TV/Movies Megathread

[viper37]

The WH40K show seems to be going nowhere at this point. The deal between GW and Amazon was about to lapse at the end of last year and they extended it at the eleventh hour without any firm announcement of anything.

They have released an animated short, but that's all.

Ah.  Maybe the failure of Halo dimmed their hopes.
Gamer fans can be really annoying with their sense of purity.

Maybe if showmakers didn't shit on the sourcematerial so hard the gamer fans wouldn't be so annoyed at them?

Halo was allright.

1st season needed to introduce the universe and the characters.  2nd season was going great.

[celedhring]

Watched Del Toro's Frankenstein - it's having a theatrical run over here.

It sticks relatively decently to the structure of the book - the most important alteration is putting Elizabeth into a love triangle (well, square actually) between Victor, his brother Willian, and the creature - which imho is the bit of the movie that works the least. And having Christopher Waltz playing Christopher Waltz in a pretty meaningless part all things considered. But Elordi is great as the creature, with an amazing physical performance, and Isaac puts in a fine job as the arrogant Victor.  The movie is long - 2 hours and a half - and it more or less hits all the key points of the novel but it really blazes through the last third of it, which I think undermines some of the character work.

The movie doesn't really put much new on the table regarding the mythos/themes (besides making the creature effectively Wolverine), but at the same time there aren't that many attempts at an actual adaptation of the novel (Brannagh!). I liked how, for example, the movie recognizes how important is the framing device of the ship in the Arctic for the moral message of the book, and leans on it.

Overall, if you don't have issues with Del Toro's excursions into sentimentalism (I don't), you'll probably enjoy it. The movie has lush gothic visuals, but it is rather restrained for Del Toro.

[The Brain]

Is the Creature built from human body parts?

[Syt]

'A House of Dynamite' - Most excellent.

Sounds like a blast.

[mongers]

'A House of Dynamite' - Most excellent.

Sounds like a blast.

 

Can't say anything about it without spoiling the plot.

[Syt]

Pluribus has launched on Apple TV with Ep. 1+2.

Created and produced by Vince Gilligan, starring Rhea Seehorn (who gained acclaim as Kim Wexler on Better Caul Saul). Yes, it takes place (in part) in Albuquerque

However, this is Vince Gilligan more going back to his X-Files roots. I haven't watched Sense8 - a show by JM Straczynski and the Wachowskis about 8 people across Earth becoming fully telepathically linked, but the premise at the moment is the inverse of that. Seehorn as writer of pulpy fantasy pirate romance novels is excellent.

Enjoying it a lot so far; looking forward to see where they're taking this.

[Syt]

Alan Tudyk and Nathan Fillion have done a podcast pilot episode "We were spacemen!" It was not particularly profound or focused, but I thought it was fun just listening to them chattering for an hour.

Thought I'd go back to Firefly. Was a big fan, and friends and I ran a TTRPG for a bit (I still have the 1E books), but hadn't watched in at least 10 years.

Man, it's still great. The Whedon-style dialogue probably works best in this show, where you have the sci-fi/Old West/Chinese jargon. And though the story of the opening feature length episode is not great, the chemistry of the cast is great from the go and they play so well off each other. I had not expected this to still be so much fun, but I enjoyed it immensely. It's still very much a fun escapist show for me.

[Josquius]

Has there ever been a cancellation more dire?

[Syt]

Question is whether they could have maintained the quality in the long run. Farscape IMHO managed, for the most part, but it had some ups and downs.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

We'll never find out though, unless we figure out a way to traverse the multiverse

[crazy canuck]

Sliders taught me that might not work out

[Josquius]

You get your parallel world 10 season Firefly.
Though Nathan Fillon's role is taken by a duck

[Sheilbh]

Enjoyed Death by Lightning a lot.

Weirdly I've read a book on Garfield on the assasination (Dark Horse - which I think I got because I read about the controversy over whether or not it was the assasination or the medical treatment that killed him). The show's a little on point but I suppose that's necessary with the "what if" implicit in a drama like this, but fun script, great cast who do very well.

In a really weird way it reminded me a little bit of The Favourite in that I think the Gilded Age is probably really important in thinking about America now but I suspect it's probably one of the least studied, known about eras in American history. Hugely contentious politics between groups like the Stalwarts and the Half-Breeds but that often focused on issues that, from a distance, seem really abstruse, plus lots of forgettable one term presidents etc - and figures like Roscoe Conkling, hugely important in his day but with very little real legacy. All of which apples to the 18th century in Britain in that it's the start of the party system and the creation of our system of government but no-one really knows anything about it because the fights are about very weird things (to our ears). They feel both long ago and very different in terms of what people car about, but also lacking the heroism of say the Civil War era or the Founding Fathers.

[Valmy]

It was when the Republicans went "lily white" and became the big business fuckers they are today.

Well that's not fair. They had a robust left flank up until the 1970s, but like the Democrats had a powerful conservative faction right up until...well...the 1990s I guess.

It was a time the United States almost sunk into a corrupt oligarghy but a powerful counter-force eventually turned the tide back against the plutocrats.

It was a crazy time. I think it is mostly remembered for Teddy Roosevelt as America's main character today.

[Admiral Yi]

This scene from Steve Jobs still gives me shivers.