What are you watching?

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
I Will Never Let You Go, a Chinese costume drama on Viki, about a girl who was raised as a beggar but is revealed to be the illegitimate daughter of the Seventh Prince... and has some sort of magical destiny that I don't think has been fully explained. Features also Seventh Prince's son in hardcore Zorro mode, his cousin the other masked vigilante, and a scary competent minor lordling who is pretending to be very socially awkward to conceal his girly parts.

I'm not nearly as engrossed as I was in A Girl Like Me or The Untamed, but I have solidly cemented myself as a fan of this genre and this show's another pretty good example of it.
Interesting the film Never Let you Go was like nothing about that at all ( a dystopia where clones are raised and harvested for their organs, but in a very genteel British fashion).

We watched The Harder They Fall, the new western on Netflix - definite notes of Tarantino & Baz Luhrmann for me, but very much it's own thing. Highly recommended.

 
Once again, been spoiled by streaming services and wish I could binge it.
I've sort of turned a corner on that. I was spoiled by dropping them all at the same time and watching them at my own pace instead of being shackled to the dictates of the network. But I've come to appreciate the spacing for having content to watch. I'll never watch anything live again on network TV- I despise the way they do commercials. But I don't mind waiting as much- if I do, I just wait for multiple episodes to drop before watching.
 
I've sort of turned a corner on that. I was spoiled by dropping them all at the same time and watching them at my own pace instead of being shackled to the dictates of the network. But I've come to appreciate the spacing for having content to watch. I'll never watch anything live again on network TV- I despise the way they do commercials. But I don't mind waiting as much- if I do, I just wait for multiple episodes to drop before watching.
I prefer to space out watching a show. I rarely watch more than one episode of a show in an evening. I like having some time to mentally digest an episode before the next one. I find it a lot easier to burn out on a show when I binge. A show that I might have enjoyed spread over a couple of weeks becomes tiresome after the fifth episode in a row. This is all a matter of personal preference, of course.
 
I prefer to space out watching a show. I rarely watch more than one episode of a show in an evening. I like having some time to mentally digest an episode before the next one. I find it a lot easier to burn out on a show when I binge. A show that I might have enjoyed spread over a couple of weeks becomes tiresome after the fifth episode in a row. This is all a matter of personal preference, of course.
Oh, I totally get that. But there's something to be said about being able to space them out at your leisure rather than being shackled to the network's schedule (and cliffhangers).
 
I rarely get the time to binge watch, so I take each episode when I can. This has disadvantages like the show dropping off the service in the meantime.

I've never been quite on the zeitgeist so I'm more prone to it than most I reckon.

The last time this happened to me is Black Sails on Amazon. I thought it was Amazon funded so not likely to be going anywhere. Now I'm not paying for Starz just for it.
 
Binge viewing I feel works better for some shows than others. I find it is easier to follow something complicated and understated like The Expanse. But it can also work for comedy as long as they aren't repetitive.

With some other shows, binge viewing can expose the formula of the typical episode making things feel very samey. You also start noticing just how much recapping of previous episodes happens in the conversations between characters. I don't mean the actual recap at the start of the episode, I'm those conversations that refer to previous events like "You know that Bob has not been the same since his dog died". If you're watching this series once a week, that can be a helpful reminder, but if your a binge viewing, dog's death was like 30 minutes ago.

The trouble is, you don't always know which is which before you get into a series.
 
With some other shows, binge viewing can expose the formula of the typical episode making things feel very samey.
That can be the issue for me. Lately, I've been watching multiple shows at once, rather than just burning through one show at a time. Currently, I'm watching the recent Star Trek shows and Doom Patrol, with an occasional re-run of The Mandalorian mixed in there. I usually watch one episode a night, but on nights when I just want to sit in front of the TV, I have a whole line-up of different shows to watch.
 
I prefer to space out watching a show. I rarely watch more than one episode of a show in an evening. I like having some time to mentally digest an episode before the next one. I find it a lot easier to burn out on a show when I binge. A show that I might have enjoyed spread over a couple of weeks becomes tiresome after the fifth episode in a row. This is all a matter of personal preference, of course.

Speaking of which, the new Korean mini-series on Appletv+ Dr. Brain is only releasing an episode every Friday.




It is a sf/mystery/action with touches of surreal horror by the director of the memorable I Saw the Devil, based on a webcomic.

The first episode was good, looking forward to seeing the rest.
 
Last edited:
Over the weekend, I saw Carol Reed's Odd Man Out (1947). The plot is fairly straightforward: members of the Organization (i.e., the I.R.A., though never so identified) attempt a heist in Belfast. Things go wrong and their leader, Johnny McQueen, is left behind wounded. The film follows his journey towards safety, attempts by his friends to find him, and the fate of other members of the squad.

It's a fine movie, with some great cinematography and strong performances. Belfast itself is something of a character in the story and the movie captures an atmosphere of grime mixed with odd moments of gaiety. I've seen it described as a 'noir' which fits with its look but not its heart, since the movie does not have the cynicism or nihilism I at least associate with real noir films.

I don't know anything about the politics behind the movie's production, but it seemed to go to lengths to avoid being either pro- or anti-Irish nationalist (Green or Orange, if you like). The main characters, who are mostly sympathetic, are all nationalists, but the leader seems weary of the struggle, and the Belfast police inspector who pursues the hero is fairly sympathetic as well. Most of the 'civilians' whom the fleeing leader encounters walk a delicate tight-rope; they don't want to turn him over to the police, but they don't want to be associated with him either.

One of the most memorable parts of the film has the fugitive falling in with an odd trio, an older and somewhat pitiable figure named Shell, a young and bombastic painter named Lukey, and a disgraced medical student named Tober. Shell wants to turn the fugitive in for a reward, but to nationalists, not the police; Lukey wants to paint him, thinking that his imminent death will make him a good subject; Tober wants to treat him and take him to a hospital (and the police). The scenes of their interactions with him--and of Shell's negotiations with the priest Father Tom over the 'ransom'--are striking.

The lead, Johnny McQueen, is well played by James Mason, but I wondered if anyone at the time complained about an Irish role going to an English actor. Some of the cast are Irish: Shell, for instance, is played by F.J. McCormick, who (I gather) was a major stage actor in Dublin; the inspector is Denis O'Dea, and Johnny's girlfriend--and would-be rescuer--is Kathleen Ryan in her film debut. For genre fans, William Hartnell has a small role as the saloon owner Fencie.

Odd Man Out.jpg
 
So the past days I've been watching:
- It ain't half hot, mum - Season 1 (nostalgic guilty pleasure)
- Free Fire (entertaining low budget shoot'em up)
- Jessica Jones episodes 1-6, and I Love it!
- Marvel Eternals (boring waste of time*)
- The Mule (liked it; Clint is always a reliable value)

*) ok, while waiting for the credits I came up with a joke:
"Why you keep calling me Hephaestus? I look Greek to you?"
"Guy back there called you Hephaestus."
"He didn't say Hephaestus. He said, "Hey, Phastos!" My name is Phastos!"
 
Two episodes into the league of legends show. Deeply wondering why this hasn’t been turned into an official rpg supplement.
 
For whatever reason, last night I ended up watching The Crow and its sequel The Crow: City of Angels.I'd seen the first one long ago and watching it again had me cringing at first... but pretty soon I calmed down and enjoyed it.
The sequel wasn't bad either... mostly the same plot but an even bleaker setting (and both seem to confuse crows and ravens).
Silly as they are, the movies did give me the urge to play some sort of game in a setting with that feel... most likely some variety of WOD, Geist maybe.

The_Crow.jpg
 
For whatever reason, last night I ended up watching The Crow and its sequel The Crow: City of Angels.I'd seen the first one long ago and watching it again had me cringing at first... but pretty soon I calmed down and enjoyed it.
The sequel wasn't bad either... mostly the same plot but an even bleaker setting (and both seem to confuse crows and ravens).
Silly as they are, the movies did give me the urge to play some sort of game in a setting with that feel... most likely some variety of WOD, Geist maybe.
One of the low-rent broadcast stations in my area has been showing the The Crow lately, so I caught a bit of it last weekend.

Lately, for relaxation at the end of the evening my wife and I have been watching some early episodes of the British detective show "New Tricks," about retired geezers who come back to work as consultants in a cold case squad. I'm struck by the fact that they always solve the cases. That makes sense in a TV way, I guess--I suppose writers and producers are thinking that viewers won't tune in if the mysteries aren't solved. But I wonder if it isn't squandering a possibility of the setup. After all, it seems fairly unlikely that, years or decades later, detectives would be able to solve cases that could not be resolved earlier, when resources were likely more abundant and clues still there to gather. Of course, writers can always use the 'they didn't have DNA testing then' approach, but you can't build a series on that--and "New Tricks" does not rely on it very much.

It would be interesting to see a 'Cold Case' kind of show where, very often, we don't precisely find out what happened in the past, no arrests are made, etc. I think you could overcome the potential frustration involved in at least two ways:
  • Present different possibilities as to the solution, but never quite find the evidence to determine which is correct. This could be shot Rashomon-style--we see the crime done different ways based on the theories of the various detectives.
  • Embrace the fact that a lot of the appeal of crime/police shows is not solving the mystery, but the human drama involved in the situation that led to the crime in the first place. So the detectives could uncover that, but maybe not be able to prove who had committed the offense.
 
It would be interesting to see a 'Cold Case' kind of show where, very often, we don't precisely find out what happened in the past, no arrests are made, etc. I think you could overcome the potential frustration involved in at least two ways:
  • Present different possibilities as to the solution, but never quite find the evidence to determine which is correct. This could be shot Rashomon-style--we see the crime done different ways based on the theories of the various detectives.
  • Embrace the fact that a lot of the appeal of crime/police shows is not solving the mystery, but the human drama involved in the situation that led to the crime in the first place. So the detectives could uncover that, but maybe not be able to prove who had committed the offense.
It's not a police procedural but what you describe feeds into what I liked about Rectify.
 
I finished Army of the Thieves, the prequel to Army of the Dead featuring the character Dieter Ludwig. It takes place while the other characters were mostly in Las Vegas at the start of the zombies appearing there. He's recruited to crack open 3 safes related to the one in Army of the Dead. It's a decent film. There are news reports in the background showing what is going on in Vegas the whole time, which I liked. I know there is an animated series in the works featuring Batista and some of the other characters set at the same time, so making a film around Dieter (who was in Europe at the time) makes sense.

I'm still flipping between FBI and FBI Most Wanted, but took a dip back into NCIS New Orleans. I've also been watching NCIS Hawaii each week. I'm considering checking out the animated films tied to Bright and The Witcher soon
 
We finished watching the two seasons of The Mandalorian, which were great. The plan is to start binging the several animated series now, probably just in chronological order, so starting with Clone Wars. Hopefully we can get used to the odd look of the characters in this particular style of animation and hopefully the stories are decent enough.
 
Last night I caught a "Secrets of the Dead" episode on the Hindenburg disaster. It included some amazing footage and images of airships. Unsurprisingly, it did not offer a lot of revelations about the explosion--there were certainly things I didn't know, but nothing like a completely new way of looking at the disaster.

The show was structured around key mistakes that led to the crash, which were even numbered. One seemed a little anachronistic to me--the claim that the Hindenburg was insufficiently tested. This is certainly true by modern standards, but this was the 1930s. Also, by the time the ship exploded in 1937, it had been successfully operating for a year or so and made 35+ transatlantic flights. So by the standards of the day I would say it was pretty well tested. Also, as the show revealed, the Zeppelin company was well aware of a variety of problems with the craft and trying (ineffectually) to fix them.

It would be neat to visit Lakehurst, NJ, where the disaster occurred and see the hangar there, which the documentary described as the largest single room ever built: ~960 x 350 x 200 ft. But according to the show, the Lakehurst location was part of the problem--only 14 miles from the Atlantic coast, it tended to have bad weather and high winds.
 
It would be neat to visit Lakehurst, NJ, where the disaster occurred and see the hangar there, which the documentary described as the largest single room ever built: ~960 x 350 x 200 ft. But according to the show, the Lakehurst location was part of the problem--only 14 miles from the Atlantic coast, it tended to have bad weather and high winds.
I live by the Jersey Shore, and the wind does not fuck around here.
 
No, I haven't. I'm in Ocean County, so that's about an hour and a half from me. Next time I have some business upstate, I'll check it out.

It's run by a fellow named Steve Conte. When I was going to the Kubert school, that was our primary comic shop and we would load up in my friend Brian's van and drive over there from Dover once a week, almost every week for two years. I even briefly worked for him doing some organization of back issues in storage. Still have a Shirt from that store and have very fond memories of it.

33507854618_46dc166abd_c.jpg


If you ever go, let me know (Steve wouldn't recognize me by my online name, I'll tell you my name from then in private)
 
It's not a police procedural but what you describe feeds into what I liked about Rectify.

Rectify was one of the best TV shows I've ever seen that no one seems to have watched.
 
And just got done with Shang Chi. Marvel crossed with wuxia. Honestly, I loved it, but I’m a big fan of high Chinese fantasy movies. It hit a lot of beats that are not quite as familiar to western audiences. I thought Awkwafina did a great job. Requisite rope dagger/meteor hammer combo was like egg drop soup for the soul.
 
Was in a bit of an odd mood, so I did a Wes Anderson binge week - I have seen all these before -The Darljeeling Limited, The Life Aquatic, Fantastic Mr Fox, The Grand Budapest Hotel. (I still need to see the ones I haven't watched yet, such as The Royal Tenebaums and Moonrise Kingdom). I will probably go see The French Dispatch when it comes out.

As far as the MCU goes, I saw Shang Chi, it was ok, so now I'm ready for The Eternals. Not sure if this new era of MCU is gonna capture the magic of the last decade's output, but I'm willing to hang in there to keep it going.

Regarding tv streaming, I've been re-watching Altered Carbon on Netflix. Really great stuff, one of the best I have seen along these lines for cyberfuture.
I'm also slowly working thru The Expanse on Amazon, and just started Season Four. It was a bit dry at the start, but things are pretty interesting by the time you make this season., and I've come too far now to turn back.
 
Was in a bit of an odd mood, so I did a Wes Anderson binge week - I have seen all these before -The Darljeeling Limited, The Life Aquatic, Fantastic Mr Fox, The Grand Budapest Hotel. (I still need to see the ones I haven't watched yet, such as The Royal Tenebaums and Moonrise Kingdom). I will probably go see The French Dispatch when it comes out.
Been rewatching a lot of Wes Anderson myself the past couple weeks, in anticipation of seeing the French Dispatch soon. Royal Tenenbaums and Moonrise Kingdom are my favorites, so you should definitely make time for them.
 
It's not a police procedural but what you describe feeds into what I liked about Rectify.

Rectify was one of the best TV shows I've ever seen that no one seems to have watched.

My access to streaming TV is very limited—basically what shows up on DVD at the local library—but I’ll keep my eyes open for this in future.
 
Was in a bit of an odd mood, so I did a Wes Anderson binge week - I have seen all these before -The Darljeeling Limited, The Life Aquatic, Fantastic Mr Fox, The Grand Budapest Hotel. (I still need to see the ones I haven't watched yet, such as The Royal Tenebaums and Moonrise Kingdom). I will probably go see The French Dispatch when it comes out.

As far as the MCU goes, I saw Shang Chi, it was ok, so now I'm ready for The Eternals. Not sure if this new era of MCU is gonna capture the magic of the last decade's output, but I'm willing to hang in there to keep it going.

Regarding tv streaming, I've been re-watching Altered Carbon on Netflix. Really great stuff, one of the best I have seen along these lines for cyberfuture.
I'm also slowly working thru The Expanse on Amazon, and just started Season Four. It was a bit dry at the start, but things are pretty interesting by the time you make this season., and I've come too far now to turn back.

My favourite Anderson remains his debut Bottle Rocket.

Need to see Moonrise Kingdom and Grand Budapest Hotel which I've heard a lot of good things about.
 
I started watching Red Notice on Netflix. Also went and saw Eternals. i thought it was ok. Took awhile to get going though
 
My favourite Anderson remains his debut Bottle Rocket.

Need to see Moonrise Kingdom and Grand Budapest Hotel which I've heard a lot of good things about.
I think I may have rented Bottle Rocket from Blockbuster Video, so that's going back to the early 2000s before video rentals went the way of the dinosaur. I just watched the trailer and it's vaguely familar, but it was before Wes Anderson developed his distincitive style. Still, I might hunt this down to see it out of interest. He already had Owen WIlson on his payroll by the looks of it.

Grand Budapest Hotel is certainly worth a watch if you like Wes Anderson's quirkly style.
 
Last edited:
Been rewatching a lot of Wes Anderson myself the past couple weeks, in anticipation of seeing the French Dispatch soon. Royal Tenenbaums and Moonrise Kingdom are my favorites, so you should definitely make time for them.
Yep they are all definately on the list!
 
I think I may have rented Bottle Rocket from Blockbuster Video, so that's going back to the early 2000s before video rentals went the way of the dinosaur. I just watched the trailer and it's vaguely familar, but it was before Wes Anderson developed his distincitive style. Still, I might hunt this down to see it out of interest. He already had Owen WIlson on his payroll by the looks of it.

Grand Budapest Hotel is certainly worth a watch if you like Wes Anderson's quirkly style.

I think BR is his funniest film and less self conscious than his later films.
 
Finished Red Notice. Turned out to be more fun than expected. It ended in a way that could lead to a sequel, which I'd be all for. Turns out Johnson, Gadot and Reynolds have really good on screen chemistry. It wasn't anything amazingly original, but it was fun, and that's good enough for me
 
Need to see Moonrise Kingdom and Grand Budapest Hotel which I've heard a lot of good things about.

Grand Budapest Hotel is certainly worth a watch if you like Wes Anderson's quirkly style.

I liked Moonrise Kingdom, though I don't remember it very well, and really enjoyed Grand Budapest Hotel. It doesn't hurt that the latter is based loosely on Stefan Zweig; I should read more of his work.

This weekend I watched most of Capricorn One, a space-program thriller from 1978 written and directed by Peter Hyams (who also did Outland, Timecop, The Relic, and End of Days). I don't know if the concept of 'spoiler' applies to a movie that's over 40 years old anyway, but I won't give away much that the theatrical trailer didn't. The basic idea of the film is that NASA's first manned Mars mission has to be faked. The life-support system for the ship is faulty and would kill the astronauts within weeks of their takeoff. NASA is struggling along anyway, and the president has informed them that any screw-up will mean the cancellation of the program. So they decide to stage the landing on a set. The astronauts--James Brolin, O.J. Simpson, and a young Sam Waterston--don't know about this in advance; just before launch they are whisked away to the secret base and informed of the ruse (as is the audience) while their crew-less spaceship takes off. They grudgingly go along with the plot, though only after the NASA honcho played by Hal Holbrook switches from appealing to their loyalty to the space program and threatens their families if they don't cooperate.

Needless to say, things don't go as planned. A NASA engineer realizes there is something fishy going on in mission control and informs his friend, a reporter played by Elliot Gould. At this point, the script starts going off the rails. Rather than doing something sensible like transferring the engineer to some distant facility, the shadowy powers-that-be behind the stunt kill him and then erase any evidence of his existence. NASA claims they never heard of him and when Gould shows up at his apartment, he finds someone else living there, with all kinds of evidence that she's been the tenant for at least a year. None of which makes much sense, since it requires more and more people to be part of the conspiracy. Gould survives several assassination attempts in the course of the film, which also seems unlikely.

I won't say more about the plot, except to say that it combines forward motion and interest with increasing implausibility. The cast is pretty good, though many of the actors were more known for TV roles by the late 1970s than for films, I think. One thing that I found particularly jarring, as an old space-program nerd, was the lack of imagination that the film displayed towards the space vehicle itself. The launch rocket is just a Saturn-V, which is perhaps forgiveable (file footage and all that), but the capsule itself is just the Apollo rig, and the Mars lander is nearly identical to the L.E.M. None of which makes much sense. It's not like the film-makers couldn't have drawn on actual plans drawn up by NASA and others for what a Mars mission might be like.

Capricorn One.jpg
 
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top