ysbreker

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How is Top Gear 5 stars and A Bit of Fry and Laurie 4 stars?

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How is Top Gear 5 stars and A Bit of Fry and Laurie 4 stars?

 

Because I closed my personal Netflix account and just started a profile on my wife's account a few months ago. Netflix doesn't know me yet. :(

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Looks like Sherlock is safe, so I guess I should have said "much of BBC's catalog" -

 

Whew.  Of course I also own it on Blu-ray but Netflix is so much more convenient.

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Guys I finished Utopia and I what. I liked it but I'm sort of amazed that kind of show was on TV. I guess the UK is different than the US, though. I don't know if it was good, but I do know I liked it a lot.

 

I also noticed the Netflix thing re: Luther, and I'm slowly making my way through it. I guess I should do it more quickly. I've watched episode one of season two. But I've been watching so much anime lately. X:

Also a friend of mine pointed me to a thing (Chrome extension: Hola) that lets me browse Netflix as if I'm in the UK so I could watch Utopia without having to download it. Is that illegal? It... it probably is. Anyway, what I'm saying I guess is that it's not a big deal if I don't finish Luther because it'll probably still be on the UK Netflix? Dunno, though.

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I think it's technically illegal but nobody cares. The reason for region locking is that the owners of the film and TV charge sell regional based licences. So if Netflix wanted everyone in the world to see Luther it's more expensive than only having it on Irish Netflix.

So technically the show's owners ought to get more for people from other regions watching it, but both they and Netflix are still getting paid so it doesn't seem like anyone's kicking up the biggest fuss about it.

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Apparently Netflix will be clamping down on region unlocking over the next few months due to studio pressure. Of course, they may just be saying that to appease the studios and may be aware that they'll lose a lot of subscribers if they successfully prevent unlocking. Hopefully people would just find other ways round it anyway.

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Hmm I mean I've definitely considered dropping my Netflix subscription a lot in the past year but discovering this thing has significantly dampened that desire, so... I guess I'm one person they'd lose! Probably.

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Woo hoo! No need to post a threatening open letter on Reddit to them about playing with fire!

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These have probably been recommended already, but just watched them recently.

 

Only Lovers Left Alive is a really good take on vampires from Jim Jarmusch after his previous movie, Limits of Control, which I personally liked but was probably too weird for most people. What I still disliked about it, though, was the trope (?) of tying the long-lived characters to some most well-known historical figures. It seems like a too obvious thing to go for, even if it was relatively well handled in this case.

 

Adaptation, written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze -- the pair who did Being John Malkovich -- is a really unique film and I can't really describe it without spoiling it. It really blew my mind at least once.

 

Pan's Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro is about a girl using fantasy to deal with her pregnant mother's illness and a nasty stepfather who is rooting out rebels in an area after the Spanish Civil War. It features some really good imagery.

 

Boyhood is a coming of age story from Richard Linklater, another rather unique movie as it was filmed over 12 years while the cast was aging together with the characters.

 

Once Upon a Time in the West is a classic that I can't sum up easily. I think I hadn't really watched older westerns since I was a kid and I don't remember if I had ever seen it before. The movie was really good, and it was awesome to see it in full HD on my big 96" screen. After seeing that I decided never to watch anything in less than 720p if possible.

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oh yay another person who liked Limits of Control

oh and vaguely on the topic of Grand Budapest Hotel, i recently rewatched the episode 'The Labours of Hercules' (of the Poirot tv series), and it's neat to see two different takes on the same type of setting (alpine resort with funicular, spa etc.). There's even a character named Gustave.

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The Hurling Day episode of Dinosaurs is the first thing in such a long time that I had to pause while watching because I was laughing so hard I couldn't see.

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The Limits of Control is one of my favorite movies but I wouldn't fault anyone if it makes them want to crawl out of their skin after 10 minutes, nor would I fault them if the feeling that they want to crawl out of their skin doubles every subsequent 10 minutes. Jarmusch films are always really great about addressing, subtly rather than head-on, the weird blurry line between plausible fiction and implausible fiction, to the extent that the line exists, and so on. It's sort of like t hey get at the same thing you get at when you break the 4th wall, but without breaking the fourth wall and more specifically without resorting to reality, by which I mean the movie never links up to the actual world any more than any other film does. It just revolves around the issue. It helps that I find Isaach De Bankolé, the guy who stars in the movie, to be a fascinating guy to watch even when he's just walking around. Not everyone can pull that off and I'd imagine he's not everyone's cup of tea.

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My housemate and I had another of our trademark movie marathons; this one was 'Pretty But Dumb' to show off our fancy new TV.

 

Tron Legacy: there's about three half-movies in here, but it never quite comes together. The decision to focus the film on the father-son relationship probably crippled it, but it's probably also a problem that the visual design led the film and there's no real way to force all the moments they wanted into one movie and have it stay coherent. But it does have great production design and probably the joke of the night:

Quorra, a curious program talking about the human books she's read: "Do you know Jules Verne?"

"Yeah, I know Jules Verne."

"What's he like?!"

 

Avatar: once you put aside the film's reputation and take it for what it is, it's not that bad. It's still dumb as hell and is basically doing the Superior White Man trope with blue aliens, but it's a damn sight more coherent than Tron Legacy is, and it's hard to imagine that it can really improve from where it ended up. I can imagine a sequel being worthwhile because they can pick something that actually works with the strengths of their setting.

 

Pacific Rim: it's actually fun! It makes no goddamn sense but you don't care because it's lively and exciting and full of ideas, it hits the emotional beats, and it uses only the cliches it means to.

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I watched The Babadook today, liked that it was a grounded, depressing psychological horror film, however didn't share the excitement critics had with the movie. It was ok. I feel dumb not getting why the movie is that great, I feel like I'm missing a lot of stuff.

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Pacific Rim: it's actually fun! It makes no goddamn sense but you don't care because it's lively and exciting and full of ideas, it hits the emotional beats, and it uses only the cliches it means to.

 

I absolutely love Pacific Rim, because it's ridiculous and fun, but manages to do all that without being dumb or offensive in the way a lot of action movies are. 

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I absolutely love Pacific Rim, because it's ridiculous and fun, but manages to do all that without being dumb or offensive in the way a lot of action movies are. 

Yeah, I think it did a really great job at being a 'live-action cartoon.' I guess that's not a thing people expect or get very often, but it was super fun if you just recognize that and let it be big and dumb and fun.

 

Kinda like Speed Racer actually!

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I shamelessly dig the films Uncle Buck and Plains, Trains, & Automobiles. Little else from that family of films strikes me as funny or interesting at all. Am I missing anything decent from the era with a similar vibe?

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I absolutely love Pacific Rim, because it's ridiculous and fun, but manages to do all that without being dumb or offensive in the way a lot of action movies are. 

 

The fight with pink neon made my brain go "ooooooooh!", Pacific Rim is loads of fun.

 

I went in with exactly the right expectations from the trailer, thanks to the shot of the ship being wielded like a bat.

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Just finished all of Luther, which I previously mentioned. Goddamn that show is good. I love British crime drama, seems a lot more grounded than what we've got going here in the States but I guess it's possible that it's a grass is always greener thing. Idris Elba is just so good, I can see why he's a bigshot movie star now (although no movie I've seen him in has been as good as this series) but I'm glad that they actually got him back to do series 4 later this year. Looking forward to it very much!

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But what about The Wire that's the best!!! (And has Idris Elba in it!)

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Just finished all of Luther, which I previously mentioned. Goddamn that show is good.

Are you just referring to the first series? I feel like you wouldn't be so positive if you'd just watched the third.

 

Speaking of crime drama, I have a lot of time for the French show Spiral, or Engrenages, which has just started again on BBC4. Wikipedia suggests that you can watch the first three series in the US via Hulu and it's definitely a show I'd recommend so long as you have a stomach for subtitles and horrendous criminal acts.

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Are you just referring to the first series? I feel like you wouldn't be so positive if you'd just watched the third.

 

Speaking of crime drama, I have a lot of time for the French show Spiral, or Engrenages, which has just started again on BBC4. Wikipedia suggests that you can watch the first three series in the US via Hulu and it's definitely a show I'd recommend so long as you have a stomach for subtitles and horrendous criminal acts.

 

I watched all three series. I had heard about the second and third being relatively poor as compared to the first so I went in kinda mentally prepared for being disappointed. I actually don't know what is so egregious about series three in particular, I enjoyed it quite a bit though I do think the limits of its believability were being poked and prodded. Despite the fact that some of the situations that brought them about were a bit contrived, it had some of the best emotional payoffs yet (thought series two was a bit emotionally flat).

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