Movie/TV recommendations

[SecretAsianMan]

If you're enjoying House Of Cards, you might find it interesting to check out the BBC 80s adaptation of it. It's a lot slower but it's got a great central performance from Ian Richardson (otherwise perhaps best known from Dark City and, apparently, familiar to American television viewers as the man in the Rolls-Royce who asks "Pardon me, would you have any Grey Poupon?" which is a reference in Wayne's World I now understand).

 

How much would I have to know about the UK's political system?  I'm not very knowledgeable about the US system either, which is where the majority of my confusion comes from.  Politics in general is not a thing I care for nor can stand very much of which is why I'm surprised I like this show.  I think its the acting that's doing it for me.

[Ben X]

Ummm, not much, I should think, but it's been ages since I watched it. Even if you only get halfway through an episode, I think it's interesting to see the different adaptations.

[BusbyBerkeley]

Watched You're Next again on Halloween and it held up really well to a repeat viewing. Home invasion horror movie that plays with expectations in fun ways and has some hilarious familial bickering. Works great with a crowd, too.

[SuperBiasedMan]

How much would I have to know about the UK's political system?  I'm not very knowledgeable about the US system either, which is where the majority of my confusion comes from.  Politics in general is not a thing I care for nor can stand very much of which is why I'm surprised I like this show.  I think its the acting that's doing it for me.

 

One thing to be cautious of is that the British one is based on the same books as the Netflix one, so you might spoil the overall plot if that matters to you. They seem to follow each other pretty closely.

Having watched both, I didn't feel like I needed any political knowledge for either to be a fun watch (which is good because I know little about either of your politics)

But the British one had nowhere near the same kind of production values and performance as the Kevin Spacey one so I'd say undoubtedly I preferred the latter.

[SecretAsianMan]

Kevin Spacey is definitely the main reason I'm enjoying it so much.  I'm not sure how receptive I'd be to another portrayal of the same character.  And I feel like knowing the details in advance would remove a lot of the intrigue.  I already accidentally spoiled one thing for myself in Season 2 and now I'm worried its going to change the way I view events from here.

[Bjorn]

I don't have much to add other than House of Cards (Netflix version) is really good stuff, and seems to draw in people who would normally be turned off by a political drama/thriller.  I know a bunch of people who wouldn't normally be into something like it, but love HoC. 

[Ben X]

Well, again, half an episode won't spoil much, but you could always take a look when the US series ends!

 

Has anyone seen the new Constantine series? It's okay, got some visual flair and plenty of potential, although at the moment it's like a not-as-fun Supernatural. His accent is atrocious, though - it veers from Irish to Yorkshire and hardly touches on Liverpudlian. It's pretty much as convincing as his fresh-off-the-rack costume that hasn't seen a day outside of Wardrobe, never mind fighting demons. It's possible that he bought it all new after

leaving the asylum

at the start of the show, but even so, his affected manner of constantly having the knot of his tie pulled down to nipple level for no reason is just daft. Hopefully they'll dirty him up a bit before long.

[SecretAsianMan]

I started the second season of House of Cards.  The thing that I accidentally spoiled myself on happened in the first episode.

 

Even though I knew that Frank kills Zoe, I was still shocked when it happened.  I didn't know what episode it would be in and he did it so suddenly that it caught me by surprise.  I was worried that it was going to happen at the end of the season and that I would spend each episode looking for the moment it would occur.  In a way I'm glad it happened so early.

[Mawd]

I've just finished the miniseries In The Flesh. It was reeeally good. It's a zombie show but the plot concerns reintegrating the zombies into society. The show follows a young guy in a rural english town as he adjusts to his new life as a living dead.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I started the second season of House of Cards.  The thing that I accidentally spoiled myself on happened in the first episode.

 

Even though I knew that Frank kills Zoe, I was still shocked when it happened.  I didn't know what episode it would be in and he did it so suddenly that it caught me by surprise.  I was worried that it was going to happen at the end of the season and that I would spend each episode looking for the moment it would occur.  In a way I'm glad it happened so early.

 

Yeah I spoiled myself on that by watching the British series, where it happens at the end of episode 1 (which is equivalent to season 1 of the American series.)

 

I've just finished the miniseries In The Flesh. It was reeeally good. It's a zombie show but the plot concerns reintegrating the zombies into society. The show follows a young guy in a rural english town as he adjusts to his new life as a living dead.

 

I watched that a while back, I think it's great. I get repeatedly disappointed by zombie media not addressing the idea that the zombies are living creatures too (even if they're sort of the living dead?) and the show spins it into a nice social dynamic where the infected receiving treatment are pariahs among societies where they previously felt at home... or relatively at home. Depending on who they were before.

 

I've only seen the first season (the three episode one) but I was hoping they'd spend more time addressing the actual killing of the zombies as morally questionable but a lot of the attitude in what I saw was that the infected being treated should be considered people, but not the wild ones. There were hints of that being explored though, so I hope it comes up more in season 2.

[syntheticgerbil]

Even though I knew that Frank kills Zoe, I was still shocked when it happened.  I didn't know what episode it would be in and he did it so suddenly that it caught me by surprise.  I was worried that it was going to happen at the end of the season and that I would spend each episode looking for the moment it would occur.  In a way I'm glad it happened so early.

That moment killed the show for me. Be prepared to be bored the whole rest of the season. I love hearing Kevin Spacey say, "Why no, I would never do that!" a billion times. Great writing.

[seamus2389]

I am on board the Jane the virgin bandwagon for best show of the fall.

 

The best description I can think of is the artifice of Pushing daises, the family dynamics of Gimore girls, the self-awareness and hilarious omniscient narrator of Arrested development (credited as  Latin Lover Narrator) and a central character who belief in telling the truth cuts through the bullshit plots of people keeping secrets from each other that annoys the hell out of me in soaps.

 

Watching it I realised that Arrested development  could be described as a comedic soap  - constant scheming, people going in to hiding from treason charges, affairs, reveals based round who actually related to who but all played for laughs and with Ron Howard commenting on the ridiculous nature of it all along the way along the way.

[Mawd]

I watched that a while back, I think it's great. I get repeatedly disappointed by zombie media not addressing the idea that the zombies are living creatures too (even if they're sort of the living dead?) and the show spins it into a nice social dynamic where the infected receiving treatment are pariahs among societies where they previously felt at home... or relatively at home. Depending on who they were before.

 

I've only seen the first season (the three episode one) but I was hoping they'd spend more time addressing the actual killing of the zombies as morally questionable but a lot of the attitude in what I saw was that the infected being treated should be considered people, but not the wild ones. There were hints of that being explored though, so I hope it comes up more in season 2.

 

All I'll say is that as time passes more people appreciate the zombies, even the rabid ones as the people they were rather than what their bodies have become. Of course in a show like this many people still hold views to the contrary and even have reason to do so

[Bolegium]

First time hearing about Jane the virgin, sounds great.

[SuperBiasedMan]

All I'll say is that as time passes more people appreciate the zombies, even the rabid ones as the people they were rather than what their bodies have become. Of course in a show like this many people still hold views to the contrary and even have reason to do so

 

Awesome. Gotta get back on that season 2...

[RubixsQube]

I saw this little indie film called Interstellar last night, and I have some opinions about it. I want everyone to hurry up and see it so we can all talk about it. 

[Ben X]

I've seen it!

 

Briefly:

 

I enjoyed the first two hours or so, up until they meet Mann, because it was all elegant and epic and exciting. But then it turns into a tropey, twisty, predictable sci-fi thriller (which is especially weird because the first few shots of the film tell you that everything's going to get solved, so it didn't seem at first like the film was bothered about story gymnastics).

[RubixsQube]

Ok, spoiler commence!

 

So, I liked the first hour, myself, and it really started falling apart once Cooper discovered the secret NASA headquarters, because then it became real lazy and far too quick in its exposition, taking a film that was doing a good job settling into the story and just ramping things up in hamfisted way. It kind of settled back into elegance / epic /excitement once they took to space, though. I really liked when the spacecraft reached Saturn, and I'm always a sucker for films that showcase space in a pseudo-realistic way, especially thrown out huge on an IMAX screen. But then they go into a wormhole and come out in a new galaxy and...

 

Ok. I understand that doing the thing I am about to do is REAL NITPICKY AND SHITTY, but, in the case of this film, it was just so disappointing and I'm going to do this anyway:

 

...the science that the film throws out makes zero sense. Let's say that there is a planet orbiting a black hole. Let's say that, say, a planet composed almost entirely of a weird thin layer of water survived a supernova explosion, or was captured by a black hole, such that it was close enough to the black hole that relativistic effects make it 7 years for every hour. This...would mean that the planet would be like, right, right at the event horizon, and by that point it would have been ripped apart by tidal forces. 

 

Also, you can't just fly into a black hole. You can't. You'd get ripped apart pretty quickly. And black holes don't have weird dual accretion disks orbiting at 90 degree angles that are kind of like rings. They have singular accretion disks that are superheated until they glow insanely bright. This, by the way, is my specific field of study. I have a PhD in supermassive black hole accretion disk emission. So when a film decides to just use this as a fun little plot point, it's incredibly disappointing to me, specifically.

 

I won't keep going, since nobody wants to read this. I think Phil Plait (who I find insufferable) had a bunch of similar comments. There were just too many of these moments where I couldn't just put the dumb science aside. I love science fiction. It is possible to use science fiction to tell stories that have human weight and impact without getting too bogged down in dry science. But this was not good science fiction. The latter half was just ham-fisted dialogue and incorrect science and as you mentioned, tropes out the wazoo.

 

Sigh.

[Ben X]

Oh, I forgot to say, one brilliant thing about it:

 

T.A.R.S - such great design, dialogue and acting. I want to hang out with that guy!

[RubixsQube]

Yeah, I thought that

 

the design and the execution of the robots was great, but it's sad that the most fleshed out characters were T.A.R.S. and C.A.S.E. I was wondering who the T.A.R.S. voice actor was when I left the theatre, and it was professional clown / the father from Rachel Getting Married, Bill Irwin. Also, it's kind of sad that Romilly, the scientist who spent 28 years (!) on board the ship while Cooper and Brand fucked around in the dumb water planet, gets billed on the imdb page way way down the list.

[Bjorn]

I'm supposed to see it tomorrow afternoon with some friends, so I'll avoid the spoilers til then!

[Ben X]

Yeah, I thought that

 

the design and the execution of the robots was great, but it's sad that the most fleshed out characters were T.A.R.S. and C.A.S.E. I was wondering who the T.A.R.S. voice actor was when I left the theatre, and it was professional clown / the father from Rachel Getting Married, Bill Irwin. Also, it's kind of sad that Romilly, the scientist who spent 28 years (!) on board the ship while Cooper and Brand fucked around in the dumb water planet, gets billed on the imdb page way way down the list.

 

I thought it was William Fichtner, which I hoped was an amazing reference to Armageddon and Contact. But sadly not.

[melmer]

But is it good though? Well worth seeing? I'm playing on seeing it in the iMax next Wednesday

Finally got around to seeing the 2nd and 3rd episodes of penny dreadful after watching the first months ago... its reallllllly good. You will not know horror until I have shown it to you. I might try and work that into my wedding vowels

[Ben X]

Mington, my non-plot-spoilery opinion -

 

It's got lots of good stuff about it, so I'd say it's worth seeing (if not well worth it), but it's also a bit of a mess, especially in the last hour. Just expect lots of majesty but also lots of groaning!

[Roderick]

Interstellar:

 

Yeah, it was a disappointment. I was pretty entertained while the movie wasn't cutting needlessly back to boring Earth antics and excessive melodrama, but holy cow does it last long and does it not live up to its potential. There's a specific thing I want out of science fiction and that's that it handles some idea about the state of humanity or where we're going. At its core, Interstellar is just an adventure romp, with silly magic dressed up as science happening.

 

Neither does the film do anything interesting with its form or brings a promising theme to the table, so as a Christopher Nolan movie it's kinda disappointing. This is the second time in a row, after the mess that was The Dark Knight Rises, that he hasn't been able to replicate his earlier greatness. What's going on? I excused him for Rises, since it felt like he had all these potentially interesting things to say that were dragged down by tons of Batman lore he had to deal with also, but I thought a totally new thing would make him reach the level of The Prestige again. Guess not.

 

Did I read somewhere on Twitter that Interstellar was actually an abandoned Spielberg project? Because that would totally make sense.