Leverage, kind of a mix of It Takes A Thief and Mission: Impossible. Totally implausible but at times hilarious. Definitely not made to be taken seriously; more like cotton candy for the eyeballs. We’re enjoying it immensely.
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There is a reason I follow John Rogers on Twitter. Showrunning that shifted him farther left than he ever imagined.
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Took a look at his twitter feed. Breath of fresh air.
I liked The Librarians too, though not as much as the similar Warehouse 13. Though John Larroquette is always awesome.
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I binged the entire thing in two days. Was not expecting all the family feels from a frickin’ horror show.
In other watching news, just got back from watching Bohemian Rhapsody with my mom. She adored Freddie Mercury. There wasn’t a lot of rock music in our house when I was a kid, but somehow there was Queen.
Not being quite the age for it, I never quite understood the whole thing with Freddie, at first. I mean, they were good, yeah, but lots of bands are good, when all you hear is the studio stuff. Then one night, I was listening to the radio, and they were doing a retrospective… I think it was the 10 year anniversary of his death or something. They played the 20 minute set from the 1985 Live Aid concert. All of it. It was then that I realised what people meant. No studio tricks, just that voice. Playing with the crowd, drifting through that range the way he could. That was how a kid from Zanzibar could become one of the biggest rock stars in the entire world. And now whenever I think of Queen or Freddie Mercury, what immediately comes to mind isn’t any particular song. It’s a Hey-O! A call and response that no one could ever replicate.
The movie glosses over a lot, makes things warmer and fuzzier than they were. But it’s good. Rami Malek is fantastic. If you even kind of like Queen, you should go see.
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I’d been thinking about watching that.
That too.
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Who is the mole? EVERYBODY IS THE MOLE!!!1!
i suspect watching this would make @wanderfound very angry
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(cued to most interesting bit)
The Australian left has been trying to close Pine Gap for nearly fifty years.
This is what happened when we got close to it:
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I’d certainly recommend it… scary, but with a good, solid story to back it up.
I’ve heard good things about Sabrina, too.
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So, I wrapped up season 2 of Patriot, which got so much grimmer as it progressed. Only 8 episodes, so I’m assuming it reached its inevitable conclusion.
It’'s hard to describe. The best I can do is if you took a Tom Clancy novel, but the script is re-written by the Cohen Brothers, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and produced by Wes Anderson. Yet it’s still uniquely it’s own product.
I hope for future endeavors by the team that put it together. Stephen Conrad created it, but he’s also the guy who wrote Wonder (ugh - too saccharine for me) and the remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
I’m still amazed by the tapestry of it. Patriarchal society and its resulting misogyny, the difficult struggles between fathers and sons, and the absurdity of capitalism and its relationship to war, death, and depression. It’s all so intertwined, it would take a research paper to cover it all.
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I watched the first 2 eps last night, and the read the oddly hostile reviews on AV Club; I guess Im alone in being glad that the series is not trying to be a faithful adaptation on the beloved novel.
Frankly, I’m of the mind that while Jackson’s book is a great psychological horror story, it just doesn’t translate well to the medium of tv (or film, if one wants to talk about that horrid 1999 film version.)
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After Breaking Bad this is how it’s done?
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No, one does not. 1963 or go home.
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Surely there’s been grim stuff before Breaking Bad or Sopranos, despite graphic material?
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Stuff where the audience is expected to cheer for the bad guy, though?
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I was thinking specifically “starts out comedy with ‘wacky violence,’ ends up horrorshow with no funny at all”
I guess there are arguably “jokes” in the later seasons of BB, but by then the audience is so traumatized it doesn’t really work as comedy any more, it’s just another kind of pain
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Plenty of movies, but TV’s always been tamer until cable started making series, right?
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With Patriot, it’s more a matter of laying bare the injustices of the world. It’s only mildly graphic, has some great inside jokes, but there are moments that are raw and honest, and this conflict is why I see it as becoming more grim.
Update: I almost forgot about the second season’s urinal scene among the Luxenbourg male Tough Cool Guys in the police department. Pretty funny at the Tough Cool Guys expense, but yes, graphic.
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I just finished watching the latest Doctor Who (Demons of the Punjab) for the second time in two nights. Having had two badass grandmothers, I really get a kick out of seeing fictionalised ones.
And though it might sound weird for Who, I really liked how the science fiction aspect was nearly incidental for this one. The Doctor and her friends have to really think their way through what is inherently a very emotional situation for all of them.
Also, I loved how, just this once, the “don’t alter your own history” thing came up and everyone managed it, instead of it being a predictable plot point.
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I don’t have time, myself ATM:
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