What Have You Watched Recently?

[Cassandra]

Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD.

 

David Hasselhoff as Nick Fury.

[bigdamnhero]

Tried to watch Nocturnal Animals, only made it 15 minutes in. Ugh, what a POS.

 

Instead I'm watching Millennial, which I haven't seen since it was in the theaters in 1989. Having read the book first, I remember being slightly disappointed when I saw it originally. But aside from the 80s cheese factor, it holds up fairly well. Definitely due for a remake.

[Clonus]

Midnight, Texas:  TV adaptation of the books by the same author who wrote the True Blood and Aurora Teagarden books.  The fact that I know the Midnight books were a crossover of all of her series including True Blood keeps jogging my elbow while I watch since they treat the TV show as a stand alone thing.  Anyway it's OK although I don't remember the Hellmouth thing being part of the books.  

[Greywind]

They crossed over with Buffy, too?

[Clonus]

They crossed over with Buffy, too?

 

Well, in the book Midnight attracted supernaturals and dangerous humans because it was something hellmouthish, but the story arc in the TV series is about it actually opening up and that I don't remember.  

[Bazza]

Captain Underpants...better than The Mummy.

[bigdamnhero]

The Iron Giant. Which is better every time I see it. Both funnier and sadder than I remembered. (Or is that the 4th glass of wine talking?)

[death tribble]

Wild France. Two programmes showing nature in France.

 

Mega Shark vs Mecha Shark. This had Liz Rohn so it was worth a look.

[tkdguy]

US Open. Last Grand Slam event of the year, and Venus Williams has just won her match vs Carla Suarez-Navarro. Sloane Stephens beat Julia Goerges.

 

The American women are really doing well in this tournament.

[Nolgroth]

I skipped through, more than watched, Europa Report. I didn't like it. As a found footage film, I had to expect what was going to happen but it still annoyed me. Movie was very long, even with a running time of 90 minutes, many of which I skipped over. 

 

EDIT: Deleted the cranky, half-delusional rantings from earlier.

[mrinku]

Saw Baby Driver yesterday. Great film!

[Pattern Ghost]

Saw John Wick today. Decent action. Keanu only needed one emotion for this one, so nailed the acting too.

[Nolgroth]

Monsters - Watching this directly after Europa Report as one reviewer online indicated it was a direct sequel. The creatures look similar, but I'm not buying the direct link. I'm thinking head canon on the reviewers part.  That said, great movie that was full of action, a little bit of humor, and some pretty good drama. There were parts of it that I did not like. They almost seemed like Plot Convenience Theater. Still, for the most part I thought it was pretty darn good. Couldn't be further from my opinion of Europa Report. I only wish Monsters: Dark Continent was on Netflix, as I understand that it is a sequel to Monsters.

 

Gangs of New York - I am a sucker for period piece movies like this and I was impressed the first time I watched it. I think I enjoyed it even more this time. 

[Joe Walsh]

Mary Kills People. (A Canadian TV show that is broadcast on Lifetime. We watched it on Hulu.)  We finished the six-episode first season last night. Overall, it was an enjoyable season and did a good job of introducing the characters while telling a pretty good story. It's unique as far as I know, in that it centers on a doctor who provides illegal euthanasia services to the terminally ill. There's some dark stuff there, some moments of humor, as well as the first steps of exploring the underlying issue of whether euthanasia should be legal. There were a few bits that could have been handled better by the writers, but that's common in first seasons. Overall, it was worth watching and I look forward to season 2.

[death tribble]

Jim Clark: The Quiet Champion. This was a documentary about one of motor racing's greatest drivers. He won the Formula 1 Grand Prix World Championship twice and he also won the Indianapolis 500 but he is the only driver to win the 500 and the F1 Championship in the same year.

 

The Wilderness. Several young offenders are taken to an island following the suicide of a fellow inmate. And then someone starts hunting them down and killing them. It was ok.

[bigdamnhero]

Humans, Season 1. A BBC show about a world where human-looking robots have become commonplace, as household help, as menial labor, and of course as sex workers because humans. Asks some interesting questions about what effect that would have on society, the job market, etc. And then some robots have become self-aware, and how does that change the moral equation and what does self-aware even mean and how do you measure it, and so forth. Well written, well-acted, and generally well worth watching. Looking forward to Season 2 when it becomes available on this side of the pond.

 

The OA, Season 1. A Netflix original about a woman who reappears after having been missing for 7 years. The story about what happened to her while she was missing unfolds gradually, while she tries to recruit 5 people to help her with...something. An interesting story overlaid with some interesting metaphysical ideas, which asks some interesting questions - including just how reliable a narrator the lead is - and leaves the answers to most questions up in the air. If you're the kind of a person who dislikes vague endings, you should avoid this, but I found it...well, interesting.

[Spence]

Midnight, Texas:  TV adaptation of the books by the same author who wrote the True Blood and Aurora Teagarden books.  The fact that I know the Midnight books were a crossover of all of her series including True Blood keeps jogging my elbow while I watch since they treat the TV show as a stand alone thing.  Anyway it's OK although I don't remember the Hellmouth thing being part of the books.  

 

I'm actually liking Midnight and probably wouldn't have watched it if I had known the connection with the other books.  It has been a very very very long time since I tried to read any True Blood books and the only thing I remember is the impression it was porn masquerading as vampires.  Never was inclined to watch the TV show either. 

 

Midnight doesn't really do anything I'd call original, but it is entertaining without resorting to the social justice sledgehammer every episode which is refreshing. 

 

A series that just tells a story, imagine that. 

 

I like it enough I'm actually recording it so I can watch the series.   Not too many on that list. 

[Spence]

Re-watching Babylon 5.

[Ternaugh]

Blade Runner Final Cut 4K version. So, you probably already know the plot, so I'm going to talk about a few things related to the 4K version. First off, this movie was made for HDR. Lots of dark and dim scenes, with bright splashes of neon lights. Picture is absolutely gorgeous, and I found myself finding little details that I just plain missed on the other four releases that I've owned*. Second, the sound mix is incredible. A lot of the movie takes place while it's raining, and the Atmos mix literally places you in the center of it. Crowd scenes feel almost claustrophobic, as you can hear folks pass you. The Vangelis soundtrack is awesome, and has some teeth-rattling low frequency components**.

 

This was definitely an E-Ticket ride!

 

*It's kind of like the Beatles' White Album, in that I've got it on just about every format at one time or another (except LaserDisc).

 

**The CD version of the Vangelis soundtrack also has some serious LFE to it if played on the right equipment. I tried a burned CD copy in the audio room at work (Circuit City, many years ago), and it ended up rattling the acoustic tiles in the ceiling.

[bigdamnhero]

Justice League Action. Holy Moly, someone at DC remembered that superheroes are supposed to be fun!

 

If you don't have access to Cartoon Network, they also did some short webisodes that give you a good feel for the show. This is one of my favorites.

 

[Grailknight]

More evidence that all the people at DC who get it work in the animated division.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Justice League Action. Holy Moly, someone at DC remembered that superheroes are supposed to be fun!

 

If you don't have access to Cartoon Network, they also did some short webisodes that give you a good feel for the show. This is one of my favorites.

 

 

 

More evidence that all the people at DC who get it work in the animated division.

The alternate-universe DC Superhero Girls is also getting a full series from Cartoon Network and has already had an OVA (Americans refer to it as a direct-to-DVD release, but I prefer the Japanese term -- it's less demeaning). The shorts for that one are also amusing. Several female DC superheroes go to a prestigious Boarding School for Supers. Comedy ensues (one of the themes is how Wonder Woman, who had been the cream of the student body, reacts to the arrival of the new kid on campus -- Supergirl....)

[Michael Hopcroft]

I finally got to watch The Wind Rises, Hayao Miyazaki's final cel-drawn feature, and it is a masterpiece. Visually stunning. I wish I'd seen it on a bigger screen -- the bigger the better. As in "does Autzen Stadium need its Jumbotron on Sundays?"

 

Jiro is a child in love with aviation, but his eyesight is too bad to let him be a pilot. So he becomes an engineer, designing aircraft, who winds up at Mitsubishi in the 1920s and 30s. His idol, the Italian air designer Count Caproni, visits him in his dreams. His boss Kurokawa is demanding, gruff, and almost sadistic. At one point he goes to the country for the summer and falls deeply in love with a girl he had previously aided during the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. At one point he is sent to Germany to study their designs (something the Germans are reluctant to let him do once he gets there) and he later runs into a German exile (we never find out if the man is a spy or a genuine refugee). Finally he is put in charge of one of the crowning achievements of aeronautical engineering -- the naval fighter that would become known as the Zero.

 

None of the Zeros made it back to Japan.

 

The film is about Jiro's journey, and the really remarkable thing -- the thing that makes the movie so incredible -- is how that journey mirrors Miyakazi's own. Many of the characters represent parts of his complex personality, and others represent the way the world reacts to him. In one of his dreams of Caproni, Jiro is told that an artist gets "ten good years" and that he should use them wisely. And the film ends with Caproni asking him how well he used that time.

 

Hayao Miyazaki, however he feels about his own legacy (he is notoriously misanthropic and practically averse to admiration), has had significantly more than ten good years. He really believed The Wind Rises would be his farewell to film. 

[death tribble]

John Surtees. This is a documentary about the racer who died this year. He is the only man to win a world championship on two wheels and also on four.

 

La Vuelta highlights. I have been following this every day as Christopher Froome tried to win this race for the first time. He did and became only the third rider to do so in the same year that it was done with a Tour de France and the first to win it since it was moved from Spring to late Summer in 1995.

[Cassandra]

Once Upon A Crime (1990) - Sean Young, Richard Miller, Jim Belushi, Cybill Shepard, John Candy, and George Hamilton accidentally get inloved in a murder in Monte Carlo in this comedy.