Watch, Watched, Watching: From Scott Civil Wars to Christmas Movie Wars

[Mexal]

15 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

I read a brief interview about that. They said they went with book 11 to show Reacher's professional roots. I also think that just like season 1, season 2 gives Reacher personal reasons to go after the baddies. (I haven't read any of the books)

That seems right. Most of the Reacher books are "Reacher gets off bus, helps someone, finds out they're in deep shit and kills everyone". It's pretty random scenarios without any real connection to Reacher. First book was his brother, this one is about his old Army team. The personal connection plus his background makes for a good second season. Not a clue what they'll do for the third, which they will get given how watched S2 is already.

[dbunting]

40 minutes ago, Mexal said:

That seems right. Most of the Reacher books are "Reacher gets off bus, helps someone, finds out they're in deep shit and kills everyone". It's pretty random scenarios without any real connection to Reacher. First book was his brother, this one is about his old Army team. The personal connection plus his background makes for a good second season. Not a clue what they'll do for the third, which they will get given how watched S2 is already.

They announced before this season aired that S3 was already filming, not approved, but actually already filming. 

I've read a lot of the books and that description fits them perfectly. Random town, comes across seemingly minor thing, helps out, murder and mayhem ensues.  Easy reading, turn off brain and just enjoy.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

The Green Mile

'Finally got around to this one. I'd honestly never had much interest in watching another Stephen King prison movie. I'd only ever seen clips and they all seemed a little hokey to me. I decided to give it a shot.

I'm glad I did. Wonderful Film. It's a bit long but it never dragged at all. Had me from start to finish.

The Crown.

I'm probably a bigger fan than some of these last two seasons. This one had a very somber tone and I think does an excellent job of capping off the series. 

[Teng Ai Hui]

I decided to wait on Reacher.  I’d rather binge-watch the whole season in January than watch it week-to-week. Instead, I watched seasons 1b and 2a of Quantum Leap (2022).  Before that, I watched season 2 of SurrealEstate.

Currently, I’m watching Found.  I don’t really care about the search for the missing person that happens in each episode, but I’m intrigued by the character development and character interactions.  For network television, the main character is very morally gray.
 

Edited December 21, 2023 by Teng Ai Hui

[AncalagonTheBlack]

Anyone watched the South Park special that came out yesterday?

 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

No but I'm gonna.

[Heartofice]

I felt the ending to Murder at the end of the world fell a bit flat for me.

Spoiler

Obviously AI was going to be the answer to the mystery, the whole show was pointing to AI as a core story element without really dwelling on it that much, so it was clear Ray was going to be the who dunnit.

Having said that, the conclusion all felt a bit rushed and barely scratched the surface of what AI is, and didn’t really go deep on the topic at all. Instead they just set fire to it and job done. Bit anti climactic 

However I liked the show overall, enjoyed my time watching it. The foundation of the show was the relationship between Bill and Darcy and that was what really grabbed my attention. The murder mystery element was all a bit meh. 
 

Shout out to Clive Owen for a performance that creeped me the fuck out. Not sure what he did but he subtly switched his usual charming Brit persona to be 5% more narcissistic and it captured exactly the way controlling CEOs behave. 

[Ran]

Watched Bradley Cooper's Maestro, his biopic about the great conductor, music educator, and composer Leonard Bernstein, and his relationship with his wife Felicia Montealegre, played by Carey Mulligan. This is very much Oscar-bait as things go, and Cooper goes all out as performer, co-writer, and director. But at the end of it, I felt that there's a forced aspect to the direction, that a lot of the directorial and framing choices were driven by the goal of being artistic rather than necessarily being what was best from scene to scene. 

That said, Cooper is a generous collaborator, and while he could have made the film all about him, Carey Mulligan has top billing -- and rightfully so, it's a really finely-tuned performance from start to finish, the best I've seen from an actress this year (Emma Stone is the other big candidate being talked about, but Poor Things has only been shown at festivals so far).

I think Cooper  should also get some real credit for the evolution of the script, which per interviews initially started as a fairly straightforward biopic, but then became more and more centralized around the Lenny-Felicia marriage, which I think was the right choice. I have seen some critics ding the film for not being enough about Bernstein's music and conducting, but the man left an enormous body of work that anyone can look up right now -- while the details of his personal life and marriage are not so easy to come by.

There's some stand-out moments, mostly from Mulligan, but there's a really amazing depiction of a famous Bernstein conducting performance at around the 90 minute mark which I felt was terrific. Mahler's Resurrection Symphony is gorgeous.

[Annara Snow]

Trying to finish a few more TV shows before the end of the year.

Binged Silo - excellent SciFi mystery thriler/drama with a strong cast. Great seeing Rebecca Ferguson as the lead in a good show, Tim Robbins - who I haven't seen in a long time (where has he been?), Iain Glen as the protagonist's dad, and Harriet Walter is the MVP of appearing as an interesting, complicated mother figure (not actual mother here) in some of the best recent/current TV shows. The twist at the end opens up interesting possibilities for season 2

Finished season 2 of The Bear - which is excellent workplace/family drama about a bunch of dysfunctional but still likable people, which barely has any comedy elements, so I'm puzzled how it's being put in the comedy category. Currently halfway through Beef, which is amazing and will probably end up as one of my favorite shows of the year - another comedy-drama (which is a drama according to AACTA, while The Bear is a comedy.... although Beef has so many more comedic moments, and not just with comic relief minor characters like The Bear does.)

My ideal outcome of these Emmys would be if Succession, Barry and Beef won their respective categories (drama, comedy and limited series) because those will probably end up being my favorite shows of the year (if Beef is as good throughout as it's been so far). Although that would also be hilarious since they're all more or less the same sub-genre of comedy-drama that could be called tragedy-dark comedy, but I love that sub-genre. This will probably not happen though - Succession and Beef are almost certainly winning, but Emmys never cared much for Barry, so the comedy category will probably be won either by The Bear (which I'd be OK with even though I'd prefer it wait for the next Emmys to win for season 2, and even though it's not even comedy-drama but just drama) or Ted Lasso (which would be ridiculous - while Ted Lasso was one of my favorite comedies of the last few years, its final season was very inconsistent and doesn't deserve all these nominations, let alone a win. It should have only gotten a few acting nominations and nothing else).

[Zorral]

Watched the final episode of Murder At the End of the World. Not only are there loads of loose ends / or matters just dropped, but O lordessa, here we are in an obscenely richest in the world tech bro smartest people on the planet murder mystery, with All the HiTech trappings, and the best the the smartest people in the screen industry can come up with is –

Spoiler

the Butler did it, all be it the Butler is an AI. But we saw that coming from the gitgo.

This mess did not impress.  By far the best parts were not the HiTechBro stuff, but two kids driving the Southwest in search of a serial killer and falling in love.

[Heartofice]

33 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Watched the final episode of Murder At the End of the World. Not only are there loads of loose ends / or matters just dropped, but O lordessa, here we are in an obscenely richest in the world tech bro smartest people on the planet murder mystery, with All the HiTech trappings, and the best the the smartest people in the screen industry can come up with is –

  Hide contents

the Butler did it, all be it the Butler is an AI. But we saw that coming from the gitgo.

This mess did not impress.  By far the best parts were not the HiTechBro stuff, but two kids driving the Southwest in search of a serial killer and falling in love.

The only time I will ever agree with Zorral on anything.

[Heartofice]

Sat down to watch obvious Oscar Bait Maestro tonight with the Mrs. 
 

Neither of us had any real knowledge of Leonard Bernstein and I was only vaguely aware of his music. So maybe that didn’t help, but we switched it off after an hour of trying hard to get into it.

Unfortunately found it extremely dull. 
 

Cooper looks bizarre, like he’s carved out of plastic, a big nosed Max Headroom. 
 

Carey Mulligan is excellent and I loved her accent, but she can’t hold it together for me to like the rest of it. 
 

Maybe by the end of the movie you will end up liking Bernstein, or at least get a sense of him. But certainly we watched that first hour and we got nothing.

Im sure it will win Oscars, it’s literally covered in honey trying to attract votes. 

[Zorral]

@kissdbyfire  

Don't know if you like the Vera Stanhope novels by Ann Cleeves, or the television series adapted from them, but if you do, the 12th, the latest series of Vera, on Britbox, has just put the 5th episode, to be a Christmas special.  It's the way I like tv, or movies or novels that have Christmas in them -- it's not about Christmas, it's that the events are taking place in the season.  The Rising Tide (2023), is fabricated from the 10th Stanhope, which so far is the final Vera novel.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

Rebel Moon Part 1 (and it is very much a part 1) Rocks. The Tomato is wrong. More words to follow.

[AncalagonTheBlack]

3 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Rebel Moon Part 1 (and it is very much a part 1) Rocks. The Tomato is wrong. More words to follow.

Are u serious? 

[Argonath Diver]

I suppose I'm a more than a bit side-eyed here with Deadline's strong opinion. I  dismissed Rebel Moon entirely because Fuck Zach Snyder, the trailers were atrocious, and the eventual reviews have agreed. As much as a genre fan as I am, I feel like it's inevitably worse than a Jupiter Ascending-level disaster. That said, I completely dismissed the early teasers for Battle Angel: Alita, but damn if I don't enjoy the crap out of that corny ass film. 

So, Deadlines, it's late, I'm feeling right and I'm gonna actually give it a try. Only because I already finished the 3 eps of Reacher that Amazon gave us and I'm ready for some pulp.

[Ran]

1 hour ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

Are u serious? 

You've never met a bigger Snyder-head than Deadlines.

[Argonath Diver]

Holy shit, they paid Anthony Hopkins to read the Star Wars crawl instead of showing it?

That's my very first impression of this film. It's also immediately comical that the evil empire thing is clearly the goddamn Empire. I'm 2 minutes 15 seconds in and this is atrocious. I'm going to Spoiler the rest of my MST3K-plus-Jameson responses assuming this continues to be somehow worse than Channing Tatum as a tame man-dog.

Spoiler

3 min in: Okay Sofia Butella is gorgeous. Check. She just did a blatant Gladiator "smell the dirt" moment as her intro. The score is truly bad so far. First conversation was stilted.

6 min in: We're in an inn now. Every actor has chosen their own accent.

9:22 Finally the first Snyder slo-mo moment. It's getting intense guys!

"What do you think they want?!"

"Everything!"

16min in: Ed Skrein was silly and fun as a cocky bad guy in Alita, but his awkward attempt at Chrisoph Weinz in Inglorious Basterds is a colossal failure. Yikes. Deadlines no action has happened but you're already losing me mate.

24min in: Deadlines this movie is atrocious.

My goodness. Thanks for nothing for wasting a half hour of my time. I truly, truly hope that anyone on the edge of trying this shite out avoids it on my word. 

Good night.

I'm giving up right as what appears to be a near-rape scene plays out. I can't. Where art thou, Tairy?

 

Edited December 22, 2023 by Argonath Diver

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Okay, but is it fun to watch ?  Cause that’s all that really matters to me.

24 minutes ago, Argonath Diver said:

Holy shit, they paid Anthony Hopkins to read the Star Wars crawl instead of showing it?

That's my very first impression of this film. It's also immediately comical that the evil empire thing is clearly the goddamn Empire. I'm 2 minutes 15 seconds in and this is atrocious. I'm going to Spoiler the rest of my MST3K-plus-Jameson responses assuming this continues to be somehow worse than Channing Tatum as a tame man-dog.

  Hide contents

3 min in: Okay Sofia Butella is gorgeous. Check. She just did a blatant Gladiator "smell the dirt" moment as her intro. The score is truly bad so far. First conversation was stilted.

6 min in: We're in an inn now. Every actor has chosen their own accent.

9:22 Finally the first Snyder slo-mo moment. It's getting intense guys!

"What do you think they want?!"

"Everything!"

16 in: Ed Skrein was silly and fun as a cocky bad guy in Alita, but his awkward attempt at Chrisoph Weinz in Inglorious Basterds is a colossal failure. Yikes. Deadlines no action has happened but you're already losing me mate.

 

 

[Argonath Diver]

5 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Okay, but is it fun to watch ?  Cause that’s all that really matters to me.

 

I absolutely guarantee you'll like it.