What are you watching?

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I’m watching this classic Disney short about Mickey’s time in 'nam.

Y’know, that old chestnut.
That we loved as kids.

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Finished watching The Boys second season last night. Interesting ending, if a bit far-fetched. I think this season has pulled too many “get out of jail” cards. And gratuitous gore, by the way.
I finished the second season of Cobra Kai mid week, and that was great. Although I think I agree the best part of the season is the build-up to chapter 6, I cannot wait to see what happens in January with season 3.
And now that I finished those two, I can focus more on reading, board games and college work. I am so glad there was no streaming back in the turn of the millennium, I would have never finished my degree with so many distractions.

At the moment we’re more motivated to start season 2 of Sense8 than to finish season 1 of The Boys.

We’ve watched a few episodes of season 1 of Lucifer, and while it’s funny, we’re not sure about watching much more of it. It doesn’t seem to take seriously its premise that Lucifer is a vast cosmic entity, indeed the greatest of the angels; he seems almost entirely human, and that makes the series less interesting.

We’re interested in the upcoming The Queen’s Gambit; both of us have read the novel and liked it a lot. If any of the serious chess players among you give it a look I’ll be interested to see what you think.

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JFK - love that film

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A friend mentioned Ted Lasso. American football coach comes to the UK to coach soccer.

It’s not going to be blowing anyone away with the comedy, but you slowly realise that the show is really goddamn wholesome. The US side of things rely on him being the Nicest Guy Ever, but the UK characters and setting are absolutely right. I kinda want to keep watching just because I must ensure that good things happen to this lovely fictional person.

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Star Trek - Lower Decks

Which I’ve enjoyed immensely, although I have no idea if others would like if they don’t know who the Pakleds are or where exocomps are from or all the hardships Miles O’Brien faced…

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The Trial of the Chicago 7

Great performances by all concerned.

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Saw Tenet.

If you really love sci-fi, go see it (if/when able) – it’s entertaining and mind-bending, and you’ll probably have a pretty grand time in spite of potential problems.

If neither sci-fi nor large-scale action set-pieces score instant bonus points in your brain… it’s a tough sell. It’s an incredibly complicated plot (and the film is almost completely plot-driven – reasons to care about any of the characters are few and far between). It undoubtedly rewards multiple viewings to help unravel things – but it’s 2.5 hours long, so who has time for that? And it’s kinda 2.5 hours of stuff constantly happening at you at an unrelenting pace. Oh, and the dialogue is hard to hear on numerous occasions, which is definitely what you want from a hard-to-follow intricately-plotted film.

I gave up trying to understand what was going on part way through, so it did devolve somewhat into a montage of “…and now this is happening, apparently…”

It might actually be as clever as it suggests – I’d really like it to be, and I’ll sing its praises if I come to realise that everything (in which I include practicalities of the central conceit) actually makes sense and meshes together perfectly – but Nolan has pulled bait-and-switch moves on me before, and my gut says that aspects of it are tosh, even in context : )

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I think anyone going into it expecting a sci fi would be sorely disappointed. The trailer makes it look like Inception, but there’s far less action in Tenet. I was surprised how much is just a straight up drama with people in chairs talking very seriously. In pure definition, it sure is sci fi, but it doesn’t fit many of the tropes of the genre at all. For a modern audience, it’s quite sedate.

I really enjoyed it, with the exception of the third act war scene. It was shot in such a disorientating manner, I don’t really understand the role it plays narratively. It didn’t need to be there at all and was a huge shift tonally. Even with the narrative elements setting up for the ending, there were huge stretches of generic soldiers shooting at identically generic soldiers with dust everywhere. It was just nonsense! Why wasn’t it espionage rather than all out war? It seemed like Nolan just wanted it in there to pay homage to Dunkirk.

I hate pretentious meta-analysis… but the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced the entire film is a retrospective analysis of Nolan’s career to date. If so, the “keep going, you’re halfway there. It’s going to be great” at the end was a bit on the nose!

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C and I watched episode 1 of The Order, a Netflix series about a modern university with a secretive magical society. I don’t think we are going to watch any more of it. I love scholastic fantasy, but the emphasis here seemed to be not on actual training in magic but on conspiratorial stuff. The characterization wasn’t subtle, and the protagonist was consistently obnoxious and unsympathetic.

I have literally no other term for it in my film categorisation vocabulary, so I would still unhesitatingly call it a sci-fi film. It’s a broad umbrella, though – perhaps the tropes in question would deserve their own subgenre term.

I am also willing to concede the possibility of my not being “a modern audience” : )

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After 3 years of it not seeming right, I have returned to my favourite science fiction show.

Inevitable Joke...

The West Wing. I’m already at the beginning of season 2. So far these fantasy characters have stated such amazing political opinions such as ‘Poor children should be able to get food and milk’, and that Nazis are bad.

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We watched the new Borat film the other night.

Then I read a thread on reddit about how much of it was “real”, most of the participants believed they were filming a documentary about something completely different. It’s just so wild. And cringy and very very sad. And also “Very nice.”

I haven’t even seen the first one.

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I’ve been watching Taskmaster. From the beginning! Gosh, I love Tim Key. He is so smart and clever :heart_eyes:

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Taskmaster is one of my favourite things. Alex Horne is a genius.

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May I direct you to the following…

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Alex Horne once picked on me at a live show. I have been embarrassed to see his face ever since. Still have flashbacks. :sob::sob:

EDIT: Oh, it was 9 years ago. Still mortified.

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If you haven’t listened to it, the Comedian’s Comedian Podcast episode with Tim Key is excellent. He’s that sneaky of a bastard in real life!

He’s also a consultant on Taskmaster so is involved with picking the contestants and designing the tasks.

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*points @KIR2 to the first of the two youtube videos I embedded previously*

Sorry to hear you got picked on – I actually hate it when comedians do that to anyone. Responding to hecklers is one thing, but I think picking on innocent audience members (who have generally paid the performer money in the hopes of having an enjoyable time at the show) reflects very poorly on the comedian – cheap laughs at someone else’s expense just means they couldn’t write enough good jokes for their show, IMO.

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