Watch, Watched, Watching: No Dragons Allowed

[RumHam]

I think if you asked me just before it came out if The Sopranos would work outside of NYC I would have said no way.

[Spockydog]

Parks and Recreation could only have worked in Pawnee, Indiana.

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

23 hours ago, KalVsWade said:

I don't think those sitcoms work in shitty cities, but they work fine in big ones.

By shitty do you mean ones with smog and congestion or crime and a lack of decent housing options?

[Spockydog]

Finally caught up with Top Gun: Maverick tonight.

Imma give it a hard 10. It was everything I thought I loved about the original. Brilliant stuff.

 

[dbunting]

2 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

By shitty do you mean ones with smog and congestion or crime and a lack of decent housing options?

The big bang - Pasadena, Happy days and Laverne and Shirley, MIlwaukee, Fraiser Seattle, The Golden Girls, somewhere is Florida...Coach was somewhere in Minnesota near @Tywin et al. , Home Improvement was in Detroit, oh wait...

[DMC]

Let's not forget San Francisco's totally awesome lineup of shows - Full House, Nash Bridges, Monk, and Charmed.

[Kalbear]

4 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

By shitty do you mean ones with smog and congestion or crime and a lack of decent housing options?

Heh.

I think a bunch of them need a lack of decent housing options. Especially friends and himym - if the norm is not roommates then I don't think it works for a bunch of reasons.

And you also need to have a city where driving isn't the rule and there is some public transit options.

So with those I think it rules out, like all of Texas, Phoenix, possibly Portland and Seattle, most Ohio cities.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, dbunting said:

The big bang - Pasadena, Happy days and Laverne and Shirley, MIlwaukee, Fraiser Seattle, The Golden Girls, somewhere is Florida...Coach was somewhere in Minnesota near @Tywin et al. , Home Improvement was in Detroit, oh wait...

Damn you're old. Laverne and Shirley, GMAB.

Also, Frasier, great example of a show picking the perfect city to compliment its theme. 

[BigFatCoward]

Friends was set 99% in 3 indoor locations. NY had almost nothing to do with it. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

Finally found something decent on Netflix after a long draught 

Martin Scorcese did a +3hr Doc on Dylan called "No Direction Home."

Its a journey, Bob is lucid and compellingly walks us right through his Iron Range beginnings and his transformation to the folk rock icon, poet laureate of a generation.

Fascinating AF, right there with Scorcese's "The Last Waltz" for me.

Its essential American Music/Folk/Poet history.

[TheLastWolf]

Raging Bull, good enough to be fourth after Goodfellas, Taxi Driver and The Departed on my Scorsese ranklist.

Catch me if you can, Spielberg subdued, but liked it.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Been trying to work through some more classics I've overlooked and The Hunt for Red October is absolutely amazing. The cast is great, the way the scenes are shot in the subs is incredible and everyone involved does an excellent job conveying the tension of the situation. 100% recommend this film.  

[Spockydog]

12 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Been trying to work through some more classics I've overlooked and The Hunt for Red October is absolutely amazing. The cast is great, the way the scenes are shot in the subs is incredible and everyone involved does an excellent job conveying the tension of the situation. 100% recommend this film.  

Great movie. And one which benefits enormously from Connery nopeing right out of even attempting a Russian accent.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Great movie. And one which benefits enormously from Connery nopeing right out of even attempting a Russian accent.

They were very wise to say from the jump these aren't Russian actors, forgive it. Sam Neill taking a bullet to the heart was gutting. 

[RumHam]

For some reason I can never keep Red October and Crimson Tide separate in my mind. I guess cause of red/crimson and they're both submarine movies. Also drugs and alcohol. I know one has the suspicious cook and one has Gandolfini, and I prefer the latter.

[A True Kaniggit]

I keep on asking, but none of my family members will watch that Hot D with me. 
 

Suppose I’ll have to watch episode two alone now. 

[DMC]

1 hour ago, A True Kaniggit said:

I keep on asking, but none of my family members will watch that Hot D with me. 

Buncha prudes.

[Veltigar]

Two episodes of the Sandman left (the finale and the surprise episode). It's still great TV in my book, although I did find the plot in the latter half of the season a bit less gripping than the original set up. Curious to see how it ends. I'm pretty confident that I'll be pleased enough with the resolution to watch the second season.

 

On 8/28/2022 at 1:12 AM, Spockydog said:

Finally caught up with Top Gun: Maverick tonight.

Imma give it a hard 10. It was everything I thought I loved about the original. Brilliant stuff.

 

Wonderful how that film keeps on uniting people. They are even doing a revival of it in IMAX in some places due to high demand, which is crazy for a film that came out end of May.

[Maithanet]

So we finally watched the movie everyone's been talking about, Dr. Zhivago (1965).  I hope other people want to talk about this, because this movie really really left me and my wife very confused and unsatisfied. 

It is considered a classic and a great romance, set in the backdrop of the Russian Revolution.  But...it isn't very romantic.  It could be called There's Something About Lara, because all the men in the movie fall in love with her for...no clear reason other than that she's beautiful.  The titular Doctor is a very upstanding, romantic poet/doctor and he is married to Tonya, who is a likable woman.  They have two children together.  But when all the characters have to flee the communists in Moscow for more rural settings, Dr. Zhivago reunites with Lara (who he served with during WW1).  They start having an affair, but Dr. Zhivago ends it because he loves his wife.  Then he's captured by Red partisans and forced to fight with them for ~ six months.  He deserts and returns home to find that Tonya and his two children were deported to France.  And so he....moves in with his mistress Lara.  Romantic, eh?  And then a few months later, the communists come from the whole family, and they have to trust a very scummy man who offers to help, and Dr. Zhivago says he'll do what he can to protect Lara and her child.  But then he abandons them too and moves to Moscow.  Away from both of the women in his life.  How romantic!  Then he sees Lara on the streets of Moscow and dies of a heart attack.  The end.

WTF?  I get that the movie has beautiful cinematography and some interesting camerawork, but this movie is not romantic at all.  Dr. Zhivago goes from a Gray Sue character in the first half to a loser who abandons his family, abandons his adopted family and then needs help just getting a job, in spite of being a famous poet and doctor.  The movie is also over 3 hours long.  Why do people like this? 

[Spockydog]

I know we're not allowed to talk about it, but when watching Hot D, I found myself wondering why HBO, instead of making what appears to be just another feudal succession story, didn't make a show about the Targs taming the dragons and/or the Doom of Valyria.

That would have been infinitely more interesting.