Brand New Cherry Flavour. Well this must have been good because I watched it all today and paid attention to 95% of it. Catherine Keener is a blast as always, though the cast is uneven, the way the plot jumps from magical to real and back and forth is worth it, with some very unpleasant scenes.
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Iâve watched a Wheel of Time trailer a couple of times on Prime, now. Not a single character looks anything like I imagined them but Iâm ok with that. I think if I didnât know anything about WoT I might have viewed the trailer as some sort of generic fantasy show. Production looks pretty good, though, and I am looking forward to the show in Nov.
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I watched the trailer last night and thought similarly. I still feel that Pike is an odd choice for that role, but sheâs talented and looks like sheâs really going for it. Production value reminds me of the LotR movies, but itâs hard to tell just from the trailer, as theyâre going to show you all the best stuff.
Link:
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Godzilla: Singular Point. A series that regularly reaches the singular point of failure in my tolerance (âAh yes, the Orthogonal Diagonaliser!â - fuck off) and yet I keep going back. Mildly interesting, doesnât make much of its big twists, some entertaining kaiju apocalyptic stuff, but mainly fluff and lots of it.
Midnight Mass. Off to a promising start. A declining island fishing town gets a new priest and weird stuff starts happening. Thankfully itâs a coincidence and the show is trying to teach you correlation is not causation.
Only Murders in the Building. Steve Martin and Martin Short as two old men, with Selena Gomez there purely for the demographics as far as I can tell. A murder in their building spurs them on to investigate and start a podcast. Unevenly funny, pleasant to watch.
What If? is a great idea, but I note even in an alternate universe where we have Captain Carter (Captain Britain effectively), Steve RogersâŚstill gets to be a superhero? That seems to me like a pure failure of the imagination.
American Horror Story. Latest season is quite good, albeit Iâm waiting for it to inevitably shit the bed. Macaulay Culkin is a surprise.
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The first What If? is arguably one of the weakest. I would try the second and third episodes. If youâre not into it by then, you probably wonât be. For me, Iâve been waiting for it since it was announced years ago and it absolutely has not disappointed.
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Midnight Mass was good. Slightly predictable, but solid for the most part, if slow.
Only Murders in the Building has reached a new high with episode seven. Deeply pleased with it now. Yes, itâs a bit of an artificial change but it works really well.
What If appears to alternate good and bad episodes. Hereâs a show about alternate realities kids, except Doctor Strange canât have an alternate reality. Shit on your own shoes there a tad.
Letterkenny. More of the same. Some of the repetition is wearing thin and not a lot happened this series, but itâs good fun and as quick and sharp as usual.
Haunting of Bly Manor. I have never wanted children to be killed so much.
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Maybe it is because I hadnât watched a good horror movie in a while, but Hill House genuinely scared me. Bly Manor lacked any of the dread and malevolence of Hill House and instead relied a little too heavily on some jump scares rather than atmosphere-building. That said, if Bly Manor disappointed at all it is only because Hill House was better; the director has my attention, for sure. My wife and I just started Midnight Mass and we enjoyed the first episode.
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Mare of Easttown. Kate Winslet is absolutely rock solid in this, and Evan Peters, who I only really know from American Horror Story, is a brilliant surprise as her partner. Gorgeous palette, rich colours, and excellent if staid camerawork. Some really good, understated acting from most of the cast. The particular messiness of small town life amplified by being a cop and magnified by being traumatised.
Doom Patrol. Much like Suicide Squad and the excellent Harley Quinn series, Doom Patrol satisfies my urge for heroics, without resorting to punching every single problem into submission.
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LOVED Mare of Easttown. Watching Sharp Objects now, which I couldnât get into beforehand but giving it another try based on how much I liked MoE
Babylon 5 is getting a reboot, next year on The CW (their stuff usually finds its way to Netflix pretty rapidly).
I really liked the original (though it has aged so badly as to be unwatchable now), and Straczynski is writing this, so Iâm sort of hopeful?
For a moment, I thought, âWhy a reboot, not a continuation?â and then I realized that half the main cast is dead (the actors, not just the characters). Which seems like kind of a high body count for a show from the 90s. Is it just me, or is that a lot? Like âthat show is cursedâ amounts?
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It is me.
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Foundation. Cautiously impressed, but I think the source material isnât as impressive as it was sixty years ago, and itâs showing its arse a bit. Good visual design though, halfway between an updated Dune and Star Wars, with a decent cast doing their best with an okay script sourced from a book that is very dated. Features some actual women (well, one, really) so Asimov is whirring in his grave.
Y: The Last Man. I fucking hate flashbacks. Theyâre lazy storytelling. So when you have an initial scene post-apocalypse, and then immediately flashback to before the apocalypse from the perspective of multiple characters, there is very little tension, because the charactersâ situations and relationships will shortly be completely irrelevant. So the entirety of the first episode is just âYo, the apocalypse happenedâ and in a post-apocalyptic series thatâs completely redundant. Itâs things like this that make me want to give up on watching television. RIP my fucking brain.
The congresswoman, will she divorce her husband and reconcile with the president? Irrelevant, theyâre both going to die in the plague.
The first lady, will she raise her sons successfully despite cancel culture stunting their sexually aggressive lifestyles? Irrelevant, theyâre going to die in the plague.
The EMT having an affair with a married colleague, howâs that going to turn out, will he leave his wife and child? Irrelevant, because heâs going to die in the fucking plague.
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My wife and I generally watch one episode of a show a night. For most of the pandemic it was streaming stuff where the whole series was already online. There were some exceptions like the Marvel shows on Disney+, but we were mostly working through Netflix shows like Dark, Ragnarok and Money Heist.
Right now, everything we are watching is weekly drops. What If, Titans, Ted Lasso and the Morning Show. We usually do movies on Friday and Saturday nights, and we slip in something else from Netflix on off nights, like we just caught up on the last half season of Money Heist.
I find it odd going back to weekly show drops.
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I agreeâweekly show drops are sort of like the streaming services torturing viewers for no reason.
Titans has been a pleasant surprise to me. Much better than expected.
Still have to watch the last season of Darkâthat show is amazing, so Iâm kind of rationing it.
Amazon kills me with weekly drops for their big shows like the Expanse. Wheel of Time is going to do it, too.
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It makes sense though. Netflix pushing binging creates a monster that requires so much content to be satisfied that itâs hard to shell out enough money for it. Why blow $25 million on a show that keeps your people entertained for two hectic days? Plus, it extends their cultural footprint. Marvel and Mandalorian dominate discourse online for far more time than non-weekly shows do.
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Sharp Objects, on HBO. I know Iâm behind the times on this one.
Amy Adams does a great job as a self destructive reporter with a past, sent back to her Southern hometown to write a story on two dead girls.
Had a hard time getting into it, as Adams is great in her role but itâs difficult to watch someone be that self destructive. Finally gave it a second shot after enjoying Mare of Eastown so much and well worth it.
One of the best endings Iâve ever seen in a show. 8 episodes, around an hour each, highly recommended.
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My wife and I recently finished a show about vampires. Iâm purposefully not naming it for spoiler reasons but you can probably guess the show if youâve seen it.
Anyways, my wife knows little about vampire lore as I think the only time sheâs ever encountered vampires in her entertainment was the Twilight series. Upon reflection, it was a little weird how I found myself often explaining the way vampires work as though it is historical truthâŚ
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