Current Watching

[Hot Pepsi]

It's a bit trying, but kinda compulsive. I've a hunch season two will be a step down, based on the teaser at the conclusion of the last episode.

I think I'm out. Cults, murder, animal slaughter, obnoxious teenage girls from the 90s. No thanks.

But mostly, I'm out on shows that seem to exist primarily to drive reddit threads about people speculating about where it's headed.* I don't mind mysteries where the characters don't know the answer either, or dramatic irony where the audience knows but the characters don't, but this format of "we'll just fuck with you and not reveal what is actually happening even though we could just show you the person's face, and the characters know what's going on but just are talking around it" is just getting really tedious.

The Mandalorian did a little of that but it paid it off pretty quickly and even then, it made sense to insert a bit of mystery because it was a mystery from one or more of the character's views too.

I liked Damages and Bloodlines, which kept flashing forward to a critical scene later in the story, but that was the aspect of those shows that I liked the least. I guess the rest of the narrative would have felt low stakes if the audience didn't already know something terrible was coming.

The new season of Ozark has a little bit of that. It shows you a scene from some time after these episodes, then goes back to where it ended last season. (that's not a spoiler. It's the first five minutes of this season) But it doesn't even bother to tell us it's doing that. There's no "three months earlier" on the screen or any of that. Annoying. We don't need to know that something terrible might be coming. There's so many terrible things happening in the main story.


* This might be going too far, but I think our culture in general is too obsessed with trying to predict the future instead of just living in the present. But it's especially bad in nerd culture.

[Wouter D]

I stuck with Yellowjackets through season one, and didn't regret it, despite the reasonable objections against it raised in this thread.

I read somewhere that this series is partially a reaction to the boys-only Lord Of The Flies, and a rejection of the ancient idea that girls wouldn't work in that novel's situation because their emotional maturity is so much higher at that age that boys', so that they would empathize their way out of the situation without much bloodshed. Instead, Yellowjackets makes believable how traditional high-school social tactics as deployed in everyday situations in a group of girls would fall flat in a life-or-death situation. Some characters make the transition effortlessly, others do not at all. I thought that was fascinating.

[Hot Pepsi]

Any one who thinks suburban teenage girls would handle that situation better than British Public School boys didn’t go to a US high school.

It’s also why I’m a little bit of a women’s sports skeptic. I’m all for girls having equal sports opportunities, but we shouldn’t pretend girls’ sports are immune from all the same toxic culture bullshit that plagues youth sports on the boys side.

[Sean of the Shed]

Just seen the first episode of Responder, the new series with Martin Freeman as a front line first responder copper on the nightshift. It's brutal and tough and utterly absorbing.
It's bleak. You know it's going to be bleak very early on. In fact you can probably deduce that it's going to be bleak as soon as you are told it's set in Liverpool, to be fair.
Freeman's character is seriously mentally flawed, and is right on the edge of going over, as you might expect would be the case for any half decent person trying to perform that role.
I would imagine we are going to see all the worst side of inner city poverty and degradation, and also perhaps how the police force looks after, or fails to look after, their own members on the front line.

[Tony C]

Agree completely, The Responder was excellent, both as a drama and social commentary. An important piece of work.

[hobbes]

I’m off work with the ‘Rona. So I figured I’d splurge £13 and buy Ghostbusters Afterlife. And you know what? I’m glad I did. There’s elements of fan service and elements of retread, but it’s well enough put together and made with obvious love and no little charm that it gets away with it.
It’s no Ghostbusters, but it’s more enjoyable than Ghostbusters 2, I reckon.

[San Bernardhinault]

Yesterday's flight was a marathon starting with utterly shit and moving through the spectrum to enjoyable but lightweight.

It started with Guy Ritchie's Wrath of Man. Now, to be fair, it was a Guy Ritchie film so I wasn't actually underwhelmed. My expectations were low, and they were met. I will say this about his films, though. They are about the right level for watching on a plane, a bit sleepy, while eating a meal and drinking and reading your book. I'm trying to think if it had anything else going for it. It didn't even have the comical stupidity of Ritchie's King Arthur. Zero stars.

Then it was The Kitchen. with Margo Martindale, Tiffany Haddish, Elizabeth Moss and Melissa McCarthy. With that kind of acting power you might expect it to be good. It's a "wives take over their husband's business in the Irish Mafia in 1970s Hell's Kitchen New York" film. And, frankly, I don't need to tell you anything else. You know absolutely everything that's worth knowing about the film already.

Finally, it was Music and Lyrics, which I somehow had never seen. A Hugh Grant/Drew Barrymore romantic comedy about a washed up pop-star. Utterly cheesy and predictable, but charming enough that I actually enjoyed my way through it. It was basically a merge of Hugh Grant's and Bill Nighy's characters from Love Actually, and the most surprising thing about it is that it wasn't directed by Richard Curtis.

[Hot Pepsi]

The Gilded Age is of to an entertaining start. It's set in New York in 1882 in the Downton Abby Extended Universe.
Lots of scenery chewing. Great costumes. Real Masterpiece Theater shit, but it's on HBO so there may be swearing and boobs at some point.
It's got Meryl Streep's youngest daughter.

[WOM]

It's got Meryl Streep's youngest daughter.

Grace seems to know what she's doing. Mamie...not so much.

[Hot Pepsi]

This is the third daughter, Louisa Jacobson.

[Amor de Cosmos]

The Gilded Age is of to an entertaining start. It's set in New York in 1882 in the Downton Abby Extended Universe.
Lots of scenery chewing. Great costumes. Real Masterpiece Theater shit, but it's on HBO so there may be swearing and boobs at some point.
It's got Meryl Streep's youngest daughter.

It's another tedious frock-opera like all Julian Fellowes productions (even his football series was really about the kits.) He might as well — possibly did — cut and paste the script from a Downton Abbey/Upstairs, Downstairs mash-up. Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

[ursus arctos]

We never watch any of these things (though I did watch some of The Forsythe Saga with my mother), but I am irrationally prejudiced against this because it is set among the worst people to live here at one of the worst times for the city.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I'm sure they'll all leave New York and go to a nice rural setting like the South Fork fishing and hunting club.

[Hot Pepsi]

We never watch any of these things (though I did watch some of The Forsythe Saga with my mother), but I am irrationally prejudiced against this because it is set among the worst people to live here at one of the worst times for the city.

That’s what makes it potentially appealing. I’m hoping for some come-uppance.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Well they could all die from drinking the water at any fucking moment.

I think perhaps the most telling example of how terrifyingly ever present death was back in the good old days, was that in the first year of the coolidge presidency, his son home from college picked up a blister on his foot playing tennis at the white house, and er, died.

[Amor de Cosmos]

That’s what makes it potentially appealing. I’m hoping for some come-uppance.

Absolutely no chance whatsoever.

[Hot Pepsi]

Then we must do without hope.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Sadly, in these times hope is all we have.

In all honesty I will probably see bits of this as m'luverley wife will be glued to it. I know I'll be required to leave the room though as my inevitable sarcasm will not be well received.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I watched the first episode of the Fraggle Rock revival the other night. Oh, my the nostalgia! It was the first show AdeC jr and I watched together with the same amount of eagerness. Fortunately they haven't changed a whole lot — a young woman has replaced the old dude 'behind the wall,' but that's about it. Red is the same, the Gorgs are still stomping around and the Dozers are doing their collective thing. Wonderful, wonderful stuff.

[ursus arctos]

You and I could do a Statler and Waldorf style running commentary on The Gilded Age

[Amor de Cosmos]

Ha ha! Excellent. Trouble is we'd have to actually watch the show.

[Sits]

But who’s who?

[steveeeeeeeee]

Like jwdd we just finished After Life and I loved the last episode. I’m getting increasingly sentimental.

I just watched season 1. There is a lot of lumpy characters, continuity is all over the place, some ham fisted humour. But sentimentally, it is perfect, the bit when Sandy says "Just be happy" just got to me, I couldn't stop crying. The end of season 1 is obvious, but even then, Gervais's reaction caught me off guard, beautiful, simple and genuinely moving acting.

You can pick a million holes in Gervais's work, but he is a master at making you feel emotion as a result of the drama he presents you. It's pleasure pain.

[Sits]

Just enjoyed an Aussie film called Goldstone. The locations in central Queensland make those in The Tourist look positively lush. The always excellent Aaron Pedersen is a great lead as an extremely weather worn indigenous detective sent to the middle of nowhere looking for a missing person. Alex Russell is also good as the local cop torn between towing the easy line and the uncomfortable truth. There are obvious bad guys (David Wenham’s mine owner and Jacki Weaver’s bent mayor) plus an enigmatic cameo by the recently departed David Gulpilil (Dalaithngu). Starts slowly, but very atmospheric before it kicks off.

[WOM]

This is the third daughter, Louisa Jacobson.

Wait....she's 30 and just started acting?