Watch, Watched, Watching: Festival Time!

[TheLastWolf]

Anyway today's plan got cancelled thanks to damn university keeping exams not even a month into classes.

[DireWolfSpirit]

Finally have Paramount+ thanks to birthday gift of a yrs streaming.

The Yellostone prequel, "1883", lands squarely in my wheelhouse. Another impressive Taylor Sheridan Western, lovely landscape, nice acting and plenty of drama to the journey.

Now i just need to see the last year or 2 of Yellowstone, have never viewed past the season finale where they had the multiple ambushes.

Need Peacock to accomplish this though.

 

[Isis]

18 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

The Peripheral remains good, though this was a bit slower of an ep. The powerpoint description of the Jackpot was a bit silly but it was pretty cool how on the nose a lot of it is. I appreciate the hacking behavior looking actually reasonable and not incredibly stupid like much hacking often does. 

The scene between the head of RI and Lev was damn good though. So was Connor's reaction to having limbs again. 

I actually found this is 'fastest' ep yet*; I felt completely engaged and unaware of the time (very rare for me these days!). T'Nia Miller is a highlight for me in the show. Her costumes are amazing and I just find her face just very pleasant to look at, plus her character is super sinister. I love it. 

I had high expectations for the show and so far I have yet to be disappointed. I saw someone mention on Twitter this morning that William Gibson does not write in a cinematic way (paraphrase). That's a ridiculous claim. 

 

*this could just be me though as I had major surgery almost two weeks ago and I wasn't very comfortable physically watching the first few eps. 

[Spockydog]

On 10/2/2022 at 10:49 PM, Zorral said:

Interview With the Vampire (2022) season 1 – AMC. The network put up this first episode earlier than scheduled.

Eric Bogosian is terrific as the aging, ill, journalist, in this era of covid. Louis de Pointe du Lac is played by Jacob Anderson, Got's Grey Worm.

 It’s fun seeing New Orleans – many of the places are locations with which I’m more than familiar. I can tell when it's the real place, and when it's a set.

It's brilliant. Jacob Anderson is absolutely crushing it. As is the guy playing Lestat (though for some reason he reminds me of Jez from Peep Show ). 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

On 11/3/2022 at 9:30 PM, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

All Quiet on the Western Front 2022.

Strong Recommend. 

Doubling back to this, 100% recommend. I watched the English version, next time I'll watch it in German (the dubbing is hit or miss).

This is such a well made war film on every level. The acting and the cinematography are exceptional and the brutal realism of WW1 and the loss of innocence are so perfectly captured. Can not recommend this enough, but there are some very brutal war scenes in this film for those who are squeamish.

[Zorral]

12 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

I named a runaway dog my uncle rescued (damn Diwali crackers) after Semba.

Ha!  

[Zorral]

3 hours ago, Isis said:

William Gibson does not write in a cinematic way

That's hilarious.  Bill began writing when he was running the film program at the university in Vancouver -- meaning handling the projector, the cans of film etc. -- after he defected from the US to Canada as a conscientious  objector to the Vietnam War.  He told me that he regularly sat in the auditorium alone, watching and re-watching films. He did this particularly with Blade Runner.  He's always been about films.

I'm 'saving' this episode -- maybe.  Torn between watching more Ponniyin Selvan: Part I and this episode sometime today.

[Ran]

Neuromancer is so cinematic in feel that the claim seems false on the face of it. That said, I haven't read the novel this show is based on, it's possible he took a less cinematic, more literary approach...

Isn't it strange that Neuromancer still hasn't been adapted? Back in 2017 Tim Miller was working on it, but I'm guessing that died, the last(?) of many attempts stretching back 30 years.

 

[Zorral]

13 hours ago, DMC said:

eems kinda weird that WWI movies are on the upswing. 

FYI -- when it comes to the historical fiction genre, WWI has been the favorite location for writers for at least a decade now, according to the stats the Historical Fiction Society Journal keeps.

[TheLastWolf]

Waiting for our extinction 

ugh

 

[Zorral]

12 minutes ago, TheLastWolf said:

Waiting for our extinction 

ugh

 

I'm sure that in the 1920's Kali also drank hooch from flask, danced the Charleston and kissed boys.  She is a goddess and immortal and does as she pleases, not what some damned man says she doesn't do.

[TheLastWolf]

11 minutes ago, Zorral said:

I'm sure that in the 1920's Kali also drank hooch from flask, danced the Charleston and kissed boys.  She is a goddess and immortal and does as she pleases, not what some damned man says she doesn't do.

If she exists in the first place

BTW coinciding with your PS1 viewing, Nov 3 was 1037th birth anniversary of Raja Raja Chozha, the titular character. zh is l with a tonguey flourish. And you were right to watch it split, it would be overwhelming for someone who has not read the books yet. And it crossed the 500 cr (USD $ 65 mil or so) mark, big deal here. 

After Oppenheimer and Killers of the flower moon, PS2 is my hype source.

[briantw]

On 11/3/2022 at 8:18 PM, Spockydog said:

The Old Man is great. Jeff Bridges fucking rocks.

 

If they ever adapt The First Law, he'd be a perfect Bayaz.

[Zorral]

23 minutes ago, TheLastWolf said:

And you were right to watch it split, it would be overwhelming for someone who has not read the books yet.

Fortunately I have a great deal of patience that goes hand-in-hand with ever present curiosity, whether reading or watching, assuming sooner or later I'll 'get' who, what, when and where, trusting in the content's creator(s) to provide, assuming they know what they're up to.  This applies to fiction, of course.

Nevetheless the never-ending delving into history and the sources, primary and otherwise, has enforced both the patience and the ever present delight in trying to find out! 

[Isis]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

Neuromancer is so cinematic in feel that the claim seems false on the face of it. That said, I haven't read the novel this show is based on, it's possible he took a less cinematic, more literary approach...

Isn't it strange that Neuromancer still hasn't been adapted? Back in 2017 Tim Miller was working on it, but I'm guessing that died, the last(?) of many attempts stretching back 30 years.

 

I feel like since we got The Matrix, we were never going to get a Neuromancer in its own right. I would say that the book/trilogy which The Peripheral is based on is equally as set piece/cinematic as Neuromancer/that trilogy. It's very visual, easy to imagine it happening on a screen.

Just watched Enola Holmes 2 - I loved it. It's so wholesome! Just very satisfying from start to finish. 

[Zorral]

The later books are more easily adaptable, being more conventionally visual, than the way cyber space was presented in Neuromancer, particularly in terms of the blocks and colors.  Then there was that authentic feeling of the characters' sensibility, fully realized in Neuromancer, that Gardner and Bruce recognized as 'punk', which isn't in the later novels, though in the short fiction.

 

[Werthead]

Checked out The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent on Amazon and it's excellent, Nicholas Cage and Pedro Pascal make for a fantastic buddy bromance and Cage being mercilessly cruel to himself is very amusing.

Spoiler

The scene where Pascal makes Cage watch Paddington 2 and he breaks down in floods of tears at how beautiful it is, is fantastic.

 

[Nictarion]

17 hours ago, DMC said:

I know it's just two that I can name but between this and 1917 seems kinda weird that WWI movies are on the upswing.  I anxiously await the Farewell to Arms adaptation.

Peter Jackson’s doc They Shall Not Grow Old was really good, too. 

[dog-days]

Watched S4 The Dragon Prince. I think pretty much every season at the start I tell myself that this is way too saccharine and I'm not going to be drawn into it, then get drawn into it anyway. It's a wonderful antidote to RL, the fantasy cartoon equivalent of Only Murders in the Building. 

Admittedly, I do regularly hope that Prince Ezran is disintegrated, set on fire,  or walled up in a cave for twenty years, returning as a Steerpike-like villain, because there's only so much niceness I can bear, but apart from that I think that Dragon Prince gets the mix of seriousness and humour about right. It has a light touch - it's good at gently poking fun and satirising teenage romance plotlines while valuing them at the same time. 

I liked the dynamic of having a set of antagonists who patently want to reform, but haven't yet got round to acknowledging this themselves. The dramatic tension largely comes from waiting to see how much damage they cause on the way to achieving self-knowledge. 

[Knight of Ashes]

Started Season 5 of The Expanse.

After gobbling up the first 4 seasons, I should probaby slow down ; especially since it only goes up to Season 6.