Watch, Watched, Watching: November Rain

[Corvinus85]

I've watched the new season of Jack Ryan on Amazon. It was alright, but there were some ridiculous things, and mainly I had three problems with this season.

Spoiler

1) This season continues to have Jack Ryan be less of an analyst and more of an action hero. If Amazon had tried following the books more closely, instead of copying the feel of just about every other spy thriller since the first Jason Bourne, they would have had a more unique show.

2) This season felt lazier in world building that the previous two seasons. Everyone was speaking English. I guess they couldn't find enough good Czech and Russian actors or something. That being said James Cosmo is the highlight of the season; he was very good. There are other world building issues that makes the show feel smaller despite the plot's ambition, like the Czech president sneaking about and having barely any security.

3) If this show had come out a few years ago, it would have felt more believable. But with the Ukraine-Russia War ongoing, I have a hard time believing the premise of the plot. On top of that, it seems the show is unaware of how many European countries are in NATO. I'm not sure why the focus was the Czech Republic and not Poland.

 

[williamjm]

58 minutes ago, briantw said:

Also watched Glass Onion.  I don't know if that movie was specifically written to lambast Elon Musk, but if not it came out at the exact perfect moment to feel that way.

I saw some comment from Rian Johnson a couple of days ago where he did say that he wasn't intending to comment on any one tech billionaire in particular, more the general concept.

The billionaire in Glass Onion makes a point of not having any social media presence, so in some respects he's not very Musky.

[Ran]

Miles Bron is basically an amalgam of all sorts of tech "disruptors" -- Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk, Jobs (indirectly referenced with the line about reality distorion fields), Ellison (who paid like half a billion for a private island), Paul Allen (collector of pop art and other things), Dorsey (wellness guru type stuff), Thiel, etc. Silicon Valley already did this sort of thing with its depiction of characters like Gavin Belson and Russ Hanneman.

[briantw]

9 minutes ago, Ran said:

Miles Bron is basically an amalgam of all sorts of tech "disruptors" -- Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk, Jobs (indirectly referenced with the line about reality distorion fields), Ellison (who paid like half a billion for a private island), Paul Allen (collector of pop art and other things), Dorsey (wellness guru type stuff), Thiel, etc. Silicon Valley already did this sort of thing with its depiction of characters like Gavin Belson and Russ Hanneman.

No doubt.  It's just that the speech that Craig gives near the end where he solves the mystery almost feels written as a direct attack on Elon.  But that's probably just a result of Elon's spiral into alt right conspiracy theories and extreme narcissism that has been playing out very publicly for the past two months.  Not often you get to see a dude live tweet his midlife crisis.

[Ran]

2 minutes ago, briantw said:

It's just that the speech that Craig gives near the end where he solves the mystery almost feels written as a direct attack on Elon. 

The whole plot of the films turns on the fact that 

Spoiler

Miles Bron is an idiot. The speech is just summing up all the evidence to this fact. 

Personally, I thought it was a bit much to have this guy come into the lives of these people and then co-found a massive multi-billion dollar company while launching each of them into fame and fortune in various areas of endeavor, and yet he's supposed to be an idiot.

He had to have some sort of genius to get those people to where they were, and Alpha to where it was. It was a bit cutesy, similar to the way we're supposed to accept that Cassandra lost 100% of her stake in Alpha despite having run it for a decade, with the facile "Social Network-ed" reference when that's referring to a situation that happened about 1 year into the existence of Facebook, not a full decade where Cassandra must have become one of the most famous entrepreneurs in the world.

 

[maarsen]

2 hours ago, briantw said:

I loved Smile.  Thought it was ridiculously fun and the ending was awesome.

Also watched Glass Onion.  I don't know if that movie was specifically written to lambast Elon Musk, but if not it came out at the exact perfect moment to feel that way.

I felt the same way. A theatrical poke in the eye to Musk.

[maarsen]

23 hours ago, Zorral said:

In these days his home would be in torylandia.

I haven't watched Turn yet. My wife has shown no interest. Yet that name Simcoe has a real resonance here in Upper Canada as basically being the person who created the province of Ontario. He was also the first governor in the British Empire to ban slavery, back in 1783. I may have to watch it on my own.

[Zorral]

Ya, this is fictionalized history for sure.  As the author of the book from which Turn was adapted knows, though he liked the series so much he rather played that down somewhat; a lot of the characters in his book got changed, shall we say, for the series, including Abraham Woodhull's father's.

Here's a good synopsis of the historical Simcoe on Long Island -- and as you point out, a governor of a Canadian province:

https://www.denofgeek.com/culture/amcs-turn-the-real-story-of-capt-simcoe/

 

[Relic]

Fleishman Is in Trouble. Was sort of enjoying this in a way that made me wince and cringe every now and again. And then I watched the 7th episode. Wow. Well worth the 6 hours I invested into it. 

Edited December 27, 2022 by Relic

[Tywin et al.]

Just finished a 2021 Showtime Charlie Chaplin doc which featured some of his kids and a lot of people who knew him. It's not breaking news that he was a creep with young women and an asshole overall, but if you can set that aside, he lived one of the most fascinating lives there ever will be. It's wild that his first real speaking role features arguably the greatest speech ever made. His overlaps with Hitler are simply stunning:
 

 

[Heartofice]

It’s possibly just my fading memory but getting back into His Dark Materials the whole ‘war on the authority’ plotline seems quite jarring, a lot of things just seem to have happened off screen and Azriel is doing a bunch of things that seem to have come out of nowhere.

It’s been a while since I saw season 2 and even longer since I read the books , but it feels like I missed a huge chunk of the story. Or that’s how it’s been written.

[polishgenius]

Like everyone else, watched Glass Onion. Quite surprised at how different a movie it is to the first one, without wilding out into a completely different feeling. Not complaining about that though. I enjoy movies that are dumb at heart but cleverly put together and this nails that. It also slam-dunks a very tricky tone- it could easily have come off as mean-spirited or obliviously out-of-touch but it managed to avoid that.


 

Also: I won't link it here coz it contains spoilers but for those of you who have seen it I recommend, for a grace note, Ben Shapiro's twitter thread about it. Didn't think we'd see a tweet-thread review as dumb as Logan Paul's of Nope in the same year, but Shapiro's sneaked in before the cut with a damn good effort. 

[Tywin et al.]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

Also: I won't link it here coz it contains spoilers but for those of you who have seen it I recommend, for a grace note, Ben Shapiro's twitter thread about it. Didn't think we'd see a tweet-thread review as dumb as Logan Paul's of Nope in the same year, but Shapiro's sneaked in before the cut with a damn good effort. 

I was curious to check this out and...I never even made it to his Twitter page. The internet is having a good bit of fun with him. 

Cannot believe someone so dumb gets as much attention as he does. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

I was curious to check this out and...I never even made it to his Twitter page. The internet is having a good bit of fun with him. 

Cannot believe someone so dumb gets as much attention as he does. 

He's been hailed as some kind of super genius since he was a little kid. I don't get it. And fuck me I can't stand his voice. 

-

A general point about this film being so much sillier and implausible than the first; a plot device used in the first film, a woman who reflexively vomits when she tells a lie? Yeah, that's not actually a thing. 

And have any of you actually been following FTX? Ever followed Enron? Holy shit. The gang of idiots portrayed in the film is, at worst, taking a composite of past/present personalities and cantilevering it out ever so slightly. 

ETA: George Santos is kind of amazing. I mean, he's total piece of shit, but goddamn you gotta respect the hustle. 

Edited December 27, 2022 by Deadlines? What Deadlines?

[Heartofice]

I had to look up what he said, and I guess what he’s saying is sort of valid, Glass Onion isn’t a cleverly constructed murder mystery aka Agatha Christie and it does use a number of cop out devices to get to the conclusion.

Think what Shapiro is missing is that Glass Onion IMO isn’t trying to be an intricately plotted mystery, if you came here looking for that then you would be disappointed. I’m not sure if Johnson is actively trying to subvert the genre but he’s not as far as I can tell trying to directly copy it. 
 

The first movie wasn’t that either, as above there is a character who vomits when they lie, much of the mystery reveal in that movie was just plain silliness. Silliness is fun, and these movies are meant to prioritise fun.

They are certainly better than the god awful Poirot movies we got recently. 

[Mexal]

20 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

ETA: George Santos is kind of amazing. I mean, he's total piece of shit, but goddamn you gotta respect the hustle. 

"I never said I was Jewish, I am "Jew-ish". Too funny.

[williamjm]

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

It’s possibly just my fading memory but getting back into His Dark Materials the whole ‘war on the authority’ plotline seems quite jarring, a lot of things just seem to have happened off screen and Azriel is doing a bunch of things that seem to have come out of nowhere.

It’s been a while since I saw season 2 and even longer since I read the books , but it feels like I missed a huge chunk of the story. Or that’s how it’s been written.

I've heard there was meant to be another episode in season 2 which was going to focus on what Asriel was up to, but due to McAvoy's schedule it was being filmed after the others, and then the first Covid lockdown came along and it got scrapped.

It has been a really long time since I read the books, but from what I remember we also don't see much of Asriel building up his forces.

[Luzifer's right hand]

I got a two weeks trial of crunchroll because I wanted to watch season 2 of One Punch Man. A fun watch I must say.

No app for my TV but it is available in the PS5.

Any anime recs? I'm currently watching Chainsaw Man which is fun so far.

[Relic]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Cannot believe someone so dumb gets as much attention as he does. 

Really? 

[Heartofice]

20 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I've heard there was meant to be another episode in season 2 which was going to focus on what Asriel was up to, but due to McAvoy's schedule it was being filmed after the others, and then the first Covid lockdown came along and it got scrapped.

It has been a really long time since I read the books, but from what I remember we also don't see much of Asriel building up his forces.

Thanks, that would explain a lot. I think even the end of season 2 felt very strange and like a lot was missing, stuff I assumed would be filled in by season 3. But so far there just seems to be huge gaps in the story, almost like it’s an entirely different story. Could be me.

I also have a vague recollection that the book didn’t do a good job at this either