The TV and Streaming Thread: Summer Reruns

[Keyrock]

I'm a big fan of noir detective stories and many of its tropes (e.g. the femme fatale, two-faced characters playing each other) thus many of David Lynch's works are right up my alley. The surrealist nonsense is icing on the cake, the weirder the better. Obviously, Twin Peaks is completely my jam.

Edited September 5, 2022 by Keyrock

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

6 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

I'm a big fan of noir detective stories and many of its tropes (e.g. the femme fatale, two-faced characters playing each other) thus many of David Lynch's works are right up my alley. The surrealist nonsense is icing on the cake, the weirder the better. Obviously, Twin Peaks is completely my jam.

I too love surrealist nonsense and, perhaps atypically, don't care if something makes sense as long as it's interesting so the work of David Lynch works really well for me. The first film of his I saw was Lost Highway on IFC when I was in high school and I was just blown away by how different it was from most of what I had seen at that point, even though I was confused as hell. Even beyond the plot they way it looked and sounded was like nothing I had seen in the movies I had been able to see in theaters or rent at the Blockbuster. 

[Gromnir]

On 9/4/2022 at 1:40 PM, ShadySands said:

 I'm not against David Lynch or anything just not a huge fan. 

am actual a david lynch fan, but is our opinion that none of his movies or tv shows is all that fantastic. is some ok lynch stuff we enjoyed, but nothing which is gonna make a top 25 or 50... or even 100. dune is a hot mess at best, but that is ok. elephant man is the most conventional lynch and is likely what we would describe as his best effort though counter-intuitive it is not our favorite lynch work.

is david lynch who is quirky and kinda kewl, but even his best stuff is tending to be big on concept and kinda hit-or-miss on execution. from our pov, is nothing particular groundbreaking 'bout lynch films, but the guy is a different cat and am ordinarily willing to watch his movies and shows 'cause even if being different don't equal being good, the uniqueness makes the time we spent on the viewing worth the indulgence.

am now gonna listen to some everly brothers.

HA! Good Fun!

ps our favorite lynch is mulholland drive, but we got more than a few criticisms o' the film and am thinking the second half o' the film undermines much o' what were done well in the first half. 

 

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

This other side also has terrible action sequences and warfare on a scale of stupid that it possibly out-stupids the Battle of Winterfell in Game of Thrones.

To be fair to the Battle of Winterfell, it wasn't even the most stupid 'battle' in GoT*, amazingly. That honour goes to Euron Greyjoy 360 noscoping a dragon from a moving, pitching ship, with a ballista, from a distance of hundreds? thousands? of meters, because the dragons had gone blind, and Danaerys had developed a very specific form of early onset dementia which makes her forget about fleets. At least a few things in tBoW worked (well, kind of), that had no redeeming features whatsoever.

*and would probably have been better received if everyone had the same a/v equipment as the producers had so could actually see what was going on.

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Spoiler

there is the fact that they are losing the war against the Crabfeeder's army holed up in a small series of caves that could easily be besieged and blockaded, and the fact that they have two dragons at their disposal.

 

Spoiler

There's some precedent in the successful Dornish resistance, albeit that was in every facet a far more large scale resistance. The obvious modern allusion is to groups like the Taleban and how little air power etc ultimately effected the outcome- and that was air power with practically unlimited endurance, night vision, satellites etc- though again that's on a far larger scale. Really though, there's a very good reason why insurgents never 'fight fair', and it's the same reason they're insurgents in the first place.

 

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Early Game of Thrones did not have the budget to depict battles, and I think the show was better for it.

Oh god yes. They got a lot of criticism for how they handled Whispering Wood (? when Jaime got captured) and it being offscreen but the Battle of Blackwater was, in retrospect, an utter disaster for GoT longer term. Or at least their need to constantly one up the last battle in spectacle (but little else) was.

Edited September 5, 2022 by Zoraptor

[uuuhhii]

rick and morty s06e01

was really hoping for a super jerry villain

but no just the most uncaring rick for this season

[InsaneCommander]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

House of the Dragon, episode three

Then there's the other side of the show, when there is a lot of CGI on the screen to make things look grand, but in doing so makes everything just look uncanny. Much to @Hurlshort's delight, there were  three CGI animals in this episode (not counting the dragons as animals, for the record), and they all looked bad. There's also Daemon's dragon which just looks awkward and is animated in such a ludicrously bad manner that I cannot but wonder if anyone got paid for how it looks, or worse, if anyone actually wanted it to look this way and it was not just sheer incompetence at work.

This other side also has terrible action sequences and warfare on a scale of stupid that it possibly out-stupids the Battle of Winterfell in Game of Thrones. The final ten minutes of this episode very much ruined all the good will the rest of the episode built up. Needless to say that this battle necessitated a departure from the source material, but that is not even the biggest issue. Time economy and resources dictate that certain events must be changed in an adaptation, however, a little more sense applied to it would be nice.

A disappointing episode. I thought the animals looked really bad, but I agree with the Prey discussion on the other thread, it is still better than having real animals, if they are suffering some abuse.

The battle was the most anticipated moment of the episode, but it didn't work at all for me.

Spoiler

The crab people seemed to be hiding in just a few caves. As @majesticsaid, it shouldn't be too difficult to deal with them. Burn something right inside the caves and suffocate them. Throw stuff there to blockade them, whatever, it shouldn't really be an issue, since they didn't go too far inside so either they needed to be there or couldn't go any further. Where is their food coming from?

 

[Keyrock]

Where does creamed corn fit into the workings of the universe?

Edited September 6, 2022 by Keyrock

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

32 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

Where does creamed corn fit into the workings of the universe?

While I could write up a paragraph how corn represents sorrow, I honestly think David Lynch just thinks it looks interesting when filmed and worked backwards from there.

[Zoraptor]

7 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

[HotD ep3 spoilers]

  Hide contents

The crab people seemed to be hiding in just a few caves. As @majesticsaid, it shouldn't be too difficult to deal with them. Burn something right inside the caves and suffocate them. Throw stuff there to blockade them, whatever, it shouldn't really be an issue, since they didn't go too far inside so either they needed to be there or couldn't go any further. Where is their food coming from?

 

 

Spoiler

Them being there as part of a successful resistance is plausible enough, if the caves are an extensive network. If not then yeah, implausible, and the rest of this post can be ignored.

Otherwise; cave systems are notoriously hard to take, even with planes and literal explosives/ flamethrowers the US had a lot of trouble with the extensive systems on islands like Iwo Jima and Okinawa for example.

The issue with trying a close blockade with ~medieval tech if the system is extensive is that you have to divide up troops a lot to block every entrance/ exit, and that makes classic insurgent tactics like hit and runs and attacking isolated detachments pretty easy if you know the terrain or if any entrances have been missed. You can't enter because the enemy knows the caves and you don't, making you extremely vulnerable to ambush. Fire, whether dragon or natural only really works for shallow caves that slope upwards, otherwise you just get a chimney/ draw effect. If you've got lots of exits/ entrances you have a lot of opportunities to resupply too, and you can't keep, say, a fleet permanently on station to blockade 24/7 with the tech available. You couldn't do that even in the early 19th century (both the Trafalgar campaign of 1805 and Nile/ Aboukir Bay happened after- generally incompetent- French admirals initially slipped a blockade from the definitely competent Admiral Nelson because Nelson couldn't keep his fleet at sea all the time). You certainly couldn't plausibly resupply to a 21st century level, but people in  the ~14th century could make do with a lot fewer calories than we do.

If it's a military simulation type program you'd want that addressed so it explicitly makes sense, but warfare in extended GoT has predominantly been written to be 'cool' rather than ~realistic~, even when GoT was good. The books are a lot better in that respect, understandably so. Logistics and the like is kind of boring in a visual medium but is relatively easy to explain with a few paragraphs or even lines.

The battle itself... yeah, fair to say it doesn't seem to have been well received by pretty much anyone with critical faculties above 'looks cool' level. And even some of them were peeved about aspects of it. I don't think the long term situation/ scene setting is much of a problem though.

 

Edited September 6, 2022 by Zoraptor

[Chilloutman]

not sure if it was already shared NSFW trailer for Cyberpunk anime - looks ok I guess

 

[uuuhhii]

33 minutes ago, Chilloutman said:

not sure if it was already shared NSFW trailer for Cyberpunk anime - looks ok I guess

 

trigger with high budget was something many audience wanted for a long time

but script was always the thing drag trigger down

if a trigger production cannot maintain the momentum audience will have the time to think and notice how stupid everything are

[Lexx]

Very german trailer music.

[Malcador]

Was hoping McGlynn would be in it, hah.

 

[Amentep]

 

[Amentep]

 

 

[InsaneCommander]

3 hours ago, Amentep said:

 

 

The second one looks good. The first doesn't show in my country.

[kirottu]

I don't know, man. He doesn't say "oh boy" once. 

[majestic]

It looks like Rings of Power is going to be about the ring forging, the War of Sauron and the Elves, the fall of Numenor and the Last Alliance. At the same time. Guess that makes it possible that mystery man fallen from the sky is actually Gandalf. Oh what a joyous time to be alive.

 

Spoiler

Episode three introduced us to Elendil and Isildur and Pharazon, who for some reason is chancellor of Numenor, not king. Numenor's already been corrupted by Sauron, by the looks of it, so we're shortly before it is destroyed.

No sense complaining, it is what it is given the amount of material they've licensed.

Edit: The episode's incredibly dull. Managed to get throuh less than half of it before having to pause. Will finish it tomorrow. Yuck.

Edited September 9, 2022 by majestic

[Hurlshort]

I was hoping for Tom Bombadil, but I don't know much of the lore outside of the main books, so I've got no idea. Don't ruin it for me!

 

[Keyrock]

Who owns the Silmarillion IP? I'm assuming it's Tolkien's family. I'd watch a Silmarillion show, they could get a ****ton of seasons out of that too.

[Amentep]

 

 

[majestic]

On 9/9/2022 at 11:34 PM, Hurlshort said:

I was hoping for Tom Bombadil, but I don't know much of the lore outside of the main books, so I've got no idea. Don't ruin it for me!

Tom Bombadil has always been around, as per the information from Lord of the Rings, he certainly did not fall out of the sky in the Second Age. In the lore outside of the book trilogy and The Hobbit, Sauron forged the One Ring in 1600 SA, as the last of the (Great) Rings of Power. The characters introduced in the last episode are from a time around 3100 to 3200 SA, with the age of some of then suggesting that we're somewhere around 3228 SA, give or a take a year or two.

So yeah, since this is all fan fiction condensing 1600 years of history into one TV show storyline, what's there to ruin?

Spoiler

Tar-Miriel was never queen, she should have been, but her cousin Pharazon forcibly married her and usurped her throne, and later caused the destruction of Numenor at the hands of the Valar. At the time when the Rings of Power were forged, Numenor was still a friend to the Elves, and helped them win the war against Sauron.

 

[Zoraptor]

I quite like the idea of Akallabeth details being put in spoiler quotes, if only because it's older than I am.

Spoiler

Unless those are details from Unfinished Tales, in which case meh.

 

23 hours ago, Keyrock said:

Who owns the Silmarillion IP? I'm assuming it's Tolkien's family. I'd watch a Silmarillion show, they could get a ****ton of seasons out of that too.

It's a bit muddy. Embracer's press release on them acquiring the rights from Saul Zaentz recently (first paragraph, emphasis added:

"Embracer Group AB (”Embracer”), through its wholly owned subsidiary Freemode, has entered into an agreement to acquire Middle-earth Enterprises, a division of The Saul Zaentz Company, which owns a vast intellectual property catalogue and worldwide rights to motion pictures, video games, board games, merchandising, theme parks and stage productions relating to the iconic fantasy literary works The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as matching rights in other Middle-earth-related literary works authorized by the Tolkien Estate and HarperCollins, which have yet to be explored."

That kind of implies they've got something off of the Tolkien Estate as well? Guess they could just be referring to Akallabeth, though in literary terms I believe it's book IV of the Silmarillion rather than a separate work and must have been licensed some time ago given the RoP series uses it extensively.

Edited September 11, 2022 by Zoraptor

[Maedhros]

Liking House of the Dragon so far (bar that action scene at the end of episode 3). It's taking its time, and laying some really good groundwork for upcoming conflicts. Kudos to the writers for being very loyal to the story by GRRM.

Rings of Power I had very low expectations going into, and I'm reasonably happy with it. They clearly care about the lore, despite the weird scriptmaking decisions at times. It's just frustrating that they don't have the rights to Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, etc. They're also gonna miss out on some key events that they don't have the rights to in the future).

[Zoraptor]

Once again the question of where the most appropriate place to post rears its perpetual head...

On 9/5/2022 at 6:20 AM, Keyrock said:

There are people out there that don't like the works of David Lynch?

Even Her Majesty the Queen was a fan, apparently.

Quote

“Back when ‘Twin Peaks’ was kicking off around the world, I flew by Concorde to London, to work with Paul McCartney at Abbey Road,” Badalamenti said. “He said, ‘Let me tell you a story’. Not long before we met, he’d been asked to perform for the Queen for her birthday celebrations. And when he met her, he started to say, ‘I’m honored to be here tonight, your Majesty, and I’m going to play some music for you.’ And the Queen says, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t stay, it’s five to eight and I have to go and watch ‘Twin Peaks!’”

Then again, personally I'd rather watch Wheel of Time Episode 8 on loop for two hours than listen to Paul McCartney.