I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before: he was my English teacher back in the mists of time. We always had the best written school plays. I was amazed (and saddened) when I discovered that other teachers just did plays that everyone already knew rather than brilliant original material. I’m hoping to see some good Oxford action in the new version.
Announcement
Collapse
No announcement yet.
Current Watching
Collapse
X
-
Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View PostI’m sure I’ve mentioned it before: he was my English teacher back in the mists of time. We always had the best written school plays. I was amazed (and saddened) when I discovered that other teachers just did plays that everyone already knew rather than brilliant original material. I’m hoping to see some good Oxford action in the new version.
Comment
-
The Beeb are running a Cold War themed session for the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and I’ve caught a couple of Nuke Weapon crackers this week on BBC4.
Arena - A British Guide to the End of the World was a run through of the ridiculous Protect and Survive nonsense we had drilled into us during my childhood (basically hide under the table and hope for the best), topped and tailed by recounting the disgraceful use of squaddies as guinea pigs at the early tests on Christmas Island.
Rick Hall’s Red Menace had the deadpan comedian tell the tales of US/Soviet Arms Race, recalling how ‘basic human ineptitude’ was more than once a more likely cause of blowing ourselves to smithereens rather than Commie aggression.
And Dr Stangelove is on the iplayer too for anybody who’s never seen it. Not sure how those outside the UK without VPN can catch these, but worth looking out for.
Comment
-
I think (hope) I have been keeping up with this thread so apologies if I’ve missed it, but I’m assuming many will have seen Years and Years? We got the first two episodes back to back this week and I found it compelling, funny and scary in equal measure. The cast are just great.
Comment
-
The new Ken Loach film reminded be why I don't like watching ken Loach films, certainly since Laverty became the scriptwriter. Harrowing... etc etc.... savage indictment of the gig economy... but also pantomime villain roles, other key roles painfully amateurish in the acting.....
at least Jimmy McGovern stuff can be somewhat entertaining and well acted as it hits you across the head with The Message.
Comment
-
I really have to watch Land and Freedom again to see if it's more than Cliff Notes Homage to Catalonia as a young Scouse Man, but fer sure the Wind That Shakes Cillian Murphy was a load of Wish fulfilment Embryonic Fianna Fáil as proto leftists drek.Last edited by Lang Spoon; 09-11-2019, 02:21.
Comment
-
Originally posted by Sits View PostI think (hope) I have been keeping up with this thread so apologies if I’ve missed it, but I’m assuming many will have seen Years and Years? We got the first two episodes back to back this week and I found it compelling, funny and scary in equal measure. The cast are just great.
Comment
-
Uncle Ethan it’s on SBS, but we’ve only had two episodes so far so they should be on the SBS On Demand app still.
Comment
-
Checking out the new Apple Plus service.
Morning Show is loaded with stars. Apparently costs more than Game of Thrones. It’s like something that was written by Aaron Sorkin but it wasn’t. It’s kind of ridiculous and some of the plot points are implausible, but it’s extremely entertaining.
Dickinson is the story of Emily Dickinson except the music is contemporary and the characters talk like kids in 2019. Also kind of ridiculous and yet entertaining.
Comment
-
Originally posted by Ray de Galles View PostAnyone else seen 'Booksmart'? I would normally start a stand alone thread for a movie but given this has been out in the UK for two months and is already almost disappeared from cinemas I doubt it would sustain one.
I finally saw it tonight and it was fantastic. Fantastically smart, funny script, great performances from a lesser known cast (a few cameos aside), quite touching in places and a killer soundtrack. I don't think I've seen any of the recent 'coming of age' movies it's been compared to like 'Superbad' because none of them came across with the wit and charm this one had even just from the trailer.
Anyway, thoroughly recommended when it ends up on streaming platforms and the like.
Comment
-
Originally posted by Ginger Yellow View PostWatching Season 2 of The End of the Fucking World. It feels more aimless than the first season, but I'm interested to see how it ends up.
Comment
-
Definitely. And James, maybe not more sympathetically, but more, well, ordinarily. Apart from the whole carrying the urn around everywhere thing, if you were just watching this season without having seen the first, you might not think there was anything particularly off about him all
Comment
-
Originally posted by tracteurgarçon View Post
What channel is this on? Sounds right up my strasse.
They have four original shows:
The Morning Show - A Sorkinesque drama about the people who work on a US network morning show. It's ridiculous but very watchable.
See - Jason Mamoa led show about a future where a virus has made all humanity blind and living in small tribal groups. I like the ambition, but so far it's super violent and I'm just not into it.
Dickinson - About Emily Dickinson but with modern speech idioms and music. So imagine if the scripts for Girls and Little Women got mixed up at the printer and somebody was trying to make a show out of the resulting mess. In fact, the highlight so far is Louisa May Alcott, played by that one actress who was on Girls, and Emily Dickinson discussing the New England literary scene while going for a "run" in their full 19th century skirts, etc, and LMA saying "But Hawthorne can eat a dick, am I right?"
For All Mankind - My favorite of the four. The idea is that the Soviets kept beating us to the key milestones in the space race - largely by being less cautious about safety - so Nixon kept pushing us to be next. So the Soviets land on the moon first - Apollo 11 still happens, barely - and then the USSR puts a woman on the moon and are, it appears, trying to build a military base on the moon, so Nixon wants to do both of those things too. It's entirely from the US perspective, so far. What the Soviets are up to is only seen from the perspective of US intelligence and TV news. Which helps put the US' paranoia in context.
It's unclear how these things will change other bits of the alternative history. The emergence of women astronauts would, no doubt, change our culture a bit, and military bases on the moon would change a lot of things, but I can't begin to imagine how.
Comment
-
Originally posted by WOM View Post
Same. We're halfway through and it just doesn't have the same magic as S1. And she's written far less sympathetically this time around.
Comment
Comment