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    A League of their Own on Amazon. Like the film, it’s about the Rockford Peaches in the All American Girls Baseball league in the 1940s, but doesn’t use the specific characters from the film. Nick Offerman plays a version of the Tom Hanks character.

    Unlike the film, however, about half of it is about a Black woman trying to play ball. Of course, the league wasn’t integrated, so it’s unclear how it will tie that plot into the part about the white women. So far, it’s mostly just a whole separate story.

    It’s also about queer people, which, it turns out, is historically accurate but not mentioned in the film.

    I don’t understand the connection between interest in sports and sexual orientation, but I guess there is one.

    Needless to say, it will piss off all the right people, which is no doubt why it has a low score on IMDB, but it’s a
    well-made show. Lots of good 40s fashion.

    Of course, it’s mostly a story of women putting up with all kinds of bullshit to do what they want to do. Unfortunately, that’s timeless.



    The main criticism is that the dialogue is often anachronistic. I think the idea is to show that these were young people, often from fairly rough places, who struggled to fit into the finishing school rules being imposed on them. They probably swore a lot, but not the way we do today.

    So if hey talked the way people actually talked in the 40s, kids watching today might not get all of that.

    A few shows are doing that now. Dickinson did it to a much greater degree (“Hawthorn can eat a bag of dicke, am I right” - Louisa May Alcott)

    But if they talked like my grandma while playing baseball and having forbidden romances, maybe the contrast from their reality vs the expectations imposed on them would be even starker.

    The other issue is that the actors are too old. They’re in their late 30s or early 40s. The real players from that era were in their 20s, of course.

    Also, historically, the version of baseball they played started out as a hybrid of softball, because that’s what the women had played. The rules and the hall evolved to be more like baseball. That’s never mentioned.

    These leagues started during the war, of course, but actually lasted into the 1950s. i didn’t know that.
    Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 13-08-2022, 16:59.

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      It sounds as if it was written by committee made up of HR people and liberal politicians.

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        And yet is NOT an Adam Sorkin joint

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          Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
          It sounds as if it was written by committee made up of HR people and liberal politicians.
          No, it’s made by Abbi Jacobson. Half of Broad City.

          One of the possible bits of anachronistic language is the use of “asshole” to refer to an objectionable person. According to Wikipedia, it’s unclear if that was in circulation before the 60s.

          It’s set in Rockford but made in Pittsburgh.

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            Paper Girls picks up steam by the end of the first episode. I like it.

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              Finally able to watch season 3 of Atlanta. This show continues to surprise and delight (in an often horrifying way) like no other.

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                Watched all 4 episodes of One Shot: The Football Factory on the Sky documentaries channel over the weekend.
                It was alright, but despite some interesting behind the scenes stuff at Wimbledon and Tooting & Mitchum, there was greater potential to explore the subject matter than the superficial treatment delivered.
                But bloody hell, some parents need to get a grip of themselves.

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                  Godless, on Netflix, is a pretty good western with Jeff Daniels and the eldest sister off Downton Abbey. About all the usual stuff; horses, gold mines, unavenged deaths, it's roughly 8 parts and worth a look. From 2017. A one-off series.

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                    Originally posted by WOM View Post
                    Godless, on Netflix, is a pretty good western with Jeff Daniels and the eldest sister off Downton Abbey. About all the usual stuff; horses, gold mines, unavenged deaths, it's roughly 8 parts and worth a look. From 2017. A one-off series.
                    That was great.

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                      Originally posted by Sam View Post

                      Series 4 especially, we've found during our watch-through (which is for many episodes a rewatch, but the first time we're seeing them in order, as it was much bigger here than in the UK when it first came out so my girlfriend just grew up with it always being on somewhere in the schedule and I've seen a lot of late-night repeats on TV since moving here). I have it on good authority from a couple of friends that it goes from patchy to much, much more consistently great starting with series 5, which we've now made a dent in, and that's holding up so far.

                      Some of the stuff is absolutely skin-crawling even though you know the whole point is that the characters are horrible, horrible people though. The episode in series 4 where Jerry and George's TV show pilot is endangered by them looking at the cleavage of the TV exec's 15-year-old daughter had us pretty much watching through our fingers, and it doesn't get any better when you know that the real-life Jerry Seinfeld started going out with an 18-year-old more or less when that series was being broadcast, when he was 39. That sort of stuff and real-life Jerry's enthusiasm for genocide make it very much a separating-the-art-from-the-artist sort of experience.
                      My favourite character from the whole series was definitely the library detective, Mr Bookman, played by Phillip Baker Hall. I just found out that he died this summer, at the age of 91. He was one of the many actors I started to notice after the film Boogie Nights. Of course, he 'd already been in Hard Eight and subsequently appeared in Magnolia, both direced by Paul Thomas Anderson.

                      Anyway, the Seinfeld clip is still great.

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                        Having allowed a Youtube playlist to stumble onto a list of the American version of "Who's Line is it Anyway?" I've decided to watch a load of the British version from when I was 11/12 years old and didn't really understand what I was watching.

                        I like it.

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                          Yeah, I watched a few from the first series recently, for nostalgic reasons. I think every series is on All4.

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                            Originally posted by Belhaven View Post

                            My favourite character from the whole series was definitely the library detective, Mr Bookman, played by Phillip Baker Hall. I just found out that he died this summer, at the age of 91. He was one of the many actors I started to notice after the film Boogie Nights. Of course, he 'd already been in Hard Eight and subsequently appeared in Magnolia, both direced by Paul Thomas Anderson.

                            Anyway, the Seinfeld clip is still great.

                            That also ties into our thread about instant coffee.

                            Indeed, that was an all-time great cameo.

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                              Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
                              Paper Girls picks up steam by the end of the first episode. I like it.
                              Picked up steam? I thought it hit the ground running and didn't let up. The first two episodes are great and I've still no idea what's going on.

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                                I need to watch Paper Girls - glad to know it is out. They closed down half our downtown to film it (down by Luminati's pizza)

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                                  Originally posted by hobbes View Post

                                  Picked up steam? I thought it hit the ground running and didn't let up. The first two episodes are great and I've still no idea what's going on.
                                  Same. We're starting E3 shortly.

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                                    Originally posted by hobbes View Post

                                    Picked up steam? I thought it hit the ground running and didn't let up. The first two episodes are great and I've still no idea what's going on.
                                    The characters felt a little cliche at first - the brainy one, the tough one, the quiet one, and the sporty one. It was a bit like TMNT or Spice Girls.

                                    But as soon as the laser fights started, it took off.

                                    I don’t really like the way the season ended, but hopefully it will continue.

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                                      Finale of Better Call Saul on now!!!

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                                        Originally posted by Belhaven View Post

                                        My favourite character from the whole series was definitely the library detective, Mr Bookman, played by Phillip Baker Hall. I just found out that he died this summer, at the age of 91. He was one of the many actors I started to notice after the film Boogie Nights. Of course, he 'd already been in Hard Eight and subsequently appeared in Magnolia, both direced by Paul Thomas Anderson.

                                        Anyway, the Seinfeld clip is still great.

                                        Glorious. There's a moment about 45 seconds into that clip, and another about 1:35 in, where you can see the real-life Jerry Seinfeld – the one doing the job of acting in a sitcom on camera – is struggling not to start laughing. His mouth just starts to curl into a smile that's slightly too real to be in character, for me. He does an absolutely heroic job of not cracking up.

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                                          Flicking through my television’s integrated apps the other night I came across a British series called ‘Suspects’ on My5, originally shown on Channel 5.

                                          We started with the first series from 2014 and it’s pretty good. A police procedural, I suppose, but a much more watchable example of the genre. It’s very pacily cut, lots of hand held camera work and semi improvised dialogue. Stylistically it reminds me of NYPD Blue which I liked a lot. Each episode is 45 minutes long but they get through a lot of story in that time - and good story, too. It’s compassionate but never sentimental. Definitely no hugging, but no contrived in-fighting or power struggles amongst the main cast detectives either.

                                          On to second series now and it’s just as good. Recommended, although seeing the first series is eight years old I’m sure it may have been discussed on here previously. Out of curiosity I looked up reviews from the time and found a fairly negative one from the Guardian which I disagreed with completely.
                                          Last edited by Tony C; 19-08-2022, 08:52.

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                                            Paper Girls is absolutely nuts. I'm very much enjoying it.

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                                              Aussie Gold Hunters. As it sounds, it’s people in Australia trying to find gold. Literally. It goes from your have-a-go amateur to high-end industrialists. They build the tension throughout each show. That eeehweeee of the metal detector makes you sit upright. As ever - as always - it’s the folks that are doing it that makes the show. Neville is my favourite. Dude is in a 15-foot hole going “ah, I’m getting a little tickle here. There she is. Great little piece of gold.”

                                              They weigh the fruits of their labour at the end. It ranges from nothing to about $20,000. Everyone is called mate. That mate carries so many meanings. It’s like Donny Brasco “forget about it”.

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                                                It’s only episode one so far, but I thought She Hulk is off to a promising start, at least as these things go.

                                                The criticism I’ve heard is that it put the origin story in episode one. Apparently, that’s not what the writers wanted to do. They wanted to just jump right into the legal/romantic comedy that will be the backbone of the show. But the producers told them to put the origin story first. There’s even a fourth-wall-breaking moment alluding to that decision.

                                                The origin story isn’t very interesting, but it allows She Hulk/Jennifer Walters to banter with Hulk/Bruce Banner.

                                                I don’t think any of these Marvel shows will be life-altering, but they’ve all been worth watching. The only one I was really unhappy with was Moon Knight, because Moon Knight was barely in it and it was confusing. But it wasn’t badly made.

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                                                  Finally got to watch The Card Counter. (Mrs Slightly isn’t a fan of Schrader, but was out tonight.) The film itself was almost brilliant. The black-site scenes, Issac’s performance and a low-low-fi soundtrack make it. Schrader’s never going to excise whatever he needs to, but it’s lucky for us he’s trying.

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                                                    That was a mind fuck. I thought it was going to be about gambling.

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