SCFZ

Holymanm wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2020 7:55 am Struggled to get through Breaking Bad, after putting it off all this time... could not have been more, I dunno, disappointed.

Well it's good to get an opposing view.

I might start watching it, and I agree, reviews for it have been too glowing. No offence to you personally, Roscoe! I'm talking about general reviews you come across everywhere.

I, Claudius - Outstanding televison despite the tacky wigs and oh so hideous makeup. It struck me that you couldn't make a saucy show like that today with so little eye candy.

pabs wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2020 11:23 am reviews for it have been too glowing

So utterly, brilliantly glowing that I was ready for anything at all except... same old, same old. Superficial characters and cool ultraviolence and such.

But it's universally agreed upon as the best show ever made, so you probably have to watch it for yourself, anyway!

So, for the past couple months I've been, um, homing from work and have cable tv for the first time in more than a decade, which has mostly meant catching all sorts of recentish action movies and "marathons" of extended universe blockbusters in the evenings, if I'm awake, but in the mornings means TV series that ran for a lot of seasons that some channels play back to back to back etc rather than having to schedule anything more creatively, stuff like five hours or Friends, Deep Space Nine or Xena: Warrior Princess or whatnot. Easy enough to understand most of it, but I gotta say that I can't figure out how Charmed managed to last at all. It's dreadful, and I mean more than in the standard mediocre TV sense. It's completely perplexing how it managed to find any sort of dedicated fandom, though it must have as it goes on and on.

On the other hand, I've ended up getting sort of hooked into Supernatural, that show is just plain nutty. X-Files ripoff* it may be, but the X-Files didn't have Scully and Mulder shoot God. I'm willing to ride with the drearier episodes for the little pleasures of a show getting really wacky.

*Or at least that's how it started out, before drifting closer to Fringe, another of the X-Files like shows that went beyond the inspiration to something much odder.

pabs wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2020 11:23 am

Holymanm wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2020 7:55 am Struggled to get through Breaking Bad, after putting it off all this time... could not have been more, I dunno, disappointed.

Well it's good to get an opposing view.

I might start watching it, and I agree, reviews for it have been too glowing. No offence to you personally, Roscoe! I'm talking about general reviews you come across everywhere.

Sure -- I get the "the reviews are too good for this to be anything but crap" thing, that's pretty much where I live most of the time. No one was more surprised than I at how much I dug on BREAKING BAD. Mileage, as always, is gonna vary.

In other news, sheer inertia led me to sit through Big Chunks of DOWNTON ABBEY over the past couple of weekends, local PBS channels were doing marathons and well, whatever. It's just crap, and as ineptly written as it is handsomely produced and acted. It's like Julian Fellowes worked really hard on the plot outlines for each season and each episode, plotting it all out to the millisecond, and then dashed off an entire season's worth of dialogue in about 15 minutes. One exchange seems indicative, as when someone is speaking to Maggie Smith's Lady Violet about a potential adversary:

Character: (Potential Adversary) is a tough nut to crack.
Lady Violet: Well, I'm a tough nut cracker.

Jesus. To be fair there are occasional flashes of life, from everybody but the embalmed Maggie Smith who long ago gave up even pretending to give a shit about what she's doing.

Couldn't help notice that Disney Plus allows THE MANDALORIAN to rack up a Tarantinian body count in its opening episode because weapons are his religion, but HAMILTON can't say "fuck" because it's obscene. The stupidity of censorship. The show about a mass murdering bounty hunter who kills anyone or anything that gets in his way is Fine Family Fare, but the most acclaimed theatrical work of the millennium gets the chop because naughty language.

Yeah, and nudity in film is taboo and immoral, but constant violence, blood gushing from wounds, and killing are not, so let's see lots of the latter and not censor it. And let's buy and hoard lots of guns and then shoot random people in shopping malls and cinemas, and also kids and staff in schools. What a fucked up, insane society. A country that's as prude about sex as some silly old maid, a 75 year old virgin with sexual hang-ups wearing 3 petticoats under her dress, yet gung-ho about showing blood, pain and violence.

McMILLIONS on HBO, a documentary series about the McDonalds Monopoly Game that was so popular in the US, and how it all went so hideously wrong. A good tasty slice of America, funny and sad. A glorious subplot about a gangster seeking to get around local restrictions on his strip clubs by rebranding them as churches is one thing, but the grim reality of that woman realizing that she's gotten involved in something destructive and wrong is something else.

BETTER CALL SAUL -- starting on a rewatch of one of my favorite things in this world.

finally made it all the way through dominik graf's 10 episode series im angesicht des verbrechens/in the face of crime from 2010. doesn't have the sheer concentrated force of the other policiers i've seen and it's definitely miles away from something like der felsen, but i kind of thought this was great, just to see what happens with graf's narrative instincts when he is allowed to stretch out at this length.

and it turns out they get super baroquely layered, to the point where it becomes difficult put down a simple synopsis and you just start laying out all the separate overlapping threads, many of don't play out to conclusion so much a flare out in grotesque anti-climax. and graf is just really good at the most straightforward termite pleasures of this kind of thing, tailing suspects and daring raids and foot chases. any other tv show i tried to put on while watching this just felt hopelessly staid and boring...

been binging midnight diner. very pleasant, if not groundbreaking. enjoy its literal approach to the episodic format, each show basically a little short film in its own right, which, after building up over time, does achieve that comforting sense of worldbuilding, in both setting as well as intermittently overlapping characters. reminds me of the japanese joint i used to oft frequent; you go enough times, you start to get to know the people around you, from the staff to the regulars to the every-once-in-a-whilers to even those you'll never see again for whatever reason; an entire universe in and of itself, in a strip mall no less. given that, i'm more than likely biased, feeding as it does into my own nostalgic, sensorial pleasures, but still i think it's nicely done. the haiku-esque approach can of course lead to lesser entries, some episodes/storylines falling a bit flat from time to time; and, yes, melodrama on a near soap operatic-level can intrude for the convenience of the half-hour presentation; but i gotta say, it's all seemingly earnest enough that its pleasures amount to more than merely satisfying my own predilections. worth a watch for those who've had it in their queue for a while, but haven't gotten around to it yet (admittedly, it also gets major bonus points for intro'ing me to a host of japanese dishes i hadn't ever heard of, and can't wait to tackle, so there's that too...)

Ah yes, Season Three of BETTER CALL SAUL, and Michael McKean delivers a performance for the ages here. There's so much more to him than those Christopher Guest things will ever show.

I watched the first episode of The Comey Rule just now. I'm very impressed by the acting and the story's pacing. It's thrilling. I flat-out hated Comey at the time, but now realise, thanks to this, what a horrible position Comey was put in to have to decide whether or not to make such an announcement so close to the election. Jeff Daniels and the entire cast are superb. 8/10 for ep. 1.

Finally watched UP TO SPEED (2012). I liked it... a lot even... but considering how much I ADORE both Rick Linklater & Speed Levitch, I was expecting something a little more transcendental... I dunno, THE CRUISE is more organic for sure, and I prefer it. But I did learn a lot of interesting things! Also his vists included the 2 cities in the states I've lived in (Chicago & KCMO), and my two favourite that I've visited (SF & NYC), so that was cool

Checked out the last episode of Season 3 and the first episode of Season 4 of BETTER CALL SAUL back to back, which follow each other almost immediately chronologically, and a great pleasure it was, as of course every moment of BETTER CALL SAUL is.

Finally got round to Fishing with John, which is absolutely incredible and hilarious.

Fishing with John is superb comedy! A classic TLC favourite I believe, it was James who told me to watch it way back when

MrCarmady wrote: ↑Sat Oct 17, 2020 12:50 amFinally got round to Fishing with John, which is absolutely incredible and hilarious.

bure wrote: ↑Sat Oct 17, 2020 1:18 amFishing with John is superb comedy!

I had to look it up. Thanks for the rec, guys, I'm in!

I'm on the last ep. of the first season of Schitt's Creek and it's grown on me quite a bit. The characters are over-the-top, yet something about their flaws and tantrums makes me sympathetic to them. A look of helplessness sometimes flashes across each one of these characters' faces at key, often overly dramatic, moments, making you feel sorry for them despite their total ridiculousness. I'm glad I persisted with it and I'm keen to see it through to the end.

I started watching I Hate Suzie, but after three episodes, I'm not enjoying it much and will probably jump ship. Maybe one more episode.

Up to Sex and the City's Season 4. It's so dependable. It's the thing I go to when there's nothing else I'm in the mood for, and I'm always charmed. It never disappoints.

beelzepabs wrote: ↑Sat Oct 17, 2020 6:43 amSchitt's Creek

canadian TV is under-the-radar good this last decade or so! schitt's creek, mr. d (my favourite), kim's convenience... the kids in the hall: death comes to town revival series was amazing, if completely forgotten now

beelzepabs wrote: ↑Sat Oct 17, 2020 6:43 amso dependable

couldn't agree more actually! i 'watch' it about once a year, though i use the word 'watch' loosely cuz i often just put it on in the background while i'm cooking or cleaning, but yeah, it's still good fun. samantha will always be the best. miranda i've grown to luvvv. charlotte just isn't my cup of tea. and by now i think carrie is the absolute worst of the bunch tbh. just a bad person. selfish. flighty. irresponsible. i get that back then they were trying to create this three-dimensional female main character, complete with all the flaws that go with being a human being, and not merely a perfect tv creation, but ugh she's pretty bad in hindsight. i enjoy laughing at her now, rather than sympathizing. also, with binging it, it's interesting to see how the series really changed over the course of its run. the sitcom-y episodic approach of the first couple seasons eventually gives way to longer story arcs and character development (not sure when carrie stops breaking the fourth wall, but it's somewhere in the middle of the series iirc) before finally becoming much more dramatic, rather than comedic, almost like a soap opera. in that way, season six is by far my least favorite, but everything leading up to it is still charming, even when it's wildly outdated

For me the trajectory of SEX AND THE CITY is the trajectory of Miranda in the episode THE REAL ME -- a hot guy hits on her at the gym, she's got zero confidence and gets a pep talk from Carrie to the effect of "don't you know how wonderful you are?" and then Miranda blows it on the first date with the hot guy by being all fabulous and self-involved. The entire series went from being endearingly funky and messy to being impossibly self-important and smug, just unbearable, and those atrocious films only elevate the Extreme Selfishness on display.

NosfeRoscoe wrote: ↑Fri Oct 23, 2020 6:39 pmjust unbearable

makes sense that the logical end result was the wedding between stanford and anthony, with liza minnelli presiding, and every other horrible thing that followed in that overlong informerical for abu dhabi that they called a sequel. the first film was bad, but think it woulda kinda worked as the proper final season of the show, rather than five episodes strung together into a 2.5hr flick, which is essentially what it was. the sequel though, yikes. historically atrocious. no wonder it was the final nail in the coffin for the franchise. well, that, and parker and cattrall's apparently super toxic working relationship. there's a good time to be had on rewatches trying to spot the on-screen tension between the two

Yeah -- that Abu Dhabi trip where we find out that All Women Want To Be Carrie Bradshaw. Agreed about the rewatches, it becomes clearer and clearer that Cattrall and Parker are rarely in the same shot.

There was something really ugly about that last season the show, I just kept muttering "how in fuck's name is it possible to be bored in Paris?"

I agree with almost everything you both said. I'm only in the 4th season so far, so I'll be seeing if I agree with you as I graduate to S.5 and 6.

Would either of you have seen Cattrall's current tv series, FILTHY RICH ? It's received pretty poor public scores (e.g. IMdb ratings) so far, but such ratings don't mean much to me.

Saw about half of the new version of REBECCA, with Armie Hammer miscast as Maxim De Winter, and Lily James as a more forceful Mrs. De Winter than usual, and the sublime Kristin Scott Thomas misused as Mrs. Danvers, and Ben Wheatley making a hash of what I've seen. A tasty flourish here and there, to be fair, some nice locations. But no.

i have downloaded brass eye and hope it will be good for some laughs!

Brass Eye is amazing, especially the final episode. I watched Black Books recently, which was enjoyable, and most of Chewing Gum (likewise). Also re-watching Spaced and Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. Weird, only after writing this down did I realise how UK-focused my TV viewing has been recently, should mix it up.

that's funny, just by random coincidence i watched the first ep of the day today yesterday (it showed up in my youtube sidebar). very hit and miss for me, but its moments of inspired genius make the lulls worth enduring.

brass eye has quickly won me over also a pretentious hipster put me on to nathan for you and he kills me

I'll be diving straight into the new season of The Crown tonight.