What are you watching?

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Last night, based on an up-thread recommendation, by BFF & I watched the documentary Iron Fists & Kung Fu Kicks, about the rise of martial arts movies. Well, kung fu movies, mostly. It only briefly touches on non-kung-fu martial arts movies. Anyway, it was enjoyable, and I learned a bit. Already knew some of it from having read Jackie Chan's autobiography and having studied Bruce Lee.

Also recently watched the Justice League Dark animated movie, which I found pretty enjoyable. I'm really more of a Marvel guy, but amongst DC characters, Batman, Zatanna, and John Constantine are some of my favorites, so it was fun seeing them work together. Animation was fine, voice acting was fine, plot was fine... basically the whole thing was fine, without anything being extraordinary.

As for 2020 movie viewing goals, that's 3 down, 97 to go!
 
The only good thing about The Blacklist is James Spader to be honest. His character is amazing, and the only reason I watched as long as I did was to see his acting and to see where the mystery was going. Somewhere in S3 though I just couldn't stand the surrounding show anymore.
 
The only good thing about The Blacklist is James Spader to be honest. His character is amazing, and the only reason I watched as long as I did was to see his acting and to see where the mystery was going. Somewhere in S3 though I just couldn't stand the surrounding show anymore.
Yeah, the first two seasons are absolutely the strongest by far. There are smatterings of good episodes later on, but the writing quality of the show gets... odd, and wildly inconsistent. There was one moment in particular which I genuinely could not tell whether was supposed to be comedic or dramatic (it made me laugh HARD though): a character gets kidnapped by a murderous psychopath, then there's a car crash, then they get impaled on something after already having been stabbed, then the character is trying to get away when a fucking BEAR comes out of LITERALLY nowhere and murders the psychopath before attacking, THEN the truck rolls sideways down a fucking hill into a river in which the character drowns. The laugh part came with the random fucking bear, and continued with the drowning. All while there's some teary-eyed plot being cut away to of other characters desperately trying to find them and save them. Just absurd. :goof:

The character Reddington also morphs, personality-wise, until it's almost unrecognizable from the charismatic character from early on. In any case, I like a couple others; Tom after he develops, although that plot quickly gets silly too. I like Dembe's character as well.

I think part of the problem is the season lengths. I get that it's a genuine "made for TV" TV show but they could have cut out so much crap and really focused their time and energy on, say, 6- or 8- episode miniseries. Hell, even episodic movie-length "chapters" like Sherlock; the premise surrounding Reddington and the blacksite is practically begging for such a format.
 
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Just finished watching Mandalorian and a few weeks ago, Star Wars (whichever day it came out). I think there's a marked difference between the big budget and lower budget stuff and much prefer the lower budget (albeit it's a Disney Star Wars thing so probably HBO style budget rather than shoestring). Rogue One was also a very enjoyable movie whilst Last Jedi was awful. Rise of Skywalker was ok, but I went in very wary and thinking that it would be garbage. I think TV shows are the way to go with Star Wars. Waiting two-three years for a film coming out and praying as you go into the theatre that they aren't going to crap on all the stuff you loved as a kid is not enjoyable.

Looking forward to 1917 next week.

On another note HBO should make a series about X-Com. I would cry tears of joy.
 
After Witcher, was in the mood for some anime and some horror, so re-watched Higurashi aka "When They Cry", easily one of the darkest series this side of Elfen Lied. Downloaded Darling in the Franxx, but only watched one episode so far. Need to catch up on The Purge, think I'm 2 or 3 episodes behind, depending how long this season is.

Want to give the Polish Witcher TV series a try, but that would mean I'd have to pay attention enough to read the subtitles rather than arting while it's on, which is a drawback for me with my limited time budget. Thought about rewatching Berserk to get my dark fantasy fix, but only so many times a person can do the Golden Age Arc, shame there isn't a halfway decent adaption of any of the other arcs.
 
While I was NOT in the mood for The Witcher (I'm sure to give it another try someday), I did watch
The Ash Lad: In the Hall of the Mountain King... on Amazon... and that was much more my taste.

666full-the-ash-lad -in-the-hall-of-the-mountain-king-poster.jpg

A straightforward fairy tale, but done well.
Hapless farmboy and his brothers set out to save a princess from a troll, and run into various complications along the way.

We watched it in the original Norwegian... we read that the dubbed version was lacking.
 
This is peripherally on-topic, not about a TV show about TVs themselves. I'm a little perplexed by the desire for totally bezel-less devices. On phones and tablets, we keep moving closer and closer to devices that don't actually give you anywhere to hold the device without activating the touch screen.

The last monitor that I bought had a 1/2 inch bezel, which I didn't care about either way, but the promotional material gushed about how the design "minimized the distracting bezel". Seriously, has anyone here ever been using a computer or been watching something on TV and been distracted by the black, empty expanse framing the picture? At the time, I had a conversation with someone about when we hang pictures, we deliberately give them frames for clarity.

Well, Samsung just announced their completely bezel-less TV today with this promotional image, and they couldn't have done a better job of arguing why I think they are a dumb idea.
samsung-bezel-free-8k-qled-official-ces-2020-1.jpg


Having no frame around your image just makes it blur into the visual noise around it and makes it harder to focus on what you are watching.
 
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This is peripherally on-topic, not about a TV show about TVs themselves. I'm a little perplexed by the desire for totally bezel-less devices. On phones and tablets, we keep moving closer and closer to devices that don't actually give you anywhere to hold the device without activating the touch screen.

The last monitor that I bought had a 1/2 inch bezel, which I didn't care about either way, but the promotional material gushed about how the design "minimized the distracting bezel". Seriously, has anyone here ever been using a computer or been watching something on TV and been distracted by the black, empty expanse framing the picture? At the time, I had a conversation with someone about when we hang pictures, we deliberately give them frames for clarity.

Well, Samsung just announced their completely bezel-less TV today with this promotional image, and they couldn't have done a better job of arguing why I think they are a dumb idea.
samsung-bezel-free-8k-qled-official-ces-2020-1.jpg


Having no frame around your image just makes it blur into the visual noise around it, and makes it harder to focus on what you are watching.
Looks weird and terrible. Also I fucking miss ordinary buttons.
 
I have enough trouble not fat-fingering my stupid tablet without the physical keyboard and it's probably got a 3/4 inch bezel. Can you imagine trying to move that TV without dirtying the hell out of it? My phone already has this problem with the stupid curved screen BS where I can't even hold it without activating something. Drop it on a single corner, guaranteed dead. If this is the future, I don't want it. I'm not even old yet by any conventional definition. Makes me miss those shitty 'innovative' sidekick phones with the gimmicky flipout keyboards.

Yes, framing and bezels are GOOD. I still have human hands and eyes. This comes across more as a status symbol than anything else. Unsurprising as that type of thing almost always sucks in the utilitarian sense.

Whatever. I'd rather have a mounted projector and screen anyway.
 
My go-to happy place lately has been the 1962 UK kids' show "Space Patrol," which, I think it's safe to say, is a ripoff of Gerry Anderson's supermarionation shows. It's black & white, weird, ugly, often sexist (odd, being created, produced and written by a woman), with characters that are often hilariously rude and blunt. But it's also charming, and has some very foreward-thinking science fiction ideas for an early 60's puppet show.
It's all available on youtube, with the first episode below. If you get hooked like I did (which I doubt will happen), keep your eyes peeled for the episode "Planet of Light," probably the unintentionally funniest thing you'll see all week.

 
My go-to happy place lately has been the 1962 UK kids' show "Space Patrol," which, I think it's safe to say, is a ripoff of Gerry Anderson's supermarionation shows. It's black & white, weird, ugly, often sexist (odd, being created, produced and written by a woman), with characters that are often hilariously rude and blunt. But it's also charming, and has some very foreward-thinking science fiction ideas for an early 60's puppet show.
It's all available on youtube, with the first episode below. If you get hooked like I did (which I doubt will happen), keep your eyes peeled for the episode "Planet of Light," probably the unintentionally funniest thing you'll see all week.



Used to watch this all time drunk on late night weekend TV.
 
This is peripherally on-topic, not about a TV show about TVs themselves. I'm a little perplexed by the desire for totally bezel-less devices. On phones and tablets, we keep moving closer and closer to devices that don't actually give you anywhere to hold the device without activating the touch screen.
This. I had a Samsung S3 with this problem in buckets, although they put a rim on the S4 that mitigated the problem a lot. I still have my S4, which cost me the princely sum of £100 or so on Ebay.
The last monitor that I bought had a 1/2 inch bezel, which I didn't care about either way, but the promotional material gushed about how the design "minimized the distracting bezel". Seriously, has anyone here ever been using a computer or been watching something on TV and been distracted by the black, empty expanse framing the picture? At the time, I had a conversation with someone about when we hang pictures, we deliberately give them frames for clarity.

Well, Samsung just announced their completely bezel-less TV today with this promotional image, and they couldn't have done a better job of arguing why I think they are a dumb idea.
samsung-bezel-free-8k-qled-official-ces-2020-1.jpg


Having no frame around your image just makes it blur into the visual noise around it and makes it harder to focus on what you are watching.
Agreed. It might be useful if you wanted to tile the screens into a bigger display, but the tech exists to make monster OLED screens quite cheaply these days so I see little application outside of large public display systems. Even then, you can get monster panels for that application that are pretty seamless, even though they are actually tiled. The ones in the baggage claim area in the new terminal at Soekarno-Hatta are about 10m long each.

777140Baggage_Claim_1.jpg
 
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Finished watching Witcher and enjoyed it.

Decided to watch the new BBC version of Dracula and liked it. I can see how a lot of people hated episode 3, but I thought it worked.

Maybe the Expanse next, or maybe something else, I haven't decided.
 
I ended up not finishing Game of Thrones Season 1. Ned Stark turns out to be a total moron, and after the scene in the throne room where he gets played, I had enough. Since dropping that, I've been binging Hawaii Five-0, and am almost caught up. Just a few more episodes until the Magnum PI crossover. Also a few behind on that show as well.

I also watched Ek Tha Tiger, a Bollywood film starring Salman Khan. He's an undercover agent for RAW (India's CIA) sent to Ireland to check up on some scientist. He meets a girl, falls for her, only to learn she's ISI (Pakistan's CIA). There's some pretty good action scenes. There's a sequel to it, so it is on my list to watch soon.
 
Since dropping that, I've been binging Hawaii Five-0, and am almost caught up. Just a few more episodes until the Magnum PI crossover.

I wonder if it will be as good as the Murder She Wrote/Magnum PI crossover...

gm08vwy6bqj11.jpg
 
I'd wager probably not. The newer incarnation of Hawaii Five-0 and Magnum PI both feature characters now being ex-seals (McGarrett and Magnum are both former seals in the modern takes. Magnum's buddies Rick & TJ are, as is Junior from Five-0), and they get into a lot more gun battles with automatic weapons. Higgins is ex-MI-6, and is pretty badass (she gets to show how badass alot). In the current season, she and Magnum are actually partners in his PI business. There's been hints the two might be heading towards being romantically involved, which I honestly hope they don't do.

That doesn't mean it won't be good, but these shows rely on a bit more action than the originals did. It won't have the same charm though
 
Watched Dracula. I thought it was absolutely horrible.
We're into the second episode now. There's a few good parts but overall we don't like it much. The postmodern wokeness is rather cringy to us.
 
We're into the second episode now. There's a few good parts but overall we don't like it much. The postmodern wokeness is rather cringy to us.

Let's avoid the political side of it.
 
Dracula was awful. Like, as bad as you would imagine a Dracula adaptation written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss could be.


I remember when I used to really like Moffat, but it's like he went off the rails and used up all his good ideas in his first season as Dr Who showrunner, and from there on out has been down this rabbithole of *wink*wink*loook how clever I is* and I'm like "No. No, you're really not."
 
Castlevania, OTOH, hasn't been too bad

I watched Midsommer yesterday. It was really well done - but, not entirely engaging as it was just sort of the Wicker Man 2.0. Actually, I take that back, it was almost the exact plot of the not very well known sequel to the original Wicker Man, the Wicker Tree. I thought it was a really well done film, but I can't help but compare it to Gus Van Sant's shot for shot remake of Hitchcock's Psycho - what was the point?

Has anyone seen the 3 hour director's cut? What does it add to the film?
 
Let's see, lately I finished off the Halloween series by watching Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, Halloween Resurrection, and Halloween (2018). I did not bother watching the Rob Zombie remakes of Halloween and Halloween II because I have no interest in them.

I like H20 a lot, and it was a good ending for the series. Then Halloween Resurrection begins with one of the dumbest retcons in all of fiction, in order to invalidate the end of H20 so that and this movie can happen.

If they had to make Resurrection, I wish they would've just taken the approach to H20 that H20 took towards Halloween IV, V, and VI: just ignore them. Instead, they came up with a retcon that's nearly as stupid as "Superboy punched time." Then end of Resurrection is also stupid, with Busta Rhymes trying to take out Michael Myers with kung fu. But in between the sandwich of stupidity, the middle of the film was actually a pretty solid slasher.

I saw Halloween (2018) in the theater when it was new, and really liked it at the time; probably would have rated it 9/10. Upon the recent watching, I liked it a little less, and would probably knock it down to 8.5. The actors are all pretty solid, the story ain't bad, and, while I would never wish harm on real-life people, within the confines of a fictional slasher movie, those podcasters absolutely got what they deserved.

Watched the Netflix original movie Spectral, which is an action-sci fi thing with a little bit of a horror element. It was ... fine.

Finally, watched the movie Next, where Nicolas Cage can see the future. Do I really need to tell you anything else about it? :clown:

And, lastly, watched my original home team, the Seattle Seahawks, lose their playoff game to the Green Bay Packers. At least it was fun to see Marshawn Lynch get a few more touchdowns before he probably hangs up his cleats for good.
 
Halloween, Halloween 2, and H20 make a great trilogy, if you ignore every other film in the franchise

and I think Halloween and Halloween 2018 make a great pair of films, if you again ignore every other film in the franchise.

But I'm rather sad they didn't continue with the concept of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, where the series became a set of unrelated horror films that are bound only by revolving around the holiday. But H3 was a bomb at the time, even if I consider it a highlight of 80s horror.
 
Halloween really didn't need sequels. I feel there are some films that should just be left as is. I think the big problem is once they saw Freddy and Jason take prominence they felt the same should have been done with Michael Myers. I think when your sequels start ignoring other sequels there is a big problem.

But to be honest, according to the special features on (I guess) the Resurrection Blu-Ray, this was planned from the get-go and wasn't a retcon by the new movie makes, but something Williamson agreed to to make sure his film got made. From Wikipedia:

The writers of Halloween H20: 20 Years Later were left with a dilemma when Jamie Lee Curtis wanted to end the series, but Moustapha Akkad had a clause that legally wouldn't allow the writers to kill Michael Myers off. According to the Blu-ray released by Scream Factory, Curtis almost left the project just weeks before filming, until Kevin Williamson came up with the paramedic storyline and presented it to Akkad. Curtis finally agreed to be a part of the film under the condition that no footage hinting toward a sequel would be presented by the film, and that the audience would believe that Michael was dead until the inevitable sequel was announced. Resurrection's first shot of Michael in the paramedic uniform was filmed the day after H20's principal photography ended, according to H20's editor, Patrick Lussier.
 
Halloween, Halloween 2, and H20 make a great trilogy, if you ignore every other film in the franchise

and I think Halloween and Halloween 2018 make a great pair of films, if you again ignore every other film in the franchise.

But I'm rather sad they didn't continue with the concept of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, where the series became a set of unrelated horror films that are bound only by revolving around the holiday. But H3 was a bomb at the time, even if I consider it a highlight of 80s horror.

I agree with all of these points. Halloween, Halloween II, and Halloween H20 have long been my perfect trifecta of horror movies to pull out every few years and binge on Halloween day.

And now, Halloween and Halloween (2018) make a great pair. I do like the always-ready prepper version of Laurie we get in 2018.

And Halloween III: Season of the Witch is a great and underrated movie.

Although slashers are my second-favorite subgenre of horror movies, after surreal dream-logic Italian horror films, the original Halloween was pretty much the perfect slasher movie. The universe could've just stopped making slasher movies right there and it would have been fine.

But to be honest, according to the special features on (I guess) the Resurrection Blu-Ray, this was planned from the get-go and wasn't a retcon by the new movie makes, but something Williamson agreed to to make sure his film got made. From Wikipedia:

Huh, interesting, I didn't know that. Now I hate the beginning of Resurrection even more! They had all that time, and that was the best they could come up with? Ugh.
 
Huh, interesting, I didn't know that. Now I hate the beginning of Resurrection even more! They had all that time, and that was the best they could come up with? Ugh.

Based on the last sentence, I suspect they did that mostly because they knew Curtis was planning to end it so they wanted to kill the character off, which means they had to film it right away. Not sure but I think Curtis filmed her scenes at the same time for the new movie--it's not entirely clear though.

Which makes you wonder if she was so dead set about ending the series, why she agreed to come back yet another time.
 
I think when your sequels start ignoring other sequels there is a big problem.

But then we wouldn't have those awesome color-coded charts people make to show which Halloween films are in continuity with each other! :clown:
 
Which makes you wonder if she was so dead set about ending the series, why she agreed to come back yet another time.

Well, 20 years is a long time. I imagine it was nothing more than a good scipt and a good paycheque.
 
Halloween really didn't need sequels. I feel there are some films that should just be left as is. I think the big problem is once they saw Freddy and Jason take prominence they felt the same should have been done with Michael Myers. I think when your sequels start ignoring other sequels there is a big problem.

But to be honest, according to the special features on (I guess) the Resurrection Blu-Ray, this was planned from the get-go and wasn't a retcon by the new movie makes, but something Williamson agreed to to make sure his film got made. From Wikipedia:


I don't think Mike Myers as a character ads a lot of depth. I could've have ridden Freddy sequels for another 2 decades - there's so many places to go and avenues to explore. With Myers, the more you reveal about him, the less effective he is. That's why I think the Rob Zombie films didn't work - trying to give Myers a backstory completely undercuts the character. He's the quintessential "silent, inhuman" killer, with no discernable motivation. And that's maybe interesting enough to sustain one film a decade. I don't mind Halloween 2, to me that and the first one run together in my head as one long film, even though it introduced the element of JLC being related. But really, even thoiugh I liked the new one, it's still just "more of the same". There's literally no where to go with MM - he stalks around and kills people. Jason Vorhees is pretty much in the same boat.
 
One of my favorite slashers is the original Black Christmas. It's been remade a couple times now (never watched 'em), but no sequels. I guess the killer wasn't as marketable, since heThe killer is never shown, so no iconic mask or weapons or anything... just a creepy voice on the phone.

The past few weeks I've been binging British crime shows... so Unforgotten, Touching Evil and, most recently, Tin Star. I really enjoyed Tin Star... it's brutal and funny and weird. Purposefully disjointed sometimes. It doesn't seem to have been a ringing success with the critics though.
 
One of my favorite slashers is the original Black Christmas. It's been remade a couple times now (never watched 'em), but no sequels. I guess the killer wasn't as marketable, since heThe killer is never shown, so no iconic mask or weapons or anything... just a creepy voice on the phone.

I also am a fan of the original Black Christmas. And it even predates Halloween by a few years.
 
Castlevania, OTOH, hasn't been too bad

I watched Midsommer yesterday. It was really well done - but, not entirely engaging as it was just sort of the Wicker Man 2.0. Actually, I take that back, it was almost the exact plot of the not very well known sequel to the original Wicker Man, the Wicker Tree. I thought it was a really well done film, but I can't help but compare it to Gus Van Sant's shot for shot remake of Hitchcock's Psycho - what was the point?

Has anyone seen the 3 hour director's cut? What does it add to the film?

I think the soundtrack, amazing performance by Florence Pugh and the absolutely lovely/bonkers ending elevate it for me. I'd like to see the director's cut, I saw an interview with Aster and he says it restores a long lake sequence he cut for time but missed in terms of character.

I watched the first episode of Dracula and due to what I had heard I went in with low expectations and had more fun than I expected. It is an overly broad mess but delivers some entertaining gore shocks near the end that won me over, for that episode at least.

I agree that Halloween should have been left alone. Although I enjoyed the most recent sequel with the return of Curtis I find the others (the atypical III aside) risible. The original is such a carefully calibrated formalist masterpiece with a perfectly ambiguous ending.
 
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Finally, watched the movie Next, where Nicolas Cage can see the future. Do I really need to tell you anything else about it? :clown:

He only sees like 60 seconds or so normally (except for the big reveal at the end), and it did allow him to do some cool stuff. I thought it was a fun film, and one of his better ones.
 
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