ysbreker

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So after all these years I finally got around to watching the West Wing. What a great show. I've been marathoning the dvds for weeks now when I've been able to find the time. Such interesting characters and witty dialogue you can't help but love it. Yes I know I'm about 10 years late

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So after all these years I finally got around to watching the West Wing. What a great show. I've been marathoning the dvds for weeks now when I've been able to find the time. Such interesting characters and witty dialogue you can't help but love it. Yes I know I'm about 10 years late

Yes! I know! A year or so ago I rewatched the entirety of the West Wing, and I enjoyed it so much that it went from watching an episode when I was eating or taking a break from work but didn't want to play games to my main source of entertainment. I almost totally stopped playing games because any time I wanted to relax I'd just watch more of the West Wing.

Edit: I also felt similarly about another Aaron Sorkin show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. But I understand that many people don't, and if you start watching it you have to prepare in advance for the fact that there's only one season.

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Yes! I know! A year or so ago I rewatched the entirety of the West Wing, and I enjoyed it so much that it went from watching an episode when I was eating or taking a break from work but didn't want to play games to my main source of entertainment. I almost totally stopped playing games because any time I wanted to relax I'd just watch more of the West Wing.

Edit: I also felt similarly about another Aaron Sorkin show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. But I understand that many people don't, and if you start watching it you have to prepare in advance for the fact that there's only one season.

I'm about halfway through season 2 right now, and I think my favorite episode is when the republican lawyer, Ansley Hayes gets hired in, her first day was filled with so many hijinks and funny asides for all the different characters, that it's easily my favorite episode so far. Especially the president finally getting medical clearance and getting the doctor's permission to have sex with his wife again lol!

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West Wing fans... how do the Seasons play out? I imagine it starts strong, but it ran for so long that I'm sure it faltered at some point. Anyone know when? It's one thing to be disappointed when a show ends, but in a way it's weird it's worse when you discover that only the first three seasons are any good, and the rest just break your heart.

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The way I've often heard it described is like an inverted bell curve. I don't recall exactly how I felt about it, but this is a popular opinion. Basically the first few seasons (two or three, can't recall exactly) in which Aaron Sorkin was heading up production are considered great, and then after he left there's a dip in the middle few seasons (four and five, I think, possibly three) and then the last couple of seasons they seemed to find their direction again and were strong.

Again I don't necessarily remember being that disappointed with the middle, but it could have just been the momentum of watching them in quick succession that carried me through. The early and late seasons are definitely good.

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Huzzarah! Warehouse 13 gets a third season. This fills me with great joy.

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The way I've often heard it described is like an inverted bell curve. I don't recall exactly how I felt about it, but this is a popular opinion. Basically the first few seasons (two or three, can't recall exactly) in which Aaron Sorkin was heading up production are considered great, and then after he left there's a dip in the middle few seasons (four and five, I think, possibly three) and then the last couple of seasons they seemed to find their direction again and were strong.

Again I don't necessarily remember being that disappointed with the middle, but it could have just been the momentum of watching them in quick succession that carried me through. The early and late seasons are definitely good.

Good to know. Thanks! :tup:

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Glad GoG sorted that out so fast with you Thunderpeel.

Huzzarah! Warehouse 13 gets a third season. This fills me with great joy.

I kind of wanted to dislike Warehouse 13 the way I do a lot of US series, but it's strangely compelling cheese.

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Hey, thanks for the Warehouse 13 tip, I'm going to check it out. Apparently is somehow based on a miniseries called The Lost Room, which wasn't perfect but I liked it.

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I kind of wanted to dislike Warehouse 13

I succeeded where you failed.

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I dislike a lot of US series, particularly when they're billed as seasons and have 23 or so episodes that meander around a lot from 10 - 20 (*cough*Heroes*cough*).

I've only caught odd episodes of Warehouse 13, and it made me laugh. The characters are also fallible and goofy, which makes them quite likeable. Maybe I'm just a bit infatuated with Claudia. Imagery doesn't usually affect me like that, but... rrr.

It seems to have the slightly low-budget production values of something like Stargate but with just enough silliness thrown in. It's ridiculous, but upfront about it and coherent with it. Probably as close as US TV gets to Doctor Who.

Super powered underpants: :tup:

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Just watched 'A Town Called Panic' - UK users will recognise the figures from the Cravendale ads from a few months back. This film is bloody crackers, and great fun. Impossible not to like. :tup:

Also just watched 'Winnebago Man'. While I enjoyed it, I felt a bit sorry for the man himself, as the guy doing the doc seemed like a bit of a wanker. When the old fella wanted to talk about his political beliefs, and how he thought things were going wrong, the director just cut him off and refused to let him finish, and made him talk about vacuous stuff. In short, you get what the man is about, but not really to know him as well as you'd like. A missed opportunity, and I got the impression the director just wanted to use him as a leg up for further projects and didn't actually care about Winnebago Man at all.

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Also just watched 'Winnebago Man'. While I enjoyed it, I felt a bit sorry for the man himself, as the guy doing the doc seemed like a bit of a wanker. When the old fella wanted to talk about his political beliefs, and how he thought things were going wrong, the director just cut him off and refused to let him finish, and made him talk about vacuous stuff. In short, you get what the man is about, but not really to know him as well as you'd like. A missed opportunity, and I got the impression the director just wanted to use him as a leg up for further projects and didn't actually care about Winnebago Man at all.

That sounds terrible. Every documentary make should have some genuine empathy for their subjects, not just be exploiting them :tdown:

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The Borgias.

Jeremy Irons, Rodrigo Borgia. Ergo, Pope Alexander. (If you've played AC, yes, those Borgia.)

Seems like a good way to pass the time until A Game of Thrones.

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I really want to watch the borgias because I love Assasin's Creed and the mythos behind all of that conspiracy stuff, but I can tell just from the trailer that it's going to be sooooooo bad. And not bad in a sopranos/entourage guilty pleasure kind of bad either.

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I thought the The Borgias would be the spiritual successor to The Tudors, which was excellent. I'm gonna see it anyway, your opinion is clearly wrong.

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I really want to watch the borgias because I love Assasin's Creed and the mythos behind all of that conspiracy stuff, but I can tell just from the trailer that it's going to be sooooooo bad. And not bad in a sopranos/entourage guilty pleasure kind of bad either.

The trailer doesn't tell you anything! It's seriously good stuff.

Edit: I just watched Muppets From Space and Dagon back to back. That's a really weird tonal shift and I fear there may be something wrong with me.

Edited by Orvidos

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Watched Tron: Legacy yesterday. The soundtrack was excellent and visuals were great at least on technical level. Otherwise the movie felt like an enormous wasted opportunity and I can't help but feel that it could have used a decent director, or writer or whoever.

Given the prices we charge to students, schools what sort of improvements have been made in [...] ENCOM OS 12?
Oooh.. they are evil alright.

Tron, while charging into the bad guy:

I fight for the users!!!
Really? You do?

The one part Zen-Buddhist, one part God, one part the Dude and one part hollow Kevin Flynn was so poorly written that his every "Man, ..." made me cringe.

So yeah, audio-visual treat and nothing else. I'm not sure why I even expected something more.

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Source Code :tup: - From the director of Moon. Another enjoyable chunk of sci-fi, with quirky, but realistic, characters. More sentimentality this time around, but it never goes too far. Very enjoyable.

Fair Game :tup: - True story of the "outing" of a CIA agent, and the idiotic reaction of the US press. Interesting story. I wonder if we'll ever know the truth.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams :tup: - Werner Herzog documentary about the oldest cave paintings in existence... in 3D! Well worth your time, and lot more interesting than it sounds.

(They're all worth your time.)

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Cave of Forgotten Dreams :tup: - Werner Herzog documentary about the oldest cave paintings in existence... in 3D! Well worth your time, and lot more interesting than it sounds.

Wuh eh wha zog now? The dude makes some really odd choices. You can never know what he's up to next and it feels like he makes a movie every couple of weeks. He's bored one weekend, so he grabs some Prelinger clips, spend $50 on iStock videos and the movie hits the theaters a week later. Or he shoots a documentary in 3D. Or a full on Hollywood flick with a proper cinematographer... based on a documentary he did two decades ago. Weird cat.

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Wuh eh wha zog now? The dude makes some really odd choices. You can never know what he's up to next and it feels like he makes a movie every couple of weeks. He's bored one weekend, so he grabs some Prelinger clips, spend $50 on iStock videos and the movie hits the theaters a week later. Or he shoots a documentary in 3D. Or a full on Hollywood flick with a proper cinematographer... based on a documentary he did two decades ago. Weird cat.

Definitely. A good combination for a film director :tup:

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Agreed, Herzog is one of the few people in any medium that can be accurately described as a "force of creativity".

I'll be volunteering at the film festival here next week, so I'll definitely catch his cave movie. I saw his South Pole documentary a few years back, and some of his imagery really stuck with me.

That was also a case of "Hey, what's up with Antartica? I'll jump on a plane with one other guy and a camera and find out".

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