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

[briantw]

10 hours ago, Spockydog said:

Season 3 of What We Do In The Shadows is shaping up really well. Episode 2 was one of the funniest ever. Kayvan Novak doing a Matt Berry impersonation whilst wearing the The Cloak of Duplication was simply hilarious. 

I love the running gag of "she must not be into dudes" every time they fail to seduce the woman at the gym.  Great payoff too. 

[williamjm]

On 10/20/2021 at 12:54 AM, Mindwalker said:

The final episode of OMITB was a bit of a mixed bag for me, but mostly positive.

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I was hoping we'd get one final twist wrt the murderer, but alas. bassoon lady actress sold it well.

A very nice showcase for Steve Martin's comedic shtick.

Fun fact, that scene from the trailer that had everyone guessing was just setup for the next case... And nice job of lampshading that there are some "loose ends" left hanging. (Not to mention some leaps of logic, like: Wasn't it Jan herself who suggested to the podcast crew to look elsewhere for the second murder, instead of putting it on the Dimas duo?

And why was Bunny wearing podcast merch, was she a closeted fan?! Speaking of which, those superfans sure looked ecstatic when their heroes were handcuffed, lol.

I assume that now-grown-up Lucy will be the replacement for Gomez, which can only help in the acting department.

All in all I'm looking forward to season 2.

I thought the finale wrapped things up well although I could have done without the cliffhanger ending. I thought it was a great show, the silent episode was particularly inspired and there was some great comedy in it.

I agree it's perhaps best not to think too much about some of the plot details. When Jan started to try to distract from the Dimas family I was suspecting her of somehow being connected to them but in retrospect it felt like maybe she was just playing games with them. It did feel a little bit unlikely that she wouldn't at least consider the possibility that Charles might record her, especially after he made it clear he knew she'd killed Tim Kono.

[Spockydog]

4 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

What We Do In The Shadows is on HBO Max?  I thought it was only on Hulu (for the FX channel).  I’m waiting until our next swing by Hulu.  We have HBO Max right now (Dune!!) but I haven’t seen the goofy vampires there. 

My bad. You're absolutely right. After checking with my brother, I can confirm that we're actually watching this on Hulu. Similar signup process as described above.

As well as paying for the myriad streaming services we subscribe to, Chops keeps a vice-like grip on the TV controls. And with so much content, spread across so many services, it's sometimes difficult to keep up. We recently finished that War of the Worlds with Gabriel Byrne. Up until the penultimate episode I thought it was on Amazon!

Anyway, discussing this with him tonight, it became apparent just how much he is spending on streaming services. We made a list.

Amazon Prime
Amazon Music Unlimited
Audible
Britbox
Netflix
Disney+
AppleTV
Hulu
Shudder
Sky Sports
BT Sports
HBO Max
Gamepass

I'm pretty sure we missed some.

It's ridiculous that he spends so much of his pension on this. I'm tempted to sit down with him and conduct an audit. But he likes to have full, uninterrupted access to everything, and as long as it makes him happy, I'm happy.

What we all need, as consumers, is some kind of streaming aggregator. Somewhere you can pick and mix bundles, mitigate the cost of this bullshit.

[WarGalley]

Dear lord, I thought 2 streaming services was too much. You should really have a talk with him and have him subscribe to one, watch a bunch of content he's interested in until it runs out, cancel and subscribe to another. Donate the savings to a charity of his choice or something.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

You probably have all you need if you just have Prime, Netflix and Max*. The others you can just get for a month or two at a time when a few shows are on them that you want to binge. The key is remembering to cancel the service though.

 

*I still don't need streaming services for sports outside of the EPL. Once that changes I'll have to make some tough choices, especially when it comes to the Super Bowl. There's a real possibility major sporting events will move to a PPV in the years to come.

[Corvinus85]

I basically try to keep it to a max of 5 streaming service at a time. Amazon Prime and Music Unlimited are the only constants, but I get a lot out of them.

[Heartofice]

There is rarely anything worth watching on Amazon Prime, and I use it mostly for the delivery element. Netflix is also frustratingly poor qualify for the most part with a decent thing to watch once every month or so. 
 

It’s then that you notice that most of the things I’d quite like to watch aren’t on those platforms. Whether it’s high quality series like Succession or reasonably new or properly classic movies, they just aren’t there with the subscription for those services. So here in the UK you might want to sign up to something like Sky or Nowtv if that’s what you wanted. 
 

That’s not even mentioning sport, which if you want football is just ludicrously expensive seeing as it’s split across multiple providers. 
 

So I just say nah, I won’t bother.

[BigFatCoward]

Yeah, amazon prime has very little content to justify it, but when you include delivery, reduced amazon music unlimited cost, and the photo storage it's worth the 8 quid a month. 

@Spockydogdoes he have all those to himself? Surely he could get netflix, prime or disney plus log in from someone else? 

[Spockydog]

2 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

does he have all those to himself? Surely he could get netflix, prime or disney plus log in from someone else? 

He could, but he won't.

Shudder, Hulu, Britbox, Apple, HBO Max are all getting binned today.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 hours ago, Heartofice said:

There is rarely anything worth watching on Amazon Prime, and I use it mostly for the delivery element. Netflix is also frustratingly poor qualify for the most part with a decent thing to watch once every month or so. 
 

Prime's created content isn't all that great, but their library is huge. I can find a ton of things on there that aren't available on Xfinity On Demand, and a lot of the time it ends up being free. Of all the services it's the best value given everything else you get out of it.

[GallowKnight]

I went to see Halloween Kills today. I liked fine I guess. I really the 2018 Halloween movie and felt like that one was a perfect and fitting end to the Halloween-franchise and Michael Myers. Halloween Kills naturally kinda ruins all that, but I still mostly enjoyed the movie. It's not as good as the original or the 2018 movie, put I guess I'd put it on par with the original Halloween 2.

Spoiler

 

The acting is overall really strong. Jamie Lee Curtis is naturally great, even if she does not have all that much to do in this one. Michael Anthony Hall is also really good. Judy Greer is the real star though and she is really great throughout the whole movie. I liked the character work they did with some of the characters from the previous movie, like the sheriff and the boyfriend. The kills are great, real brutal and appropriately gory. I liked the Halloween 3 references (even if that movie sucks). 

I was also really impressed with how the managed to integrate Loomis into the flashback scenes. I'm not entirely sure how the got Donald Pleasence into it, but it was very well done. Edit: Apparently it was done mostly with prosthetics, impressive nonetheless.   

What doesn't work though is that they make Michael Myers into too much of a badass fighter. Him sneaking up on people and brutally manhandling people is fine. But when he  takes on a whole group of people head-on, fights them and even uses his weapon to block attacks, it's a little silly. And while Michel has always been able to soak-up a lot of damage in these movies, they take it a bit to far in this.

And because of that the ending does not work at all for me. A severely injured Michael Myers managing to get the upper hand on all those people and managing to kill them all is just way too ridiculous. I don't really mind him killing Judy Greer's characters, but the lead up too it is just weird. It looks weird, it feels weird and it just ends up feeling anticlimactic and bad. The ending is just a real let-down, especially after the previous movie having such a strong ending.

I really hope they can tie it up better in the next movie, which I will naturally see.

 

I was also reminded why I, even in pre-pandemic times, seldom go to the cinema: Other people. We had a lot of people talking, making shitty quips, a lot of burping and even one guy answering his fucking phone, TWICE! He didn't even put it on silent mode.

[Zorral]

3 minutes ago, GallowKnight said:

 

I was also reminded why I, even in pre-pandemic times, seldom go to the cinema: Other people. We had a lot of people talking, making shitty quips, a lot of burping and even one guy answering his fucking phone, TWICE! 

Hear you, loud and clear.  Same for me.

[Mindwalker]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Hear you, loud and clear.  Same for me.

Ditto.

With both Only Murders and Lower Decks having finished for now, I'm a bit at a loss as to what to watch. Have started with American Crime Story: Impeachment. Must have been all that true crime talk on OMITB! Seems a bit on the soapy side, but we'll see.

ETA: OK, one episode is enough. Too bad, it has some nice sardonic humor, but it revolves around a terrible mean old hag stereotype. Not interested.

[Nictarion]

Saw The Last Duel tonight. Thought it was great. Especially Jodie Comer. Might have to check out Killing Eve.

[Isis]

On 10/17/2021 at 3:33 PM, Nictarion said:

There hasn’t been this many movies I’ve wanted to see since before the pandemic. Already saw No Time to Die, and this month alone there’s The Last Duel, Dune, The French Dispatch, Last Night in Soho…

I really want to see Dune on the big screen, but with it being available on HBO MAX, I might have to stream it so I can use a trip to the theater on one of the others…

Same. Went to see Dune yesterday. First trip to the cinema since February 2020 (when we saw Parasite and The Lighthouse in the same weekend). Definitely need to go back for The French Dispatch and Last Night in Soho. 

We watched The Green Knight on TV earlier in the week and I REALLY wish I could have seen that at the cinema too. I've missed that immersion in sight and sound and feeling SO MUCH.

ETA: everyone was well behaved in the cinema. We had to ask a couple to move out of our booked seats when we arrived (we didn't book the best seats in the house for nothing!) but there was plenty of room for them to move far away from us so that was no problem. Nobody talked/messed with their phone or anything like that. That's a lot of the reason we pay to watch at Curzon cinemas - they are more expensive but that tends to price out a lot of the poor behaviour, compared to say, an Odeon or Empire. 

[BigFatCoward]

4 hours ago, Nictarion said:

Saw The Last Duel tonight. Thought it was great. Especially Jodie Comer. Might have to check out Killing Eve.

Stop after season 1. It goes downhill very quickly. 

[Ser Drewy]

Rewatched Alien & Aliens. 

 Alien holds up pretty well, generally, although some of the effects look very dated now. The designs remain very gross.

I still think Aliens is my favourite in the series. Cameron balances the slow build-up and intense attacks really well. The 'futile escape' scene is fantastic. Although I have to admit I found the mecha-suit/Queen showdown a bit... tonally awkward this time around. We go from this scary and relentless onslaught, with the characters having to option but to run, to a much more "action badass" climax. I'm not quite convinced it works.

[Ran]

1 hour ago, BigFatCoward said:

Stop after season 1. It goes downhill very quickly. 

Sad but true.

[BigFatCoward]

12 minutes ago, Ran said:

Sad but true.

The drop in quality enhanced PWB's reputation even more. 

[Heartofice]

2 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

The drop in quality enhanced PWB's reputation even more. 

Yeah it did kind of show that she improved something that really didn’t have any right to be as good as it was and elevated it to being something special