Watch, Watched, Watching: November Rain

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, TheLastWolf said:

Y Tu Mama Tambien

Hans Landa going oooooh

So strange to think back to this movie with these two young fresh faced young guys I didn't know.. now one of them is the grizzled hero of Andor and the other is having heart attacks on stage in Station Eleven... amongst other things. 

[TheLastWolf]

55 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

amongst other things

Werewolf by night went unnoticed I daresay, I liked it though, only MCU shit ive seen in recent times 

Shyamalan's Old was the last I saw Bernal in

[dbunting]

Got a couple more episodes into Yellow jackets. Some suspicions were correct, now have more.

Spoiler

The guy that Shauna is having the affair with, has to be the younger brother of Travis. He seems to have a crush on her in the old time line, read her diary so he knows about her wanting an artsy type of guy, made her the wolf toy. I think the glitter in the closet may actually be a distraction, I think it's her husband that's black mailing them. He would have access to her diary and the writings in it and knows the one lady has money. His business is probably failing and he needs money to hide that and his affair.  That or I am way off and the younger guy is the bad guy.  So why did the damn teddy bear burst into flames???!!?  Supernatural shit? I expected her to die, but thought she would hit a mountain not have that happen.

This show is definitely fun and interesting, I see why so many here were watching it when it came out.  @Tywin et al.   I just got access to showtime recently, thats why I missed out when it was the cool show to watch!

[DMC]

Watched The Crown last night.  A definite improvement on the previous season.  Perhaps that's just because the characters weren't depicted as abjectly horrible - as well as simply the timeframe it covered, but still.  Really liked the Al-Fayed episode as setup.  Also the recasting remains stellar - even if it is weird seeing old kinda-stars like Dominic West, Olivia Williams, and Jonny Lee Miller as Charles, Camilla, John Major, respectively.  I also really enjoyed the kitchen-table scene, even if anything like that almost certainly didn't happen.  Great writing and performances there.

One thing I can't get over is how tall Elizabeth Debicki is.  Maybe it's heightist (?), but when she was cast I figured they'd do some film trickery to deal with it.  But nope, she just towers over everybody and it kinda took me out of it at times.  Can still see why they cast her though - she definitely had the look and mannerisms down otherwise.  And yes, Diana was fairly tall.  But 5'10" is A LOT different than 6'3". 

Really liked Pryce as Philip.  What a long long way he's come since Matt Smith!  And Timothy Dalton was a pleasant surprise, didn't know that one was coming.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer

I'm not a serial killer enthusiast by any means but I probably have a slightly above average awareness and interest in the subject.  What amazes me is that I had no awareness of this guy, at all. He makes Son of Sam and BTK look like lightweights.

I have to think part of it was that he was initially convicted of killing sex workers, who were generally given a lower priority than other violent crimes, if they were prioritized at all. also, he didn't write letters to the police or press.  He later confessed or was convicted of several other murders. 

A pretty good documentary series. I'd recommend it if you're interested in that sort of thing.

[Spockydog]

7 hours ago, DMC said:

 Really liked the Al-Fayed episode as setup.

Really enjoyed that episode as well.

A lot of foreshadowing this season, including the brakes on Diana's car failing, and talk of intelligence agents posing as paparazzi.

I wonder if they're going to tell the world that when Diana died, she was pregnant with Dodi's child, and was planning to get married.

[Derfel Cadarn]

5 hours ago, DMC said:

Watched The Crown last night.  A definite improvement on the previous season.  Perhaps that's just because the characters weren't depicted as abjectly horrible - as well as simply the timeframe it covered, but still.  Really liked the Al-Fayed episode as setup.  Also the recasting remains stellar - even if it is weird seeing old kinda-stars like Dominic West, Olivia Williams, and Jonny Lee Miller as Charles, Camilla, John Major, respectively.  I also really enjoyed the kitchen-table scene, even if anything like that almost certainly didn't happen.  Great writing and performances there.

One thing I can't get over is how tall Elizabeth Debicki is.  Maybe it's heightist (?), but when she was cast I figured they'd do some film trickery to deal with it.  But nope, she just towers over everybody and it kinda took me out of it at times.  Can still see why they cast her though - she definitely had the look and mannerisms down otherwise.  And yes, Diana was fairly tall.  But 5'10" is A LOT different than 6'3". 

Really liked Pryce as Philip.  What a long long way he's come since Matt Smith!  And Timothy Dalton was a pleasant surprise, didn't know that one was coming.

All the Philip actors have been in a GoT show

[Zorral]

 

[hauberk]

Wrapped up the second season of The Terror.  I found it to be much creepier than the first season.   Really pleasantly surprised by the final episode end credits that included references to cast and crew that were descendants of or, in the case of George Takei, actual subjects of the internment camps.  I've had a couple of books about the 442nd Regimental Combat Team on my want to read list for a while now.  This ups the priority for me.

[Conflicting Thought]

9 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer

I'm not a serial killer enthusiast by any means but I probably have a slightly above average awareness and interest in the subject.  What amazes me is that I had no awareness of this guy, at all. He makes Son of Sam and BTK look like lightweights.

I have to think part of it was that he was initially convicted of killing sex workers, who were generally given a lower priority than other violent crimes, if they were prioritized at all. also, he didn't write letters to the police or press.  He later confessed or was convicted of several other murders. 

A pretty good documentary series. I'd recommend it if you're interested in that sort of thing.

just finished the second episode...i dont know, kind of has the same problems that almost all of the true crime docs have, allot of copaganda, questionable views on sex and sex work, sexualization of the women while talking about a serial killer that tortures them. it kinds of rubs me the wrong way.

[BigFatCoward]

Getting to the finish of eastbound and down is becoming a chore. 

[Heartofice]

So finally managed to watch Topgun: Maverick

I am highly aware that my contrarian view here is most likely influenced by two factors:
 

1. I had to watch it at home on a big screen TV rather than in a cinema and that no doubt impacted how powerful the action scenes were and the overall atmosphere
2. I'm not sure I have ever seen Top Gun, and I certainly contain no nostalgia for the movie.

So baring that in mind, I have to say I am really not sure what all the fuss is about with this movie. My over riding thought as it was going on was, that this was a terrible movie that looks good because almost everything about it is so technically well done.

It's almost like a straight to DVD B-Movie got a glow up, a lick of new paint in the form of spectacular shots, some good actors and lots of money spent on military hardware. 

It's quite possible that was I in the right situation, had I been a fan of the first movie I could totally buy into all the cheese and the corny dialogue, I would be creaming myself over the Bruckheimerisms, the sunsets and explosions. But it mostly made me kind of roll my eyes a bit. I did however very much appreciate the sheer unapologetic balls of the movie that ramp the corn up to 11, it took me back to the good old days of the 80s where they just were not ashamed to be so uncynical.. but even then there was a limit.

There are 2 main problems with the movie as far as I'm concerned. Firstly the plot has no weight dramatically and the structure of the movie means you basically watch a training exercise for half a movie, then they repeat it for the second half. When they main event finished I was certain that couldn't have actually been what the movie was building up to, it felt so weird. The whole story is about fighting an 'enemy' that the movie is not allowed to talk about for legal reasons. Really hard to give a shit about some faceless non existent 'enemy'. Are they meant to be in a war? I guessed it was the Russians from the soviet chopper but it was just bizarre to set the whole movie background as some as yet unmentionable bad guy... that you never see.

Also most of the movie consists of people talking in cockpits narrating the action you are about to see or just saw, or people in dusty rooms saying stuff like 'it can't be done!!'. There was so much audio description of what was happening I thought maybe it would be better to listen to it on Audible!

Secondly, I know it's too much to ask for there to be characters in a movie, but there isn't much there at all. Didn't buy any of the relationships, I've no idea what this Rooster guy is like other than I envy his facial hair. Everyone else is less than a one note stereotype.. so I wouldn't actually care if they died. 
On top of that, what the hell was going on with the Jennifer Connelly character / love interest, that felt so tacked on, I have no idea what that was meant to be about. 

So yeah, I guess if I watched in a theatre, the loud noises and flashing lights might have wooed me into coming out thinking I'd had a good time, but on a smaller (its still a damn big tv) screen, I was totally unimpressed.
 

[RumHam]

16 hours ago, dbunting said:

Got a couple more episodes into Yellow jackets. Some suspicions were correct, now have more.

  Hide contents

So why did the damn teddy bear burst into flames???!!?  Supernatural shit? I expected her to die, but thought she would hit a mountain not have that happen.

 

Spoiler

People have tried to argue that the plane caught on fire, then the bear. I don't buy it. To me that was some clearly supernatural shit.

 

[Spockydog]

Season 2 of Slow Horses is pretty good.

[Ramsay B.]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

  Hide contents

People have tried to argue that the plane caught on fire, then the bear. I don't buy it. To me that was some clearly supernatural shit.

 

Spoiler

Yeah, that scene is weird. I still don’t know what to think of it. 

I finished 1899. I thought it started strong but kinda slowed the deeper it got into the mystery of what was actually going on. I don’t know if I’ll watch the second season.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

So baring that in mind, I have to say I am really not sure what all the fuss is about with this movie. 

I intentionally watched it on a tiny screen on a plane for free as a fuck you to Tom Cruise. It's okay, but I do not get the over the top praise. The story and characters are pretty basic and the action scenes are by the numbers at this point.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

7 hours ago, Conflicting Thought said:

just finished the second episode...i dont know, kind of has the same problems that almost all of the true crime docs have, allot of copaganda, questionable views on sex and sex work, sexualization of the women while talking about a serial killer that tortures them. it kinds of rubs me the wrong way.

I get what you're saying. There are a few voices in that doc in support of sex workers, but yeah. It's interesting to see the attitudes of the day. Watch the third episode.

I watched this like I did the Son of Sam series. Like the contributors were actually the subjects. That thing stopped being about Son of Sam after the first episode and started being about these crazy conspiracy theorists connecting SoS to a transcontinental satanic conspiracy. It's subtle. The doc doesn't really come down one way or the other on these guys, but I suspect that's what they invite the viewer to do.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

  Hide contents

People have tried to argue that the plane caught on fire, then the bear. I don't buy it. To me that was some clearly supernatural shit.

 

100%

[Spockydog]

She was just unlucky.

[Spockydog]

13 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I intentionally watched it on a tiny screen on a plane for free as a fuck you to Tom Cruise. 

Bet he looked really small.