Just a quick question for the assembled masses here:
A buddy of mine is a professional actor (primarily stage, but he’s done big and small screen roles before). He hates the acting in The Expanse with a few exceptions (notably Amos, who he thinks is brilliant).
Does anyone else feel this way? I love(d) the Expanse, start to finish, and I thought the casting and acting were top-notch, but by the same token I am very uncritical of the media I enjoy for the most part. Was it just really good writing performed by actors who weren’t very good? Or is this an insider-baseball thing where for another actor they might notice it, but the general public doesn’t?
Specifically, he hates Thomas Jane’s portrayal of a noir-style Detective, which he says is completely unbelievable and surface, and Shohreh Aghdashloo, who’s voice he says is absolutely wrong for the role. I kinda agree about Jane’s detective, but I love Aghdashloo as Avasarala… but again, maybe I just love the lines she’s given, because she has some utterly spectacular dialog
Just curiousity. I am very critical of some writers who I think have fantastic ideas but can’t actually tell a story to save their lives (Asimov, Weir) and other writers who tell great stories but are awful at the ideas the stories are based on (Brin, Card)… but I don’t expect anyone who isn’t a writer would really care about one issue or the other.
I would watch Aghdashloo in anything. (I did, in Renfield.) I think this might be personal taste, combined with awareness of acting choices that flow straight past me.
I thought the two leads (Naomi and uh, the guy) were bad, and that was pretty clear. Still loved the show, but I can see how that might spoil it for someone.
EDIT: Having read your spoiler text, I can see why those two roles might grate, but those two seem more like things that would only bother an actor/critic.
I agree about the lead male character, bland and uninteresting to me, but to be fair, he’s also written that way in the books. I like Naomi well enough and I loved both the characters mentioned in the spoiler text; I actively disagree quite strongly with your friend’s opinion there, Marx.
I can agree with you about The Gentleman, he was doing London gangsters and that is pretty much what he can do, but not on The Ministry of UW. Nazis dancing to Brecht…really? Plus I just thought it didn’t work, but that’s me.
You absolutely did say it was nonsense you are correct. I guess the main difference is that I was not entertained but then people are different.
It was memorable for having the absolute worse rendition of Die Moritat von Mackie Messer that I have ever heard in my life, that will stick with me from the film
Realised that I watch a lot of international series on Netflix (because if they made it onto UK Netflix they’re generally so good that Brits won’t mind subtitles).
I’ve mentioned some on here before, but recent years have included Germany’s KLEO, France’s LUPIN and cool spy series FURIES, Italy’s ruthless version of Citadel “Citadel: Diana”, Turkey’s very silly “The Protector”, there was another French police drama set in a swampy forest which may have included celtic forest gods, more recently the melancholy “Sara - Woman in the shadows” from Naples, the lovely and fun “North of North” from arctic Canada, and now Luxembourg’s “Capitani”. Season 2 of Capitani is an absolute banger.
Anyway, don’t say no to international shows, there’s awesome stuff out there.
In one of my rare moments when I was feeling in the mood to watch some telly, I thought I might catch up on Ash vs Evil Dead. I bought the first series when it came out—the only way I could watch it—but only got around to seeing a couple of episodes. Knowing that it had wrapped up after a third series, I ventured online.
Season One: Free to view.
Season Two: Pay to view.
Season Three: No longer available to watch in the UK because the rights have expired.
We started Deep Cover after your recommendation tonight and watched the first half hour. We had tears in our eyes, it was so funny! I hope the movie keeps that level!
Needed some comfort watching, so yesterday I watched Howl’s Moving Castle (gosh that finale is fast… plot plot DONE!), which is probably one of my Top 5 Ghibli films.
After that was My Neighbour Totoro, which is probably 5th of my Top 5… it’s good, and the finale isn’t so abrupt (although still pretty abrupt!).
Thinking about it right now, it probably goes:
Kiki’s Delivery Service
Spirited Away
Princess Mononoke
Howl’s Moving Castle
My Neighbour Totoro
Ponyo
The Cat Came Back
Nausica In the Valley of the Wind
… the rest of them?
Anyway. They both helped a little.
And then I decided to try Frieren Ageless Elegy, which was pretty good. It got a bit shonen for my tastes in the last few episodes, but otherwise it’s been quite good. I can feel in my bones that there’s a big twist coming… I have my guesses (Frieren is actually the one who died! Frieren is actually the Demon King! Frieren is actually a demon! Frieren killed her family, and Fren’s family!), but the fact that I don’t know, despite decades of anime viewing is… refreshing. Dialog is cute and the characters are neat. I miss Goatee, though.
I started watching this and found it hard to believe just how many cliches they had managed to squeeze into Bana’s character (I’m not going to list the because, spoilers). I actually had to go and check it hadn’t been written by AI scraping previous crime series.
