What Have You Watched Recently?

[Bazza]

Not having seen The Hunt for Red October Ford is the best Jack Ryan for me. 

[Starlord]

Agree that Baldwin was the best Jack Ryan, probably because that movie was just so good.  Admittedly, I'm a sucker for submarine movies.

[mattingly]

14 hours ago, Pariah said:

I really wish Alec Baldwin had stuck around for the other Jack Ryan films.

 

I know, right!

[Pariah]

Okay, I am officially ready to promote Christopher Pike into the top three along with Jean-Luc Picard and Ben Sisko.

[Pattern Ghost]

Just watched the first episode of Obi Wan Kenobi. Owen has some big brass ones.

[Joe Walsh]

We finished S2 of The Flight Attendant (HBOMax). S2 was a shadow of the first season. That's not uncommon with shows from the Greg Berlanti machine, but in this case they were able to work from an existing story for S1 but were on their own with S2. They just weren't up to making an exciting and interesting story, so instead came up with a banal story about alcoholism, family, motherhood, and related themes. The writers had nothing interesting to say and don't seem to have really understood what made S1 so compelling. Not worth watching. It would be best to watch S1 and stop there.

 

We also finished S2 of Mr. Mayor (Hulu). For a 1/2-hour network comedy, S1 was pretty good. As usual for its type, it had moments of dull idiocy, but it also had enough somewhat clever bits that it was worth watching. S2 started out at almost the same level but it descended from there. The penultimate episode didn't even cause me to crack a smile. The final episode was a bit better, but I think it's a good thing that this one wasn't renewed for a third season.

 

[Spence]

Watched the 1986 miniseries Shaka Zulu on blu-ray.

 

Unsurprisingly my memory of the show was different from what actually happened. 

 

The part I remembered and enjoyed was Shakas story from birth to becoming the ruler of the empire.  That part ( eps 4 through 7ish??) was great.  The rest of the show was not bad. 

 

The plus the Zulu parts were filmed using actual Zulu's.  All in all great parts of the show.  I'd love to see something similar made with modern cinema tech.

 

 

 

[wcw43921]

21 hours ago, Pariah said:

Okay, I am officially ready to promote Christopher Pike into the top three along with Jean-Luc Picard and Ben Sisko.

 

Command 101--A starship runs on loyalty.  Not just loyalty of the crew to the Captain, but the Captain to the crew and the crew to the ship.  Pike demonstrated that loyalty--"I believe in the Enterprise."  And that belief--that loyalty--was rewarded.

I like that they're giving nods to previous Star Trek episodes. The week before we had the control center in the structure on the comet that responded to musical notes ("The Paradise Syndrome"), and this week we had not only someone who was secretly a genetic augment ("Doctor Bashir, I Presume") but a person being stored in a transporter pattern buffer for an extended period ("Relics"). And this past episode we had a shipwide catastrophe with which the crew had to contend ("Disaster"). This is something I figure will continue.

[Lord Liaden]

The feel of Strange New Worlds is IMHO classic Star Trek. We have hope, optimism, wonder, exploration of the unknown, believable character development and personal drama, physical threats and philosophical conundrums requiring imagination and courage to solve. We have a crew who are more than the sum of their parts, who come together to overcome their collective challenges. Perhaps most importantly, the show is firmly rooted in the Trek universe's past while taking it in new directions.

 

Anson Mount's Chris Pike is the opposite command style from Jean-Luc Picard. While Picard was mostly an isolated figure of authority, Pike interacts and bonds with his crew as their friend and big brother/father figure. I like that they've brought back Kirk's habit of the captain addressing the crew shipwide when facing a crisis, giving them all reassurance and inspiration.

 

It's been a long time since I felt excited over the newer iterations of Star Trek. I'm getting a little excited now.

[Starlord]

The first 2 episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi were pretty good.  Very impressive.  OMG, the little girl they got to play Leia is brilliant - she is stealing the show!

[Bazza]

Where is she putting the torrent? #stealingTheShow 

[Pariah]

2 hours ago, Starlord said:

The first 2 episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi were pretty good.  Very impressive.  OMG, the little girl they got to play Leia is brilliant - she is stealing the show!

 

I agree with this assessment in all particulars. I never really got into The Mandalorian, but this series has my attention.

[wcw43921]

5 hours ago, Starlord said:

The first 2 episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi were pretty good.  Very impressive.  OMG, the little girl they got to play Leia is brilliant - she is stealing the show!

 

My sentiments exactly.  It's a shame Carrie Fisher isn't around to see this.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Chip n Dale was fantastic! So glad.

 

Are kids liking it? You know, people who didn't watch the original show.

[Pariah]

Stolen from the Book of Face:

 

Quote

I know it won't happen, but how cool would it be if Qui-Gon Jinn called up the Inquisitors and told them about his very particular set of skills.

 

[death tribble]

Giro D'Italia 2022

The Italian version of the Grand Tour kicked off in Hungary. Simon Yates won a time trial in Budapest and Mark Cavendish a sprint. Unusually the tour had three rest days as they went from Hungary to Sicily. The tour featured the first black African to win a stage in any Grand Tour but unfortunately he had to retire with an injury. It was very close until the penultimate stage in the mountains when the gap went to over a minute. It had been as low as three seconds. For the first time in three years Ineos did not win and Bora Hansgrohe won their first ever General Classification title. Jai Hindley won after losing in 2020 when he was the Maillot Rose on the last day. The problem is the presenters from Eurosport one in particular Orla Chennaoui who changes her style day by day which is distracting and unnecessary.

 

Hillary On Everest

Documentary about Sir Edmund Hillary made in 2003 a few years before his death. It went on about his upbringing and what lead to his becoming a mountaineer. He was in the right place at the right time and was invited to survey Everest and then join the attempt to climb it in 53. The details of the climb and then the descent were followed by public and government adulation. Hillary went on to cross the Antarctic by vehicle. He also went to do a lot of philanthropic work in Nepal building schools, hospitals and airstrips for which the locals were grateful. He was a high commissioner from New Zealand to India and attended

Sherpa Tensing's funeral when he died.

 

The Many Faces of Christopher Lee

This is a documentary about the film career of the actor made in the 90s. It explains why he did not speak in some of the Hammer Dracula films. He said the dialogue was atrocious and as a result he would not say them. He also had an injury from one of the Three Musketeer films which he carried for th rest of his life. He mentioned working with Peter Cushing and Vincent Price and portraying Fu Manchu particularly in Hong Kong. This is a brief snapshot of the actor and well worth a look.

 

Crossing Lines Season 3

Only three members of the cast returned from season 2. Donald Sutherland was still prosecuting and Tom Wlaschiha was still hacking and Lara Rossi was the inspector from Belgium. New theme. New team. But the only one to make an impact was Goran Visnjic playing an Italian police inspector. It was alright but William Fichtner was missed from the previous two seasons.

 

The Man With the X-Ray Eyes

Ray Milland tests a formula which gives him increased sight with his eyes even allowing him to see through things and allow him to read letters or see cards. Predictably it goes wrong and ends with the quote about 'if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out'. Milland elevates the material and Don Rickles has a straight role. Worth seeing for GMs who want to make their players suffer.

 

Crucible of Horror

Michael Gough is awful to his wife and daughter so they decide to kill him after he goes down to their cottage in the country. But it goes wrong. There is a suggestion of abuse between father and daughter but the misogyny is plain to see. It is unusual in that you don't really know why it ends like it does.

[death tribble]

Mouse on the Moon

The sequel to the Mouse that Roared suffers from a lack of Peter Sellers. Ron Moody and Margaret Rutherford took over two of his parts. David Kossoff returned from the first film as the Duchy of Grand Fenwick asks for a loan for space research when they want to install indoor plumbing. The Americans give them the money and the Russians give them a rocket. And the mad professor works out a way for the rocket to go to the moon which it does. It narrowly beats both the Americans and Russians who have to be helped back after problems with their craft. Rather quaint rather than laugh out loid funny.

 

On the Double

Danny Kaye is a British general planning the Normandy Invasion and his double in the US Army. The Germans want the former dead or captured and so try to kill or capture him. Intelligence officers get the American private to impersonate the general in order to try to find the assassins. He ends up getting hauled over to Berlin and then escaping back with a list of the top German agents in Britain. It is ok.

 

Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter

Something is turning young women into old drained hags. Enter the captain with his hunchback assistant and the gypsy girl they save (Caroline Munro). This was supposed to be the start of a series but Hanner studios was in trouble so it was a one off. It s good for a different take on the vampire.

 

Zombieland Double Tap

See the original Zombieland first, then watch this. It is fun. There are new zombie types (technically they are ghouls) which ups the danger. Jesse Eisenberg is good in this as is Emma Stone and Woody Harrelson. They also have Bill Murray return at the end advertising Garfield 3. Silly fun.

 

The Seven Ups

Roy Scheider is a cop with a unit that traps crooks and said crooks get a minimum seven years thus the name. Made by the same producer as Bullitt and The French Connection it has a really good car chase. Someone is kidnapping mafia members and holding them to ransom. They do this by pretending to be cops. Only the mafia think that real cops are behind it. Cue tragedy. Well worth a look.

 

Bringing Out the Dead

Nicholas Cage as a paramedic in this Scorsese film. Cage is suffering burnout and has not saved anyone in months. You see him put with three different partners and what they do when they have to take someone to a hospital. It is rather a bleak film but it is good.

[Ternaugh]

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: A prequel spin-off series from the Harry Potter "Wizarding World", this one has Newt Scamander arriving in New York and promptly losing several magical creatures from his suitcase. This gets muddled by another plot involving the Magical Congress of the United States tracking down a destructive creature, which seems to exist only to set up future movies. The movie drags in many places, and is in great need of both a script doctor and a better editor. (HBOmax)

 

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald: Second in the Fantastic Beasts series, this one follows up on the ending of the last movie, with an escape by Grindelwald while he was being transferred to Europe to stand trial. Newt gets recruited by his former instructor, Professor Dumbledore, to go to Paris and investigate the mage responsible for the destruction in the first movie, while Grindelwald is recruiting mages to wage a war for control of the wizarding world, and, by extension the muggle world as well. Many of the characters in the first movie appear again, but some have odd changes in behavior that appear to be only to set up yet another movie. J.K. Rowling's still writing the script, and really should have let someone else take that duty. (HBOmax)

 

Obi Wan Kenobi: The first two episodes in the limited series were very good, and, as mentioned by several posters above, the actress that plays a young Princess Leia really steals the show. Here's hoping that the rest of the series is as good. (Disney+)

 

Jurassic Park: My 4K set arrived today, and I decided to watch the first movie again to see if it was worth the investment. For the first movie, that's a resounding yes, as the picture looked beautiful and the DTS:X sound mix was amazingly immersive. (4K UHD Blu-ray)

 

[Bazza]

Stranger Things 4. The fourth season continues 6 months after the end of season 3, even though it has been 3 years since it aired and the kids are not kids anymore. The ambition in the 7 episodes that have aired so far (final two in 5 weeks) is worth it with the storylines taken place in multiple locations and this clearly justifies the extra runtime per episode. The fourth and seventh are noteworthy and are some of the best episodes of the series so far. The show itself it close to like reading a book, as care s taken to refer to details in previous seasons that increase the realism of the characters. And few will forget Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) currently #1 in the US at the moment.

 

Obi-Wan Kenobi. This should have been a home run, but it is not. What is letting it down is the writing is to predictable, and although Vivien Lyra Blair is a good actress, her character Leia is too annoying to be likeable. The show is basically the childhood of King Arthur told from Merlin’s point of view and has all the hallmarks of enshrining the mythology Star Wars is noted for, however the first two episodes it misses. As such it is not of the standard one would anticipate it should have as ‘prestige television’. Hoping episodes three and four improve things.    

[mattingly]

12 hours ago, death tribble said:

Mouse on the Moon

The sequel to the Mouse that Roared suffers from a lack of Peter Sellers. Ron Moody and Margaret Rutherford took over two of his parts. David Kossoff returned from the first film as the Duchy of Grand Fenwick asks for a loan for space research when they want to install indoor plumbing. The Americans give them the money and the Russians give them a rocket. And the mad professor works out a way for the rocket to go to the moon which it does. It narrowly beats both the Americans and Russians who have to be helped back after problems with their craft. Rather quaint rather than laugh out loid funny.

 

I never knew there was a sequel.

 

[Ternaugh]

The Poseidon Adventure: Irwin Allen's 1972 version, and still the best. An ocean liner gets hit by a tsunami in the Mediterranean and flips over, and a small group try to make their way up through the destruction to be rescued. (Amazon Prime)

 

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore: This one's better than the first two, and concludes the events of the first two movies in a satisfactory way. (HBOmax)

[slikmar]

15 hours ago, Ternaugh said:

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore: This one's better than the first two, and concludes the events of the first two movies in a satisfactory way. (HBOmax)

Well, except for the obvious omittance of Katherine Waterston, apparently due to pettiness from Rowling when she disagreed with the author: Some outlets have drawn the conclusion that Katherine was actually cut out of Secrets of Dumbledore due to making a statement on her social media and to The Independent in support of trans rights and against J.K. Rowling's anti-trans statements.

[Joe Walsh]

George Carlin's American Dream (HBOMax): I grew up in the generation where all the much-worshipped artists of the previous generation decided to do something completely different. The erstwhile worshippers may have been disappointed by, for example, Neil Young's Wonderin' or The Rolling Stones' Waitin' on a Friend, but I didn't have prior experience to fall back on with these artists so to me, they were just super duper lame. Embarrassing, really. Same for George Carlin, who in my time was just the dude with the lame ass segment on the lame ass Tony Orlando and Dawn .  It was only much later that I came to appreciate these classic artists, but I never became much of a fan of any of them. Still, I respect Carlin for his later, more raw comedy from the 90s when he really laid it on the line. His "It's a big club and you're not in it" era. So, for me, the first half of this two-part biography was interesting but almost not worth watching. Still I persisted and was rewarded by the second half (which I appreciated more having seen the first half). Good stuff!

 

In other news, as most everyone has already said, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Disney+) is good so far. But I'm pretty tired of the Skywalker family story. Although I'm mildly interested in how Leia came to see Obi-Wan as her "only hope," please move on after this one, Disney.

[Joe Walsh]

Obi-Wan Kenobi episode 3 was a bit better. I'm glad they didn't have Leia run in this episode. The little actress just doesn't seem to be able to run very well (or they're not letting her do so), resulting in really bad chase choreography. This ep was more like a road trip, and the character interactions worked pretty well. Still, they do seem to be really leaning into the movie serials, complete with lots of things happening that make no sense in context.

 

Spoiler

Darth Vader: I can use the force to grab you and drag you around at will! I can drag you into the fire! Muhuhahahah!

Also Darth Vader: Force not work through flames when I don't make 'em. Waaah.

 

Not to mention Obi-Wan wasting time on disabling the gate instead of simply walking around it.

 

We finished Cake, S1-S5 (Hulu). S1 and S5 were the best of the five. The one with the shark story was the worst. Overall, the show is worth watching, but the segments are of widely varying quality so you'll end up seeing quite a lot that doesn't hit for you.

 

 

[Pariah]