What Have You Watched Recently?

[Grailknight]

Just finished binge watching Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn 0096. An excellent addition to the Universal Century timeline

 

The animation is beautiful and the story is well executed if somewhat predictable,  This is a sequel to the Char's Counterattack movie and pretty much wraps up all the UC plot lines and shows the final fate of some fan favorites.

[Pattern Ghost]

I watched the first episode of DARK MATTER via Netflix on the recommendation of an acquaintance. Six people (and an android) awaken on a spaceship with no memory of their identities or how they got there. I only discovered after starting it (via the credits) that Tailgunner Joe (Joseph Mallozzi) and a fellow alumnus of Stargate were the executive producers and writers. I hate Tailgunner Joe. Given the chance, he stripped the Stargate universe of everything enjoyable about it and created the arrogantly, aggressively, abysmally stupid and awful Stargate Universe. Anyone who disagrees about the utter lack of redeeming qualities of SGU is just wrong.

 

Still, I watched the first episode. And I was surprised to find that I liked it.

 

But I'm not sure I'll watch any more. Why? Because it was so ****ing dark! (Among his other numerous sins when he ran SGU, he favored a show so darkly lit that you could hardly see what the hell was happening most of the time. And that has carried over to Dark Matter. I guess he thinks it's "artistic" to fill the screen with shadows and darkness. Or maybe he takes "dark" literally when it comes to dark stories or dark matters. I dunno. But it's annoying as hell, and doubly so when I know very well that it's a deliberate choice not to light the damn set.

 

You can safely keep watching. The lighting's not so bad for most of it, and it just gets better as it goes. Killjoys was another unexpected find on the SyFy (are they still doing that stupidity? or did they go back to SiFi yet?) channel. Both are very good. We just finished up Season 2 of both shows, and they're well worth the watch.

[Pattern Ghost]

Attack on Titan season one

 

Beautiful, great potential, interesting world - but choppy as hell and some aspects that seriously needed explaining nearly pulled me right out of it for large chunks of the story.

 

I have no doubt the manga fills some things in - but I don't read manga.  Based on being stand alone there were plot holes large enough in season one to march a  Colossal Titan or three through.

 

I'd watch a second season without reservation but on my personal anime-o-meter Season 1 is lower than I expected (which is why I try not to buy into hype).

 

The anime follows the manga pretty closely. They're going to need a couple more seasons to get into the explanations, but they do have explanations. They haven't had the ultimate explanation yet, but they've been doling out enough explanations to make me think there's an actual plan and ending in mind that explains the situation. At least it's not nearly as confusing as The Big O or Serial Experiments: Lain.

 

Also, another season of Mikasa badassery can't be a bad thing. If they ever release it.

[death tribble]

More of the Paralympics. One of the guys over there is doing a show called the Last Leg and is an Australian. He made a bet saying he would shave his head and have the Union Jack painted on it if the GB team got more medals than the Australian team. Well as the table is looking so bad for the Australian team so he has gone ahead and had it done.. 

[death tribble]

Various clips from Saturday Night Live's 40th anniversary show. And then various parts of Weekend Update particularly Stefon as his ideas for people visiting New York. Bill Hader breaks up every single time, it is very funny.

[Christopher R Taylor]

So, a blind guy apparently shattered a bunch of Olympic records in the paralympics, and it made me think: why is a blind guy not just in the regular Olympics?  What about not being able to see affects running speed?  Its gutsy to run blind, but he's on a track, not out in the street or where there's debris to avoid.

[Nolgroth]

The season premiere of Gotham. About the same as previous seasons in terms of feel. Hard to feel as if many of the established characters are ever in danger, assuming that this isn't some sort of Elseworlds or What If? universe. I suppose I am interested in how they wrap everything together to get us to a point where it somewhat matches the common assumptions from the comic books.

[Old Man]

The current remake of The Magnificent Seven.  Antoine Fuqua starts with a true Hollywood classic and creates a version that is sloppy and predictable.  Don't get me wrong, it's a solid action Western, but Training Day it ain't.  Once again I'm left wondering what the screenwriters were paid.

[Old Man]

Sully starring Tom Hanks.  The movie has to invent an adversarial NTSB investigation board to come up with some conflict, and even then the movie is kind of slow.  But otherwise it's not bad, and as usual Hanks carries the film.

 

(Note that after Apollo 13, Cast Away, The Terminal, and now Sully, the joke is that you should never, ever travel with Tom Hanks.)

[Nolgroth]

Slogging my way through Longmire Season 5. It's not that the current season is boring, but I want to watch when I have time to relax.

 

Also been keeping up with the Fall premiers. So far, the ones I have watched seem troublingly entertaining. I tend to limit myself to just a few shows at a time and I worry that I will have to drop something that I want to see. All this and the CW superhero shows haven't even started yet.

[Pattern Ghost]

Walking Dead Season 6: Finshed binge watching this the other day. It had some good bits, but seemed to dwell pretty heavy-handedly on the contrast between extremes of attitudes about violence. I think they were trying to explore some theme there, but it really just amounted to a group of mentally troubled people making bad decisions on both sides, while the moderates played Jiminy Cricket, but were largely ignored. They did pull a good enough cliff hanger that we'll probably get an Amazon season pass for Season 7 instead of waiting a year for it to come on Netflix.

 

Lucifer Season 2 Premiere: Mom's escaped Hell! Mom's played by Tricia Helfer. So, Tricia Helfer and Lauren German in one show. I guess I'll be staying tuned. The show catches a bit of flak for Lucifer being a bit of a frat boy type and not true to the Gaiman version of the character, but I like it. It's pretty episodic, and still hasn't concluded the major story arc involving Chloe's strange effect on Lucifer, but at least season 2 has what looks like an overall story arc to follow to give the show some direction. I won't go as far as recommend it, but it's a guilty pleasure. I enjoy Ellis' and German's performances and chemistry, just hope they give a more substantial plot this season. They had a few good build up moments with German's character starting to realize something supernatural may be going on, and her acting in those scenes was pitch perfect with a great growing horror vibe of the "things (wo)man was not meant to know" variety. Then they dropped it for the second half of the season.

 

Dark Matter Season 2: Finished watching these on streaming. Some pretty solid space opera-ish stuff here. This one's also based on a comic, though one I haven't read. The main cast are all great, the overall story progresses well and the setting is further fleshed out this season (a lot more than Season 1, which is understandable given the amnesia premise; this season they're getting out into the galaxy in a big way). Season finale ended with a bang. Literally.

 

Killjoys Season 2: Also finished watching this one on streaming recently. Again, very solid main cast, more world-building, and a major overall storyline that's advanced well. Very well-done show, even though the trailers for it looked like it was more style over substance. Good stuff IMO.

 

Agents of SHIELD season premiere: Basically a set up for the season. Not much happened. They're being coy about revealing the new director. (It's Jason O'Mara, the lead from Terra Nova and the US version of Life on Mars. I liked him in those. They should have just put him in the first episode, but wasted a lot of time setting up uninteresting stuff instead.) Not sure about the addition of Ghost Rider. I expect the season will be decent, but if this was my first exposure to the show, I'd not be too impressed.

 

The Last Man on Earth season premiere: OK-ish, not sure where they're going with this one. Can't really discuss without spoilering.

 

The Magicians season 1: Streamed this too. Was way better than the trailers made it look. Good balance of humor and deadly serious consequences.

 

12 Monkeys season 2: Another win for the SyFy channel. They've continued to up the stakes and advance the overall story. This is a show that actually has a planned ending, or so they say, so I'm hoping they don't Abrams it up in the end. Very well done. Time loop issues are basically the premise of the show, so either they'll have a reveal or just roll with "time doesn't work the way you think it does" like they've been doing. Great acting, and character relationship building on this one.

 

Humans season 1: Sort of Blade Runner-ish with a bunch of British actors we've seen on other BBC/ITC shows. Just another very well-executed show. Actually streamed this quite some time ago, but since I'm mentioning a lot of science fiction stuff, I may as well plug it here. Very much worth the watch.

[bigdamnhero]

The Magicians season 1: Streamed this too. Was way better than the trailers made it look. Good balance of humor and deadly serious consequences.

 

12 Monkeys season 2: .

 

Humans season 1:

The first two are in my queue, but haven't gotten to them yet. Humans sounds interesting, so I may add it too.

 

I've been catching up on Sleepy Hollow, currently nearing the end of Season 2. I enjoyed the 1st season, but missed the start of Season 2 and just never got back to it. Not a great show, but a fairly entertaining one as long as you don't mind some deliberately over-the-top Romance dialogue between Crane and his wife. But some of the visuals are really well done. The plot is totally bizzaro, as you might expect from a series whose central premise is that Ichabod Crane, who was a spy for George Washington during the American Revolution - which was actually an occult war trying to stop demons from conquering our world - anyway Crane pulls a Rip Van Winkle and wakes up in 2013 and he's being chased by the Headless Horseman who is British RedCoat with an assault rifle who is also one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, and he's partnered with a local cop who's descended from a long line of Witnesses, and oh yeah his wife is a witch and she's trapped in limbo and their son is

... Yeah, the whole show's pretty much like that. You can almost hear the writer's room discussions "Wait, I know! What if we threw ____ into the mix?!" Next time I run an urban fantasy game, I'm going to steal a lot of bits from this show.

[death tribble]

Norm McDonald's Weekend Update the first two seasons. Includes the infamous 'Murder is now legal in the State of California'

[Michael Hopcroft]

 

This lesson in the Crash Course series is notable for how the great philosopher Bertrand Russell contended that there was no way to make any meaningful statement about anything that did not actually exist. The reading and writing of fiction being an acceptable or even praiseworthy pursuit for people with powerful intellects seems to be relatively new. For example, in his time Shakespeare made a boatload of money and had some small access to the halls of power as a client of nobility, but was commonly viewed as "unlettered" and "vulgar" because his craft of theater was so despised. The idea that literature was at all worth study is fairly new. Indeed, up until the early 20th century there were a lot of people of prominence who stated that the reading of fiction or the attendance of plays was actually harmful to the intellect (Robert E. Lee held that opinion). Whether that belief has been pretty much discarded or whether it's been essentially drowned out is open to conjecture. (After all, I have seen people online say a Christian should read the Bible every day and nothing else....)

[Nolgroth]

Finished Longmire. Damn cliffhangers!

 

I am nominally caught up now, since I watched Gotham last night.

 

Shows I watch: Blindspot, Gotham, Lethal Weapon (1st Season 5 episode trial), and the Blacklist

 

Shows Upcoming: Arrow, Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Supergirl

 

I have decided to wait on Marvel's Agents of Shield, so that I can binge watch it later. I am also going to binge watch Luke Cage, despite using the same title font as Duke Nuke'm.

 

That leaves me in a conundrum, as I usually limit myself to 4 concurrent shows. If Lethal Weapon fails after the first five episodes (and by fail I mean with me), that still leaves seven concurrent shows that I enjoy watching. That is a lot. If it turns out that I like Lethal Weapon, then that is 8; twice as many as I normally indulge in. Gah! I remember when TV wasn't so damn entertaining. I wonder if I have changed or if TV did.

[slikmar]

Nice thing about DVR is hour long shows become 40 minutes or so. so you could stretch your 6.

[Ternaugh]

"Ghostbusters: Answer the Call": I enjoyed it. It's not quite as good as the original for me, but better than "Ghostbusters II".

[Michael Hopcroft]

Just finished binge-watching the "Jasper Returns" storyarc of Steven Universe (I'm on a kick). The series is at its best when the spirits of its protagonists are being tried, and what the monstrous warrior Jasper does to Amethyst is suitable terrible. Every time Jasper shows up, you know something really, really bad is about to happen that will try the Gems to the utmost.

[death tribble]

The trailer for the new live action version of Bambi with Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson as Bambi and 'Vin Diesel' as Thumper.

[slikmar]

Was at a friend of mine's and he got me to watch a 2008 vampire movie called Suck. Rock and Roll Vampires. Was very funny.

 

Also saw the new version of the Magnificent Seven. Not really a remake, but we liked it. Was a good western with a good Seven Samurai style plotline. All the main characters were good and well played.

[death tribble]

New York: America's Busiest City. This is a BBC thing. Parts 1 and 2.

Part 1 looked at commuting into New York via rail, the Metro and the Staten island ferry. One of the journalists is in a wheelchair and got the rail route while one travelled through the Metro and the third used the ferry and then a bicycle. It looked at Grand Central Station and how the city is attempting to future proof transport by building a new station and station platforms. Very impressive.

Part 2 looked at feeding New York by looking at Hunt's Point markets and how food got there and then into New York itself. Again fascinating and well worth a look.

[death tribble]

New York: America's Busiest City Part 3. Looked at Central Park, what happens in it and how it is maintained. Also renting and buying property in New York.

The whole series has been fascinating and makes you want to visit the city.

[tkdguy]

Raid, a twelve-part series from Finland.

 

Breathless, from the UK.

[DasBroot]

Deadpool

 

I liked it for what it was.  Probably the best portrayal of Colossus we've seen yet and as he's always been my favorite X-Man that was nice treat.

[bigdamnhero]

Colossus is one of the best Straight Men in comics; nice to see the movie take advantage of that.