TV/Movies Megathread

[Josephus]

yeah, but that was more of a kid thing, slightly below the scope of our cast.

I've been rethinking our show a bit. I now envision a show set in New York in the 90s.  Cast is made up of about 6 attractive 20 somethings who are Friends. They live in an apartment building, with apartments across from each other.  One of them is a paleontologist. He has a pet monkey.  He's constantly hurting after one of the girls, let's call her Rachel. The gang likes to hang out at a coffee shop. They are Friends.

[Admiral Yi]

Tried to watch Ken Burns' Vietnam documentary, found it too slow and covering too many obvious points.  No cool factoids.

[Eddie Teach]

Josephus, that premise would never work.

[Admiral Yi]

The Lobster.  This is some weird art house shit.

By law you have 45 days to find a partner when you become single, or you get turned into an animal.  Colin Ferrel sneaks out of the match making hotel and meets up with a band of loners that punish each other for flirting, kissing or fucking.  He gets the hots for Rachel Weicz, who is treacherously blinded by the leader of the loner pack.  At the end Colin blinds himself so he can be suited for Rachel.

All the while weird art house music plays.

[Duque de Bragança]

The Rise of Skywalker

J.J Abrams is back as director so expect a closer film to The Force Awakens than the Last Jedi. Nothing groundbreaking, though I did not feel it was a hidden remake of an earlier episode like TFA. Plenty of references to earlier movies, of course. Rewatched the earlier movies of the trilogy and I liked better the Last Jedi than last time.
Careful,[spoiler] Ewoks are back, as extras fortunately. Unlike Palpatine, however. Not entirely convinced by his return from the grave or maybe it was writer's block.[/spoiler]

Well, maybe a bit repetitive at times but it's always better than Lucas' second trilogy.

[Josephus]

Josephus, that premise would never work.

Yeah, it's a bit much, isn't it?

[Josquius]

You need to play games on PC, mate.

.
There too the leaps between 1990 and 2000 are far greater than between 2010 and now.
Games from the start of the decade hold up perfectly well. No way was that the case back around 2000

[celedhring]

Watchmen finale was a wee bit on the convoluted side. I think they hurried it up a bit to reach the conclusion. Still Adrian Veidt was once again awesome.

The ending left everything pretty wrapped up, [spoiler]besides the Angela getting Manhattan's powers tease. [/spoiler]Is the show a one-season-and-done deal? Cursory google search reveals season 2 isn't confirmed, and HBO tends to be pretty quick when announcing new seasons of hit shows. Wouldn't mind if that was it, not everything has to be 6 seasons and a movie.

[Sheilbh]

I am intrigued:
https://io9.gizmodo.com/cats-review-i-have-seen-sights-no-human-should-see-1840507030

[Syt]

The Witcher launches on Netflix tomorrow. Apparently he also likes the games Total War: Warhammer and Witcher 3.

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/henry-cavill-interview-2019

Henry Cavill would rather be at home right now, without the fame, without the attention, sitting at his gaming PC in shorts and a T-shirt, playing Total War: Warhammer II.

Yes, Henry Cavill. Superman.

And yes, Warhammer. The game with little plastic goblins.

And he's played it through six times already, accounting for hundreds of hours of gameplay ("With six different races! And I love it each time!").

Cavill is talking to me a few hours ahead of the premiere of Netflix's adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher. He's elaborating on how his love of escapist gaming – something he's possessed almost since he was old enough to sit at a computer – has only become more and more enhanced as his anonymity has disappeared.

"Every time I step out my front door, I'm hyper aware," he says. "Even if I'm not looking terrible, you still realise there are people taking sneaky photos of you, because that's what people like to do. And then they put them on the internet and you see them on Instagram and you're like, 'Oh, my god.'"

He groans.

"At home, I get to sit playing games for ridiculous amounts of hours and escape there, because going outside has the opposite effect."

The Hollywood star is the perfect get for Netflix's latest original show. A biologically flawless, world-famous presence, he's the kind you wouldn't necessarily expect to be headlining an adaptation of niche, Polish high-fantasy literature that spawned a hugely successful video game franchise. But he's who Netflix needed to join a less recognisable supporting cast. In fact, it was a role the actor chased the moment he found out about it.

"My first involved experience [with the franchise] was The Witcher 3," he tells me, explaining how he's now played developer CD Projekt Red's 100-hour role-playing epic two-and-a-half times to completion, experimenting with different difficulty settings, first on regular difficulty and then on the game's toughest setting, in order to find the perfect balance of fun and challenge.

"It's all well and good when you're trying not to stress out," he says, "but then I realised I wasn't chilling out. I just ended up dying at the wrong points and thinking, 'I should not have left the roads. I don't know why I left the roads.' I couldn't run away fast enough or my attention span dropped for a second or I answered a text and now I'm dead and that's six or seven hours of gameplay that I've just messed up."

Netflix's adaptation is based primarily on the books, but the universe's DNA is distinct enough in book and game form that both are sort of interchangeable in terms of tone, lore and plot. Cavill plays the titular role, Geralt Of Rivia, a famed monster hunter with mutant abilities, pristine white hair and cat-like eyes. The actor had, understandably, always assumed the books were spin-off stories from the games – the latter have been much more successful – but after quickly setting up a meeting with show creator Lauren Schmidt Hissrich to express an interest in being involved, he read all of the books and "absolutely loved them".

Video game adaptations are rarely good. Cavill stops short of saying which he thinks are bad, but he says The Witcher is different because of the source material. "It's based on a fleshed-out character," he says. "Yes, you make decisions in the game, but it's fairly unique within the gaming world. There's a bit more of a character here."

For Cavill, coming to something this close to his fanboy heart, staying true to the "lore" was important.

"I want to do it as true to the lore as possible. For me it was about bringing my love for the character to the show, as a fan – I want to protect it. It would've hurt my heart to hear there was a show that I didn't jump on, [especially] if someone else had a unique and perhaps even brilliant interpretation of Geralt, but one not who I, as a fan, sees."

Cavill also pushed more and more for Geralt's signs – magical spells – to be used as much as possible in the show, despite the expense attributed to the CGI. "I really wanted to push that in there, because for me the audience must know he can do these things. It mattered to me, because it's all part of being a Witcher."

Warhammer and The Witcher aren't his only big gaming passions. He reminisces fondly about playing games with his brothers, cramped around his mother's dining room table in makeshift LAN parties. He grew up on games such as Delta Force and Half Life. In the former, his brothers toyed with one another endlessly. Especially, he says, when his younger brother was repeatedly killing his elder – a serving member of the armed forces – to great personal frustration. Eventually, though, the tables turned. "He actually started using military tactics, so my youngest brother was getting slayed at every corner," Cavill says, laughing.

Now, though, it's time for him to head to the premiere, another global appearance as one of entertainment's most bankable stars. Until later, of course: when it's back to his Kensington home, back into shorts and T-shirt and back into Warhammer.

"There's just something about those games that I find so satisfying," he says. "There's new DLCs coming out all the time and I'm looking forward to whatever the next one is."

[Syt]

Henry Cavill also missed the call re: Superman, because he was playing WoW at the time: https://youtu.be/wmfFT2iORVg?t=92

[Admiral Yi]

Au Service de la France.  Netflix French-language spoof on the French intelligence agency.  The French busting on themselves usually works for me.  It did with Amelie.  Two cuties so far in this one.  Skipping recap and credits the episodes are really short, like 19 minutes.

Does anyone know the name of the French intelligence agency?  I've heard of La Surete, but have the impression that's counterintelligence.

Never mind.  Just googled and as one might expect there are a handful.

[Oexmelin]

The DGSE (foreign) and the DGSI (interior) are the two main ones.

DGS: Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure/Intérieure. 

[Admiral Yi]

Grazie.  What does La Surete do?  Is it like the FBI?

[The Larch]

Grazie.  What does La Surete do?  Is it like the FBI?

FBI (in its intelligence capacity) would be the DGSI, CIA would be the DGSE. Surete is regular police at the national level, which I guess would be the law enforcement capacity of the FBI.