Archie
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Eraserhead son or Inland Empire daughter?
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Post by Archie on May 27, 2021 21:42:20 GMT
Invincible season 1 gets a monumental shrug from me. I’m so sick of this trend of “deconstructing” stuff. Saying “What if this unrealistic concept was actually realistic?” Or “What if this loving hero was actually an abusive asshole?” is not clever and it’s overdone.
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Post by Viced on May 27, 2021 22:35:44 GMT
Broadchurch - Series One Now that was one shocking, fucked up, and truly eerie conclusion. Not quite transcendent television overall, but a very well done police procedural in a unique setting with a nice array of characters. Definitely elevated by the cast too... Colman and especially Tennant have some amazing moments.
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Post by Mattsby on May 28, 2021 17:33:47 GMT
Twin Peaks s1 - Love the pilot, like the second ep ("cottonballs!"), but then it repeats and dulls and kinda ruins its own mystery. It feels as thought out as pointing to your set dresser and saying "Him?" as Lynch literally did. Lara Flynn Boyle is so wonderful in the pilot but in the next few eps her scenes feel xeroxed and that's indicative of a larger problem.
Points for MacLachlan’s coffees.
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Post by Mattsby on May 29, 2021 22:02:26 GMT
C-16: FBI (1997-98) I can't find any production info online about the show... cancelled after 13 eps, created by some guys who had worked on Law & Order and NYPD Blue but wanted their own thing of the same thing. Yes....it stars Eric Roberts (let me live!) and he's actually pretty good, a team player perf that is sort of only special bc it's coming from him and he's surprisingly buyable as the head of the FBI unit. Critics liked him too. Variety said "the standout is Roberts, who creates a compelling and multi-dimensional personality" ......and the New York Times said "Roberts proves his appeal and ability to carry a series with remarkable ease." Who'da thunk? Now why was it cancelled? Well, the title is useless and looks like javascript... Viewership too low? Bad marketing? Idk. My own theory is the cast wanted out... Roberts was offered Velvet Goldmine at the time and begged them to open up his schedule and they wouldn't, so I think he hated being tied down like that... and I think Angie Harmon was looking at a Law & Order opportunity and wanted out for that, which she did right away. This show isn't my thing... weak storylines, weak supporting cast (except for John Ventimiglia as old friend of Roberts just exiting a long undercover stint - he has a carried-over guard to him that's interesting, estranged from everybody he knows, reality weighs crucially on him). Otherwise blah cast. Roberts does stand out, he lives by what he tells his colleagues: Do not lose control. But the show doesn't let him ever go off, really...they wait til the last ep to develop a different side to him, but by then it's too late.
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Post by DeepArcher on May 30, 2021 6:30:09 GMT
Hannibal, "The Wrath of the Lamb"Brilliant end to a brilliant series. I wasn't huge on the first half of season 3, the Italy arc; starts slow, gets better as it goes along but with a lot of contrived writing, and that's coming from someone who usually doesn't care about that kind of thing as much as most. The adaptation of Red Dragon in the second half of the season, though, is fuuuuuucking phenomenal. Chilling, heart-wrenching, insanely effed-up television. So glad I finally circled back to this show after trying it six years ago and my braindead ass dismissed it. Just don't think I appreciated enough at the time how utterly insane this show is, even more so how goddamn batshit it is this was actually on network television. Season 2 is masterful and the best parts of Season 3 ain't too far behind it. Mads and Dancy are both just impeccable, with amazing stuff from Fishburne, Anderson, Armitage, and many more. Great all around ... not that that's news to anyone else!
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Post by Mattsby on May 31, 2021 21:40:10 GMT
Hacks E1-6 Alright and sort of enjoyable so far, mainly for Jean Smart who gets a great role for her as an aging ultra rich comedian who both chases and hates her monotonous career.... definitely inspired in ways by Joan Rivers.... from the trailers I feared it might be like a show on Jane Lynch's annoying Sophie Lennon from Mrs Maisel, but it isn't cartoony... it reminds me of Danny Collins in its tone and themes, and their opening shots are pretty much the same.
Not a fan of the young lead they casted.... and the McDonald's fries product placement was maddening bc their fries are not that good!
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Post by Viced on Jun 2, 2021 1:25:13 GMT
Broadchurch - Series Two Underdeveloped and plodding compared to the first... but still pretty good overall. Very entertaining and ridiculous courtroom stuff, and an involving cold case... blended together well enough I guess. But while the courtroom stuff was resolved really well (not the verdict, but the get the fuck outta town scene)... I kind of hated how the Sandbrook murders were concluded. I really wanted Lee Ashworth to be innocent for some reason... but for him to kill an 11 year old girl to protect himself from another murder that he didn't actually commit was beyond ridiculous. Still very much carried by the cast too... including some great additions. Charlotte Rampling especially brought a lot to the show.
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 4, 2021 2:50:31 GMT
It's Mental Work (1963) "Episode 9" S1 of Bob Hope Presents The Chrysler Theater - altho I like to consider these anthology presentations little standalone movies. Rod Serling won his 6th and last Emmy for writing this, a short story adaptation - the dialogue is very witty and he adds a side racial element. Mostly set at a rundown little bar... Lee J Cobb plays the bar owner with bad health, who's waited too long to essentially begin his life, meanwhile the bartender (Harry Guardino) a war vet with a bad temper ("That guy could curdle bourbon") is one-rung-up focused, and the coat check girl (Gena Rowlands) wants to leap ahead and foolishly thinks marriage is the ticket. Everybody is looking to gain but keeps losing.....there's clever casting in Archie Moore as a bar-back, he was a longtime boxing champion who had then only recently lost his belt, whooped by Muhammed Ali. After initial airing this has gone unreleased - 0 votes on IMDb! UCLA did a live screening tonight from their own archival of it... It's too bad so many of these shows are sitting in archives somewhere, or worse totally lost... they are gems. Cobb is terrific here...
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Post by cheesecake on Jun 4, 2021 13:46:07 GMT
Watched the first season of Feel Good. I love Charlotte Ritchie so, so much.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jun 4, 2021 16:56:37 GMT
Watched the first season of Feel Good. I love Charlotte Ritchie so, so much. glad you're enjoying it!
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 6, 2021 18:25:17 GMT
The X Files - various eps. Jumping from 1x1 to 1x13 ( s/o stephen ), Scully definitely feels inspired by Clarice. The Pilot is pretty good, it has a surprisingly cinematic quality. Some eps I thought I'd really love, like Ice, but they were just ok. Brad Dourif is phenomenal in ep13... a bursting, creepy, emotionally-taxed perf. I went way ahead to 8x6 for Joe Morton - shows how much I know, I was like...Robert Patrick runs the show now? But that ep, called Redrum, is actually my new fav.... Fascinating and thrilling.... it's Morton's Memento (it filmed before that was out), and very much like a Twilight Zone ep which it surely nods to in the ending narration. If I return to the series it'll probably be for the monster of the week eps, tbh...
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Post by Viced on Jun 6, 2021 22:31:06 GMT
Broadchurch - Series Three An improvement over the second, but still nowhere near the level of the first. Feels like this show squandered it's potential by having Ellie have such a personal connection to the series one result (though it was amazing at the time) and continued to squander it by keeping the Latimers around as main characters the rest of the series (though I liked the way they integrated Beth into the crime plot of series 3). The best thing this show had going for it by far is the greatness of Tennant and Colman, and the amazing dynamic they have together. Feels like way too much time is wasted away from the both of them as the series goes on. And Mark Latimer going from being the beaming new father in series 2 to being ready to off himself in series 3 was just cruel. But overall, the third installment was good. Keeps you guessing on the guilty party throughout, and some of the new characters had some absolutely savage moments. Halfway predicted the ending before the final episode, but the other half of it really took me by surprise. I'd like a Broadchurch movie or two now tbh. Two hours of Tennant and Colman doing their thing and solving some case with less superfluous shit going on around them.
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 12, 2021 16:06:25 GMT
Killer App (1998) - A lot of failed pilots work as TV Movies, more or less, but not this one. Robert Altman helmed, Gary Trudeau wrote - Fox canned it right away and you can see why, it's a charismaless cast and moves from satire to soap opera without a tonal bridge but even as maybe the worst thing I've seen from Altman it's still kinda interesting... For one, it uses the term app before anyone knew what it meant, and it's presciently about a new widespread ability to live-stream (“Every website in the world becomes a potential overnight broadcast network"). It feels like an early, pleated version of the (not very good) Silicon Valley show. Two clever casts... Sally Kellerman as a Siri-like lip-bot...and an evil Bill Gates/Steve Jobs-esque character played by Stephen Lang who, in the best scene, gets a whole hockey arena to chant his net worth: "Twelve billion cash!!!!"
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jun 15, 2021 21:36:16 GMT
been watching season 1 of Why Women Kill. I'm enjoying it so far! Some cheeky bit of soapy fun. Standouts right now are Reid Scott (Dan Egan ) and Lucy Liu whose perf is just over the rails camp. It's not just style over substance, has some genuinely funny moments and situations with solid comic timing. Currently up to Episode 3, "I'd Like to Kill Ya, But I Just Washed My Hair". Liu's wardrobe looks like she raided Ru Paul's werk room and picked the most expensive-looking items.
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 16, 2021 0:35:25 GMT
The Best of Times (1981) ABC pilot that they said 'absolutely not' to - it's like a variety sitcom afterschool special musical?? starring Crispin Glover and a lot of fourth wall breaking. So dumb you can't help but laugh.... like Nicolas Cage singing Dolly Parton's 9 to 5 at a car wash while doing split leaps. Does your screen debut have you saying "My magnificent biceps will drive you wild!" Didn't think so.
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Post by Viced on Jun 16, 2021 22:57:25 GMT
Dexter - Season One I tried watching this over ten years ago and remember cringing at the narration and canning it after like 2 episodes. But with the new season coming later this year, I figured there's no better time than now to give it another go. There's still something slightly goofy about the show... but overall it's always entertaining, pretty unique, and the narration I cringed at all those years ago I now realize is some pretty solid dark humor. The reveal of the Ice Truck Killer's true identity, along with the reason for his obsession with Dexter and why he was forcing him to confront his past, totally caught me by surprise and was incredibly well done. And was strangely devastating after Dexter had to put an end to it. And of course the show would be nothing without Michael C. Hall's incredible performance. Has anyone ever conveyed emotion that the audience knows is phony but his fellow characters aren't aware of better?
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jun 17, 2021 5:59:38 GMT
two eps into Handmaids Tale Season 1. Good god the amount of slow mo in this thing. It's not even that the pace is slow, it's that so many damn frames have literally been slooowed down for these overbearing moody segments overlaid by music, usually of a dour violin or choral variety. I don't know, I think they're trying to tell us that this dystopian theocratic society where women are chattel slaves is not fun to live in. The worldbuilding is interesting and I'd like to know more, but the artistic choices are so overbearing that it makes the experience an utter slog. Going to try to keep going for now.
Why Women Kill S1 is pretty fantastic btw. It starts out as soapy fun but the stories evolve and the lives of the characters unravel in some shocking twists and it manages to be remarkably poignant towards the end. Very pleasantly surprised by how much this one worked for me.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jun 21, 2021 15:29:28 GMT
giving up on Handmaid's Tale for the foreseeable future. Just can't bring myself to go forward. If I had been watching since 2017 maybe it'd be different, but the prospect of wading through 46 episodes of this morass of slow motion and 15-second angsty reaction shots just to say I'm caught up is too much to bear. I'll read the book.
starting on The Good Fight with Baranski later today after I get off work.
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DaleCooper
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Post by DaleCooper on Jun 23, 2021 22:42:40 GMT
Finally making my way through Mr Robot after a lengthy break. In the middle of season three right now, and can't quite decide what I think about it. In some ways it's really good, but there's just something that doesn't quite work for me. It's improved massively over the first half of season two though, which was proper bad.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jun 24, 2021 18:09:04 GMT
The Good Fight 1x04: "Henceforth Known as Property"wellll this is just a lot of fun. Light, entertaining, compulsively watchable legal drama from CBS. Situationally episodic but has dramatic thru-narratives too, so presumably like a lot of serialized CBS/NBC programming. The last time I watched a show like this was probably Criminal Minds in my teens and well... this is better. And it also has f-bombs. Was shocked to see this didn't have any serious Emmy nods and I don't think any GGs either, despite its predecessor being an Emmy standby. Baranski's character got what, like five noms for this character in The Good Wife but nothing for the spinoff yet, and there's been four seasons since 2017 and I think the 5th is premiering tonight so maybe next year... Also didn't realize Rose Leslie and Delroy Lindo were in this. Both turning in great work so far. Lots of fun little guest cameos too.
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 28, 2021 0:48:21 GMT
Under One Roof (1995) Cancelled after 6 episodes..... One of nine or ten shows with Joe Morton as co-lead that were canned after one season. He had bad luck on tv until later in his career - he's an underrated actor with several great perfs actually, and you can picture him playing a lot of Denzel roles and vice versa (around 1997 I sort of rate 'em even). Pilot here is pretty good... lotta activity, handheld camera, good cast, a lot of heart and not too much lessoning. Rest of the eps are uneven, falter in dated or heavy-handed ways, and have....too much lessoning. I think it might've made a fine movie, like Joe Morton's Parenthood or something. James Earl Jones was Emmy nominated, actually.....he's a wonderful presence and my fav of the ensemble. Calloway as the mother and Merlin Santana as Jones' adopted son are standouts too. Show got really good reviews but apparently CBS screwed it by running it - an hourlong drama - at 8pm when all the other sitcoms aired (crucially - Fresh Prince and Martin ).
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 30, 2021 20:32:38 GMT
11.22.63 (2016) Ep1-6. This went from fun to flubber pretty quickly. I liked the first 3 eps... amusingly ridiculous high concept, with the Franco character at both an advantage and disadvantage in the past, they can play with anachronism, there are solid pitstops (a career best Josh Duhamel), surveillance stuff, etc. But the next three eps have about two dozen crying scenes and it not only becomes a Hallmark romance (tho I love Sarah Gadon), it flip-flops other characters at whim and creates unnecessary twists that seem to only serve as filler before 'the showdown.' Still it's entertaining and there are two more eps, hopefully ends strong.
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Post by Mattsby on Jul 7, 2021 19:27:50 GMT
I Think You Should Leave (2021) S2 Netflix - S/o Viced Who I know liked S1. Six eps that run about 15m each so even tho a bunch of sketches just aren't funny, there are a bunch that are. Robinson dude is sort of in the obnoxious style of Sandler that either makes you laugh or annoys the f outta you. Some notable guest stars: Paul Walter Hauser, who I love, as a sad poker player / community theater actor, a great Bob Odenkirk whose got triples (his Mr Show show clearly influenced this show), and Sam Richardson who is on a spree this week with three releases, Tomorrow War, Werewolves Within, n this. Best sketches: the Calico Cut Pants ("giiive!") is hilarious and gonna be the fav for most... but I laughed hardest at the stalled mall prank, and the court texting hat bit ("You grease these wheels?").
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 7, 2021 20:26:39 GMT
Alfred Hitchcock Presents "The Dusty Drawer" S4 E3A lot of people loooooooooooooove this and I sort of don't get it - well I do get it - I just don't think it's that special.........it is amusing though........a humurous, circular tale of revenge at Christmas time...... Hitchcock is very funny in his segments in this episode
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Post by cheesecake on Jul 8, 2021 14:47:51 GMT
Uh, Mythic Quest made me cry. I thought this was a comedy? That episode with Abraham and Hurt... Their one-off/flashback episodes are such standouts.
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