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Post by vicedestroyer on Oct 22, 2021 0:13:58 GMT
Succession SE1 8/10
For a show about cunts, this is a surprisingly intriguing and entertaining show. Quite a few of the slimy arseholes got quite satisfying punishments in the season finale, but as is the case in real life, those who you feel deserve the most punishment, somehow manage to dance between the rain drops and not get wet. Intrigued for season 2.
Wolfe 6/10
A problem that I have with short season procedurals, is that they don't give enough time to learn to enjoy the interplay between the characters. It's certainly a promising start and the supporting cast all do a sterling job. It's just a shame that the best episode by far, is the last episode. And it is the best episode by far, because it brings a plot thread to the boil, that has been simmering for over 70% of the length of the season. Worth a watch. Hope we get a second season.
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スコットランド
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Delicious gruel
Posts: 3,934
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Post by スコットランド on Oct 22, 2021 5:30:58 GMT
I just watched the first episode of Succession last night, definitely piqued my interest...
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Post by Bill in the rain on Oct 22, 2021 13:51:37 GMT
I've almost tried Vikings several times, as it does look like it's going to be a Norse Spartacus, and Spartacus was unexpectedly awesome.
But, like Spartacus, it does look a bit of an iffy prospect from the outside.
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Frog
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Post by Frog on Oct 22, 2021 13:55:01 GMT
Vikings is great but definitely gets better after S1, it's not that s1 is particularly bad it's just not up with the best of it.
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Post by simple on Oct 22, 2021 13:59:35 GMT
What about Last Kingdom?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 22, 2021 15:04:39 GMT
I liked The Last Kingdom, but it's essentially Vikings if Ragnar was John Marston. By that I mean, remember in Red Dead 1, how every cutscene before a mission is "I'm not working for you! Okay but this is the last time!"? That's every discussion between Uhtred (the lead) and King Alfred. Much like Ragnar, Uhtred is the strongest, cleverest warrior in the world, and somehow he seems to be at the center of every major battle in history (specifically English in this case). At least with Ragnar, there's historic record of him existing, even if much of it is likely exaggeration. Uhtred is a completely fictional creation. It's worth a punt, though. Embellished history, big battles, Saxons vs Vikings. What's not to love?
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Post by simple on Oct 22, 2021 15:22:27 GMT
He’s Saxon Sharpe, isn’t he?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 22, 2021 15:32:50 GMT
100%
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Gruf
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Even more taciturn than my name suggests
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Post by Gruf on Oct 22, 2021 18:15:24 GMT
All this Saxon Talk, enough oldies on here, might know. What was that 70's, (I think), TV show about Saxons (maybe), two main characters one blond the other dark haired striking looking, deffo ancient Briton based, round shields and swords lots of horse based combat. Thought it was called The Saxons, but bugger all hits on google, I can picture the dark haired dude, but his name is lost, may have been dutch sounding, van something. Senility is a bitch
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geefe
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Post by geefe on Oct 22, 2021 21:04:14 GMT
The Shield (S5)
It was very, very good until the last 20 minutes of the last episode and then it just took it up a notch.
This is coming very close to surpassing Breaking Bad.
10/10
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Post by Mr Wonderstuff on Oct 22, 2021 22:03:51 GMT
Well I loved it. Definately worth a watch.
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cubby
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doesn't get subtext
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Post by cubby on Oct 22, 2021 22:10:47 GMT
2nd series of Mindhunter on NF, set it aside for a while after watching the 1st series, took a while to get back, excellent if a little underwhelming with regards a conclusive story. Looks like we may not see the 3rd series, which it needs to complete the storyline, for a while, if at all. Fincher is onto other projects. Well directed and very authentic looking, enjoyed it, well as much you can given its a series about serial killers There's some movement on a third season all of a sudden, apparently Fincher is trying to get Netflix to greenlight it. I'm guessing without him.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 22, 2021 22:36:03 GMT
BILL'S WIFE IS TIM'S GIRLFRIEND IN THE OFFICE.
Still blows mind to this day.
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Gruf
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Even more taciturn than my name suggests
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Post by Gruf on Oct 22, 2021 22:43:20 GMT
2nd series of Mindhunter on NF, set it aside for a while after watching the 1st series, took a while to get back, excellent if a little underwhelming with regards a conclusive story. Looks like we may not see the 3rd series, which it needs to complete the storyline, for a while, if at all. Fincher is onto other projects. Well directed and very authentic looking, enjoyed it, well as much you can given its a series about serial killers There's some movement on a third season all of a sudden, apparently Fincher is trying to get Netflix to greenlight it. I'm guessing without him. Terrific, deserves a decent conclusion.
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Post by RumMonkey on Oct 23, 2021 12:33:30 GMT
The Office(US) 1-9
After it stops copying the UK one beat for beat in the first season it becomes a great sitcom in its own right. They develop the characters well and there's some genuinely touching moments.
Then from s8 it takes a massive nose dive and takes some questionable turns that ruin some characters. Was a satisfying final 2 episodes though.
8/10
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Post by stuz359 on Oct 23, 2021 21:22:17 GMT
Only Murders in the Building (Disney+)
Really fun, easy to binge. No spoilers, so three unlikely friends start a true crime podcast to solve a murder that occurred in their apartment building.
9/10
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JYM60
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Post by JYM60 on Oct 25, 2021 10:41:47 GMT
You S3 Pretty meh. The first season was pretty good I thought, but downhill since then. The love character is still stupid and annoying. And they don't even give her a good ending. 5/10[/spoiler]
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 25, 2021 11:27:33 GMT
Midnight Mass Fucking hell did we need epic monologues every few minutes delivered by interchangable characters that had no personality or function of their own other than to deliver lengthy monologues. This should have been half the length, with half the characters. What a massive disappointment. The whole religion and vampire angle was inspired but in all honesty Flanagan made a big fucking hash of the whole thing. There's so many faults I can't even be arsed to mention them. That's 7 hours I'm not getting back. Thanks Mike.
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lexw
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Post by lexw on Oct 25, 2021 12:27:15 GMT
Midnight Mass Fucking hell did we need epic monologues every few minutes delivered by interchangable characters that had no personality or function of their own other than to deliver lengthy monologues. This should have been half the length, with half the characters. What a massive disappointment. The whole religion and vampire angle was inspired but in all honesty Flanagan made a big fucking hash of the whole thing. There's so many faults I can't even be arsed to mention them. That's 7 hours I'm not getting back. Thanks Mike. I really enjoyed it but my answer to the monologue question is "Yes" because most were pretty great. Also the lines and delivery of "Welcome to God's army. We're going to do great things." with him just walking away were, mic-drop-style was one of my favourite moments on TV ever. Plus the Sheriff's monologue was just awesome. It could definitely have been a bit shorter for what they wanted to do though.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 25, 2021 12:38:44 GMT
See I really didn't enjoy them. They went on to the point of tedium and seemed shoehorned in at completely bizarre times. The Sheriff's for example, right at the end of the series, was quite frankly a nonsense response to what he had just been asked to do. Every one of them could have been delivered by any character as they felt so obviously scripted. It's just incredibly obvious that Flanagan was exorcising his own demons with alcohol addiction and catholicism, which is fine, as both subjects are more than worthy of making good TV about and have been in the past, good horror as well (see King and The Shining for the alcoholism for example), but the fact he had to stop the action dead in it's tracks time and time again for long speeches was just an exercise in frustration. What was very interesting was that with the Sherrif, he was poised to say something a lot more interesting. Between his religion, and Riley's atheism, we were poised to have our "heroes" right there, except that's not what happened, and the fact the Sheriff was a muslim actually counted for shit at the end where it came down to him and a random selection of other characters resisting the flavour-aid moment. It genuinely felt that his character was shoe-horned in to make a point about ingrained racism following 9-11, which again, is valid, but was so obviously just plopped in there. Then half of the church that Flanagan was rallying against were redeemed in their final moments (another fucking song, how enjoyable), ultimately completely muddied his message and we were left with a series with some interesting ideas and concepts but completely ballsed in it's execution. My opinion, obvs.
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lexw
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Post by lexw on Oct 25, 2021 15:00:24 GMT
I've almost tried Vikings several times, as it does look like it's going to be a Norse Spartacus, and Spartacus was unexpectedly awesome. But, like Spartacus, it does look a bit of an iffy prospect from the outside. If Spartacus is a 10, which it was for me (and my wife), Vikings is like an average of about 7, and occasionally reaches some real heights, particularly when Floki or the "fun" English king is involved (of Wessex I think), but is dragged down by some tedium with various characters, esp. when Ragnar stops being in it. Fimmel isn't the best actor but he eventually makes the role his own and becomes really fun.
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Post by RadicalRex on Oct 25, 2021 18:40:57 GMT
Futurama S5
That's S6 on Amazon Prime for whatever reason I don't want to go into, it's the one after the original run that is 4 feature-length "episodes" instead of 20-something 20-minute episodes.
Generally, it had fewer good jokes than the original 4 seasons, but the main issue is the 90-minute format. Futurama themes work well for 20-minute episodes, but they tend to really outstay their welcome in 90-minute ones. What's more, all of them felt like around the 45-60 minute mark they ran out of ideas and especially the last third is painfully slow, watching them trying desperately to fill the remaining time. Major drop from the original 4 seasons as far as I'm concerned.
6/10
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Post by simple on Oct 25, 2021 19:14:33 GMT
Are you pushing through to the post-revival seasons after the movies or stopping here?
I thought the ‘new’ episodes held up remarkably well once they got going
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Post by RadicalRex on Oct 25, 2021 19:29:37 GMT
I'm continuing to watch them, I just finished that season recently and didn't like it. I'm glad it returned to the 20-minute format after that.
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Post by nemesis on Oct 25, 2021 20:45:46 GMT
Blair and Brown (BBC)
5 part documentary up on iPlayer going through the New Labour era; gets particularly spicy around the WMD as you'd expect and the body language throughout is fascinating.
8/10.
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Post by skalpadda on Oct 25, 2021 23:49:32 GMT
I just finished watching the Studio Ghibli TV-series adaptation of Ronja, the Robber's Daughter (Ronja Rövardotter in the original Swedish, or Ronja, Fille de brigand since I'm an idiot and watched the French dub). It's a coming of age story with some light fantasy/folklore elements, following the young daughter of a medieval bandit chief as she grows up and becomes her own person, befriends the son of the leader of a rival bandit clan and confronts the realities of what her father does for a living.
It's based off a children's book by Astrid Lindgren (best known for Pippi Longstocking in the anglophone world), who is as close to a national saint as you can get here in Sweden. There's also a (very good) 1984 Swedish film adaptation that's a real classic, still shown on TV every christmas here and a childhood touchstone for everyone my generation and younger. So despite having loved almost everything by Studio Ghibli I ignored it for a long time. This is kind of sacred. There's no way I could view it in a fair way, no way it could live up to 40 years of rose-tinted glasses. Watching it seemed a bit pointless.
But, I finally decided to give it a go anyway. Does it measure up to my nostalgia? Nope, but I liked it a lot more than I thought I would, and I ended up watching the whole thing over the course of a couple of weeks. It was predictably jarring at first and this version is a lot cuter and less grubby than the book and the Swedish movie, but it's also clearly a labour of love, determined to do its very best to tell the book's story and it won me over after a few episodes. They actually understood the characters, stayed very faithful to the book, and while it can't compete with the 2D Ghibli movies in terms of animation quality and sheer artistry (this does 2D backgrounds and 3D characters) it's still very pretty. It did get a bit "anime" at times, especially with Ronja's father Mattis' frequent tantrums, but thankfully not enough to ruin it for me and it still felt fairly grounded.
I read a little about it before watching it and the most common criticism I saw was that it's way too slow. That's a fair critique. It's a not-particularly long book spread over 26 25-minute episodes. It could have been done in half the time without missing a single plot point. It's perfectly happy to hang on some pretty images for a while, or just spend time with the characters without much happening, and for sure some scenes go on a bit too long. But I think I prefer it that way. Not everything has to be constant action and dialogue, and sometimes it's nice to just slow down and relax. Maybe I'm just old.
So, yeah, actually a pretty good, cozy show that does its best to respect the source material.
The music is rubbish though. Somehow aggresively milquetoast. Distractingly dull.
I rate it four out of five rumpnissar.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 26, 2021 0:01:00 GMT
I watched two or three episodes of that and thought it was fine, but was in no urge to finish it. That was about two years ago...
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Post by Bill in the rain on Oct 26, 2021 5:00:51 GMT
The original movie was good. I also watched one or two episodes of the Ghibli one a while back and thought it was fine but didn't continue. The switch to 3d wasn't that appealing. I'm kinda surprised Ghibli stayed true to the book and got the characters, as their adaptions of foreign works, while usually good in their own right, tend to miss the point of the original characters more often than not.
The new Ghbili movie is in 3d, which looks pretty awful. They haven't worked out how to do the moving hair that Pixar got in 2012
they should probably just do it in Unreal Engine or something.
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Post by simple on Oct 26, 2021 12:04:17 GMT
Firefly (disney+) and Serenity (netflix)
My first time watching the whole thing through and maybe its because I just watched Enterprise which was on at the same time but it feels like it mostly holds up really well still. A few niggles in the special effects department and attitudes to women that would probably receive social media hot takes nowadays but its good stuff otherwise.
At first I got strong Enterprise away mission vibes but I think they just share similar production values and some design choices. Plus backwards cowboy planets being visited by hi-tech space people is very Star Trek.
Its a shame that we never got to see more of the character because to start with they all felt very stock and artificially put together as a crew by committee and their chemistry was quite slow to come together but they do come into their own. Serenity is a bit of a jump because I know its supposed to put an ending to the series but it feels a little like we’ve been given the beginning and end of a story without much middle. I mean like, if Whedon had been given 5 seasons of Firefly I don’t think Serenity would be much different, it feels like it picks up from where Whedon wanted to get to rather than quite where Firefly left off if that makes sense. Good that they upped the action so much for it and we got to see more of the galaxy.
I’d love to know more about the wider lore, like sure an advanced core and backwater fringe makes sense but why did everyone revert to C19th tech, dress and attitudes? What was the deal with Shepherd? Why is sex worker the only high status profession women have in society? How do the Reavers keep their fleet running if they’re such slavering monsters? Who thought the tin foil house looked good? Did the production designers know colours other than brown exist?
I’m also kind of baffled by the way Fox treated the show. I knew it hard a poor reception initially but only broadcasting 11 of 14 episodes, out of order and ending with ep1 is baffling. Why even commission it if you want it to fail that badly?
Anyway, good stuff, glad I caught up
8/10
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Post by stuz359 on Oct 26, 2021 18:40:56 GMT
Firefly definitely deserved a better run than it got, maybe sci-fi tv had peaked at that point (by which I mean, the market had been saturated and come to the end of a natural cycle).
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