The latest season of Portlandia, on Netflix. I felt they were plateauing a bit in the previous two seasons, but this new season is much stronger.
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
What are you watching right now?
fallopiancrusader wrote:
Design Cinema, on YouTube. It’s Feng Zhu, a top concept artist in film and gaming, sketching and painting in Photoshop. While he’s drawing, he goes on long, stream of consciousness rambles about design principles and painting technique.
That sounds like it could be worth a watch!
Star Trek: Picard
I liked it. It's about time that the Star Trek universe recognized that there are broken people who self medicate because everything can't be all peaches and cream throughout the cosmos. It's still Star Trek. We just never saw the self-medication so clearly.
That aside, it had some wonderful characterization and cameos that really brought tears to the eyes of this old ST:TNG fan. I even loved that the theme music for the most part was variations on the Jerry Goldsmith theme used in Next Generation.
For the most part it was a good story with layer upon layer being peeled away episode by episode though stuff got a bit too magical "just imagine it and it fixes things" and Deus ex machina at the end, probably because the creators had written themselves into a corner and didn't see any way out of it except to wave a magic wand.
But the characters were wonderful and it's nice to see that blondes goes for loosely moussed hair in the 25th century. Just like my wife does today.
And Seven of Nine as a regular? I'm in heaven.
And a cigar smoking Cubano? He's got to be Cuban. About freaking time.
Now if they can just get John De Lancie and Robert Picardo for the second season. According to their Twitter feeds all they'd have to do is ask.
And damn if this wasn't everything that ST: Discovery wasn't. Well except for the magic at the end. Yeah, endings are hard to write and when you do bring in the cavalry, it's a pain trying to figure out how they won't to mess up your original characters being the heroes.
THE JOKER - Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen. Some think it was a great performance by Joaquin, I did not. He plays a pathetic loser, lives with his mom?, can't hold a job and tries to be a stand-up comedian, except he isn't even remotely funny. Kills 3 toughs on the subway and for some reason everyone starts dressing like clowns? Somehow ends up on De Niro's TV show and….oh well, gave it a 1 1/2 on the Moizmeter.
One Upon a Time In Hollywood. Tarantino is a very "hit & miss" director for my money, but I did love Pulp Fiction…
As someone old enough to remember the Sharon Tate / Manson Family killings and knowing Quentin's penchant for violence & gore there was a part of me that was apprehensive about how he was going to deal with those murders.
I have to admit he had me totally fooled as far as that denouement was concerned ! (no spoilers for those who haven't…)
Those 2 guys Di Caprio and Pitt do a believable job as the fading T.V. star and his stuntman/employee/buddy. The actor playing the actor, playing the T.V. 'bsddie' works well. Being old enough to be contemporary with the events, I guessed the hitching girls were "Manson Family", from the first encounter, etc., so I was a step or two ahead of my son (He'd seen it sometime ago) in that regard, who says it all came together in the end for him, as to how the 'vignettes' come together, but as I say above, he had me fooled over the ending…
This has to go above the 3 Goldilocks I've been giving some quite good stuff, by a half….I nearly went for 4, I put it up with Pulp Fiction, as his best 2 movies.
Starting Season 2 of Dead to Me. It is more serious and dramatic than I prefer. The acting is excellent and it has some dry and dark humor. But it's really frustrating because it's one of those stories where literally ALL the conflict is caused by characters not behaving like normal, rational people. They make very poor decisions that no normal person would make. So, they are pretty much 100% unrelatable. By the time they fess up to one lie/secret, they've done another stupid thing to lie about. You kinda want things to go well because you pity them, and some of their problems weren't their fault to start with. That said, 95% of everything that happens they bring on themselves, so I find myself mostly waiting to see how much deeper they'll dig this hole before it all caves in.
EDIT:
I finished season 2. It *could have* had a satisfying conclusion but, as is standard for modern series, it went one scene too long in order to set up a cliffhanger.
I watched quite a few things recently but I'll just mention two:
The Huntress: Rune of the Dead and Midsommer
The Huntress: Rune of the Dead
This was an interesting find. This is the ONLY Viking themed movie I've seen in years that actually has historical looking vikings. No hipster shit hair styles and silly leather bondage biker outfits and death metal stage makeup around the eyes, nope! Just actual Scandinavian people dressed and styled in the actual clothes of the period.
The story is told in a very realistic style. A family are in the woods, away from the main village. They're doing tough because the father went out raiding and hasn't returned for two years. The word "viking" is never mentioned in the movie. The oldest daughter was taught archery by her dad and supplies the family with food and skins to sell at the market. But she's having dark visions of bad things to come. She finds a dying man in the forest and takes him home to care for him, against the wishes of her mum who is afraid that he will revive and murder them or whoever injured him will get the family.
They nurse him back to health anyway and discover he was shipmates with their dad and their dad might return… but things aren't good. His shipmates attacked him and their dad and they only just got away…
I won't spoil it, it's a really decent story about something you might read in a saga… it's fantastical but historically rendered and told in a modern, realistic way. It just goes to show that people who whine that "It's just a movie blah blah blah, historical accuracy would be booooooring!" when people talk about historical accuracy don't know anything about anything and aren't worth knowing.
Midsommer
Is a sort of psychological horror done by the same wanker that made Hereditary - and that tells you about 80% of what you need to know.
This is a MASSIVELY pretentious film by a person who has exceptional cinematography skills. The editing is pretty good, the effects, lighting, the visuals, acting and directing are all quite good but the story, plot and themes are first year university film student stuff- the market that it's probably designed to appeal too.
SPOILERS:
The story:
A woman is insecure and her BF is not very supportive, he's going to break up with her. Her sister kills herself and their mum and dad. BF can't break up with her after that. She travels with BF and his university friends to Sweden to witness a special festival that only happens every 90 years during the summer. They Swedes in the small village they meet seem to be nice and their rituals seem lovely but it starts to go weird and they're trapped inescapably in a cult and everything ends in disaster for them.
There are many, many, many callbacks to Hereditary to a very unimaginative extent: The story starts of painfully realistically, involves devastating family tragedy and the slowly devolves into crude physiological horror as new friends are not what they seem, involving dismemberment, naked grinning old people, bare wooden rooms, a badly made up Wiccan style interpretations of a pagan religion. And finally the protagonist is converted over to the cult of the pagan weirdos at that becomes her new reality. Oh, a PLENTY of goose-like honking, rhythmic, heart-wrenching sobbing, ie Toni Collette from Hereditary.
It's not as unintentionally hilarious as Hereditary unfortunately. The worst part for me was the portrayal of the cult. Its supposed to be an ancient Swedish religious thing, but it's 100% American 1960s Hippy new age bullshit and has almost zero relationship to anything Scandinavian apart form superficial stuff like runes and the design of the May pole… Which is stuff that died out in the stone age. The religious practices and the cult are exactly like what people used to invent for scifi stories in the 1960s and 70's in order to comment on the hippy culture of the time, so it's bizarrely retro to see that appropriated in a modern movie like this.
This movie could have easily been made about a cult hippy commune in the 1960s in the USA- probably better if it had been.
The symbolism in the film is heavy handed and culturally ignorant, but would probably make the Swedes happy because it was filmed there with Swedish actors.
I'll end by saying that this "Hereditary" creator is one to avoid. All you'll see is big budget, well produced wank by someone who needs to spend a few more years absorbing culture and learning before they attempt to produce it.
"I Don't Want to Live in this World Anymore"
A movie I very much enjoyed on Netflix. It's subtly humorous. Not too intense but the climax is a sudden burst of pretty graphic violence. The plot progression, writing, and foreshadowing was all excellently done. The protagonists are likeable and real. The antagonists are assholes but also realistic.
I'm here for the midsommar review, and while I see where you come from and very much agree, I'm gonna add that the brightness and the colors were the things that made the biggest impact on me. There was something upsetting about the sun never setting and I think it was apparent that it was affecting the characters in weird ways.
That being said, yesterday I rewatched the Sphere and I'm surprised because I did not remember it being this good. I did have a good time and I just might go and re-read the book too.
As for TV shows, I am rewatching my all time favourite comedy: Breaking Bad.
Finally watched Parasite. It was well shot, had good atmosphere. Didn't quite like the ending. And by 'ending' I mean the epilogue. I think that dampened the effect of the climax somewhat. I was a lot more engaged and impacted by the movie before the epilogue. But all around glad I watched it, and it had some strong moments. I know most of those actors and they were A class as always!
I can't see the Parasites vs Joker kerfuffle though. The two movies go in completely different tangents. Just because they're about class struggle doesn't make them comparable or even on the same issue.
Two creations by Phoebe Waller-Bridge: Fleabag and Killing Eve.
Fleabag was VERY good.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge stars in this series. It was written based on her one woman show of the same name, created back in 2013 I think, which was also the date she stared in the first episode of London Irish in which she plays basically exactly the same part… probably based on herself.
Fleabag is about a young woman, from a well-to-do background who's messing up her life, making bad choices, and is addicted to sex.. She uses sex as a way to fill a very big void in her life as she tries to assuage the crippling guilt she feels for the incident that caused her life to slowly unravel…
Anyway, it's a very funny comedy about relationships, sex, and family in Britain with top notch writing and acting! Characters are written very well and their lines are sometimes philosophical, sometimes cutting, and quite funny.
All the men in the series are more like caricatures rater than real people, but that's how it's meant to be because they're stylised. It features the main character breaking the forth wall a lot and speaking directly t camera is a very Ferris Bueler fashion.
—————————————–
Killing Eve
Phebes obviously made a name for herself on Fleabag and decided to try for something big, writing a spy thriller comedy about a psychopathic killer assassin and the woman trying to hunt her down!
This is very much a "dream", fantasy project: Spies, assassins, a psychopath etc… need I say more?
They shoot for the moon here and come up a bit short, but it's still a very fun, compelling show.
The lead character Eve tries to hunt down Villanelle, a Russian psychopathic assassin. Eve's a member of MI5. she gets fired from her job for being too good and gets recruited to lead her own team at M16 instead… Male writers have always done this sort of wish fulfillment, the only difference here is that woman like the idea of tracking down psychopaths and getting in their heads, which you have a lot of here.
This features the same level of great writing for characters, great dialogue, and character interaction and humour as fleabag. It's only let down in two places: the spy procedural stuff is mostly made up , or not well researched, and some characters are just based on standard tropes… Julian Barret's role in the second season as the creepy Norman Bates style character is a prime example. Him and a scenario he's part of are all standard for that trope with no deviation or flourishes, which is a bad idea because when you do that the audience knows everything the character will do and there are no surprises, so much so that you don't even need to show any scenes, just the introduction and the conclusion and we already know how the whole story goes in the middle.
Anyway, apart from that it's fun and interesting and a nice original take of the spy thriller/assassin genre overall.
I'm continuing, after a break, with the OG Twilight Zone series. I've skipped around a bit, but watching season three now. Good stuff. I just watched "Once Upon a Time" which features Buster Keaton in his older years, time traveling from the 1890's (shot as a silent movie) to 1960.
It was good, and Keaton was still quite physical even as an older guy.
Made me want to watch his classics from the 20's, since I've only seen clips before.
SHARP OBJECTS - (8 part series) Amy Adams, Patricia Clarkson, Eliza Scanlen, Chris Messina and more. 2 young girls murdered, Amy is reporter sent to cover story which involved her family, mainly her crazy Mama, Patricia. Ending baffled me, Amy is poisoned and throwing up, helpless, suddenly Police arrive and arrest Mama??? Who blew the whistle on her??? She's charged with murdering her first daughter about 40 years ago, what brought this to light???? Then Amy takes younger crazy sister Amma back home and all is well again…wait, Amma's dollhouse, hmmm, Amy looks inside and finds a tooth, (victims had their teeth removed) apparently many more altho I failed to see them and guess who killed the 2 young girls? Don't tell Mama says Amma. Much dialogue hard to hear, scenes suddenly jump from present to far past to near present, and everyone smokin it up, is there any actors who don't smoke? A 2 on the Moizmeter.
hotisusi wrote:I know I've been amazed, in the past, watching documentary and travelogue stuff, to hear the accents of people living along the Labrador coast, and how 'Un-North-American" they sound ! Scots, Irish, mostly…
I just started watching the “Republic of Doyle” I did not know there was a part of Canada that was so Irish..
READY OR NOT - Samara Weaving, Mark O'Brien, Adam Brody, Henry Czerny, Andie MacDowell and many more. Samara and Mark are getting married at family estate. Poor Samara learns she must first play a little family game of hide and seek, cuz whole family is crazy. She must hide until dawn or be killed, they all have an assortment of lethal weapons, but luckily they're not very handy with them and a few of them get killed instead. Will she survive her wedding night? Will anyone? Filmed in Oshawa, Ontario. A generous 2 on the Moizmeter.
If any of y'all are fans of animation, I recommend Wakfu on Netflix.
The 4th Season just got greenlit on Kickstarter.
Cannon Busters (Netflix) is a pretty fun time.
Dorohedoro (Netflix) is……wacky as heck, I can't due it's insanity justice.
Watched Deep Space 9 despite not liking Star Trek (Netflix again.)……and Now I'm watching Voyager.
Dragon Prince (Neeeeeeeetfliiiiiiiiix) is pretty fun.
Watched an Episode of Kipo (Netflix), probably will resume soon.
Gargoyles (Holy crap a non Netflix Show! Disney Plus) is fantastic and I hope Weisman decides to resume it for Disney Plus.
The Mandolorian (Disney Plus) is amazing.
Recommend Clone Wars and Rebels (In that order) as well (Given the New Trilogy may be rendered non-canon soon, maybe skip Resistance.).
Big Hero 6 The Animated Series (Disney Plus) was shockingly good, well worth a watch.
Owl House (Disney Channel I think, I just DVR it.) is fun albeit it does kinda push it's moral a bit hard in the pilot.
Edit: Annnnnnnnnnnnd Hell seems to have Frozen over, as it seems Clone High and Beavis and Butt-head are returning.
moizmad wrote:I saw this with my ex.
READY OR NOT - Samara Weaving, Mark O'Brien, Adam Brody, Henry Czerny, Andie MacDowell and many more. Samara and Mark are getting married at family estate. Poor Samara learns she must first play a little family game of hide and seek, cuz whole family is crazy. She must hide until dawn or be killed, they all have an assortment of lethal weapons, but luckily they're not very handy with them and a few of them get killed instead. Will she survive her wedding night? Will anyone? Filmed in Oshawa, Ontario. A generous 2 on the Moizmeter.
It was pretty fun :)
The structure of the alliances and character interaction was 100% predicable though, no surprises.
——–
I just watched Prince of Persia. Pretty boring unfortunately :(
It was inspired by a videogame but they tried to make it into a proper movie.
It's basically an Arabian nights style fantasy with all the actors having English accents for some reason and almost no middle eastern actors in the main roles.
It didn't grab me because they didn't go far enough with the fantasy elements. If you're going with fantasy then go all the way! Make it magical and Speilbergy or like a Bollywood film! Wasted opportunity.
It didn't make me fall in love with the characters either.
Niggle: I THINK it's set in some ancient pre-Mulsim period… because they never mention Islam and I can't recall seeing any symbols or anything… SO if it's set back in the past they got the weapons and Armour wrong. From what I know most of what they had there is all post 13th century- Great big curved Kilj swords etc… all later stuff.
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