SubJeff on 16/1/2021 at 20:45
Will give that a go.
Just finishing off Bridgerton ATM. Switch your brain off and enjoy the awesome sets and outfits. It's an easy watch. Nice for convalescence.
Gray on 18/1/2021 at 03:36
Well.... Mandalorian again. I just finished watching the whole thing. I thought I was done spewing my half-baked ideas about what it was. But yet again, I was wrong.
It was awesome.
Yes, true, I am a proper nerd, and exactly the type of person they're doing fan service for, and knowing this, under any other normal circumstances I'd be VERY sarcastic about this, but in this particular case, I can not. I really....really... REALLY enjoyed it. Plenty of things I did not see coming. Well, I sort of half did, but thinking "oh, well, that looks a bit like so-and-so, but surely, they won't do THAT.... will they...? And then they did.
Yes, yes, perhaps it's just fan service, but this past year has been shit and we all need some cheering up. I enjoyed it so much I'm almost borderline gonna use the L word. Maybe. Well. Yes, ok. I love it. LOVE it. Can't wait for Book of Boba Fett now.
This left me feeling somewhat conflicted, I just naturally assumed that everything Star Wars would become neutered and shitty when Disney bought it. Yet again, perhaps I was wrong. I'm getting pretty good at being wrong.
Aged Raver on 20/1/2021 at 11:37
Quote Posted by raph
I'm 2/3 in on
A Suitable Boy and I'm absolutely delighted so far. It's turning out to be a great adaptation, and I feel like I've been reconnecting with some dear old friends... I love this.
I didn't know there was a film. Long time ago I tried reading it. I bought it when it was published (apparently 1993) and didn't get more than about 100 pages in (out of 1,488). It was heavy, even as paperback, as the author playfully acknowledges at the start, and in small print. :D Although I have a few Indian friends, there were so many unfamiliar names I couldn't always remember who was who and had to regularly check the genealogical chart. I knew it was a great book just from the history it covers and the poetical phrases but real life sort-of got in the way. I see there was a BBC series and read the author is writing
A Suitable Girl.
demagogue on 20/1/2021 at 13:10
I'm watching it now. Even seeing their faces, I can sometimes get a little confused who is in what family that relates to the others in what way... It gets better the longer you watch it though. It's good TV.
It's tight & put together really well to tell fantastic story ... It's dramatic, it's emotional, sometimes intense, and above all, it's really funny in lots of little moments. All of these different strands are woven together pretty well. I can't speak too much about how authentic it is to 1950s India, but it's definitely making me feel the sense of a time & place. It also helps that all of the characters are very likeable.
rachel on 22/1/2021 at 20:55
So, Lupin.
First things first, it is great. Omar Sy pulls a French Ocean's Eleven-style caper at the Louvre and everything he does is just pure class. The characters are all fun to watch and well written (with two exceptions, I'll get back to that later) and the obvious callbacks to the Arsene Lupin books are really fun to entangle. The cop character in particular is hilarious to watch because we know he's right, of course, he knows he's right, and he also knows that his lead sounds absolutely deranged.
I was going to include the cliffhanger in the bad stuff, but I'll refrain. I was expecting the season to be self-contained, so me being bothered that it was not the case is more a matter of misplaced expectations. If you know in advance or don't care, I don't think this is actually a negative. (Still, I was a tad miffed.)
The bad stuff, though. Two things, both related to the writing:
- First, I think they really put very little effort in establishing the villain. I was almost expecting the guy to be a red herring, given the amount of foreshadowing we're given that he's an absolute asshole of a human being who stole his own jewels. That he's yeah, actually really a stereotypical corrupt executive with no morals feels cheap and almost insulting given the quality of the rest... But then you get the other thing.
- The whole videotape subplot. What the actual fuck was that? You get three episodes' worth of Lupinesque bravado, intelligence, cunning, and planning, and then Diop doesn't even digitize the tape, or at least duplicate it, or hell, anything else than giving the only original copy to unknown parties? And then he gets tailed like an amateur and you get the whole mess from the last episode.
I don't buy it. It's plot-driven stupidity and there's a real dissonance between this clusterfuck and the kind of talent we've seen before. Dude took two weeks to plan and execute the Louvres thing and it went off perfectly. He could spare a few days to make sure the tape was released unequivocally, and with minimum risk to himself. The entire thing with the journalist and the tape is forced just to introduce and justify the cliffhanger later.
It's stupid.
I still recommend it though.
Gryzemuis on 23/1/2021 at 21:00
Two weeks ago someone recommended Lupin to me. I just watched the first episode tonight. I enjoyed it. I'm gonna read your spoilers after I've seen all 5 episodes. I have a rule of thumb to watch only one episode per day. I'm going to try to adhere to that.
I'm amazed how the simple fact that a tv-show was not made by Americans, adds to my enjoyment. Not spoken in English. I wish there were more good shows, like Lupin, Dark, Parfum, etc, from countries like Spain, Italia, Russia, etc. I'd watch them all.
Fun fact. This week I learned that Billy Butcher (from The Boys) has been in the Rohirrim when he was young. (In Middle-Earth). I watched 16 episodes of The Boys without realizing that.
Gryzemuis on 31/1/2021 at 23:34
I watched Lupin. I agree with everything raph wrote. So maybe we should tell people that the 5 episodes are only half of the first series? The 2nd half of the first series will be released this summer. I agree with everything raph wrote, so I also recommend watching it anyway.
SubJeff on 1/2/2021 at 10:27
We've been a little bit skilled with sci fi this year. Discovery was good and the Expanse is great at the moment.
I watch the first episode of the new Resident Alien. Terrible name, seems okay. I'll reserve judgement for a few more episodes.
And I must get back to Raised by Wolves. Only saw the first one but it seemed like a serious business!
Jason Moyer on 5/2/2021 at 11:40
Just watched Season 2 of the Mandalorian. The recurring characters and plotlines from season 1 were great, the cameos from other, shittier Star Wars properties in every single episode were stupid as hell. I dunno how you take something that managed to go a full season without milking the original films/prequels/cartoons/etc outside of "how this universe works" kind of stuff and a few cringy things that are just continued misapplications of the source material and make no sense (i.e. carbonite being a normal bounty hunter thing and not a freezing-gas-process-they-tested-on-han-and-didn't-know-if-it-would-work thing and Tattooine being a backwater shithole in the middle of nowhere but somehow in every goddamn SW story ever) and turn it into "which character can we squeeze into this episode because we can't have the universe feeling too large and we wouldn't want to accidentally make something that isn't fucking garbage and holy shit we made something good how can we spin this into 4 other things" type of thing. So now we're back to the good SW stuff being the first two movies, the Last Jedi, Jedi Knight 2, and KotOR 2. And season 1 of the Mandalorian. GG Disney.
zombe on 5/2/2021 at 17:50
Yep.