TV You Have Watched

[Dogg Thang]

I finally got around to finishing Obi-Wan Kenobi last night. I thought it was weak.

[Neon Ignition]

Neighbours paid for itself the second this guy was delivered to the world:




Everything else after that was a chain of cherries on the cake

[QualityChimp]

Amazing post, @fuse.
I was explaining to my son that Neighbours was the show we all watched when we got in from school after the Broom Cupboard ended.
There wasn't any streaming in those days, so Neighbours it was.

I finished off Alice in Borderlands (Netflix) and there's a bit more about who's running everything, but you're still having to make some massive steps of faith to just accept it and roll with it, rather than question the logistics of it all.

We then started The Lazarus Project (NowTV) and blimey, it crams a lot into its opening episode!
I really enjoyed it feels like it could be a Christopher Nolan story, but you can hear the dialogue.

Then I got told off for continuing The Boys without the missus.

Then we started The Resort (NowTV) together, which sounds more whimsical in the blurb than it actually is because it's about a couple on holiday to celebrate 10 years of marriage, but in reality they're really unhappy, the wife especially, so when she finds an old phone in the jungle she gets obsessed with finding out about who it belonged to, but finds out that the owner went missing 15 years earlier.

I kinda fell in love with Cristin Milioti in Palm Springs, but her unhappiness in marriage is pretty sad to watch in The Resort.
I'm hoping the scrapes they're inevitably going to get into will revitalise their relationship!

It's good so far, though. There are 3 eps available thus far.

[fallenangle]

Neighbours paid for itself the second this guy was delivered to the world:




Everything else after that was a chain of cherries on the cake

Seconded; quality actor (BTW NZ not Australian) who has had roles in so many good US TV series its incredible: JAG, NCIS, 24, CSI, Homeland, Lost, Person Of Interest, Californication...................the list is huge.

It reminded me the fact he is from NZ that The Sullivans, the early Aussie soap I mentioned earlier, also featured another notable first TV role for a now very well known and justifiably respected actor: Sam Neil. He was/is British; originally from Northern Ireland but moved to NZ as a child. His TV and film CV is even more extraordinary than Alan Dale's.

I was trying to think if Home & Away, Neighbours' 'rival' Aussie soap, had created any similar stars who have gone on to bigger and better things and the only one that immediately came to mind was the exquisite Isla Fisher. But with very little research necessary the list is actually almost as good as Neighbours and includes two notable cross-overs: Guy Pearce and Chris Hemsworth.

But you also have Heath Ledger, Naomi Watts, Melissa George (30 Days Of Night), Julian McMahon (Fantastic 4) ........................and a host of others.

[Neon Ignition]

Yep, the shows end will undoubtedly result in a big reduction of talent via Aus to Hollywood

[Neon Ignition]

Resident Evil: Season 01
Not great but passable, the dialog memes out there are ott to what the show actually plays out like. Its limited budget is probably the main thing working against it as there's a heavy limit on scenery etc and the decision to base in the 2030's for the most part separates it from the games events that it is supposedly aimed to be canon with. If there's a second season they should embrace the games more as the lower quality/cheesy elements would fit that better.

[Finsbury Girl]

I finally got around to finishing Obi-Wan Kenobi last night. I thought it was weak.

I thought the last couple of episodes were good but overall I agree it wasn't great. Leia was just annoying throughout.

Room for improvement if they do another season that's for sure. But please, no more sad Ben, no more Tatooine (except to launch the show) and please God, no more Leia.

[Lebowski]

The Woodstock 99 documentary Woodstock Trainwreck popped up on Netflix last night and it was a really interesting watch, maybe a little overlong at three episodes but was a real nostalgia trip back to the music of my youth and a real deep dive into the set up and execution of the festival. You kind of forget how big bands like Limp BIzkit and Korn where, and seeing a festival that had 400 thousands people attending was just mind-blowing.

Where it went wrong was easy to see The location an old army base was mainly just open Tarmac and runway with no shade and a 3 mile walk between stages, you could see why heatstroke was such an issue. Exasperating this was confiscating basics like water and food and forcing 400 thousand people to use the vendor village where price gouging was rife. under-qualified minimal security and cut backs on everything including cleaning and waste management mean the site was set up to fail. These failures led to numerous Sexual assaults and rapes, and a general lawlessness that saw widespread destruction of facilities, fires, riots, and looting on the final night.

[Atticus]

That's on my radar too @Lebowski. The trailer instils a similar fear I got from Gimme Shelter ... the lawless, volatile environment. The (more) shocking thing about Woodstock 99 is it happened relatively recently.

[Dogg Thang]

I watched the first few episodes of The Sandman on Netflix. I am a huge fan of the comic series and collected and read them back in the day and have read them from start to finish several times over since then. It’s an incredible comic and not an easy one to adapt.

My feelings so far on the show are a little complicated. As an adaptation, it is incredible. It manages to capture the soul of the material in a way that few other adaptations ever manage. It is so spot on. Yes, there are changes, switching some roles around (Joanna Constantine instead of John, for example) but not one of those changes ever works against it and, if anything, feel completely right - the soul is 100% intact. It has the language, the feel, the theatrics and that moodiness. It feels right. And it’s entertaining.

Where it gets complicated for me is the passage of time since reading the comic for the first time and what seeing it in live action does. Scott Pilgrim was an example of this for me - those characters were unlikeable but, with the drawings of the comic, I kind of projected charisma onto them. I couldn’t do that in the live action movie and just hated the characters. Here, much of the fantastic visuals that had the unique flair of each artist (many artists across the run) just kind of look like Harry Potter when done in live action with animation, a reference which obviously didn’t exist when the comics came out. It’s too typical fantasy in ways, if you know what I mean. The period setting of the first episode compounds that, almost lending a BBC drama touch to it along with the Harry Potter stuff. And of course Harry Potter didn’t invent anything - I’m just using that as a familiar reference point. It’s just that the visuals feel more like they came from any fantasy fan now that they are realised in live action.

And along with that, there is an odd stage play kind of feel. Not quite sure what it is but I feel like I’m watching theatre.

Still, it’s a great adaptation and I’m looking forward to watching the whole thing. It was always an incredibly difficult thing to adapt and it’s probably amazing we’ve got it at all.

[Atticus]

Another big fan of The Sandman comics here. I never knew what to expect with a film or tv adaptation but at the very least it's another way to enjoy The Sandman. Three episodes in I'm loving it. I get what you mean about a theatre vibe @Dogg Thang but maybe that fits with the world and old-time storytelling. I honestly can't imagine a better take for tv. Just trying to resist the urge to burn through the lot (at the rate it's going I expect it might cover a particularly dark chapter before the season is done).

[Brad]

Blackbird

Finished this Friday night. We both thought it was fantastic. Prison drama based on true events. Taran Egerton is great and Ray Liotta’s last appearance felt a bit too close to home. The real star is as the guy who plays Larry. Highly recommended.

[Atticus]

Halfway through Sandman and watched an ep based on pretty horrific and intense issue of the comic. Yes it had a lot to live up to but it fell disappointingly short. Compared to the episodes before it, it felt far more like just any tv show. Maybe a blip. Maybe my expectations were too lofty.

Or maybe it was because I watched Brimstone and Treacle before it. And that is dark. First time I'd seen this 1976 Play for Today by Dennis Potter, banned by the beeb until 1987 (presumably reconsidered following the success and praise for The Singing Detective). It involves a man (the devil) who tricks his way into a family's house/life and, well, behaves appallingly (those who have watched it with know). The content/story is pretty extreme, especially for the time, and the manipulation and abuse can be hard to stomach. But it's complex path and flawed characters make it less linear than you might expect ... and the conclusion, though not the easiest ball to catch, will have your thoughts swimming in all directions.

[Neon Ignition]

The Staircase
Decent, possibly an episode or two too long. I felt like it thought it was being more objective than it was, it never painted Michael as being likely to have been guilty at any point even if it was making it clear he isn't a good person in general. They try a last minute viewer wobble but it feels forced and doesn't land so if it turned out he did definitively do it then the show would look ropey in hindsight, not that 20 years later we're ever likely to get a 100% outcome either way.

[Atticus]

The Staircase
Decent, possibly an episode or two too long. I felt like it thought it was being more objective than it was, it never painted Michael as being likely to have been guilty at any point even if it was making it clear he isn't a good person in general. They try a last minute viewer wobble but it feels forced and doesn't land so if it turned out he did definitively do it then the show would look ropey in hindsight, not that 20 years later we're ever likely to get a 100% outcome either way.

Yeah, I remember watching the docu-series and being totally gripped (and thankful for broadening my vocabulary with the word 'blowpoke') but i was disappointed at the lack of any satisfying conclusion. Maybe the point is you make up your own mind. I didn't feel there was enough for a dramatisation but I might take a took.