Current Watching

[Cal Alamein]

This Netflix doc was an education for me.

[slackster]

Watched Birdbox on netflix last night, and lead actor Bullock’s not bad in it. Feel the story could have done without the twee last couple of minutes, though.

[DCI Harry Batt]

No mention of the Malkovich Poirot?

[Hot Pepsi]

I didn’t know there was such a thing.

[elguapo4]

No mention of the Malkovich Poirot?

I watched one and two, really enjoyed it and,haven't watched three yet so no spoilers, it was only at the end of the first episode that I realised that Rupert Grint was the copper, it's amazing how a tache and a bit of brylcreem can age someone

[WOM]

Watched Birdbox on netflix last night, and lead actor Bullock’s not bad in it. Feel the story could have done without the twee last couple of minutes, though.

We just watched this today. I found it very compelling and tense. And I liked SB a lot. I hear ya about the twee last couple of minutes, but it didn't ruin it for me.

[WOM]

Also, finally saw Get Out, which was excellent. But I'm only a year late to this particular party.

Also, saw The Post. An excellent story, well told, with about a million great actors, but fuck me does Spielberg play it with a really heavy hand these days. I mean, some scenes were laughably cartoonish in their execution.

[Hot Pepsi]

It was the most Oscar-baity movie ever. It didn’t win.

[Femme Folle]

I might watch Bird Box tonight.

[Sean of the Shed]

No mention of the Malkovich Poirot?

Really enjoyed it. Not normally a fan of Agatha Christie dramas, all been done before and same old same old, but this was a refreshing approach, especially the Poirot back story.

[gt3]

Thought Bird Box was simply a rip off of A Quiet Place - which was one of the most tense pieces of film story telling I saw this year...Criminally under rated i reckon.

Echo Sean of the Shed re Malkovich's Poirot. Have always shied away from Agatha Christie. But I enjoyed the dark re-imagining of his character. Also, the anti-immigrant elements were played well. Didn't feel shoe horned in to make it "relevant" in these Brexity days...

[MsD]

As a fan of the books, I didn’t like the Poirot retcon. I quite enjoyed it as a John Malkovich film and all the camp gloom. David Suchet played Poirot with all the necessary darkness in the later ITV productions (Curtain, Murder on the Orient Express) and Malkovich will never be a “funny little man”.

[Hot Pepsi]

Thought Bird Box was simply a rip off of A Quiet Place - which was one of the most tense pieces of film story telling I saw this year...Criminally under rated i reckon....

It got an 82 on metacritic.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Really enjoyed it. Not normally a fan of Agatha Christie dramas, all been done before and same old same old, but this was a refreshing approach, especially the Poirot back story.

Same here. I mean, I enjoy the trad Christie sometimes as cheesy obvious in-your-face nonsense. But it grates after a while. Really refreshing, I thought.

[Ray de Galles]

Also, saw The Post. An excellent story, well told, with about a million great actors, but fuck me does Spielberg play it with a really heavy hand these days. I mean, some scenes were laughably cartoonish in their execution.

As I mentioned on the “Films of 2018” thread that was one of the biggest disappointments of the cinematic year for me. The characterisation was so thin & one-dimensional and the plot so linear that it reminded me of ‘The Comic Strip presents The Strike’.

[Femme Folle]

I started watching Killing Eve today. I like it so far.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I read that as Killing Ewe, and I wondered if you'd done a 180 on your normal attitudes towards animal cruelty.

And as I pondered who would make a sheep snuff film, it dawned on me that I'm an idiot.

[Femme Folle]

Haha

[Benjm]

Watched The ABC Murders tonight. I liked John Malkovich's restrained version of Poirot. The pacing was pretty leaden as the episodes wore on and it definitely felt like a two hour story stretched out to three. The longeurs led me to an alternative reading of the story in which present day Peter Gabriel was hunting young Jah Wobble across time, perhaps due to a disagreement over billings at WOMAD.

The tricksy direction and attempts to add psychological import seemed a bit presumptuous. Christie was fairly well known for starting with the mechanics of the puzzle and retro-fitting her characters on to that, so if they don't always resonate with deep human truths there's a reason for it. Likewise Poirot's greatness as a character is that he is an instantly recognisable silhouette that readers and viewers can fill in for themselves. Again, had the story unfolded more tautly and without the lengthy post-solution coda, that might have been less of a niggle.

[Hot Pepsi]

Per tradition, I’m watching The Twilight Zone.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Watched The ABC Murders tonight. I liked John Malkovich's restrained version of Poirot. The pacing was pretty leaden as the episodes wore on and it definitely felt like a two hour story stretched out to three. The longeurs led me to an alternative reading of the story in which present day Peter Gabriel was hunting young Jah Wobble across time, perhaps due to a disagreement over billings at WOMAD.

The tricksy direction and attempts to add psychological import seemed a bit presumptuous. Christie was fairly well known for starting with the mechanics of the puzzle and retro-fitting her characters on to that, so if they don't always resonate with deep human truths there's a reason for it. Likewise Poirot's greatness as a character is that he is an instantly recognisable silhouette that readers and viewers can fill in for themselves. Again, had the story unfolded more tautly and without the lengthy post-solution coda, that might have been less of a niggle.

Yeah. I mean we haven't got this yet but undoubtedly it'll show up on PBS in the next three months, but why? I mean does the world really need/want another Poirot however reconstructed he is? Fuck me there must have been half a dozen versions of Murder on the the Orient Express — for example — in my lifetime and there can't be more than half a dozen English speakers on the planet who don't know who did it by now. I mean if the BBC, or whoever, wants to regurgitate 30s whodunits than take another crack at Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. There's far more to be done with class and gender in one Dorothy L Sayers story than in an entire library of Agatha Christie.

[Hot Pepsi]

I never read or saw the Orient Express until the recent Kenneth Branagh film. After about 45 minutes I just skipped to the end to find out who did it.

[WOM]

Dunnit, innit?

[Incandenza]

Started watching the first episode of Derry Girls. It's pretty entertaining so far.

[Femme Folle]

Bah. I got to the third episode of Killing Eve and discovered that only the first two were free. I'm not paying for it. It will eventually be on Netflix or Amazon Prime. What a despicable thing to do, to let someone watch enough to get hooked and then put up a paywall.