The TV and Streaming Thread: That's Entertainment!

[Hurlshort]

Black Doves - excellent political/spy series set in London during Xmas. We binged it this weekend, and I rarely find the time to binge anything. Very festive and fun.

[ShadySands]

We've started watching High Potential. It's a bit like Psych/Monk/Mentalist/Castle. The last couple of episodes have gotten really predictable but I'm still enjoying it.

[Gfted1]

You guys might like Will Trent: Will Trent - Wikipedia  Its only 2 seasons in so far.

[kanisatha]

55 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

We've started watching High Potential. It's a bit like Psych/Monk/Mentalist/Castle. The last couple of episodes have gotten really predictable but I'm still enjoying it.

The concept of the show is good, but I don't like the main actress - find her a bit annoying. Still, I have so very few shows I like so I'll keep watching.

[Zoraptor]

Mr Bates vs the Post Office is excellent.

I have been watching Day of the Jackal (up to e8, so two to go; doubt my views will change much though). In many ways it's very good, but it all rings a bit hollow. It has the trouble you always get when the script calls for writing a very intelligent/ competent person (well, two here really) of it being far more easy to describe someone as very intelligent and have people say he/ she is than to show it. The demands of the drama require him to do pretty stupid stuff in order for there to be a plausible set up for him potentially being caught; yet his chief pursuer still has to have extremely specific knowledge and make huge and implausible leaps to get close. Fortunately it isn't quite enough to be outright implausible, but it runs a very narrow line. It's also deeply unsubtle with its parallels between the lives of the Jackal and his chief pursuer and how they're same coin, different sides. OTOH, I've seen people flabbergasted when the comparison is pointed out, so it clearly wasn't too unsubtle for some.

Eddie Redmayne is very good? in the role. The question mark is because you're always aware that it's Actor, Acting, whenever he's on screen; but that is how you'd broadly expect an assassin to act. The rest are functional, with Charles Dance being a bit wasted. None of the characters get much beyond archetypes and caricatures but this is, ultimately, higher brow 24 with pretensions so that works fine in context.

Edited December 10 by Zoraptor

[majestic]

I watched Social Nightmare with my wife. She was randomly looking for some mystery or horror film and stumbled upon it. I missed the opening credits, but even so it did not take me long to figure that it was an Asylum film - they all that have, uhm, Asylum look. You know, in the same way one can immediately tell that a movie is from France because it looks like a French film, or a movie is from Germany because it looks, yeah, like a typical German film.

Unlike some of the other Asylum films which I found highly entertaining (like Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies), this one has very little redeeming qualities. Everyone's in possession of the idiot ball, the acting is really bad and the plot manages to be convoluted, unrealistic and harebrained at the same time, while still being so obvious that it takes all but the opening scene to figure out the "mystery" and what is going on and why. If that last part sounds like a contradiction to you, then welcome to the wonderful world of The Asylum.

To shamelessly steal a line from Will Ferrell in one of his SNL Celebrity Jeopardy skits, I give the film a score so low it cannot be represented with a real number. Sheesh.

[uuuhhii]

On 12/11/2024 at 12:25 AM, ShadySands said:

We've started watching High Potential. It's a bit like Psych/Monk/Mentalist/Castle. The last couple of episodes have gotten really predictable but I'm still enjoying it.

 

feel like it should come out 10 year ago

[rjshae]

On 12/10/2024 at 8:25 AM, ShadySands said:

We've started watching High Potential. It's a bit like Psych/Monk/Mentalist/Castle. The last couple of episodes have gotten really predictable but I'm still enjoying it.

I tried watching the original series in dubbed French, but I just found it really annoying for some reason. The English remake is okay even though it's a police procedural, and she has that quirky character going for her.

[uuuhhii]

the sifu episode of secret level are as depressing as first two hour of playing the game

still couldn't do half of the unlockable combo

[Sarex]

WH40 episode was epic and the Astartes maker was also involved as a layout artist. The D&D one was like a cutscene and seeing the Unreal Tournament Facing Worlds map brought up so much nostalgia. A surprising episode was the Pacman one, did not expect it.

[uuuhhii]

jentry chau vs the underworld

first 2 episode seem promising

netflix sometime invest in interesting project purely by the ridiculous amount of nonsense they finance

[LadyCrimson]

"Red One" - brain at your door (or maybe as far as your neighbor's door) Xmas movie. I thought it might be the  Jingle all the way type of silly/"stupid" - but fantasy/cgi/some action stuff.

It reminded me more of Xmas Men In Black (in a non-direct comparison way) mixed with some darkish (well, vs. singing elves/snowmen and dancing reindeer) fantasy tones here and there, and typical Santa nice/naughty/redemption moralizing. Or something. Anyway, it's not a good movie, but maybe because I had zero expectations and wasn't looking for any depth whatsoever, I still found some stuff hilarious. *shrug*

Edited December 15 by LadyCrimson

[Malcador]

The old Battletech cartoon.  I don't recommend you watch it

[melkathi]

11 hours ago, Malcador said:

The old Battletech cartoon.  I don't recommend you watch it

Didn't I warn you? Sorry.

Watched three episodes last year.

[Malcador]

2 hours ago, melkathi said:

Didn't I warn you? Sorry.

Watched three episodes last year.

I do like the spacious ****pits.

 

[uuuhhii]

outer world episode of secret level

the stupidity are not even funny anymore just depressing

guess that is the point

[Sarex]

First half of Secret Level was better, kind of a let down to end on these episodes. They should have shuffled it a bit better.

[bugarup]

On 12/10/2024 at 8:53 PM, Zoraptor said:

Mr Bates vs the Post Office is excellent.

I have been watching Day of the Jackal (up to e8, so two to go; doubt my views will change much though). In many ways it's very good, but it all rings a bit hollow. It has the trouble you always get when the script calls for writing a very intelligent/ competent person (well, two here really) of it being far more easy to describe someone as very intelligent and have people say he/ she is than to show it. The demands of the drama require him to do pretty stupid stuff in order for there to be a plausible set up for him potentially being caught; yet his chief pursuer still has to have extremely specific knowledge and make huge and implausible leaps to get close. Fortunately it isn't quite enough to be outright implausible, but it runs a very narrow line. It's also deeply unsubtle with its parallels between the lives of the Jackal and his chief pursuer and how they're same coin, different sides. OTOH, I've seen people flabbergasted when the comparison is pointed out, so it clearly wasn't too unsubtle for some.

Eddie Redmayne is very good? in the role. The question mark is because you're always aware that it's Actor, Acting, whenever he's on screen; but that is how you'd broadly expect an assassin to act. The rest are functional, with Charles Dance being a bit wasted. None of the characters get much beyond archetypes and caricatures but this is, ultimately, higher brow 24 with pretensions so that works fine in context.

Sigh. Day of the Jackal is one of my favoritest books and I will never understand why such an un-cinematographic book, essentially about two nondescript people methodically trekking towards each of their goals through tedium of hard work, gets regular adaptations. Well OK, the assassin's research and then execution is sometimes flashy, but police work, while captivating to read, is totally not for visual medium. I thought the old seventies movie was OK, Bruce Willis version was a joke, and this one I read is padded out with sappy family stuff?  Not to mention someone looking as peculiar as Redmayne would stand out wherever he goes. 

[Lexx]

The Secret Level episodes on Amazon made me realize that most big games are totally lame.

 

[Zoraptor]

10 hours ago, bugarup said:

..and this one I read is padded out with sappy family stuff? 

Yes, though it isn't as bad as it sounds and does serve some purpose other than padding out the plot/ trying to humanise the characters. That's there to show that the jackal and his chief pursuer (Bianca) are different sides of the same coin- and ironically it completely fails to humanise Bianca. Who in many ways is a better Jackal than he is. Said it before but I'll say it again, their parallel lives stuff is very blatant. The bigger problem is probably the action sequences which make the Jackal look crap at his job and unbelievable that he'd be either undetected or uncaught for more than a few months at most.

My overall rating for it improved quite a lot after the last episode. It was pretty obvious what was broadly going to happen if you had some meta knowledge but one thing was pure lol.

Spoiler

ie Jackal wasn't dying since the series was renewed. The lol thing was Bianca getting popped pretty much instantly in her first actual confrontation with the jackal after getting yet another person killed. Absolutely the correct decision and what needed to happen but they could so easily have gone the other way.

Wouldn't be an unqualified recommendation by any means, but as someone who wasn't particularly invested in the previous material and wasn't expecting much I enjoyed it/ Just rather more in the way that I enjoyed 24 or The Night Agent rather than the way I enjoyed Thief/ Hitman (games, though I didn't actually hate the movie).

Edited Thursday at 06:59 PM by Zoraptor