What-cha-what-cha-what-cha Watched?

[Tellenbach]

Jessica Jones, season 1. X-Files handled this theme much better but I did enjoy the series.

Tennant is just too likable to play the villain; they should have cast someone who looks menacing like Buscemi.

 

[Lark]

Jessica Jones, season 1. X-Files handled this theme much better but I did enjoy the series.

Tennant is just too likable to play the villain; they should have cast someone who looks menacing like Buscemi.

I agree with you about the casting in that show, he does become truly hateful as an adversary and I was glad they finished it how they did (also that it has a lasting legacy for the character in question) but I also thought it was unconvincing, while its a pretty specific power that guy has he seemed to be about as powerful as Thanos at one point. Totally unstoppable. At least to anyone with a conscience and anything at all to lose.

I liked the show but I wouldnt have thought it was your cup of tea Tellenbach, what did you think of Iron Fist? I liked it too, even the disappointing final season.

 

[Tellenbach]

I liked the show but I wouldnt have thought it was your cup of tea Tellenbach, what did you think of Iron Fist?

I don't have Netflix so I haven't seen it; I only watched Jessica Jones because Walmart was selling the DVD for $10.

 

[Lark]

I don't have Netflix so I haven't seen it; I only watched Jessica Jones because Walmart was selling the DVD for $10.

Oh, I see, well, I dont know when it will get a physical copy release but when it does I recommend Good Omens, its on Amazon Prime at the moment, its a great book too BTW.

 

[Tina&Jane]

Waiting for the Handmaid's Tale to come back

 

[Cellmold]

 

[Lark]

I am watching this show about Americans called Good Girls and its ironic because its three bad bitches.

Bad in terms of wicked bad aswell as badasses, they do robberies and are friendly with money launderers and stuff.

I think its class. Its one of a bunch of shows that clearly have the message that Americans are a bunch of crooks. Capitalism is basically the crook ideology.

 

[Zhaylin]

I just watched, perhaps, the worst story ever.
And yet, the line: "“I am full of ordinary sounding words. But when I say them, and you are there to hear them, all is well with everything.” " Makes perfect sense to me

 

[Tellenbach]

An Interview with God. I think I enjoyed this more than Endgame.

 

[Population: 1]

Just wrapped up Blake’s 7.

Overall I really enjoyed the show. Having watched a huge amount of Tom Baker era Dr. Who as a kid I could get past the cheesy music and special effects. Underneath a shoestring budget is a show about complex characters with tremendous flaws struggling to survive in a dystopian galactic empire. Or in the case of Blake, struggling to overthrow it. Blake, Vila (absolutely love Vila, the cowardly but brilliant master thief), and of course Avon are the characters that really move the show. It’s unfortunate that interesting characters like Jenna and Cally (smuggler and telepathic freedom fighter respectively) end up being sidelined as teleport operator and victim of the alien of the week (also in that order).

Blake’s actor leaving at the end of season 2 obviously throws the show into an identity crisis but Avon and Vila are such interesting characters, especially when playing off one another (the episode where there’s a weight limit problem on a shuttle and Avon begins to hunt Vila to lighten the load is quite chilling actually).

The finale was absolutely tragic as Blake and Avon’s paranoia (understandable after being ruthlessly hunted by the federation and Servalan in particular) led to a fatal misunderstanding in a chaotic situation.

In the end it was modern in it’s approach to morality and character depth. I’m glad I finally sat down to watch a show that heavily influenced Farscape. Now when I watch that show (particularly seasons 2-4) I can see Blake’s 7’s charm interwoven into the Peacekeepers and the crew of Moya and the Farscape universe in general.

 

[Totenkindly]

So I saw a stream of "Dark Phoenix" last night, just for the hell of it.

Yeah, pretty much underwhelming and inconsequential. It's not the worst superhero movie I have seen, it's just utterly pointless. I'm still torn on whether it or "X-Men: Apocalypse" was more boring to view.

Fox just never really grasped what to do with the X-Men. They couldn't get a consistent cast, and then they never really grasped how to make the characters people rather than just collections of powers. (And often, they didn't even figure out how to make use of said powers interesting, if they were going that route. There were actually a few interesting applications in DP in the latter half of the film.)

It is just bland and toothless and trivial. I'm not sure how you fuck up the story of Jean Grey, it's all mapped out in the comic. If they had simply done the Zack Snyder thing and used the comic book as the script and frame, that would have still been preferable to this.

Their casting is not great either. I mean, they hire good actors but they don't really seem to fit with the established properties (well, except for Cyclops, which is hilarious -- because the biggest complaint about him in the comic too is that he's just another bland white guy with insecurities and kind of uninteresting... so I guess they nailed that). One of my biggest annoyances is how they shoved Jennifer Lawrence into the Mystique role and made her a good guy, she's nothing like the original Mystique; she became so uninteresting. They also hired Sophie Turner to play Jean Grey, although her personality is nothing like Jean... she basically got this job because she's got red hair and she was in GoT. (She's not a bad actress, but she needs to be cast right.)

Oh, and hell, let's toss in Jessica Chastain. She's another great actress who you should be writing a part for, not just making her a generic baddy with a role it sounds like she's improvising everything for as she goes.

This story is underwhelming. I think only Michael Fassbender gets by with a pass because he's simply good regardless, but the Magento role is half a muddled mess here.

Overall problem? Besides never really knowing how to establish the characters and make us care about them, they didn't want to put in the time to do real story-building like MCU has done with their 20-movie arc. Think about it. The Dark Phoenix story is one that took about 35 issues of X-Men (three years) or more to resolve.

Jean was someone the readers loved. She was an original X-Man. She dies through a sacrifice to save her comrades ... and rises again in the midst of grief, with newfound powers that seem cool. Everything is good. The X-Men are successful for a time after, with Jean still around. After fixing the M'Kraan crystal, she puts limits on her own power to keep herself restrained safely.

At least until Mastermind starts mucking around with her (under his Jason Wyngarde persona)... creating illusions that encourage her to throw away restraint, as part of his ploy of becoming a power player in the Hellfire Club. So he basically weakens Jean's self-restraint over time and she takes on the persona of the Hellfire's Black Queen. But when Wyngarde kills Scott in a psychic duel, it shocks Jean back while also shattering all the barriers she had imposed around herself and now the genie can't go back in the bottle. She succumbs to her dark side. She casts Mastermind's psyche out into the face of eternity (which almost drives him insane), blasts the X-Men, and flees earth.

But this drains her and she ends up devouring a star... which unfortunately also had at least one inhabited planet orbiting it ("billions of asparagus people scream as one," har har) and she doesn't care even if it registers. She destroys a nearby Shi'ar vessel as well, that tries to intervene, before heading home. She tries to rediscover her humanity (she's torn between her humanity and this godlike power that she wields), but her parents turn her away and the X-Men end up fighting her in order to keep her from spinning out of control... they barely win, only because Jean helps Charles defeat her, allowing him to put up psychic barriers between herself and her Phoenix power, so that she only now has access to her original powers. So... problem solved? Maybe things will be okay?

But no. I mean, like it or not, she murdered a whole planet, casually. So the Shi'ar empire shows up to execute her, because she's a threat. (I mean, this is totally what should happen. She's a grave danger.)

Xavier and Lilandra are old lovers apparently, and he knows Shi'ar law -- so he manages to pull it in to a spin on GoT's "trial by combat" -- the X-Men take on the Imperial Guard, and if they win, Jean will go free. (It remained to be seen whether that would have actually happened, honestly... I don't care what the law says, if you have a threat to the cosmos, you don't let a law on the books result in the downfall of all life everywhere.)

Well, the X-Men don't win, the Imperial Guard manages to separate them and soon enough kicks their asses until Jean and Scott are the only two left. Scott is knocked out. Jean loses it and completely blows through the psychic barriers Charles put in her mind, and she's Phoenix again, taking out the Guard.

She realizes she can never get away from this power and that it will slowly subvert her, and she could be responsible for the deaths of billions more... so she kills herself giving a tearful farewell to Scott.

That was Jean. Moral, passionate, vibrant, empathetic.

I mean, Marvel mucked up the Jean Grey story because it could never leave well enough alone, but the original arc was great, which is why Fox has tried to do it twice. However, it never wanted to do it right. It simply wanted to cash in on the emotional payoff without doing any of the character building necessary to make it spectacular. And now instead of some big epic tale involving a force that could destroy the cosmos, the story remains very tiny despite it... being... a ...force... that could destroy... the ... cosmos? It's not clear, because we never really see the force get that big.

It's just kind of amazing that you could take something with great source material and make it so boring, bland, and tiny.

 

[1487610420]

started Good Omens, looks satirically delish

 

[Lark]

started Good Omens, looks satirically delish

Its a great book, much better than the show but the show was alright.

 

[1487610420]

Its a great book, much better than the show but the show was alright.

books are inanimate

 

[Lark]

I cant get this movie out of my head, I think its an australian movie, its centred on a restaurant or pizza delivery firm and they tell the same or broadly similar story from four different perspectives, they over lap is what I mean, so you might see someone riding a bike in one scene and its in the background but in another scene the camera is centred on them and you see someone in the background stuck in a dumpster.

I think there's a sequence in which a guy takes a delivery for another female worker because he thinks that they are being forced to make deliveries to a guy who some old perve who never leaves the house but as it turns out they have been choosing to make the delivery there because he always orders two pizzas or something like that and they always give them one of them to eat.

So I am trying to figure that one out.

And I'm watching this odd old movie called good burger which has awful special effects and which might be racist, I'm not sure.

 

[Tellenbach]

Mary Poppins Returns. She really is practically perfect in every way.

 

[Hermit of the Forest]

Mary Poppins Returns. She really is practically perfect in every way.

I almost cried when Dick Van Dyke came on the scene and started dancing.

 

[Tellenbach]

^Yeah, but that wasn't the only surprise.

Angela Lansbury is still alive! and she even sang a song.

 

[Hermit of the Forest]

^Yeah, but that wasn't the only surprise.

Angela Lansbury is still alive! and she even sang a song.

Yes, absolutely! I love her (and balloons)! She was fantastic.

 

[Lexicon]

In recent months:
Caught up on Channel Zero. SyFy network is doing something right, still.

Watched all of Deadwood, including the new finale film. Never saw the series before this. Glad I gave it a chance. Far exceeded my expectations. Such a strong cast, good writing. Doesn’t matter that it was a Western, of sorts.

Mindhunter on Netflix. Rewatched. Guy who plays Ed Kemper deserves an award. Impeccable.