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Post by Philip Ayres on Jan 31, 2016 18:00:51 GMT
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Post by Philip Ayres on Feb 5, 2016 12:47:46 GMT
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Post by legios on Mar 2, 2016 21:17:48 GMT
First the resampling:-
Gave "Killjoys" another go. It definitely seems to have found its feet now. I'd call it competent, if uninspired (and a little bit mirth inducing when they run slap-bang into the Budget Wall). Whomever is doing the editing seems to have got the hang of putting the action scenes together so that the joins between the actress and the stunt-personnel is a little less obvious. In fairness, if I actually had more than an hour available to watch TV of an evening I would probably stick with this. As it is there are too many other things I would like to see for me to be able to spare time for it. Probably one to come back to as a dvd rental in a couple of years.
Then on to other things:-
Gotham Season 2: Yep, given up pretending to be anything other than melodrama crossed with Grande Guignol. I mean, you can't tell me they didn't know exactly what they were doing when they cast Michael Chiklis as the new, by-the-book, clean Captain of the GCPD. That casting is just to on-the-nose. Also, for anything other than melodrama Gavilan, and most especially Barbara, would be ludicrous caricatures. But given the High-Melodrama nonsense that this show is they fit in rather well. It did amuse me though when I realised that by this point Bullock looks like one of the few sane people in the room! Like the show itself I have long since given up pretending to take Gotham seriously - and I think both it and I are better off for that.
I could do without Nigma though. Of all the characters that's the one I genuinely dislike and regret getting any screen-time.
It also amuses me that even when the rest of the DC TV shows have people in costumes, other dimensions, magic and psionically-powered gorillas... it is Gotham that looks the furthest removed from reality.
It seems that Person of Interest is back this week as well. I have a feeling that my tea-time TV slot is going to be fairly well stocked for the next few months!
Karl
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Post by blueshift on Mar 6, 2016 13:10:26 GMT
Catching up on Adventure Time, I hadn't realised how much of season 7 had been broadcast to date!!
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Post by blueshift on Mar 7, 2016 12:59:29 GMT
Also been catching up on the new Venture Bros eps (new Venture Bros, what crazy world do we live in!!!!). Amazing stuff!
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Post by legios on Mar 25, 2016 22:52:32 GMT
So,
Legends of Tomorrow: Just caught up with the first couple of episodes on catch-up. Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear. Whilst it is always nice to see Victor Garber on screen in things, and I was looking forward to seeing Brandon Routh again... Nope, this isn't working at all. Pretty much everybody is badly underwritten, and the plotting is some unfortunate mix of sketchy and loggy. So far I think the highlights are Captain Cold - it is hard to go wrong by having Snart just sarcasm his way through two hours - and the fight team, who are really rather good at what they do when it comes to putting together fun melee and unarmed combat sequences. But I don't think these two hours have done enough to make me want to spent my currently very limited TV hours keeping up with this show. Not when Flash and Arrow are doing traditional superheroics with much more aplomb. (Much as I wanted to like Arthur Darvill's Rip Hunter...It is basically as much of bad knock-off of the David Tennant Doctor as it looked from the trailers.)
Karl
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Post by The Doctor on Mar 26, 2016 11:26:28 GMT
I have watched an episode of Legends Of Tomorrow. Utter crap. The kind of screenwriting I detest, ie interchangeable dialogue, everyone talks in that annoying 'super smart/sassy way', no sense of threat or danger or excitement.
-Ralph
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Post by blueshift on Apr 4, 2016 20:14:41 GMT
Whilst it isn't a show I'd generally recommend (it's okay) I recently watched the Wander Over Yonder musical episode, which is genuinely amazing. So of course Disney have just cancelled it.
Here's the best two songs from it, though they're all pretty fun
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Post by Bogatan on May 11, 2016 18:48:49 GMT
Oh no Im watching Adventure Call on Youtube again.
Nothing will be done now.
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Post by blueshift on May 11, 2016 18:52:32 GMT
Oh no Im watching Adventure Call on Youtube again. Nothing will be done now. What's Adventure Call? Teach my your ways! I have been watching season 11 of Always Sunny in Philidelphia which just popped up on Netflix. Amazing show. I love how Danny Devito's character is literally just the Penguin now! |
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Post by Bogatan on May 11, 2016 19:05:59 GMT
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Post by Andy Turnbull on May 15, 2016 18:50:56 GMT
Kill Jester.
Andy
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Post by legios on Jun 4, 2016 21:34:50 GMT
So, watched "Evangelion 3.33: You can (not) redo" this evening. Absolutely beautifully animated. Not only in the sense of having huge amounts of money thrown at it per minute, but also in terms of being astoundingly framed and with a very clever use of colour. I think it was probably quite well sound designed too, except that the sound-mix is uncompromisingly 5.1, and doesn't adapt to well to only having a 2.0 television...). There are some moments in there that made me realise how carefully they were actually choosing the colour palette for the previous two films in terms of leading the audience to this one. And the result is some visuals which are genuinely disturbing on an intellectual level.
Did I enjoy it? Honestly, I find it difficult to actually parse Eva in those terms. It is so uncompromisingly a product of Anno's personal despair and his struggle with depression that enjoy doesn't really seem appropriate somehow. The central thesis of Eva, that the human lot is to be trapped behind barriers forever unable to truly communicate fully with another is one that I think I have grown away from over the last decade or so - and probably never really bought all the way into. Which makes these films a very very competent explication of a central thesis that I outright reject. (In the same way as I react to it's deconstruction of the Super Robot Sub-genre with "Piffle!" and a desire to reclaim and proclaim the glorious, simple joy of a bit of bonkers Super Robot craziness.)
Cracking stuff which I think I probably respect more than I like. Do wish I'd had a chance to see it theatrically though - I think some of the imagery would have been astounding in the intended environment.
Karl
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Jul 10, 2016 19:23:53 GMT
300: Rise of an Empire.
Horrifically dull and plodding, lacking the energy of the first. Awful lead as Themistoklesm very dull with an accent that can be best described as wandering. Hilarious CGI blood splatters at every opportunity and what felt like endless narration.
Andy
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Jul 10, 2016 20:55:57 GMT
Debug.
A gift for my birthday. A film by David Hewlett of SG:A fame, with Jason Momoa in it.
Basically a mash of Event Horizon and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Lacks the right pacing for what is essentially a s/f stalk and slash. Momoa is hamming it up big style, but cannot do anything to lift the film. Whenever he is off screen it dies on it's arse.
Andy
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Jul 16, 2016 7:55:01 GMT
This year I am mostly watching Pointless.
Martin
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Post by Bogatan on Jul 17, 2016 17:35:18 GMT
I've watched two and a half seasons of DS9 in about two weeks. Plus half a season of Gilmore girls.
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Post by legios on Jul 17, 2016 21:29:59 GMT
Gone back to give a couple of shows that I skipped a second chance in the last few weeks:-
Killjoys:
I still don't like the first episode very much. For some reason it really doesn't grab me. I actually found it picked up as it went along. I think it is one of those things where I needed to develop an investment in the core characters and the way they interacted. Once I clicked what was going on in the Dutch/John relationship I felt a bit more invested in the show. (I did have to laugh when my brain made the mental comparison to the last show I saw that Michelle Loveretta created - a love triangle over an ass-kicking dark haired women, amongst characters who mostly hang out in a bar... The woman having a sinister figure from her past hanging over her, a mentor this time instead of a father but still...) I do like the way that they have rolled out the main plot - putting so many pieces into play quite early without them being obvious is difficult, but it pays off quite well toward the end of the season. I think of all the things that skiffy have kicked around in recent years I think I'd call this the "Firefly replacement". Both confined to one solar system, and playing the Western-tropes pretty hard and all. It is certainly more enjoyable than I thought from the opening episode. (They also got past one of my other problems with the first episode - some wince-inducingly bad action choreaography. By the end of the season it felt like they'd really worked the kinks out of that). It is nice to have a character with a posh English accent not be the villain of the piece for once as well. :-)
Dark Matter:
I didn't see the first season of this at all on broadcast - thankfully laser-tv has a good integrated tv-on-demand offering. I really like the premise that the show opens with - "you all wake up on a spaceship. None of you have any idea who the others are. Oh, and you don't know who you are either." That made me chuckle evilly. (Of all the spaceship shows I've seen, Dark Matter is the one that reminds me of a roleplaying campaign run by a referee with my kind of sense of humour. It just feels like the players all turned up with characters with the "amnesia" flaw as a joke, and weren't prepared for the answer to be a semi-feral smile and "ok".) Decent set of actors, and a nice set of character dynamics between the various members of the group. It also doesn't stretch out the "we don't know who we are" thing too long - with most of the good stuff coming from peoples reactions to who they were and their decisions as to whether they want to be those people again or to be better (and the problems that come with both). It does show sometimes that they've spent a lot of their budget on that spaceship set - they are visibly trying to get their money's worth out of it at times, but it is a pretty nice set actually. Also it has an android with a fantastic line in deadpan snark, she's probably my second favourite character in the show to be honest.
Both shows do show the limits of their budgets at times - Dark Matter by spending a lot of time on their big set, and Killjoys by trying to stretch every cent out of the woods in Canada. I think I probably prefer the production design on Killjoys - it has a nice "used future" aesthetic to it which I rather like - whilst in terms of character dynamics I think Dark Matter has the edge with a larger deck and a tendency to redeal hands fairly regularly. I'm not prepared to go out on a limb and say that I think either of them are classics, but I think that they are pretty solid all told.
Karl
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Post by legios on Jul 22, 2016 21:11:28 GMT
The original Patlabor OAV series has been watched. It is fine, fine stuff. Much more comedy-oriented in general than the movies it spawned, it has a fine blend of wit and slapstick. Ranging from police sitcom stuff, to a fantastic "monster in tokyo bay" story which even has a deranged scientist with an eye-patch to a fantastic tongue-in-cheek ghost story, it still finds time to change gears and do a very good serious two-parter about a coup attempt. There are only seven episodes, but there isn't really a dud amongst them - even the least successful one still raises a few good laughs. Really pleased that this is finally available in this country - it has taken long enough to get here, but it was worth the wait.
Karl
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Post by blueshift on Jul 23, 2016 23:58:13 GMT
I just watched Stranger Things, the new Netflix show. It's REALLY good, very much reminded me of the film 'Super 8', a Spielberg meets Stephen King sort of thing. Up the streets of most people here I'd wager!
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Jul 25, 2016 19:45:38 GMT
Now that it's been released on Blu-ray I am mostly watching season 1 of Supergirl.
Martin
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Post by Pinwig on Aug 5, 2016 9:10:19 GMT
I just finished season two of Black Sails. That's excellent stuff. The second season is vastly improved on the first. Loads of great sea battles and a genuinely engaging plot.
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Post by blueshift on Aug 5, 2016 9:28:00 GMT
What's Black Sails?
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Post by legios on Aug 5, 2016 10:11:08 GMT
Original Playstation Game wasn't it? :-)
Karl
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Post by Pinwig on Aug 5, 2016 11:48:46 GMT
Black Sails is a prequel story to Treasure Island, but with a much more adult tone. It deals with the major Treasure Island characters (and some other 'real' pirate names of the time) and the lives they lead about 20 years before the original story; a kind of how the gang got together. But it's so much more than that. It's basically a tale of piracy on the high seas and life in the Bahamas around the beginning of the 1800s. The first series took about five episodes to get going, but came through toward the end. The second has been great right the way through. Intriguing plot and impressive visuals with ships broadsiding each other etc. It's been on the History Channel. Kinda like Vikings I suppose, but with pirates.
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Post by Benn on Aug 28, 2016 17:28:44 GMT
Now working my way through 'The Mysterious Cities Of Gold'. Why did I not remember aliens? ALIENS! I mean... wow.
They may not be in the end, but we're clearly meant to think that at this point.
And then there was the live action reenactment of a human sacrifice a couple of episodes back. We had it good back in the day, didn't we?
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Post by blueshift on Aug 28, 2016 18:12:27 GMT
Now working my way through 'The Mysterious Cities Of Gold'. Why did I not remember aliens? ALIENS! I mean... wow. They may not be in the end, but we're clearly meant to think that at this point. And then there was the live action reenactment of a human sacrifice a couple of episodes back. We had it good back in the day, didn't we? Cities of Gold is one of those few shows that's better than I remember!! |
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Post by Benn on Aug 28, 2016 18:35:04 GMT
I have just watched a chicken being beheaded. These live action sections are hardcore, man.
I think the only cartoon that I've rewatched that really hasn't held up has been Thundercats, really. Jayce And The Wheeled Warriors is sporadic, too, actually.
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Post by Benn on Aug 29, 2016 15:27:09 GMT
Okay, so the aliens aren't aliens, they're the last survivors of a super-advanced race who got wiped out in a prehistoric nuclear war. Yay!
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Post by Benn on Aug 29, 2016 15:28:51 GMT
They still have a flying head tripod thing, though. Which is equipped with a laser. This show properly jumps the shark at the end here, but it never feels too outlandish. It's great.
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