Watched the first three episodes of Scott Pilgrim on Netflix, and so far it's really darn good. Talking about why it's good, besides the animation, would go into spoilers, suffice to say that I didn't see this coming.
Discuss and Rate the Last Thing You Watched (non-movies)
- Thread starter Hawki
- Start date
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters
...meeeh.
It's a meme that all the parts of Godzilla movies where the scientists and politicians yammer at each other and wring their hands about what to do are the most boring parts of the films. It's only slightly less true here.
This show serves as a prequel to both Godzilla 2014 and Godzilla King Of the Monsters, time jumping between the 1950s and 2014 with a motley crew of scientists trying to find MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms) in the 1950s and the Japanese children of a researching who disappeared after the Godzilla attack trying to find out what happened to him. The plot seems to revolve around Monarch being aware of the threat this whole time and hiding it.
Some of the show works and some of it doesn't. Between the first two episodes the vast majority of it is spent with the people and only a few minutes of Monster time. It's kinda awkward because they gotta find reasons to have the monsters, but still drag it out. So a flash back here and there of one of the children surviving the attack on San Francisco, jungle monsters, etc.
Admittedly I'm just not invested at this point. I don't like any of the characters and the monster action is minimal. The end of episode 2 gives us our first look at a full on Kaiju and it's a middling step between film quality and scifi channel. It's pure CGI which is disappointing. Thats kinda the charm of old school Godzilla and with the CGI not quite great it leaves you with a bad taste like those trashy straight to streaming shark vs snake movie. Not that rough but not "awesome".
There's a part where a CGI monster arm 30ft in diameter smashes through a steel wall a ft away from a guy and he does that og star trek "oh no were shaking" shit when in real life the shockwave of something like that hitting right next to you would literally throw you into the air, but they ,...so far, are going cheap on the practical's. I hope it improves.
I'll give it another episode, but immediately I'm disappointed largely in part with it being pre- King Of the Monsters. We already know what happens. Similarly to the Asoka series were left in this weird state of getting an in between story.
I won't say it's "bad", but your mileage may vary on this one 5/10 for me so far.
...meeeh.
It's a meme that all the parts of Godzilla movies where the scientists and politicians yammer at each other and wring their hands about what to do are the most boring parts of the films. It's only slightly less true here.
This show serves as a prequel to both Godzilla 2014 and Godzilla King Of the Monsters, time jumping between the 1950s and 2014 with a motley crew of scientists trying to find MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms) in the 1950s and the Japanese children of a researching who disappeared after the Godzilla attack trying to find out what happened to him. The plot seems to revolve around Monarch being aware of the threat this whole time and hiding it.
Some of the show works and some of it doesn't. Between the first two episodes the vast majority of it is spent with the people and only a few minutes of Monster time. It's kinda awkward because they gotta find reasons to have the monsters, but still drag it out. So a flash back here and there of one of the children surviving the attack on San Francisco, jungle monsters, etc.
Admittedly I'm just not invested at this point. I don't like any of the characters and the monster action is minimal. The end of episode 2 gives us our first look at a full on Kaiju and it's a middling step between film quality and scifi channel. It's pure CGI which is disappointing. Thats kinda the charm of old school Godzilla and with the CGI not quite great it leaves you with a bad taste like those trashy straight to streaming shark vs snake movie. Not that rough but not "awesome".
There's a part where a CGI monster arm 30ft in diameter smashes through a steel wall a ft away from a guy and he does that og star trek "oh no were shaking" shit when in real life the shockwave of something like that hitting right next to you would literally throw you into the air, but they ,...so far, are going cheap on the practical's. I hope it improves.
I'll give it another episode, but immediately I'm disappointed largely in part with it being pre- King Of the Monsters. We already know what happens. Similarly to the Asoka series were left in this weird state of getting an in between story.
I won't say it's "bad", but your mileage may vary on this one 5/10 for me so far.
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We watched the first two episodes of the recent season 2 of Loki and were utterly bored out of our minds. I was determined to finish the season since it's short and the last one but with the long Thanksgiving weekend away from out living room, I don't see that happening. There was just a lot of explaining of plot stuff that I didn't care about any more because of the long break from the previous season and our general no longer giving of a shit of Marvel. Oh well.
The recent season The Morning Show was quite... something. It's one of those shows that "objectively" is actually rather bad, but I enjoy it. It's pure stupid soap opera at this point and Jon Hamm's "what if Elon Musk but sexy" character was absolutely absurd. I would still strongly recommend the first season of that show to anyone but after that... *blows raspberry*
New season of For All Mankind is getting mixed-to-negative reviews as it fulfill the pattern of a Ronald D. Moore show starting strong than petering out (Battlestar Galactica and Outlander say hello). As with Morning Show, it might have exhausted the larger themes and plot past the point of interest which then pushes the interpersonal drama from something interesting into soap opera cheese. With Mankind, I think now that they're on Mars I dunno how much further they can go to make it interesting in terms of speculative "hard" sci-fi, which made the show so interesting. But I'll still watch the season despite my reservations.
The Curse is the new psycho-mindf*** cringe masterpiece from Nathan Fielder and lemme tell you... if you like his whole schtick, this show is for you and if not, run away. Now me- yeah, I'm a fan. A huge fan. Nathan For You was great and I still think about that insane episode of The Rehearsal where he was like sort of married but not all the time. The Curse is fully fiction and scripted though and he got Emma Stone who, I gotta say, is maybe my favorite actress alive. She also has been doing hilarious stunt promotion with Fielder (i.e., their deliberately uncomfortable Jimmy Kimmel appearance) and call me a sucker but this whole thing is exactly my jam.
The premise is a gentrifying HGTV couple trying to earnestly ingratiate themselves with the economically declining native populations while also glorifying themselves with fame and fortune all through the lens of their f'd up marriage. My favorite details are things like when a John Carpenter like soundtrack swells while they are discussing intimate issues. Truly horrifying. My wife suffered through the first episode and will not watch any more. It gets my very highest recommendation as the best TV show of 2023.
The recent season The Morning Show was quite... something. It's one of those shows that "objectively" is actually rather bad, but I enjoy it. It's pure stupid soap opera at this point and Jon Hamm's "what if Elon Musk but sexy" character was absolutely absurd. I would still strongly recommend the first season of that show to anyone but after that... *blows raspberry*
New season of For All Mankind is getting mixed-to-negative reviews as it fulfill the pattern of a Ronald D. Moore show starting strong than petering out (Battlestar Galactica and Outlander say hello). As with Morning Show, it might have exhausted the larger themes and plot past the point of interest which then pushes the interpersonal drama from something interesting into soap opera cheese. With Mankind, I think now that they're on Mars I dunno how much further they can go to make it interesting in terms of speculative "hard" sci-fi, which made the show so interesting. But I'll still watch the season despite my reservations.
The Curse is the new psycho-mindf*** cringe masterpiece from Nathan Fielder and lemme tell you... if you like his whole schtick, this show is for you and if not, run away. Now me- yeah, I'm a fan. A huge fan. Nathan For You was great and I still think about that insane episode of The Rehearsal where he was like sort of married but not all the time. The Curse is fully fiction and scripted though and he got Emma Stone who, I gotta say, is maybe my favorite actress alive. She also has been doing hilarious stunt promotion with Fielder (i.e., their deliberately uncomfortable Jimmy Kimmel appearance) and call me a sucker but this whole thing is exactly my jam.
The premise is a gentrifying HGTV couple trying to earnestly ingratiate themselves with the economically declining native populations while also glorifying themselves with fame and fortune all through the lens of their f'd up marriage. My favorite details are things like when a John Carpenter like soundtrack swells while they are discussing intimate issues. Truly horrifying. My wife suffered through the first episode and will not watch any more. It gets my very highest recommendation as the best TV show of 2023.
I'm on the 3rd episode now. Enjoying it so far. Honestly I loved the book, the movie is one of my favourites and honestly (without spoilers) I don't mind that they have changed things. The books and movie still exist. This version is great in it's own way. Honestly better in a lot of ways.
I was never a big fan of the movie. I love it for its style and blend of geek indy realism with over-the-top cartooniness, but god did I dislike nearly all of these characters. And it's funny how simply making these characters literal cartoons makes them so much more likeable right off the bat. I felt so much more invested in these cartoons struggling with realistic issues of love than I did for the realistic characters in the movie trying to be cartoony.
I will say I think Episode 3 is probably the peak of the show. It's kinda the most touching one overall. And even as a cartoon Aubrey Plaza's character is still the hottest, because ofcourse she is.
After finishing it I can honestly say I prefer this one in a lot of ways. It's a much more grown up look at relationships than the manic pixie dream girl stuff of the original. I enjoyed the books and movie but they're definitely a product of the time.
There's a lot more character interaction in this show, as opposed to the movie where the interactions were relegated to snark or fights. Can't speak for the comic book. But just that one flashback where you see Roxie sitting there defeated and trying to meet Ramona's eye as she's leaving was so much more genuine than anything in the movie.
Though I do feel the show kinda peters out a bit near the end.
Blue Eye Samaria - 7/10
Pretty solid overall samurai animated adult show. Some really great episodes in the season like the onryo episode for example. The animation is just great looking for the most part, especially stuff like the rain. I feel like some of the rather subtle animations just seem off and in the uncanny valley area. I do like how the show demonstrates the sexism and racism in history as a lot of fiction nowadays like to act like medieval times were similar to today's acceptance. I did not really care for how the main character, Mizu, is a chick and is playing off like a guy the whole time. That is fine for a more comic-y/wacky tone but in such a serious show, she is not going to be able to easily pass as a dude because it's obvious that she's not a dude. At best, people that spend any amount of time with her would be asking themselves "is that a chick?" I'm also not the biggest fan of how Mizu's ark progressed through season as they do a really great job of showing her progressively become evil and it comes to a head in the onryo episode but then she keeps sorta redeeming herself just so the show can get all the characters together again. It would have been really great for her to come to the relevation in the last episode when she sees the city on fire.
Pretty solid overall samurai animated adult show. Some really great episodes in the season like the onryo episode for example. The animation is just great looking for the most part, especially stuff like the rain. I feel like some of the rather subtle animations just seem off and in the uncanny valley area. I do like how the show demonstrates the sexism and racism in history as a lot of fiction nowadays like to act like medieval times were similar to today's acceptance. I did not really care for how the main character, Mizu, is a chick and is playing off like a guy the whole time. That is fine for a more comic-y/wacky tone but in such a serious show, she is not going to be able to easily pass as a dude because it's obvious that she's not a dude. At best, people that spend any amount of time with her would be asking themselves "is that a chick?" I'm also not the biggest fan of how Mizu's ark progressed through season as they do a really great job of showing her progressively become evil and it comes to a head in the onryo episode but then she keeps sorta redeeming herself just so the show can get all the characters together again. It would have been really great for her to come to the relevation in the last episode when she sees the city on fire.
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I started watching this, too; mentioned it in the anime/cartoon thread. I'm almost done, but so far, I'd say your 7/10 is about right. Insofar as Mizu playing it as a male the whole time, I thought it was strange at the end of episode one, when Ringo sees her bathing (and we get the full-frontal, bush and all) that it was played as a reveal to the audience. Like, were we NOT supposed to have known already? I get that we're supposed to believe the people in that world have been fooled and might be shocked to learn she's female, but pretty much from the jump, I (we, the audience) had no reason to believe otherwise. She has a woman voice actor who doesn't ever try to put on a masculine voice, never mind the art style typically has men with square jaw lines and women with pointed ones, and Mizu's has got to be the pointiest of them all!
For All Mankind Apple TV S1 E1 and 2
B+
I'm liking an alt reality in which the USSR gets to the moon before the US. Mixes some real world concerns with the socio political environment of the times. Daughter asked me to watch with her and did not realize: we got 4 seasons to catch up upon!
Very different experience as they recreate images, audio and video of the time to make it all the more realistic. Listening to "tapes" of Nixon worrying about his legacy. Hearing them speak of how the F4 Phantom was the ultimate fighter (I worked on the E-s a dozen years later and we thought of them as proving with enough thrust, you can make a brick fly.)
So far? Really worth watching.
B+
I'm liking an alt reality in which the USSR gets to the moon before the US. Mixes some real world concerns with the socio political environment of the times. Daughter asked me to watch with her and did not realize: we got 4 seasons to catch up upon!
Very different experience as they recreate images, audio and video of the time to make it all the more realistic. Listening to "tapes" of Nixon worrying about his legacy. Hearing them speak of how the F4 Phantom was the ultimate fighter (I worked on the E-s a dozen years later and we thought of them as proving with enough thrust, you can make a brick fly.)
So far? Really worth watching.