Yeah, also remember the ad, and the kurfuffle when someone claimed it.
Discuss and Rate the Last Thing You Watched (non-movies)
- Thread starter Hawki
- Start date
it's a 4-part series, but worth the watch if only to laugh at his insistence over getting the jet. I mean, he rejected an almost million settlement just to get the jet. Fucking hilarious. If you're going to interrupt our regularly scheduled programing, make good on it!
Well, the jet is worth more then a million easily but yeah I can see wanting to see Pepsi pay up.
Here in the Philippines, there's a similar Pepsi marketing fuck-up story. Except that would probably be more of a thriller or drama, since people actually died. Then there's Michael Jackson getting set on fire for one of their adverts. I wonder what other skeletons Pepsi has in their marketing closet.
All caught up with The Boys. It’s fun! Often ridiculous fun, but it still does a good job with its characters. The action is also appropriately over the top, and I like most of the song choices which feel well-placed with the scenes they accompany.
Not sure how many seasons are planned, but I think as long as they keep shifting around the baddies maybe a couple more would be just right. The fact that nothing is really black and white leaves things wide open. I have a feeling Homelander and Victoria will ultimately have a showdown next season, and of course Soldier Boy is left as a bit of a wild card.
Not sure how many seasons are planned, but I think as long as they keep shifting around the baddies maybe a couple more would be just right. The fact that nothing is really black and white leaves things wide open. I have a feeling Homelander and Victoria will ultimately have a showdown next season, and of course Soldier Boy is left as a bit of a wild card.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.
Holy shit.
This is a Netflix anime set in the world of Cyberpunk 2077, and is about a delinquent youth named David as he is forced by circumistances into a life of crime in Night City. It's kind of hard to discuss without spoilers, so I'll just say it's excellent, probably a 9/10. The themes of corporate dystopia, losing one's humanity through cybernetic implants, and making something of yourself against the odds are all classic cyberpunk, and executed very well. The animation by Studio Trigger is amazing, the characters are all engaging, the writing is sharp, the soundtrack is excellent, and the action kicks major ass. It's also incredibly violent, sometimes bordering on the level of those infamous 90s OVAs like Genocyber or Angel Cop, but it never feels lurid or gratuitous in the way those did. I just finished it less than 10 minutes ago, so I don't know if there's any major criticisms I'd level at it. I guess you could say it's not very original in its worldbuilding or story, but I'm not big into cyberpunk anyway. Massively worth your time, especially if you've been hankering for a proper old school 2D anime for adults.
Holy shit.
This is a Netflix anime set in the world of Cyberpunk 2077, and is about a delinquent youth named David as he is forced by circumistances into a life of crime in Night City. It's kind of hard to discuss without spoilers, so I'll just say it's excellent, probably a 9/10. The themes of corporate dystopia, losing one's humanity through cybernetic implants, and making something of yourself against the odds are all classic cyberpunk, and executed very well. The animation by Studio Trigger is amazing, the characters are all engaging, the writing is sharp, the soundtrack is excellent, and the action kicks major ass. It's also incredibly violent, sometimes bordering on the level of those infamous 90s OVAs like Genocyber or Angel Cop, but it never feels lurid or gratuitous in the way those did. I just finished it less than 10 minutes ago, so I don't know if there's any major criticisms I'd level at it. I guess you could say it's not very original in its worldbuilding or story, but I'm not big into cyberpunk anyway. Massively worth your time, especially if you've been hankering for a proper old school 2D anime for adults.
If not for the bright color palette, energetic animation and pumping soundtrack, this would be one of the most depressing things I've ever seen. I'd be willing to say it's almost Requiem for a Dream level. I mean, the series starts with the protagonist losing his sweet mother not to the car accident they get in, but to the shitty healthcare system they can't afford. After the halfway point it's basically just a descent into hell as David's humanity and sanity start slipping, and everything around him and his posse starts crumbling. The ending isn't even bittersweet, it's just bitter: Everyone except Lucy and Falco die horribly, nothing changes in the grand scheme of things, the only villain to get their comeuppance is a small time gangster, there's not even a final showdown between Adam Smasher and David, he just gets his ass absolutely handed to him. There's no relief, no redemption, no light at the end of the tunnel. But what makes it so gut-wrenching is that I was still rooting for David at the end, despite him bringing it mostly on himself by being an arrogant, snot-nosed dipshit who thinks he's special. I was waiting for him to just go total psycho at the end, but then he spends his last moments in full clarity. And worst of all you could see it all coming from episodes away. It's a very cruel, very harsh, proper downer ending.
David's augmentation being an analogue for drug addiction isn't an original angle (I assume) and sometimes it's quite on the nose, but god damn is it executed well. It perfectly conveys the sense of this kid getting everything too fast and having too much money for his own good. He can't see 2 days into the future, he's riding that high too hard. I especially enjoyed how at the end he basically becomes one of those gun-riddled abominations he's been hallucinating during his episodes, signifying his irreversible downfall. When Maine died in episode 6 I was expecting the final episodes to be about David and Lucy going on the run, but instead it shows how these things run in cycles: what made David and Maine so strong is also what destroyed them, but the high is too strong to resist or try to learn from the mistakes of others. David keeps telling himself he's special, how he can go further than Maine, but he never stops to think how augmentation is a one-way street. Instead he just keeps going harder and harder despite everyone around him plainly seeing he's a total mess.
So yeah, awesome show, but god damn is it hard to watch a lot of the time.
David's augmentation being an analogue for drug addiction isn't an original angle (I assume) and sometimes it's quite on the nose, but god damn is it executed well. It perfectly conveys the sense of this kid getting everything too fast and having too much money for his own good. He can't see 2 days into the future, he's riding that high too hard. I especially enjoyed how at the end he basically becomes one of those gun-riddled abominations he's been hallucinating during his episodes, signifying his irreversible downfall. When Maine died in episode 6 I was expecting the final episodes to be about David and Lucy going on the run, but instead it shows how these things run in cycles: what made David and Maine so strong is also what destroyed them, but the high is too strong to resist or try to learn from the mistakes of others. David keeps telling himself he's special, how he can go further than Maine, but he never stops to think how augmentation is a one-way street. Instead he just keeps going harder and harder despite everyone around him plainly seeing he's a total mess.
So yeah, awesome show, but god damn is it hard to watch a lot of the time.
Is that what that Simpsons episode is based on where Bart wins an elephant on a radio show?
That's cuz it's cyberpunk, and by that I don't mean it just has the trappings of cyberpunk like the aesthetic and surface level theming. Proper cyberpunk don't do happy endings. It's nihilism all day, every day.
You can win battles in Cyberpunk, but the war was lost long, long ago.
Really, this is why I couldn’t get into Dark. Maybe if it was in the original language with subs but wife wanted to watch it dubbed. I only watched here and there while I was on my phone or something and well, that’s about as effective as it sounds.
I was also reminded of that, but apparently not:
The premise of the episode mirrors the real-life story of Jack Snyder who in 1966 won a contest offering "$3,000 or a baby elephant".
My closest reference to cyberpunk in comparison to Edgerunners was Blade Runner 2049. You can't call that a happy ending either, but at least at the end of that movie I got a sense that someone in the movie got something out of what happened. That something was achieved. Edgerunners just left me feeling hollow, like a part of my soul had been ripped out. I saw a Youtube comment sum it up very well: David achieved every dream he took up for other people. He reached the top of Arasaka tower like his mother wished, he went further and became a legend like Maine wished, and he (indirectly) took Lucy to the moon like she'd told him she wanted. But if you asked any of those people if they were happy that David achieved those things, not one of them would say yes.
It's a terribly poignant lesson about survivor's guilt, living for yourself, and letting people go without forgetting them.
Wednesday on Netflix.
I don't know anything about the Addams family, but I was incredibly surprised at how much fun I had with this show. I think the weird contrast of shitty teenage high school shenanigans and fairly graphic horror and violence keeps things lively and fresh.
The summary on Rotten Tomatoes is quite fitting. "Wednesday isn't exactly full of woe for viewers, but without Jenna Ortega in the lead, this Addams Family-adjacent series might as well be another CW drama." Jenna Ortega might be the best casting I've seen all year. She is absolutely perfect for the role. Also, how the fuck is she not related to Aubrey Plaza? But yeah, without her, generic CW schlock would describe this show quite well. The writing is all over the place and the episodes that Burton didn't direct and noticeable and distractingly not as stylish.
I don't know anything about the Addams family, but I was incredibly surprised at how much fun I had with this show. I think the weird contrast of shitty teenage high school shenanigans and fairly graphic horror and violence keeps things lively and fresh.
The summary on Rotten Tomatoes is quite fitting. "Wednesday isn't exactly full of woe for viewers, but without Jenna Ortega in the lead, this Addams Family-adjacent series might as well be another CW drama." Jenna Ortega might be the best casting I've seen all year. She is absolutely perfect for the role. Also, how the fuck is she not related to Aubrey Plaza? But yeah, without her, generic CW schlock would describe this show quite well. The writing is all over the place and the episodes that Burton didn't direct and noticeable and distractingly not as stylish.
Battlestar Galactica - the reboot
Rating: 7/ 10 - but seriously that's only because it too so long to reach what I'd say is the best of the shows,
(available free in the UK on BBC Iplayer)
Premise: (Seriously does anyone even needs this) The 12 colonies of man created Cylons, they rebelled and a massive war was fought there has been a 40 year armistice since and an uneasy peace with humanity trying to have diplomatic relations with the cylons and them never showing up to the table to talk. Suddenly the cylons show up and they're no longer all metal machines but some look human and some even believe they are human still. The Cylons attack the 12 colonies of man in a devastating nuclear first strike getting past all the planetary defence systems thanks to having infiltrated the colonies and gained the codes after a cylon agent seduced the systems creator Gaius Baltar. The show follows the remnants of the 12 colonies who escaped on civilian ships and were helped to organise into a fleet with the space fighter transport and war ship the Battlestar Galactica that escaped destruction due to not being in the main colonial fleet dockyards at the time of the attack and was meant to be getting refitted / decommissioned at the time. The eventual plan, try to find the legendary lost 13th colony of man, a place called Earth.
Thoughts in a Tagline: It's not about what's in the Mystery box it's about the friends we made and saw horribly killed off along the way.
Thoughts: I once heard this show described as "The first post 9/11 sci-fi" and it's shockingly accurate because there's so much of the kind of "War on Terror" themes being raised here, the idea of paranoia as anyone could be a cylon in the show and attack people and turn when activated. The first two seasons are very military stuff to the extent that they'd make the deliberate parody military patriotism of Starship Troopers tell the show to lay it off a bit, including a full length episode about interrogation and torture of an enemy with the fairly uncomfortable message "Yeh no-one wants to admit that torture is sometimes necessary". The 2nd season does learn into the idea of military over reach a bit. Also holy crap was this a show I struggled to watch through because the action is good but it's so grim dark in places and so overbearingly militaristic.
Then season 4 happens and you'll reach a point and just wow, 3 and a half seasons and suddenly it's like some-one pulls the camera back and the series of disconnected lines and squiggles they've been drawing has formed a beautiful intricate picture by design. Suddenly it all feels planned, it all feels designed and it all had purpose even if the show doesn't really feel like actually explaining some of the more esoteric elements such as magic music and religious visions.
Also this is a show where one of the characters (Gaius Baltar) just really became a character I hated so much for most of the show's run because he's a special kind of skevy character with so few morals and by the end of it I wouldn't say I liked him but I'd say I had a new found respect for what he'd finally become when he finally decided to care about something more than his own survival and attempts to gain influence to access more easy pleasures.
Honestly other than some of the weirder stuff in season 4 I'd say after a certain point it really is a 10/10 show but it's the getting there that in my view drags the whole show down.
I will say I really did enjoy what the show did and there's a lot of pretty brave decisions in the show from explorations of suicide and the impact it can leave to the ways people handle trauma. This really isn't a happy show that with a happy message at the end where everything works out. It's a show about paranoia and the nature of war that can create monsters out of almost anyone and it's about being able to accept your own legacy and try to do better going forward.
Rating: 7/ 10 - but seriously that's only because it too so long to reach what I'd say is the best of the shows,
(available free in the UK on BBC Iplayer)
Premise: (Seriously does anyone even needs this) The 12 colonies of man created Cylons, they rebelled and a massive war was fought there has been a 40 year armistice since and an uneasy peace with humanity trying to have diplomatic relations with the cylons and them never showing up to the table to talk. Suddenly the cylons show up and they're no longer all metal machines but some look human and some even believe they are human still. The Cylons attack the 12 colonies of man in a devastating nuclear first strike getting past all the planetary defence systems thanks to having infiltrated the colonies and gained the codes after a cylon agent seduced the systems creator Gaius Baltar. The show follows the remnants of the 12 colonies who escaped on civilian ships and were helped to organise into a fleet with the space fighter transport and war ship the Battlestar Galactica that escaped destruction due to not being in the main colonial fleet dockyards at the time of the attack and was meant to be getting refitted / decommissioned at the time. The eventual plan, try to find the legendary lost 13th colony of man, a place called Earth.
Thoughts in a Tagline: It's not about what's in the Mystery box it's about the friends we made and saw horribly killed off along the way.
Thoughts: I once heard this show described as "The first post 9/11 sci-fi" and it's shockingly accurate because there's so much of the kind of "War on Terror" themes being raised here, the idea of paranoia as anyone could be a cylon in the show and attack people and turn when activated. The first two seasons are very military stuff to the extent that they'd make the deliberate parody military patriotism of Starship Troopers tell the show to lay it off a bit, including a full length episode about interrogation and torture of an enemy with the fairly uncomfortable message "Yeh no-one wants to admit that torture is sometimes necessary". The 2nd season does learn into the idea of military over reach a bit. Also holy crap was this a show I struggled to watch through because the action is good but it's so grim dark in places and so overbearingly militaristic.
Then season 4 happens and you'll reach a point and just wow, 3 and a half seasons and suddenly it's like some-one pulls the camera back and the series of disconnected lines and squiggles they've been drawing has formed a beautiful intricate picture by design. Suddenly it all feels planned, it all feels designed and it all had purpose even if the show doesn't really feel like actually explaining some of the more esoteric elements such as magic music and religious visions.
Also this is a show where one of the characters (Gaius Baltar) just really became a character I hated so much for most of the show's run because he's a special kind of skevy character with so few morals and by the end of it I wouldn't say I liked him but I'd say I had a new found respect for what he'd finally become when he finally decided to care about something more than his own survival and attempts to gain influence to access more easy pleasures.
Honestly other than some of the weirder stuff in season 4 I'd say after a certain point it really is a 10/10 show but it's the getting there that in my view drags the whole show down.
I will say I really did enjoy what the show did and there's a lot of pretty brave decisions in the show from explorations of suicide and the impact it can leave to the ways people handle trauma. This really isn't a happy show that with a happy message at the end where everything works out. It's a show about paranoia and the nature of war that can create monsters out of almost anyone and it's about being able to accept your own legacy and try to do better going forward.
Honestly I'm watching it and should like it but something just isn't clicking yet for me, I've been struggling to finish episode 3 for a while. I don't know if my brain is just recognising the hand of the writers of West World and remembering how kind of crap season 2 went for that show and going "Don't get invested this time" of if there actually is something not clicking but I'm in the same box as you here. Everything feels like it should be making a great compelling show but it feels like a number of perfectly created pieces that on their own are perfect but put together they don't seem to all fit together right. They feels too perfect almost if that makes sense.
I take back what I said about Edgerunners.
God, what an awesomely powerful show.
It's not that it would be one of the most depressing things I've ever seen if not for the animation and music: it just plain is. There are moments in the last episode that are now seared into my brain. I don't think I've had my soul broken in this way since probably the first time I saw End of Evangelion. But whereas that pretentious piffle eventually became unintentionally hilarious to me and entertaining in how nonsensical it is, Edgerunners retains a very raw, very human core that's just heartbreaking. And a big part of why it's so effective is its incredibly fast, borderline ADHD pacing and the fact that it almost never lingers on stuff too much. It doesn't wallow in its darkness or raise it up to be a big focus, which makes you not expect just how much of a gut-punch that ending is. A lot of the series is just a fairly straightforward sci-fi action show, but it uses the concepts it introduces perfectly that you see where it's all leading to, sowing the seeds for the heartbreak from the very first episode, and fully reaping them in the last.
I keep comparing it to the original Ghost in the Shell film, since that movie is basically entirely cerebral, detached and emotionally dead. It's almost all musings on concepts and ideas that make you stroke your chin and go "hmm, yes, interesting". Edgerunners is the opposite: it's very visceral, very human and very emotionally charged. Though the characters in this series are by certain definitions even less human than the ones in GhostShell, they act more human than Mokoto Kusanagi ever could.
Edit: Another point of comparison could be Devilman Crybaby, because that show's ending also harrowed me to my core. But that show becomes very different over the course of its run, and focuses on the characters less and less in favor of less grounded, mean-spirited nihilism in order to underline its point. Edgerunners retains an unmistakably consistent tone, style and focus for its duration. If you showed someone clips from the first and last episodes of it, they wouldn't go "wait, this is the same show?"
I keep comparing it to the original Ghost in the Shell film, since that movie is basically entirely cerebral, detached and emotionally dead. It's almost all musings on concepts and ideas that make you stroke your chin and go "hmm, yes, interesting". Edgerunners is the opposite: it's very visceral, very human and very emotionally charged. Though the characters in this series are by certain definitions even less human than the ones in GhostShell, they act more human than Mokoto Kusanagi ever could.
Edit: Another point of comparison could be Devilman Crybaby, because that show's ending also harrowed me to my core. But that show becomes very different over the course of its run, and focuses on the characters less and less in favor of less grounded, mean-spirited nihilism in order to underline its point. Edgerunners retains an unmistakably consistent tone, style and focus for its duration. If you showed someone clips from the first and last episodes of it, they wouldn't go "wait, this is the same show?"
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It amazes me how we hold such ying yang opinions on stuff XD
Anyway.
The Sandbaggers. Dry as a desert spy drama series about SIS. Holds a small amount of fame in the comic world for being the inspiration for Greg Rucka's original comic "Queen and Country" and regarded among genre aficionados as one of the more realistic depictions of how SIS actually works day to day and in operations. The first episode has main character, Director of Operations Neil Burnside, say to a colleague from Norway "If you want James Bond go to your local library" as a way of telling the audience there will be no thrilling heroics, beautiful locations or exotic women here. What makes the series compelling for me is just what a proper, 10 caret, undiluted BASTARD Neil Burnside is. Roy Marsden is the actor and he never seemed to strike it 'big' as some British TV stars do but fucking hell I'll always remember Neil Burnside.
Trevor Noah's special on Netflix: I Wish You Would
Love this man's work, but this one was a bit of a let down. I was having fun, but there wasn't a single moment where I was losing my mind, laughing till my stomach hurt. All his previous specials had one or more of those moments.
He reused a bunch of jokes too. Which I guess shows that he really does need to leave the Daily Show, get back to travelling, and come up with better material.
Love this man's work, but this one was a bit of a let down. I was having fun, but there wasn't a single moment where I was losing my mind, laughing till my stomach hurt. All his previous specials had one or more of those moments.
He reused a bunch of jokes too. Which I guess shows that he really does need to leave the Daily Show, get back to travelling, and come up with better material.
The latest season of Hunter x Hunter (I actually binged the whole series in the past 10-12 days...)
6/10 for the least (?) season, 9/10 for the whole series.
Highly recommended overall!
6/10 for the least (?) season, 9/10 for the whole series.
Highly recommended overall!
Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Special. Its kitschy, corny, cheesy and very Christmasy. I can't really stand the Guardians. They all have that Office/Parks&Rec style of humor where they're all just horrible people and that's somehow funny. If you sincerly watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas every single year at Christmas time, you'll enjoy it. If not, skip it.
The two big takeaways for the skippers: Mantis is now Quill's half-sister, she'll probably get stuck in the drier now. Also all the Guardians are flying so many death flags you'd think they're a runway tarmac. Seriously every single Guardian ends this special going "Boy howdy do I love being alive! Can't wait to retire in two weeks and go off to save the puppies from cancer college!" I think its fair to say the Guardians on the chopping block in the third movie are Drax, Rocket, Nebula, probably Quill and Mantis, and maybe Groot again. Cosmo is the only safe one.
The two big takeaways for the skippers: Mantis is now Quill's half-sister, she'll probably get stuck in the drier now. Also all the Guardians are flying so many death flags you'd think they're a runway tarmac. Seriously every single Guardian ends this special going "Boy howdy do I love being alive! Can't wait to retire in two weeks and go off to save the puppies from cancer college!" I think its fair to say the Guardians on the chopping block in the third movie are Drax, Rocket, Nebula, probably Quill and Mantis, and maybe Groot again. Cosmo is the only safe one.