogue on television. I remember already being annoyed by it in season one, but it's like it has somehow gotten worse. It's so fake that it takes me out of the moment.

The acting is patchy. There are a few actors like the guys playing Leary, Father Yun, Li-Yong and potentially Chao who seem to be part of a much better, more grounded show but boy, all the others are hamming it up like crazy and I don't think most of them are doing it intentionally. 

The only thing that is really working for this show are the fights, which are damn great it must be admitted. It's a poor man's version of Banshee/Peaky Blinders, but I can stomach it as long as they have a fight scene every 10 minutes. I hope the last three episodes will surprise me, but I'm not hopeful.

Next up is going to be Deadwood. All the praise here has made me curious and Friday Night Lights has like 22 episodes a season  How does a show like that have such a great reputation?

21 hours ago, briantw said:

Again, totally agree that Deadwood is the better show.  It's one of my top ten ever. 

Warrior is just a fun kung fu show.  It's like Banshee.  Sometimes, I'm in the mood for a great show.  Sometimes, I'm in the mood for a trash show with great fight scenes.

Banshee is better than Warrior though. At least the three seasons I saw of it. I feel like the average fights on Warrior are better, but there is not much else it has on Banshee which had better characters (particularly in the villain department), better actors (It still blows my mind that Homelander and Lukas Hood are played by the same guy)  and the big fights stood out a lot more to me. I know Asam fought Li Yong at the end of the last season, but without the constant flashbacks I wouldn't be able to remember a single move in that. Lukas Hood vs. the Albino or the MMA fighter though, I still remember those even so many years later.

 

[Heartofice]

Watched Doctor Sleep and while it got some praise and yes it has a lot going for it ( the way it mimics the Kubrick movie, the young girl in it is good) for me it bares far too many hallmarks of a Stephen King story, and I tend to have an allergic reaction  to that because I mostly think his stuff is garbage. 
 

Everything to do with The Knot and stealing people’s steam was pure King nonsense and I wish I liked the movie more because I think it deserves respect. Haven’t read the book so can’t comment on how different it is,  but the more King I detected the more I lost interest 

[Zorral]

The most undigestable in Warrior was that preposterous cliche 'love story' between treacherous sister and the Irish gangster.  I was able to put up with everything else, if often with great reluctance. This was such a useless plot device, and so very boring -- it's prevented me from watching the last two episodes of Warrior's second season.  I. Just. Cannot. Do. Sophia and Leary.

[Veltigar]

I forgot that I also watched The Favourite yesterday. I'm well aware that I'm very late to this party, but for anyone who hasn't seen this yet you are missing out. I remember seeing the director's first film (Dogtooth) years back and finding that an excruciatingly terrible film to sit through. I skipped over all his subsequent films, but now that I have seen The Favourite, I guess I have to give it another chance. The cast was simply amazing, the story great and I loved the visuals in it. The distortion and the type of lenses they used really gave this film a unique feel.

3 hours ago, Zorral said:

The most undigestable in Warrior was that preposterous cliche 'love story' between treacherous sister and the Irish gangster.  I was able to put up with everything else, if often with great reluctance. This was such a useless plot device, and so very boring -- it's prevented me from watching the last two episodes of Warrior's second season.  I. Just. Cannot. Do. Sophia and Leary.

The two of them are terrible, but as someone who has just finished the last two episode, I can vouch that their relationship is hardly in it. You are also missing something, because episode 9 is by far the best episode of the season and 10 isn't bad either.

Glad they are going for another season, because it does end in a rather bleak place.

[Zorral]

Woke at 4 AM and could not get back to sleep, for no fathomable reason.  So I turned on the original Highlander film from 1986. 

I only saw this once, long ago, maybe early in the 2000's.  I'm seeing it with  different eyes this time around, as an historical era artifact encapsulating the mid-late 1980's, early 1990's -- particularly the choice made as to where and when the film opens, one of those fake, costume wrestling nights at Madison Square Garden. -- the days of Jesse Ventura, who eventually got himself elected governor of Minnesota. 

HOLY COW!  I cannot imagine what a thrilling experience this movie would have been for a kid in those days, anywhere in the range of 11 - 20 range maybe? Really, what could possibly compete with that movie opening that concludes with the most prolonged, explosive, strongest ejaculation ever experienced in the history of the planet -- no wonder it is called "the Quickening." I think ... way back, sometime after 2003 but before 2010, I watched via dvd some of the first and second seasons of the tv series that spun off from the movie. Which naturally did not carry the same electric excitement and interest of the movie.  

I don't think there was anything like this around in 1986.  Or at least very seldom, unlike now.   Also, the landscapes and crowds of the 16th century were really filmed, not cgi pretense thrown up against a blank blue mud screen.  So that material is fun to see too.

Funny -- the Kurgan reminded me of the Mongol baddie in the television series of warring tongs in the San Francisco of the 1870’s, Warrior.
 

[Lord Varys]

On 6/3/2021 at 6:02 PM, Zorral said:

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.

It's on Sky Atlantic and actually pretty good, in my opinion.

On 6/4/2021 at 1:00 AM, Mindwalker said:

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)

I've started a thread here.