TV/Movies Megathread

[Josquius]

But it wasn't trying to be Xena, it was trying to be GoT.

Maybe at first. I don't for a second believe thats where they seriously they thought they were aiming as production got under way.
But you miss the point a bit; a fantasy show doesn't have to be of the quality of early series of GOT to be good.

Can we drop the diverse casting BS please? That ship has sailed. Just put on your big boy pants and deal with it. Jesus fucking Christ who the fuck cares?

It's not BS.
You should know I'm not racist and there's no hidden agenda or false concerns here.

Noting the weird high diversity in a group of characters that are meant to be from a small inbred hick town, where one of their number looking different is meant to be a key plot point, is a perfectly valid nit pick.
Especially in a fantasy setting where making a world feel real is a central goal.

Is this wheel of time? I found this criticism absolutely didn't stand there, the infamous "woke village" that ticked off racists didn't mix snow white nordics with a couple of ebony sub-saharans, it was a spectrum of skin colours and features, an approach that should have eased the worries of those sensitive to the laws of genetics in their high fantasy settings.

But the casting efforts were clearly in vain, as it turns out fantasy villages must be straight off a 1940s German school book or they don't work.

The diversity in this particular group is an immersion breaker != everyone should be white. The show could have done with making things less white in fact later on when you get to the Asian influenced land - real echos of my old favourite Stargate where the Chinese go'aulds main henchman would be Chinese but most of his grunts just white guys.
As said its a nitpick, but appearance of characters does matter for making a world seem real.

[Threviel]

The Wheel of Time was blah, and the diversity of the cast had nothing to do with it.

I suspect the candle based economy made the world totally unrealistic.

[crazy canuck]

But it wasn't trying to be Xena, it was trying to be GoT.

Maybe at first. I don't for a second believe thats where they seriously they thought they were aiming as production got under way.
But you miss the point a bit; a fantasy show doesn't have to be of the quality of early series of GOT to be good.

Can we drop the diverse casting BS please? That ship has sailed. Just put on your big boy pants and deal with it. Jesus fucking Christ who the fuck cares?

It's not BS.
You should know I'm not racist and there's no hidden agenda or false concerns here.

Noting the weird high diversity in a group of characters that are meant to be from a small inbred hick town, where one of their number looking different is meant to be a key plot point, is a perfectly valid nit pick.
Especially in a fantasy setting where making a world feel real is a central goal.

Is this wheel of time? I found this criticism absolutely didn't stand there, the infamous "woke village" that ticked off racists didn't mix snow white nordics with a couple of ebony sub-saharans, it was a spectrum of skin colours and features, an approach that should have eased the worries of those sensitive to the laws of genetics in their high fantasy settings.

But the casting efforts were clearly in vain, as it turns out fantasy villages must be straight off a 1940s German school book or they don't work.

The diversity in this particular group is an immersion breaker != everyone should be white. The show could have done with making things less white in fact later on when you get to the Asian influenced land - real echos of my old favourite Stargate where the Chinese go'aulds main henchman would be Chinese but most of his grunts just white guys.
As said its a nitpick, but appearance of characters does matter for making a world seem real.

When we first discussed the casting I explained to somebody who had not read the books why genetic heritage had such a significant role to play in the plot. I forget who it was but they correctly commented that it was right out of a Nazi eugenics playbook. They weren't wrong. The main plot line is based on the concept of a genetic bloodline being kept pure.

The fact the show does not "show" that concept but rather opted to tell a different story, with really weak writing, was part of the problem.

The other problem is that the books did not have great dialogue. Unfortunately some of that was picked up in the show.

[mongers]

When we first discussed the casting I explained to somebody who had not read the books why genetic heritage had such a significant role to play in the plot. I forget who it was but they correctly commented that it was right out of a Nazi eugenics playbook. They weren't wrong. The main plot line is based on the concept of a genetic bloodline being kept pure.

The fact the show does not "show" that concept but rather opted to tell a different story, with really weak writing, was part of the problem.

The other problem is that the books did not have great dialogue. Unfortunately some of that was picked up in the show.

Yeah something can be meah, because it also sticks too closely to the source material, if that source is 'tainted'/objectionable.

[crazy canuck]

When we first discussed the casting I explained to somebody who had not read the books why genetic heritage had such a significant role to play in the plot. I forget who it was but they correctly commented that it was right out of a Nazi eugenics playbook. They weren't wrong. The main plot line is based on the concept of a genetic bloodline being kept pure.

The fact the show does not "show" that concept but rather opted to tell a different story, with really weak writing, was part of the problem.

The other problem is that the books did not have great dialogue. Unfortunately some of that was picked up in the show.

Yeah something can be meah, because it also sticks too closely to the source material, if that source is 'tainted'/objectionable.

I agree. The point is the writers and showrunners had a good reason to move away from the central plot of the books, but they did not replace it with something that was interesting.

One wonders why the project was pitched in the first place when the underlying theme of the book is objectionable.

[grumbler]

When we first discussed the casting I explained to somebody who had not read the books why genetic heritage had such a significant role to play in the plot. I forget who it was but they correctly commented that it was right out of a Nazi eugenics playbook. They weren't wrong. The main plot line is based on the concept of a genetic bloodline being kept pure.

The fact the show does not "show" that concept but rather opted to tell a different story, with really weak writing, was part of the problem.

The other problem is that the books did not have great dialogue. Unfortunately some of that was picked up in the show.

It's been quite a while since I read the books, but I don't recall anything about maintaining pure bloodlines or genetic heritage.  Rand wasn't related to the original Dragon (who killed his entire family IIRC), though he was half-Aliel and thuis unlike the rest of the villagers.  He has children with an Andoran and an Aliel woman.  Not much preservation of genetic heritage there.

[Josquius]

The show certainly kept the "he is ginger. Only aliels are ginger." bit.

As to whether eugenicsy stuff is bad in fantasy... I'm torn. I do think it should be a valid what if - what if certain genes /magic blessings /whatever do make some people inherently "better"?
The trouble of course is you just know the wrong sort will read this as a clear analogue for reality rather than a silly theoretical.

[Duque de Bragança]

[
My college had a huge film library, all of it on original language. A lot of them were taped from TV  Many laserdiscs too. A lot of their B/Obscure genre stuff were UK editions.

Satellite TV or Portuguese TV screenings who knows. 

A bit of everything. Also, Spanish TV wasn't actually that bad. At the time the second public channel was essentially Film Buff TV, and everything was shown with subtitles. Most of the movies they had were taped from it. Some of the copies were really shitty, you could tell they had been copied from some other tape. I remember their copy of The Magnificent Ambersons cut off before the end, and it took me many years before I was finally able to watch it in full (well, the surviving cut at least).

The second channel being somewhat more cultural/film buff was exactly the same in Portugal with RTP 2, these days more likely to be on RTP Memória, another free state-owned channel.

Of course, there are some details in Spain such as SD free terrestrial channel showing it with subtitles but not the HD channel.  Makes less of a difference for a Turkish telenovela but still bad, as a matter of principle.
Telenovela audience is not demanding anyways.

As for bad copies on TV,  well it only changed in later years. I remember Bergman's death changed TV schedules for a screening in PAL+ (16/9 from a decent print).

As for the Magnificent Ambersons, it's available in HD by Criterion so the situation has improved considerably.

[grumbler]

The show certainly kept the "he is ginger. Only aliels are ginger." bit.

As to whether eugenicsy stuff is bad in fantasy... I'm torn. I do think it should be a valid what if - what if certain genes /magic blessings /whatever do make some people inherently "better"?
The trouble of course is you just know the wrong sort will read this as a clear analogue for reality rather than a silly theoretical.

Rand wasn't a ginger in the book, though, and he wasn't an Aiel.  He had dark hair with a reddish tinge, and his mother was Andoran.  His father was an Aiel and may well have been a ginger.

There was a period in the book series when Rand and those around him thought that he was Aiel.

Now, if you want to complain about the whole eugenics thing in Lord of the Rings, I am right there with you.

[viper37]

Not to mention I suspect the Castilian dubs for Re-Animator did not help. I remember laughing at Romero's Day of the Dead given its ineptness and that's after being exposed to not particularly good dubs in France.
Or it could be you are not into Stuart Gordon, as you said.

PS: actually, the problem may be Brian Yuzna's direction for the inferior sequels. :hmm

I don't think I ever watched the Spanish dub of Re-Animator, tbf. I'm a film major, I'll get my degree rescinded if I watch Spanish dubs.

But yeah, I've never got into Yuzna/Gordon, although I've watched tons of their films because they were hugely popular among Spanish college students in the 1990s - there's a reason they both moved to Spain to make films in their late careers. Heck, I even worked in the promotion of "Faust".
 

But not Catalan dubs? 
As for Spanish dubs, unavoidable before you graduated, not just the '90s and probably some time after possibly till the early 2010s (the advent of DVD earlier also helped unlike overpriced Laserdiscs) but Spanish TV has improved a lot by offering most of the times the original version, except for cheap sports channels and the odd channel, even on free terrestrial TV, as in France.

Germany seems to regress unlike in the past, where they offered Zweikanalton from the '70s.  Even Arte Germany would not always offer French original versions for French movies.

I get Spanish TV in Portugal and seldom watched it these last 15 years.

My college had a huge film library, all of it on original language. A lot of them were taped from TV  Many laserdiscs too. A lot of their B/Obscure genre stuff were UK editions.

Quebec made dubs tend to equalize performamces. Great becomes good, awful becomes passable, Slapshot became a masterpiece

Was it the same for Spanish and Catalan dubs, or are they like those atrocious, out of sync, english dub?

[Admiral Yi]

If anyone has the Netflix ad supported tier I'd be interested to know that the ad load is.

[Eddie Teach]

So it appears Frasier/Kelsey Grammer is getting a sequel-series starting next year sometime...

A series which for some reason just hasn't aged well at all.

Didn't it have a laugh track?

[celedhring]

Quebec made dubs tend to equalize performamces. Great becomes good, awful becomes passable, Slapshot became a masterpiece

Was it the same for Spanish and Catalan dubs, or are they like those atrocious, out of sync, english dub?

Spanish/Catalan dubs used to be of top quality. I grew thinking Arnold Schwarzenegger was a good actor because of his Spanish dub 

Nowadays it has become a bit of a volume business, since streaming platforms have to dub so much stuff every month, and the quality has significantly declined. It's still not as bad as those out of sync dubs people make fun of though.

[Duque de Bragança]

Quebec made dubs tend to equalize performamces. Great becomes good, awful becomes passable, Slapshot became a masterpiece

Was it the same for Spanish and Catalan dubs, or are they like those atrocious, out of sync, english dub?

Spanish/Catalan dubs used to be of top quality. I grew thinking Arnold Schwarzenegger was a good actor because of his Spanish dub 

Myth found in every dubbing country. Spanish/Castilian dubs have been crap for as long as I remember, only better than the voice over Russian/Polish école. I found the lack of different voices even more jarring than in France, pretty bad in this aspect. Sound mix was not as bad as in Germany or French dubs of the '80s, where voices crush everything, but that's about it.
Viper's saying that dubs tend, at best, to equalise through a race to the bottom (le nivellement par le bas) is spot on.
 
Did he have always the same voice?  from Hercules in New York through Conan to the Expendables? 

Nowadays it has become a bit of a volume business, since streaming platforms have to dub so much stuff every month, and the quality has significantly declined. It's still not as bad as those out of sync dubs people make fun of though.

See above. Comparable as before, only worse than before. I keep hearing the same complaints by voxolâtres over here.
Mind you, I understand the nostalgia factor to some degree, but revisiting classic old dubs, even for cartoons/anime, is generally disappointing.

Do they use voxophiles/voxolâtres in Québec Viper?

[mongers]

If anyone has the Netflix ad supported tier I'd be interested to know that the ad load is.

Is this a new thing or America only?

As I've not seen that option on netflix here, though I've not logged into my basic account in several months.