Whatcha Watching?

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

11 hours ago, Zorral said:

It was absorbing, though ... well, not so historically credible in every way.  But that is the case with all period dramas it seems, some more and others less plausible in their changes and their reasons for them. (But I end up watching most of them, if not sooner, then later, it seems! )

The White Queen, to which The White Princess is the sequel, is even more absorbing. Both are adapted from Romance Historicals by author Philippa Gregory.

Yeah I don’t watch Starz period dramas for their historicity. I found the moral ambiguity, chemistry between the leads and political intrigue way higher than the later seasons of got and hotd.

[Zorral]

9 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

chemistry between the leads

  The actors did fill their characters most successfully!

 

As for not watching for historical accuracy: sometimes it's fine, and sometimes the lack thereof spoils the work for people who do know it entirely.  There are whole sections of The Tudors for instance, where they went so far off facts as to have historical characters do what they didn't do, or not have them do what they did do.  Yet, the actors were very good, the writing was so tight, and one felt (emphasis on felt) that this constant tension and anxiety of living in the Henry VIII's court was like this.  The biggest problem is that the actor refused to be the obese stinking thing Henry VIII was by his middle-late years, which would have doubtless had an effect on the audience's regard for not only that character but his actions as well.

Other times, as in Braveheart, with a princess running around all over the country alone, not even wearing a cloak in freezing seasons, etc. -- along with ALL the myriad utter lies instead of history -- no enjoyment, no immersion, and I despise that thing. Also the extremist political subtext.  Playing hell with history is always top of the extremist, authoritarian playbook!

[Darryk]

Watching the last season of The Crown. It's still good but I'm just not enjoying watching The Crown in modern times as much, especially since some of the events that took place are still so heartbreaking. I loved watching ye olde post-WW2 England in the earlier seasons.

[Zorral]

Let's face it: Queen Elizabeth II was the most interesting person in that bunch, and she still is, even though she's no longer here.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

37 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Let's face it: Queen Elizabeth II was the most interesting person in that bunch, and she still is, even though she's no longer here.

And yet she's not interesting at all. 

[Zorral]

17 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

And yet she's not interesting at all. 

Ya.  Isn't that amazing?  Her lack of charisma, etc. makes her opaque > therefor making us speculate.  Note: I did not say she was a fine person, a good person, or anything like that.

[Darryk]

She sure was interesting when Claire Foy played her.

[RhaenysBee]

I’m watching The Morning Show, because I had watched season one back in… when it came out and really enjoyed it and respected the series and the creators for the angles and nuance and self-reflection of the show. So I thought it would be a good idea to check out seasons two and three. Nah. Not. Nope. It wasn’t. 

season two still had some highlights hidden in between in the mounds of crap most of it was. It was repetitive, boring, lackluster, unfair, hypocritical and did I say repetitive and boring? On the first look it masqueraded as a Covid season, which is why I put of watching it for years. Turns out Covid was only a minor background story, and I had no reason to avoid it after all. Oh well, there were some quality bits 

Spoiler

I truly enjoyed Paola’s character and Mitch’s storyline, and Cory was entertaining for a while as well. I also liked Laura Peterson and the contrast she brought into the show juxtaposed to the neurotic mess Alex is. It was a breath of fresh air. 

And much needed one with the entire season being centered around Alex and her anxiety about not being America’s sweetheart for half a minute. Just watching Jennifer Aniston act out this character makes me stressed. There’s nothing remotely entertaining about a rich celebrity having a crisis and a mental breakdown every ten minutes, I don’t even know how the character is still alive, because I don’t see how a human body could take that amount of stress without getting a heart attack or an aneurysm. It’s way overdone and way overacted. The Bradley love story line bored the life out of me especially because they backed out of the interesting angles of the theme. I hated that they killed off Mitch and especially the way they did it. Overall the season was characterized by a lot of random and fragmented topics they threw up into the air and completely abandoned and forgot about in the next minute, everything is explored in the shallow waters because the show no longer dared to risk going deep enough that they might end up being controversial. 

Then season 3 came along and its u-n-h-i-n-g-e-d. So far I wanted to turn it off twice in three episodes, and the next time I feel that way, I will turn it off and walk away. It is at this point the equivalent of being on Twitter.

It’s truly a shame because season 1 did have potential and was able to keep a fair and balanced scale. Not anymore.

 

[Corvinus85]

So this must have been the year science-fiction did musicals? I'm binge watching the final episodes of Doom Patrol and just got to episode 9 which is a musical, really funny and with good character moments. Maybe not as good as the musical episode from Strange New Worlds, but it does have Oscar-winner Brendan Fraser singing about masturbating. 

The Marvels had a musical number, too. Any other SF show/movie this year?

[Annara Snow]

On 11/22/2023 at 6:57 PM, Zorral said:

It was absorbing, though ... well, not so historically credible in every way.  But that is the case with all period dramas it seems, some more and others less plausible in their changes and their reasons for them. (But I end up watching most of them, if not sooner, then later, it seems! )

The White Queen, to which The White Princess is the sequel, is even more absorbing. Both are adapted from Romance Historicals by author Philippa Gregory.

The White Queen was a show with great performances (with a couple of exceptions) and terrible writing. I can't say for sure how much of that was the fault of the showrunner, but I tried to read two of Philipa Gregory's books and gave up, so I think it's mostly the fault of the source material. The lack of historical accuracy could be excused if it was a good show (or good books) but it wasn't. 

It also looked pretty, but was ridiculous in terms of costumes, haristyles and set pieces, which really took the lack of accuracy to the next level. Every battle seemed to take place between 20 men in some forest, none of the royals seemed to have any servants or retinue at any point, etc.

It did have its moments, though, mostly in the middle. It started badly (the romance between Elizabeth and Edward was always one of the weakest points of the show), got better, and then deteriorated again. The best character was Margaret Beaufort (very much not historically accurate) and her dynamic with Rupert Graves' Thomas Stanley, while historically inaccurate, was a lot of fun. But with most of the other characters, it seemed like the show had no idea what it was doing. They somehow made Edward IV boring (and Max Irons with his lack of charisma was a poor choice, one of those couple of exceptions). On the other hand, Rebecca Ferguson and Aneurin Barnard  were amazing in roles that were very weirdly written and made no sense (Elizabeth Woodville and Richard III, respectively), but the most inconsistenyl and weirdly written character was Anne Neville. All I got from it is that Gregory has a bizarre hate on for her, although not as much as she has for poor Cecilly Neville, who wasn't even allowed to be interesting at any point or a cool villains (like Margaret of Anjou was made to be in her short appearance).

The show's basic premise was to make it look like women were the main engineers of the conflict, and to make that work, a ton of historical inaccuracies had to be there - the female characters were made to be in places where they were not and not likely to be (always popping up just before the battle or even in the middle of a battlefield) and the roles of powerful men were reduced and their actions to women. All this was supposed to be in the service of some pseudo-feminist premise, but ends up instead looking pretty misogynistic - someone could watch this and go "look at all those catty women hating each other and causing trpuble". Gregory generally loves portraying historical women in black and white terms, you just know immediately who she's decided to hate and who she likes, but the ones portrayed as heroines don't fare well either. Case in point, her Elizabeth Woodville is stripped of the ambition, pride  and prickliness that historical accounts give her (Gregory hates ambitious women) and instead made into a country bumpkin who is constantly shocked at how things work at court, but Gregory made the one accusation against Elizabeth that makes the least sense real in this story... she's actually a witch, as are all the women in her family! But they are good witches, you see, because river goddess or something. Except she and her daughters use it to curse people and their offspring, so how the heck is that supposed to be good? The show definitely struggled with morality, too.

I didn't watch The White Princess or the one about Catherine of Aragon, because the descriptions made it sound like they would be worse than TWQ. 

Edited November 24, 2023 by Annara Snow

[Annara Snow]

On 11/22/2023 at 11:31 PM, IlyaP said:

Hey @Ran, question, where's a good place to talk about what we're *not* watching, because it's clear as day the movie's going to fall apart? (As in: Scream VII, which looks to have been ghostface'd this morning.) Want to make sure I put it into the correct thread and not give you a headache. 

As it should.

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Annara Snow said:

was ridiculous in terms of costumes, haristyles and set pieces

Aren't they all, from the Taylor-Burton Cleopatra to The Tudors, The Gilded Age*, etc.!  Not to mention the dentistry, and the stirrups in Roman epics!    Also, yes, I am among those who find Philippa Gregory unreadable for multiple reasons.  But she's taken it to the bank on two fronts, so she doesn't need to care what I think!

* You should be in my friend's atelier when she and other costume fabricators meet for their weekly get-togethers of wine, bread, cheese, olives on these matters!  You will hear "zipper" employed in such a tone you might think they were pulling *()&*Y&&^T&#))(#E out of the most scatological lexicon. Right now it's The Gilded Age that has achieved the acme of their spitting disgust.

Edited November 24, 2023 by Zorral

[Argonath Diver]

I've been rewatching Spartacus: Blood and Sand after some chatter here about it inspired me. Man I love this show. It's just so damn stupid and outrageously horny. I find myself laughing and clapping multiple times an episode. Mind you I'm only doing this at 1am and on after a long bar shift and some strong Indica; I'm not sure I'd ever watch this show stone sober.

Also reminds me how little interest I have in the Ashur spinoff thing; the actor does a fine job of making me hate every scene that character infests. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

7 hours ago, Argonath Diver said:

I've been rewatching Spartacus: Blood and Sand after some chatter here about it inspired me. Man I love this show. It's just so damn stupid and outrageously horny. I find myself laughing and clapping multiple times an episode. Mind you I'm only doing this at 1am and on after a long bar shift and some strong Indica; I'm not sure I'd ever watch this show stone sober.

I checked with the guys in the lab and we all agree. Every word of this checks out. 

-

That Blue Eye Samurai is a pretty good show. 

[Corvinus85]

Pretty good ending to Doom Patrol, the usual silly stuff + a lot of bittersweet moments.

[Darryk]

Watched The Killer with Michael Fassbender and it was brilliantly made but I felt the story was lacking something. I know that it was part of the intention for there to not be much background to anything going on but I still feel like something was missing.

[williamjm]

I finished the third season of Only Murders in the Building. I think this was probably an improvement on the second season which had felt a bit unfocused at times but having everything revolve around Oliver's play/musical helped. Meryl Streep was a good addition to the cast and Matthew Broderick's portrayal of himself as an obsessive actor was very amusing. The Death Rattle musical was both absurdly awful and annoyingly catchy.

[dbunting]

On 11/25/2023 at 7:04 AM, Darryk said:

Watched The Killer with Michael Fassbender and it was brilliantly made but I felt the story was lacking something. I know that it was part of the intention for there to not be much background to anything going on but I still feel like something was missing.

Pretty much agree. It wasn't bad but seemed like it was missing something.

Spoiler

I like how he ended it with the client. Got to him, showed him how easy it was. Then was like, are we good? Yep, ok, adios.  Because it wasn't personal, the client didn't have anything to do with what happened to his girl. That at least felt appropriate to the character.

 

[Heartofice]

For some reason Kenneth Branagh keeps making those Poirot movies, and for some reason I’ve seen them all.

The latest, A Haunting in Venice, is actually quite a step away from the other two. Where Murder on the Orient expresss and Death on the Nile, were very colourful and almost bubble gummy in their style, with big celebs playing roles, and worst of all, an over use of loud flashy CGI, A Haunting feels much much smaller, though maybe no less unrestrained.

The budget was clearly slashed for this movie, there are almost no CGI shots, maybe as a reaction to just how crap it was in Nile, maybe due to costs.

Visually though it’s an improvement, Branagh does more with less, and uses the Venice location to the maximum, rather than trying to ‘do things in post’

I appreciated that, at the very least. He also attempted to make the movie visually interesting with many ( far too many) clever angles and camera shots. 
 

Overall though, it just felt like an episode of TV, I’d be pretty aggrieved if I’d paid to see it. 
 

None of these 3 movies are actually good,  but there are 3 of them now. I hope this is the last one, everyone can just go and watch the superior David Suchet version instead, which I’m sure didn’t include a backstory to a moustache.

Edited November 27, 2023 by Heartofice

[Veltigar]

I got stuck on a plane and you know what that means, bad movie time! I managed to polish off the following movies:

1. Mission Impossible II
2. Get Hard
3. Maffia Mama
4. Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2
5. Fast X

I think it was the first time I saw any of these, with the exception of Mission Impossible II, which I had last seen about a decade ago. This is probably the worst streak of movies I have seen in a very long time. I'll review them briefly in turn.

Let's begin with MI II. It's an absolutely dreadful film, which doesn't feel connected to any of the other MI films and is definitely more a John Woo film (past his prime) than it is an MI film. The most interesting about it is that the villain in this film was supposed to play the part of Wolverine, but he had to relinquish the role to Hugh Jackman due to the fact that MI II went wildly over time.

Also interesting, Anthony Hopkins has a small part in this film that was first offered to Ian McKellen. He turned it down, as he was afraid it would interfere with his casting in LOTR and X-Men. If he had accepted, he would have had to drop out of both. We dodged a bullet there). The plot is stupid, the performances bad and the violence is laughably over-the-top, but feels nerved at the same time (forcing Woo to do a PG-13 film was not a good idea). Don't watch it, unless you are stuck on an airplane.

Get Hard was a film that made me sad. I have a higher tolerance for Kevin Hart than most, but the pairing with Will Ferrell is utterly cringe-inducing. The film tells the "story" of a white collar criminal who hires a black person to teach him how to survive prison. It is probably the most homophobic film I have seen in quite some time. Pretty much every attempted "gag" or "joke" in this film was a variation on "you will get anally raped in prison, taking it in the butt is gay, so therefore you are gay". This film would not have been funny in the 1980s, it certainly isn't now.

In Maffia Mama Toni Collette plays a fish-out-of-water American soccer mom who travels to Italy to take care of the affairs of her deceased grandfather. Her plan is to have her "Eat, Pray, Fuck" (the movies words, sigh) in Italy, but on arrival, she finds out that she's the grand daughter of an Italian mob boss and has been designated as his heir. I'm explaining the plot to you, because you have probably never heard of this film before and for good reason. None of the jokes land and since the jokes were the only thing it invested in, that leaves you with a black void of a film.

Fast X was a relief. A relief since I had originally planned to see this in theatre and now I'm so happy that I didn't spent money on this piece of shit. I'm not the biggest fan of this franchise but I re-joined for Fast 9 and the Hobbs and Shaw spin-off. The spin-off was alright and Fast 9 was so ridiculous with sending Ludacris and Tyrese into space that I couldn't help but like it. This was far worse though and I don't even know where to begin with the critique. It's incoherent and the action has become rather boring, but that you could have said that of the previous two films in the franchise as well.

I think the biggest difference is firstly that Jason Momoa's villain just doesn't work. He's annoying instead of menacing and his plans don't make any sense. Secondly, the film also made the mistake of foregrounding Vin Diesel's Domenic Toretto more than in the previous films mentioned (he wasn't in Hobbs and Shaw of course) and he's just utterly devoid of charisma. I have a soft spot for his Riddick, but he just stopped caring for the Toretto character. It's just a way to flex his ego and earn a pay check, but I can't believe out of that entire cast (which was sprawling and included some very talented people) it is him people want to see.

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 then, is literally saving the best for last. I saw the first one when it came out and was deeply disappointed, so I never bothered with Volume 2. I popped it in on the airplane and I found it better than the usual Marvel film. It's still a far cry from a master piece and perhaps some of the enjoyment came from the comparison with all the subpar content I had consumed in the hours before, but I liked the performances. Ego was an interesting antagonist, but it was Michael Rooker who stole the show as Yondu

Spoiler

I feel like GotG: Vol 2 is a good demonstration of what proper stakes can do for a story. Yondu's sacrifice is what sets this film far above most of its Marvel competitors. His inner turmoil about working for Ego and his love for Chris Pratt (whose character name I have already forgotten) could have been much better established, but even half-assed like this he still managed to leave a lasting impression.

I'd like Marvel to invest more in characters like this, but I suppose that doesn't sell enough merc. A pity.