Discuss and Rate the Last Thing You Watched (non-movies)

[Old_Hunter_77]

Lucky me this sucker is on Disney+ of all places. So I get to watch it, yay! I read the book and saw the Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune mini series years ago and I had a good time with them. So this one getting some serious money and style thrown at it is all my bread and jam.

Ah, the Hulu thing.
I saw some review or something about the show where the title was like "FX's Shogun..." and the subtitle "this new Hulu series..."
Even media can't keep up with all the mergers but it's true- Shogun is an FX Disney Hulu. So it goes...

 

[BrawlMan]

Big respect for Terry Crews. I am glad he's been able to do so much and still continue.
​

 

[gorfias]

Shogun episodes 1 & 2

Yo... this show is for real.
Ok so I was a bit worried about it being too Games of Throne-y from the trailers and about how they were gonna deal with the potential orientalism of the story and the "it was a different time" vibe of the original storyteller/storytelling.
Well on the former, there's nothing to worry about, the trailers were sensationalizing it. Yes there's gruesomeness and one moment of gratuitous nips but it's nothing beyond the typical fare so we're all good there.
On the latter- well they just lean into it and come out ahead. Like a ship sailing into a massive wave to minimize the damage. They make our main white dude Blackthorn a lot gruffer and more forceful than the version in the 80's miniseries. This works by also putting the politics of the story more at the forefront, where the book and miniseries feel to me like they lead with the cultural tourism.

I think it benefits from the fact that, unlike 1966 (the book) and to a lesser extent 1980 (the first miniseries), Japan- even the version with samurai- isn't exotic anymore. We don't need anyone to explain what feudalism and a warrior's code and honor suicides are anymore, we can just lean into the story. Yes we do need explaining on the interests of all the political entities near and far and in the second episode the show actually takes a major but clever shortcut to make that exposition better integrated into the character drama.

My only complaint is that the show so feels like it's moving along so fast there isn't time to breath. The book is 1200 pages and, yeah, it's a lot, but it sure does set the scene. The old miniseries has contemplative moments that I hope the new show finds ways to do and make its own. For example they completely changed the way and context of Blackthorn's important final line to Toranaga and really removed its power IMO.

The emotional core of the story for me is Mariko (the lead woman) and they are leading with her internal turmoil more than her pleasant exterior, which I like. It has the potential to take her relationship to Blackthorn in interesting ways. She also has my single favorite mini-monologue in the books and I really hope they don't mess that moment up here somehow.

Anyway- so far, highly recommend.

I'm having a blast watching this with my daughter. I took a class on Japan and its history and this period and am having some fun explaining or commenting on things. The Blackthorne character strikes me as so much more realistic than having him played by squeaky clean Richard Chamberlain for gosh sakes!! I may have to re-watch that 1980 show to have a laugh compared to this gripping, grueling, realistic feeling show. IGN gives it a 10/10.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

I'm having a blast watching this with my daughter. I took a class on Japan and its history and this period and am having some fun explaining or commenting on things. The Blackthorne character strikes me as so much more realistic than having him played by squeaky clean Richard Chamberlain for gosh sakes!! I may have to re-watch that 1980 show to have a laugh compared to this gripping, grueling, realistic feeling show. IGN gives it a 10/10.

Well I do hope if you re-watch the older series you don't just go into it for mockery. There are aspects of it that are superior to the modern version.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

I'm having a blast watching this with my daughter. I took a class on Japan and its history and this period and am having some fun explaining or commenting on things. The Blackthorne character strikes me as so much more realistic than having him played by squeaky clean Richard Chamberlain for gosh sakes!! I may have to re-watch that 1980 show to have a laugh compared to this gripping, grueling, realistic feeling show. IGN gives it a 10/10.

Glad you like it as it is good, but IGN isn’t really the be-all of reviews lol. I also get that older/original shows and movies can really seem cheesy next to updates (I personally use Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as an example here even though the wife has basically the exact opposite opinion), but you gotta understand those shows didn’t have generations of culture changes, tech changes and whatnot to iterate upon. They pretty much had nothing to go off of, so even if nothing else they were pioneering whatever followed.

 

[Gordon_4]

Well I do hope if you re-watch the older series you don't just go into it for mockery. There are aspects of it that are superior to the modern version.

Well it is hard to be better than Toshiro Mifune.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Well it is hard to be better than Toshiro Mifune.

Sure, though the current guy ain't no slouch neither.
No I was thinking about specific dialogue and character moments in which they changed the context for the worse compared to the source novel, and the first miniseries was more true to. The last two episodes of the new show I watched (I haven't seen the one that just dropped today yet) ended on sour notes for me.

The new show gets the "big" stuff much better- the action, the political drama, the spectacle, the production. But it's screwing up some of the character beats IMO.

 

[Piscian]

I started watching Resident Alien on Netflix (Thank you lab test account) last night and it's surprisingly solid.

I remember hearing the announcement for this show like a million years ago and I thought it was gonna be some silly sitcom comedy and ignored it. I'm only a few episodes in, but I found it both interesting and hilarious. It's more straddling a line between black comedy and drama. The Alien was sent to Earth to wipe us out with a bomb. Instead he crashes here and has to pretend to be human until he can finish his Bomb.

Alan Tudyk plays the alien sort of doing a take on Dexter combined with Mork & Mindy. He immediately kills somebody pretty violently in the first episode and that becomes a subplot of him trying to hide the body, ending up forced to become the towns resident Doctor to hide his identity. He gets into some hilarious hijinx like trying to murder a kid who suspects who he really is. The comedy obvious comes from how awkward he is, but it's not played up to a BIg Bang Theory sitcom soundtrack. Instead is all played straight which is wonderful. Everyone is like "WTF is wrong with you?!" or creeped out by him and only you the audience is laughing. I applaud the respect for the audiences intelligence here.

The only drawback of the show is that it also wants you to care about the townsfolk. They don't beat you over the head with it in the first season according to reddit, but apparently the towns people become more of a character in the second season. I'll watch it til I get bored and report back. First 5 episodes so far have been pretty great.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

First couple episodes of The Gentleman.

It’s pretty solid so far with characters that are fun to watch in some cases more-so than whatever plot development they’re involved with. Comic relief is organically sprinkled in at certain points where the tone is otherwise a more serious note that leaves you feeling a bit off balance, not knowing what to expect. Giancarlo Esposito plays a character that feels like he was tailor made for, given one of his most notable past portrayals. Curious to see what direction they go with it.

 

[Piscian]

I binged The Gentleman on Netflix yesterday.

I gotta say I was patently impressed. My lasting impression was "Fuck this should be the next GTA game, not that Florida trash".

Its a strange watch. This not a Guy Ritchie film dragged out over 8 hours. The pieces are all there, crime, posh london lords, pikies, irish catholic gangsters. A clear A to B plot where everything goes sideways with factions scrambling for control.

Whats different here is the absence of rapid fire comedy and over the top hijinx. The hijinx and comedy is there but the presentation is thoughtful and subdued. This shares more in common with contemporary UK gangster movies like "The General" (Apologies, I have like movies on the tip of my tongue but google doesn't seem to comprehend that other UK movies about crime exist, if you know you know). Theres a chuckle here and there, but its not an adhd headache of UK tropes.

The premise here is that the smart royal kid, who avoided his lordship and joined the military has inherited his family's estate only to find out they are broke and being kept afloat by a relationship with gangsters. His goal is to figure out to get out of this dependency without getting his family killed.

Each episode, thankfully, is told largely as a contained storyline of him taking one step forward and two steps back. This makes the watch more compelling as I never felt the pull to get a recap to try and keep up. The table is setup, eaten, and cleared each episode.

I don't often just sit and watch a show for 8 hours. My ADHD and OCD usually demands I go wash dishes or play videogames every couple episodes.

Im surprised to say there was none of that and though I was near constantly compelled to check my phone, with The Gentlemen, I kept pausing and rewinding, putting down my phone because I didn't want to miss anything.

Im struggling to think of reasons to take points away. If anything occasionally in homage to Guy Ritchie, theyd have a "bad ass slow walk" scene to some kinda gangsta music every episode or two. These are blessedly uncommon and short.

Also Kaya Scodelario is distractingly pretty and her presence soaks up all the oxygen in every scene DANG IT!

9/10

My scoring however requires this show end with this season. Great experiment, great finish. Don't ruin it. Tell a new story next time.

 

[Casual Shinji]

So that new X-Men show is actually looking pretty damn good.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

The Gentleman- Netflix

A sort-of spin/off or remake of Guy Ritchie's movie that was like a return to his roots- slick and silly Brits doing crimes and looking extremely cool and then stupid and back.
The show uses the similar set-up as the movie of a marijuana empire using aristocratic land. The big difference in the Netflix show is that the main character is actually one of these aristocrats. He and the woman running the operation for her imprisoned father take us on a tour through this wacky underworld with much blood and quips.

It's a vibe show if you want some cool nihilism. You get to see dudes looking self-consciously cool while sipping whiskey and making grand pronouncements and then hyperstylized shots of text scribbling on the screen making meta-jokes and people getting shot in the head. It's always good but never particularly great.

When I fired up Netflix to watch the last episode (only 8, the perfect number for such shows because its not good enough to merit like 20 episodes), Netflix put it next to Breaking Bad on one of the lists which was kinda funny because Giancarlo Espesito plays the slick talking cool calm collected criminal master minded but it's much more surface on Gentlemen- by design- but it really draws home the difference between spectacle drama and drama with spectacle.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

The Gentleman- Netflix

A sort-of spin/off or remake of Guy Ritchie's movie that was like a return to his roots- slick and silly Brits doing crimes and looking extremely cool and then stupid and back.
The show uses the similar set-up as the movie of a marijuana empire using aristocratic land. The big difference in the Netflix show is that the main character is actually one of these aristocrats. He and the woman running the operation for her imprisoned father take us on a tour through this wacky underworld with much blood and quips.

It's a vibe show if you want some cool nihilism. You get to see dudes looking self-consciously cool while sipping whiskey and making grand pronouncements and then hyperstylized shots of text scribbling on the screen making meta-jokes and people getting shot in the head. It's always good but never particularly great.

When I fired up Netflix to watch the last episode (only 8, the perfect number for such shows because its not good enough to merit like 20 episodes), Netflix put it next to Breaking Bad on one of the lists which was kinda funny because Giancarlo Espesito plays the slick talking cool calm collected criminal master minded but it's much more surface on Gentlemen- by design- but it really draws home the difference between spectacle drama and drama with spectacle.

I'm digging the show, only like 3 episodes in. I like that it's not just a retread of the movie but just uses the same setup.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Wolf Like Me - Season 2

Josh Gad is a widowed single dad. Isla Fisher is a werewolf. After inexplicably bagging her in Season 1, Isla is now pregnant and despairing over the logistics of giving birth. Is it going to be a human? A werewolf? What if she gives birth as a wolf? Would she recognize a human baby as her own, or eat it? Can she induce birth before the next full moon? Would the stitches from a C-section hold after transforming? Suppose she locks herself up with her werewolf ex boyfriend and both fuck all night long while her husband watches in horror - would wolf cum alter the fetus' DNA? And so on. The show is absolutely fixated on the logistics of the werewolf's reproductive system and while the joke's on me - anything involving werewolves is furry filth, surely - I felt like this season was overly fetishistic between the birth thing and the cuck thing.

There's also a nature vs. nurture arc in which Josh Gad has to overcome his fear of his vicious werewolf girlfriend during that time of the month, and we need a definitive answer on whether the werewolf retains some form of humanity or not. Again with the dumb Zootopia thing of rising above your nature. All very noble until you put an actual fox and an actual rabbit together. I know this has some wiggle room because it's a fantastic creature and you can make up your own bullshit rules about it, putting the burden of this nonsense on the person who is probably going to get killed for trying seems unfair.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Wolf Like Me - Season 2

Josh Gad is a widowed single dad. Isla Fisher is a werewolf. After inexplicably bagging her in Season 1, Isla is now pregnant and despairing over the logistics of giving birth. Is it going to be a human? A werewolf? What if she gives birth as a wolf? Would she recognize a human baby as her own, or eat it? Can she induce birth before the next full moon? Would the stitches from a C-section hold after transforming? Suppose she locks herself up with her werewolf ex boyfriend and both fuck all night long while her husband watches in horror - would wolf cum alter the fetus' DNA? And so on. The show is absolutely fixated on the logistics of the werewolf's reproductive system and while the joke's on me - anything involving werewolves is furry filth, surely - I felt like this season was overly fetishistic between the birth thing and the cuck thing.

There's also a nature vs. nurture arc in which Josh Gad has to overcome his fear of his vicious werewolf girlfriend during that time of the month, and we need a definitive answer on whether the werewolf retains some form of humanity or not. Again with the dumb Zootopia thing of rising above your nature. All very noble until you put an actual fox and an actual rabbit together. I know this has some wiggle room because it's a fantastic creature and you can make up your own bullshit rules about it, putting the burden of this nonsense on the person who is probably going to get killed for trying seems unfair.

Oh wow, this show actually came up on a feed of something, either like Facebook or IMDB saying it's similar to something else I looked up. I checked out the general gist of it and the reviews seemed good and I was thinking about checking it out. I did not at all realize it was so into the logistics of werewolf birthing. Might be fun to watch in a group setting though and make fun of it.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Oh wow, this show actually came up on a feed of something, either like Facebook or IMDB saying it's similar to something else I looked up. I checked out the general gist of it and the reviews seemed good and I was thinking about checking it out. I did not at all realize it was so into the logistics of werewolf birthing. Might be fun to watch in a group setting though and make fun of it.

I don't know if it's watch party material, but I had fun with it. None of the things I mentioned is untrue; I do think it borders on fetishistic (especially the new season). Having said that it's obviously "really" meant to be about a couple who wants to make things work out despite all the ridiculous happenstance the universe keeps throwing their way, and about compromising for love and all that lofty messaging. It's just that it's laced with the nastiest, most unromantic plotting possible: the girl periodically becomes a vicious murder machine, so an attempt at a normal life has to be engineered around that.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

I don't know if it's watch party material, but I had fun with it. None of the things I mentioned is untrue; I do think it borders on fetishistic (especially the new season). Having said that it's obviously "really" meant to be about a couple who wants to make things work out despite all the ridiculous happenstance the universe keeps throwing their way, and about compromising for love and all that lofty messaging. It's just that it's laced with the nastiest, most unromantic plotting possible: the girl periodically becomes a vicious murder machine, so an attempt at a normal life has to be engineered around that.

That reminds me -



But me thinks it didn’t work out there.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Wolf Like Me - Season 2

Josh Gad is a widowed single dad. Isla Fisher is a werewolf. After inexplicably bagging her in Season 1, Isla is now pregnant and despairing over the logistics of giving birth. Is it going to be a human? A werewolf? What if she gives birth as a wolf? Would she recognize a human baby as her own, or eat it? Can she induce birth before the next full moon? Would the stitches from a C-section hold after transforming? Suppose she locks herself up with her werewolf ex boyfriend and both fuck all night long while her husband watches in horror - would wolf cum alter the fetus' DNA? And so on. The show is absolutely fixated on the logistics of the werewolf's reproductive system and while the joke's on me - anything involving werewolves is furry filth, surely - I felt like this season was overly fetishistic between the birth thing and the cuck thing.

There's also a nature vs. nurture arc in which Josh Gad has to overcome his fear of his vicious werewolf girlfriend during that time of the month, and we need a definitive answer on whether the werewolf retains some form of humanity or not. Again with the dumb Zootopia thing of rising above your nature. All very noble until you put an actual fox and an actual rabbit together. I know this has some wiggle room because it's a fantastic creature and you can make up your own bullshit rules about it, putting the burden of this nonsense on the person who is probably going to get killed for trying seems unfair.

Man.. I once thought Isla Fischer would be like a big deal. She's funny and charming and so freaking gorgeous, I thought she'd be like the next Kate Hudson. But she ends up doing stuff like these eh?

 

[Piscian]

Resident Alien Follow up

Finishing up season 2 of Resident Evil Alien on netflix. The easiest summary is that I'm downloading season 3 as we speak, longer answer is that I'm typing this while watching. This was built for Alan Tudyk. You remember that line in A Knight's Tale when he gets so angry he can't think of anything to say and just says "..PAAAIN"

Entire character is kinda like that. ET, but angry, confused, and extremely weird. He is laugh outloud fuckin hilarious. Its great because it's not like a sitcom with a laugh track, everybody is like "WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU"

*for context only one kid is born with a genetic trait that lets him see Alans actual face.


The only real problem is that they try to grow the other residents into the story with mixed results. Any time the cut to a subplot it's to pretty mixed results. They try to use it as a way to reflect on the Alien coming to terms with one thing or another. It may work on some people, but my eyes glaze over anytime to its leans away from the humor.

That said I've still been enjoying it. When you do laugh its like laugh outloud funny because some of the humor just really comes out of left field. It's all pretty clever and well acted, they never feel the need to pause for laughs. Solid 8/10. IMDB is right on this one. Trying not spoil anything for myself by looking online but it looks like Season3 will end the series.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Man.. I once thought Isla Fischer would be like a big deal. She's funny and charming and so freaking gorgeous, I thought she'd be like the next Kate Hudson. But she ends up doing stuff like these eh?

I posit she has more of a career than Kate Hudson at this point, even if she never quite became an A-Lister like Kate did.

My take on the show is that it's one of those smol, unambitious, shot-near-my-home celebrity-financed post-COVID projects that exist purely to continue working. Small cast, few sets, short episodes. Season two at least enjoyed a bigger budget.

She's also married to Borat so she clearly has a thing for weird and uncomfortable.