TV/Movies Megathread

[Josquius]

Snowden- Too soon? How did such a dour conservative get such a pretty gf? Meh. Alright. I guess it serves more as an informational piece on why what the intelligence services are doing is so messed up. I always mix up Snowden and Manning.

War for the Planet of the Apes- Starts quite cool, but gets a bit meh with the new location, not such a war there. So-so.

Anybody watching The Punisher? Was really looking forward that one but the reviews are rather meh, which would totally suck.

First episode starts slow. But fucckkkkk it's gets gory.
I'll see how it goes. They told the main Punisher story in Daredevil already so I'm not sure what's left. Hopefully its not another Iron Fist

[katmai]

Anybody watching The Punisher? Was really looking forward that one but the reviews are rather meh, which would totally suck.

I'm going to start it after i catch last season of Longmire.

[Sophie Scholl]

Adding to the chorus of people getting into the latest (and last) season of Longmire.  I finally caught Wonder Woman the other day during a double feature of Wonder Woman and Justice League.  Both were light years ahead of Man of Steel and BvS:DoJ.  Grim and gritty works ok for Batman and a lot of Marvel properties, but DC always seemed to be better at bright and hopeful.  I think that was my biggest complaint with the first two films in the DC Universe effort.

[celedhring]

Watched first two eps of Punisher. It's ok so far. Digging the gore. It's really not "buckets of blood" gory but definitely two or three steps above Marvel TV fare. It fits the character.

[celedhring]

Up to episode 6 of The Punisher so I'm going to ellaborate a little bit more. Thoroughly enjoying the show so far. I understand that people may find it slow in parts (I appreciate that, though, but I'm a huge fan of the character so I guess I'm willing to cut them some slack), and the violence and gun-toting murderous vigilantism may be a put  off in this day an age. But that's part of what makes the character tick, and I appreciate Netflix had the marbles to run with it. A good Punisher story is the one that is able to portray the character's duality - he's a victim and a monster at the same time. What I always found refreshing about the Punisher is that - unlike your usual superhero stories - it's not a sanitized version of vigilantism where nobody ever dies and everybody gets saved. At the same time, we are not in the 80s anymore, and you can't watch gun porn where the hero mows down tons of baddies and say "that rocks!" (unironically). The show will live or die on how they thread that particular needle, so I look forward to see what's in store the rest of the season. For now the writers don't seem afraid to go to difficult places, i.e. [spoiler]how he uses Micro's family as a way to relive the family life that was taken from him - which is really tortured.[/spoiler]

For now I'm pleasantly surprised - the weak reviews had deflated my expectations for the show.

[KRonn]

I don't often catch animated movies, but I watched Storks yesterday morning.  Fuck, that was funny.  Mind: blown, brah.

I saw that a few days ago. Fun movie. Animated movies are often fun stuff.

[The Brain]

The Big Short. Doctor decides to bet against humanity to make a buck instead of helping sick people. The end.

I still (after all these years) don't understand how the misleading packaging of subprimes could be a problem for the big financial players (if in fact it was a problem, I don't know this crap). I hope it wasn't a problem (and that stuff like optimistic risk assessment and management fraud and similar were the problems if there were any problems) because if it was then I don't understand how that could be. Surely they knew what they were buying?

[frunk]

Surely they knew what they were buying?

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahaha!

[The Brain]

Surely they knew what they were buying?

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahaha!

"Stupidity" isn't an explanation. If they were stupid, why were they?

[Malthus]

Finally getting around to watching American Gods. Enjoying it so far.

[crazy canuck]

Surely they knew what they were buying?

That was one of the problems.  Often that was not the case.  One of the reasons for this was the decision not to regulate this market.  Reportedly Greenspan convinced lawmakers the that the market could be trusted to self regulate.  But the problem was that without disclosure requirements the underlying securities were uncertain at best.

[celedhring]

I worked with a German scholar that studied the phenomenon pretty closely and his opinion is that the actors just chose to believe the risk assessments that were more convenient to them in the short term. Everybody (and that means everybody, including the subprimes) stood to benefit if the lower risk hypotheses were the ones that were accepted (which made mortgage-backed securities money-printing machines, priming the real estate boom), and that's what happened. Potential whistleblowers got drowned under the weight of shared interests - it's hard to be the killjoy when everybody is having a huge party. It also didn't help that many of the people involved wouldn't be directly hurt if the whole thing got blown up, because of limited *personal* exposure.

This scholar made a pretty detailed study of the incentives affecting every member of the mortgage chain (from house buyers to guys providing CDS at the end of the securitization process), and everybody was incentivized to behave irresponsibly. So they did just that.

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, I am sure that was a big part of it and that phenomenon was made easier by the lack of regulation.  If there had been more strict disclosure rules it would have been very difficult for those more risk assessment to have been made in the first place.

[Josephus]

Show called Berlin Station. American CIA operatives in Berlin, modern day. Not bad. Features Michelle Forbes (Ensign Ro)

[Eddie Teach]

She was the mom on The Killing, right?