Originally posted by Uncle Ethan
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Hooked up to Now TV again for 6 months, in order to watch True Detective and CYE. Any other recommendations to catch up on welcome. That first episode of True Detective gave me a lot of X-Files vibes.
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The Good Place has grown on me. We finished series 2 tonight.
[EDIT: Actually that's not true. We watched the penultimate episode of series 2 tonight. Plan was to finish it, but it got too late and my girlfriend had to get to sleep.]Last edited by Sam; 17-01-2024, 06:26.
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Started on The Flood but the main character is one of the most frustrating I've ever seen. How many dumb decisions can one person make in an hour. Can't say what obviously, for spoiler reasons, but drove us both nuts.
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Just watched the first couple of episodes of the new series of Big Boys – thankfully just as well written and acted as the first series so far.
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Originally posted by ChrisJ View Post
Fair enough. Still a corrupt, thieving shite, though.
Anyway, after that, we’ve binged Truelove. Very enjoyable
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My wife and I saw 'Cat Person' on streaming last night. The film adaptation of a New Yorker short story that went viral a few years ago about the nightmare end of a relationship.
I was intrigued by a very positive Kermode review when it came out late last year, a connection with the excellent 'Booksmart' (that film's writer directed 'Cat Person') and Nicholas Braun (Greg from 'Succession') as the male lead.
It's very good - equal parts funny, sharp, ambiguous and deeply discomforting (especially when one is the parent of a 20 year old female university student which the main character is) though it loses the run of itself a little searching for a dramatic way to end the story which departs from the source material.
Braun & Emilia Jones work well together as the central couple (though I was amazed by the latter actor's nationality and parentage when I found it out afterwards) and Geraldine Viswanathan is great in a supporting role.
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Also, we watched Season 1 of Loudermilk. It's a bit over-written / over-acted, but decent. It's very much not L's thing, but she seems to have a soft spot for the cast, so we're staying with it.
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Originally posted by Snake Plissken View PostCaught up with Reacher prior to the final episode this week. It's properly, properly stupid entertainment. A car chase, with automatic weapons, through an incredibly empty "New York", with no traffic, no one around and absolutely no consequences. It occurred to me that there are no extras in this, every person you see on screen either is a main character, plot point, exposition dump or cannon fodder for the good guys to despatch in a number of silly ways.
Judging by the amount of humour - there are more jokes in one episode than the entire 20-odd books so far - I think everyone knows it, too. It's great stuff, but I can't justify it to anyone.
The line "we still have a bunch more bad guys to kill" was telling. No reason to recommend...but we enjoy it.
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It’s memorable.
I didn’t think it was too long. The whole point was just the vibe, not the story. I watched it in a few sittings.
I think a lot more films will be like that; the producers will correctly assume most people are going to watch it home.
They could just skip releasing them in theaters, but the sort of directors who make movies like that will insist they be in theaters for a while.Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 15-01-2024, 19:45.
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Finally watched Licorice Pizza, which is a very good PTA joint. Echoing what others have said on here, it's a nice, offbeat rom-com, but just too fucking long. 2 hours and 15 minutes for a retro-period rom-com? Fuck me.
Also, it shot itself in the foot with the title. It says nothing, has no relevance to the movie, and frankly evokes an 'ew gross' mental image. (It was the name of a record store...get it...a licorice pizza...in LA in the '70s.)
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Caught up with Reacher prior to the final episode this week. It's properly, properly stupid entertainment. A car chase, with automatic weapons, through an incredibly empty "New York", with no traffic, no one around and absolutely no consequences. It occurred to me that there are no extras in this, every person you see on screen either is a main character, plot point, exposition dump or cannon fodder for the good guys to despatch in a number of silly ways.
Judging by the amount of humour - there are more jokes in one episode than the entire 20-odd books so far - I think everyone knows it, too. It's great stuff, but I can't justify it to anyone.
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Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
I assumed that would be because one of his parents were American or one of those Europeans that had such an affinity for a romantic idea of America that they overcompensated. For example, I discovered that the most vital rockabilly scene is in Europe.
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New season of TD tonight. So far, so good. It definitely helps disabuse me of the idea that living in the arctic might be cool.
I think living on Mars might be better.
Speaking of that, I finished the latest season of For all Mankind. I liked it. Not as much as the previous seasons, but it had some good ideas and some of the characters are still interesting.
I hope it keeps going.
Maybe they can turn it into a prequel for The Expanse. This season felt like the start of Belter culture.
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Over the hols I finally caught up with series one of True Detectives. Magnificent TV. I had stop watching the post office series - I'd have ended up putting a brick through the telly. My conversion to Ghosts was completed with a lovely series ending and Xmas special. Slow Horses was the highlight.
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Originally posted by diggedy derek View Post
Not saying you’re wrong, but I really like how painfully normal the players on The Traitors generally are. Estate agents, vets, NHS workers, mental health service co-ordinators, etc. And whatever an National Account Manager is.
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Having missed it in the theater because I thought it would make me dizzy, I spent today, watching Oppenheimer off and on. I finished it.
I wish I had seen in a theater, I suppose, but I still thought it was very good.
I understand why people think the last third was a bit off the rails. The whole business of him losing his clearance and the confirmation hearing for Strauss was a bit complicated. His ambivalence about the whole project and changing perspective and the back and forth in time is all a bit much to follow.
I like that it wasn’t just the simplistic answer, “Red Scare.” Im’m not sure I fully followed it all, but it does seem like maybe JRO wasn’t the best judge of who is or who isn’t a spy and maybe wasn’t a guy who should be in charge of something top secret.*
I understand the complexity is the whole point, but it’s hard to get one’s brain around. Maybe that’s also the point.
I also imagine a lot of the audience found all of that to be just not very interesting compared to actually setting off a bomb. And the ending was a downer.
But so many great performances and great scenes!
Just an unbelievable murderers row of white actors. They pretty much emptied the bench, so to speak.
And so many characters! I kept having to pause to look up who was who. But ultimately, it didn’t matter. Almost all of them were elite physicists. But I’ve given up caring about physics, so I don’t know who was who.
If it wins the Oscar, it will reinforce the idea that the Oscars love complicated White men doing big things. For that reason, it might be better if Killers of the Flower Moon wins, which I thought was fantastic. But that is also a bit of a big win for white guys because the director and two of the three big stars are well-liked white actors (3/4 if you count Jesse Plemons), even though the film is mostly about the Osage people.
But there really isn’t any Moonlight or Parasite to offer an alternative to the traditional Big Epic Oscar Bait film. Poor Things has some momentum coming out of the Golden Globes, but I suspect that is too weird and off-putting to win Best Picture.
* Truman comes off as a real idiot. He really thought the Soviets couldn’t build a bomb without stealing the idea?
I don’t get that. Wasn’t the Bomb a bit like the four-minute mile? Once it was proven possible, others could figure out how to do it?
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Oh yeah totally. I think the fewer reality TV shows one watches the better for your life as a whole really
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Originally posted by diggedy derek View Post
Not saying you’re wrong, but I really like how painfully normal the players on The Traitors generally are. Estate agents, vets, NHS workers, mental health service co-ordinators, etc. And whatever an National Account Manager is.
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Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
I would have been amazed to learn that someone called Harlan Coben was any other nationality
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We watched Maestro tonight. It took me about half an hour to get into it, but once I did, I actually thought it was excellent. Carey Mulligan is utterly brilliant.
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Originally posted by Jobi1 View Post
Nope, you're definitely not. I'm usually the grumpiest of TV pop culture refuseniks (I can't do The Traitors because I find the people and production too hysterical, and not in the funny sense), but I bloody love the Masked Singer - innocent, joyously silly entertainment.
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I’ve never seen or read anything by him before. I was surprised to learn he’s American.
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