Thread "What are you watching right now?" in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 9:07PM, Jul. 5, 2016

Genejoke wrote:
It also doesn't seem to know whether it should be proud to be geek or ashamed of it.

Ashamed, firmly ashamed. Characters are only rewarded for doing "non-geek" things, or for doing "geek" things in a "non-geeky" way.
All aspects of being geeky are treated as an immature little secret life. Typical mainstream American TV show. Very sad.

——–

I'm watching more anime (ugh, gawd… I know).
This time the second season of Log Horizon has grabbed my interest. The show has evolved from the "real world people stuck in a computer RPG game". They've come to think of the game reality as their own. The players are growing up there and having life experiences… There's politics, economics, policies to help the poor, it's a complex society.
There are a lot of characters in this show and they're all developing into fun familiar figures.

Another one was There's Gonna Be Twin Tails!
This was an action techno-magical girl genderswap fighting show. But what it REALLY is is just a massive spoof on all those genres. A good old crazy spoof anime that laughs at itself a bit too much. It was a good bit of fun.
I love that all the bad guys are basically extreme parodies of the fans of the very genres the show is lampooning! They're all crazy perverts, it's hilarious.

Posted at 11:07PM, Jul. 5, 2016

Key Largo
The Big Heat
White Heat
The Beast of the City
Scarface (1932 & 1983)
Little Caesar
The Public Enemy
The Departed
In Harm's Way
The Wings of Eagles
The Battle of the River Plate
Liberation
Waterloo
War and Peace (2016)
The Big Trail
The Man who shot Liberty Valance
The Northwest Passage

Movies. The good stuff I've missed and not so good stuff I'm curious about and a few old favorites just because everything can be seen in wide-screen now as opposed to a 19" TV on the Million Dollar movie like when I was a kid.

And of course the latest version of War and Peace by BBC

Posted at 7:07PM, Jul. 24, 2016

Die Hard. Except for the hair styles, it's aged well. And it makes my heart break a little all over again knowing there will be no more luscious growls from dear Alan Rickman.

Posted at 9:07PM, Jul. 25, 2016

Ah Die hard… one of the few movie franchises that gazumped the titles of their porn parodies.

Posted at 7:07AM, Jul. 27, 2016

Stranger things.

A great homage to 80s movies, really enjoyed it as I was in the mood for a little nostalgia.

Posted at 9:07AM, Jul. 27, 2016

I have heard good things about that!

I have just started watching Maria Holic.
It's a very silly crazy anime…
It's about a lesbian girl who goes to an all girls school hoping to meet her true love, but instead gets stuck with a super bitchy, evil, nasty boy in drag. It's just weird.

Posted at 4:07AM, Jul. 29, 2016

I'm watching Stranger Things and I agree, the kids are straight out of some 80s flicks and kinda fun for that reason. And it's a hoot to see Matthew Modine as Mr Menacing, but Winona Ryder's character makes me cringe. Seriously. I think it's best for me to stop watching than to see more of her crazy "but I'm not crazy!!" desperation.

And I feel similarly about Mr Robot. I thought the first season was solid, but now it just seems like cardboard figures shuffling along on a cardboard stage.

I don't have much patience with one note characters

Posted at 10:08PM, Aug. 2, 2016

A parcel of westerns including Rio Bravo, Rio Lobo, El Dorado, 3:10 from Yuma, High Noon

And I just started a miniseries I last saw in 1989, ANZACs: The War Down Under. Portions were directed by George Miller which I didn't know the first time around.

Posted at 11:08AM, Aug. 4, 2016

Rewatched Nightmare on Elm St. film series… I always thought that the second one didn't make much sense for the series… now I'm more convinced it doesn't really belong…

Posted at 7:08AM, Aug. 11, 2016

I haven't watched a nightmare on elm street 2 since I was 9, it was kind of scary then but I don't remember a lot about it.

I've watched a few things lately.

Suicide squad…. the reviews are pretty accurate, it's a mess of a film. That said it does have a sense of fun to it in places.

Finding Dory, it's good. It's a standard pixar film really. Life lessons, goofy characters and amazing visuals.

Star trek Beyond. which was very good.

Star trek… DS9… I finished my rewatch and loved it, although they didn't fully marry up the episode of the week stuff with the ongoing plots all that well. The stand alone episodes felt jarring later on. Some great episodes in there though.

star trek Voyager… I'm on season 5 now, previously I hadn't seen much beyond the first season but the later stuff does get better as I had heard all along. Also 7 of 9… good eye candy.

Posted at 7:08PM, Aug. 11, 2016

Voyager was a great show in its own right, just as good as the rest of the Star Trek shows. I think Janeway's weirdly anachronistic character as captain was a bit of a turn off at the start, maybe there was sexism there in the dislike too, but from my perspective it was the anachronism that was the issue: A hairstyle from the late 1800s and a voice to match… and she also fetishised that type of character on the holodeck. It was an odd fit with the show.
But things got so much better.

I've been watching The Last Man on Earth, by Will Forte.
It's so, so funny. :)
Some "virus" killed off everyone, apparently. Will's character spends two years looking for survivors, writing "Alive in Tucson" on billboards as he travels all around the US.
He ends up settling in Tucson and slowly growing crazy, filling a big house with valuable paintings, destroying things, getting hairier and grottier…

And then a woman shows up and things change for him.
A very, very annoying woman.

Posted at 8:08AM, Aug. 12, 2016

Sense8. Again. I needed a Sun fix bad.

Posted at 7:09PM, Sep. 7, 2016

The Last Man on Earth went in silly directions… it was mostly funny but it really seemed to me that the creators approached the original concept as a goof- a pilot they weren't really invested in and didn't know if it'd be picked up.
The writing has a sort of "on the fly" feeling to it and it's not well rounded out. They have arcs and other characters, but it feels like they're faking it, pretending to have a bigger plan to the whole series, they're really just winging it.
Secondary characters are just not fleshed out at all, they're like cardboard cutouts and are only given a bit more life and motivation in the few solo scenes they have, in scenes with the two main characters they're limited to simple reactions.

It's like a tutorial in bare bones writing.

———————

On the subject of minimal writing, I've been watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
That started out very bare bones, like something a group of friends came up with through improvisation and the characters were impossible for me to differentiate from each other, but as you go on through the episodes and series it gets MUCH better, cleverer, and more nuanced!
Initially the comedy is very, very cringey, almost pianfully so, but it moves away from that a bit as it goes on.
Banes recommended this to me and I'm glad. It's great. :D
All the characters are evil, awful people.

Posted at 10:09PM, Sep. 7, 2016

My star trek marathon approaches the end. I finished Voyager, which lame ending aside turned out a lot better than I expected as it was previously my least favourite star trek show that I had seen. Speaking of which I had almost never watched Star trek enterprise. It's a show I never gave the time of day when it aired and watching it now I'm really enjoying it.

I took a break from Start trek to watch Fargo season 2, that was excellent. If you haven't seen Fargo, do it, do it now.

Posted at 10:09AM, Sep. 9, 2016

I dunno, I haven't yet seen the movie version. :)

Watching films…
I saw Battleship the other day.
It REALLY WAS a movie made about a board game. WTF? WHHYYYY????? >:[
It had very bad SciFi, military jingoism, and a massive turgid hardon for veterans. As if a silly scfi movie about a boardgame will make them proud and honour them.

The boardgame elements were so dumb and stood out apart from the rest of the stuff:
- The enemy vessels fired orange pins, like in the game, and could only do that when it was their "turn".
- All ship battles were turn based.
- They had to find the enemy using a grid map and fire blind.
- They used the USS New Jersey as their Battleship.

All in all it was dumb (oh SO dumb), but competent.

————————

Currently watching Coyote Ugly.
My impression is that it's a bit of a girly movie… The women are generically "Hollywood" sexy, but it seems to be a love story and a movie about girls bonding. It's sexy in a very safe, unsexy way, if that makes sense? A girl in the big bad city making her dreams come true.

I've only seen halfway through though.
Oh, and there's a non-ocka Aussie in it. Interesting.

Posted at 4:09PM, Sep. 9, 2016

ozoneocean wrote:
I dunno, I haven't yet seen the movie version. :)

Watching films…
I saw Battleship the other day.
It REALLY WAS a movie made about a board game. WTF? WHHYYYY????? >:[
It had very bad SciFi, military jingoism, and a massive turgid hardon for veterans. As if a silly scfi
- They used the USS New Jersey as their Battleship.

Did you watch the same movie? It was USS Missouri which is in Pearl Harbor Oahu.
New Jersey is in Camden across the harbor from USS Olympia.

The movie went beyond mere jingoism, it was a recruiting poster pure and simple. And it proved just how butt ugly those Navy camouflage uniforms were.

But it did get me to finally visit an Iowa class ship museum. USS Wisconsin in Norfolk VA.

I've been going through John Wayne movies and Clint Eastwood movies. I also threw in the remakes of True Grit and 310 to Yuma.

Posted at 9:09PM, Sep. 9, 2016

I watched it last week and must have miss-remembered :(
I visited both when they were on active service as working battleships in service back in the '80s and '90s so I mix them up XD

I always have to mention that because I effing LOVE battleships and I still can't beleive I got to do that!!!
The US Navy is pretty awesome just for that.

That Navy camo is moronic. Do they really wear that now? The old tan stuff was better but still odd. Personally I think the blue one piece coveralls of the British and Aussie navies are the better service uniforms for working on ships. Same with the colour coded overalls of the US Navy carrier flight crews.

Posted at 10:09PM, Sep. 9, 2016

The Navy digital camouflage is not for shipboard use anymore because it wasn't flame retardant. They wear dark blue coveralls just like everyone else.

The marpat (Marine Pattern) like Navy camouflage is restricted to off board and special operation types.

The Navy always had too many uniforms. Or so my Navy Reserve friends would complain. The Navy still differentiates duty and service uniforms.

Because of the 50th anniversary of the first.broadcast of Star Trek, I have been watching original series episodes. Also hoping to get some inspiration for continuing writing a new installment of my comic.

Posted at 1:09AM, Sep. 10, 2016

So THAT'S why that's all over Facebook!
Good to know about the uniform details! Thanks for that.

——————

I'm still slowly going through Coyote Ugly and not finished it yet. It's dull to me.
I think I've figured out what it is though: the 21st century version of Flashdance.
Not as iconic of course, but the same sort of thing- "smalltown" Girl with big dreams compromises them in a seemingly exploitative way, although it's really a female focussed fantasy of that kid of exploitation, but in the end she finally gets the courage to follow her dreams.

That's still a prediction though because I haven't yet made it to the end.

Posted at 12:09AM, Sep. 13, 2016

Corpse Party. Four part OVA that is a triumph of horror in the best Japanese style. They added a 10 minute missing segments bit.that clears up a couple of bits but you just won't be ready for what happens.

And there's a great "Another" like twist at the end. The solution to the puzzle isn't what's important nor is one even possible because there is always a piece missing…

Posted at 5:09PM, Sep. 18, 2016

im watching everything. lol. just kidding, i'm watching cupcake wars. i love the french judge.

Posted at 10:09PM, Sep. 18, 2016

ozoneocean wrote:

——–

I'm watching more anime (ugh, gawd… I know).
This time the second season of Log Horizon has grabbed my interest. The show has evolved from the "real world people stuck in a computer RPG game". They've come to think of the game reality as their own. The players are growing up there and having life experiences… There's politics, economics, policies to help the poor, it's a complex society.
There are a lot of characters in this show and they're all developing into fun familiar figures.

Another one was There's Gonna Be Twin Tails!
This was an action techno-magical girl genderswap fighting show. But what it REALLY is is just a massive spoof on all those genres. A good old crazy spoof anime that laughs at itself a bit too much. It was a good bit of fun.
I love that all the bad guys are basically extreme parodies of the fans of the very genres the show is lampooning! They're all crazy perverts, it's hilarious.

I finished Twin Tails and there is a second season expected. Very funny and thank you for recommending it.

I have started Log Horizon and it is interesting.

And then I've been watching every single Clint Eastwood western and all the Dirty Harry movies.

Posted at 6:10PM, Oct. 5, 2016

THE FALL - with Gillian Anderson, Jamie Dornan. A serial killer is on the loose in Belfast and Gillian is put in charge to find the killer. There's no secret to the viewer who it is but very interesting to observe how he balances his family life, his work and his horrifying obsession with murdering women.

Posted at 7:10PM, Oct. 5, 2016

Luke Cage. It started a little slow, though from the jump it was very good and quite…mature, I guess one could say?

But after the slowish build up in the first two eps, the third was terrific.

I also just saw The Witch. Wow, it was intense! Mismarketed as a typical jump-scare horror flick, though. It's a very unusual, slow moving but compelling creeper. Amazing characters and some chilling parts that stayed with me afterwards. A big Halloween season recommendation there!

Posted at 7:10PM, Oct. 5, 2016

Gekken shoujo Norizaki-kun , or as I first heard about it GSN. Ozoneocean mentioned it a few posts back so I finally got the title right. But I had heard about this over a year ago and not gotten the title. It is about Japanese high school students making a shoujo manga. The main character is right out of the Cromartie high school anime and the characters and situations are just as ridiculous but more believable than a fellow student being Freddie Mercury or a robot.