What Have You Watched Recently?

[Joe Walsh]

We watched the first two episodes of My Brilliant Friend on HBOMax. It's an Italian series about two schoolgirls in the 1950s, their frenemyship, and the community they live in. It's very well done, and if it was a 2-hour movie we'd probably rate it highly, but watching season after season of desperate people behaving terribly isn't really something we want to do.

 

On the other hand, Starstruck S2 (also on HBOMax) is going great, two episodes in! And the first four episodes of Cake S4 (Hulu) have been better than seasons 2 or 3.

 

 

[Joe Walsh]

Forgot to mention that we finished S2 of How To with John Wilson (HBOMax), an odd little comedy documentary series that we've found to be pretty compelling. He manages to find the most surprising stuff, and to weave it together in wonderful ways. Heck, just the little bits of footage he shoots and stitches together for use during his voiceovers is often surprising and funny. The way he assembles his footage brings to mind how a poet assembles their words.

 

[Matt the Bruins]

On 4/13/2022 at 12:07 AM, Ternaugh said:

Still not as bad as the murder rate in Cabot Cove.

Cabot Cove made Sunnydale, CA look like a peaceful little town by comparison.

[archer]

On 4/8/2022 at 10:24 PM, Ternaugh said:

 

First season of Foundation, which isn't bad if you've never heard of Isaac Asimov and the Foundation series of books before. (Apple TV+)

 

 

Yeah, I was disappointed that Seldon and his encyclopedists didn't spend more time on Trantor, which was a more interesting setting than the spaceship or Terminus. You wouldn't need much in the way of set, just corridors and CGI huge crowds of people moving through them.

 

Seeing him gathering resources, recruiting personnel, rejecting spies applying to be personnel, and generally scheming to get what he wanted would have been a lot more entertaining than what the viewing audience actually got (Oh look she's swimming, again, and counting numbers, again).

 

minor spoilers:

 

 

And they never got around to explaining why the Galactic Empire was crumbling: education was stifled and rote memorization constituted training for many technical positions. So people who were maintaining the infrastructure of civilization didn't understand the machinery they were maintaining, people who built spaceships didn't understand the underlying theory of what they were doing, crewmen of spaceships were hit-and-miss on whether they could fix their own ships (and spare parts were increasingly a problem).

 

One of the great points of the books were that a general could have pulled the breakaway sections of the Empire back together.

 

1) But if he were incompetent, he couldn't do it.

2) If he were competent but disloyal, he'd be better off turning his ships against the center and taking over the remaining Empire than trying to reconquer the fringes.

3) If he were competent but loyal, the emperor would fear him and eventually either kill him or promote him out of the field so that he no longer commanded a fleet of ships.

 

And the thing that drove me up the wall about the TV version is that they make the point that an exceptional individual can change the course of history. That not only invalidates the entire concept of psychohistory but is exactly the opposite of the point which Asimov made in his books: history is formed by relentless sociological pressures and expressed through economics, warfare, and many other methods while the individual and his attempts to alter the fates of trillions upon trillions of people scattered around the galaxy were doomed to fail if they worked against the relentless tide of history.

[Scott Ruggels]

 Watched Supercrooks.  Liked it, and it would make an interesting Champions campaign if you like heists. It's another series from Millarworld (Jupiter's Legacy). There is a very interesting portrayal of time, and it's the first time I have seen an Accurate San Francisco in Anime before. On Netflix.

[archer]

I've been enjoying For All Mankind on Apple+.

 

It basically is an alternate history of the space race where the Russians took a huge chance to try to make it to the moon first and actually succeeded.

 

That lit a fire under the space race with both the Republicans and Democrats fighting over which party was more devoted to making sure that the US had the finest space program on the planet and off the planet.

 

It digs up a lot of real details of people who were astronauts (and those who were washed out of the program in the real world) and intertwines it with technical details of what NASA was really working on or had ready in the late 60's and early 70's to create a compelling tale of what NASA could have been and would have done if Nixon hadn't decided to trashcan NASA's budget.

 

Season 1 focused on the events surrounding the first US manned landing on the moon and the aftermath of being the second country there rather than the first. It covered the Nixon administration 68-72 and the Ted Kennedy administration 72-76. The main characters for all seasons are astronauts, mission control, NASA administrators, and families.

 

Season 2 alluded to events from the first Reagan administration 76-80 and took place mostly in the second Reagan administration 80-84 in the depths of the Cold War. And how the space stations, moon bases, and regular spaceflights affected world events.

 

Season 3 isn't out yet but a teaser seemed to show that a NERVA rocket has taken man to Mars in the mid-90's rather than just running shuttles to the moon.

 

I haven't really looked at anything yet in either season and said to myself that the writers hadn't done their research and got their facts wrong. That's unusual because I pick most shows to death.

 

I mean some things are unfixable within budget constraints like coming up with ways for everything in every shot looking like it's in lunar gravity. But if you ignore the occasional pot belly and/or bust line, the lack of technical fixes for low gravity isn't 

glaring.

[Ternaugh]

17 hours ago, archer said:

 

Yeah, I was disappointed that Seldon and his encyclopedists didn't spend more time on Trantor, which was a more interesting setting than the spaceship or Terminus. You wouldn't need much in the way of set, just corridors and CGI huge crowds of people moving through them.

 

Seeing him gathering resources, recruiting personnel, rejecting spies applying to be personnel, and generally scheming to get what he wanted would have been a lot more entertaining than what the viewing audience actually got (Oh look she's swimming, again, and counting numbers, again).

 

minor spoilers:

 

 

And they never got around to explaining why the Galactic Empire was crumbling: education was stifled and rote memorization constituted training for many technical positions. So people who were maintaining the infrastructure of civilization didn't understand the machinery they were maintaining, people who built spaceships didn't understand the underlying theory of what they were doing, crewmen of spaceships were hit-and-miss on whether they could fix their own ships (and spare parts were increasingly a problem).

 

One of the great points of the books were that a general could have pulled the breakaway sections of the Empire back together.

 

1) But if he were incompetent, he couldn't do it.

2) If he were competent but disloyal, he'd be better off turning his ships against the center and taking over the remaining Empire than trying to reconquer the fringes.

3) If he were competent but loyal, the emperor would fear him and eventually either kill him or promote him out of the field so that he no longer commanded a fleet of ships.

 

And the thing that drove me up the wall about the TV version is that they make the point that an exceptional individual can change the course of history. That not only invalidates the entire concept of psychohistory but is exactly the opposite of the point which Asimov made in his books: history is formed by relentless sociological pressures and expressed through economics, warfare, and many other methods while the individual and his attempts to alter the fates of trillions upon trillions of people scattered around the galaxy were doomed to fail if they worked against the relentless tide of history.

 

I agree with you about Trantor. It would have been a better model for the writers to start with Prelude to Foundation, and stick with that for the first season. Second season could be Forward the Foundation, Third could start the stories in Foundation. It would also allow the cast to remain relatively stable during a season, but allow changes for the inevitable jumps in time in the overall story, without resorting to convoluted plots involving cold sleep, AI duplicates, or serial cloning. And it would allow the viewer to see examples of how the systems were breaking down, which would inevitably lead to the fall of the empire.

 

I would have also liked to see a Terminus like that described in the books. The initial colonization was described as 100,000 scientist colonists to a watery world with lots of islands and a mild climate. What we got was a small colony on cold, rocky world that, 35 years after planetfall, still hasn't moved much of the colonists out of what appears to be temporary tent structures. There's certainly no real mention of anyone working on the Encyclopedia Galactica, which was the purported reason for establishing the Foundation in the first place.

 

It would definitely help if they had someone on the writing staff that actually appeared to enjoy the source material, which does not currently appear to be the case.

[Grailknight]

On 4/15/2022 at 5:39 PM, archer said:

 

Yeah, I was disappointed that Seldon and his encyclopedists didn't spend more time on Trantor, which was a more interesting setting than the spaceship or Terminus. You wouldn't need much in the way of set, just corridors and CGI huge crowds of people moving through them.

 

Seeing him gathering resources, recruiting personnel, rejecting spies applying to be personnel, and generally scheming to get what he wanted would have been a lot more entertaining than what the viewing audience actually got (Oh look she's swimming, again, and counting numbers, again).

 

minor spoilers:

 

 

And they never got around to explaining why the Galactic Empire was crumbling: education was stifled and rote memorization constituted training for many technical positions. So people who were maintaining the infrastructure of civilization didn't understand the machinery they were maintaining, people who built spaceships didn't understand the underlying theory of what they were doing, crewmen of spaceships were hit-and-miss on whether they could fix their own ships (and spare parts were increasingly a problem).

 

One of the great points of the books were that a general could have pulled the breakaway sections of the Empire back together.

 

1) But if he were incompetent, he couldn't do it.

2) If he were competent but disloyal, he'd be better off turning his ships against the center and taking over the remaining Empire than trying to reconquer the fringes.

3) If he were competent but loyal, the emperor would fear him and eventually either kill him or promote him out of the field so that he no longer commanded a fleet of ships.

 

And the thing that drove me up the wall about the TV version is that they make the point that an exceptional individual can change the course of history. That not only invalidates the entire concept of psychohistory but is exactly the opposite of the point which Asimov made in his books: history is formed by relentless sociological pressures and expressed through economics, warfare, and many other methods while the individual and his attempts to alter the fates of trillions upon trillions of people scattered around the galaxy were doomed to fail if they worked against the relentless tide of history.

 

Not quite true. A exceptionally powerful telepath( The Mule) could change the course of galactic history but that wasn't part of what the First Foundation was built to encompass. That was more the scope of the Second.

[Ternaugh]

39 minutes ago, Grailknight said:

 

Not quite true. A exceptionally powerful telepath( The Mule) could change the course of galactic history but that wasn't part of what the First Foundation was built to encompass. That was more the scope of the Second.

 

Which is why it's disappointing that two of the characters in the TV series appear to have 

Spoiler

powers of precognition, which are especially strong in their version of Salvor Hardin--to the point where she unerringly predicts coin tosses. 

 

Edited April 17, 2022 by Ternaugh

[mattingly]

Cast a Deadly Spell. Haven't seen this in such a long time. I forgot how great to cast was -- David Warner and Clancy Brown? Yes, please.

 

[csyphrett]

Columbo has to deal with Oskar Weiner killing his mother in law as the invisible man, and George Hamilton accidentally killing the husband of a woman he is dating and then hypnotizing her to jump off her fifth floor balcony.

CES 

[Jhamin]

Just saw "Everything Everywhere All At Once".

 

It was... amazing!

 

It was the most fun I've had in a movie in years.  It was funny, poignant, and filled with the most creative martial arts sequences I've seen in a while.

The film is a sci-fi martial arts fusion, and dives into the Multiverse.  Beyond that don't spoil yourself if you can avoid it before going to see it.

It stars Michelle Yeoh with a really great supporting cast.  I didn't know I needed Jamie Lee Curtis in a Michelle Yeoh action movie.. but I did.

I know I'm talking it up, but I was blown away.  Its been a long time since a movie has blown me away.

 

Everyone should go see it!

[Joe Walsh]

We watched the documentary "Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off" (2022) which was not only about the titular subject, but also the famous Bones Brigade skate group and how those crazy kids are doing now that they're grandfathers (or at least old enough to be). At more than 2 hours long, it needed to be pretty compelling for someone like me, who was only tangentially aware of the skate phenomenon the few times its become megapopular over the last 50 years.  And I think the documentary succeeds in that. I enjoyed watching the whole thing. Check it out if you're at all interested (on HBOMax).

[csyphrett]

an episode of Mrs Columbo that came with the disk set where Kate Mulgrew has to deal with a ventriloquist having a mental breakdown

CES

[rravenwood]

On 3/25/2022 at 10:30 PM, Ternaugh said:

Is It Cake? Contestants create cakes that look like certain objects, and it's up to the judges to determine which objects are decoys, and which one is cake. (Netflix)

 

I never would have decided to watch this myself, but my wife wanted to watch it so... It was actually pretty fun!

 

We then proceeded to watch Baking Impossible which was also enjoyable, but between the two I liked Is It Cake? better.  I think one reason why is that the judges on Is It Cake? are not professional chefs (if there were one or two I don't recall - most were not), and so it was nice to just hear three "everyman" opinions, whereas Baking Impossible has a professional as one of the judges who seemed like they just needed to try and find something negative every time, no matter how small (although there were at couple occasions where the feedback was entirely positive, I will admit).

[Ternaugh]

The Batman: Surprisingly good movie that lets Batman be a detective for a change. Gotham is portrayed as dark and moody, and reminded me heavily of the rainy Los Angeles in Blade Runner. It's a long movie, but is now available on HBOmax, so it's possible to pause for bathroom or snack breaks. (HBOmax)

 

Iron Man: I re-watch this one every once in a while, still a good watch. (Disney+)

 

Spider-Man: No Way Home: Good mix of nostalgia and action. A good watch. (4K UHD)

[mattingly]

9 hours ago, csyphrett said:

a ventriloquist having a mental breakdown

 

 

[Joe Walsh]

For the first time in my life, I watched Network (1976) (HBOMax). I'd seen parts of it before, but never the whole thing. It was amazingly prescient, and it still holds up pretty well. It was also a good reminder that a lot of our current problems don't date back just to the legitimization of greed in the 80s, but to well before that.

[Matt the Bruins]

On 4/17/2022 at 11:45 PM, csyphrett said:

Columbo has to deal with Oskar Weiner killing his mother in law as the invisible man, and George Hamilton accidentally killing the husband of a woman he is dating and then hypnotizing her to jump off her fifth floor balcony.

CES 

Was this a crossover with Love at First Bite?

[death tribble]

Over the Easter weekend the Horror Channel showed a whole bunch of classic Sci-fi horror flicks including ones I had seen before like 20 million Miles to earth, It came from beneath the sea, Earth vs The Flying Saucers and The Blob. It also had the almost genuine turkey The Giant Claw. If you have not seen it do just to see how atrocious the giant bird is. On now to films I had not seen before.

 

The Monster that Challenged the World

This one was not on the Horror channel but could easily have been. Same period. After a parachutist jumping over a lake disappears and the two sailors on pick up duty do not report in, an intelligence officer goes looking for the cause. And the cause is a giant mollusc. A number of people are killed before the navy corners the mollusc and family and kills them. Except there is an egg back at the base and the little kid has turned the temperature up so that the bunny rabbits will not get cold. So of course the egg hatches and menaces said little girl and her mummy who have to be saved by the intelligence officer. See once and be satisfied.

 

The Monolith Monsters

This is a bit of an oddity. The beast here is silicon from space brought to earth by a meteor. The problem is that when you add water it expands and multiplies and drains silicon from any life turning it into stone. The meteor has landed in the desert so that is not too bad until it starts raining and will not stop. A little girl is slowly being turned into stone, can she be saved ? And how do you stop the silica from reproducing ? It is probably only a one watch film.

 

The Mole People

This opens with a discussion on the Hollow Earth idea. Then we get into the story of archaeologists in Asia finding a table hinting at the existence of an unknown dynasty now vanished. They climb a mountain and find a temple but one of their number falls down a crevice and his party follow him down in an attempt to rescue him. They fail as he has died and then they are cut off and need to find another way out. They discover a hidden Sumerian civilisation who have enslaved mole people to work for them. The moles are beaten as they work but the party will not have that as they are Americans and of course anti-slavery. The high priest schemes to get their secret weapon (a torch) from them while the moles rise in revolt. Alfred from the 1966 Batman is the high priest. See once.

 

The Deadly Mantis

What is attacking outposts and planes up in the Arctic ? A giant Praying Mantis. If you like Them! you'll like this. Enlivened by Craig Stevens as an Air Force officer and William Hopper who was also in 20 Million Miles to Earth. Worth repeated watching.

 

Tarantula

Giant Spider on the loose in the desert after lab escape. That is it in a nutshell but it works. Leo G Carroll is the scientist whose work inadvertently created the monster. Not for arachnophobes. Clint Eastwood is the air force squadron leader at the end. As with Mantis, you can watch this again.

 

It Came from Outer Space

An astronomer claims he has seen a spaceship but no-one believes him. He has even seen an alien but does not know it. But the aliens do and they want to fix their ship and leave. If the locals will let them. I had never seen this one before and it is really good. It does not outstay its welcome and is different to a lot of its peers as the aliens just want to leave. Again one to watch repeatedly.

[archer]

You have a lot more patience than I do. I'd rather watch a good or middling movie over again than to watch a bad movie that I've never seen before.

[death tribble]

But wait there is more !

 

Legend of the Lone Ranger

Based on the Lone Ranger story and had the same origin story as the earlier serial. Except it took too long in setting up the origin and meeting/getting the horse Silver. And then when the Cavendish gang are being fought the denouement seems rushed. Cavendish kidnaps President Grant so that he can set up his own country. The Lone Ranger stops him and brings him in alive. The film just does not work. The actor playing the Ranger is dubbed by another actor is one reason. The origin and end are others. But the people behind the film did it no favours by banning Clayton Moore who played The Lone Ranger in the serial from doing any signings as The Lone Ranger. This got a lot of bad publicity. The actor who played the Ranger got no other lead parts and the director did not have another feature. Michael Horse who played Tonto, Jason Robards who played Grant and Christopher Lloyd who was Cavendish all went on to other films or to have a career. My verdict is see it to believe it. It is not the worst film ever but deserves to be considered in the same breath. I forgot the bad song or balladering throughout.

 

Kull the Conqueror

Kevin Sorbo takes a break from playing Hercules to play Kull. Tia Carrere is the evil sorceress who turns into a demon and must be beaten by the Breath of Life. It is ok but it just does not work. Despite the other people in the cast that I recognised. It just did not work. Worth seeing once.

 

House of Long Shadows

An author agrees to write a new story in 24 hours for a bet. For isolation he goes to the country but finds the house has visitors. Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing arrive to see John Barrymoore who is already there. It is a shame that the film is not better served with a stronger script because Price, Lee and Cushing are excellent. Desi Arnez as the author less so. It is ok but it could have been so much better.

 

Daughters of Satan

Tom Selleck is in the Philippines and buys a painting as it looks like his wife is one of three witches being burned in it. Then supernatural things start occurring. A dog appears as does a new housekeeper. His wife acts oddly. The man who sold the painting is murdered and Selleck is attacked. I had seen part of the film before and now had a chance to see the whole thing. Not bad.

 

Kingdom of Spiders

William Shatner is the local veterinarian when spiders start gathering together to fight man. I had seen this before and it has one of those rather bleak endings. Worth a look and then it depends on whether yoy are an arachnophobe or can tolerate an unhappy ending.

 

Masquerade

Cliff Robertson is recruited by ex-Army buddy Jack Hawkins to look after an Arab prince for a few days until he comes of age and will sign a contract to give Britain oil. His uncle wants to give it to someone behind the Iron Curtain. Robertson has run into what he thinks are smugglers and a guy who wants to record all sorts of songs or birds to see to the BBC. Except the smugglers are actually after the prince and kidnap him out from under Robertson who tries to find him. Nothing is as it seems and it is not that bad.

[csyphrett]

8 hours ago, Matt the Bruins said:

Was this a crossover with Love at First Bite?

George Hamilton was a cool dude before he started doing comedy. I remember seeing him as the villain on Nash Bridges once and he still had it.

 

I thought at the time he could have got out of killing the husband by claiming self defense, but I realize now that if he had gone that way, the fact he was using the wife as a test subject and dating her could have ruined his future. I just thought he was being impulsive setting up an alibi so he wouldn't be blamed

CES   

[mattingly]

15 hours ago, death tribble said:

The Deadly Mantis

What is attacking outposts and planes up in the Arctic ? A giant Praying Mantis. If you like Them! you'll like this. Enlivened by Craig Stevens as an Air Force officer and William Hopper who was also in 20 Million Miles to Earth. Worth repeated watching.

 

Tarantula

Giant Spider on the loose in the desert after lab escape. That is it in a nutshell but it works. Leo G Carroll is the scientist whose work inadvertently created the monster. Not for arachnophobes. Clint Eastwood is the air force squadron leader at the end. As with Mantis, you can watch this again.

 

14 hours ago, death tribble said:

Kingdom of Spiders

William Shatner is the local veterinarian when spiders start gathering together to fight man. I had seen this before and it has one of those rather bleak endings. Worth a look and then it depends on whether yoy are an arachnophobe or can tolerate an unhappy ending.

 

I loved the various bug monster movies growing up.

Still have a soft spot for them.

 

 

[Lawnmower Boy]

I'd like to say that I've been watching Severance, but I have no memory of it.