What Have You Watched Recently?

[Spence]

On 6/30/2021 at 5:39 PM, archer said:

I watched the first five episodes of the Dresden Files yesterday before my TV service apparently removed the entire series from free viewing (even the episodes I'd just watched).

 

I hope the series was just getting its footing because I didn't see much in those episodes to recommend it.

 

Well, just an opinion of course, but they had great actors for the main cast, Paul Blackthorne as Dresden, Valarie Cruz as Murphy (except she was way too big/tall an actress) and Conrad Coates as Morgan.  

The problem was that the moron that was directing was 100% sure that the audience was too stupid to follow the plot so they changed 90% of what made The Dresden Files The Dresden Files. 

The Blue Beetle was a Jeep.  Instead of his wand...err... Blasting Stick  they went with a hockey stick(???). 

They simply changed too many integral things that made the books great just to change them.   It is not like changing a wand to a hockey stick made it easier for the actor to carry it or something.

 

The TV series is a classic example of how not to adapt a book into a TV show. 

[Spence]

Watched The Tomorrow War today.   I had thought they were adapting the book, but it turns out the movie has nothing to do with it and it was just a coincidence with the various movie news sites saying there was not link to any book. 

 

It turned out to be a pretty good movie actioner and I wouldn't mind seeing a novelization. 

[mattingly]

9 hours ago, Spence said:

The Blue Beetle was a Jeep.  Instead of his wand...err... Blasting Stick  they went with a hockey stick(???). 

 

I kind of like the hockey stick, actually.

 

[Spence]

2 hours ago, mattingly said:

 

I kind of like the hockey stick, actually.

 

Individually and by itself that wouldn't have been too much of a change.  But they literally changed everything possible that set the tone and feel of the books.

In my game master conspiracy brain I can see them planning to try and make the show without licensing the actual book, so they changed as much as they could to be able to claim it was a original work with no ties to the Dresden Files at all.  And then they were surprised when they got it.  But by that time they had already invested too much time and effort to double back.  And shazam!! another Follywood failure......

[slikmar]

iirc, Dresden Files was also another of the shows that was done out of order too. Part of the problem, and I don't blame them, but Dresden's books didnt really settle in until the 3rd or so. It was a show that would have needed time and word of mouth to get going. I would love to see someone do it now, especially as the series has enough popularity to possibly be done right, along with the advances in filming technology.

I thought they should have cast Sarah Jones as Murphy: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1967673/

 

[Spence]

1 hour ago, slikmar said:

iirc, Dresden Files was also another of the shows that was done out of order too. Part of the problem, and I don't blame them, but Dresden's books didnt really settle in until the 3rd or so. It was a show that would have needed time and word of mouth to get going. I would love to see someone do it now, especially as the series has enough popularity to possibly be done right, along with the advances in filming technology.

I thought they should have cast Sarah Jones as Murphy: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1967673/

 

 

I'd love to see another try at a series.  But at 5'8" wouldn't Sarah Jones be a bit tall for a character described as "short and stocky"?  I really don't have a name, but I always visualized Murphy as 5'0" to 5'4". 

[pinecone]

Summer Glau! Lol...

[archer]

16 hours ago, Spence said:

Watched The Tomorrow War today.   I had thought they were adapting the book, but it turns out the movie has nothing to do with it and it was just a coincidence with the various movie news sites saying there was not link to any book. 

 

It turned out to be a pretty good movie actioner and I wouldn't mind seeing a novelization. 

 

I thought it was fine. I expect very little out of Hollywood movies which try to mix fighting modern armies with alien invaders or future tech. It was a lot better than I had any right to expect based on previous experiences.

 

It failed at some predictable points but also at many points that were just downright odd.

 

major and minor spoilers

 

Predictable points

 

The bad guys can smell blood a literal mile away. And that's somehow still useful in an urban landscape where at least thousands have been recently butchered.

 

The good guys, knowing the scientists are their only hope to pull out a win, decide to bomb and destroy the last remaining enclave of scientists in the world because there's some bad guys in the area. The rest of the movie has a lot of shots made from a helicopter showing that there's a lot of bad guys on the ground whether you're looking at beachfront, city, or jungle. No explanation was made over why there was a rush to bomb the scientists...though the movie took pains to explain that the aliens had no use for or understanding of human technology.

 

No one in the past thought to investigate the landing site or thought to try to prepare defenses despite knowing when and where the invaders would show up.

 

The future people don't send back any data on the invaders so that a world full of scientists could be working to try to find solutions to defeating them.

 

There was no future tech at all in the future except for the time machine itself.

 

The good guys assume the movie is over and don't look at the dead body of the invader queen despite the fact the movie tells us that no one ever figured out how they reproduced. I mean the world is majorly screwed if the alien reproduces by budding or has an internal egg sac which wasn't destroyed.

 

downright odd

 

They good guys recruit "soldiers" but don't train them and don't even explain the enemy they'll be facing. You know you could recruit everybody you might ever need and start training them. Use the ones you need to when you need to but keep training the rest. The first ones you use will be untrained. But as the weeks and months pass, you'll be using troops who've had more and more training. 

 

They recruit scientists who are led to believe that they'll be thrown into the meat grinder like everyone else when the good guys already know the scientists are never intended to see combat and likely immediate death. That's not only needlessly cruel but would drive a lot of real-world types into catatonia. Or at least drive them to make every possible effort to avoid the draft rather than join up.

 

Even after all hope seems lost and humanity will be wiped out, the future people still don't make any attempts to send back information about the aliens or even send back information on scientific breakthroughs which might bootstrap the world forward a couple of decades in technological capabilities.

 

Why would you have a cruise boat under way when there was literally no place for it to travel to because it was completely enclosed by a wall?

[slikmar]

6 hours ago, Spence said:

 

I'd love to see another try at a series.  But at 5'8" wouldn't Sarah Jones be a bit tall for a character described as "short and stocky"?  I really don't have a name, but I always visualized Murphy as 5'0" to 5'4". 

says she is 5'3". Go watch the series Alcatraz. she looks smaller.

[Spence]

2 minutes ago, slikmar said:

says she is 5'3". Go watch the series Alcatraz. she looks smaller.

I must have looked up info on the wrong Sarah Jones.

[Spence]

1 hour ago, archer said:

 

I thought it was fine. I expect very little out of Hollywood movies which try to mix fighting modern armies with alien invaders or future tech. It was a lot better than I had any right to expect based on previous experiences.

 

It failed at some predictable points but also at many points that were just downright odd.

 

Well yes.  It's 2020's Follywood so I don't expect anything remotely military to have anything that loosk like it tried to make sense.  

 

For me, once I realized it didn't have anything to do with the story I had read, I  just took it as another scifi actioneer "bug hunt" and went on the ride. 

 

Heck, If I can enjoy Godzilla versus the incredible size changing monkey, I can enjoy humans shooting up aliens

[mattingly]

23 hours ago, Spence said:

In my game master conspiracy brain I can see them planning to try and make the show without licensing the actual book, so they changed as much as they could to be able to claim it was a original work with no ties to the Dresden Files at all.  And then they were surprised when they got it.  But by that time they had already invested too much time and effort to double back.  And shazam!! another Follywood failure......

 

At least Jim Butcher got to cameo in one of the episodes.

 

[zslane]

I just finished watching WandaVision. I liked Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany tremendously. I found the show entertaining and enjoyable overall.

 

However, this show firmly proves, to me at least, that "magic" in the MCU is an incoherent mess. That is not good (for the integrity of the MCU). Not being able to make sense of a setting's magic removes viewer engagement. We become trained to just accept that anything can happen at any time because plot advancement requires it. Sure, there was one magic "rule" that was established towards the end of the show that had a dramatic payoff, but I fully expect that they will forget all about that rule going forward and we'll never see or hear about it again in the MCU. Magic is like time travel in that nobody in Hollywood seems to know how to use it properly as an element of world-building.

 

Next up...Falcon and The Winter Soldier.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

Mega Monster Battle Ultra Galaxy Legend: The Movie- Essentially the "Infinity War" saga of the Ultra series. Lots of kaiju (and kaiju fights), more backstory on the Ultras, and decent CGI. I really don't have anything bad to say about it. It's fun and totally worth watching.

[Michael Hopcroft]

In The Heights, in the theater with my mother (it's also up on HBOMAx until the 11th of July). If nothing else, the play it adapts is known as the show that got Hamilton backed. In its own right, it is quite remarkable.

 

Anthony Ramos is Usnavi, operator of a mom-and-pop store in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. The neighborhood, consisting mainly of Carribean immigrants and their descendants,  is very tight-knit, and in his block everybody knows everybody else. But Usnavi's parents emigrated from the Dominican Republic, and Usnavi wants to go back. But several things serve to complicate matters, from a local legend's premature return from college to Usnavi's frustrated affections for a young woman who works as a hairstylist and whose own efforts at leaving the Heights are being frustrated, and -- most significantly -- from the gentrification of Manhattan that may price everyone out of their community.

 

The movie is full of scintillating musical numbers. Ramos could be a star in the making, and the movie has a great deal to recommend it. 

[Bazza]

 

13 hours ago, zslane said:

 

Magic is like time travel in that nobody in Hollywood seems to know how to use it properly as an element of world-building..

 

It is not surprising, as our modern society inherently misunderstands the nature of magic.

[mattingly]

I've been rewatching Chuck. I'm halfway through the third season now. It's still as delightful as I remember.

[DoctorImpossible]

3 hours ago, mattingly said:

I've been rewatching Chuck. I'm halfway through the third season now. It's still as delightful as I remember.

Ooh, nice. I really liked that when it was first on. Got a little to dramatically serious for me at times, but otherwise very good.

 

More recently, I've been watching, and just finished the latest (2nd) season of the new DC animated "Harley Quinn". I loved it! Very different interpretations of a lot of the DC world, but as long as you're on board for it, then it is a lot of great comedy and great super-hero (well, super-villain protagonist) action. 

[Matt the Bruins]

On 6/28/2021 at 2:47 AM, Michael Hopcroft said:

I fail to see why anyone would want to do a Cliff's Notes of Eragon.

To save themselves the ordeal of reading a full-length book of cliches and tropes written by a 15-year-old?

[Scott Ruggels]

Been watching “The Borgias” on Netflix, with my mother. Beautiful scenery, beautiful actors, lots of politics, we’re enjoying it. 

[Greywind]

The Tomorrow War

[Tech]

Frozen

[Tjack]

   I watched an unusual John Wayne double feature.  Both black & white from the ‘50’s, and neither one seen too often nowadays.  
  The first was “Island in the Sky” about a plane going down in the Alaskan wilderness during WWII. The flight crews fight for survival and the other plane crews search for them.  It was quite good with Andy Devine and Lloyd Nolan in supporting roles.

 The second was kind of a historical oddity.  It’s called “Big Jim McLain”.  In it the Duke and a young James Arness are investigators for The House on UnAmerican Activities. Wayne was a big supporter of the committee at the time and the film even makes mention of the bad press it was getting at the time.  The film was quietly buried for a long time and is only now starting to appear on TV.  It’s pretty blatant propaganda but still an enjoyable flick. The Duke and Marshall Dillon are staunch and brave and the head of the Commie plot is played by Alan Napier (Alfred from TV’s Batman)

  Both are worth seeing at least once if you’re a fan of John Wayne. And even if you’re not they’re still a nice way to kill an afternoon.

 

[Spence]

48 minutes ago, Tjack said:

   I watched an unusual John Wayne double feature.  Both black & white from the ‘50’s, and neither one seen too often nowadays.  
  The first was “Island in the Sky” about a plane going down in the Alaskan wilderness during WWII. The flight crews fight for survival and the other plane crews search for them.  It was quite good with Andy Devine and Lloyd Nolan in supporting roles.

 The second was kind of a historical oddity.  It’s called “Big Jim McLain” in it the Duke and a young James Arness are investigators for The House on UnAmerican Activities. Wayne was a big supporter of the committee at the time and the film even makes mention of the bad press it was getting at the time.  The film was quietly buried for a long time and is only now starting to appear on TV.  It’s pretty blatant propaganda but still an enjoyable flick. The Duke and Marshall Dillon are staunch and brave and the head of the Commie plot is played by Alan Napier (Alfred from TV’s Batman)

  Both are worth seeing at least once if you’re a fan of John Wayne. And even if you’re not they’re still a nice way to kill an afternoon.

 

 

Wow, that is a blast from the past. 

 

I have watched “Island in the Sky” a few times, but I had totally forgotten about “Big Jim McLain”.   You reminded me the title existed, but I cannot recall any of the movie.

[Pariah]

On 7/5/2021 at 7:29 PM, Matt the Bruins said:

To save themselves the ordeal of reading a full-length book of cliches and tropes written by a 15-year-old?

 

Let's not forget the unnecessarily colorful vocabulary. We were listening to I think it was the third book on a trip through Wyoming (which, given the available scenery, is a perfectly good place to do that) and I remember remarking to Lady P, "His parents must have given him a thesaurus for his most recent birthday."