TV/Movies Megathread

[crazy canuck]

Robert the Bruce.

Robert the Shite

Yep, I kept waiting for the fanciful prologue to end so the story could begin but the show ended first.

[crazy canuck]

This Hour has 22 minutes and the Rick Mercer Report?

Or didn't you watch shows that were critical of Conservative politicians?

Also Little Mosque on the Prairie was great.

This Hour / Rick Mercer are painfully unfunny.  Next you're going to be telling me about Air Farce.

Never watched Little Mosque.

Probably a good snap shot of why the Conservatives rarely win elections 

[crazy canuck]

She is the leader. Also, the biggest badass on the show is the Martian marine chick.

I'm halfway Season 2. She is not the leader. She is an ambassador. She works most often with the Deputy UN Secretary Ennwright.

The "biggest badass on the show" is a Sargent who reports to a male General/Admiral (I don't know his rank).

If Avasarala becomes the UN Secretary, one has to wonder if it's not because people complained, just like I am.

Oh, and the abused marine on Bobbie's team for being an Earther? Played by a black man. Seriously? They couldn't have found some blond guy for that role?

The most powerful leaders and characters in this show are women. 

My advice is to keep watching.

I got bored after the men around the UN table kept pushing for war and decided to blow up a moon, and the man with all the money killed a bunch of people, and the men in charge of the resistance decided to push another moon into the sun.

Yeah.. powerful women leaders and characters.... But hey! The bad-ass marine is a woman!  

That is an interesting interpretation.  I saw if very differently.  The UN President was a weak minded fool and the true leader amongst them is a woman. 

That is the theme that runs throughout the show.

[Berkut]

She is the leader. Also, the biggest badass on the show is the Martian marine chick.

I'm halfway Season 2. She is not the leader. She is an ambassador. She works most often with the Deputy UN Secretary Ennwright.

The "biggest badass on the show" is a Sargent who reports to a male General/Admiral (I don't know his rank).

If Avasarala becomes the UN Secretary, one has to wonder if it's not because people complained, just like I am.

Oh, and the abused marine on Bobbie's team for being an Earther? Played by a black man. Seriously? They couldn't have found some blond guy for that role?

The most powerful leaders and characters in this show are women. 

My advice is to keep watching.

I got bored after the men around the UN table kept pushing for war and decided to blow up a moon, and the man with all the money killed a bunch of people, and the men in charge of the resistance decided to push another moon into the sun.

Yeah.. powerful women leaders and characters.... But hey! The bad-ass marine is a woman!  

That is an interesting interpretation.  I saw if very differently.  The UN President was a weak minded fool and the true leader amongst them is a woman. 

That is the theme that runs throughout the show.

The weird thing is that they pulled it off amazingly well. It comes across almost stereotyped in that the only competent AND sane person apparently running Earth is the woman. The men are either incompetent, malevolent, or not powerful enough to matter. The entire story arc there is this insanely awesome, kick ass woman basically saving all of Earth from the either incompetent politicians, or competent but malevolent influencers.

I am not sure how you could have set out to portray a female leader better, at least in a world where you want that leader to have some kind of arc.

[Razgovory]

Has anyone watched any of "Lovecraft Country"?  I started watching it and then it suddenly turns into the Dukes of Hazard and I thought that was stupid and turned it off.  Does it get better later on?

It gets really weird in later episodes. I love it, but I can uderstand people not liking it at all. The last episode could've been straight off Legion.

It's also certainly quite "in your face" regarding the racism/sexism themes, which I find provocative but again, may not be everybody's cup of tea. I just love weird, ambitious, and creatively aggressive shows even if they don't always succeed.

The problem isn't that it's "in your face" racism, it's that the racism is exaggerated in absurd ways.  There was lynching at that time but it wasn't done through chases.  The days of broad daylight lynching had ended by that time period and there no lynchings in the states of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio from 1950-1960.  It's a bit like Franco's secret police shooting people in throwing them in mass graves in 1995.

The most famous lynching in the 1950's was Emmet Till a kid from Chicago.  His only crime was acting the way he normally did in Illinois in Mississippi.  He was kidnapped by two men in the middle of the night, shot. and his body was thrown in a reservoir.  It wasn't a public thing and the killers tried to hide the body.  Cartoonish, over the top racism gives a false impression of how far we have come.

Bizarrely the heroes are pretty chill about it after they escape, laughing like it was no big thing.  If someone tried to kill me and (presumably) died in the attempt I think I would be a little more shaky.

[Berkut]

I think a better complaint about women in modern fiction is that there are so few female leads in roles where the gender of the character is not the point of the story.

Some stories, the gender of the main character isn't really important to the overall story. It obviously changes the story, but the core story could work with a male of female lead. Why are so few of them female? Why isn't Harry Potter about Sarah Potter? The basic story doesn't require Harry to be male, right? It would work just as well with Harry being a girl.

I think the only fiction I can think of where the characters gender is not central to the story and the character is a female is Hunger Games.

In The Expanse, James Holden could be female. There is nothing about the basic story that this protaganist couldn't be female, right? The Expanse does do a great job, IMO (at least relative to most fiction) in having diverse characters, but still, the MAIN character is a guy. He doesn't have to be.

Star Trek Voyager would be another I suppose, were the main character is female in a story that isn't specifically about the main character being female.

[grumbler]

I think that the main reason we don't have shows and movies that have leads that are just incidentally female is that female viewers are more tolerant of shows with male leads than is true vice-versa.  I know guys who refused to watch the BSG reboot because Starbuck was a woman, even though only incidentally so.

The Money in Hollywood is too timid to take chances.

[celedhring]

Has anyone watched any of "Lovecraft Country"?  I started watching it and then it suddenly turns into the Dukes of Hazard and I thought that was stupid and turned it off.  Does it get better later on?

It gets really weird in later episodes. I love it, but I can uderstand people not liking it at all. The last episode could've been straight off Legion.

It's also certainly quite "in your face" regarding the racism/sexism themes, which I find provocative but again, may not be everybody's cup of tea. I just love weird, ambitious, and creatively aggressive shows even if they don't always succeed.

The problem isn't that it's "in your face" racism, it's that the racism is exaggerated in absurd ways.  There was lynching at that time but it wasn't done through chases.  The days of broad daylight lynching had ended by that time period and there no lynchings in the states of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio from 1950-1960.  It's a bit like Franco's secret police shooting people in throwing them in mass graves in 1995.

The most famous lynching in the 1950's was Emmet Till a kid from Chicago.  His only crime was acting the way he normally did in Illinois in Mississippi.  He was kidnapped by two men in the middle of the night, shot. and his body was thrown in a reservoir.  It wasn't a public thing and the killers tried to hide the body.  Cartoonish, over the top racism gives a false impression of how far we have come.

Bizarrely the heroes are pretty chill about it after they escape, laughing like it was no big thing.  If someone tried to kill me and (presumably) died in the attempt I think I would be a little more shaky.

Yeah, there's not a single white man that's not a ridiculous cartoon villain in the show. That said, it also doesn't spare black characters from being shown in a negative light at times. For example, Tic [spoiler]is revealed to be a war criminal and a homophobe[/spoiler]. Sexism eventually becomes a big theme, not just racism. Again, the show becomes more inventive and daring as the episodes progress (there's a [spoiler]couple of reverse rape scenes, one of which even hurt me as I watched  [/spoiler] so there's artistic meat to back up the social commentary, not just sloganeering.

Again, if you didn't like the first 1-2 episodes, I don't think you'll like the rest of the show. It just becomes a crazier version of that.

[celedhring]

I think a better complaint about women in modern fiction is that there are so few female leads in roles where the gender of the character is not the point of the story.

Some stories, the gender of the main character isn't really important to the overall story. It obviously changes the story, but the core story could work with a male of female lead. Why are so few of them female? Why isn't Harry Potter about Sarah Potter? The basic story doesn't require Harry to be male, right? It would work just as well with Harry being a girl.

I think the only fiction I can think of where the characters gender is not central to the story and the character is a female is Hunger Games.

In The Expanse, James Holden could be female. There is nothing about the basic story that this protaganist couldn't be female, right? The Expanse does do a great job, IMO (at least relative to most fiction) in having diverse characters, but still, the MAIN character is a guy. He doesn't have to be.

Star Trek Voyager would be another I suppose, were the main character is female in a story that isn't specifically about the main character being female.

Mmmmm... I'm not completely sure about Holden. He embodies a certain naive, uncomplicated idealism which contrasts with the more complex issues the female protagonists find themselves having to balance out. He's the "good" version of the guys at the UN table. I think that's intentional.

Otherwise, though, I completely agree with your general point. I'd throw Ellen Ripley to the mix.

[crazy canuck]

She is the leader. Also, the biggest badass on the show is the Martian marine chick.

I'm halfway Season 2. She is not the leader. She is an ambassador. She works most often with the Deputy UN Secretary Ennwright.

The "biggest badass on the show" is a Sargent who reports to a male General/Admiral (I don't know his rank).

If Avasarala becomes the UN Secretary, one has to wonder if it's not because people complained, just like I am.

Oh, and the abused marine on Bobbie's team for being an Earther? Played by a black man. Seriously? They couldn't have found some blond guy for that role?

The most powerful leaders and characters in this show are women. 

My advice is to keep watching.

I got bored after the men around the UN table kept pushing for war and decided to blow up a moon, and the man with all the money killed a bunch of people, and the men in charge of the resistance decided to push another moon into the sun.

Yeah.. powerful women leaders and characters.... But hey! The bad-ass marine is a woman!  

That is an interesting interpretation.  I saw if very differently.  The UN President was a weak minded fool and the true leader amongst them is a woman. 

That is the theme that runs throughout the show.

The weird thing is that they pulled it off amazingly well. It comes across almost stereotyped in that the only competent AND sane person apparently running Earth is the woman. The men are either incompetent, malevolent, or not powerful enough to matter. The entire story arc there is this insanely awesome, kick ass woman basically saving all of Earth from the either incompetent politicians, or competent but malevolent influencers.

I am not sure how you could have set out to portray a female leader better, at least in a world where you want that leader to have some kind of arc.

I agree.  I actually had deleted a paragraph where I observed that my main complaint is that almost all the male characters are the worst possible stereotypes.

[grumbler]

Mmmmm... I'm not completely sure about Holden. He embodies a certain naive, uncomplicated idealism which contrasts with the more complex issues the female protagonists find themselves having to balance out. He's the "good" version of the guys at the UN table. I think that's intentional.

Holden's also the target of a lot of explanatory exposition, as well (at least in the books - I gave up on the series when it was clear they were traying to out-dark the very dark books).  You have to be more careful with extensive explanatory exposition* to a female character - it can easy become stereotypical.


*my alliteration quota for the day is met!

[crazy canuck]

I think a better complaint about women in modern fiction is that there are so few female leads in roles where the gender of the character is not the point of the story.

Some stories, the gender of the main character isn't really important to the overall story. It obviously changes the story, but the core story could work with a male of female lead. Why are so few of them female? Why isn't Harry Potter about Sarah Potter? The basic story doesn't require Harry to be male, right? It would work just as well with Harry being a girl.

I think the only fiction I can think of where the characters gender is not central to the story and the character is a female is Hunger Games.

In The Expanse, James Holden could be female. There is nothing about the basic story that this protaganist couldn't be female, right? The Expanse does do a great job, IMO (at least relative to most fiction) in having diverse characters, but still, the MAIN character is a guy. He doesn't have to be.

Star Trek Voyager would be another I suppose, were the main character is female in a story that isn't specifically about the main character being female.

Mmmmm... I'm not completely sure about Holden. He embodies a certain naive, uncomplicated idealism which contrasts with the more complex issues the female protagonists find themselves having to balance out. He's the "good" version of the guys at the UN table. I think that's intentional.

Otherwise, though, I completely agree with your general point. I'd throw Ellen Ripley to the mix.

I agree, Holden is another of the flawed male characters.  He is just a bit more likeable.  But there are times the viewer can very upset with just how naive he is.  If not for the strong female lead in that story line holding him up and showing him the way, he would be lost.

[Sheilbh]

[Josephus]

Robert the Bruce.

Robert the Shite

Yep, I kept waiting for the fanciful prologue to end so the story could begin but the show ended first.

Exactly

[Maladict]

This is disturbing.