[xasop]

Fucking awesome.  If you haven't seen them already, do so now.

Nice review. Now I know exactly what you liked about them so I can decide if I would like those things as well.

[beardo]

Fucking awesome.  If you haven't seen them already, do so now.

Don't tell me what to do!

[Snupes]

Frank Zappa Halloween '81

This was probably one of my favourite things of Zappa I've heard yet. It didn't feel overlong like most of his work I've heard, and it stayed varied and impressive enough to keep my (auditory) attention the whole time. There wasn't much going on that was interesting to watch, but it was neat to see Zappa and his band perform, since I never really have before.

[Particle Person]

Was good.

[Ghost Spaghetti]

I’ve finally finished Stargate Atlantis, a programme which I gave up on when it was first broadcast. I’m glad I stuck with it, this time. The show generally strikes a good balance between serious sci-fi drama and light comedy, the characters are warm and engaging, and the setting is unique enough to distinguish itself from its parent series without throwing what came before under a bus.

That said, the show isn’t perfect, there are more than a couple of episodes which fall far too heavily into the ‘comedy’ side of the balance and just come across as silly. Character development is also inconsistent from one writer to another – it’s there with all of them, but most noticeable with Dr McKay; he is introduced as the obnoxious and insufferable genius he was in SG-1 and his character arc is supposed to show him learning to work better with others, be more aware of his weaknesses, and generally becoming a team player but there are episodes where he’ll either drop it all and go back to ep1 McKay, or go too far and make him a craven coward.

In addition, I found their treatment of non-human aliens to be troubling at times. A species could be as sentient and empathetic as humans but if they’re even slightly different, the Lanteans never show many qualms about experimenting on them, killing them, or committing genocide.

Now that SGA is out of the way, my next watch is the almost universally panned Stargate Universe. Wish me luck.

[Saddam Hussein]

Fucking awesome.  If you haven't seen them already, do so now.

Nice review. Now I know exactly what you liked about them so I can decide if I would like those things as well.

Oh, you probably wouldn't like them.  They're big dumb Indonesian action movies that emphasize the cast's mad skillz in pencak silat and killing people in gruesome ways.  But I will go into more detail.  The first film is set in a tenement run by a notorious gangster that a SWAT team is raiding.  However, the operation goes to hell and the trapped cops are hunted by dozens of the tenement's criminal residents.  What I really like about this movie is how smartly it subverts the common tropes of these kinds of martial arts-based action films.  With the exception of one of the main antagonists, the characters in this film don't fight fair.  They smack their enemies' heads against surfaces, throw them out windows, and use all manner of weapons they can get their hands on, like machetes, guns, or clubs.  They're not realistic, far from it, but the fights have a much more visceral and tangible feel to them than there is to a more typical scene of two elegant martial artists just punching and kicking each other until one of them falls over.

The second film sheds the high-concept of a raid gone wrong and goes with an undercover cop story in the vein of Infernal Affairs or Sleeping Dogs.  I appreciate them not wanting to just repeat themselves for a sequel, but I do miss the brilliant simplicity of the first movie.  It's still a great film, and has plenty of incredible action, but I'd rate it just slightly below the first one.

[Snupes]

Bridge of Spies (Steven Spielberg, 2015)

I wish I'd written this review yesterday, since now I hardly remember anything I wanted to say about it. But, the gist is, it's a movie (based on a tru story) about an American lawyer in the 1970s, during the Cold War, who gets tasked with defending a man accused of being a spy for the Soviet Union. There's more to it than that, it escalates, but that's the setup.

All-in-all it was a very good film. The camerawork was fine, and I actually really liked the dull tones and seemingly light bloom sort of filter imposed over most of the movie, especially with the sort of shots Spielberg used to keep windows exposed, with a fuzzy aura. That sentence was a fucking trainwreck.

Anyway, very good movie. Mark Rylance was great and I loved his moments on-screen, and Tom Hanks cannot be overrated as an actor. Goddamn, that man. He does such a great job imbuing his characters with enough tics and mannerisms naturally that they feel more like real people than any other actor.


Time Lapse (Bradley D. King, 2014)

Found this and several other movies I'll probably end up watching on a list of low budget films with interesting concepts. This one is the story of (and you find all this out in the first 10 minutes, so I don't consider it spoily) three people living together (an artist, his girlfriend and their friend) that discover a camera in the house across from theirs that's been taking pictures through their window for at least a month, ever single day at 8PM. What's strange is that the camera seems to be taking pictures...of the next day. Hijinks ensue!

Finding out what exactly leads up to each picture can be obvious, heart-poundingly intense or a delayed "...ohhhh" moment. Just as exciting is guessing at and finding out what the next picture is going to be. Even then, nothing is quite what it seems.

Seriously, despite some questionable acting at times and pretty standard cinematography, the concept and story is what makes this one so exciting. That is, at least for me—my standards are presumably different (and possibly lower) than others'. That said, it's usually rare for a film to really snag me nowadays, but every time I thought I was getting a bit tired of this film it threw a new curveball and executed the concept excellently.

I don't want to say too much, because not knowing what's coming next is part of what's exciting, but I would recommend this movie to anyone who has two hours and wants to give something new a shot. Personally, I fucking loved it and am going to force my nephew to watch it this weekend.


Circle (Aaron Hann and Mario Miscione, 2015)

On that same list. The setup to this one is that fifty people suddenly come to in a black and red room, and quickly find out that they have to vote (every two minutes) to kill one person. The movie is mostly about the dynamics of this, why people vote for whom, how long certain people last, stuff like that. That's literally all the plot there is for the majority of the movie so I can't get into specifics without spoiling, but it's interesting.

I think that's the only word I can really use for this film. I don't know if I would call it good or bad; it was interesting. I'm feeling sort of ambivalent about it post-watching, but I don't regret it since I was engaged. I dunno.

This one's an easy recommendation. If that premise sounds interesting to you, watch it. If it doesn't, don't.

[Snupes]

^ Continuing with that list


Enemy (Dennis Villeneuve, 2013)

Starring the glorious Jake Gyllenhaal as a man who, while watching a movie, sees himself as a background character and decides to investigate, leading to a series of troubling, confusing, and inexplicable (sometimes very fucking inexplicable) events.

Well, enough can't be said about the atmosphere in this movie. It's mysterious and gloomy, bordering on paranoid in that even when it answers your question it leaves enough leeway that you're not sure anything's actually been answered. It's intriguing in that way, allowing every scene to draw you in out of curiosity and wanting answers. Plus not enough can be said about how good Jake Gyllenhaal is, because he's Jake Gyllenhaal and he's really good.

I would elaborate more but I don't want to say too much because, out of the few films I've watched so far on this list, this is my strongest recommendation so far. Partly because I think it's great, but also because I want someone else to watch so I can talk about it with them. It's very much a "what the fuck did I just watch?" film, but it's great for it.

[Saddam Hussein]

Spectre (Sam Mendes, 2015)

Starts out well enough, with some tight action sequences and a lighter, more comedic feel than the last few Bond movies, and then about halfway through, an unpleasant and unearned grimdark tone appears right the fuck out of nowhere, and an incredibly half-assed plot involving mass surveillance, the powers of government, weak political commentary, blah blah blah, lurches its way into focus.  Aside from that, it's poorly paced, way too long, has a very underwhelming climax, and a boring love interest who has no chemistry with Craig.  Speaking of the actors, Craig is good, Ben Whishaw is good, and Dave Bautista is a lot of fun as a gleeful heavy.  Christoph Waltz is also good, because of course he is, but he doesn't have nearly enough screen time.  And I really hated the claim towards the end that (I'm not going to use spoiler tags here, because that's how much I don't respect this "twist") that Craig's previous villains were all secretly working for SPECTRE all along.  Really?  So Javier Bardem's twisted, demented villain from Skyfall wasn't really trying to get revenge on M for what he saw as his betrayal by her?  He was actually just a lackey of Waltz under orders to fuck with Bond by killing his boss?  Wow.  I never thought that I'd be arguing about these canonical details for a series as silly as Bond, but to essentially retcon the events of previous films as being mere preludes to this one, and the villains as just pawns of this other villain seems incredibly disrespectful to me.

[Saddam Hussein]

Jessica Jones (Marvel's latest Netflix show)

This was great.  It's definitely the darkest and most mature franchise of the MCU, and as well as ramping up the profanity, violence, and sexuality, it takes a close look at some very heavy subjects, with rape in particular standing out.  It's well-written, well-acted, and well-directed throughout, with a compelling and flawed heroine, a disgustingly creepy villain, and an intriguing neo-noir tone.  My one big criticism of it is that the action scenes aren't all that great.  They're awfully repetitive - prepare to see a lot of guys getting thrown against walls and over tables - and Jessica's powers are portrayed very inconsistently in them.  We'll see her ripping open padlocks and lifting cars, but once a fight starts, she'll apparently have trouble just trying to take down a few attackers, and even getting her ass handed to her on a few occasions.  I know they're on a budget, so there's obviously going to be a limit to how impressive the special effects or wire fu they show us will be, but creativity costs nothing.  A little more of that would have been nice.

[Snupes]

Jessica Jones (2015)

Aaaaaaaah this was amazing and I love it I love it I love it. There are flaws, like, yeah, the fight scenes are usually kind of dull, and I'm a bit sad that there was less of a private investigation focus in the show (granted, her skills in the career are put to much use). That said, though, the fact that they made Kilgrave so much more terrifying and well-done in this makes the fact that over half of the season is focused on him. David Tennant couldn't have done a much better job, and he was genuinely thrilling to watch (along with creepy as hell). Krysten Ritter did a fantastic job as Jessica, and I'm really glad they didn't go overboard and try to make her to be super-moral and a hero and stuff. She's a flawed, selfish alcoholic asshole with a troubled past, present and future and the show doesn't try to cover that at all.

I'm tempted to go into more detail, but I'd be writing an essay and I don't think anyone's interested enough to warrant that. In the end, I'll be singing this show's praises for a good while. Granted, the comic (Alias) has been important to me since I was a teen for several personal reasons, so I'm pretty biased, but I love it to death. Can't wait 'til season two.

[beardo]

Jessica Jones (2015)

I bored my way through it because it's an MCU thing. I think it ended pretty good though.

[Blanko]

La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995)

A very stylish, yet very flawed look into the lives of troubled youth of Paris. Despite being immaculately directed, I can't help but feel how reminiscent the caricatured characters are to goofy MTV-era attitudes, which I think would appeal to children more so than anything this film is going for. 7/10

City of God (Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund, 2002)

For better or for worse, this is quite an emotional and tonal rollercoaster ride. It's a semi-autographical look into the lives of the people in the slums of Rio, filled to the brim gang violence and lack of order or security. Despite being genuinely heavy-hitting in its more dramatic scenes, the film otherwise errs too often on the side of stylised exploitation, which all too often puts the film at odds with itself. Tonal inconsistency aside, this is a very well paced and structured film, and pretty much every character - of which there are plenty - is compelling and well written, and the use of mostly amateur actors from real slums works wonders for its sense of authenticity. 8/10

Somewhere (Sofia Coppola, 2010)

I guess the most concise description for this film would be "Californication meets Lost in Translation", and while being compared to Lost in Translation is well enough worthy of merit in itself, I do feel like this film shows Sofia as having matured as a director - from simply being hugely influenced by filmmakers who likewise indulge in banality, such as the likes of Wong Kar-wai and Edward Yang, to having her own clear, distinct form to her method. Her understated quietness is filled with so much poignancy that I hoped it would never get any louder, and of course it didn't - otherwise this wouldn't be a film where "nothing happens". 9/10

[Vindictus]

Jessica Jones wasn't as good as Daredevil.

[beardo]

It wasn't.

[garygreen]

I finished The Man in the High Castle last night.  I disliked nearly everything about the production and direction of this series.  The only thing I liked about it was thinking about all of the interesting notions and topics that come from the premise, but this series decided to explore exactly none of that and try to be a spy thriller instead.  That's all well and good, but it totally failed for me in that genre, too.  The fun thing about watching a good spy drama is unfolding the underlying, obfuscated narrative with the protagonist; but, this narrative unfolds in such an uninteresting, dry, and sloppy manner that I had a hard time making it through.

Just one example: they make a big deal in the first episode about how Juliana is an akido expert who can defeat/disable a man twice her size.  Like, it's this whole big scene of her whooping this dude's ass and throwing him around like a rag-doll.  For the rest of the show, there's only one scene where it's even remotely arguable that she uses this skill to save herself, and even then it only happens because another character shows up to help her (who magically shows up at just the right moment to foil the arch character! again!).  But, there are plenty of scenes where using that skill would have helped her escape the jam she's in, but instead another character coincidentally shows up at just the right time and place to save the day/advance the plot/render a bunch of scenes you've already watched irrelevant.

[Snupes]

Just watched the first episode of A Young Doctor's Notebook and Other Stories.

Decided to check this out on a whim, and I can’t say I regret it in the slightest. Jon Hamm and Daniel Radcliffe do a great job in their respective roles. Radcliffe plays a brilliant but inexperienced and naïve young doctor freshly-graduated from Moscow, while Hamm plays the older, wiser version of him. The episode focuses on the young doctor’s first operation in a hospital he’s been put in charge of running, while Hamm reflects on the experience via a journal his younger self kept. Amusingly, the two interact, as Hamm “talks” to his younger self and relives the experience and things he didn’t know.

The show has a very dry sense of humour, and a very dark one as well, which is much to its advantage as it deals with very dark subject matter. Despite having the tone of an hour-long show, it’s only 20 minutes, and probably all the better for it. No need for all the ramblings and confusing arcs of a show like CSI or House M.D., just a simple procedure injected with stark dealings with the subject matter and surprising splotches of levity.

If the rest of the show can keep up this tone, I’m super excited.

[Snupes]

Alright, finished season one of A Young Doctor's Notebook and Other Stories. I feel like this season should’ve been four episodes longer.

That doesn’t mean the season isn’t good—far from it!—but it certainly feels unexplored. Its large themes and character development don't lead themselves well to four short episodes.

It’s a gripping, visceral drama with slight surrealist tendencies and a very dark, very bleak sense of humour. It’s funny that I was watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt just before this (not a fan), given that that show is painfully optimistic and cheery. To go from a bright, vivid, glass half full New York to the stark, barren hopelessness of Muryevo is quite a jarring transition.

The highlights of this show are definitely Jon Hamm and Daniel Radcliffe. Admittedly, I’d hoped to see more dealing with patients and diseases in a medically non-advanced hospital in 1917 Russia, but the show largely eschews that set-up in favour of showcasing Hamm and Radcliffe’s respective versions of the doctor in their respective periods of life. It’s a tragic tale to follow, and it’s easy to get sucked into young doctor’s pessimism and cynicism. In fact, I haven’t quite gotten out of it! It’s hard to see a happy ending for anyone in this show, and I won’t spoil anything, but the show’s not over yet. There’s still another season for things to turn around, I suppose.

Not that the cynicism and hopelessness is a bad thing. In fact, the show pulls it off quite well and does a marvelous job at making you feel it. The barren and unsaturated cinematography conveys the atmosphere of the show well, and makes those brief moments of respite all the more comforting and helps you feel why the doctor makes some of the decisions he does.

I highly recommend this to anyone who likes dark dramas. Don’t go in expecting a grittier version of House M.D.; this show is not about the medical procedures. They just happen to be a part of the doctor’s story, and are sprinkled briefly throughout the four 20-minute episodes. The show is very much primarily about the doctor and his struggle with himself, both future and past depending on whose side you view it from.

All-in-all, great show, great season. Has some room for improvement (namely in how unnecessary some scenes feel. The show could’ve gone with 10-15 minute episodes), but is overall a very good unhappy experience.

[Ghost Spaghetti]

Sounds good.

I just finished my Stargate binge with Stargate Universe

I gave up watching this about half-way through the first season when it first aired, and unlike SGA, I'm not entirely sure that was such a bad decision, but I am glad that I took the time to watch it years later.

Perhaps the best thing that can be said for SGU is that it was ambitious. The previous two Stargate series had laid down a comfortable formula which would have been very easy to follow - a light-hearted Sci-Fi Adventure series with some amusing characters and cool battle scenes about saving humanity from a Big Bad. It would have been so easy for SGU to follow this well-trodden path, instead they decided to do a darker, more character driven series with no main antagonist. The problem was that it didn't really pay off, at least at first.

By 'darker', the writers apparently decided that meant that everyone must brood. Episode after episode go by with the whole crew moping around, tearing each other apart with petty arguments and generally being depressing. Exploring the far-reaches of the universe with an inexperienced crew and an alien ship they don't understand could have been really fun. Instead, most of the first season is a plodding, depressing affair where the viewer ends up wishing for the deaths of characters just so the rest can get on with things.

Then there's the direction. Whoever decided that all the cameramen must film everything as though drunk on a ship in a storm needs to be dropped off a ship in a storm. The shaky steadicam footage actually gave me motion sickness at times and the jerky, quickly-swapping close-ups sometimes made following the action difficult.

By the second season, they must have heard some of these criticisms and started making great strides to rectify them. the crew started cracking jokes, playing pranks on one another, talking about things other than how quickly they reckoned they were going to die. God, they actually smiled from time to time.

The second season brought up some interesting ideas to be explored; the fingerprints of a Creator, the starfaring human civilisation spawned from time-travelling crewmen, the consciousnesses stored on the ship's computer. By the end of season 2, it felt like the series was finally hitting its stride and becoming comfortable in its shoes, but by that point the damage was done, the ratings had dropped too low, and the damage of reviews was too great for it to go on.

I'd rate it as 5/10, moving up to 7/10 by the end of S2

[Snupes]

Watching Aziz Ansari's Netflix sitcom Master of None. Watched the first episode weeks ago and thought it was pretty good. A few laughs, but dragged a little. Watched episode two a day or so later and it was horrific. Horrid acting, horrid comedy, incredibly forced and shoddy writing. Just eugh. Decided to stop. Took a detour to try to find some comedy show I would like, but Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt failed to make me laugh.

So picked up on episode three of Master of None today on a whim and damn, it was great. I got a good amount of actual laughs out of it. It reminds me a little of Louie, just because it's harshly real and not all romanticized like most sitcoms, but it's not too similar otherwise. So, yeah, gonna be checking out the rest of this over time.