Television

[niminy-piminy]

Denmark launches children's TV show about man with giant penis

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... iant-penis
John Dillermand has an extraordinary penis.
So extraordinary, in fact, that it can perform rescue operations, etch murals, hoist a flag and even steal ice-cream from children.
Critics condemn idea of animated series about a man who cannot control his penis, but others have backed it.
---
“The show depicts a man who is impulsive and not always in control, who makes mistakes – like kids do, but crucially, Dillermand always makes it right. He takes responsibility for his actions. When a woman in the show tells him that he should keep his penis in his pants, for instance, he listens. Which is nice. He is accountable.”
---
DR responded to the latest criticism by saying it could just as easily have made a programme “about a woman with no control over her vagina” and that the most important thing was that children enjoyed John Dillermand.

https://youtu.be/_3sGocnMP3A

[nrh]

pleasantly surprised to see that hbo has put out a full, spanish language horror series from alex de la iglesia, 30 coins (after the cursed silver coins given to judas that seem to precipitate the action here).

two episodes in, and i should say the first in about 80 minutes long and with some editing could play like a self contained horror film in its own right, and it it is a genuine pulp pleasure, all hints of shadowy vatican machinations and repentant ex-con priests with an arsenal of weapons hidden in a secret room behind the altar. definitely nice to see something that eschews a lot of the tropes of modern prestige horror without being at all winking and cute about its genre (this at least so far is a long way from his campier horror riffs). not sure if they'll stick the landing (something alex de la iglesia has had issues with in the past) but for now it is a lot of fun.

[nrh]

like seemingly a bunch of people have started to watch star trek deep space nine during the extended lock down period, just finishing up the second season.

it's funny that a lot of things that might have seemed white elephant like in early television - the focus on highly written scripts, the space given to theatrically performative actors, the limited sets, and so on - seem termite like in a time of prestige tv where shows act like movies without an auteur presence.

i've heard the whole thing gets more continuity heavy as it goes on, and i'll see where it goes, but for now really enjoying these small episodes based on an almost hawksian team of equals coming to terms with each others skills and limitations; the best of these 45 minute episodes remind me more of a classic lewis rifleman or a george sherman b western than most 90s onward american tv (it is very telling they got the actual screenwriter of mann's naked spur to work on their naked spur episode).

[thoxans]

their naked spur episode

[kanafani]

https://twitter.com/Jerkwheatery/status ... 0621536257

[thoxans]

most consistently genre-defying tv show ever? maybe...? all i know is that watching the first 10min of a magnum pi ep, before promptly falling asleep, has become part of my bedtime routine

[Monsieur Arkadin]

I've been noticing a lot of Magnum PI memes lately. Just yesterday saw this one pop up in several different locations:

[pabs]

I also finished watching PRETEND IT'S A CITY. Fran's irascible nature is such fun to behold! She's one of my favourite misanthropes and she's angry at all the right things including some I hadn't really thought about.

Also finished FOSSEY/VERDON.

I saw All That Jazz (Fosse, 1979) a few years ago and this series is kind of a companion piece to that film, even if it's a bit too drawn out at times. Michelle Williams is perfect as Verdon.

[Roscoe]

PRETEND IT'S A CITY has been good fun, mainly. Gotta say that my respect for Spike Lee took a bit of a hit after that discussion of sports, his defense of fandom got embarrassing. Her little rant about putting murals in the subways came straight from my mouth -- this is what they spent all that money on?

[Curtis, baby]

I'm rewatching Student Bodies (Shtudent Bowdies). It rules

[rischka]

is anything good on hulu? they're trying to give me a free trial again (my 3rd :p)

wow i watched star trek: deep space 9 back in the day. glad to hear it holds up

[kanafani]

https://twitter.com/dhm/status/1355920267227373569

[...]

Good stuff. Hasselhoff really sells it. Heh.

[rischka]

is that real?? also the magnum PI clip above

[kanafani]

The gleeful silliness and joie de vivre of these cheesy old shows is so much more enjoyable than 99% of what passes for prestige TV nowadays.

[Roscoe]

BETTER CALL SAUL, the fifth season of which I'm revisiting and savoring every single magical delicious moment of. There's nothing better. At all.

[Holymanm]

^ good juxtaposition

[wba]

.

[wba]

Struggled to get through Breaking Bad, after putting it off all this time... could not have been more, I dunno, disappointed. Is my 'critical' thinking so dulled these days that I can't recognise quality when it kicks me in the face with 63 double-length episodes? Apparently, because this is the most widely-acclaimed show ever made and it just seemed pretty much the same as any other silly American drama to me...?*

Too comic bookish to be serious; too serious to be fun or amusing.** Like Chris Nolan moved to America, stuck his head up his ass (American English for "arse"), and set out to make The Best Show Ever. And then watched some Tarantino movies, got drunk, and re-shot it all in a day. Crikey!

I'm sure there's a decent show buried deep down - deep under the endless 5-minute conversation scenes, buried under the 10-minute reaction scenes of characters conversing with other characters about their previous conversations they just had, buried under the 5-minute cold opens of nothing at all... and under the inexplicable need to make almost every single character as boring and unsympathetic and unbearable as possible... and under the absolute turgid filth of every single scene in the show being buried under I-Took-English-1100-in-Uni level "dramatic devices" such as "foreshadowing" and shit... so yeah. Chop it down to 20 episodes, rewrite everything, and maybe there'll be that better-than-films quality level and deeply intelligent and riveting meditation on good and evil that I was promised (I'm mad)

* but given more license to be "artistic", i.e., make every 1-minute shot 2 minutes instead
** except of course for the pizza scene and the tracking device to the face scene

Yeah, Breaking Bad sucks. The first two episodes were quite promising, though.
I actually had to force myself to watch and finish this boring piece of dumbery after season 3...

[wba]

The gleeful silliness and joie de vivre of these cheesy old shows is so much more enjoyable than 99% of what passes for prestige TV nowadays.

Absolutely!

I'm watching and enjoying "Knight Rider" as well as "Magnum P.I." for the past ten years now (an episode every month or two), and it is so much better than anything US TV has produced over the past 20 years! It's really mind-boggling, how bad most TV series have gotten.

[nrh]

i ended up very much enjoying alex de la iglesias hbo project 30 coins. the exact right mixture of pulp seriousness and silliness; it never gets quite as perfectly weighted as the first 90 minute episode but the way the monster/supernatural visitation of the week structure grows into giant vatican conspiracy, with haunted mirror worlds and secret tunnels under vatican city where priests store hoards of forbidden scripture and small spanish towns are taken over by fog and the dead come back to life as golems made of dirt, is wonderfully handled. some dumb plot stuff towards the end where the show needs to go through some strained plotting to get one of the main players off the board for a few episodes but not enough to harm the show.

and the cast is great, especially eduard fenrnandez and macarena gomez, who really gets to shine as she goes off the rails towards the end. and genuinely happy to see this sort of thing getting funded.

[pabs]

Finished watching the 8 part HBO series WE ARE WHO WE ARE (2020), directed by Luca Guadagnino, and co-written by Paolo Giordano, a well-known Italian author (The Solitude of Prime Numbers).

Set on an American military base near Venice, it focusses on a handful of adolescents and their parents, including a couple of kids working out their sexual identities.
Chloe Sevigny is surprisingly good as the outfit's head honcho, a gay woman juggling her work with raising her troubled son and maintaining a relationship with her wife.
The gender issues it brings up were interesting. It was a bit flat a few times, but the characters and acting really made up for those. I ended up getting attached to Caitlan, played by Jordan Kristine Seamón, an amazing newcomer (well, I'd never seen her), as well as Sevigny's character and a few of the others, so much so that I'll miss not seeing them again tonight.

7/10

[pabs]

Mrs. America is just so entertaining!

The cast is fantastic and the mise-en-scène, perfect. The visual quality makes you think it was filmed in the early 70s. I'm learning so much about second-wave feminism from this, as well as American history and politics.

Cate Blanchett is amazing as Schlafly! Such a fucking cow!

[Curtis, baby]

ok so im rewatching My So-Called Life, first time in probably more than a decade

13 of 19 eps in

so, ths is by far the greatest series ever

claire danes' and jared leto's performances as angela and jordan are acted and captured ASTONISHINGLY BEAUTIFULLY. everyone else is good too, especially ricky, brian and danielle, but i would put the two lead performances up there on the pantheon of acting. for sure best ever in tv, let alone tv drama

[pabs]

^ I might give it a whirl.

[Roscoe]

I remember liking MY SO-CALLED LIFE when I caught it in reruns soon after the initial broadcast. I remember one scene of Clare Danes, sitting at a breakfast table with a cup of coffee, projecting "I'm So In LOVE" without any easy gimmicks or tricks, you could just see it in everything she did. And I liked that her parents weren't morons or villains.

[Searchlike]

Never heard of it before. Good thing it was cancelled, wouldn't even think of watching it if it was 20 episodes long.

[rischka]

how did i not realize the TIME TEAM host was baldrick from BLACKADDER

[sally]

how did i not realize the TIME TEAM host was baldrick from BLACKADDER

what?

you need to watch the earlier series, it's pretty obvious

the earlier ones are mostly all here (pretty ropey quality tho)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd1Mxy ... shelf_id=0

also, geofizz john has an ace lockdown beard now

[rischka]

oh nice! yeah i was watching more recent ones with bald baldrick but i saw an earlier one yesterday. i knew he was familiar....