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

Posted at 11:08PM, Aug. 31, 2023

Since I'm constantly seen bitching about movies here, I've picked some of my favorites from the past 5 years.

Shoplifters (pure perfection. Tought-provoking and entertaining, a found-family drama without being shallow)
Uncut Gems (rarely so much pressure is portrayed, no wonder it's not everyone's cup of tea)
Aftersun (so down-to-earth, yet much depth packed into it that won't leave you after the film)
Everything Everwhere All at Once (one of my favorites, amazing how they made it work)
An Elephant Sitting Still (one of the best debuts and unfortunately his last film as well, since the director died)
Parasite (often movies get overhyped, especially when they win best picture, but in this case it's hard to say it's without style or substance)
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (one of the best sequels to films)
Bullet Train (far from perfect, but entertaining af)

Posted at 9:09AM, Sep. 5, 2023

Watched WordGirl again since it became a meme last year (2022). This isn't your ordinary PBS Kids cartoon; this is a show packed with lore, fourth-wall breakin' humor, vocabulary (hence the show's and character's name), action, and satire, because mentioning another word for "humor" twice would be this show's basis.

People from {early} Family Guy, Saturday Night Live and other projects worked on this particular show; writing's so good, no wonder it's been memeable in recent years. Even if Scholastic {had} put this toon on Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon, the show still would've worked.

(If you see Mr. Big's debut episode, you'll know why I'm not revealing more details about this.)

Posted at 9:09AM, Sep. 5, 2023

Nimona the film, the fifth season of the Dragon Prince, and Etra Chan Saw It on YouTube.

Posted at 11:09PM, Sep. 6, 2023

Watched Strays recently. I probably have to be a dog or some gangsta to appreciate this type of "humor" every 10 seconds or so. But let me just say that the obsession with mutilating men's genitals as revenge / justice is a notion that people find entertaining for some reason (take that fucking Wednesday for example, or this one) and I'd like to see if the same people would still giggle behind devilish smiles if it'd be female genital mutilation instead. Something tells me that wouldn't be the case. Rendering a man unable to reproduce for the rest of his life is a joke. Rendering a woman is an unforgivable act of violence, a horror words cannot express. Movies like this is why I hate people.

Posted at 6:09PM, Sep. 11, 2023

I finally finished all of Steven Universe. It's really a loved show in every way. I'm glad I finally watched it all.
I started on it years ago when I was sick in Cambodia and stuck in my room. I binge watched it and really fell in love with it.

It's a good show with not many bad points or dud episodes.

Posted at 7:09PM, Sep. 13, 2023

I saw Elemental last night on Disney plus

Pixar REALLY have to get over their obsession with family based stories about coming of age and making life choices… That's most Pixar movies these days. They're all about important things that happen at various points on a person's life - usually focussing on parent and child relationships. It's as if they went to a damn therapist to get all their ideas XD
I don't mind stories about that but I like variation

The story:
Fire elementals arrive as new immigrants in a water elemental city and over the years despite a culture clash and some xenophobia establish themselves and become the focus of a community of other fire people.
The have a daughter with anger issue. The dad wants her to take over his corner shop and she wants to but she's bad at dealing with people. The dad gets old and sick and needs to retire…
The daughter meets a water elemental guy and they gradually fall in love. She wants to keep that a secret from her parents because they have resentment towards the water elementals.

And so the love story/coming of age/finding yourself/family focussed story progresses.

It's a very pretty movie. Probably the prettiest Pixar film. The mechanics of the world make no sense at all, which makes your brain spin (elemental people that function as their element… watch and see what I mean). The story is good but would have been farrrrrr far better told with human or animal based characters. These magical elementals deserve a story that centres more around their magical existence.

Posted at 8:09AM, Sep. 14, 2023

Last Stand
This was a movie starring an elderly Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The plot is that a Mexican cartel head in the US escapes a prison transfer by the FBI and heads to the border on a ruthless and carefully planned escape.
Sherif Arnold and his small town band of Misfits are the only thing between him and freedom.

This was a bloody action movie that had a lot of firearms fantasy. Basically just pure magical stuff happening with those guns.

Weirdest for my was Peter Stomare doing a terrible fake American accent and weilding an antique Colt Walker pistol, firing shot after shot Long distance and people with modern, much better guns running away 😅
The Walker was a big gun but not good at long range, plus it only has six shots and it's super slow to reload.

Oh and someone gets blown to pieces by a flare from a flare gun 😅

The most powerful gun they have is a Vickers machine gun which they fire for 15 seconds and then just ignore - you can litterally fire that for several days straight without stopping. It would have cleared the entire town of every badguy… as long as the assistant keeps reloading the belts.

And there was so much more 😅

Posted at 8:09AM, Sep. 14, 2023

Ozoneocean wrote:
I saw Elemental last night on Disney plus

Pixar REALLY have to get over their obsession with family based stories about coming of age and making life choices… That's most Pixar movies these days. They're all about important things that happen at various points on a person's life - usually focussing on parent and child relationships. It's as if they went to a damn therapist to get all their ideas XD
I don't mind stories about that but I like variation

The story:
Fire elementals arrive as new immigrants in a water elemental city and over the years despite a culture clash and some xenophobia establish themselves and become the focus of a community of other fire people.
The have a daug

Yeah, it was sort of a letdown. They put so much emphasis on how the science of it is magical and then they really do a magic ass-pull. Plus I've nothing against family stories. Maybe a little less acting like only immigrants have culture and traditions that gives way to conflicts between generations. Otherwise Pixar can really be outstanding in that regard, but they have to let go of making non-living creatures their protagonists and get you invested in them, because the whole world is just a setting to illustrate their base concept and I could not care less about anyone in it, neither the main nor the side-characters make you wish you'd see more of it. The whole forbidden love thing that it's centered around could use better symbolism (what are we, toddlers, that unless it's fire and water, we wouldn't get it?) and we get it, racial preconceptions are bad, geez, whoever doesn't get it, this won't make any difference for, especially since most character's personality just happens to be exactly as you'd associate from their form of existence.

And yeah, Steven Universe is great. Although I can't get myself to binge it, 1-2 episodes sometimes is the most I can do for some reason. Probably because it's episodic and wholesome.

Posted at 8:09PM, Sep. 20, 2023

InkyMoondrop wrote:
Yeah, it was sort of a letdown. They put so much emphasis on how the science of it is magical and then they really do a magic ass-pull. Plus I've nothing against family stories. Maybe a little less acting like only immigrants have culture and traditions that gives way to conflicts between generations. Otherwise Pixar can really be outstanding in that regard, but they have to let go of making non-living creatures their protagonists and get you invested in them, because the whole world is just a setting to illustrate their base concept and I could not care less about anyone in it, neither the main nor the side-characters make you wish you'd see more of it. The whole forbidden love thing that it's centered around could use better symbolism (what are we, toddlers, that unless it's fire and water, we wouldn't get it?) and we get it, racial preconceptions are bad, geez, whoever doesn't get it, this won't make any difference for, especially since most character's personality just happens to be exactly as you'd associate from their form of existence.

Very much so!

———-

I binged all of White Collar and finally finished it. It wasn't a clever show but the fake art they made for the scenes was always very high quality, and the characters were friendly and entertaining and had good, mature relationships with each other that ware nice to watch. The actors played them well.

The ending was a big let down for me though.

–Spoiler–

So this guy is a criminal conman working for the FBI in order to get time off his sentence, that's the setup. But through the course of the show with all his experiences and growing relationships with other characters he was changed from liking the criminal like and conning people and preferring to be a "good guy" and one of the team. But in the final episode he fakes his death in order to finally escape for good and go back to conning people as a lone wolf baddie :(
As if NONE of the hours of the show you watched mattered, all that progress for nothing.

Writers tend to be a bit lazy and get addicted to easy tropes and character setups, they WRONGLY think that basic crap is more important than growth. Characters "reverting to type" is absolute amateur hour and the biggest kick in the groin to an audience.