About halfway through S3 of Shrinking. This show is great. All the feels all the time.
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The show should have ended after Nolan and the others became cops and stopped being rookies.
The death of West came out of nowhere and felt super weird.
The honeymoon episode of Nolan and his wife on this island was so bad it really killed any interest I had to watch more. It was also the worst rated on IMDB.
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Oh yeah, honeymoon episode is awful. And I do hope they end it after season 8. The value added by good writing is a diminishing return at this point.
I have started to fast-forward in 30sec skips the action scenes. There were a couple fights/shootouts (both) that were beyond laughably bad. My favourite was a phalanx of riot shield wielding baddies: the shields cover head to knees, more or less. Four guys up front had shields, with another 8 behind them.
SHOOT THE LEGS.
Just… point down a little, bam. Guy with shield drops, and then hose down everyone behind them.
But no.
Also, guns in the show are shockingly variable in their lethality. Which might be accurate to real life? I dunno. But the number of shootouts by this point must be… 7 seasons with 15 episodes per seaon (on average, the earlier seasons were longer and S6 had only 10)… 70? 80? It’s just ridiculous. They have shot up SO MANY shops.
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It’s funny how you can have a vague idea of what a programme is in your head, and then someone describes it, and you realise it’s a completely different kind of show.
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I think The Rookie especially has changed significantly over the seasons - I drifted away from in about S3 or 4 - partly because of the usual TV show problem about escalating consequences.
“In S1 they’re fighting criminals.
In S2 they’re fighting crime gangs.
In S3 they’re fighting international crime cartels.
In S4 they’re invading Poland.
In S5 they’re conquering other planets …”
and so on.
Reminds me very much of the EE “Doc” Smith Lensman novels, where the escalation in weapons went through using whole planets as conkers to creating a planet sized anti-matter sphere.
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The shootouts are a bit ridiculous, the most ridiculous one in my opinion was when Tim jumped out of an ambulance, in which he was lying heavily injured after another shootout, shooting the last bad guy.
@jfs And yeah you are right too, as soon as they started preventing terrorist attacks on LA and the rest of the US, it left the show’s premise very far behind and you wonder how further they could escalate it.
It is a bit sad, we really loved the show for the first seasons.
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Went and saw Supergirl last night. It was fine. Well acted, but the plot felt a litte meandering. Still a fun time.
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Watched the first episode of “Ride or die” on Prime and it’s great fun. Hannah Waddingham is clearly the best Bond we never had, and my partner’s new gym goals are to get biceps anything like hers.
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Saw The Odyssey. Really good film! Probably could have shaved 20 mins or so off the runtime, but it was still very well written, incredibly well acted, and had fantastic direction. One of Nolan’s best, and I was really impressed with Matt Damon’s performance.
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We saw it (The Odyssey) yesterday in the 70mm version.
It was very good and definitely worth seeing on a big screen.
I think what Nolan tries to and achieves here is drawing the viewer into the screen. It was almost a little too intense for me but … that is quite the achievement.
And the design of Agamemnon. … so good. That helmet in particular.
Though I wonder were they filming Dune 3 next door and sent over some actors? 
The cyclops scene was difficult. I had to close my eyes. Too claustrophobic. Also wondering if it was inspired by Attack on Titan? Feels similar with the Kopfabbeisssen (biting off the head) .
And I loved Anne Hathaway as Penelope.
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I just finished watching season 1 of Solo Leveling, which was… fine. The plot gets away in the power creep extremely quickly, and the hero’s inclination to challenge dungeons that are above his power level is… idiotic. It’s just plain stupid.
“Oh, so this is a B-tier dungeon, but I’m currently barely D-tier… thankfully now that I know I can gain power safely and consistently, I can just come back in a few days and tackle this when I’m properly prepared!.. ha! That’s funny, I was thinking sensibly for a moment. In I go!”
I finished the season and immediately could tell that this was going to spiral way out of control very quickly. Plus, I kinda dislike “chosen one” stories (there are exceptions, obviously).
That stated, it was competently done and I can understand why other people like it. But it’s a fraction of a fraction as good as Frieren, and even that one was getting rough near the end of the 2nd season. Maybe I dislike power creep as a mechanic? Hmm. Anyway.
I’m between viewing things at the moment. Which is okay… I’m trying to learn DaVinci Fairlight audio editing for my podcast/audio short stories, and that’s… whoo boy. It’s a lot.
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Zendaya seem to have this theme of showing up more on the trailers than on the film itself. First, Dune 1. And now, the Odyssey.
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Working my way (again) through Person of Interest - a really fascinating look at what might happen in the world of ever increasing surveillance and unchecked AI.
Reads totally differently now, post LLM, than before.
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Such a good show!
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We consider doing a rewatch too. I am sure it gives a different feel now. Had the same experience when rereading Hyperion this year.
@yashima I find it fascinating that there is no cinema in Germany that can show the IMAX 70mm version. We are going on Saturday morning to see the IMAX version.
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I learned from a friend on Friday that there is an IMAX theatre about a half-hour’s drive from where I live. Apparently it’s been there for years. I guess I’m going to go see the Odyssey.
I’ve only been to an IMAX theatre once before, about 20 years ago in Vancouver. They were showing a documentary with incredible aerial photography, and it was an absolutely amazing experience. I was so impressed that I went right back in to see the other film they were playing, which was something about dinosaurs, and it was absolutely awful. I felt I’d experienced IMAX at its best and worst in a matter of hours.
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I just think its so weird to film something that is so different if watched at a normal cinema. I’ve seen some of the examples of the shots in IMAX and the shots in a ‘normal’ cinema. Its practically a different shot. I know there are lots of memes about saying “I’m going to watch the ‘poor man’s’ version of Odyssey” etc. Just seems a strange thing to do
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Similarly with the latest 3D film boom a few years ago - you get your serious directors who realise that as with the advent of sound (and arguably colour) you need a whole new way of filming which doesn’t work well if presented in the old format, and then you get the companies that just want to sell as many tickets as possible
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But he’s filmed it in a format that is vanishingly small across the world, compared to even larger screens. Unlike the ‘talkies’, people aren’t going to go around making all the cinemas into Imax 70mm, like they converted all the cinemas for sound.
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I’ve seen it said that the only Movie that fully understood what 3D was in the recent boom was Jackass 3D.
I’d argue that Dredd at least tried to make it a plot element with it’s Slo-mo scenes.
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