So years after I first heard about it, the TV series: What We Do In The Shadows was popped into my DVD player. It was hilarious and damned funny and I had only myself to blame. Why had I waited? And what have you finally broken down to experience? Was it worth the wait? What would you recommend?
I signed up for HBO Max a few months ago and finally started watching “Rick and Morty”. Which is brilliant.
oh nevermind
I finally got around to watching The Wire a few months ago. It was good - but if it hadn’t been overhyped as the greatest TV show ever I probably would have enjoyed it more. There were still plenty of well-worn tropes and predictability, albeit less than in most shows. I kept expecting it to get better.
Just by the way, the series is only two years old, but the movie it’s based on is now seven years old. So, likely you first heard about the movie years ago. If you liked the series, but haven’t seen the movie yet, I recommend it (I personally liked the movie more than the series, but they’re much closer in tone and execution than most series spun off from a movie).
I watched Cheers for the first time about a year ago. I watched Breaking Bad for the first time last night.
Cheers is now one of my favorite shows. Breaking Bad didn’t do anything for me. I’m wondering if it gets better.
I just finished bingeing Red Dwarf. Many shows people like I get fed up with, but that was good all the way to the end. And then I watched Can’t Smeg, Won’t Smeg too.
Ditto for Blackadder. Yeah, it took me a while to get to it, but it was worth it.
Finally saw the “new” Mad Max film (which somehow is six years old!) bloody hell it was good. Absolutely worth the hype.
Finally read “The Murderbot Diaries” and loved them. The Mrs. binge read them too, after my recommendation.
Just make sure to read #6 after the 4th story, as that’s where it fits in the timeline of the narrative arc. #5 goes right after #6, at least for now. It’s not critical to the arc nor does reading them in publishing order spoil anything, but some stuff makes a bit more sense.
Probably not. Unlike many shows that have lousy pilots, because they try to cram so much into the first episode, but later turn out to be excellent, Breaking Bad’s pilot is very consistent with what happens in subsequent episodes. Personally I found it brilliant - but if you disliked the pilot you probably shouldn’t waste your time. I’d say watch two more episodes and if you still hate it, don’t bother.
I got Prime just before Christmas, and am finally watching both Smallville and Supernatural, neither of which I’d ever seen as much as a single episode before starting. I’m alternating (season of one, then a season of the other) but liking them both a lot. When Supernatural ended last year, my Facebook feed seemed to be 90% full of women rending their clothes in grief at no longer having the Winchester boys around. One friend of mine has a convention photo op picture in which she’s sandwiched between the two stars which may be the high point of her fandom life. I figured I was missing out on an interesting cultural conversation by not having seen it, and now I’m committed for the long haul of streaming.
I watched part of Titanic about 12 years after it was released. Was surprisingly good.
I didn’t see Star Wars until 20 years after it came out. I saw The Empire Strikes Back when it was still in its first run. I still think Empire was the better movie of the two, and wonder if it is solely because I saw it first.
Intellectually, I know you’re right about the timeline, but I’m still having trouble believing it.
It’s 15 years old! - ‘The New Adventures of Old Christine’, a comedy with Julia Louis- Dreyfus playing a ditz. I started watching it in the middle of the night (I’m up all. night. long. with insomnia). Had never heard of it! I thought it was really funny, with some cringey moments (no matter what dopey fix she gets in, a spacey woman with a bangin’ body is always going to get away with a lot that lesser mortal females can’t.) Also, Wanda Sykes, who I love, plays her unlikely best friend, and pretty much steals the scenes she’s in.
I’ve been on a comic reading binge lately, reading a lot of stuff from years or even decades back that is new to me. I’ll mention one title in particular because of one of those funny coincidences:
Manifest Destiny. First published in 2013, I first heard of it a few months ago. I read the first few issues, then set it aside for other things. It seemed to have been abandoned or canceled incomplete, being more than a year since the last published issue (#42) and googling didn’t come up with any answers on that. But I did recently turn back to it and finish all the issues that were available. The very next day, issue #43 was published–turns out that there was a Covid delay.
Flash Gordon, the movie from 1980. I’ve heard about this film from the beginning, since I was a big Queen fan and the single “Flash” was a big hit. When I first heard it on the radio, I thought “Wow, that’s an extravagant song”, but I liked it. But somehow I didn’t go to see the movie and never had until about a year ago. And it didn’t disappoint, it’s just as extravagant as the song. It has fucking Max von Sydow as the emperor, a scantily-clad Ornella Muti, a young Timothy Dalton, a big dumb blond footballer as the hero and most of all, Brian Blessed with wings in his underpants, so what’s not to love?
I didn’t see the show Everybody Loves Raymond’ until 10 years after the series ended in 2005. In fact, I didn’t even know of the show itself. Through cable TV syndication and/or streaming I was able to watch all 9 seasons.
I heard of but never saw Seinfeld until the middle part of the last season, and through reruns was able to see the other seasons. As I’ve mentioned, I knew of the show but turned my nose up at it because so many other people whose tastes I disagree strongly with in regards to film and TV also mentioned the show. I through out the baby with the bathwater due to my “Well if they like it, it must suck” prejudice.
Oh shit, does that mean I’ll soon be watching Friends?
I’m not sure if anything in pop culture has ever faced more unjustified backlash than Titanic. When it very first came out, before anyone knew how damn BIG it was going to be, it got very very good reviews. I saw it opening weekend with friends and we were all enthralled.
Then it made all the money, and won all the awards, and it became fashionable to look down one’s nose at it. And it’s certainly not a perfect movie, nor the best movie ever made. But it’s an incredibly effective piece of storytelling.