Some terrific stuff here, really quite thrilling at times, and yet… I felt a bit disappointed. I’d only heard great things about this from critics and audiences, but for me a fair amount of it felt a bit ‘generic gangster’. Colin Farrell was mostly really good as I expected (how he manages to act under all that incredible latex is amazing. At least I assume it’s latex and not CGI!), and so was Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone (my favourite episode was the one centred around her time in Arkham). But Deirdre O’Connor as Oz’s mother… wow, what a performance. Really out of the top drawer. I also thought the kid who played Oz as a teenager was excellent and really captured Farrell’s mannerisms and expressions well for such a short appearance.
Overall, well worth watching and if they do another series I’ll be along for the ride, but felt somewhat overrated going off the IMDB scores for example.
This is the story of World War II From the Front Lines
Outstanding documentary with brilliant actual and true colourised footage never fully released until now, thanks to the release of war press archives and war time photographers.
It’s maybe trying to stuff too much into the short series but the colourization is so immediate it’s far better than anything I’ve seen…and a fair bit of stuff I have not seen.
I didn’t know there was a new season – Netflix sometimes reminds me of stuff I’ve already watched so it is possible it did mention the new season and I blew it off. Though I don’t remember that.
No, it’s good that I now know not to expect too much. The first episode set up an intriguing mystery, and the involvement of Toni Collette seemed to indicate quality. If I had continued watching while expecting a tightly plotted series with a satisfying mystery reveal, and it got stupid, I would have been disappointed. Now I can choose to either bail, or watch with lowered expectations. So thanks to you and @SwissMan .
We watched the first ep of Chad Powers and it was OK. Maybe it had to do a lot of lifting to get the premise and everything else in place but some of it felt very flimsy. I can’t see a washed up football player returning in disguise 8 years later getting away with it for more than a few hours if that. Somehow the team mascot (and theater major!) is on his side though and the coach’s daughter is lining up to be the love interest. She’s on the coaching staff but doesn’t get respect from the other coaches so I predict that they’ll win the big game at the end with the play that she drew up that the other coach threw away. I like the actors though. Glen Powell looks like he could be a QB and is believable as a narcissistic a-hole who’s going to learn a lesson or two along the way. Steve Zhan is an interesting choice for a head coach, but I like him and it works. Toby Huss is Chad Powers’ dad and Perry Mattfield is the love interest.
Another silly and uninteresting final shot that probably could lead to a 4th season, but I hope not. It’s really only a 2-season show that they extended past its worth.
For some reason I can’t recall I thought Creature Commandoes looked like it would be terrible when it first came out and I skipped it. But I kept seeing a certain character mentioned as needing to be in the last episodes of Peacemaker season 2 so I finally watched it and it’s actually pretty great.
I had heard that the HBO show “Task” was supposed to be so good I PVRd the first few episodes and thought I’d binge watch. I watched about 40 minutes of Episode 1 and its such a snooze-fest I think I’ll pack this in and delete the rest.
The Rainmaker on the other hand, now THATs a great show. (at least the first 4 episodes)
On the anime front again, the new simulcast season has started and among other series I’ve started watching May I Ask For One Final Thing?
There seems to be a whole subgenre of these stories where a young noblewomen is affianced via arranged marriage at a very young age to a prince who then turns out to be a bullying jerk who makes her life hell and then, in a final indignity, holds a big event with all his snivelling toady supporters in which he dramatically calls off the engagement and announces he’s going to marry some other young woman who has lied her way into his heart by falsely accusing the protagonist of all sorts of bad behavior.
Usually what happens in these things is that she goes off and, actually being a nice person, lands a better prince who loves her while the nasty prince brings about his own downfall because he’s an insecure incompetent jerk (although I watched one where she ends up back with the prince who wasn’t actually all that bad, which really annoyed me - it was like Stockholm syndrome in action).
Anyway, MIAFOFT has a novel take on the trope. The rebuffed noblelady politely asks for one last request before she leaves, which the prince agrees to grant. The request turns out to be (quoting from memory of subtitles) “I want to knock that bitch on her ass”. She then proceeds to punch the new fiancée really hard in the face. And then, donning a dainty pair of fingerless gloves (to go with her dress, naturally) with metal studs on the knuckles, punches the living shit out of everyone else in the room finishing up with the prince.
Quite a refreshing take, if you ask me. The people in the show are calling her “The Lady of Beatings”. I’m only two episodes in but I love her already.
I introduced a friend to Slow Horses and we binged the whole series over the last week. After seeing it all over again it came to me that an appropriate alternate title for the series might be “A River Runs Through It”.
Hadn’t heard of it but it’s got a high rating on Crunchyroll so I might give it a go.
Of the series from the summer season I’ve watched, the standouts IMO are Gachiakuta (which is fighty and shouty but the artwork and story are good) and the unexpected feel-good Ruri Rocks which is a sweet little story and a literal introduction to mineralogy.
I thought I’d give **Monster: The Ed Gein Story ** a try. It has the incomparable Laurie Metcalf in it, but it may be a bit too intense to continue. Pretty sure the Ms. wouldn’t like it.
Life was coincidental enough so that we finished S6E9 of Better Call Saul the night before our trip to Albuquerque for the Balloon Festival. On the drive there we put together a list of favorite BCS locations and I am pleased to announce that the Dog House hot dogs are quite good, especially for $3.50.
Sadly, they do serve Pepsi products. Well, you can’t have everything!
We are putting BCS to the side right now so we can watch Breaking Bad. Gotta get a pizza for Walt’s house!
I just finished the second episode and, at least up to the point where I am, the intensity continues to escalate. You were probably better off cutting your losses now than continuing on and not being able to finish it.
For anyone else that’s seen it, I have a question that I’m hoping can be answered without spoiling anything. Why did Hitchcock build a replica of Gein’s house on the Psycho set? Did that happen in real life? I feel like I would’ve run across that bit of trivia at some point or another, plus it would’ve been really expensive.
Semi-related, in the movie thread I linked to a Matt Baum video about the movie Kiss Of The Spider Woman. He also did one on Tab Hunter and another Anthony Perkins. Both really interesting and worth watching.
The NYT called this series a “fictional account” of Gein’s life. So, it’s hard to say what is real or not. I saw nothing on Wiki that would indicate that Hitchcock built that on the set.
I also looked for anything suggesting it was real. But even for it being a fictional account, it still seemed odd. I almost wonder if there was more to it that was cut out. ISTM, Hitch could’ve had Perkins study some of the crime scene pictures, probably the same one’s he used to recreated the house. Perkins could’ve imagined himself walking through the house and then gone on to have the same reaction (being disgusted and puking in the road). It would essentially be exactly the same, but without Hitch building an extra set piece.
