Watch, Watched, Watching : Series or Stand Alone? Home or Theater?

[Spockydog]

Midway through season two of Pennyworth.

I ignored this show for a while, thinking it was probably something akin to Gotham.

How wrong could I have been. Absolutely brilliant stuff.

If anyone is interested in the backstory of Michael Caine's Alfred, this is it.

So, so good.

 

 

[Veltigar]

11 hours ago, Heartofice said:

That WW1 episode is the one I always remember, because I can’t think of another time I’ve ever seen the Belgian army on screen! That’s one of the reasons I liked the show , it seemed to be happy to shove Indy into different unusual situations in historical contexts. I don’t remember too much else of the show but that really stood out 

I watched the first episode of the series earlier today and I'm not surprised you do not remember much else of the show. It wasn't very good. Far more orientalist than the episode I saw earlier, with a lot of fawning about the historical figures Indy meets and just cringe-worthy acting from the young star (who really reminds me of Anakin from Phantom Menace).

I'm guessing the series killed itself by starting with these episodes. Swashbuckling teenage Indy is far more compelling. I'll probably carry on, but the fact that I was able to switch off the screen instead of bingewatching the next episode is already quite a bad sign. Fortunately, the whiny young Indy seems to be only in a few episodes. 

[Spockydog]

Watched the second episode of Foundation tonight. Though it looks spectacular in UHD, I am finding the story somewhat dull. Having said that, the ending of EP2 was pretty wild.

[Corvinus85]

In the last few weeks I watched the first two seasons of Doom Patrol. What a wacky, crazy show, but I've ended up liking it, despite my initial skepticism. It has a set of great characters with solid acting. Cyborg is the one that sometimes can be more boring. I did dislike that season 2 was much shorter and ended on a massive cliffhanger, but I hear its production was affected by the pandemic, and at least season 3 started, so on I go. Season 1 was great thanks in part to its villain, as well.

[Ramsay B.]

On 9/27/2021 at 3:05 AM, Isis said:

- yes, I know that it is about life and death but I actually had to forward through one scene as it just went ON AND ON AND ON, hitting the audience over the head with the point and being incredibly dull in the process. 

I’m gonna guess that the scene was in episode 4. Just watched it.

[Veltigar]

22 hours ago, RumHam said:

They were the highlights for sure, but I wish the movie actually had something to say about Natasha beyond "she might have ditched the avengers had she not been reminded of her old adoptive family" 

Then there was also a lot of stupid plot stuff, which I'd be more forgiving of if it was a more entertaining movie. 

That's what I don't really get about the criticism on Black Widow. With the exception of Winter Soldier and Thor: Ragnarok (and perhaps one or two others you can debate about) that same criticism can be put on all MCU outings and yet people are generally quite positive about those.

 If the average MCU film consists of dumb plot + glacial character progression + rote action finale + stupid side characters, at least Black Widow had good side characters  Apart from the fact that it arrived way later than it should, I think it does it job better than most other films in the MCU.

22 hours ago, RumHam said:

I've really gotta see Shang-Chi. 

Definitely, it's a good time.

 

[Ran]

On 9/28/2021 at 12:04 PM, Heartofice said:

That WW1 episode is the one I always remember, because I can’t think of another time I’ve ever seen the Belgian army on screen! That’s one of the reasons I liked the show , it seemed to be happy to shove Indy into different unusual situations in historical contexts. I don’t remember too much else of the show but that really stood out 

I was a fan of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles back in the day -- Sean Patrick Flannery was great, I think, as a younger Indy. I loved the way that they kept a canonical history for Indiana, referencing and revisiting events and characters from past episodes, in a good example of serialized storytelling while maintaining a pretty good episodic structure. Besdes the WWI set of episodes, the episode I remember best is the one where Ford reprised Indiana -- Indiana Jones and the Mystery of the Blues was the title of the episode, and it features Jeffrey Wright in one of his earliest roles as the great jazz musician Sidney Bechet. Think he showed up in a second episode, as well, set in NYC. And there were a couple of episodes where Hemingway appeared, played by Jay Underwood.

Good stuff. Is this something that can be streamed on Disney+ these days?

[RumHam]

26 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

That's what I don't really get about the criticism on Black Widow. With the exception of Winter Soldier and Thor: Ragnarok (and perhaps one or two others you can debate about) that same criticism can be put on all MCU outings and yet people are generally quite positive about those.

 If the average MCU film consists of dumb plot + glacial character progression + rote action finale + stupid side characters, at least Black Widow had good side characters  Apart from the fact that it arrived way later than it should, I think it does it job better than most other films in the MCU.

Definitely, it's a good time.

 

Part of it may be that the other movies, even when they were meh, were building to something  and this one is not. 

I need to watch it again sometime, but I really thought this one was extra dumb. I posted specifics in the Black Widow thread.

[Zorral]

More discussion around The Sopranos.

New York Times Magazine - paywall.

"Why Is Every Young Person in America Watching ‘The Sopranos’?
The show’s new audience is also seeing something different in it: a parable about a country in terminal decline."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/29/magazine/sopranos.html?

Quote

 

. . . .One oddity that can’t be ignored in this “Sopranos” resurgence is that, somewhat atypically for a TV fandom, there is an openly left-wing subcurrent within it — less “I feel so seen by this” lefty than “intricate knowledge of different factions within the Philadelphia D.S.A.” lefty. This is especially true on Twitter, where just about everything takes on a political valence. But it goes beyond that: There’s a Socialist “Sopranos” Memes account on Facebook with 22,000 followers, run by a Twitter user called @gabagoolmarx. There’s a podcast called “Gabagool & Roses,” “the ONLY leftist ‘Sopranos’ podcast,” a presumably ironic claim, because there’s also the much more popular “Pod Yourself a Gun,” which frequently brings in guests from the expanded Brooklyn leftist podcast scene. The queens of downtown leftish podcasting, at “Red Scare,” sell “Sopranos”-inspired merch; the “Irina Thong” ($21) and “Capo Tee” ($30) both have the podcast’s name styled just like the Bada Bing’s logo. The “leftist ‘Sopranos’ fan” is now such a well-known type that it is rounding the corner to being an object of scorn and mockery online.

This new structural reading of “The Sopranos” was encapsulated neatly by Felix Biederman, a co-host of the leftist podcast “Chapo Trap House.” Recording another podcast in November 2020 — after the presidential election was held but before it was called for Biden, a moment when nothing in this country seemed to be working — Biederman argued that the show is, at its heart, about the bathetic nature of decline. “Decline not as a romantic, singular, aesthetically breathtaking act of destruction,” he said, but as a humiliating, slow-motion slide down a hill into a puddle of filth. “You don’t flee a burning Rome with your beautiful beloved in your arms, barely escaping a murderous horde of barbarians; you sit down for 18 hours a day, enjoy fewer things than you used to, and take on the worst qualities of your parents while you watch your kids take on the worst qualities of you.”

The show’s depiction of contemporary America as relentlessly banal and hollow is plainly at the core of the current interest in the show, which coincides with an era of crisis across just about every major institution in American life. “The Sopranos” has a persistent focus on the spiritual and moral vacuum at the center of this country, and is oddly prescient about its coming troubles: the opioid epidemic, the crisis of meritocracy, teenage depression and suicide, fights over the meaning of American history. Even the flight of the ducks who had taken up residence in Tony’s swimming pool — not to mention all the lingering shots on the swaying flora of North Jersey — reads differently now, in an era of unprecedented environmental degradation and ruin. . . .

 

Which is what Simon's The Wire consciously was dramatizing back then, and which the audience saw back then too.

[Derfel Cadarn]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

I was a fan of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles back in the day -- Sean Patrick Flannery was great, I think, as a younger Indy. I loved the way that they kept a canonical history for Indiana, referencing and revisiting events and characters from past episodes, in a good example of serialized storytelling while maintaining a pretty good episodic structure. Besdes the WWI set of episodes, the episode I remember best is the one where Ford reprised Indiana -- Indiana Jones and the Mystery of the Blues was the title of the episode, and it features Jeffrey Wright in one of his earliest roles as the great jazz musician Sidney Bechet. Think he showed up in a second episode, as well, set in NYC. And there were a couple of episodes where Hemingway appeared, played by Jay Underwood.

Good stuff. Is this something that can be streamed on Disney+ these days?

I had it on dvd until recently. Weirdly they wanted to make them ‘movies’ so removed the old indy, sorted it into chronological order and merged merged two episodes into one movie of sorts.

But since the stories merged were kind of standalone it felt disjointed at times

[RhaenysBee]

I started the second season of Morning Show. I didn’t last the whole episode. On the one hand, it’s impossibly boring, the timeline is confusing and jumped over significant events and their driving forces. The themes of the previous season seem to be done and abandoned. There are hints at major 2020 events and a new and improved diversity angle. The first is just way too soon for me. The second retcons issues into the first season. The characters are behaving in odd ways and are in odd places without explanation. Overall, I’m confused and bored. Might give it a second chance. 

[BigFatCoward]

Sex education season 3 is not as good as the first 2 so far, but the performances of the main and side characters remains excellent.

I never saw the attraction to Gillian Anderson when everybody else did when she was in X Files, now I have a huge crush on her (it may just be the coldly clinical nature of the character though). 

[ithanos]

Made the mistake of starting Squid Game on Netflix in the middle of the working week. Didn't like any of the adult characters in the opening episode, but the situation was intriguing and I couldn't resist the second episode, then the third. Will probably finish the 9 episode season before the weekend starts. A bit too addictive this.

[Veltigar]

23 hours ago, Ran said:

Good stuff. Is this something that can be streamed on Disney+ these days?

Apart from making inferior (nuclear) submarines, the French also have an inferior copy to YouTube called Dailymotion. All episodes are on there in both reasonable quality and English 

23 hours ago, Ran said:

I was a fan of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles back in the day -- Sean Patrick Flannery was great, I think, as a younger Indy. I loved the way that they kept a canonical history for Indiana, referencing and revisiting events and characters from past episodes, in a good example of serialized storytelling while maintaining a pretty good episodic structure. Besdes the WWI set of episodes, the episode I remember best is the one where Ford reprised Indiana -- Indiana Jones and the Mystery of the Blues was the title of the episode, and it features Jeffrey Wright in one of his earliest roles as the great jazz musician Sidney Bechet. Think he showed up in a second episode, as well, set in NYC. And there were a couple of episodes where Hemingway appeared, played by Jay Underwood.

What I also find odd about it is how unaware this show from the mid-nineties is about so many of the things that we (at least try to) pay attention to nowadays (colonialism, gender, etc.). In outlook the two episodes I saw had more in common with something from the fifties than with contemporary understanding of historical shows. It's all "great man of history " meets great fictional character in childhood/teenage years and played incredibly straight. 

I wonder how an updated version of this would play out now. Get a competent (non-Lucas) writer on board, tone down the fawning about the historical characters Indy meets and double down on action and characters and this could be a really great vessel to teach people about history.

23 hours ago, RumHam said:

Part of it may be that the other movies, even when they were meh, were building to something  and this one is not. 

You know what, that's a really fair point that I didn't consider. It also makes sense that this has little impact on my viewing of the film as I'm genuinely luke warm about what they are building up to, but this is probably not true for the majority of viewers.

 

20 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

I had it on dvd until recently. Weirdly they wanted to make them ‘movies’ so removed the old indy, sorted it into chronological order and merged merged two episodes into one movie of sorts.

But since the stories merged were kind of standalone it felt disjointed at times

This show is super confusing, it has like three separate entries on IMDB. I did not see the old Indy version, but the framing device sounds horrible so I'm glad they cut it. The movie concept makes sense for the teenage Indy years (the Africa episode was pretty good), but it does seem to be less fitting for child Indy.

In the first episode they went from grave robbing in Egypt to stupendously unaware about the experience of enslaved people in Morocco. Truly a lot of cringeworthy moments in one episode. I guess the teenage episodes probably held up far better than the ones with child Indy. 

[Ran]

36 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

What I also find odd about it is how unaware this show from the mid-nineties is about so many of the things that we (at least try to) pay attention to nowadays (colonialism, gender, etc.).

I mean, there's a whole episode featuring Ho Chi Minh at Versailles. It was very much aware of colonialism, at least.

 It was actually envisioned as an educational tool for educators, and each episode had a 20-30 minute documentary produced concurrently it that discussed the history behind the episodes. There were a total of 97 documentaries, both BTS stuff and education-related, available on the full DVD set. I believe they also produced written guides that were distributed to schools. 

As to the "Great Man" matter, the fact is that it makes for exciting narratives and drama when you can attach historic events to specific persons and what they were doing rather than trying to abstract it all because of socio-political forces. That's why GoT had the Night King, I guess.  It may be somewhat simplifying of things, but it works for a TV show trying to engage and excite young people about history, which then leads to a deeper examination of the history in the documentaries and so on.

[Ran]

Binged the two seasons of Apple's For All Mankind. Fun show, especially in its excellent first season which I think was on the whole better than the sophomore season. The 2nd season more often fell back on hoary old TV melodrama tropes and scenes, especially a turn near the end of the season which was just poorly executed. Ended very strongly, though.

[RhaenysBee]

morning show season two episode two. What have they done to this thing? This show used to be genius. And now, we have walking and talking Twitter accounts for characters. At this point I should be out based solely on principle. And it’s still boring as hell with no stakes or real tension. 

[SpaceChampion]

Astonished to find out Regina King is 50 years old now, I'm wondering wasn't her Watchmen character much younger?  How often do aging Hollywood actresses ever play someone much younger anyway?

[RumHam]

47 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

Astonished to find out Regina King is 50 years old now, I'm wondering wasn't her Watchmen character much younger?  How often do aging Hollywood actresses ever play someone much younger anyway?

Apparently a slide shown during the FBI headquarters scenes said she was born in '76. So 43 during the events of the show. I would have believed she was younger though. 

https://watchmen.fandom.com/wiki/Angela_Abar

[Zorral]

Episode 6 of My Life Is Murder, featuring Lucy Lawless as 'police consultant', Alex Crowe, has a shortish all on screen within the screen segment with William Shatner. He supposedly is a property developer/acquirer in LA, she was interviewing abut a murder victim.  After a few minutes on Zoom or whatever the program was, he asked Alexa if he could fly to New Zealand and take her to dinner.  We see and hear no more of him after that.