The TV and Streaming Thread: That's Entertainment!

[Zoraptor]

Chernobyl is a great series so long as you don't think it's a documentary. Because every time there was a choice between accuracy and D R A M A they went option 2. Which also wouldn't be a problem, except you can't really do that with impunity when your tag line is "what is the price of lies?". If that's your tagline you need to be scrupulously accurate.

(eg the 'bridge of death' is debunked, completely, which the writers obviously knew since they had an incredibly mealy mouthed disclaimer about it in the end slides; Dyatlov got radiation poisoning directing the firefighting efforts and never thought the core hadn't breached, the three waste water volunteers were not volunteers, easy to tell when their names were something like Akmetov, Apraxin and Barametov; and Legasov had no problems covering everything up for years in reality. Plus a load of other minor things, like the historical minister of coal at the time being an ex miner not some apparatchik. Makes for good tele him being an MBA type instead though)

[bugarup]

I don't think tag line has to be scrupulously accurate because obviously a non-documentary series would sacrifice some elements of accuracy for drama and someone who embellishes or, well, "lies" with the tag line absolutely can call out those elephantine lies that were the primary building material of Sovietistan. Like, I knew the bridge was fictional but it was both concise and hauntingly beautiful way to show how poorly informed people were. I didn't quite like how they done Dyatlov dirty because IRL he was nothing like that, but maybe they cast Paul Ritter and then went "Hey, he will make an excellent villain"?

 

Of authenticity, interiors were recreated with incredible accuracy, the power plant who "played" in the series was the sister of Chernobyl's, and exteriors were more or less accurate though much cleaner.

I still rewatch episode one regularly, it's one of my favorite horror films. That reactor maw is scarier than any Lovecraftian monstrosity.

[LadyCrimson]

Squid Game, season 2, 1st episode

Gong Yoo is the best. would probably watch him play a man whose job is to dress up as a carrot in front of a grocery and that's all he does for most of the show. He made the 1st episode of SG2 great. I probably don't have to watch any more.

...although I might, eventually.

[majestic]

Commando Ninja (2018)

To quote the synopsis from imdb:

Quote

John Hunter is Vietnam Green Beret Veteran, Half Commando, Half Ninja, whose daughter has been abducted by a secret Ninja Organization, led by a Central-American dictator, who wants to create a new-world order... through time. Unfortunately for them, she is the only thing he would kill again for.

It's a goofy homage to 80ies classics, similar to Kung Fury, but different insofar as where Kung Fury relied mostly on digital effects, Commando Ninja has pratical ones - and the they are hilariously bad at times, and silly at their best. The biggest problem of Commando Ninja is funnily enough also a source of much amusement - it certainly feels more like a parody at times than a mere over the top homage, from directly copying scenes from Predator to having a Terminator style time travel arrival (sans the male nudity, what a missed opportunity).

At only a bit more than an hour of runtime, it's well worth checking out for a laugh or two. Very, very much in the so bad its good territory. Since this was a Kickstarter project (like Kung Fury) it is freely available on YouTube - the link is in the title. Anyway, and I can't believe I am writing this, what differentiates Kung Fury from Commando Ninja the most is its originality. Where Kung Fury is an actual homage and an "original" story told in the over the top way of 80ies cannon films, Commando Ninja consists of heartfelt and well-meaning (parody) copies of scenes from other films strung together.

As such Kung Fury works as a short film with only a (passing) familiarity of 80ies cinema and B-movies, while Commando Ninja requires much more specific knowledge.

The film is also so full of anachronisms they had to be intentional. "Present day" is in 1986, but there are movie posters of Predator and Bloodsport and John's daughter is playing NES games that released in 1989 while her mother uses a 90ies VCR, and a bunch of criminals buy weapons with dollar bills from the 90ies.

As it stands, if anyone wants to watch an homage to 80ies films that is actually also a really good movie on its own, go and watch Turbo Kid. Turbo Kid is awesome.

[majestic]

Something random YouTube came up with had me in stitches. I laughed so hard my sides hurt. Can you imagine, The Critical Drinker apparently had a Kickstarter project to make his very own short film. Now, for those of you who don't know, which is I hope most of you, The Critical Drinker is one of those obviously conservative YouTube channels that focus on criticizing wokeness in mainstream media. Well, actually, no, he's calling himself a film critic, but in reality once you have watched a video or two of his it becomes clear that his own critical thinking ability is not all that greatly developed. This leads to having content such as stating that Star Trek: Picard is bad because a female admiral is giving Picard some lip while at the same time extoling the virtues of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a series that has plenty of episodes with female admirals giving Picard some lip, or even sue him with the intent of ruining his career.

For the longest while of the Next Generation era of Star Trek, Admirals were the go-to people in the Federation whenever the writers needed a threat, a villain or just someone who is a completely unsympathetic higher up serving as a foil to properly contrast our heroes. If he had actually watched any of the TNG era Star Trek while paying attention, he would have known that. Alas, he either didn't, or didn't have the mental capacity to process, and his brain reached the conclusion that wokeness RUINED Star Trek.

As if Star Trek wasn't ever among the most woke series on air. What it used to be, though, before the TNG movies, before Enterprise and arguably before parts of Voyager, was well written and engaging in addition to presenting philosophical conundrums and a brighter, optimistic look at the future. Star Trek: Picard ruined that by making the Federation Tump's America, which was a current issue at the time, and by having that cynical backdrop that simply does not fit into the existing Star Trek canon than further dragged down by atrocious writing, a stupid plot and terrible characters.

But @majestic, what does that have to do with his Kickstarter project?

Well, it just recently came out. A forty minute short film that no longer is a film, but has been turned into a TV series proof of concept (they at least had the sense to not call it a pilot). A project that overshot its Kickstarter goal by a factor of fifteen, raking in some 300,000 pounds instead of the 20,000 he asked for. This is it:

I don't blame you if you do not want to sit through forty minutes of the most rote Steven Seagal level straight to video schlock. In fact, I suppose, I encourage you to not give him any clicks. Watching it makes it clear why he has called it a TV series proof of concept. It's not that all technical parts of the film are terrible (the stunt work is fine, actually), except for the soundtrack and the audio mixing, but that writing is... well, how do I put that nicely?

It's an incoherent disaster, hence why it is called a proof of concept - after all, if all you have is a bunch of scenes you cannot string together into a coherent narrative because you suck at making films (oh, the irony), just call it a proof of concept and hope your seriously dumb fanbase does not notice*.

Here's the bit that made me laugh though -  I mean, as bad as the film is, what else would one expect from The Critical Drinker - it's that precisely the same people who watch his channel for his critiques  are the ones making fun of him in the comments. People are calling him a grifter and a hypocrite, and those are the nicer ones. It's fair, considering that the thing he is most famous for (aside from writing forgettable spy thriller novels which are what this proof of concept is sort of an adaptation of) is making fun of bad writing on YouTube.

Eh, looks like bad writing is still bad, even if you subtract the wokeness, although, dumb short film still features a girl boss coming to the rescue of the protagonist.

Edit: Contrast this with the aforementioned Turbo Kid, which had a budget of 60,000 Canadian dollars in 2015, and out came a heartfelt and fun movie that is also a great homage to the 80ies... and it featured Michael Ironside as villain. 

*There are those who blame it on not having enough creative control. Over the film he raised the funds for and credits him as one of the writers of the script, with behind the scenes footage clearly showing his being present and giving input at every turn. Right. 

Edited December 30, 2024 by majestic
Switched away from Euro-Peon decimal point as 1000-separator for consistency's sake

[Bartimaeus]

What I have learned from the last two posts is that Turbo Kid is - apparently - good...though I'm still not confident that I'll personally enjoy it.

[majestic]

6 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

What I have learned from the last two posts is that Turbo Kid is - apparently - good...though I'm still not confident that I'll personally enjoy it.

You might like Apple, one of the characters. Everything else... uhm... tough sell.

Pretty sure @PK htiw klaw eriF would love it, if he hasn't watched it already.

Edit: might as well link the trailer (pretty sure I've done that before).

 

Edited December 29, 2024 by majestic

[Sarex]

That does look fun.

[LadyCrimson]

Juror #2 is on HBO/MAX now, so we watched that.
I was a little disappointed. It's like if you mashed a much lesser 12 Angry Men (but they go outside!) and some John Grissom jury novel together in a modern cinematic and edited way. Felt a bit perfunctory in pacing and script. The moral dilemma is fine, although I ended up not really liking the protagonist - eg, didn't feel much sympathy, probably because he came off as being stupid. >.>  Still, watchable, didn't dislike it. Made me hope Eastwood has one more movie in him tho, and a better one, to perhaps end his career on.

[Hurlshort]

Juror #2 was problematic for me because it was a pretty weak story. I mean anytime a movie plot can collapse if the central character just did the right thing, I have trouble connecting. We are supposed to connect with the character, but if he was really a good person, the movie would have been over in 5 minutes.

The acting was great though. I wanted an epilogue for JK Simmons. He should have been the central character.

[Lexx]

Watched s2 of Squid Game. I liked it, but of course due to popularity, they ended on a cliffhanger and there's going to be another season now. Hope they will for sure end it with season 3, though. I don't think the concept of the show can go on for much longer than that.

[LadyCrimson]

2 hours ago, Lexx said:

Watched s2 of Squid Game. I liked it, but of course due to popularity, they ended on a cliffhanger and there's going to be another season now. Hope they will for sure end it with season 3, though. I don't think the concept of the show can go on for much longer than that.

Ssn2 and 3 were filmed back to back or something of that nature, so in reality it's basically one long season, split apart, 2nd half next year (I would guess 4-6 months from now or some such).
But the way they did  the cliffhanger - there was zero sense of satisfaction re: a "part 1" ending. I'm fine with some cliffhanger in some stuff but it has to be done well. That was just ... cutting a cake in half and leaving with the knife still in the cake, before the cut is even finished.

The bigger issue I had with ssn2/pt1 was the voting segments. They went on far too long/were too much the focal point, and other side/concurrent arcs mostly feel like filler, in the sense we still know almost nothing/it didn't seem to progress.  I'd guess all the strings will pull together in part2 somehow but it felt sloppy. That said - I did like it overall, and there were great moments. Eps 1-4 I felt pretty good about/felt invested, it was just the longer it went, the more picks I felt like nitting. In the end, even if it all works, I think splitting the season and plot arcs was a mistake.

Edit: I was, however, quite excited as more and more cast members kept showing up and I recognized more and more from S.K. films/dramas/music. Quite the cast, even past the main knowns.

Edited December 30, 2024 by LadyCrimson

[Lexx]

Yeah, it really feels like a mid-season break and not an actual ending of a season. S1 also had 9 episodes and not 7 ... so yeah... clearly we'll be getting 14 episodes max. and they just ended it in the middle.

[rjshae]

6 hours ago, Lexx said:

Yeah, it really feels like a mid-season break and not an actual ending of a season. S1 also had 9 episodes and not 7 ... so yeah... clearly we'll be getting 14 episodes max. and they just ended it in the middle.

14 episodes is almost a massive season these days. It can be fun to go back to pre-2020 and binge on the 22 episode seasons, at least for the good shows. Too many series are now under 10 episodes, although the shorter seasons do seem to equate to better quality.

[ShadySands]

I actually really miss 20-26 episode seasons

[Lexx]

For me it highly depends on the show... Like, I'm actually fine with ~13 episodes if something is supposed to go on for multiple seasons. Some shows, like The Last of Us, were way too short. They skipped so much interesting content from the game... feels wasted. But also I'm fine with those "7 episodes only"-storylines. Not everything needs to be drawn out as much as possible.

When it comes to k-drama shows, I feel like most of those with 20+ episodes get really terrible after half of that, and then you just suffer through it till the end, because you started with it.

[LadyCrimson]

To me it depends on what a series pattern is being styled for.

Procedural (Law and Order, CSI, sitcoms, etc) are easiest re: long multi-seasons and make sense because they are generally 80-90% self-contained stories but with some important chr arc threads being moved forward a little at a time, whether in every episode or every few episodes. Didn't matter if there were 2 seasons or 15 seasons much of the time because you can keep churning out new self-contained mysteries/funnies, with season long "who's the ripper?" arcs.

The larger pattern these days is for series - at least initially - to be a 6-12 hour movie. The "self contained" aspects are now minor subarcs that often wouldn't really even be missed if deleted, and the focus-flow is all for main plot suspense and momentum to go on and on.  So you have to have enough story - and the skill at drawing things out on a fine blade - to justify series-length movies. If you don't, it will drag and the "filler" will get more silly and hard to ignore. Shorter seasons are less risky but can feel rushed.  

Obviously there are crossovers and series that mix both styles with varying success, just talking generally.

==========

K-dramas are interesting (from the a US standpoint) because they were/usually self-contained (that's becoming less true now ofc). But even back when, 16 was often a little long - 16 was probably what they wanted for ideal ad/commercial amounts - so you'd get the half or back third season lag/filler. They used to be filmed a few weeks advance of air-date, like old US TV, so if popular they might even spur of the moment extend the series a few more episodes. with mixed results.  There used to be (may still be, times change, I don't keep up) restrictions on S. Korea re: playing ads during an episode air-runtime. That is, they couldn't run ads like the US does, in the middle of/interrupting episodes. This was, supposedly, one reason why some k-dramas started splitting 1-hour episodes into 2 episodes - so instead of 16 it looks like there's 32 episodes - so more actual ads (vs. blatant in-show PPL) could be played for that one episode. Anyway, it's probably changing/already has changed somewhat at this point, but it was an interesting difference vs. US broadcast TV.

[LadyCrimson]

^   "This post can no longer be edited because it's been moved or too much time has passed." (It's been maybe 5-10 minutes).  

I was going to add, doesn't Great Britain do something similar re: ads playing during a show's runtime?

[ShadySands]

1 hour ago, Lexx said:

For me it highly depends on the show... Like, I'm actually fine with ~13 episodes if something is supposed to go on for multiple seasons. Some shows, like The Last of Us, were way too short. They skipped so much interesting content from the game... feels wasted. But also I'm fine with those "7 episodes only"-storylines. Not everything needs to be drawn out as much as possible.

Yeah, for sure. It definitely depends on the show and the story that they are trying to tell. Like, I don't think 20 episodes of Discovery or Picard would have helped those at all. Just more bad. But more episodes of Strange New Worlds would be nice since it's pretty much just old Trek so it feels way too short.

[LadyCrimson]

I've definitely come to think pacing - in either direction - is a large factor why I have a hard time getting into anything now.  They are either too rushed, or too indulgent.

[Zoraptor]

I watched S2 of The Diplomat and it felt like it stopped half way through the season there as well.

3 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

I was going to add, doesn't Great Britain do something similar re: ads playing during a show's runtime?

It used to be no ad breaks on the BBC (as you paid a tv licence which covered their operating costs) and a maximum number of breaks per hour (one per quarter hour?) on the commercial channels.

Don't know if it got changed, apart from the BBC, last time I was in Brittyland a lot of tories wanted to relax the restrictions because of satellite tv not being bound by them or something.

4 hours ago, Lexx said:

Some shows, like The Last of Us, were way too short. They skipped so much interesting content from the game... feels wasted.

The Last of Us was at least very expensive to make. Same for Fallout to an even greater extent- that's the problem with genre shows, if you want high verisimilitude they cost, a lot.

Something like Squid Game really shouldn't be all that expensive though. For much of its content it ought to have a built in excuse for, say, things looking like sets rather than looking 'real'.

[uuuhhii]

that new star war show start with awful suburb

why

hope andor season 2 come out soon

[rjshae]

13 hours ago, uuuhhii said:

that new star war show start with awful suburb

why

hope andor season 2 come out soon

It's intended to be a Goonies-like series, and I suppose it is at that. There's at least some character development and kind of a plot, but it mostly feels random. The whole credits rationale is just dumb, but then it's targeting kids.

[Lexx]

After latest Squid Game, I saw people saying that Alice in Borderlands is a lot better... so I went ahead and gave it a second chance... made it through s1 and I'm in s2 now (semi-binge watched it a little), and .... I think it's really stupid and annoying. This stupid mystery about the games is annoying me, because they just keep adding to it and not resolve anything. Also if apparently everyone plays the games until they die, why even bother. Yeah, nah, Squid Game is the better "game" show, imo.

[LadyCrimson]

So I was going to skim through From's 1st season as a reminder, then watch 2nd season. Hubby went "what u watching". So I had to rewatch whole thing, didn't skim through it.
Then started on the 2nd season. I think we're about halfway through. There is then the 3rd season, and wiki top summary said it was renewed for a 4th season, and I read an article with the creator saying something like (totally paraphrasing) "have tons of stuff/ideas for endless seasons."

I like the 2nd season enough - although the influx of new people pattern already feels a little old, plus it's getting weirder and more convoluted - but my thoughts on all of this is:

"Is this going to be another Lost?" ... which I wouldn't be keen on. May watch all 2nd season and then wait again, see if they ever "finish" it, first.

Edited Monday at 04:43 AM by LadyCrimson