Current Watching

[Hot Pepsi]

I really enjoyed the first 3 eps of True Detective.
but episode 4 is like 90 minutes long and it’s putting me off completely. Why not do it as 2 episodes?

Because it all flows together and happens in one day. If you want to break it up, you can chose to do that.

[hobbes]

I really enjoyed the first 3 eps of True Detective.
but episode 4 is like 90 minutes long and it’s putting me off completely. Why not do it as 2 episodes?

in other news Halo season 2 kicked off with 2 episodes today. It’s more Halo-ey than series 1 already.
Trash, but my sort of trash.

[Ginger Yellow]

The early buzz for this season roped me back into True Detective after giving up a couple of episodes into season 2, but I'm really not feeling it.

[slackster]

Streaming both Fargo S5 (Amazon Prime) and True Detective S4 (Now TV) currently, which have some elements in common.

The former (we’re up to e6 of 10) has been very good - the usual mix of whacky Minnesota mirth and menace, with some excellent performances from the leads.

The latter (we’re up to e3) started strongly but the latest episode felt a bit of a lengthy chore to watch. And I hope I never have to watch Christopher Eccleston’s sex face again. I can’t unsee that gurn yet.

[hobbes]

I watched The Marvels last night as it came up on Disney+.

It's not the greatest film in the world and it played it more for laughs than the first one. But it had a lot of charm, it explored what happens when superheroes are a bit too super for everyone's good, It had a baddy who had genuine understandable motivation and all 4 protagonists are women. What's not to like?
And the actor who plays Kamala Khan is just infectiously charming, as are her family.
It's the Marvel film I've most enjoyed since the first Captain Marvel or Thor Ragnarok.

[Simon G]

I'm currently watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

It's completely stupid and I think that's why I like it.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Indeed

[ursus arctos]

Just a wonderful film

[Levin]

Tampopo

Seen at the Prince Charles in a 4k restoration. I'd never seen it before but it had me with the very first fourth wall breaking scene. It's funny and absurd and sexy and sad and just about life. So delicately filmed, so carefully filmed. There's a couple of shots of trains that have nothing and everything to do with the film. One just a long shot of a train going under a highway and the other looking down and into a train at night, pov a man who's wife is dying.

It just crams so much into a single film. And has a sense of humour too (although I think the audience at the screening was far too British and far too eager to find humour in sex rather than letting it be sensual).

[RaggedTrousered]

Pitch Invasion: How the Scottish and Irish Changed Football (iPlayer)

Weren't we Irish great?* I have some inner revulsion at this idea so the title jars but I'm not allowing that to stop me wallowing in some nostalgia especially as the first episode covered the Arsenal team I supported as a kid - I think from when they lost to Leeds in the 72 cup final. I wrote a begging letter to the club at the time and they sent me a sticker album.

Of course, many great Irish players in the team in the 70s and that did matter to me at the time.

I was 'serving my time' when the 79 final was being played. We were doing overtime, working on a bank in Kells (painting, not robbing), so went to the pub to watch the game. When it was over the landlord bought everyone a drink then came around to show us a betting slip where he had backed Arsenal at the start of the cup, at 1k at 7/1 or 8/1, with a covering bet on united at the final.

Other than that, not a great programme to watch perhaps.

*Scots can speak for themselves

[hobbes]

Our only complaint is that neither has the magic dust that elevates them above a regular network procedural. They're....fine. Which maybe is all they need to be.

Oh god, yeah. It's no Lucifer.

[Hot Pepsi]

New season of Hangin’ with Dr Z

[Amor de Cosmos]

I thought that you didn't partake in such post-millenium thingies.

I don't. La Signora does.

[Gangster Octopus]

That 'discussion' cued Siri on the speaker in our living room, which started a very bizarre three-way conversation. I do wonder how many other households participated in it.

I thought that you didn't partake in such post-millenium thingies.

[Hot Pepsi]

Yeah. La Signora refuses to watch it, the noise/stress factor is too high.


That 'discussion' cued Siri on the speaker in our living room, which started a very bizarre three-way conversation. I do wonder how many other households participated in it.

I have Alexa in the living room and she is not always responsive anyway.

Awkwardness - or cringe, as the kids say - is almost worse to watch than abject mortal terror.

I have found it especially hard to watch anything about the painful awkwardness of adolescence. It's not so much that it evokes bad memories, although it does.

It's that we, as adults, can see how it's all going to end in tears from a mile away and as often as not, we just have to let it happen in slow motion. I always want to skip to the end.

If I feel that way about movies, I can't imagine actually raising a middle schooler. I found that to be a problem when I was working with teenagers. I wanted to help them skip to the lesson they were inevitably going to learn. But that's not how it works.

I could not get through Are You There God, It's Me Margaret even though I fancy Rachel McAdams,* I couldn't see Eighth Grade nor could I deal with Pen15.

I like Mean Girls, of course. That's different. It's very exaggerated and it's as much about adults as it is the kids. And it's about high school, as opposed to middle school, which is awful in a lot of ways, but not in the same nails-on-chalkboard sorta way.

* She had a lot of her own travails in that story, dealing with the uptight bougie moms. That was hard to watch too.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I just find it a hard show to watch. Everything is so awkward. It just makes me feel anxious-by-proxy.

Yeah. La Signora refuses to watch it, the noise/stress factor is too high.

I did enjoy him flipping out on Siri in the car.

That 'discussion' cued Siri on the speaker in our living room, which started a very bizarre three-way conversation. I do wonder how many other households participated in it.

[Hot Pepsi]

I have only watched Curb occasionally, but I think I'll try to watch this last season. I didn't know what the Young Larry thing was about, but I picked up on it by context.

I just find it a hard show to watch. Everything is so awkward. It just makes me feel anxious-by-proxy.

I did enjoy him flipping out on Siri in the car.

I also liked LD's interview on the Bill Simmons's show. I didn't know he was such a New York sports fan - Rangers, Knicks, Jets and, I think, Mets (right?).

[RobW]

Started watching the last series of Curb... I haven't really paid that much attention to the last few seasons, Palestinian Chicken was probably the last episode I watched back. Bob Einstein passing was such a loss as I loved Funkhauser and getting Vince Vaughn in didn't appeal to me. Anyway, I hadn't re-watched last season in prep for this final season, so I had forgotten about the Young Larry thing. A few good laughs so far, so i'll remain optimistic.

[WOM]

I'm watching the TV adaptation of The Lincoln Lawyer.
It's not my usual bag given there's only been once sort-of car chase and no space battles.
It's not bad at all. Although his relationship with his ex wife is a bit weirdly creepy.
Anyway it's diverting enough and not too soapy.

& Hot Pepsi

We've enjoyed both LL and the Bosch stuff. Our only complaint is that neither has the magic dust that elevates them above a regular network procedural. They're....fine. Which maybe is all they need to be.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Surprised there is no mention of Miners' Strike 1984: The Battle for Britain, as far as I can see. Both episodes have been excellent. There's a big aspect of being told what you already knew, but the first episode focussing on Derbyshire and Shirebrook was enlightening for me. Having read GB84 by David Peace, one of the most shocking things is what seemed like aspects of fantasy in Peace's book was very much reality with blood thirsty Metropolitan Police officers being bussed in to bust some heads. Thatcher's actions are of course indefensible, but I would be interested to hear the thoughts of OTF on Scargill, who comes across as an out of touch megalomaniac obsessed at proving he could damage Thatcher, whatever the cost. Like most wars, it's the people, most of who are loyal and brave, that suffer and really have no voice whatsoever because the NUM didn't listen to them and the government was determined to destroy them.

I watched the first one and liked the micro focus, avoiding the big players. But it began to imply by the end that somehow 20% scabbing meant 'the strike was doomed' which is, actually, absurd.

On Scargill. I have all sorts of problems with him and his politics but he is a clear victim of history being written by the winners.

A good corrective on why the miners were not doomed to lose is the documentary Still the Enemy Within

[Hot Pepsi]

The first season of that was ok, but then I just couldn't get excited for season 2. A lot of Amazon procedurals are like that. They just feel like CBS shows from the 80s, for better or worse.

[hobbes]

I'm watching the TV adaptation of The Lincoln Lawyer.
It's not my usual bag given there's only been once sort-of car chase and no space battles.
It's not bad at all. Although his relationship with his ex wife is a bit weirdly creepy.
Anyway it's diverting enough and not too soapy.

[3 Colours Red]

To be fair the whole 80s was a 400m hurdle race with sharks for hurdles.

And of course, those sharks were off their faces on cocaine.

[Sam]

I saw the film in the cinema and a couple times over the years and I have no recollection of that scene at all. I would speculate that the scene might be on a DVD or Blu-ray that was an extended cut.

The other thing that doesn't make sense is that Leon was the cleaner in Le Femme Nikita. He seemed to be a French cleaner at that time. Certainly spoke french. I can't remember if he lives or dies in Le Femme Nikita but he's shot up in that one. I guess he could have survived and gone back to the US.

EDIT: OK, I just looked up Le Femme Nikita Wiki and the character was Viktor, not Leon.

The Wiki page for Léon suggests that it's 'an expansion of an idea' that Besson used in La Femme Nikita, so the two films don't take place in the same universe.

It was only after switching everything off and heading to bed last night that it occurred to me that this same idea could be the seed of Besson's later Taken franchise as well. He certainly has a genre, whether it's deliberate or not.

Talking of directors who know what they like, tonight I watched The French Connection. Very good. I hadn't realised it was directed by William Friedkin until his name popped up at the very end of the opening credits, and then chuckled to myself as that gave way to the opening shot of the film, a pan out from a tight shot focused on something in the distance to a wider shot of the city the scene is set in ... which if I remember correctly also works as a broad description of the opening shot of The Exorcist.

[Hot Pepsi]

The Lovers. An unusual romantic comedy set mostly in Belfast. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any film or TV show set in Belfast other than Belfast.