What Have You Watched Recently?

[Doc Shadow]

Watched The Phantom again. Loved it back in the 90s, still love it now.

[Bazza]

Guardians 2. Reasonably good, and packs an emotional punch at the end.

[death tribble]

Yes Virginia there is a Hercules. An episode of Hercules the legendary journeys. Set in modern day actors play the writers and production staff. And they have to cope with the fact that Kevin Sorbo is missing. So Kevin Smith wants the story to be about Ares and Hudson Leick wants the story to be about Calisto. Bruce Campbell as the executive producer tries to keep things together. Ted Raimi is another one of the writers trying to get his story written. This is fun.

[Cassandra]

The Day After

[L. Marcus]

Saw the first episode of American Gods. Faithful to the book so far. Not how I would've cast it, but very good performances all round. Bilquis' scene was powerful.

[Spence]

Currently watching this on Funimation and finding it thoroughly entertaining:

 

Watched this one on CR. Great show and I am hoping for a second season.

[zslane]

Is a second season being considered? So many anime series never get a second season.

 

This one features my favorite anime voice actress: Monica Rial.

[Pattern Ghost]

So, I called Comcast a few weeks back to complain about getting spam instead of some coupons they promised me for repeated internet outages, and jokingly asked the retention person who was fixing the problem if they had free HBO since Game of Thrones is on when she asked me if there was anything else she could help me with. She said that she could, in fact, give me three free months of HBO! So, here's my report on a few of the things we've watched so far.

 

Her (2013): Watched Her tonight. A movie about a guy falling in love with his AI? Probably bad. But look! It has Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson in it! And a 95% Tomato Meter! Maybe it's worth watching after all . . . Watch movie, realize that it's just that 95% of professional critics don't know anything about computers, never thought about tech or AI and have little to no exposure to Science Fiction. 

 

That said, it was actually pretty good, to a point. Phoenix and Johansson's performance and some good dialog writing really carried the movie. It's a very . . . what's a kind word? . . . quiet movie. Which is to say it lacks the normal rising and falling tension that you'd expect in a story with a plot. It's more vignette than story. 

 

The plot, for what it's worth, is about Phoenix's character Theodore's emotional growth. And Theodore almost develops by the end of the story. Almost. The ending left me more with the impression that he was now about to start growing a bit, having learned something from his relationship with his AI, which is the second major relationship of his life. Theodore had married and separated from his childhood friend, and meets his AI, Samantha, a year later. Theodore's fairly passive throughout the movie and does little to move the story along. Rather, it's a slice of life type of affair about

 

Edit: Going to spoil this, but it's nothing you can't skip. I'm being a bit wordy anyway b/c it's late.

 

 

 

boy meets AI, boy falls for AI as it develops consciousness, boy gets jealous of AI's thousands of new friends, over six hundred of which it's also in love with, AI goes off into the singularity with all of the AIs on the planet and boy notices his female best friend from college (Amy Adams; if you can't have Johansson with a body, not a bad consolation prize, I suppose) for the first time since the one awkward date they had. It's not plotty at all, and lacks even the basic romcom level of structure. There's simply no conflict in the relationship, and every rough spot including the "seeya meatbag" speech at the end is handled in a fairly mature and level-headed manner. Sure, some hurt feelings on both sides come up, but nothing rising to the level of an actual plot point.

 

 

I guess the best way to sum up my thoughts on the movie is that it seemed like someone scripted out an article from a layman's science magazine about the future of dating AIs with some decent dialog and very good acting and put it on film. 

 

This movie reminded me very much of Ex Machina. The critics raved over that movie, too. Critics who had apparently either never thought about any of the issues raised or had any genre awareness whatsoever. It was a good movie (so was Her; I'd give it a thumbs up with the caveat that it's a vignette and not a story), but the level of gushing wasn't earned. It was also carried by some stellar performances. It was also utterly predictable and raised absolutely no new questions about its subject matter, even though for most critics it did.

 

I may just be getting old and jaded. I may have reached genre saturation levels over twenty years ago. My wife's cousin came up to help, back when my father in law was in the hospital. She saw me reading some manga on the computer and asked if I did much novel reading these days (she's an MFA, and knows I used to be a heavy reader, known her about 20 years). I said no, because nothing I read seems new or interesting, and I only follow a couple of writers I like these days.

 

So, I guess it's not fair for me to act surprised when a SF movie that's over-hyped for being intellectually engaging simply isn't. I should expect that by now.

 

Westworld Season 1 (HBO): I've got to say that I enjoyed this one a lot, but that I'm afraid that they're going to get petty with the writing and start changing things to try to appear clever and ruin the whole thing. If after reading that introduction, you suspect that J.J. Abrams may be involved,  you'd be correct! Great cast, great acting all around, and pretty decent scripts. Then you have the delay (which I didn't experience since I binged it a while after the season was over) before releasing the final four episodes, and the cracks from that delay and rewrite show in those episodes. Then you have a statement by Jonathan Nolan that he changed episode 3 of Season 2 because someone on reddit guessed a reveal planned for that episode. This all stinks of Lost to me, so I'm crossing my fingers that it all turns out well. I just wish that Abrams and his ilk would get over the idea that they're clever enough to outwit literally everyone on the internet and be the next O. Henry in a weekly format. Plot twists are exceedingly hard to pull off if you have millions of viewers who not only have a week between episodes to mull over and discuss the prior episodes but the technology to rewatch and pick apart said episodes to their heart's content. If you lay the groundwork properly for a reveal, someone will guess it. If you toss in a twist without laying the groundwork, it will ring false. It's a no win, but fixing the former by committing the sin of the latter is really not fixing it.

 

Silicon Valley, Season 4: This one's still funny. I'm surprised that they've been able to sustain the core concept of the show this long. I'm too lazy to lay that out after typing all of the above so here's the show's Wikipedia page. If you don't mind some bad language, it's worth checking out.

[tkdguy]

Rogers Cup semifinals. The women are playing in Toronto; the men are playing in Montreal. The final matches are coming up later today.

[mattingly]

I watched Top Secret!

 

Hadn't seen it in 30-ish years. It still holds up. 

[Tech priest support]

"Men into space", on comettv.com. really old sf show with some surprisingly advanced ideas and concepts. Fairly realistic look at what we could have done if we wanted to.

[Bazza]

A Monster Calls

Albion The Enchanted Stallion

Gifted

[Dr. MID-Nite]

The Great Wall...not a bad time waster, but I wouldn't call it great cinema either. The main problem being all the eastern actors treat their roles much more seriously than the Western ones do...which makes matt Damon and friends look amateurish in comparison. The CGI is also a bit too transparent. Good cinematography and set/costume design help this film quite a bit.

[DasBroot]

Arrival

 

Very well done.  I've found that if the presentation is confident and competent enough (like Interstellar was) then I'll happily squash the part of my brain saying 'but.... but' and enjoy.  

[Cassandra]

NTSF: SD: SUV

[death tribble]

NTSF: SD: SUV

Is this the latest NCIS spinoff ?

 

Confused of London

[Tjack]

I'm getting into Archer the animated series on the FOX cable channel.

How can you describe it? Archer is to spy movies what South Park is to childrens shows.

As an example of the strange meta style humor, I offer that the CIA contact is named Slater. Not Slater something, not something Slater, just Slater. He is drawn to look just like Christian Slater, and of course is voice acted by Christian Slater. Nothing is ever made of the resemblance.

[Joe Walsh]

Archer is awesome! Not every season is equally awesome, but it's a very funny show.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

Journey to the West: This is probably the best film attached to Steven Chow since Kung Fu Hustle. It's the story of of a buddhist monk who wants to be a demon hunter. Problem is that his methods are a bit too pacifist for the public at large. When a pig demon starts causing havoc, the monk goes on a quest to find the legendary Monkey King to help. The SPFX in this are pretty good and the leads are engaging enough to make the 140 minute run time go by fast. Recommended.

[bigdamnhero]

You had me at Steven Chow + Pig Demon!

[Michael Hopcroft]

The first episode of the new DuckTales series is on Youtube. Good stuff. Donald Duck, who was a bit player in the classic '80s show, is a regular in this edition, and much of the pilot is driven by his past work with, and distant relationship with, Scrooge. Webby and Mrs. Beakley have had their characters level up substantially as well -- both are more highly skilled and more adventurous than their earlier versions.

 

As for the voice work, David Tennant is a formidable Scrooge, albeit having to do a very similar voice to the Alan Young original. Huey, Dewey, and Louie has completely different voices than what fans of the old series will be used to, but Donald retains his short-tempered, often-unintelligible garble.

[Cassandra]

Leverage Season 1

[Cassandra]

Is this the latest NCIS spinoff ?

 

Confused of London

 

It's a parody of shows like CSI and 24.  The cast play members of the National Terrorism Strike Force: San Diego: Sports Utility Vehicle.

 

They did go to London which stood in for "Little Britain" in San Diego to prevent a reverse revolution.

[Cassandra]

Leverage Season 1

 

I love Parker!

[bigdamnhero]

Who doesn't love Miss 20 pounds of crazy in a 5 pound bag?! Great show, and one of the few where the character interactions get deeper an more complex as the show progresses.