I binged on The Mandalorian.
I never want to hear the word, Beskar, ever again.
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We watched Brave last night.
FYI itās the only Disney film when the Princess doesnāt sing her own part. Kelly MacDonald (who is awesome) gives way to the equally magnificent Julie Fowliss*
Itās typical Disney, taking a folk story and adding songs, scenery and comedy. Itās brilliant, and yes it did make me cry.
- I know that because when we were waiting for a boat from Magic Kingdom to go and have brunch in The Grand Floridian we were the only people in the queue. The two security guards asked the boys (and us) loads of quiz questions and gave us some facts.
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Watched the Doctor Who New Years special, which was, well dull. (Bring back the Christmas episodes dammit!)
Watched Jurassic World:Fallen Kingdom In which I was yet again confused by people would return to a dangerous place without proper safety
Measures. My wife countered with ā2020ā.
Also thereās an auction in the film for dinosaurs, and they all seem ridiculously cheap, like an actual ankylosaur for less than a challenger tank.
These are the things I care about.
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I havenāt caught up with the previous season of Doctor Who yetā¦ I think the basic problem is (a) Iām not twelve and (b) itās more tightly made for the target audience than back in the day when they tried to appeal to a wider range of viewers.
Vaguely recent watching:
Enola Holmes (2020): In 1884, Enola, younger brother sister of Sherlock, goes looking for her missing mother. Fine as far as it goes, but it doesnāt go very far. (But it annoyed the Conan Doyle estate, which of itself is a Good Thing.)
Pulling Power from the Sky (2020): the rise and fall of Makani, which was going to build kite-borne wind turbines. Utterly fascinating study (without knowing it) of how even very smart people can be subject to the sunk costs fallacy: the thing kept getting bigger and more complicated and more expensive and less reliable, and nobody was in a position to say āwhoa, maybe weāre not going down the right path hereā. Freely available on YouTube.
Never Surrender (2019): retrospective about the making and marketing of Galaxy Quest. Elizabeth Cantillon (one of the executive producers) is particularly worth paying attention to. GQ could very easily have been just more interchangeable ācomedyā garbage.
The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018): surprisingly solid given the clichĆ©d setup. Comedy actually flows from the characters rather than feeling like āooh, letās put them in this stock situationā.
Ghostbusters (2016): the bits that arenāt trying, unsuccessfully, to pander to nostalgic fans of the original can be pretty good. But the script is dire, and itās only saved by the acting. Also, 
Holtzmann.
The Lego Movie 2 (2019): plays up the stuff I didnāt like from the original and loses the stuff I did like. Hanging a lampshade on how your story is all about how the deserving woman is sidelined by the incompetent man doesnāt help when you then tell the same story again.
Future World (2018): bad. Bad bad bad bad bad. If you have the chops to enjoy bad, itās quite fun. Milla Jovovich is the only one here who realises sheās in a bomb, and has fun chewing every bit of scenery in reach.
Longer reviews at my blog.
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An ankylosaur doesnāt have a built-in kettle. Waste of money, if you ask me.
As for Doctor Who, I havenāt watched the special yet either, but Iāve enjoyed the previous couple of series. Mostly for the characters, but some of the stories have been good and itās a relief to be back to a style that doesnāt insist every episode has to be āimportantā and constantly trying to redefine the world of the show.
I stumbled on this a while ago and was pleasantly surprised by it. Also surprised that the spy action is quite brutal in parts considering itās a comedy.
One of my absolute favourite Disney films (I love Mulan, the character, a bit more, and Leia is now canonically my favourite princess, and my favourite Western animated film is Moana which makes me cry like a baby every time). Itās so good!
Holtzmann is the best. Oh em gee. I loves her so much.
As for me, my partner and I are watching Star Trek Discovery together. Iām enjoying the hell outta it. Very JJ Star Trek, but I loved those movies so thatās definitely a good thing for me. And Michael is incredible as a character, and Tilly is delightful. I donāt like the science-lieutenant (Sass?), but I donāt think youāre supposed to. Weāre about 4 or 5 episodes in and enjoying the hell out of it.
We tried watching The Orville, but Andy couldnāt get past the scene with the new captain and his pilot in the shuttle heading for the ship. I get why that bothered her so much (mediocre men being mediocre and getting incredible opportunities as a result), but Iām willing to give it another stab without her.
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Well, it doesnāt have to keep the raptors nearby.
Yeah; I think that may have disorientated many viewers, but I thought it worked rather well. (For calibration: I hated Spy, which might have had a similar premise but to my perception spent all its time saying āhar har this woman is fat and ugly and unable to pass in society and fatā.)
Is this a more gender-experimental film than the previews suggest, or did you mean āyounger sisterā?
The pilot of The Orville strikes me as MacFarlane saying to the executives ālook, I can do a parody of Star Trek and itāll get all the jokey stuff you likeā. While the episodes are more āOK, some fool has given me money, Iām going to make the season of Trek Next Generation that never was, and occasionally Iāll throw in a jokeā.
I really didnāt get on with S1 of Discovery. Everyone is horrible, everyone has the thing theyāre most scared of happen to them, oh and kill your gays too.
I did; I tripped over the āolder brotherā that was still in my buffer from an earlier version of the sentence.
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Iāve heard good things about Discovery, but if āJJā is Abrams, thatās a pretty convincing argument for avoiding it. The original series, with all its flaws, had a balance of action/adventure, characterization, and sense of wonder; the first reboot film turned the action/adventure way up and the sense of wonder way down, which basically killed my interest in seeing any more Trek. Iām not sure I want to endure more of that for the sake of seeing Michelle Yeoh . . .
(In retrospect, I also dislike the alternate timeline rationale. I donāt see why a reboot needs to be anything other than a new telling of the story.)
Iāve seen it recommended many a time, but I got bored after about half an hour when it decided it needed to detour from the plot to remind you that Melissa McCarthy is sad and fat.
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I watched Toy Story 4, and I enjoyed it! I found something immensely cynical about the Toy Story sequels, but this hit a sweet spot between āactually, I think youāll find this is a very deep and meaningful film for adultsā and fun set pieces.
Maybe a few too many cameos though? With cartoons I become astutely aware of how often characters talk and how often they just stand silently in the background.
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The best thing about the movie - okay, maybe the only thing
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You might like the last season of Capaldiās run, which was much more adult with some amazing scripts. (Not his first season, avoid that completely). Everything from āHeaven Sentā towards the end of season 9 onwards is the best in decades.
I actually really like Jodie W but the writing in her series is pathetic and thatās entirely because Chibnall is terrible. It was inevitable as soon as they announced he got the job, but with a good script sheād be great. Hoping they can do what they did with Capaldi and take some time to know the character, then write to fit it.
We watched WW84 last night. It wasā¦okay? I had seen previews, but none of them really prepared me for the plot, other than knowing something had to bring Chris Pineās character back into the picture. As such, the MacGuffin was a bit of a surprise, but it was such a trope that you kind of knew how the movie would end up, even if you didnāt fully know the path needed to get there.
Good acting overall, and it was interesting seeing Pedro Pascal play smarmy and really chew up the scenery in some bits. I think the movie also made a good representation of the workplace misogyny that was built into society at that point that hopefully we are overcoming by now.
Also, the ending did not feel right, which is probably why I feel so āmehā towards the film, especially with the 2.5 hour runtime. Just felt like it was dragged out for a somewhat disappointing payout. Sad, because I really enjoyed the first one.
Whereas for me, it would be a good reason to watch. Star Trek was okay, but nothing that ever really grabbed me. By contrast, I always really enjoyed Star Wars, which the reboot Trek always felt like. Thatās why I felt J.J. would be a great fit for directing the SW sequels, as he already made a couple of great SW-like films, but I can see why fans of the original ST would not enjoy them.
Been meaning to watch this for a while now. Still need to get around to it.
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All of this about Capaldi.
As a special it completely focussed on the uninteresting parts of the story and was weird.
Dull point ā¦and also referred to the travelling machines as Daleks, and the Daleks themselves as āthe creatures inside the daleks.ā What?
I had stopped watching by then because of Moffat fatigue.
That is entirely fair. I got that too, but itās like a different show from Heaven Sent on, and Capaldi finally gets to do gravitas without Moffat getting in the way.
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I enjoyed the original SW trilogy a lot, back in the day. But it was fairly straight action/adventure, which isnāt what I primarily like in science fiction. The original STās theme was āto explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations,ā which is a lot more interesting for me as a premise, even though fairly few of the scripts lived up to the potential of that theme. When C and I saw Star Trek, it seemed to have had that theme diluted, which made it a lot less interesting.
I have to say, also, that I donāt care for Abramsā approach to serial drama (as opposed to single films). We watched all of Alias and liked a lot of it, but the ending didnāt really resolve the storyline or reveal the mysteries underlying it. And as we watched Lost, it seemed increasingly that Abrams wasnāt going to show what was really going on; instead he kept introducing new mysteries on top of the old, till the whole thing was so incredibly overcomplicated that there was no way to clear it up in the time that was left. We were disappointed when the digital changeover made us unable to watch the final half season, but Iāve never gone back to watch those remaining episodes, and by now I wouldnāt have the patience to go back to the start. This wouldnāt necessarily apply to his movies, of course; I disliked ST for other reasons.
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Iām with you on this - I donāt like JJ and think heās hugely overrated.
(Although Alias had one of the best pilot episodes of anything Iāve ever seen: really clever writing, introducing great characters with a minimum of fuss, brilliant. I loved series 1, not sure how far into 2 I got but Iād watch it again anytime).