What Have You Watched Recently?

[BoloOfEarth]

Just re-watched (for like the thousandth time) the first Back to the Future movie.  While watching the credits, I saw "DeLorean Time Travel Consultant" (Ron Cobb).

 

I wonder what would happen if you put a flux capacitor and an oscillation overthruster in the same vehicle.  Like, maybe a TARDIS. 

 

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Fished both semi-final rounds for Eurovision. I hate to say it, but there's not a lot to like this year. Most is just bland more than anything else. Traditional highlight countries really let me down this year, like Denmark and Iceland. 

 

But the worst part of the show was the technical production. (There were several songs that I swear their mics were turned off. I need to look up some of the videos just so I can hear what the songs are supposed to sound like.) The less said about the supremely distracting video wall the better. 

[Pariah]

I've often said that Star Trek: Voyager was much like the little girl with the curl in the nursery rhyme: When they're good,  they're very, very good, but when they're bad, they're horrid.

 

The episode "Living Witness" was, in my humble opinion, very, very good. 

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Eurovision 2023 is over! 

 

The winner was one of my picks, so I'm pretty happy with the results. Other results were... baffling. As always, Eurovision thinking remains a mystery to me. 

[Bazza]

1 hour ago, Pariah said:

I've often said that Star Trek: Voyager was much like the little girl with the curl in the nursery rhyme: When they're good,  they're very, very good, but when they're bad, they're horrid.

 

The episode "Living Witness" was, in my humble opinion, very, very good. 

Schrödinger’s Voyager? You don’t know unless you “open” the episode, ie watch it. 

[BoloOfEarth]

Watched the pilot episode of My Secret Identity yesterday.  Starred Jerry O'Connell and Derek McGrath, with the young Andrew Clements (O'Connell) getting superpowers from a "photon beam" in his neighbor Dr. Jeffcoate's (McGrath) in-home lab.  Super speed, invulnerability, and the ability to float (not really fly - he used aerosol spray cans to allow him to move).  Admittedly a bit cheesy, but I enjoyed it.

[wcw43921]

2 hours ago, Bazza said:

Schrödinger’s Voyager? You don’t know unless you “open” the episode, ie watch it. 

 

Merlin's line from Excalibur says it best--

 

"Looking at the cake is like looking at the future, until you've tasted it what do you really know? And then, of course, it's too late."

[Ternaugh]

Little Shop of Horrors-Director's Cut: This is the musical version from 1986. According to Frank Oz, producer David Geffen told writer/composer Howard Ashman and him that the original ending wouldn't work for a theatrical piece, but he let them shoot it anyway. After a test screening, the test audience returned only 13% favorable comment cards, they were forced to shoot an alternate ending, which became the theatrical cut. The Blu-ray release restored the director's cut, and it has a decidedly 1950s B-movie feel to the additional 20 minutes of footage (in a very good way). I liked it, but I also understand why it was changed for the original theatrical release. I found my copy recently at a Wal-mart, for around $10, and the disc has the theatrical cut as well. (Blu-ray)

[KawangaKid]

Watched MONUMENTS MEN, and enjoyed it.

Now looking at a re-watch of the Batman: Brave & the Bold series.

[mattingly]

4 hours ago, KawangaKid said:

Watched MONUMENTS MEN, and enjoyed it.

 

I love Monuments Men. My favorite war movie. 

[slikmar]

19 hours ago, Ternaugh said:

Little Shop of Horrors-Director's Cut: This is the musical version from 1986. According to Frank Oz, producer David Geffen told writer/composer Howard Ashman and him that the original ending wouldn't work for a theatrical piece, but he let them shoot it anyway. After a test screening, the test audience returned only 13% favorable comment cards, they were forced to shoot an alternate ending, which became the theatrical cut. The Blu-ray release restored the director's cut, and it has a decidedly 1950s B-movie feel to the additional 20 minutes of footage (in a very good way). I liked it, but I also understand why it was changed for the original theatrical release. I found my copy recently at a Wal-mart, for around $10, and the disc has the theatrical cut as well. (Blu-ray)

As an enormous fan of the original theatrical release, can I ask what the original ending was? Spoiler if you want, am just curious. 

[Ternaugh]

12 minutes ago, slikmar said:

As an enormous fan of the original theatrical release, can I ask what the original ending was? Spoiler if you want, am just curious. 

Spoiler

After Seymour pulls Audrey from the plant, she tells him to feed be body to it, and dies. Seymour puts her lifeless body into the plant's mouth, then leaves the shop. He climbs up to a nearby roof to kill himself, where a representative of a company reveals that he has a cutting and will be marketing them across the country. Seymour goes back to face the plant and "Mean Green Mother from Outer Space" ends with Seymour being eaten.

 

It then cuts to people rushing to buy Audrey 2s followed by giant plants rampaging through various cities as the army unsuccessfully attacks the plants.

 

[Michael Hopcroft]

For Mother's Day I brought some DVDs (I really need to get Mom a Blu-Ray player) and dinner. The one we ended up seeing was the original French comedy The Tall Blonde Man with One Black Shoe. The movie was an art house staple while I was growing up, but my mother had never seen it. It's a lovely combination of frothy comedy and Watergate-era political satire with a surveillance state run amok.

 

Infighting within the French Intelligence services has led to the head of the agency looking to get the goods on a treacherous subordinate by setting a trap -- he tells his most trusted aide to go to Orly Airport and choose a random stranger to see if the rival takes the bait that this is a supposed "superspy" that poses a threat to the traitor's plans. His random choice is a man with shoes mismatched -- he points out :"The Tall Blonde Man with One Black Shoe" and steps aside to watch what happens.

 

Sure enough, the bait is taken and the subordinate's entire crew devotes itself to discovering everything that can conceivably be known about this man, who turns out to be the Principal Violinist for a Paris orchestra. He is in fact trying to keep a secret -- that he's engaged in an affair with the wife of one of his friends -- but it seems that everything they watch him do or overhear him say leaves the man even further convinced that the musician poses a deadly threat. And the fiddler? He has no idea what's going on, how the toothpaste and shaving cream in his tubes got mixed up, or why the friend he is cuckolding thinks his wife is having sex with someone in the back of a florist's van.

 

Add to this the fact that the violinist i8s played by Pierre Richard, one of French film's greatest clowns at the peak of his powers. Fortunately, this was the original French cut, subtitled, and is sounds a LOT better than an appalling dub for English-0language TV.

 

That it is just as relevant a piece of satire as it weas in 1974 is profoundly saddening. But the movie is hilarious.

[slikmar]

26 minutes ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

For Mother's Day I brought some DVDs (I really need to get Mom a Blu-Ray player) and dinner. The one we ended up seeing was the original French comedy The Tall Blonde Man with One Black Shoe. The movie was an art house staple while I was growing up, but my mother had never seen it. It's a lovely combination of frothy comedy and Watergate-era political satire with a surveillance state run amok.

 

Infighting within the French Intelligence services has led to the head of the agency looking to get the goods on a treacherous subordinate by setting a trap -- he tells his most trusted aide to go to Orly Airport and choose a random stranger to see if the rival takes the bait that this is a supposed "superspy" that poses a threat to the traitor's plans. His random choice is a man with shoes mismatched -- he points out :"The Tall Blonde Man with One Black Shoe" and steps aside to watch what happens.

 

Sure enough, the bait is taken and the subordinate's entire crew devotes itself to discovering everything that can conceivably be known about this man, who turns out to be the Principal Violinist for a Paris orchestra. He is in fact trying to keep a secret -- that he's engaged in an affair with the wife of one of his friends -- but it seems that everything they watch him do or overhear him say leaves the man even further convinced that the musician poses a deadly threat. And the fiddler? He has no idea what's going on, how the toothpaste and shaving cream in his tubes got mixed up, or why the friend he is cuckolding thinks his wife is having sex with someone in the back of a florist's van.

 

Add to this the fact that the violinist i8s played by Pierre Richard, one of French film's greatest clowns at the peak of his powers. Fortunately, this was the original French cut, subtitled, and is sounds a LOT better than an appalling dub for English-0language TV.

 

That it is just as relevant a piece of satire as it weas in 1974 is profoundly saddening. But the movie is hilarious.

Remade with Tom Hanks as the Man with one Red Shoe. Also good and funny. It sounds like a direct remake, too, from your description.

[KawangaKid]

On 5/16/2023 at 11:32 AM, slikmar said:

Remade with Tom Hanks as the Man with one Red Shoe. Also good and funny. It sounds like a direct remake, too, from your description.

I watched the Tom Hanks one years ago...

[johnnyy]

Just started watching This is Going to Hurt on iplayer

Only 2 episodes in but it's fantastic so far.

[BoloOfEarth]

On 5/13/2023 at 10:09 PM, BoloOfEarth said:

Watched the pilot episode of My Secret Identity yesterday.  Starred Jerry O'Connell and Derek McGrath, with the young Andrew Clements (O'Connell) getting superpowers from a "photon beam" in his neighbor Dr. Jeffcoate's (McGrath) in-home lab.  Super speed, invulnerability, and the ability to float (not really fly - he used aerosol spray cans to allow him to move).  Admittedly a bit cheesy, but I enjoyed it.

 

Soooo... I ended up buying a set of DVDs online for the whole series (3 seasons) and it arrived yesterday.  (On a side note, given the fairly low price, only about $30 IIRC, I shouldn't have been surprised that it's all homemade, just episodes recorded off the TV and burned onto DVDs numbered 1-6 with a green magic marker.)  I watched the first 8 or so episodes yesterday.  Still cheesy but still fun.  

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Finally getting to the final season of Better Call Saul. Still got four episodes to go, but damn... what a good show. Writing is top notch, acting is wonderful, and I had almost forgotten the amazing (underappreciated) cinematography. Incredible show that might even exceed the show that spawned it. 

 

We're watching Junior Bake Off, too, which is always fun. 

[Joe Walsh]

Tried Picard (P+) again. 4 eps in and it's just OK-ish. Not really worth the time; in the 90s, it might have been on in the background while I was doing other things. These days, of course, there's no need to watch mediocre content. Still, I've heard S3 is much better, so I'm going to try to stick with it but I'll probably fast forward to Season 3 at some point.

 

Started watching I Hate Suzie (HBOMax). It's one of those shows about someone who is sort of likeable, but who is so messed up you're mostly watching a train wreck in progress. Like Barry, Fleabag, Oh Hell, and many others. It's pretty good.

 

The Rehearsal (HBOMax) is funny and so far just good enough to keep me watching.

 

School Spirits (P+) is about a high school girl who wakes up dead at her high school as a ghost with no memory of how she died. She's stuck on campus, seemingly forever, as are other ghosts -- many of whom are stuck in their own personal hells of their own making. She finds out that one of her friends -- still among the living -- can see and hear her sometimes. They set about solving the mystery of how she died.

It's pretty good so far, with some humor, some drama, and some typical teen genre stuff. At times it's handled almost as well as Pretty Little Liars was, and at other times it's just par for the course as a teen show.

Edited May 18 by Joe Walsh

[Dr. MID-Nite]

Season 3 of Picard is DEFINITELY much better. Better than the first two seasons combined by far.

[Lord Liaden]

4 hours ago, Joe Walsh said:

Tried Picard (P+) again. 4 eps in and it's just OK-ish. Not really worth the time; in the 90s, it might have been on in the background while I was doing other things. These days, of course, there's no need to watch mediocre content. Still, I've heard S3 is much better, so I'm going to try to stick with it but I'll probably fast forward to Season 3 at some point.

 

 

 

4 minutes ago, Dr. MID-Nite said:

Season 3 of Picard is DEFINITELY much better. Better than the first two seasons combined by far.

 

You can pretty much skip the first two seasons, and go right to season 3. There are a very few references to events from the previous seasons, but they have almost no bearing on the plot of the third, and if you want them clarified you can always quickly Search the Internet (or ask here) . Almost everything important to Season 3 is derived from Next Generation/Deep Space 9/Voyager continuity, so if you're reasonably familiar with those you'll have no trouble keeping up.

 

And I agree with the Doctor above. Picard S3 is arguably the best Trek we've gotten in decades, and truest to the spirit of the former shows.

[Ternaugh]

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania: Better than the reviews would have me believe. Overall, I enjoyed it. (4K UHD Blu-ray)

[mattingly]

I liked Quantumania in the theater, and liked it even more seeing the second time on Disney+.

 

[Joe Walsh]

12 hours ago, Dr. MID-Nite said:

Season 3 of Picard is DEFINITELY much better. Better than the first two seasons combined by far.

 

12 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

You can pretty much skip the first two seasons, and go right to season 3. There are a very few references to events from the previous seasons, but they have almost no bearing on the plot of the third, and if you want them clarified you can always quickly Search the Internet (or ask here) . Almost everything important to Season 3 is derived from Next Generation/Deep Space 9/Voyager continuity, so if you're reasonably familiar with those you'll have no trouble keeping up.

 

And I agree with the Doctor above. Picard S3 is arguably the best Trek we've gotten in decades, and truest to the spirit of the former shows.

 

Well that's good! I'll definitely skip S2 then (given how low the audience ratings on those episodes are) and if S1 keeps being boring I'll feel OK skipping the rest. Thanks!

[Bazza]

For what it is worth, I enjoyed all 3 seasons. I watched season 2 after a break from season 1 so came at it fresh. And feel that a big plot point for season 3 is explained in season 1. All three seasons have a different feel to them. But of the three, season 3 is the hands down winner.