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    Another good episode of There She Goes on BBC 4.

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      Originally posted by Ginger Yellow View Post
      There were some comics as well.
      I didn’t know that. Good info.

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        The Serenity comic books are OK. There have been two runs of them covering different parts of the timeline.

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          Watched the first 4 episodes of House of Cards season 6. I don’t know if it’s the quick rewrite after dumping Spacey, but it’s not very good. Completely lost the dark humour that it had, which leaves you with a bunch of horrible characters you can’t root for.

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            For reasons I can't explain, I suddenly decided to listen to all the Tolkien Middle-Earth stories on Audible. I'm on the Hobbit now. I've not actually read it since I was about 8, I think. I've listened to a reading of LOTR before, on CD about 15 years ago and read the first two, at least, in middle-school, but I want to really do it all, including all the nerdy background material and stuff published by his kids based on his notes. I don't know why. I just like the vibe of it. It reminds me of being a kid and sitting in dusty used books stores filled with yellowing paperbacks or drawing my own maps of made-up places and inventing D&D characters. The stories are also very pro-nature, which I like.

            This led me to watch the 1978 animated LOTR film by Ralph Bakshi. I remember loving that as a kid. Indeed, that was what originally got me into fantasy as a kid, even before D&D.

            Man, it doesn't hold-up, does it? It just feels thin and incomplete - because it was. He put FOTR and the first half of Two Towers in one film and was never able to make the second half for reasons that aren't clear. Rankin & Bass did that a few years later. In the days before CGI and the days before nerd-culture was a commercial boom, it was definitely the best that could be done, and as a bit of animation, it was experimental and novel in its day, no doubt. But watching it now, so much of the action feels disjointed and the rotoscoping just doesn't look right. Apparently even Bakshi concluded the same later on. And even though he wanted to include as much of the books as he could, he cut out a lot more stuff than Peter Jackson did in his films.

            I'm going to watch the Peter Jackson films again too. Those are getting old now too. I'm curious to see how they hold up. The Hobbit trilogy was ok, but needlessly padded out with action sequences.
            Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 14-11-2018, 16:03.

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              Originally posted by slackster View Post
              Watched the first 4 episodes of House of Cards season 6. I don’t know if it’s the quick rewrite after dumping Spacey, but it’s not very good. Completely lost the dark humour that it had, which leaves you with a bunch of horrible characters you can’t root for.
              I tried to start the post-Spacey season, but just couldn't get into it. I don't need any more reminders that Washington is hopelessly corrupt and evil.
              Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 14-11-2018, 16:01.

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                We're getting well into The Deuce. It's an early '70s look at the world around Times Square; the hookers, the bartenders, the crooked cops, etc. So far so good, and James Franco is excellent playing two brothers. Gritty doesn't begin to describe it.

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                  That was more grit than I could handle.

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                    The Deuce is very good. Yes it's sordid, but you probably couldn't do the subject justice any other way. Maggie Gyllenhaal, is almost always worth watch watching and is excellent, as is Emily Meade as Lori, the hooker who becomes a star, and Gary Carr who play's her pimp. You'll feel like taking a shower after some episodes but it's the best thing HBO has done so far this year.

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                      I've just, today, learned that it's only going for three seasons. So that's good and bad.

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                        Just finished Season Two of ‘Get Shorty’ without realising. Watched two episodes tonight and went to download a third to find there wasn’t one.

                        It’s been left in a fantastic place but I’m now going to have to wait until at least next summer (assuming it gets renewed) to see what happens next. It’s especially galling as the first two seasons have been aired within six months over here.

                        Really enjoyed it though.
                        Last edited by Ray de Galles; 19-11-2018, 15:21.

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                          I have started on "Making a murderer"....it's quite something I have to say...

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                            I watched the fourth season of Better Call Saul this week - superb. They resolved the ending perfectly.

                            Started on Series 3 of Spiral but switched to Call My Agent (Dix Pour Cent) for my French lessons. A bit confusing as Audrey Fleurot popped up in a couple of episodes but it’s very good and I’m hooked.

                            Still enjoying Dr Who, too.

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                              I'm guessing that Friday Night Dinner has already been covered on here, but sadly my searching skills aren't up to finding any relevant comments.

                              Anyway, the missus and I are slowly going through a boxed set I got her for her birthday, so far we've seen episodes 1 to 5 of Series 1, and I honestly can't remember a sitcom, ever, that has had me as much in stitches. It is utterly brilliant.

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                                Fantastic. Cadfael is starting on Uk Drama from the beginning. I loved this show as a teenager. Lets see how it held up.
                                Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 18-11-2018, 17:13.

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                                  It's good. Derek Jacobi is about 75% of it. But that's enough.

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                                    Originally posted by MsD View Post
                                    I watched the fourth season of Better Call Saul this week - superb. They resolved the ending perfectly.

                                    Started on Series 3 of Spiral but switched to Call My Agent (Dix Pour Cent) for my French lessons. A bit confusing as Audrey Fleurot popped up in a couple of episodes but it’s very good and I’m hooked.

                                    Still enjoying Dr Who, too.
                                    Try Yabla.com for your French lessons MsD, my wife is learning French too and it’s effective, really brilliant + cheap (she pays ~£8/month I think, different subscription options but you can take it just for a month. They have a 14-day money back guarantee scheme I think).

                                    Plenty of videos and each one displays subtitles underneath + translation (you also have the option to hide these subtitles, to hide just the English etc.). Each clip is segmented too so you can pause it, go back, skip etc. You can click on an individual word, it pauses the clip and it brings up all the meanings of the word in a box on the right hand side, you can slow the clips down etc. Top functionality. There are games, a lesson section, plenty of grammar, differentiated reading material etc. And it’s not stuffy or dated, plenty of contemporary language clips on abpout 25 topics, short documentaries, TV shows, cartoons, songs etc.

                                    It really is is a terrific tool, I tried to get it for my school when I was Head of Dpt but forget it, it wasn’t financially possible I was told (but our last Head before I left teaching 2 yrs ago drove a £70,000 Porsche and was on ~£130,000 a year, and that was a small MAT, Heads/CEOs of bigger MATs would be on much more, some of them on 2 or 3 times that). It would have been (more) possible under Labour, we had more money for those "little extras" as Spreadsheet Phil would say, but that sort of Yabla thing hadn’t yet been invented or was in its infancy anyway (plenty of language games and websites in the 2000s of course, free or subscription-based ones, like the excellent Zut.org.uk but it was more basic than now obviously and there wasn’t much available for the more advanced learners such as high achieving GCSE pupils or 6th formers).

                                    https://french.yabla.com/player_cdn....38&tlang_id=en

                                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNfIaZS3-cY

                                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK9VlfBrZ2g

                                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeAkshAONAI

                                    Feel free to ask if you need recommendations for subtitled French films (unfortunately, not all French DVDs are subtitled) with your preferred genres, I might be able to help.

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                                      Don't watch La Haine, until you can follow it. It's a great film, but the version I saw was frequently white subtitles on a light background. It gave me a headache.

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                                        I'm about halfway through it, but I'm really enjoying The Haunting of Hill House. Very well done and genuinely unsettling.

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                                          Watching Dogs on Netflix. Highly recommended.

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                                            Is the guy behind 'We Rate Dogs' actually responsible for that or just promoting it on the twitter account?

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                                              I believe the latter.

                                              The producers are Glenn Zipper and Amy Berg. Berg also directed one of the segments.

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                                                HP, do you know this series

                                                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lo..._radio_series)

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                                                  Meet the Parents and a bit of Meet the Fockers were on yesterday. It was a reminder that I really don't like embarrassment comedy at all. I get no pleasure from all that "put someone in a difficult cringe-making situation" stuff. I just find it unamusing and a very lazy style of comedy writing.

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                                                    Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                                    I believe the latter.

                                                    The producers are Glenn Zipper and Amy Berg. Berg also directed one of the segments.
                                                    The best thing about this series is that it isn't just about the dogs. The second episode ("Bravo, Zeus") tells a heartbreaking story and although the it's about the dog, it's about so much more. You don't need to be a dog lover to appreciate this series.

                                                    The first episode is about service dogs for children. The third is about a fisherman's quest to learn why the fish are disappearing from a lake that provides his family's living. His dog is the story-within-the-story.

                                                    An update:
                                                    Ep 4 was of interest to me because it was about dog grooming (the topic of which almost always includes poodles). It also featured dog owners and groomers in Japan.
                                                    Ep 5 was about a dog sanctuary in Costa Rica. It was also about cultural issues and a situation created by well-meaning legislation that inadvertently caused more dogs to be abandoned to the streets.
                                                    Ep 6 is about a dog rescuer in NYC.
                                                    Last edited by Femme Folle; 23-11-2018, 21:15.

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