Current Watching

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Coming back to The Dropout (sorry, can’t do italics on my phone and am in hospital this week), I felt the need to reread Bad Blood before I continued watching, so as to check how closely the screenplay stuck to the facts. And I’m glad I did, because I see they have conflated events and altered timings. I dare say the screenplay is true to the “spirit” of what happened, and that the changes improve the dramatic quality, but I’m really a stickler on this: if a drama is based on actual historic events, I want it to stick as closely as possible to those events as they actually happened.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

A bit late to it but we are enjoying Boat Story.

It's odd; it has a slight Killing Eve vibe and we didn't like that.

We don't always agree about viewing by the way. Ozark a notable example.

I gave up on it, despite having made the investment of watching at least 3 episodes. I could have reluctantly got through the unnecessarily and revolting graphic depictions of lethal and sadistic violence, or tolerated the oh-so-fucking clever game playing with narrative and timing perspective with those stupid twee silent movie style whole screen captions, but not both. Fuck the writers, I want those 4 hours of my life back. I only stuck with it so long because I really rate both Daisy Haggard and Paterson Joseph and because it was a gripping story before they ruined it with the “is this real” mind games.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I'd like to believe that Patricia Highsmith would have wholeheartedly approved of Ripley (Netflix) With the sole exception of Strangers on a Train It is the finest film/video production of one of her novels a I've seen. Shot in stunning B&W it inhabits the early 60s space vacated by Hitchcock and De Sica a decade earlier. Starring Andrew Scott (the hot vicar in Fleabag) it's a genuine noir a fan can drool over.

[Simon G]

Series 5 is indeed excellent, with the standout being the Song for a Stranger. You've a way to go yet Simon G, but the first episode of series 17 was pretty good too. Certainly an improvement on Series 16; which I thought was one of the poorest, slightly better than series 7 in which I just didn't like any of the contestants particularly.

I have just watched this and I implore everyone to watch it - pure comedy gold!

[Sits]

A bit late to it but we are enjoying Boat Story.

It's odd; it has a slight Killing Eve vibe and we didn't like that.

We don't always agree about viewing by the way. Ozark a notable example.

[Felicity, I guess so]

If you're talking about the Japanese film that was released 5+ years ago, it is a great film and definitely worth watching.

It was, we missed it and now after Monster we really want to see it

[danielmak]

We thought we were getting Shoplifters streamed the other night

If you're talking about the Japanese film that was released 5+ years ago, it is a great film and definitely worth watching.

[danielmak]

The Gentlemen was fun but I doubt it will stay in the memory.

I think it was based on a Guy Ritchie movie, which was good. I haven't watched the series but the trailer seems to replicate the movie.

Speaking of remakes: after a much needed break from baseball and football that last two nights I worked through the remake of Road House. This is normally something I would dodge, but was looking for brain dead action. The film wasn't that bad. Better than I remember the original Road House and some nice little twists in the story. But it is best if you are looking for a no need to think action film. It's on Prime in the US.

[Satchmo Distel]

The Gentlemen was fun but I doubt it will stay in the memory.

[Simon G]

Series 5 is indeed excellent, with the standout being the Song for a Stranger. You've a way to go yet Simon G, but the first episode of series 17 was pretty good too. Certainly an improvement on Series 16; which I thought was one of the poorest, slightly better than series 7 in which I just didn't like any of the contestants particularly.

I'm watching 17 as well, and quite enjoyed last week's episode.

[hobbes]

It's started well.

I didn't think Al Murray was all too bad either, though I get why he would irritate people with his tactics.

Oh, Al Murray was funny and found a way to game the system. It's just that after him it had to change tack slightly, or everyone would have done the same and it would have ruined it.

[Mr Delicieux]

Its shit like that thats stopped me watching Peaky Blinders past the pilot. Moody lads, proper hard lads, bad hard lads. Barely seems a step up from the Football Factory shit.

I felt the same, just wish I'd have gotten into the flat cap game, I found it incredible how that one show made something long dismissed as the preserve of old men into a desirable thing to be seen wearing.

[nmrfox]

Series 5 is indeed excellent, with the standout being the Song for a Stranger. You've a way to go yet Simon G, but the first episode of series 17 was pretty good too. Certainly an improvement on Series 16; which I thought was one of the poorest, slightly better than series 7 in which I just didn't like any of the contestants particularly.

[Simon G]

Searies 5 is excellent.

It's started well.

I didn't think Al Murray was all too bad either, though I get why he would irritate people with his tactics.

[Felicity, I guess so]

We thought we were getting Shoplifters streamed the other night, having been impressed by Monster but ended up catching up with late series 3 Mad Men

[hobbes]

Searies 5 is excellent.

[Simon G]

I've reached Series 5 of Taskmaster - I bloody love it.

[hobbes]

I was wrong. Star Trek Disco drops today, not yesterday. That was a let down last night, I can tell you.

[Mr Delicieux]

See also Rebel Wilson. Good on her for the court case but I'm still waiting to "get it".

Wow yeah, somebody somewhere really thought that the world needed her for a while there to the point where it felt like an aggressive PR campaign to make us subliminally accept her into our lives. An awful time for all of us, nobody won.

[Sits]

Its shit like that thats stopped me watching Peaky Blinders past the pilot. Moody lads, proper hard lads, bad hard lads. Barely seems a step up from the Football Factory shit.

One of the reasons Kin and The Gentlemen are enjoyable is that the women are Proper Hard, and often smarter than the blokes.

[Sits]

See also Rebel Wilson. Good on her for the court case but I'm still waiting to "get it".

[Hot Pepsi]

I finally got around to watching the Barbie movie last night as it's on HBO Max here in Finland, and I quite liked it. It was as deep and meaningful as you could expect from a film built around a kids doll, yet I didn't enjoy as much as The Lego Movie, which surprised me in ways that the Barbie movie did not.

That Kate McKinnon is an interesting one, I don't think I've ever seen anybody past Gallagher or perhaps Carrot top build an entire career around one single thing, in MacKinnons case implying that she's funny, often via a wacky pair of spectacles, a hat worn at a particularly jaunty angle or a knowing smile that assures us, the viewer that rest assured the wackiness and hijinks are going to ensue any minute now... and then they don't. With this in mind, I dirty laughed when I was watching the film and there she was in the scene she appeared in, leg at a jaunty angle playing the part of a doll no longer played with. I didn't know she was in this, so that was a treat.

She was a major star on Saturday Night Live, but she hasn’t quite found a film role that uses those skills.

Lots of this kind of thing…

[diggedy derek]

Halfway through This Town, the BBC's new 80s drama which is from the Peaky Blinders "stable". A simple tale of the ska scene, the Coventry battalion of the IRA, car clamping football hooligans, pistol wielding heroin dealing nightclub owners and hold on what now?

I'll see it through but it's too spun out and there's a bit too much of people breaking into song in unlikely circumstances, such as the rooftop duet between the British Army sergeant and his IRA-member uncle.

Agreed on all of the above.

[Lang Spoon]

Final season of Star Trek Disco is up on Paramount+ from today.
Cool!

My dad will be pleased, if Mum has let him fritter away cash on fuckin Paramount.

[Lang Spoon]

Didn't notice this before I posted my own comment, but I think it's fair to conclude that despite the publicity and the trailers, it's not really about the birth of two-tone and instead that's just a convenient hook on which to hang a story about Proper Hard Fellas doing Proper Hard Things, while female characters swoon after them. I'll probably get through the remainder of it tonight but I'm guessing from the pace it's going at, and from one online review I've read, that we're not getting much actual music content in this series at least, but it might be lining it up for a second series.

Its shit like that thats stopped me watching Peaky Blinders past the pilot. Moody lads, proper hard lads, bad hard lads. Barely seems a step up from the Football Factory shit.