2025 Rolling Streaming Media Thread

movies, television, cable, games, videos, podcasts, music, ANYTHING streaming on ANY streaming platform.

i just want to know what people are seeing/watching/hearing and what they think. and i want to go to one place. in a casual way. so sue me!

but no DVDs or movies you see when you go to THE CINEMA. that way the SERIOUS film people can have their own fun. there is a film sub-baord. make it a thing again!

if you think something should have its own thread, start one! its a free countr....oh wait. if enough people love it or hate it they can talk about it there.

and there you have it.

i just wish i had remembered that the Roku Sports channel was showing the X Games all weekend. I love the X Games! oh well. i'll watch the reruns.

also, Go Eagles.

okay, i'm going back to Chopped. the one chef who had cooked for Kissinger and Lucian Freud had one whole finger of her glove filled with blood and she was still cooking. Ewwwww!

I watched the four episodes of The Pitt that are currently available on Max and they were OK, but I don't know if I'm gonna remember to watch the next one when it pops up on Thursday. ER + 24 = not as genius an idea as its creators thought.

I actually think The Pitt is getting richer as it goes - which is not what my expectation was. There were definitely moments in the first couple episodes that felt like clumsy track-laying (eg, when will the victims of the school shooting show up?). But now onto episode 4 I’m getting more comfortable with the characters and I think Noah Wylie is really holding it down.

Noah Wyle should have kept going with The Librarians

I watched a couple of the documentary shorts that were nominated for Oscars. Two that I watched by coincidence made a *perfect* double feature and a highly recommend watching them back to back in this order:

First, THE ONLY GIRL IN THE ORCHESTRA, on Netflix - about the first woman to play in the NY Philharmonic starting back in the 60s, on the occasion of her retirement after 50+ years. She is so humble and knows her role as a bassist in the orchestra.

Its made all the more compelling if you then switch over to YouTube to watch INSTRUMENTS OF A BEATING HEART, about a second grader in a Tokyo school who *desperately* wants to be in her school band as a percussionist. She is so adorable and the doc is very compelling, especially for something as mundane as small children doing a school assembly performance.

Watching both docs takes less than an hour and they both make the other richer and more inspiring. A real highlight of my day.

thought about watching Gladiator 2 on Paramount+ but then i make the mistake of watching the whole trailer and it all just looks so phony baloney with the cgi and everyone's face is all digitally smoothed and colored...bleh. i kept thinking that one guy was harry pooper. the young guy. i have no idea who he is. he looks like harry pooper. the only people i even recognize are denzel and the mandalorian. i had no idea who pedro pascal was until he was seemingly everywhere and world famous. i guess after mandalorian. i didn't even know he was in game of thrones until the other day. i didn't watch narcos. maybe he got famous from that. he must have switched agents at some point because he was in stuff for years and years before narcos.

He got famous for the Last of Us.

really? that seems so recent. i thought it was star wars people who made him famous. i did not love the last of us. it did make me watch the walking dead again though. with maria and cyrus. that was fun. until negan shows up then i stopped.

Will def watch that Japanese short, thanks.

I liked Chopped best when I used to watch it at the gym with the sound off, much more relaxing without their dumb music cues.

Pascal was def famous before The Last of Us. I first heard of him when he was on The Mandalorian -- never saw it bc I don't care about Star Wars, but it seemed like a big deal at the time. But he was also on Game of Thrones before that.

Which you already said! (I was skimming too fast.)

Pascal attracted attention for being on Game of Thrones, then he was on Narcos on Netflix. Then the Star Wars thing was sold as "starring that guy from Game of Thrones and Narcos!" And by The Last of Us, people knew his name.

Watched Alien Romulus. It’s well-made but doesn’t really add anything new to the franchise. Just feels like a rehash.

he's not young. his credits start in 1999. talk about working it. good for him. he seems nice. not that exciting to me but a lot of leading men now seem generic to me. hollywood leading men. maybe its easier to CGI someone if they have a really normal face. at least he has an interesting backstory what with his family being a part of the Castilian-Basque aristocracy in Chile. and then...tragedy struck...

"Two years before Pascal's birth, the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende was overthrown by General Augusto Pinochet, leading to the country becoming a military dictatorship.[12] Both of Pascal's parents were listed as enemies of the state by the Pinochet regime and the family eventually fled Chile when he was nine months old,[12] after seeking refuge in the Venezuelan embassy in Santiago for six months."

x-post

I haven't watched Romulus. I'd probably like it. I don't care if its a lesser Alien movie. They all kinda are after the first three. Phil Tippett, the director of one of the greatest American movies of the 21st century, Mad God, did the stop motion rat in Alien: Romulus. HOW WAS THE RAT, PGWP?

The rat was nice.

It’s definitely not a disappointing movie - it’s exciting and tense and all that. You’ll like it if you like Alien movies.

I watched about half of Romulus and I don't even remember a rat. Maybe it showed up later.

i should watch it. i still haven't watched furiosa for some reason. now that its on netflix.

i would see some of these at the movies but the guy who bought the local theater is trumpy. its unfortunate. its good that someone took on the old heap of a movie house but on the other hand... i don't want to go there. they showed 2000 Mules there.

Pascal's real starmaking turn was being in a viral gif with Nic Cage IIRC

all of a sudden everyone knew his name. it seemed like it anyway. like olde-tyme hollywood. he probably got invited to a lot of swanky parties. does he have to hang out with george clooney now at Lake Como. with matt damon.

i'm watching american football right now and i like the ad where doja cat lurks around a taco bell.

i still haven't watched furiosa for some reason.

Very, verrrrry skippable. (But I am the only person on earth who hated Fury Road, so.)

oh i liked fury road. i like movies that never stop moving. that have forward motion.

i know its easy to make fun of tom brady but he is such a nothing broadcaster. he's no tony romo! he's so meepy.

Romulus is EXTREMELY disappointing; it’s a load of crap.

post malone/shane gillis beer ad is a big noooooooo. i never want to see shane gillis's grinning head.

but by what standard, james? is it even good as pulpy horror fun? cuz i'm fine with that.

my standards aren't very high anymore. but i do stop watching stuff a lot if it looks too dumb. it has to be pretty dumb or just low-budget filler that is boring. there is a lot of it out there. i want to watch good stuff.

i'm still watching the Eagles win but i'm also watching amy sedaris on david letterman. man, you don't see the likes of her anymore. unless its her. she would go full weird on national t.v. i'm also watching tom green on all the late night shows a long time ago. crazy. amy can make me laugh hard! not too many people can anymore. don rickles. her. some others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEIshHZXVoQ

I liked Furiosa better than Fury Road, it's 25% less '90s music video.

Furiosa is good - it's not as good as Fury Road, but then nothing is. But it does recognise that funny dumb Chris Hemsworth is the best Chris Hemsworth.

I’m on my little kick of watching things that were nominated (after watching almost no movies all year), and starting with the movies that are free to stream. Therefore I’m getting in those films nominated for best visual effects (Alien) and now costumes—Gladiator II, since most of the prestige films haven’t hit streaming yet.

I don’t think I ever saw the first Gladiator so I dont have the baggage of comparison. Nevertheless I had low expectations for the sequel but it was better than I expected it to be. I doubt I’ll think about it much but it was a nice way to spend an afternoon.

Romulus is not good fun, it's mostly incredibly awkward callbacks to better scenes from the earlier movies. It really is terrible, and in a really small, scuzzy way, not even terrible and preposterous on a grand stage like the two idiotic Scott Prometheus movies.

gotcha.

Many xps Pascal was a known actor before LoU, but after he became a subject of celebrity media, which is a different thing.

fun thing about Pascal is his friendship with Sarah Paulson, it's really sweet.

what are the good recentish spy shows other than slow horses? i finished binging it and wanted to continue in that vein. tried day of the jackal but it feels very slow and cheesy.

I think people are split here on The Agency? or maybe its just me who got bored of it. I really liked the first episodes and then it just dragged for me. didn't love the characters that didn't help.

I liked the first season of the Night Agent on Netflix. I've canceled my subscription but there's a second season now.

i liked that first season of The Night Agent on Netflix even though the lead guy is kind of a generic dud. it was still entertaining spy stuff. more action-y though. maybe more Tom Clancy territory.

great minds...uh...think alike! haha!

what are the good recentish spy shows other than slow horses?

I enjoyed Mr. and Mrs. Smith. And just started Black Doves, which seems promising.

i saw that the Recruit has a new season starting on Netflix and i can't remember if i even watched the first one. i probably did. and forgot all about it.

i want to go back and watch old stuff. MI-5 and the like. loads of stuff i've never seen.

Berlin Station looks kinda cool but i think its one of those odd ones that isn't streaming on the stuff i have. mgm+ or apple+ or something.

Xpost recent spy shows. Black Doves was good. However if you missed The Americans, highly recommended to see that instead

The Diplomat is sort of a spy show. That one is good.

I thought The Agency was skillfully made, but every now and then I remembered it was about the US trying to maintain control over the world, which was a bummer. I wonder if I'd like the French original better.

thanks all. maybe i'll give black doves a shot. or maybe i'll rewatch the greatest spy tv show of all time (patriot)

I liked The Agency a lot though I can see why some might find it boring. Less gunfights and explosives than most spy shows. But I thought it was excellent.

Patriot is a brilliant unconventional spy show.

Alias is a show about a... spy

Danger Mouse

The Pitt is legit :D
I watched ep 1 tonight and was glued to my seat! Love it. also grizzled Noah Wylie is hot af. holy shit was not prepared

I loved The Agency!
there’s a lot that plays out over many episodes so it’s a slow burn type of thing but when in life do you get GERE and WRIGHT and FASSBENDER doing their thing together. It’s fkn great!
But i knew right away i was onboard for it so if yr struggling to be interested it might not be yr bag

Watched the first episode of Paradise tonight. It's an NBC series (streaming on Hulu) starring Sterling K. Brown as a Secret Service agent; I'd basically describe it as 24 meets Under The Dome. (There's been an unspecified catastrophe and everybody still alive in America lives in a fake city inside a mountain in Colorado.)

I'm becoming a full movies illegally uploaded to Youtube kind of guy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpvAdeAv8KI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNNsahI49IE

If you can handle four hours of Quentin Tarantino talking about movies in the public domain/available on YouTube, it's actually a pretty good list of movies to check out:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/public-domain-movies-with-quentin-tarantino/id1204885502?i=1000527497044

as someone reminded me on the youtube thread, 1929 movies are public domain and this Classic Film Library channel on YT has a ton of obscure titles:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2T88am-BoA

A friend set up a watch party during lockdown, every Friday (now every first Friday) we WhatsApp and watch a film on YouTube - there's a list here - you should be able to get all of them still? Probably?
https://letterboxd.com/charmingpotato/tag/plague-film-club/films/

Presence on the list is very extremely not necessarily a recommendation, though if you haven't, it's worth seeing The Anderson Tapes inventing the 70s (and the nimbus around Christopher Walken even in his first feature film)

A friend set up a watch party during lockdown, every Friday (now every first Friday) we WhatsApp and watch a film on YouTube -

I did with this friends, too. We chatted over Slack. It lasted a few years but is basically done now (although we revived it to watch horror movies in October). Here's our list:

https://letterboxd.com/jaymc/tag/wmt/diary/

It was a great way to watch a lot of dumb-fun movies I'd never seen. If it was too serious and slowly paced, it killed the conversation. But movies with crazy visuals, fun needle drops, period fashion, chases and explosions, etc., were perfect.

haha, i wrote this on Facebook in 2022. i stand by it pretty much.

The 5 most popular themes in American entertainment today.

1) I am tired of being "good" and I am going to be "bad". I am the audience surrogate.
2) I am bored and/or disgusted with my job and/or my relationships. I will steal or kill. I am the audience surrogate.
3) I have been traumatized. I will kill. I am the audience surrogate.
4) I am mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. I might need to kill. I am the audience surrogate.
5) I used to kill. I think I could probably remember how to kill again. I am the audience surrogate.

David Cronenberg's daughter, Caitlin, has a new movie up on Hulu called Humane. I might watch it. That's my kind of nepo baby. It's about the end of the world but it looks like its mostly confined to one house where people turn on each other. Which makes it less tempting, but maybe its good. Peter Gallagher. Jay Baruchel. ubiquitous television actor Enrico Colantoni.

i can't stop watching Chopped though...i'm so pitiful. it's my cold weather comfort food. what can i say? the format of that show was MADE for my brain.

i'm definitely going to watch Cuckoo tonight on Hulu. that movie looks awesome.

i loved cuckoo but a lot of ppl were split on it. i kinda think it's like no other movie i've ever seem. same goes for the director's previous film luz

Humane was kind of a horror-thriller, the other Cronenberg nepo baby's Possessor was more interesting (but also more directly "I learned it from watching you, dad").

I liked Possessor but the Cronenberg son’s first movie Antiviral suuuuucked. I think I lasted half an hour.

how was his last one? With it's infamous pool semen shot or whatever?

I finally watched the last Cronenberg and I enjoyed it but it did feel a bit like self-parody. Just so totally on the nose with all the very blatant Cronenberg schtick.

Best recent Cronenberg was his acting turn as an evil patriarch in one of the Slasher seasons.

I've now watched two episodes of Paradise on Hulu and if you are looking for a show that's deeply convinced of its own intelligence and seriousness while actually being pure boneheaded, goofy bullshit, oh man, get in here.

I enjoyed Cuckoo. Pretty crazy. That young actress was cool. Her reactions to things were cool. She was really trying to create a character. I liked her song too! I thought it was kinda crazy that the movie ends with a song from the Straight To Hell soundtrack. "Money, Guns, And Coffee" by Pray For Rain. I always liked that song on that soundtrack. How many movies end with an original track from another soundtrack? I would have to ask Quentin Tarantino.

i was trying to think of who the actress in Cuckoo reminded me of and this is when it pays to have a best friend from high school who thinks like you and who has one of the best horror movie websites on the internet. it was anne carlisle! from liquid sky. that's who she reminded me of. Cuckoo one of those movies where i liked it and didn't care that the plot made no sense to me. it didn't matter.

I watched The Juggler on TCM. A 1953 movie starring Kirk Douglas as a tortured Jewish Holocaust survivor who becomes a refugee in Israel. It's a nightmare! Produced by Stanley Kramer. Directed by Edward Dmytryk. Music by George Antheil. The first American movie ever made in Israel. It's pretty scary. It's Kirk's The Day the Clown Cried. It's weird and fascinating.

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/B81DJJ/the-juggler-year-1953-usa-kirk-douglas-director-edward-dmytryk-B81DJJ.jpg

noticed a couple of series on Amazon I'm pretty sure won't be good but make me curious, adaptations of Len Deighton's SS-GB and China Mieville's The City and The City

Two happy side-effects of watching *The Pitt*
1) now rewatching ER season 1. I watched it here & there when it was on & knew the characters but i never fully locked in on all the storylines so this one is kinda fun to go back to
2) I now am fully crushing on Noah Wyle. Never cared for him as a puppydog in ER or much else, but now he’s grown? DAMN :D

i love & admire ppl who are cool cucumbers in crisis (bcz i am NOT that)- my brother in law was a paramedic & later a captain in the fire department, and a lot of our family friends are higher ups in that EMT/Fire world as a result -
ppl in that world are often a bit broken somewhere inside but hand to god there’s nothing better in the world when you are In The Shit & they just calmly & quickly lock eyes w you and walk you thru what’s gonna happen & just shepherd you through the worst day of yr life
it’s a superpower & Grown Noah Wyle captures it beautifilly

The Librarians wasn't your kinda thing? Seems like it might have been.

i keep wanting to watch Supernatural for some dumb reason. there are like 50 seasons i think.

i forgot about Falling Skies! Noah's apocalypse show. can't remember if i ever finished it. it was okay.

i never watched The Librarians, it didnt grab me i guess?

yeah same here. but i know some people like it. or i guess it was movies first before it was a show. i could never tell if they were for little kids or not. but then i forgot about them.

Interesting thing about The Pitt - I keep hearing people in the medical industry say it’s one of the most realistic depictions they’ve seen. As an anecdotal background - an acquaintance of mine was a longtime actor/musician (he was the drummer of Rooney and has had small parts in shows and movies mostly in the 00s). He stopped those pursuits 5 or 6 years ago and became a full time EMT and then a nurse. So I’m watching The Pitt and… there he is, playing a nurse! So far he’s had one or two lines in every episode but because of the structure of the show, he is in every episode. But it definitely reinforces the authenticity angle!

oh wow that’s cool

yeah i listen to the Ringer’s Prestige TV podcast & they had an email from a listener who was an EMT doctor who said they never watch medical shows but that they watched The Pitt & said it made them cry & they were surprised by all the small details they got right - that was what made me think abt checking it out

My daughter has been taking nursing classes in advance of going to college for a nursing degree. We watched a few episodes together, she digs it but says it's reminding her of the times she has spent in hospitals, working and shadowing.

At the other end of the spectrum, I'm watching a bit of that Fire Aid broadcast right now. It's like one long giant epic super bowl halftime performance.

Like, they just had Anderson Paak and Sheila E backing Dr. Dre.

And now Joni Mitchell.

I just turned it on and watched a very off key Stephen Stills followed by an off key Graham Nash. Now a mostly insufferable Pink.

It all has the feeling of some of the worst Grammy broadcasts that just indulge every bluesy jam rock whim.

Rod Stewart! :D

idk i’m digging it mostly

i’m an easy mark for stuff like this

well.. until John Mayer
barf

First episode of Paradise was pretty enjoyable.

Certainly intriguing but no idea if it'll deliver on the set up

everyone on Chopped says that people think "out of the box" instead of "outside of the box" and i wonder if this is why i hear this in other places on t.v. now. Chopped changed the phrase! okay it might have just been societal osmosis.

"It's like one long giant epic super bowl halftime performance."

i watched a nirvana thing that was bad because all the singers were terrible but then i felt bad because it dawned on me that they were probably all from LA and it was just a nice thing to do even if it meant singing good songs badly. well, the first three. i didn't watch dave grohl's daughter sing. and no offense to joan jett who is quite obviously joan jett and it was kinda cool to see the producer of the Germs album singing with one of the Germs.

they did the same set 11 years ago because all the singers are from Cleveland

especially Lorde, who was replaced by Grohl's daughter yesterday

St. Vincent makes a pretty decent Kurt replacement IMO.

yeah! i would love to hear her do a full set w the band

otm it would be the best way to keep these 3 busy

my friend lance from kindertrauma dot com told me i really need to see Smile 2. who knew!? i didn't see the first one. but he really loves the sequel and i trust his judgement. creepy smiles do creep me out. that's why i didn't watch the first one.

his reviews of recent horror films are always interesting, I like getting the perspective of someone who loves older horror on current releases

its fun when he writes about old movies that we saw at the movies in the 80s or that we watched on VHS together. we saw so many movies later in philly in the late 80s and 90s too after i moved there from where we grew up. he says he still goes to the movies once a week in philly.

this is his year-end list:

https://www.kindertrauma.com/unks-year-of-horror-2024/

I seem to recall the first season of Night Agent was kinda dumb but still enjoyable. Two eps into the new season it’s definitely dumb but so far not very enjoyable.

smile 2 is great!!!!

Longlegs is on Prime at the moment. Didn't love it, though some stuff on the post-2005 horror thread is making me reconsider a few things. Loved the scene in the barn with the disinterring of the doll. Am going to be thinking about that for a while...

I liked the first half better, felt like it got worse the more it explained things.

Aye, agree with that. I didn't want a ramped-up ending either though. Not sure where it could have gone. Endings are *hard*.

i watched the movie Organ Trail and its really good if you like snowy movies. i do. its a violent movie. and now i'm watching the really snowy finnish crime show called Freezing Embrace. it's good so far. and really snowy.

this week all i have watched is first 5 eps of The Pitt and ER reruns

i could probably assist on a tracheotomy iirc

i’m watching a shit tonne of shetland. i don’t know what heroin they put in it because this is truly shit tv - people appear and disappear at the transactional requirements of the plot, you have repeated and identical back and forth segments to indicate that they have travelled by car, boat or plane (presumably all filmed at the same time) and scenes where each person takes a turn to explain what’s going on and their thought processes. and yet here i sit like an absolute outpatient, lapping it up. dreadful auld crap, god help me when i run out of series. might have to go up there and rack up a body count myself.

so sick of perez’s donkey jacket.

her mixed tartan shirt that makes my eyes hurt

i'd not watched it before the recent bbc1 showing (s10 i think) but itv3 are repeating them on saturday nights (5.3 and 5.4 yesterday).

both this and rebus (Drama repeats) both used the 'pencil rubbing on a pad' trick in the same weekend.

you could move on to Vera after Shetland and eventually be sick of Vera's hat.

inspector lewis and/or endeavor are where its at for me personally

both this and rebus (Drama repeats) both used the 'pencil rubbing on a pad' trick in the same weekend.

i've just set a season pass for Endeavour when i saw the pilot was showing

i don’t know what heroin they put in it

The good heroin. (Seen every season.) I do recommend VG's Lewis suggestion which I would do myself except I've already watched it all recently, so.

Endeavour is more like demerol (vs heroin)

people really like sabrina carpenter. she's like a pocket monster. is she 4 feet tall?

i support doechii winning things.

her dress is insane.

sabrina carpenter fever. best pop vocal album. over billie and all those other people.

beyonce. best country album. she finally did it, folks. she has surely done it. the queen of america.

Khruangbin on the grammys.

benson boone. he's a pistol.

holy toledo. Doechii....

i don't need a lot of teddy swims or shaboozey in my life. jesus, teddy swims. i don't think i'd heard him. he's like a nightmare country ceelo green. i think he had his phone number tattooed on his face so that he wouldn't forget it.

you need to see chappell roan right now! haha. she's cool.

aww, her cool hat fell off.

she read this really long thing about how labels should pay for health care for developing artists.

diana ross looks really cool.

Thanks for pointing out Kindertrauma upthread - his top 10 article was nice to read, I definitely share a lot of taste with him

I have discovered the joys of Taskmaster via Youtube

First Ep of The Pitt was v promising. Nice to see Noah Wyle again. ER always felt chaotic and loud. The Pitt seems more chill even if they have plenty of medical emergencies.

yeah def! i love that they opted for no music, it gives the heavy moments more weight

I watched Kill on Hulu. If you want an Indian Die Hard on a train that is very very violent then this is the movie for you. It's 140 minutes long and I would say 130 minutes of that is pure mayhem.

https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/lakshya-kill-movie-6685314a64c1b.jpg?crop=0.811xw:0.911xh;0.135xw,0.0889xh&resize=1200:*

Nice! I've been waiting for that to pop up on a streaming service. Will post my thoughts in the international action thread once I've watched.

Watched the first episode of PARADISE on Hulu. There is a moment when Sterling K Brown gives a whole monologue about how his wife loved James and the Giant Peach and I was like yup, this show was created by the guy who created THIS IS US. And then the awful cover of Phil Collins’ “Another Day in Paradise” plays over the final montage and I’m like YUP, THIS SHOW WAS CREATED BY THE GUY WHO CREATED THIS IS US.

Hilariously though, (spoiler) the show has a sci-fi twist at the end and is actually aspiring to have more in common with a LOST-like mystery box show than a family drama.

yeah i heard about this & it seems unhinged enough to check out

I wish it was more unhinged. They haven’t gotten too deep into the mystery of the show yet but there have been a couple of maudlin moments. I thought it was going to be more of a thriller.

I kinda feel like the message is (avoiding spoilers here) "even under the most extreme circumstances, people will still get up to their same bullshit."

Endeavor, at over two hours an episode, is a bit of an ordeal

and there are nearly 40 of them. what is this, zatoichi?

hmph

(imdb has them at 98 minutes, i guess it's the adverts that are padding them out)

Haven’t finished it yet but loving the second season of Mo. Hits differently after everything that’s been happening in Gaza in the past year and a half, but also just so good in general at capturing the absurdity/humour/tragedy of being an immigrant/refugee

Great show.

Warner Bros had started putting up a load of films on YouTube for free, including Michael Collins, Crossing Delaney and The Science of Sleep.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5hv69XiegDm6tQ&si=mzJ5LLCba7VjUBNq

Article about it here:

https://tedium.co/2025/02/05/warner-bros-youtube-full-movie-releases/

Has, not had: they still are

Delancey, stupid philistine autocorrect

speaking of which, don't forget about the joan micklin silver film festival on the criterion channel. all must-see flicks.

Yeah! Gonna watch Hester Street and Chilly Scenes of Winter, at least, since it's been so long I've forgotten most of them.

Got sucked into fake ER aka the Pitt on Max. Despite some extraordinarily cheesy lines it is compulsively watchable.

yeah i am completely obsessed with it

I haven't detected that much cheese yet, tbh!

yeah very little

(my thing is i say yeah alot ugh ugh ugh)

The Pitt is surprisingly compelling.

i started a thread

Let Me Show You My Reverse Tracheotomy: “The Pitt” on Max or HBO or whatevef

Finished Mo and man, those last two episodes were incredible.

still watching Chopped! season 14, baby! i watched a cool Chopped with this cool queer punk woman from atlanta and she was up against this snooty guy who was totally sure that he was winning and it was so sweet when she beat him. so i looked up her restaurant to see if it was still around - kinda fun to see what olde-tyme Chopped chefs are doing now - and she had died about four years after winning Chopped! it made me sad. i read all about her. she was beloved. a zillion people went to her funeral. she has a day named after her in Atlanta. Ria Pell.

also watching the occasional episode of Peep Show. i've never seen them all. how cutting edge am i?

might try watching more Shameless. the original. i would never watch that dumbass-looking american version. i feel like i've watched the first two episodes of Shameless a dozen times. 11 seasons! i had no idea it had been on that long. does it get horrible?

i just checked and i didn't know that the u.s. one was ALSO 11 seasons with the same 130+ episodes. did they match the original show for show? i just never wanted to see william macy play that part. they should have gotten someone like donal logue.

oooh the second season of Mo is up?!? hope he makes it back to Southwest Houston, love seeing my old neighborhood on TV

i love the Ko$ta of doing business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thkvxF5mdAg

this was funny too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk2FyT0rYss

I really enjoyed this! funny and inspirational even. but not in a stagey monologue way like on boring netflix specials where everyone thinks they are helen hayes. he's just funny and he has some good life lessons. nothing wrong with that. and he's a progressive white male southern comedian. we need about a thousand more of those if you ask me. i didn't laugh like crazy but he's always pretty amusing. for laugh out loud i would have to point out the season 1 episode 2 of shoresy that i watched last night. oh man. i had to watch it twice.
anyway, this special is better than any hulu or netflix special i've seen in a quite a while. SO MUCH better than that horrible nate bargatze special i couldn't finish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btRgY8Yn2zI

Because I mentioned the Critic on here yesterday, and because it came up again some time in the last month, I thought "I should see if I can stream them anywhere" (nope) then "I should see if someone's put them all on YouTube" (yep!). Jen had never seen them so I asked her to pick a number between 1 and 22. she picked 15, so on we went with - oh god! oh god! maybe some of the others have aged well, but I don't think I'll get Jen to check any time soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A8TQXrsKQs

Finished Mo and man, those last two episodes were incredible.

The woman who plays Mo's girlfriend played a very different character on Narcos: Mexico; when I realized it was the same person, my head swam a little.

starting season 2 I got confused because i watched Ramy inbtween season 1 of this and season 2 and had to remind myself he wasn't that character. Ramy has some great qualities and some frustrating ones, I think Mo's probably the better show in the end. Both pretty great though.

We just binged the entirety of Apple Cider Vinegar on netflix, because I have loved the trainwreck that was the Belle Gibson drama since before she was even exposed by the media. Really impressed by Kaitlyn Dever's Australian accent - it is REALLY rare for americans to get it right without sounding cartoonish, but she nailed it.

Loved spotting bits of my local shops. Most of the show was filmed in Melbourne.

Started watching Dexter and it's already getting worse in the second season? Thought it had at a few seasons before the decline kicked in.

The general consensus for Dexter is that the big dropoff happens after season 4, but that's largely because that season is a standout so people forget the major flaws in seasons 2/3. I don't really recommend the show to people anymore, despite having seen all the original run

a home cook competing on Chopped just said: "I'm passionate about showing my children the world through the eyes of food."

I know it was 2023(?) but I just watched Scavengers Reign and loved it. The plot was kinda tired, but I could have watched days of the planetary wildlife. I see it's not been renewed for S2.

My favorite part of food is the eyes.

I’m watching APPLE CIDER VINEGAR on Netflix with Kaitlyn Dever, about an alternative medicine scammer.

It’s watchable and Dever is good, but after so many other similar series (The Dropout comes to mind first, or in another way, Inventing Anna), it’s not really a different take. I guess it says something about recent society that so many tech- or social media-enabled scammers were able to rise to such dangerous levels of celebrity over the last 10 or 15 years.

20 years ago they just got promoted by Oprah until we could never get rid of them.

As I *ahem* already mentioned a few posts above yeah this one's based on a real story and doesnt deviate too far from what really happened - they in fact kind of merge 2 different stories. The one about Belle Gibson and her narcissist confabulation and book/app but they also slot in the story of the Dolly magazine editor Jess Ainscough who was known as the Wellness Warrior and was one of the earlier woo woo "food can cure cancer" fools who refused to get her arm amputated, lied and claimed diet cured her sarcoma, then... died of sarcoma.

Gibson STILL has not paid back a cent of the money she stole from the charity donations, nor any of the fines from the several court cases she's been dragged into, nor ever apologised.

In fact recently she was found pulling a bizarre Rachel Dolezal thing by pretending to be "adopted" by the Ethiopian Oromo community here in Melbourne, til they found out who she was and told her to fuck off.

Why she never got *jailed*, I have no idea.

Since Chinaski brought up Scavengers Reign, Common Side Effects is a new show by one of the creators with Mike Judge producing and voicing. Similarly wonky animation style, can't wait to watch it

I don't know why I hated Bosch: Legacy when I first saw it, but I did and I bailed after one episode. This week I went back to it because apparently the third and final season will premiere March 27, and the first season is... pretty good! Maddie as rookie cop is bland and tiresome, and Bosch's hipster techie assistant isn't great, but Bosch himself is still a bitter old asshole, and there are some fan-servicey cameo appearances from J. Edgar and Crate and Barrel. I'm definitely not watching the Super Bowl, so maybe I'll finish Season 1 tonight.

Made it through the first season but I bailed an episode or two into the second.

As I *ahem* already mentioned a few posts above yeah this one's based on a real story and doesnt deviate too far from what really happened - they in fact kind of merge 2 different stories. The one about Belle Gibson and her narcissist confabulation and book/app but they also slot in the story of the Dolly magazine editor Jess Ainscough who was known as the Wellness Warrior and was one of the earlier woo woo "food can cure cancer" fools who refused to get her arm amputated, lied and claimed diet cured her sarcoma, then... died of sarcoma.

Since Chinaski brought up Scavengers Reign, *Common Side Effects* is a new show by one of the creators with Mike Judge producing and voicing. Similarly wonky animation style, can't wait to watch it

LOL all good, sometimes I get paranoid people have killfiled me!

Step one to improving Paradise: no more terrible covers

Thanks for the heads up, vinnie!

i have enjoyed Copshop on Hulu. you guys didn't tell me about Copshop.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/COP_03009-H-2021.jpg

its way violent. i like whatshisface...from the computer show. halt and catch fire...the old guy.

That's on Hulu now? Nice. I had to pay to rent it on Amazon a couple of years ago. Frank Grillo is almost an automatic yes from me, which is too bad because he's been in some real pieces of shit. But Wheelman, Boss Level, Skyline, Donnybrook, Point Blank, Into the Ashes... all good.

Since Chinaski brought up Scavengers Reign, *Common Side Effects* is a new show by one of the creators with Mike Judge producing and voicing. Similarly wonky animation style, can't wait to watch it

you guys didn't tell me about Copshop.

― scott seward, Tuesday, February 11, 2025 2:53 PM (four hours ago)


the OP said not to!

but no DVDs or movies you see when you go to THE CINEMA.

― scott seward, Sunday, January 26, 2025 12:58 PM (two weeks ago)

does that mean that you own the blu-ray of copshop, sic? worth it. totally ridic movie. it reminded me of an 80s low-budget indie. i love a good one building movie.

47 minutes into Omni Loop on Hulu and I have to stop. That is how long my Mary-Louise Parker and Ayo Edebiri goodwill is. 47 minutes long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8w6-iJtTOY

Professional Women's Hockey League is streaming all its games on Youtube. The Montreal Victoire have the best logo (only good logo really, they all look like an intern generated them on Canva or something) so I guess that's my team.

news you can use. cheers.

I saw Copshop in THE CINEMA

Grillo beefed a lot when it came out about how the studio had interfered and curtailed the director’s vision, or something

PARADISE gets worse every week. And yet I cannot stop myself from watching.

third episode was incredibad

i still need to watch

I thought Scott was talking about this Cop Shop and was rather confused.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o75tpUG6bqY

lol me too

would watch...

Huh, Copshop is by Joe Carnahan? I like a couple of his movies, haven't seen the rest. He's always struck me as kind of like S. Craig Zahler or Taylor Sheridan, these tough-guy crypto-republican auteurs.

THE POPE'S EXORCIST is on Hulu now and it's fucking hilarious. Russell Crowe in full Orson Welles mode, riding a scooter around Rome (and Spain), speaking Italian (and English in a terrible Italian accent)... it's pure, glorious trash, with some surprising soundtrack choices (the story takes place in 1987). Highest possible recommendation.

I watched A Face In The Crowd on Criterion Channel with Maria because she had never seen it. I've seen it at least 3 times over the years. Everyone is so good in it. What a whirlwind. Patricia Neal is lit better than a Vermeer. It must have been a crazy movie to make. That first time you see Andy Griffith's face at the jail and he snarls like a wounded animal. Classic! I kept waiting for Andy to say that he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone and he wouldn't lose any viewers...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxTUOWBZIFQ

The Sly Stone documentary, SLY LIVES!, on Hulu is really, really good. I've never listened to his music much beyond the classic trilogy — Stand, Riot, and Fresh — but I feel like diving deeper now.

this channel is amazing.

"When the recipes and the most loved ingredients have a face!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw8IBCISpL0

Watched the last few episodes of Cobra Kai. Boy this show should have wrapped up two or three seasons ago. In the meantime they have redeemed every single character who was ever cast as a villain, that there weren’t enough fights to go around for everyone to get their proper taste of victory.

I've been streaming protest singer turned pop star Bob Dylan from the Internet Archive: Renaldo and Clara last week, Eat the Document today, Festival next.

watching the live snl show. i like bad bunny salsa! i do love flowers too and miley did it well. i don't know what that bad eddie vedder song was but the roots redeemed it!

backstreet is back. i do love this song. how can you not?

wow, backstreet boys into devo. didn't see that coming.

fugee la laaaa!

In all the controversy about The Hunt a few years ago I thought it was a stupid movie about conservative stereotypes hunting liberal stereotypes and it’s actually an even stupider movie about liberal stereotypes hunting conservative stereotypes.

Absolute piece of shit now available on Amazon Prime.

i am not a jellyroll fan.

aww, he can't sing johnny cash songs.

i like this brandi song. its still good to hear live. does big thief cover this song live? "the joke".

man, jellyroll was really the dead zone of this show. what a whiff.

oof, mumfords. i spoke too soon about jellyroll being the dead zone. even they are an improvement though.

i liked the idea of people covering songs that people had done on snl in the past but they only did that a little.

this is definitely the time to show woody harrelson and kevin bacon bopping in their seats.

neutral milk hotel should definitely cover this mumfords.

i again spoke too soon. mumfords doing "the boxer". jerry douglas solo at least.

Are the Mumfords still hanging with Jordan Peterson?

i've managed to not know anything about them to the extent that i was surprised by the guy's british accent when he talked.

meanwhile: More like Snooze Dog, amirite?

oh no more jellyrollllllll nooooo why snoop why????

post malone is right there why this dweeb!!

oh noes arcade fire with david byrne and saintvincent i might need to go to bed....

too bad the roots couldn't just back up DB.

everyone is just soooo old. well not everyone but lots of people. i saw today that christina ricci just turned 45. christina ricci!

meanwhile woody harrelson looks amazing. everyone should be so lucky. oh jeez beck is there.

tht arcade guy's outfit....jesus. isn't he cancelled. why is he here?

nobody can hear your hurdy gurdy, lady. sorry.

this thing now is as bad as jellyroll but different. poor david byrne. he doesn't know.

poor preservation hall jazz band. they don't know.

this is endless.

sheesh, i never thought i'd say it in 2025 but thank god for bonnie raitt and her slide guitar.

oh noes but she has to sit down with the coldplay guy next!!! noooooooo stoppppp

at least he's just playing piano.

bonnie sounds great.

oh no its Post Nirvana!

eh could be worse. its always nice to see harpo marx on a big stage. they should do a germs song.

david byrne again. why not? might as well. singing with robyn. robyn is as old as christina ricci.

doing that song that the other guy did after she did.

who knew that miley and brandi would be my fave things tonight. i just like those songs.

seeing talking heads live on snl was a big deal to me. it felt so strange. i just hadn't seen anything like them. 1979. too bad they couldn't get the band together for this.

cher.

more gaga. i thought cher was it. why am i not sick of this song. i just like it. sue me.

oh no jack white oof goodnight moon

I avoided The Sex Lives of College Girls because the name seemed pretty creepy but it's cute. Kind of a combo of CW and premium cable throwback - no frontal nudity from the stars but you get some background dong.

The Sly Stone documentary, SLY LIVES!, on Hulu is really, really good.

Seconded. Interesting on the music, band, cultural context and his journey. Some amazing old interview footage and insightful contemporary commentators

yeah i loved it: the footage is so great, and edited really well to grab things/reactions i feel like i’ve not seen before

and i love that long interview that’s woven in throughout, the way he says one thing but his eyes tell you so much more

YES that interview was incredible

thing i loved the most was the underlying positivity. So much about Sly is so dark and it is so often summarized as a very bleak flameout but Quest does a great job I think of keeping it somehow uplifting without avoiding some of that dark shit.

The story his daughter tells about chopping rails of colored chalk was O_O

Or when he asks Geoge Clinton what crack is like & Clinton just says “Like when you nut” and the whole room bursts into laughter

Like we know & can takeaway for ourselves what the darkness IS, we don’t need the interviewees to take us all the way there.

I was really struck throughout by Sly Stone's speaking voice. I knew he started out as a radio DJ, but I wasn't prepared for his diction. (And he had incredible teeth. You wanna know how he had kids by three different women? He smiled at them.)

he really was a beautiful looking dude

FLOW (the Latvian cat movie) is on Max now and my wife and I just watched it. Fantastic. Highest possible recommendation.

Paging Ned, I think they recommended FLOW a couple of months back. Saw it in the theater - excellent indeed

Max or Criterion Channel? Or both?

Criterion's doing the blu/4K release but I don't know if they've said it'll be on the Channel. It's on Max now.

Yay, it's Tuesday — new episode of Paradise, the stupidest fucking show on Earth!

The last episode of Paradise I watched killed the best/possibly only good character.

I will give it credit for not being as repetitive and dull as Silo, the supervillain billionaire working out her trauma is no Tim Robbins though.

you guys are really tempting me...

It's like if you asked ChatGPT to combine This Is Us and The Prisoner, and unplugged/rebooted the server halfway through the process.

I can't believe I watched This Is Us for as long as I did. It's like I was brainwashed and finally woke up and said: what the fuck am i doing? i liked mandy moore though. she should have a good show of her own.

It was no Parenthood...Lorelai beats Jess any day of the week.

i watched the first ep of Paradise finally and while the twist makes it v stupid it’s not a very enjoyable watch, everything is so ponderously belaboured & endless flashblacks & we’re all feeeeeeeeling things & just, all the parts i hated about This Is Us with the volume turned up

so its a no from me dawg

i cannot hang

xp I don't know who you mean by Jess, but I loved Lauren Graham as Lorelai in Gilmore Girls and as Sarah in Parenthood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0jJhwPjyok

for fans of Michael Mann, jazz scores and incredible car footage

"I don't know who you mean by Jess"

jess was rory's beatnik love interest on gilmore girls and the dead dad on this is us.

I must resurface mentions of COMMON SIDE EFFECTS which has become my new favorite thing on tv this month.

i watched the first ep of Paradise finally and while the twist makes it v stupid it’s not a very enjoyable watch, everything is so ponderously belaboured & endless flashblacks & we’re all feeeeeeeeling things & just, all the parts i hated about This Is Us with the volume turned up

As it goes on it's more about the big twist than the emo flashbacks (though those never go away)... you might want to stick with it for another episode or two and if you find yourself laughing (as I do) strap in for the full ride because it is just SO FUCKIN' DUMB.

On the other hand, the new season of Reacher will be here tomorrow. (Which will piss me off in another way thanks to its blatant visual trickery. Alan Ritchson is 6'2"! I am 6'3"! They're surrounding him with dwarf co-stars and filming up at him from knee level to make him look like a behemoth, when he is just a regular-sized dude! I wouldn't be surprised if all the furniture on-set is specially built at 3/4 size! This is some bullshit, I tell you.)

I’m down for more Reacher! Anthony Michael Hall is this season’s baddie i think? i miss the characters from s1 tho, that was the most enjoyable version of the show for me

Reacher's back? I'm hoping this will scrub the average S2 from my brain.

Edit: just watched the trailer (on silent) and there is a 'oh, you thought Reacher was big, did you?!' character. I'm in.

Was there any discussion of Outer Range when it was on? There is no thread for it.

We just finished the first season which had some issues but I enjoyed overall. The parts I disliked about it reminded me of Lost: characters obviously knowing more about what was going on and just annoyingly withholding info from other characters (and the viewers). Everything else was pretty good. Interesting premise, some good actors, real stakes.

I had the season ending reveal figured out by about midway through the season. Looking forward to Season 2.

Looked around for some talk about it but apart from some mentions on the but is it on Netflix thread there was not much. Started watching it recently, at ep7 now. It's enjoyable but I expected more tbh

I watched the first season of Outer Range and enjoyed it, but so much time went by between seasons that I forgot a lot of what happened. I started to watch the s2 premiere but felt lost and didn’t want to put in the effort of a rewatch, so I let the show go.

We're watching Season Two now. The batshit brother who breaks into song reminds me of Tim Heidegger a bit.

I like how out of control they allow the Poots character to become.

Yes, to both.

They would be terrible characters if they were more serious or reigned in a bit, but without that they approach a Lynchian vibe. The way every time they make out there is all this weird spittle between them is hilarious.

Reacher S3E1 - not looking good for recapturing the magic of S1

yeahh its a bummer. but but I kinda liked it anyway.
that lady’s “maine accent” is TERRIBLE

started the Gilded Age and lol at spelling things out for the audience "you are the FUTURE they are the PAST" nah man I couldn't catch that from the first hour of the show

I started watching Day Zero last night on Netflix because why not? Robert De Niro! love of my life Lizzy Caplan! me after Ozempic and i marry Lizzy Caplan, Jesse Plemons! Angela Bassett! Connie Britton! Joan Allen! evil Matthew Modine! evil Dan Stevens!

does matthew modine's agent just say: well, you've got that hair so you're just the evil guy now, i don't know what to tell you, matty, my old pal.

Zero Day is getting bad reviews across the board and yet I feel compelled to check it out

its watchable! before i knew it i was almost 3 episodes in. i mean its pulp. i got no problem with that.

did Court of Gold on Netflix get mentioned here? Nicely done series on men's basketball at the Paris Olympics last summer. They go behind the scenes with the US, Canada, France and Serbia. Only thing is how jarring long distant past of summer 2024 is in context with the current state of affairs here in Feb 2025.

I'm not opening the specific thread yet (because spoilers and I'm rewatching the last few episodes of season 2 first) but heads up that Yellowjackets is back

That one is enjoyable to binge. Can't imagine watching it week by week.

kinda intrigued by victorian london all-female crime syndicate boxing show on hulu! A Thousand Blows. from the peaky blinders guy. (i couldn't watch peaky blinders. at the time i didn't want to see anything that reminded me of the proud boys and those haircuts definitely did it.)

https://images.bauerhosting.com/empire/2025/02/a-thousand-blows-1.jpg?ar=16%3A9&fit=crop&crop=top&auto=format&w=1440&q=80

I'll be honest, the only time I really liked Reacher is when he kicked the car in the second season. That cracked me up. I wasn't even that big on the first season. It was kinda generic. And I love the books. I think I didn't even watch the last episode of season two. didn't care. That guy, though an improvement on Tom Cruise, is a bit of a dud. And he looks a little ridiculous. It's a hard role to cast.

a friend of mine told me I should watch THE BUREAU instead of its remake THE AGENCY, so I checked out the S1 DVD from the library. i watched the first episode and i mean it is *exactly* the same show. it's like when Gus Van Sant did his version of Psycho. there are details that are slightly different, but the US version isn't a remake as much as a note perfect cover, as far as i can tell. The Agency is slicker, certainly, but seems harder to like. i'm curious to see if it the next several episodes are just as similar.

I never watched Le Bureau but from what I've heard, the whole season is pretty much the same, with some slight tweaks since this about US intelligence which is just a different animal, geopolitically, than France.

3 episodes in and Reacher is getting better. He's killing people now, and snapping their bones so he can stuff them into small spaces.

ooh yay

The Gorge is not good but making Anya Taylor-Joy do a comedy Eastern European accent for two hours is pretty funny.

I know this is old news, but we've been watching the Umbrella Academy together and mid-season 3 I'm about to bail. It was never great but wow is it sucking big time now.

That’s probably about the right time to ditch it. The final season felt totally inessential.

Day Zero basically becomes completely stupid by episode 5. one episode to go. I don't mind the crazy i just wish the show were more lurid/over the top/colorful/freaky? its played so straight for the most part. oh well. i've seen worse.

i'm sure that pumpkinhead wants to be the next jim from the office and get his own action franchise now that he's down to his fighting weight but i doubt he will ever have a role as good as landry on friday night lights. it was such a good part.

its watchable! before i knew it i was almost 3 episodes in. i mean its pulp. i got no problem with that.

I want to see that movie The Gorge. I wish it wadn’t on Apple TV.

Enjoyed the pilot of High Potential on Disney, a cosy whodunnit show with Dee from IASIP. And then the second episode was super generic, like season 17 of the same show. It is reasonably non-toxic #acab background content though.

One of the secondary lead cops looks like Steve Gutenberg processed through the square chin Insta filter. Which is weird because apparently actual Gutenberg turns up later in the season.

That’s er Steve rather than Johanes

Enjoyed the pilot of High Potential on Disney, a cosy whodunnit show with Dee from IASIP. And then the second episode was super generic, like season 17 of the same show. It is reasonably non-toxic #acab background content though.

It's a knockoff of a French series; Hulu also has the original.

the original is fun. i didn't want to watch the american one it looked lame.

"Yeah watched the first episode of Zero Day and it was definitely watchable although the writing does not match up to the caliber of the actors involved. You need, like, Night Agent-level expectations for this show."

They should have gone for opera a la The Manchurian Candidate and instead they went for a more AOR vibe. Sometimes it reminded me of an episode of FBI. Lord knows I have watched a LOT of episodes of FBI but I was expecting something more.

I might try To Catch A Killer next even though I am not a Ben Mendelsohn fan and his accent in it sounds particularly strange. Its set in Baltimore so maybe he's channeling Dominic West in The Wire.

It also STILL really bugs me for some reason when they use real news networks and newscasters to report fake news for a movie or show. I preferred it when they made up networks and had actors play talking heads. I don't need any more blurring of lines in my life. But maybe that's me.

It also STILL really bugs me for some reason when they use real news networks and newscasters to report fake news for a movie or show. I preferred it when they made up networks and had actors play talking heads. I don't need any more blurring of lines in my life. But maybe that's me.

i don't think i would recommend that show to someone. unless they really liked one of those actors. i mean, they are good actors. i stayed for the lizzy caplan but it was just diminishing returns as it went on. her role was...eh.

i'm still watching Chopped! i'm on season 18. this is my winter of Chopped and the fantasy mole trilogy i'm reading. moles in their holes for thousands of pages! comfort food. i made a lot of soup and stew this winter. i just made the best steak enchiladas.

man, i watched an old celebrity Chopped with mary ann from gilligan's island and teri hatcher and anthony anderson was such an asshole! so sexist. i guess he was just trying to be cocky but jeez he was a jerk. so glad he lost. this is before black-ish. kinda don't like him now.
on the other hand, it was kinda funny to see Amanda Freitag drool over the Calvin Klein underwear actor. whatshisface.

I started watching It's What's Inside on Netflix last night and stopped with 20 minutes left. I realize there is a final twist. I do not care. If my primary task when watching a movie is to keep people's names straight then it is not the movie for me. Also: just not funny. or scary. or suspenseful. or written well. Too bad a slasher in a weird mask didn't show up. Or are we ALL the slasher in the weird mask...and that mask is...us.
I can't believe those actors were supposed to be 30! People really are getting younger. Thanks to Elon Musk and corn syrup and taurine.

okay, fine, i'll watch the SAG Awards. but i don't need all the red carpet. i'll play my video game for 40 minutes.

still with the baby reindeer. that show will always be nominated for awards every year from now on.

i don't think i knew that chris elliott's daughter was 1) on snl and 2) is the woman from The Bear. i think someone might have even mentioned that on the snl thread and i didn't know who they were talking about. i don't remember her from snl. her and her sister who i also didn't know grew up in wilton. my cousins grew up in wilton. good place to be if you work in new york.

I'm in the middle of a re-watch of BANSHEE and I just feel the need to post this clip, which makes me laugh out loud every time I see it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwFPfKHjgpg

i ran away from the Sag Awards. veronica mars is so not funny and the whole thing was way too reverential. maybe i missed something funny later. whatevs. sick of shogun.

i actually turned off my computer and listened to records on the hi-fi! what a novelty!

I’m watching Le Bureau Des Legendes, which IMO is a lot more entertaining and less try-hard than the remake, which gave me annoying Sam Mendes vibes.

I especially like the subtitle writer, who fantastically translated “c’est la merde” as “it’s a bit of a shitter”.

We watched the first 3 episodes of Paradise on Hulu. It's hilariously terrible, in the same vein as a network show like How to Get Away With Murder. Also, the music has to be the worst of any show I've seen. There's a character who's really into 80s music, so each episode ends with a moody, indie cover of like "Another Day in Paradise" or "We Built This City."

My favorite thing about Paradise is the billionaire woman who makes no effort whatsoever to hide the fact that she is the villain. She will tell anyone in earshot who she wants killed.

Also the way they show us that This Is Not a Network Show by having characters talk about their dicks in the first five minutes.

one of the few remarkable things about that otherwise snoozy robert de niro show on netflix is that every episode features the same sex pistols song. and its a sign of insanity which is also fun.

Bunheads on Hulu. I never watched the whole season.

Both Zero Day and The Gorge are perfect examples of minimum viable entertainment. I enjoyed watching them all the way through but there's like zero calories to them.

I consolidated our Hulu and Disney accts and wound up getting the Hulu/Disney/Max bundle for less than we were paying for Hulu/Disney/ESPN+, so I think I'll start The Penguin tonight.

"Both Zero Day and The Gorge are perfect examples of minimum viable entertainment."

Coca-Cola Zero television!

With baseball season coming soon I invite you to watch the entirety of TBS's My Boys, a sitcom that tries to make you feel empathy for Chicago sports fans.

https://archive.org/details/my-boys-2006-10/My+Boys+(2006%E2%80%9310)+sitcom-+49+eps/%2BMy+Boys+Season+1+Episode+01+My+Boys-+Pilot+1920x1080.mp4

My favorite thing about Paradise is the billionaire woman who makes no effort whatsoever to hide the fact that she is the villain. She will tell anyone in earshot who she wants killed.

This week's episode dropped most of the hilariously bad elements and became instead an incredibly depressing hour-long flashback to The Day The World Ended. It was honestly way better than I expected.

FFS, now I'm watching the stupidest show in the world!

Revising: Earth Abides is still the most comprehensively unaware stupidest show in the world. Paradise seems vaguely self-aware of it's stupidity.

I started watching THE BIKERIDERS last night and got distracted thinking about why it shit the bed commercially. OK, it stars Tom Hardy, who sucks, but it's more than that. I think the real problem is that it's 2025 and nobody's thought bikers were cool for 20 years, if not longer. Anyway, I bailed halfway through. Cannot recommend.

There was a show called Sons of Anarchy

I wanted to like The Bikeriders but it didn't quite come together for me. I was mostly distracted by Jodie Comer looking and sounding like a character Tina Fey would have created at Second City in the '90s.

very little discussion on the Jeff Nichols thread, but I agree with Ned: film director JEFF NICHOLS, frequently ominous, never boring

A bunch of the Banditos MC in Texas just got busted on a ton of RICO/Drug/Gun/Murder charges. Afterwards there was a televised press conference with a local FBI dork who said something to the effect that "Despite their positive, glamorous depictions in Hollywood, bikers are not cool people!" which is a bit odd given the most recent visible depictions of MCs (S.O.A. and the Nazi bikers on Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul) are very clear that these are very uncool bad guys.

I think there was some talk of the Diplomat on the other thread, but it definitely gives West Wing vibes (plus Allison Janney's in it and soon Bradley Whitford will be). S2 went a little more high-stakes than I would have liked, forcing a more serious tone, but I'm still enjoying the show overall. Though please do not make seasons any smaller - six episodes really wasn't enough

Yeah they could've gone at least to 8 eps for that one. It felt rushed.

There are three or four more interesting stories in Paradise than the story they’re actually telling.

I'm a compulsive listmaker so here are my favorite shows of the year so far:

Excellent - I look forward to it every week
Severance
The Pitt
Common Side Effects

Very Good
The Agency
The White Lotus
Abbott Elementary
The Traitors
Yellowjackets
Survivor
Mo
Mythic Quest

A good/decent show - enjoyable but not classic
Below Deck Down Under
A Thousand Blows
Shoresy
1923
St Denis Medical
Bookie

Dumb but I kept watching
Paradise
American Primeval
Night Agent
Apple Cider Vinegar
Cobra Kai

Trash
Zero Day
Lockerbie: A Search for Truth

here’s mine, i’m sure i’m forgetting lots

tv

Excellent - I look forward to it every week:
Severance
The Pitt
Yellowjackets
Skeleton Crew 

Very Good:
The Agency
The White Lotus
Abbott Elementary
Reacher

A good/decent show - enjoyable but not classic:
American Primeval
Day of the Jackal 

Dumb but I kept watching:
Landman
Lioness 

Trash
Paradise

Well I like that list a lot since we clearly share a lot of the same! I liked Day of the Jackal and Skeleton Crew too.

I didn't make it more than halfway through the first episode of Landman. I cemented for me how skippable I find 99% of all Taylor Sheridan shows. 1923 is maybe my only exception - I think it's saved because it's an older Western and of course Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren are great in it. Though I kinda cringe every time the show shifts its focus to his son, which feels very "Taylor Sheridan".

I think it was purely Billy Bob Thornton that hooked me for Landman. With his grim viewpoint it felt like a weird Bad Santa sequel somehow idk. Most of it is just Sheridan sandbox wtfery tho really

I thought PARADISE was slowly beginning to redeem itself over the last couple of episodes but wow did it revert back its natural state of idiocy for the finale. My least favorite way to resolve a mystery is when they introduce (essentially) a brand new character right at the end who is the killer. It’s not a mystery if you don’t introduce us to the suspects! At least the early episodes were a kind of fun-dumb; the finale was just lazy and stupid.

Still thinking about the PARADISE finale, and specifically how the main concept of this show is that the city was built underneath a mountain—and yet the show ends with Sterling Brown getting into an airplane.

It's like NORAD, that big cavern opens directly out into the side of the mountain and a runway. Now, why does the plane still have power and how has the fuel not gone bad in the last X years? Who knows. It managed to get dumber and less entertaining over the last 2-3 episodes.

The only bit of Landman I've seen was a clip of Billy Bob's daughter(?) telling him her high school QB boyfriend can cum anywhere he wants as long as he doesn't cum in her and jesus christ that is the most dying of cringe "oh gosh you shouldn't put that on TV tee-hee" red state naughty bait I've seen in a long time.

I watched Wargames for the first time since 1997 or so, not sure why no one could see the screen on the side of WOPR that kept showing GAME TIME with a countdown.

I had completely forgotten the opening with Leo McGarry and the nuke launching sequence, incredible scene.

xpost yep that is his (cough) “17 year old daughter”

Now, why does the plane still have power and how has the fuel not gone bad in the last X years?

Want to know what happens to a commercial, corporate, or military jet that sits around without hydraulic, fuel, or engine system maintenance? The instant Xavier tries to use the flaps/spoilers for take off will end the show.

While I'm piling on, the underground hangar that supposedly holds all these airplanes is so clearly Tustin Blimp Hangar #2. It's like seeing Vasquez Rocks or the Trona Pinnacles now - you aren't fooling anyone. You would think that with the cgi spent to fit Air Force One, dozens of planes, and arrival processing they could have done something more about disguising the sunlight coming in through the windows.

I don't know anything about "Reacher" except there was iirc a Tom Cruise movie? But anytime I see a screen shot I assume it's about a tribe of feuding giants. Or, like, a "giga chad" spinoff.

It's basically a modern day western series of books, where the loner comes into town, fights the local tyrant and his goons then moves along.

And the loner is 10 feet tall?

Based on the billboards around LA I can only presume that Reacher and Tracker are part of some shared universe.

Reacher is shorter than my dad

Yeah the funniest part os Reacher actor is like 6’3” and they just cast tiny ppl around him so he looks like he’s 7ft tall

This season is slowly growing on me (s1 still the best to date) but man the cgi backgrounds for some of this are egregious

I saw this image this morning and was, like, what even is this?
https://img.pastemagazine.com/wp-content/avuploads/2025/03/04165642/RCHR35-recap-header.jpg

I'm enjoying it, but it's utterly ludicrous. For all his life is predicated on being footloose and fancy-free, God *alive* is Reacher miserable.

"Enjoying" might be a bit on the strong side. "It's on, and I'm not dead" might be a truer representation.

from IMDB Trivia: “In March 2013, Richters and his two siblings founded Muscle Meat, a company which provides athletes with resources and foods supplements.”

lol

yeah Reacher is less “appointment tv” than “a white noise machine that i watch to reset my circadian rhythms”

i like how grumpy & frugal reacher is, mostly.

If you asked me the title of the show that featured that image I might have guessed it was called "Muscle Meat," about a pair of siblings providing athletes with resources and foods supplements.

yeah Reacher is less “appointment tv” than “a white noise machine that i watch to reset my circadian rhythms”

i like how grumpy & frugal reacher is, mostly.

― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, March 6, 2025 12:11 PM

lol, otm x2

Dialog from that scene of "Muscle Meat" screenshotted:

Bro 1: Bro, I thought I told you to walk the dog!
Bro 2: I was going to walk the dog, but I had to get this package out to Simone Biles!
Bro 1: Bro, fuck Biles, there is dog shit all over the place!
Bro 2: What are you going to do about it, bro?
Bro 1: Back off, bro. Just clean up the shit.
Bro 2: I'm not cleaning shit, bro. You clean the shit.
Bro 1: No way, bro, it's your shit now. You own that shit.
Bro 2: Fine, it's my shit, does that make you happy?
Bro 1: Yeah. Yeah it does, bro. Enjoy your shit!
Bro 2: I will!
Bro 1: Good!

josh, simply put Reacher is like a very mid/Temu version Banshee + arm day

Can barely imagine what he must smell like all the time.

idk he spends half the show shirtless, he cant smell THAT bad

:D

Just finished the first season of The Bureau, and thought it was miles better than The Agency, which -- even though I will watch Jeffrey Wright in anything -- I tanked after one episode.

The Bureau's been out forever, so I assume it's been discussed before, but has anyone seen the last four seasons? (Spoiler-free) - are they worth watching? I dug the first season, but it felt like it ended on a good, tragic note, and am not burning to continue.

Reacher is like a very mid/Temu version Banshee + arm day

I'm currently re-watching Banshee on Hulu and with every episode I'm more and more tempted to write a 5000-word essay on how underappreciated it was. The entire goddamn thing is about generational trauma, they just distract you by putting three or four physical fights and at least one sex scene (sometimes intercut with one of the fights) in every episode.

Banshee was so fucking good, i was kind of mad at myself for sleeping on it.
And yes, criminally underappreciated! great writing, great acting, great stunts.

everything i hear about the Bureau S2 suggests it's not just good but actually incredible. the rest of the series after that apparently maintains a quality at or near that level. i appreciate the purgatory/tragic limbo Guillaume finds himself in at the end of S1 but i'm continuing on (just picked up S2 at the library yesterday and will commence tonight.) it's also a sterling example of watching an international show and being jarred by the sudden presence of an American voice, which maybe now more than ever sounds so fucking clunky and stupid in context (no shade to the actor portraying the CIA guy.)

i really have to catch up with the last couple seasons of Reacher, i enjoyed S1 even with the absolute debauched and sick level of villainy on display, usually murderous local villains in TV series are all about zoning and maybe quietly murdering a couple folks who are about to get in the way of their scheme, but these guys were Hannibal Lecter types. kill a guy quietly? no, let's nail him to the wall and torture him.

Reacher's line deliveries get more clipped by the episode. If his lips didn't match the lines you could assume they ADRed everything he says.

I watched the Cruise movies a few months ago - despite his stature he was a good Reacher, his badass fight scenes weren't less believable than Amazon Reacher, he sells constantly thinking well. The second movie is just a mess but he would have excelled in a series format Reacher.

Cruise's Reacher was much more of an angry psychopath than Amazon Reacher. I thought it worked well, especially in the first movie. The second movie felt more PG-13.

i had a hard time believing the moment in the first Reacher film where Cruise takes off his shirt and Rosamund Pike is so stunned and abashed by the sight of his physique that she gasps.

You sound like a Suppressive Person.

a 63 year old guy with an eight pack is pretty impressive!

this season's shots of Reacher in his black undies with just a hint of baby oil rubbed all over his torso are pretty funny

i don't remember an eight pack on Cruise, it was more like an unrolled wrinkled carpet. i did really like Reacher though, McQuarrie just knows how to make an action film.

There was a second Tom Cruise Reacher movie?

with Robin from How I Met Your Mother

I don't really get Reacher fans obsession with his size or shape. Cruise seems much more threatening to me than the guy in the Amazon show, who looks like the sort of lunk who gets killed first in a Groo comic. I've always imagined the Michael Connelly's Bosch as Jon Polito with a Michael Connelly goatee, which is nothing like the way he's described. I'm not sure it matters.

looks like the sort of lunk who gets killed first in a Groo comic.

lololol

I imagined Reacher as Timothy McVeigh.

first Cruise Reacher was Cruise getting McQuarrie his first directing job in 12 years

second Cruise Reacher was one of only two or three movies he’s made out of his last 15 without McQuarrie writing

I've seen all of the Bureau. definitely remains watchable throughout but becomes a little more preposterous each season, so for that I preferred the earlier ones

After seeing the new Reacher episode today I suddenly realized this season adapts the one novel in the series I read, about 10 years ago. No other part of the book was memorable.

No, seriously, I'm about to give up a big spoiler.

He escapes some danger by jumping into "nature's toilet" and making it through the riptide.

New season of Dark Winds starts tomorrow. All hail Zahn McClarnon. I thought the first 2 seasons were good to very good.

i need to watch that, it looks great

yess my wife is still out of the country for another month but that means I can catch up before she gets back and we can watch S3 together, she binged it all previously but I have not.

I started watching this animated show called PANTHEON on Netflix, thinking it was new. It’s actually from a few years back but aired on AMC+, so it’s just new to Netflix.

For a show I’ve never heard of before that aired on a streaming service no one has, the cast of voice actors is wild—Paul Dano, Aaron Eckhart, Daniel Dae Kim, Taylor Schilling, Rlon Livingston, William Hurt, Scoot McNairy, and a bunch of others.

Anyway, I’m a few episodes in and it’s good so far! Sci-fi conspiracy nuttiness.

I would prefer it if THE BONDSMAN, which premieres April 3, was a movie and not a series, because it seems like a really good 90-minute idea and not much more, but I'm gonna watch it anyway. (TW: gore, demons.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmiGkuMWJ94

I dunno, sounds like a classic '80s/'90s TV anime premise!

This looks pretty amazing — David Blaine as Anthony Bourdain, touring the world and letting people in other countries show him magic tricks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM2RPLSDjdQ

Hard to go wrong with stupid human tricks.

We saw a couple of episodes (so, half) of the UK series "Toxic Town" on Netflix and it's a solid true story environmental legal thriller sort of thing, about a '90s toxic waste/pollution/birth defect case in the east midlands. Lots of familiar faces so far. One of the Dr. Whos, the girl from the current season of White Lotus, a guy from Say Nothing ...

The Electric State getting absolutely panned in the reviews

Someone just recommended Adolescence to me, another British show now on Netflix? Seems like more feel bad appointment television.

I'm hearing good things about Adolescence.

I thought Adolescence was fantastic. The kid playing Jamie was remarkable considering it was his first gig.

Keeps popping up on my feed and seems to be getting rave reviews so will definitely check it out

The Milla Jovovich movie Monster Hunter is on Hulu now, so I'm gonna watch that this weekend. It came out during the pandemic and sank, but I have long maintained that if it had been called Milla Jovovich: Monster Hunter it would have been a hit.

Or Munster Hunter and have her slaughter a beloved sitcom family.

xxpost Reacher: so dumb, so wooden, but am i going to watch to the end? why, yes, of course i will

Adolescence is very well-done so far, the whole "each episode is a single take thing" really pulls you along even through procedural bits that other shows would leave out or truncate. Must have been crazy to plan out (but easy to edit).

The Parenting on Max - it's no Slotherhouse

xpost Not that it ultimately matters, but is it really one take, or is there some tomfoolery to make it look like one take?

one take according to the lead guy on the radio the other day. they'd redo if there was a critical error early on.

I’m now midway into the second season of PANTHEON on Netflix and have been sucked in. It’s all about artificial intelligence—or actually “uploaded intelligence,” i.e. uploading human consciousness into the cloud—touching on tech messiahs, virtual realities, cloning, etc. It’s all a little kooky but it takes itself very seriously and somehow that commitment makes it work.

watched about twenty mins of adolescence and it was typically bad british drama imo. stephen graham prob the most overrated one-note actor around and british drama is obsessed with police and crime, essentially a moral panic type story like anything else with graham in it on brit tv.

the one-shot thing is a gimmick - it's been done in other shows and films and would only matter if the programme was actually good. i saw someone online wildly astonished that an actor did forty minutes of learning lines in one-take. like wow, if this takes off perhaps they could have one-take acting without cameras, in rooms or something, it might just work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDdmBKP2uvk

i’ve circled back around to hating this season of Reacher. This amnesia shit is so bogus

Still pretty hyped for the Neagley spinoff if that's happening - her scene in the latest (I guess, maybe next to latest) episode was the most enjoyable action of the season.

would watch

I've only read a couple of the early Reachers, the cackling sexual sadist supervillain of this one makes me wonder if the books got much dumber over time ala Tom Clancy and the Bob Lee Swagger books.

the actor playing the villain is deeply unconvincing, he’s coasting on the fumes of his inferred threat-level for me at this point

feel like i've already said this somewhere, but prime target is wildly bad. it starts not-very-good, and then each subsequent episode improves on that to reach new quintessences of 'god this is really bad' until the final episode, a thing so bad, in so many diverse ways, it rendered me into something like a catatonic state of glee.

I've only read a couple of the early Reachers, the cackling sexual sadist supervillain of this one makes me wonder if the books got much dumber over time ala Tom Clancy and the Bob Lee Swagger books.

― papal hotwife (milo z), 16 March 2025 03:40 (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

they did, and pretty quickly

im years behind but ive been trying to allow florence pugh, sarsgaard jr sr and michael shannon and the production and the direction to bring me through the little drummer girl and im here to report that it is indeed possible to waste all of these things if a story is ridiculous and unsatisfying enough and lads i mean its florence pugh ffs

movie night last night. watched Hit Man on Nflix. lots of fun - Linklater/Glenn Powell romcom-ish thing

watched about twenty mins of adolescence and it was typically bad british drama imo.

I've seen two episodes, and I see what they're up to, technically-speaking. While each episode is indeed elaborately choreographed one-shots, the show is not one long shot broken up into episodes. The second episode, for example, is set 3 days after the first. Anyway, it has its familiar beats, but it's certainly not bad yet, imo. The second ep is set at the high school, where we learn about the shitty dynamics of teens in the internet age. All pretty well drawn so far.

https://filmfreakcentral.net/2025/03/the-electric-state-2025/

What I’m saying is The Electric State is a demonstration piece for showing alien civilizations why it’s not such a tragedy we amused ourselves to death. We don’t have free healthcare, a universal basic income, a functioning government, hope for a retirement, or social security, but we do have a third-of-a-billion-dollar debacle created for a machine built to destroy traditional broadcast models and replace them with those same models once they’re the last game in town. Netflix isn’t in the business of creating something of quality–they’re in the business of creating a background hum for laundry-folding. After the Marky Mark joke? A mail-bot voiced by Jenny Slate snarks, “I actually like this song!” HAHA! Ke Huy Quan is in this, by the way, giving Cuba Gooding Jr. a run for worst, most desperate post-Oscar choices of all time. Agents have their own agendas; you don’t actually have to listen to them. Oh, and the whole thing is a gloss on Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” with a finale that riffs on “Cowboy Bebop”‘s “Pierrot Le Fou” episode, which, you know, whatever you want to make of that, go right ahead. An expensive, sadistic, derivative, puerile boondoggle that’s ugly to look at and uniquely dull besides, The Electric State is, as Ozymandian monuments to the Empire of America go, dead-on. Just think, this is what they’re feeding us even before generative AI begins pumping out soulless Chuck-E-Cheezbusters. It’s all downhill from here, folks.

New season of Dark Winds starts tomorrow. All hail Zahn McClarnon. I thought the first 2 seasons were good to very good.

I read the book Season 2 was based on and the show added an awful lot of stuff. For instance Leaphorn wasn't even in the book.

I watched the first season of Dark Winds at the time but thought it was just good, not great. I didn’t keep up with season two - was it a step up?

imo yes

Apparently the last of the Looney Tunes stuff was just removed from HBO ...

they can pry my dvd box set out of my cold dead hands

This is crazy:

https://frdmtoplay.com/maximizing-bugs-bunny/

dude, awesome! i was hoping something like that existed

(unfortunately if i'm gonna buy into those, would prefer if they were blu-ray... which is not analyzed directly)

I’m halfway through Say Nothing and am liking it - I seem to recall a discussion about it somewhere on ILX. Was it on the other thread?

Korean cop/gangster series The Worst Of Evil is my only other recommend of the moment (thanks to whoever mentioned it here!)

this works best if you imagine nobody meeting your eye despite knowing the answer to your question

I’m halfway through _Say Nothing_ and am liking it - I seem to recall a discussion about it somewhere on ILX. Was it on the othe

I’m halfway through _Say Nothing_ and am liking it - I seem to recall a discussion about it somewhere on ILX. Was it on the other thread?

I’m enjoying DOPE THIEF so far. Brian Tyree Henry is great. Second episode is somewhat of a step down from the Ridley Scott-directed pilot but it’s still a good gritty drugs & gangs kinda show.

Apparently the last of the Looney Tunes stuff was just removed from HBO ...

Apparent from what - the most recent ten or so seasons still being on Max, or did the episode you were watching on HBO, like, finish?

i kind of wanted to do a thread for Say Nothing but i was also worried it could turn into a mess with a lot of “just asking questions” naivety, not in the least on my own part

but i def have ~thoughts~

currently watching Long Bright River (Peacock) it’s not bad but man Seyfried’s character is kind of terrible

Also started Dark Winds S1 & am already so down, i kinda love it?

i kind of wanted to do a thread for Say Nothing but i was also worried it could turn into a mess with a lot of “just asking questions” naivety, not in the least on my own part

I dunno - perhaps a separate thread is useful as containment anyway? I do encourage folks to watch it (and stay with it past the first two episodes)

Adolescence Ep3 is flat-out phenomenal, and not what Eps 1/2 might have led you to expect. Ep4 is powerful, but Ep3 is the one.

Dark Winds - whoa, Jenna Elfman, I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything since Dharma & Greg

The whole of "Adolescence" was pretty bleak and while there were fleeting glimmers of after school special in it, the entire thing felt really honest, with the acting great across the board. The one-shot thing was so good that I didn't even notice it in the final episode. Usually when there are tracking shots the camera likes to call attention to itself, but the final ep in particular was just so seamless. A lot of the series was, per mike t-diva, not what I expected.

Watched the first episode of David Blaine: Do Not Attempt. The first part, where Brazilian street performers and people with an interest in extremity (there was a scientist who dangled over a 20,000-degree lava lake) show their stuff, was pretty cool. One of them shows Blaine how to push a knife all the way up his nose, with an X-ray to show the viewer just how far back it went. But eventually it builds up to him doing a stunt that's just kind of cool (he gets set on fire and jumps off a bridge), with way too much "look how dangerous!" narration. I'll keep watching for the people who aren't David Blaine.

I posted this on the older thread...

I'm watching the ILM doc (everyone in thread does a double take - no, it's industrial light & magic) on disney, pretty entertaining even if it's 95% male and 100% white. I'm insanely jealous of the fun they had, and the creativity they got to exercise, in their day job. The first two episodes are entirely on Star Wars, there's fun bits I haven't seen before (R2D2 falling over on set - ok it's funnier when you see it), lots of storyboards and model work, and it's good to see Lucas talking with enthusiasm about it all, you almost start to like him again - then he completely blows it at the end of ep 2.

I'm insanely jealous of the fun they had

"Jedi wasn't fun"

Honestly highly recommended if you're a fan of vfx or of star wars.

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out. And apparently it's getting a second season that's airing next month?

I wasn't too into how season 2 of Dark Winds resolved. Vines just wanders into the desert and that's it?

i recognise and am learning to love the unique individual vibrations of energy we each are but not everyone should be allowed watch things i lve decided

I chugged Monsieur Spade in two sittings. It started off okay, no problem with Clive Owen, but the plot got so much dumber and so much more convoluted that they actually brought in a deus ex machina character in the denouement to say "everyone siddown, shuddup, I will now explain everyone's motive to your faces, now all of you get off my stage, the end."

perfect couple was amusingly cunty and bono jr was good in it as were a few others but the dancing intro was so annoying and the hyperactivity with which it red herringed got exhausting

i also dont think necessarily that all of nicole kidmans great roles are behind her but theyll need to do better than this for her

i watched reacher to the end and boy do i feel stoopider. not even replacement level dumb action

yeah s3 was a real dud

even more dud than s2
s1 was at least enjoyable

I think I gave up after three episodes, maybe four.

Reacher never gave up

im not sure there was a single good actor in this season of reacher

They should throw a curveball in S4 and not have a Reacher Fucks scene.

I’ll keep watching reacher as long as they make them, it’s so incredibly dumb but it also doesn’t make me feel queasy with its stupidity as opposed to something like Sons of Anarchy or Gangs of London or Peaky Blinders. Probably just because it doesn’t aspire to anything and Ritchson is pretty likable. I understand that objectively this is not a good show, I’ve got some criterion channel to cleanse the palette.

it’s also the last show on the planet I would’ve expected to have a song by Thee Headcoats playing over the end credits.

it’s also the last show on the planet I would’ve expected to have a song by Thee Headcoats playing over the end credits.

The amount of Billy Childish music this season was seriously the one thing I liked about it.

the needledrops are v good, i agree

the preponderance of cgi backdrops in this season was v noticeable, all the stuff w the cliff & the ocean looked so incredibly dumb every time they did it

The big swooping shot towards the mansion in the first episode was the villainous lair version of Peter Cushing in rogue one.

lmao otm

bringing the studio discourse over here

We really enjoyed the first Episode of the studio which is on Apple TV so no one will ever see it. We both loved how much it leant stylistic on Robert Altman’s the player, to the extent that Seth Rogan seems to be wearing Tim Robbins suit from the poster in most of the episode but wearing it like someone who is trying so hard to be Tim Robbins’s character, but also failing miserably at it.

Well done and lots of genuine laughs.

The ending [show hidden text] was a great payoff and a really deft use of a celebrity cameo.

― Ed, Thursday, April 3, 2025 11:38 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink
Yeah i loved the first episode too! I like the choice to style it in a late 60’s style but be set in modern-day, it just kind of adds an extra aesthetic layer of enjoyment esp w locations like the Lloyd Wright bldg, OHara’s house, Rogen’s car, etc

― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, April 3, 2025 12:06 PM (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
xp also the Bryan Cranston character is literally named Griffin Mill

― jaymc, Thursday, April 3, 2025 12:35 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
i had a hard time getting into the Studio. Will attempt again when in a different mindset.

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Thursday, April 3, 2025 12:41 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
i have this thing where i have always liked Seth Rogen, and i feel a weird sense of trust when he’s running shit. i just like him, i like his taste in stuff. idk. Like that Pickle movie he did? so lovely!

― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, April 3, 2025 12:55 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I had completely blanked on grizzled o’hara, she is so great.

The Studio is less of a biting satire than I was expecting and more Seth Rogen does Curb Your Enthusiasm. But I'm totally fine with that.

There’s a lot to enjoy about it but Rogen’s character is unbelievably dumb and thoughtless, it’s more like Season 1 Michael Scott than Larry David. There’s nothing inspired or chaotic about the way he acts up - he’s just an annoying shmuck, which makes the comedy a bit forced and predictable imo. They’ve also made him a very basic kind of film nerd - I want him to be more of a Frasier-level pretentious ass. O’Hara, Hahn, Ike B, Polley etc, are terrific.

I guess the “why should I care about these rich assholes” reaction, which I never got from Succession, I am definitely getting from this.

I was enjoying the Studio but the second episode is stressing me out so muchhhh

Daredevil Born Again is such a bore. What a shame.

Daredevil is a bore, yeah. It has little moments that are compelling but it’s very clear this was a show that didn’t know what it wanted to be.

Speaking of bores, I’m muddling my way through THE RESIDENCE on Netflix, a whodunnit with lots of great cast members (Uzo Aduba, Ken Marino, Randall Park, Al Franken, etc), but is just a slog despite its attempts at a quippy pace. From the outset, I just don’t care who committed the crime. They failed to introduce. Any characters or motives prior to the murder and instead are just meandering through a bunch of characters, almost one at a time, showing why maybe they did it but by the ends of each episode basically saying nah it wasn’t them. It’s less a whodunnit and more a game of duck duck goose.

This might not be the best place to ask this question, but one of you probably knows the answer or could point me to an article:

How and why did the United States, in the last few years seemingly, become too expensive a country for (often) United States originating movie and TV productions to film?

Did the rest of the world suddenly go “oh shit, we can offer you better tax breaks?” Or did studios and production companies just find their budgets squeezed by the streaming market economy? Or both?

That second paragraph was meant to be this but I’m still waking up here:

“How and why did the United States, in the last few years seemingly, become too expensive a country for (often) United States originating movie and TV productions (often) about Americans to film?”

The Residence looks terrible, in many of the same ways the Studio seems terrible (I only got 15 minutes into that). This particular type of comedy needs to actually be ... funny.

currently watching Long Bright River (Peacock) it’s not bad but man Seyfried’s character is kind of terrible

this looks stupid but I might watch it because I love Amanda Seyfried.

I finally started Kevin Can Fuck Himself and it is great? I thought it would be hard to slog through the (terrible) sitcom parts but the worse they get the better it seems to work. I'm only on episode three though.

Log Bright River was indeed terrible. Sort of like Mare of East Town if you withheld every bit of info from viewers so you could do a big REVEAL every half hour.

Long

in the last few years seemingly

21 Jump St was 1987, as was Wiseguy. The Commish was 1991. X-Files was 1993. The 1995 version of The Outer Limits ran 152 episodes.

Macgyver moved in ‘87.

Err, we're 3 episodes into The Residence, finding it LOL-funny, and really enjoying it! Very strong cast, good characters, yeah I don't much care whodunnit, but there are other pleasures - most notably Uzo Aduba who is GREAT.

The Residence is often laugh-out-loud funny. The cast really puts in the work.

I watched about 10 stonefaced minutes of Mid-Century Modern before deciding that they decided to go all-in on “mid”

Yeah Mid-Century Modern is extremely mid, though I did laugh at some of Nathan Lane’s lines. Aside from being occasionally more R-rated in its language, it imagines a world where TV comedy never evolved past Will & Grace.

Also I don’t buy Matt Boemer’s character. First, he seems too young for the conceit of this show, and you can also see in his eyes that he’s just not nearly as dumb as his character is supposed to be.

"How and why did the United States, in the last few years seemingly, become too expensive a country for (often) United States originating movie and TV productions (often) about Americans to film?"

One of the few things I remember about Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever (2002) is the fact it was filmed in Vancouver, because the reviews often pointed it out - it was also set in Vancouver, so the reviews often had a line to the effect that it was unusual for a film shot in Vancouver to actually be set there, breathe in.

I'm surprised to find out that Mean Girls was filmed in Toronto, though. There are apparently tax incentives:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_North

My hunch is that there was a tipping point in the 1960s and 1970s, when advances in equipment and lighting meant that the cost of location filming became low enough that the gains from shooting somewhere cheap outweighed the cost of having to move all that equipment around. At that point a lot of Hollywood productions started using Pinewood in the UK, and Cinecittà in Rome, and of course Europe has a lot of diverse locations, but presumably it's still cheaper to fly to Canada than Europe.

I remember visiting Glasgow a couple of years ago and being confused at all the US flags, until I realised they were filming the opening scenes of Indiana Jones and the Whatever It Was Called. The most recent Indiana Jones film. And one of the things that struck me about Hong Kong is that it has a diverse range of different locations in one compact space.

ok I'll give the Residence a shot; I admire Shonda Rhimes (even though to this day I have never seen Grey's Anatomy and cannot believe it is still on tv); didn't realize she wrote it

oh i guess she just produced it.

xpost afaict network tv is exclusively for elderly people now, so any successful show is just going to continue until it has a stroke.

Varying XPs

sic brought up American shows shooting in Canada, which he pointed out is no new thing, but I think what Raymond was really asking about is the relatively recent trend of productions of American-set shows being filmed completely overseas in places like Australia, the UK, Germany, Romania etc.

I don't have anything definitive to point to other than I've seen in many cases COVID restrictions/precautions becoming a major driver towards working outside the country. Many of these nations are offering extra incentives to film companies in order to keep studios open and technicians employed.

Another factor is domestic state filming incentive programs are on increasingly shaky ground given that many filming havens (Georgia, the Carolinas etc) are Red States and are open to the susceptibility of GOP overreach (censorship etc.).

For example, Texas is considering a large new filming incentive program partially spearheaded by Taylor Sheridan, who has gotten Lt. Governor Dan Patrick onboard as a cheerleader. Patrick has run with this with typical megalomania, citing that he wants Texas to displace Hollywood ("We do not like Hollywood" he put in writing in his official endorsement) as America's filming capital.

Furthering the cause, Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey have testified before committees offering insider views to the economic impact increased filming brings. To show what this is up against, during one of the hearings, they were confronted by a dweeb state senator who'd been offended by Sheridan's Texas-set and filmed streaming series Landman, saying that he didn't feel taxpayers should foot the bill for profanity and sexually explicit productions, and that he'd only support the initiative if the government could vet projects on a case by case basis for funding approval.

So yeah, working elsewhere is pretty appealing.

I've seen in many cases COVID restrictions/precautions becoming a major driver towards working outside the country.

does this mean "other countries take COVID and safety more seriously"? I'm having trouble parsing the sentence

Yeah, that's what I meant. It became more manageable to fly in and quarantine the key talents to another country than to work domestically.

This Oklahoman story about the economics behind the show Tulsa moving from its namesake city to Atlanta gets into the weeds about how much of this works now.
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/entertainment/2024/02/14/tulsa-king-paramount-sylvester-stallone-production-leaving-oklahoma-for-atlanta/72595948007/

Anecdotally, everyone I know who works in TV/movies here in SoCal unequivocally states that the business here as we know it is dead and gone - those who think it's coming back may as well be the hallucinating survivors of an atomic attack . Things were hanging on by a thread before COVID, but now? Of the folks I know who are still working, they're doing it in Hungary or Croatia. A below-the-line costumer with decades in the business recently pivoted to ice cream making.

sic brought up American shows shooting in Canada, which he pointed out is no new thing

The Punisher was shot in 1988. No Escape was shot in 1993. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was shot in 1994. Dark City was shot in 1997. The Matrix was shot in 1998 (and the sequels contigually across 2001 and 2002). Mission Impossible 2 was shot in 1999 (tbf, largely where it's set, but Sydney does play Seville too). Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones was shot in 2000. Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith was shot in 2003, as was Son Of The Mask. Superman Returns was shot in 2005. The Wolverine was shot in 2012, and the Hoey still hasn't reopened.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

he's been infected with pedantry

he IS pedantry

tru

I think it’s a real bummer that it hasn’t reopened!

Very happy to have a conversation about the actual implications for international arts funding if you’re interested in that and not just slinging incoherent epithets. If there’s a real reason it makes you mad, though, apologies, I was unaware.

Okay, but you understand the distinction between what you're doing and a conversation, right?

If the point is that productions often shot outside of the US in the past — which wasn’t being argued, it was that more productions seem to be doing so at present — the counter argument would be showing that there hasn’t been an increase in recent years, not an arbitrary list of productions that were set in the US but shot elsewhere, right?

But I agree with others, it’s be easier to question what the hypothesis actually is, if you’re trying to contradict it, because I don’t see one, just general conversation about how a lot of film and television work is being done elsewhere for US-centric shows.

Recent articles in this THR section have good info on the state of things: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/t/film-and-tv-tax-credits/

Can we have the conversation re where things are filmed now in another thread pls? I thought it was common knowledge everything's filmed in Australia/Canada/Croatia/Iceland these days.

I caught some of The Studio and I don't care for the frantic, one-shot camera work. Which I suppose is intended to add to the shitty stressful feel of the show but it just icked me out.

And how are Iannucci's crew feeling about it being such a direct rip off of The Franchise? Which I quite liked, but maybe cos I'm a sucker for anything with Richard E Grant in it.

There are a few recent shows on HBO Max from Poland that I wonder if there’s a connection to the location incentive thing … the two I watched were pretty solid! Maybe it’s just me being 50 and American but it’s super interesting to be able to see tv shows from Europe that aren’t America-focused.

xp I haven't seen The Franchise yet, as need to switch to a different streaming channel to watch it and I refuse to pay for more than one at a time... but had wondered if there was overlap there.
People who were calling The Studio basically CYE, otm.

I haven’t watched The Studio yet but I felt The Franchise was a failure. I wanted to like it but it just wasn’t biting enough.

Yeah, OK well I do believe reacher S3 wound up having some of the dumbest characters in terms of decision-making in any recent show I’ve seen. The last episode had some satisfying killing at least. Appreciated the effort of the very British Sonya Cassidy going hard with an extremely pronounced Boston accent.

i kind of ended up enjoying her after a while

the “villain” though? total whiff

also, lemme break down the dumbest thing --

"hi Zachary Beck, I'm Julius McCabe, sadist. You've let two informants into your home already which has threatened my dumb scheme, and I've promised you and your son more pain and suffering if you step wrong again. I have my 7 ft tall secondary sadist here with me too. Just wondering why are all of these folks who were part of the 110th Army Unit investigating me?"

"let me think...is my son here in this house now?"

"yes"

"okay, Reacher was in the 110th"

SO stupid!!

that part where the giant guy was like "let's fight like men" and Reacher just kicks him in the groin was funny

Appreciated the effort of the very British Sonya Cassidy going hard with an extremely pronounced Boston accent.

LOL is that what she was doing? I thought her accent was a really badly done NYC accent.

I am so not the audience for Reacher but had to sit thru much of the latest season because it's utter bait for my other half.

My wife and I just watched Dying For Sex on Hulu, which is really good and much funnier/less depressing than you would think. Eight half-hour episodes; we did two a day.

oh good, i def want to see that!

it's been getting a lot of good buzz afaict

Yeah, it's on my list to watch.

Also, Hacks back this week :D

^^I started a thread last month: An Ava In The House Of Vance: HACKS on MAX

My current tv diet:

Mobland
Righteous Gemstones
Daredevil
Abbott Elementary
The Pitt
Dope Thief
Long Bright River
Yellowjackets
Survivor
Top Chef
Side Quest

Also doing an Andor s1 rewatch with my kids.

On my radar / will start once I finish some of the above:

Dying for Sex
Handmaid’s Tale
Your Friends and Neighbors

I still need to catch up on Hacks s3. Maybe I’ll squeeze in a binge of that this weekend.

Also using The Conners, St Denis Medical and Mid-Century Modern as sleep aids.

Severance - meh
Gilded Age - sub-meh but watchable because of the cast
Dexter - taking a break after S4
Eureka - it’s cute

Waiting for the Dark Winds season to finish

Re-screened The Expanse up to the last season but haven’t gone back to finish yet

Netflix documentary The Clubhouse about the 2024 Red Sox is out and it’s fun even if you don’t care about baseball!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akeNYGjd7S4

Dexter - taking a break after S4

i won't stop you if you want to continue, but this is actually a perfect spot to end the show fyi

I’m in too deep to stop LONG BRIGHT RIVER but this show ain’t that good. There are certain twists you can see coming a mile off, and others that are less predictable but are genuinely stupid.

yeah. also there’s so many nothingy bridge-type episodes. a lot of dog-paddling around.

and maybe build an episode or two out of the incessant sister flashbacks and actually establish some fkn story idk

i like it but it is kind of frustrating story-wise.

the little boy is SO good though. so serious! <3

like when Seyfried tries to talk basketball with him & he just sighs & looks at her like “be serious”

Yeah considering how big a part he played, thankfully the kid was a good actor.

The Residence chat: our household really enjoyed this. Turns out we are big fans of Netflix shows in which smart women in wide brown trousers and sensible shoes solve legal problems, Well, there's this and Fisk, and that's about it, but maybe it could become a whole genre? But I was really annoyed that the finale was 90 minutes for no reason. Similarly I was really annoyed that the finale of The White Lotus was 90 minutes for no reason. No thank you to this.

One of the things that annoyed me about Long Bright River was that one of the big reveals in the latter part of the season that the son was actually her sister’s child was something almost every character already knew. It was just withheld from the audience for twist purposes.

Liz Moore teaches in the department where I have adjuncted for many years, so I read the book, and admit that I am genuinely surprised by how popular the book and the show are

i mean good for her, but also very much not for me

i’m reading her recent one “God Of The Woods” at the moment

I'm always surprised when I read overseas peeps talk about Fisk - has it had a good run in the UK and/or US?

Pity about Marty Sheargold being an arsehole, mind (I mean he always was a twat but now he's Done).

i’m reading her recent one “God Of The Woods” at the moment

Trayce, Netflix accurately suggested it as something I might like, but I don't think it's exactly widely known. It never had a run on actual television like Colin From Accounts.

The other Australian programme that is very popular in my circle is Five Rooms, because my mam and my aunt watch it. It runs on both the BBC and RTE (Irish public-service broadcaster).

Paramount+ does not seem to be hitting home runs.

https://i.imgur.com/9BN36eD.png

The Bondsman on Prime w Kevin Bacon is decent?, kinda like that “Stan Vs Evil” show from a while back, lotta good folks starring alongside, Beth Grant, Jennifer Nettles, Damon Herriman

Paramount+ does not seem to be hitting home runs.

🖼

I got paid $10 to watch the first episode of Happy Face for a consumer survey thing a few months ago - it wasn't terrible either, as true crime dramas go.

P+ Originals just don't seem to break confinement. The only way to know there's a new show is to have it pop up because you never unsubbed between Star Trek seasons.

Yellowjackets has a frustrating mix - I have to ride the volume on my interface 5-6db between dialogue and any scene with a song or action.

That's a big pet peeve for me too in shows (or more commonly, movies). Now we just do subtitles for everything so at least I'm not missing dialogue, but it's still not ideal

Yeah, we almost always have subtitles on everything, just to make things easier for everyone. Reminds me a bit of when CDs were introduced and classical fans were annoyed by the high dynamic range. They'd have to crank the speakers to hear the really quiet bits, but then the loud bits would be too loud. (See also: stunt recordings like PJ Harvey's "Rid of Me").

I use subtitles on everything too, mostly because my hearing is not what it was. Some of my friends want me to turn them off, which I understand

I really enjoyed reading "The God of the Woods" by Liz Moore. "Long Bright River" was also enjoyable as I recollect, but I have forgotten about it. I haven't seen the series yet

Have any of you watched "Adolescence"? It's a 4-part miniseries that is pretty wrenching

We’re a subtitles on household too

Black Mirror S7 starts with the least subtle episode yet.

xpost Us also. Its for myriad reasons - the dynamic range BS is a big one, but also things like "theres 2 TVs going within earshot of each other in the same house" or "I'm eating and cant hear their mumbling over my chewing" or "Trayce is a deafy".

I really loved the first new Black Mirror ep. I didnt mention it here cos there's actually a thread for the show but it hasnt been updated in ages.

But it was a depressing cold water slap, given it was a completely right-now plausible scenario. And also I love Ann Perkins Rashida.

Have any of you watched "Adolescence"? It's a 4-part miniseries that is pretty wrenching

Yep, and we've got a thread for it:
A thread for Adolescence (Netflix, 2025)

I really loved the first new Black Mirror ep.

I had the opposite reaction. For various reasons I thought it was extremely unlikely that these particular people would be so credulous, and also it was just exactly the kind of story I did not need to see right now.

I didn’t hate it like some of the earlier on the nose episodes (I haven’t seen most of 3-6), the pieces were all fine, it just didn’t say anything interesting about predatory capitalism.

Piling on the horrors (and lifting material from Idiocracy) is fair and real but it’s not much to watch.

Hoping there are more like the two I’ve seen from S6 - pre-Thatcher demonology and Black Mirror: Galaxy Quest.

Yellowjackets: 1st season was interesting, 2nd season was just okay, I’ve watched the first two episodes of the 3rd season so far and I don’t know if I want to commit to it

Handmaid’s Tale: I loved this show so much at the beginning and for several seasons it was pretty great. But we’re now in the 6th and final season and it feels like there will be a long denouement and it will be a disappointment. I will watch it though to see the outcome

Lockerbie: first episode is boring, not sure I will finish it

Nobody Wants This: first episode is too cutesy by far, but maybe I’m in a mood for that

Somebody Somewhere: This is an ostensibly cringey comedy about small-town characters in rural Kansas, but the characters are so great that you want to watch them forever. This show is a balm for me right now, I'm glad there are 3 seasons of it

I also just finished Somebody Somewhere and loved it! Such a sweet and funny show, wonderful characters. 3 seasons was not enough!

Definitely skip Lockerbie. 1st episode is the best episode and it goes down from there

Yellowjackets s3 is definitely rocky, just as s2 was. It mostly stayed compelling enough for me to keep with it but if you’re hoping it will return to the excellence of s1, it won’t.

Agreed on Handmaid’s Tale. I’m in it to the end but it’s diminished from its early brilliance.

Somebody Somewhere is a goddamned treasure

Handmaid’s Tale took several turns and the initial premise turning into what it is now is a thought exercise we maybe didn’t need played out?

I guess L&O: Criminal Intent falls into this bucket now that it’s just a Peacock show. It’s a goofy L&O spinoff where Stabler gets to go undercover and actually hit people outside of an interrogation room or shady arrest. The supporting cast carried it (halfway) before, but the first streaming-only season is just ehhh in the first two episodes. The writing, premise, and casting is cheaper

Finding Eureka very enjoyable not quite halfway through S1. What if you made an entire series out of the X-Files comic episodes?

Somebody Somewhere is fantastic.

Yellowjackets is pretty dumb but fun.

Handmaids Tale...I don't know why we still watch it. They're working hard to have people making bad decisions so we can get to the point where Luke gets killed so she can end up with Nick. That's my guess at least.

I had no idea Handmaid's Tale had more than two seasons!

I must resurface mentions of COMMON SIDE EFFECTS which has become my new favorite thing on tv this month.

I finally got around to watching it. Good show, though I couldn't help but keep comparing it to Scavengers' Reign, which was more imaginative and wild. We got some of that in this show here and there, but I wanted more. apparently this show is gonna get another season, so maybe they'll ramp it up

It’s so different from Scavenger’s Reign - it’s not going to reach that level because it’s not trying to. (On the other hand, SR could never be as funny)

Wouldn't mind if HBO stopped showing me ads for Paul American.

We are three episodes into North of North and we are finding it charming. The main character’s daughter is delightful.

Niko Stratis wrote a great piece about Reacher & memories on their newsletter this week

https://www.anxietyshark.ca/reacher/?ref=anxiety-shark-newsletter

Just finished Slow Horses season 1 and it's great! It took a while to get going but the spy stuff was nice and twisty without being too hard to follow and the jokes are real lols, definitely going to try to get through all the seasons now.

Come join us! Slow Horses

I am currently feeling very overwhelmed by trying to keep up with TV shows right now.

Watching Last of Us, Friends and Neighbors, Handmaid's Tale, MobLand, The Studio, Survivor, Top Chef, Dope Thief, Dr Who, and Righteous Gemstones... which seems like a lot but when you just need to watch one ep per week it's not so bad. But a few of these shows premiered with multiple episodes and/or I didn't start them right away so it took a lot of time to catch up. I also did a big catch-up on Hacks--I never got around to s3 so I watched all of it over the last week and am now caught up to the current episode of s4. I also watched the first episode of Dying for Sex but can't figure out when/how to watch the rest, even though I liked it.

And now Andor is here in 3-episode batches. It's too much and I don't want to give any of it up!

Enjoyed both seasons of Wolf Hall ( preferred S1 over 2 ). It made me want to rewatch The Hollow Crown, for some reason.

Watched the first ep of Your Friends and Neighbors. Jon Hamm and Amanda Peet … very good start

I'm kind of liking S6, the final season, of The Handmaid's Tale. The revenge of women against an evil patriarchy is something I have time for. I think the three year hiatus worked for it. The first two episodes of S2 of The Last of Us is also pretty good I think, better than the beginning of the first season even, it also benefitted from a hiatus.

I haven't continued yet with Hacks, but it ended on a really high note in S3 so I'm expecting at least slight disappointment. I will still probably enjoy what they do next though.

I'm going to rewatch the first season of Wolf Hall from 10 years ago before I start this season, and am looking forward to it

The Studio starts out as a very 'The Player'-level satire on the narcissism of Hollywood, but it is much less subtle and is super coked-out, with a really bad percussion soundtrack. It’s not something I want to continue with

After the first few eps of Hacks, I'm wishing the series were just about Jimmy & Kayla at this point. I'm not enjoying the Deborah/Ava storyline, or spending time with those characters...

I watched the first season of Andor and it was... OK. I've watched the first three episodes of season 2 and I'm out. The first two episodes are evenly divided between boring rich people having boring rich person angst and our hero trapped on a generic planet with two groups of squabbling idiots who have nothing to do with the larger story. Oh, and then we get a five-hour (or maybe it just felt that way) meeting of the Evil Bureaucracy, Special Extra-Evil Division!

Taps sign: An Ava In The House Of Vance: HACKS on MAX

Eh, I’ve said my piece… don’t want to “yuck anyone’s yum” over there (I hate that phrase, lol)

^^^ Agree. That's why I posted my thoughts here and not in the dedicated Andor thread, too.

Watched COMPANION last night on Max.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr_kX0D3DNA

It's basically a fun version of EX MACHINA, with some really surprising violence. Definitely recommended.

Oh cool, I wanted to check that out (lol at the Campbell's Soup font in that logo)

I am ending up lukewarm on YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS. All the narration is driving me up the wall, and there just seems to be no stakes despite the premise. I can still envision it ratcheting up but I’d like them to get on with it

Narcos Mexico is better than what y’all have said in prior threads… idk … maybe part of it is the current political situation here in the US vs Season 2 of the show. I like that they gave a fictional Ricardo Salcedo a cameo.

not sure if there is a thread for it but THE STUDIO is really fantastic. First two episodes were hysterical, then it dipped a little, and now the last two eps have been just terrific. This week's episode about casting the Kool-Aid movie was fast and funny, with a very Seinfeld/Curb-esque kicker at the end.

Agreed... we've only got the final episode left to watch, and it's been a hugely entertaining series.

Netflix have added a new Asterix animation (The Big Fight) and it's really good. Lots of old jokes and some new ones to keep it fresh, plus some really great original sequences (the Getafix kids show, It's A Gaul World). Feels comforting and nostalgic but modern too.

The CGI looked pretty bad, surprised to hear this!

Anyone seen The Four Seasons on Netflix? It's a remake of the Alan Alda/Carol Burnett film--a better-than-average piece of Yacht Cinema, as I recall--updated with a gay couple. I'll be resubbing to Netflix at least long enough to watch the final season of Big Mouth, so I'm just wondering if this is worth my time.

It just came out today so i haven’t watched yet, but i plan to. Saw a couple middling/poor reviews of it though so i am tempering my expectations

Ah! Didn’t realize it was just released.

Sicario 2 is lol holy shit levels of fascist

it's so weird to me that they totally took the entire message of the first movie and threw it in the dumpster, even trying to make Brolin's character 'heroic'??? but entertaining i guess!

Watching THE INSIDER on Hulu and reveling as always in Michael Mann's ability to cast instantly recognizable character actors and basically tell them, "You'll be in five scenes, you will have exactly four words of dialogue, but you'll get three close-ups in fantastic lighting. Deal?"

That movie may be perfect.

Narrow Road To The Deep North is on Prime -highly recommend if yr so inclined

Stars Jacob Elordi & Ciaran Hinds, directed by Justin Kurzel (The Order, True History of the Kelly Gang, Snowtown) based on the novel by Richard Flanagan.
It looks fucking incredible, so beautifully filmed, they clearly threw a ton of money into this - and of course Prime just barfs it into their feed without any fanfare at all

Anyway, it’s quite good.

Years ago I bought that book for my wife and she loved it. I always meant to read it, but before the adaptation ... ?

Loved The Order so I’ll definitely give it a look.

i dont remember much of the book though i did for sure read it

is anybody else watching the batshit crazy show The Creamerie, on Netflix? it's like if Children Of Men was a sharply written comedy.

Watched COMPANION last night on Max.

It's basically a fun version of EX MACHINA, with some really surprising violence. Definitely recommended.

is anybody else watching the batshit crazy show The Creamerie, on Netflix?

Not available for streaming in Ireland, boo.

Man, I wish Netflix would stop trying to push its mobile games on me.

Watched it on Hulu a couple of years ago, Creamerie is fantastic. Wish there was more, but I'd like to see it again after seeing some of the supporting cast on Taskmaster NZ.

sorry yeah it's on Hulu!

apparently there is a 3rd season but not yet streaming?

Don't worry, I'll get it.

Three movies on my "Oh, I should watch that one of these days" list — REVENGE, COLOR OUT OF SPACE, and WEREWOLVES WITHIN — just popped up on Tubi.

I've come across a few great films on Tubi, etc. just by scrolling around, checking Wikipedia, watching a bit and seeing if it catches my interest, etc. (I stopped following movies closely in the past 10-15 years, so most the titles are new to me). Here are a few that I've loved (which may not be currently available on Tubi specifically):

The One I Love (2014)

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)

If anyone hasn't seen either of these, I recommend them highly (...and the less you know going in to both of them, the better!)

(Over the weekend, I watched The Monster (2016) – which is currently on Tubi – and whose horror elements are probably too rote to satisfy horror-heads, but the performances and backstory were engaging enough to keep me watching.)

Revenge is great stuff. I didn't mind The Colour Out of Space, but I know some loved it. Need to see Werewolves and Beyond the Black Rainbow.

The One I Love was terrific--a nice contemporary spin on a Twilight Zone-style concept.

Color Out Of Space (less having no Elder Gods) is maybe my favorite Lovecraft adaptation to date. Cage relatively reins it in, have a screen crush on Joely, and the small farm scope of the film allows for better budget use. Kind of like Cujo, in that regard.

Good to know on The One I Love, which was on my watch radar years ago.

Four Seasons really ramps up the lolz in eps 3&4. I also like that they've kept the characterization of the younger girlfriend from the movie while at the same time putting in the work to make the ex-wife more well-rounded and a bigger part of the overall story.

the cage color out of space adaptation was fucking great

+1 for Color Out of Space

watching it B2B w/ Mandy was maybe the angriest I've ever been at not being high

Last year, I did a deep dive (har har) into the “underwater horror/sci-fi” flicks of the late ’80s/early ’90s. I must've watched 6 or 7 of them, ranging from super high-budget ("The Abyss" – whose production surely inspired many of the others, including some that beat it to the screen), to absolute bottom-of-the-barrel schlock. My favorite was "DeepStar Six" (1989), fwiw...

(As a postscript, I also watched "Underwater," a 2020 update on the genre starring Kristen Stewart.)

Underwater was great.

Mandy got all the press but Beyond the Black Rainbow, the director's previous one, despite being less plotty has some really fun ideas and visuals.