waaaay ahead of you on that count, haha. 
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Youāre scaring me. We may well be watching these simultaneously.
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Who recognizes the brunette with the beehive & carrying the cake?
One Day at a Time!
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I finally caught up with a movie Iāve wanted to see for a while:
I donāt know if Iād call it terrific, but it was fun, and it kept me interested until the credits rolled.
Like Cabin in the Woods and Scream, this is a very self-aware horror flick, with loving attention to all the typical summer-camp-slasher tropesā¦ yet there were a few plot-swerves toward the end of the movie that took me by surprise. The non-linear narrative makes the action a little harder to follow at first, but in some ways, discovering the plot along with the charactersā phone conversations works, giving us more sympathy for the hapless Sam and his dilemma. Thereās more blood-splatter than outright gore, except for one scene where a bodyās found, and that doesnāt show lots of detail; I think that works too, but YMMV. And Iād say Fran Kranz and Alyson Hannigan do a decent job selling their roles (though Alyson is literally phoning it inā¦ 
and having worked a job like hers, I appreciated the having-an-important-conversation-while-dealing-with-customers humor.)
If youāre a fan of the genre, I think itās worth a watch. I enjoyed it.
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With extra Bridget & Mary Jo!
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I followed up āLife After Bethā with another rom-zom-com. Some people in the reviews said it was better. I donāt know if Iād go that far, but it was different and had some interesting ideas. The comedy part was pretty weak, it was more drama/romance, complete with a scene practically lifted from Romeo and Juliet When R sneaks into the human enclave (where he would be killed if found) to talk to Julie whoās on her balcony.. But overall not bad.
Ideas that I liked:
- Zombies have forgotten their past lives, they canāt dream, can barely walk and talk, etc., but they still think. They eat brains because when they do they can sense the memories and emotions of the people whose brains theyāre eating - and, briefly, feel alive again, even moving and speaking better than just shuffling and grunting. (This kinda tracks with ideas that you are what you eat and take a part of your foodās nature into yourself, especially when eating organs.)
- They also eat brains because, as you know, you kill zombies by smashing their head. If a zombie eats someoneās brains, then that person canāt come back as a zombie and be competition.
- They start out human enough, but over time degrade, eventually becoming āboniesā, who have lost most of their flesh, and their ability to think, and whatās left of their body basically runs on animalistic adrenaline surge all the time, making them fast and dangerous.
Ideas that I disliked:
- They took that whole cool idea of why eating brains made zombies more human and just threw it in the ditch. It being a romantic movie, what actually turns them human is the love of a human - holding hands or playing catch. Love conquers all, happily ever after, blah blah blah. They never actually needed to eat people or brains, but letās just put all that behind us and ignore that it happened.
I think the ideas they set up early in the movie had a lot of potential, but the ending kind of ignored all that. Not bad, but couldāve been better.
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Tonightās Discord watch party was another two episodes of Black Mirror: āBlack Museumā and āStriking Vipers.ā
The first, āBlack Museum,ā was a sort of tales-within-a-tale narrative, and very, very dark. I didnāt like it much, and deliberately didnāt give it my full attention, since it was too bleak for my mood at the time. Narratively, it was well put-together, and the ending was earned, but itās not exactly a feel-good finish.
āStriking Vipersā was excellent, and very thought-provoking. Summary: a married man finds himself having a VR affair with another man (playing as a female character) in a video game, and has to navigate the feelings and consequences it brings. I almost wish this one had been longer, to flesh out the characters more and further explore the premise. Despite that, it raised excellent questions about relationships, orientation, emotional and physical fidelity, and it sparked quite a bit of conversation in the Discord chat while it was playing. This is one of the better episodes Iāve seen, and definitely worth a watch.
Interestingly enough, both episodes featured callbacks to previous episodes (a comic portraying events in ā15 Million Merits,ā references to the VR tech in āSan Junipero,ā and the VR device in āStriking Vipersā appears to be the same gadget used in āUSS Callister.ā This implies a sort of shared universe between episodes, or maybe just a limited budget ( 
), but theyāre nice Easter eggs for those whoāve been watching the whole series.
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Your watch parties sound like fun. What is it like - you all watch something together and then discuss afterward? All real-time, or like a book club where you each do it on your own time but then get together to talk about it at a scheduled time?
Iād like to do something like that with other Elsewherians. Could be fun with our varied interests and viewpoints.
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We all get together on one personās Discord. (Heās a Twitch streamer.) He shares his screen, we get to watch and comment in a text thread in real time.
I donāt know how it all works or how to set it up, but it can be a lot of fun. It would be great to have Elsewherian watch parties, if anyone can figure out the technical stuff.
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Iām watching āMASHā the TV series, and Iām on season 9, episode 5. What with all the prequel stuff about established franchises, it surprises me that we donāt see a āBefore-MASHā. Itās too late to do a prequel to the movie; Kiefer Sutherlandās too old now.
And who remembers the movie? Heck, the author of the original book thought Aldaās Hawkeye was too soft and liberal. I think he was just P.O.'ed that his books didnāt do as well as the TV show.
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I for sure remember the movieās version of the theme song. That was a surprise I wonāt forget.
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I just finished watching the entire run of St. Elsewhere on Hulu. What a great show. Much of the time I was watching, I was in disbelief I was watching something from the mid 1980s. It must have been incredibly cutting edge for its time and many of the stories still felt relevant. So many great actors have been on the show in starring or guest roles as well. (And some not so great ones too but the writing was often so good that even Pauly Shore somehow managed to be mostly tolerable.)
Yeah, I knew what to expect with the final scene given how itās basically a meme at this point, and Iām still on the fence about it after having a few days to reflect on it. One thing I do give the show writers credit for was it was a pretty outrageous and ballsy thing to try. It was certainly an effective way to ensure there would never be any spin-offs or half-assed revival attempts.
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I watched most of MASH as a teenager when it was in syndication. I often think of rewatching it again. It was such a great show. I know the mid-series tonal shift from light and zany to (really) dark comedy and drama made a lot of people unhappy but I thought some of the best stuff came from those later episodes.
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Fun fact: Robert Altmanās son wrote the lyrics to the song and made more money from royalties than his dad.
Suicide Is Painless - Wikipedia.
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I watched 'em from the very first season, so it had me at pre-puberty and continued through my high-school years. My brother was quite taken with Hawkeye from both the movie and the series, though Alan Aldaās homages to Groucho Marx truly got him.
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Yes please! If you can show me what it looks like, I might be able to set this up for us.
And any ideas for what to watch?
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Sure, but it might take a few days for me to get screenshots and/or info. Plus itās not my server so Iām not sure if I should ask permission to share or not.
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