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[Loud Whispers]

So I saw Mad God in the movie theatre and this is definitely going under that odd category of films I want to recommend to everyone and also recommend that no one ever watch it. It's an achievement, but is also capable of inducing great distress or despair in audiences. Combined with a very relaxing soundtrack and just all round oddness, I can recommend it to horror fans with Herman Melville's religious anxieties or a Kafkan atheist intellectual ritualism and an appreciation of stop motion art and diesel trench aesthetic. I might make a full review of it later but I need to sleep. It's rare to have a film make people stop breathing and then laugh. Certain scenes possessed a level of cruelty which felt very genuine, and caused much disgust in critics. Often you see films that try to be edgy or try to shock, but this one is not trying to be either. There is a sincerity which permeates everything, and I am grateful for the laborious work which was put into it, even if I haven't yet decided whether I could recommend this film to others or not.

[King Zultan]

I also saw Mad God recently and I liked it, not really something I could accurately describe and I probably wouldn't be able to do it justice with my shitty description anyway.

[TD1]

So I saw Mad God in the movie theatre and this is definitely going under that odd category of films I want to recommend to everyone and also recommend that no one ever watch it. It's an achievement, but is also capable of inducing great distress or despair in audiences. Combined with a very relaxing soundtrack and just all round oddness, I can recommend it to horror fans with Herman Melville's religious anxieties or a Kafkan atheist intellectual ritualism and an appreciation of stop motion art and diesel trench aesthetic. I might make a full review of it later but I need to sleep. It's rare to have a film make people stop breathing and then laugh. Certain scenes possessed a level of cruelty which felt very genuine, and caused much disgust in critics. Often you see films that try to be edgy or try to shock, but this one is not trying to be either. There is a sincerity which permeates everything, and I am grateful for the laborious work which was put into it, even if I haven't yet decided whether I could recommend this film to others or not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jas8OABbn0Y
Well that's disturbing.

[Starver]

As I can't (easily) find the Doctor Who thread that I'm sure is there somewhere, coming here to say RIP Wilfred Mott (and others, but probably the singular most widely known of his many characters, amongst the DF-focussed demographic).

[TD1]

Little could dent his ambition, even a horrific accident in a production of Macbeth.

The play ended with the usual sword fight between Macbeth and Macduff. To save money on expensive fake swords, real ones were used instead. The actor playing Macbeth, Harold Norman, was fatally stabbed in front of him.

Wait what

[hector13]

How the fuck are fake swords more expensive than real ones?

[Starver]

A glut on the market..?

[hector13]

Too many historical reenactors is the problem.

[nenjin]

Been binging Better Call Saul while I sit around at home with Covid.

Avoided it for the longest time, mostly because I don't watch much TV at all, and for two I felt it was derivative of Breaking Bad and probably wouldn't be good.

Turns out, it's a really well made show. The cinematography is great and scenes really manage to draw you in.

That said, in terms of plot......eeeeehhhhhhhhh.

For the first three seasons, I found myself getting really weary of the Jimmy/Chuck plotline. So many moments of those seasons are just the same thing over and over again....Chuck wrapped in a space blanket. Later on, it's Kim saying "Okay" in a flat, disappointed way.

And I feel like it's emblematic of the show: waffling between two ideas and making multiple seasons out of it.

Jimmy and Kim epitomize this. "Oh I want to do X!" <literally the same episode> "Actually I don't want to do that." Rinse and repeat with a slightly different idea across an entire season.

Like, you would have expected by Season 3, Kim would be over Jimmy's shit. That she's the responsible, moral one. But then I guess she gets bored or the writers were like "we need some hijinks!" and she throws out her morality for an episode before getting back on point. I was getting so bored with Jimmy waffling between being a real lawyer and being Saul Goodman in Season 2/3 that I almost quit watching.

It's a good show, don't get me wrong. But binging it you can really see the structure of the ideas clearly laid out, and the show essentially doesn't go anywhere until Season 5 in terms of Jimmy and Kim's stories.

The Gus Fring/Don Hector/Mike/Nacho plotlines are good and feel like a real offshoot of Breaking Bad. It's a welcomed contrast to the Jimmy/Kim stuff.

All in all I'm glad I finally watched it. It's a quality show with maybe average ideas at play. Or at least, not enough ideas at play.

[Starver]

First, not that this is an Obituary thread[1], but obviously you'll all have already heard mention of Nichelle "Uhura" Nichols moving on to find out whatever frontier lies even more beyond the final one. I didn't want to dismiss this so tritely, but I'm not going to do her justice anyway. So even though this aside is worse than anything I failed to post yesterday, here's my marker of the event, for posterity. Just before a big mood-swing in the other direction...


So, anyway, in a Viewers' Poll (in the UK) of the best TV shows in the last 25 years, tied for 3^rd place were Sherlock (needs no description?) and Line Of Duty (police 'procedural'), with Doctor Who in 2^nd.

In first place is Call The Midwife. Which, if you don't know it, is set in the late-middle 20^th century, spanning a time of social changes that probably really tests the props, costume and locality departments, following the work of midwives servicing the mothers(-to-be) of London's east-end.

And in the description I'm reading here, it's described as a Period Drama. Yet surely, almost all the drama arises for entirely the opposite reason!

 



[1] I don't think there's one on Bay12, nor would I necessarily want one created.

[Robsoie]

First, not that this is an Obituary thread, but obviously you'll all have already heard mention of Nichelle "Uhura" Nichols moving on to find out whatever frontier lies even more beyond the final one. I didn't want to dismiss this so tritely, but I'm not going to do her justice anyway. So even though this aside is worse than anything I failed to post yesterday, here's my marker of the event, for posterity. Just before a big mood-swing in the other direction...

That's very sad, as i just learned this from reading your post.

The original Star Trek serie is very ingrained in my youth as i was a kid when it was airing on TV (well, more like re-re-airing as i wasn't born when the serie was created, having only landed in that world in the seventies ), and i was rewatching every summer they decided to re-air it late night
I still have fonds memories of the whole crew and i must say that Nichelle Nichols was along with Lynda Carter one of my childhood crushes

Hard to believe she was already 89 as in my memories she's still as she was in the original Star Trek.

May she be at peace in Heaven.

[scriver]

First, not that this is an Obituary thread[1], but obviously you'll all have already heard mention of Nichelle "Uhura" Nichols moving on to find out whatever frontier lies even more beyond the final one. I didn't want to dismiss this so tritely, but I'm not going to do her justice anyway. So even though this aside is worse than anything I failed to post yesterday, here's my marker of the event, for posterity. Just before a big mood-swing in the other direction...


So, anyway, in a Viewers' Poll (in the UK) of the best TV shows in the last 25 years, tied for 3^rd place were Sherlock (needs no description?) and Line Of Duty (police 'procedural'), with Doctor Who in 2^nd.

In first place is Call The Midwife. Which, if you don't know it, is set in the late-middle 20^th century, spanning a time of social changes that probably really tests the props, costume and locality departments, following the work of midwives servicing the mothers(-to-be) of London's east-end.

And in the description I'm reading here, it's described as a Period Drama. Yet surely, almost all the drama arises for entirely the opposite reason!

 



[1] I don't think there's one on Bay12, nor would I necessarily want one created.

Is that the one with the nuns?

[Starver]

There are nuns (it's a church-run charity scenario, at the core) but it's obviously heavy on non-nun women (including mums, nans, gals and the like). Would surely pass the Bechdel test every single episode. Even when plot points require some discussion entirely about the men currently in (or not in) the liives of the transient or arc-long non-core cast.

It mostly revolves around the midwives, though, in their dealings with human kindness, official stupidity, natural capriciousness and every other comhination thereof.


Not myself watched so much of the programme, but it's feel-good on the whole, whilst not shy of tragedies and crises, dabbles into politics and social revolutions (of the era), a visual feast of 50s+ iconography in all its nostalgic forms with a very deliberate attempt at realism. The big problem for me is the story-arc stuff[1], and having not assiduously watched from the very beginning.

Bay 12: Come for the puns, stay for the half-arsed reviews!


[1] "So, that midwife was a nun, but left the order to marry the in-house doctor and (only then!) become a mum herself..." (That sort of thing. And I hear at least one cast-absence, with unrelated plot 'explanation' was of course because the actress had to have an IRL maternity break.)

[Funk]

The joke is that every TV show has  some kind of twisted super hero's with an F'd up up bring.
Umbrella academy,The boys, Stranger Things, Wheel of Time.
Yep normal parting is rare an the brain cell is passed around.

[Starver]

(Very tempted to put this in the non-EU politics thread, under the guise of finding the leader replacement for the post-Johnson era, but the parallels fall short in the long-admired/well-respected/plenty-of-gravitas stakes...  )

The list of (serious, if tentative) replacements for Jeremy Paxman might mean little to non-UK readers/viewers but, while I broke into chortles in reading those named, I'm not sure I'd outright reject any of them on principle, and they were chortles of glee not outright ridiculousness. Yes, a number of them are perhaps more known for their comedy-chairpersonships (and maybe more low-brow; though QI, Only Connect and even Crystal Maze are not for intellectual slackers!), but I could see a good decade or so of competently sitting behind the top table asking "Starters for ten" for most of them, without going into the (comparatively) rapid recycling of main host of Countdown, post-Whitely...

edit: Well, that was quick. I had clearly dwelt upon the day-old announcement far too long, and not noticed that three hours ago... .I know the situation isn't the same, but the Conservative Party situation is even more unlike this one! Obviously already in the works. And a decent choice, I think. I still remember when Amol Rajan took the seat of The Media Show (Radio 4) from the late Steve Hewlett. Though that probably means even less to most people reading this post.

And sorry to all those poor benighted individuals who have absolutely no idea about much of what I write. It's probably news that doesn't mean much at all beyond the UK, and may not universally excite even within it. But it is a cultural TV thing that I thought I'd mention.