Current Watching

[slackster]

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart (Amazon Prime) is an Aussie series - 7 episodes - that used Sigourney Weaver as its star attraction. She plays a gruff matriarch that runs a flower farm which also doubles as a women’s refuge for victims of male domestic violence. The titular character is her grand-daughter who suffers various extreme traumas both in childhood and as a young adult.

It’s rather heavy handed on the meaning-of-flowers symbolism, but has a decent - if melodramatic - take on the secrets, lies and violence that plague some families. Nice locations, too. My MiL, who loves a soap and formulaic historical romance novel, thought it was marvellous. I’d give it 3 out of 5.

[Hot Pepsi]

You've already got a lot on the go, what with Tonka and church and whatnot. Maybe just skip to attending the meetings and being the new guy who doesn't share very often.

I suspect that I wouldn't be the first person to do that.

[colchestersid]

"One Day" on Netflix

Equally enjoyable and irritating but, not having read the book (or seen the movie), I genuinely didn't anticipate the reveal of the date's actual significance until the end. Having got that, the structure of the story made sense

Massively in its favour were two lovely performances by the lead actors and a great supporting cast as well. Music was good too - lots of obvious choices they could have made and they avoided every singe one

[WOM]

Sometimes I think I might benefit from being an addict. I think the meetings would help me. Or maybe not. Most of what I know about it comes from TV and films.

You've already got a lot on the go, what with Tonka and church and whatnot. Maybe just skip to attending the meetings and being the new guy who doesn't share very often.

[hobbes]

I quite like Outsiders. It's had 3 seasons on Dave.

[3 Colours Red]

It was on Dave first, just like Taskmaster was so it might be a case of ripping yourself off.

[Gangster Octopus]

This BBC David Mitchell's Outsiders thing is transparently Taskmaster in a campsite setting. But.... it's

...not funny.

[Hot Pepsi]

Loudermilk is fantastic. Except the actress playing his ex is not good at acting.

Sometimes I think I might benefit from being an addict. I think the meetings would help me. Or maybe not. Most of what I know about it comes from TV and films.

[diggedy derek]

This BBC David Mitchell's Outsiders thing is transparently Taskmaster in a campsite setting. But.... it's pretty amusing, because camping has comedy baked-in

[Hot Pepsi]

I’m with Hot Pepsi on the rather meh attitude to True Detective S4 ending. It started out well, but flagged from e3 onwards. I guess they tidied up the 2 main investigations ok at the end though, and the baddies got their just deserts.

That seems to be the consensus. Six episodes was not enough to tell all the story it had set up in the first three.

A lot of character relationships were, as is usually the case with stories like this, more interesting than the whodunit stuff.

But then, with three episodes to go, it decided that it needed to get all into the ghost story part - which nobody really asked for - and then it realized that the murder mystery part needed to be wrapped up, which left no time to adequately finish the character/relationship stuff and a lot of the ghost story stuff just got left up to "the audience's interpretation" which, I find, is actually just a lazy way to tell the story.

Like, what happens to Navarro is not clear as she walks into the sunset/sunrise? Is she killing herself? Is she just going for a walk? Is that symbolic somehow? Who the fuck knows? But it looks like she's doing suicide by cold. That's not a good way to end her story, especially shortly before switching to a nice scene of Jodie Foster's character in her somehow-idyllic LL Bean Catalog beach-front house with the doors open and her relationship with her daughter magically repaired.

It also plays into a stereotype about the people of the far north which is largely untrue.


BTW, the closest real world comp to Ennis is Utqiagvik (fka Barrow). The high temperature in July is 47 F. Maybe it's getting a bit warmer now. But that still isn't "just leave the doors open" weather.

The show was inconsistent about showing just how unbelievably cold it was. Like there was that scene in the last episode where they have a long conversation through and open front door. Nobody would do that when its -20 F.

Jodie Foster would have been dead in minutes if she fell through the ice like that. Maybe seconds. Also, after the generator went out, they built a fire in the garage. That would have asphyxiated them pretty quickly unless they opened some windows, but then it would have been well below zero in there. To get the smoke out would require mechanical ventilation that ran on power.

[Nocturnal Submission]

I watched Ukraine's War: The Other Side last night, Sean Langan reporting from Donetsk and its environs, interviewing locals, the pro-Russian paramilitaries and Russian troops.

No huge insights but Langan is certainly not short of courage and put himself very close to the action. Then again:

Bafta nominee Sean Langan, 43, who was working for Channel 4's "Dispatches" television series when he was abducted in March 2008 by the Taliban in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, was "safe and well" after release on 21 June 2008 in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Langan was held hostage by the Taliban for 12 weeks after trying to make contact with Al-Qaeda's second in command, as he searched for associates of Osama bin Laden.

After suffering mock executions, Langan and his translator Sami were freed and sent back to Britain: "I thought it would be a miracle if I got out of there alive. Death was at my door every night. It makes you see your life like never before. It was a constant barrage. They could hear machine guns, anti-aircraft guns and rocket-propelled grenades going off the whole time. But they weren't being shot in a contact [firefight] – it sounded like training. The door would be kicked in in the middle of the night and they'd tell the translator that they were going to behead us.'" He lost 3 stone due to dysentery at a Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) mountain.

So he's had worse!

The bit where some Spetsnaz troops walked in, discovered he was a foreign journalist and threatened to eat his liver must have been slightly disconcerting though.

[E10 Rifle]

Echoing Hobbes on Nimona - excellent stuff, both our kids absorbed

[slackster]

I’m with Hot Pepsi on the rather meh attitude to True Detective S4 ending. It started out well, but flagged from e3 onwards. I guess they tidied up the 2 main investigations ok at the end though, and the baddies got their just deserts.

[Simon G]

A blog giving a case-by-case summary of each episode.

And that's my life taken over!!

[Patrick Thistle]

I started The Good Place yesterday. Series 1 is nearly done and it's fantastic.

Ooh the last episode of series 1 is probably one of my favourite sitcom epsiodes ever.

[WOM]

So Reacher is a hilarious load of old cobblers, isn't it? Definitely worth a watch, mind.

Oh, definitely.

[Discordant Resonance]

I love the Big Bang Theory. I think it was the first sitcom I watched from start to finish and actually went out of my way to watch at times.

I'm continuing to go through cases of Crown Court on YouTube, I'm on my second case today and will watch another before I finish work. They really need to bring this programme back - it's fantastic viewing. I can't believe it was hidden away on daytime TV.

A blog giving a case-by-case summary of each episode.

[hobbes]

Aye, re-watched Nimona with the cub recently. It's a great film.
The graphic novel is pretty decent too, according to him.


So Reacher is a hilarious load of old cobblers, isn't it? Definitely worth a watch, mind.

[Levin]

Nimona in full and on Netflix's YouTube channel.

I highly recommend this sci fi fantasy

[diggedy derek]

The BBC's The Space Shuttle that Fell to Earth, about the loss of the Columbia, is fascinating, infuriating, incredibly moving. It leaves you full of admiration for some and full of contempt for others. It's brilliant.

This doc is incredibly vivid and gripping and, at points, almost too much

[San Bernardhinault]

Finished the last of the Best Picture nominees at the weekend with American Fiction, which I really liked. Funny and charming, not too heavy handed. I've heard or read reviews saying that there's too much of the publishing and not enough of the family; and other reviews the other way round. I actually thought it was an excellent balance. The two halves made the whole film more complete.

A really good selection of films this year, definitely better than usual, with only two genuine disappointments.

[RobW]

I watched Bottoms the other night and it was very funny.

[Simon G]

I started The Good Place yesterday. Series 1 is nearly done and it's fantastic.

[Benjm]

I've just watched Paths of Glory and Benjm might be interested to know that one of the main cast members, Richard Anderson, went on to play Oscar Goldman, who he referenced earlier on another thread.

Those were the days; an actor could turn up on set, deliver good work and not have to worry about being judged by the popularity of his action figure.

[Hot Pepsi]

The doomcore version of “Twist and Shout” was unnecessary.

And there were some bits where people survived hypothermia that were not realistic. The temperature in Northern Alaska in winter is well below zero F.

And just giving a pass to extrajudicial executions just felt like a weak resolution.