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Post by klawrencio79 on May 13, 2020 0:20:36 GMT
I watched the first two episodes of Billions, season 5. I've always had something of a weird love-hate relationship with this show. I love Paul Giamatti, I love the legal shenanigans that are always showing up, the absurd depiction of the finance world, but I think Damian Lewis is just awful (great character, terrible actor) and the script is sometimes really poorly written.
For instance, they've always relied heavily on movie references, but maybe one per episode. Thus far in the first two episodes of season 5, I feel like there haven't just been references and easter eggs, but rather about 20 or so direct movie quotes and characters saying "it's just like so-and-so from [movie X]" in other instances. It's cheeky and creates this weird tone when the characters are basically winking at the audience.
They also do this thing that I feel Showtime is extremely guilty of - gratuitous cursing and nudity. Now hear me out - when the Sopranos had scenes taking place inside a strip joint, and they're constantly saying fuck this and twat that, it felt organic to the story and the characters. With Billions, they make the characters go completely out of their way for the sake a nude scene, and they force Maggie Siff to emphatically drop multiple F bombs out of nowhere, and as loudly as possible. It's distracting.
In any event, it's trashy fun at its best, but it's uneven and entirely forgettable the moment each episode ends.
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Post by sdm3 on May 13, 2020 1:05:35 GMT
I watched the first two episodes of Billions, season 5. I've always had something of a weird love-hate relationship with this show. I love Paul Giamatti, I love the legal shenanigans that are always showing up, the absurd depiction of the finance world, but I think Damian Lewis is just awful (great character, terrible actor) Wow, I’m surprised by that. I’ve always thought Lewis was pretty good, from Band of Brothers to Homeland, but I haven’t seen Billions.
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Post by tristramshandy on May 13, 2020 1:40:48 GMT
Has anybody watched Barry? I've just gotten through the first two episodes of season one. I like the option of something really well made that is 30 minutes an episode rather than almost an hour or a full movie.
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Post by Carl LaFong on May 13, 2020 4:52:52 GMT
I watched the first two episodes of Billions, season 5. I've always had something of a weird love-hate relationship with this show. I love Paul Giamatti, I love the legal shenanigans that are always showing up, the absurd depiction of the finance world, but I think Damian Lewis is just awful (great character, terrible actor) and the script is sometimes really poorly written. For instance, they've always relied heavily on movie references, but maybe one per episode. Thus far in the first two episodes of season 5, I feel like there haven't just been references and easter eggs, but rather about 20 or so direct movie quotes and characters saying "it's just like so-and-so from [movie X]" in other instances. It's cheeky and creates this weird tone when the characters are basically winking at the audience. They also do this thing that I feel Showtime is extremely guilty of - gratuitous cursing and nudity. Now hear me out - when the Sopranos had scenes taking place inside a strip joint, and they're constantly saying fuck this and twat that, it felt organic to the story and the characters. With Billions, they make the characters go completely out of their way for the sake a nude scene, and they force Maggie Siff to emphatically drop multiple F bombs out of nowhere, and as loudly as possible. It's distracting. In any event, it's trashy fun at its best, but it's uneven and entirely forgettable the moment each episode ends. S5 hasn’t arrived in the U.K. yet, but I’ll probably watch it when it does. Largely agree with what you say, including about Damian Lewis. Very mannered performance. I despise the character too and maybe his poor acting is part of the reason. I keep watching in the hope that Chuck will completely crush him! Cannot stand Taylor either. Another huge pain in the ass. Maggie Siff had been my favourite character, but she was all over the place in s4 thanks to some very poor writing. Her behaviour didn’t seem consistent with the character from the first 3 series. Chuck is a wanker, but at he knows it and you can root for him in a way ... especially against Ax. Easily my favourite character is Chuck’s Dad, played by Jeffrey DeMunn. He’s hilarious! I like Brian too, although I don’t think we’re supposed to like him. In a way I hope he gets his own back on Chuck ... but only after Chuck crushes Ax. Ari Spyros is funny even though everyone takes the piss out of him, or maybe because of that! Wags has started to get on my tits. Hope John Malkovich doesn’t come back. Worst acting he’s every done. Anyway, it’s basically got worse with each series, but it’s still watchable enough for me to tune in. I don’t want to see a Chuck and Ax joining forces again though. That just felt totally fake.
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Post by Carl LaFong on May 13, 2020 4:55:38 GMT
Has anybody watched Barry? I've just gotten through the first two episodes of season one. I like the option of something really well made that is 30 minutes an episode rather than almost an hour or a full movie. Yeah, quite like the show, especially Henry Winkler. I’ve seen both series in full. I do like the fact the episodes are only 30 mins.
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Post by Aj_June on May 13, 2020 13:10:54 GMT
I am totally unaware of those characters (Iron Man, Captain America etc) and so I will avoid watching The Avengers without knowing the characters of that movie. May be I can try out those other movies which build up the characters.
I just finished a Korean movie called I Saw the Devil (2010). I thought it was quite good. One of those movies in which the idea of revenge and the style of execution of revenge plot might be questionable. I think I will recommenced it to others. My rating 6.75/10, IMDB rating 7.8/10 I watch so many of these Korean thrillers that sometimes they blend in together. I am pretty sure I’ve seen “I Saw the Devil” but I have only he vaguest of recollections of the story . There’s a serial killer, right? And doesn’t it begin with a woman being abducted from a car? You identified it correctly. That's the movie. I think they get the English names pretty badly written. This movie could have had a better name than "I saw the Devil". But still Korean movies are growing on me. I would continue to check them out time from time.
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Post by Jep Gambardella on May 13, 2020 14:02:12 GMT
I watch so many of these Korean thrillers that sometimes they blend in together. I am pretty sure I’ve seen “I Saw the Devil” but I have only he vaguest of recollections of the story . There’s a serial killer, right? And doesn’t it begin with a woman being abducted from a car?You identified it correctly. That's the movie. I think they get the English names pretty badly written. This movie could have had a better name than "I saw the Devil". But still Korean movies are growing on me. I would continue to check them out time from time. I am not Korean and I have no ties to Korea but I am always happy when people "discover" (so to speak) Korean cinema, of which I've been a fan LOOOOONG before "Parasite" won the Oscar. Not only they make excellent thrillers and action movies, but good dramas and comedies and historical movies as well. Some recommendations: - The Good, the Bad and the Weird - My Dear Enemy - The Handmaiden - Blood Rain - Memories of Murder
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Post by Aj_June on May 13, 2020 14:57:20 GMT
You identified it correctly. That's the movie. I think they get the English names pretty badly written. This movie could have had a better name than "I saw the Devil". But still Korean movies are growing on me. I would continue to check them out time from time. I am not Korean and I have no ties to Korea but I am always happy when people "discover" (so to speak) Korean cinema, of which I've been a fan LOOOOONG before "Parasite" won the Oscar. Not only they make excellent thrillers and action movies, but good dramas and comedies and historical movies as well. Some recommendations: - The Good, the Bad and the Weird - My Dear Enemy - The Handmaiden - Blood Rain - Memories of Murder Excellent. Thanks for the suggestions. I have seen 3 of them but will check out the other ones.
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Post by klawrencio79 on May 13, 2020 15:03:33 GMT
I watched the first two episodes of Billions, season 5. I've always had something of a weird love-hate relationship with this show. I love Paul Giamatti, I love the legal shenanigans that are always showing up, the absurd depiction of the finance world, but I think Damian Lewis is just awful (great character, terrible actor) Wow, I’m surprised by that. I’ve always thought Lewis was pretty good, from Band of Brothers to Homeland, but I haven’t seen Billions. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh as Billions is so fresh on my mind. He was good in Band of Brothers (what a great series that was) and I thought he was mostly fine in Homeland. But he isn't particularly good in Billions. The character is supposed to be a supremely cunning and calculating chess master and he basically just goes through each episode without any charisma and then at the end, pulls an Ocean's 12 and says "see, I was really doing this all along!" It's just forced, everything about the show the past season plus comes across as forced. Also, Lewis had about 2 minutes of screentime in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, playing Steve McQueen in a glorified cameo. He's jarringly misplaced in it, even if he kinda looks like McQueen. I don't know if he was miscast or if he just had no idea what to go for here, which seems odd for a Tarantino character. Either way, there's no fucking way that Steve McQueen ever sat on the sidelines pining over a girl that got away. I just didn't buy it. Maybe it's true, I'm not up on my Hollywood social circle news from the late 60s.
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Post by Jep Gambardella on May 13, 2020 16:25:37 GMT
I watched “From Here to Eternity” (1953) last night. I had probably seen it before, a long time ago. Some parts seemed very familiar, like the affair between the Burt Lancaster and the Deborah Kerr characters and the Japanese attack, but others not so much. Anyway, very good movie. I wasn’t aware that it was based on a novel that was very successful at the time but caused so much scandal that it was initially considered unfilmable. Apparently the movie had to be toned down significantly to get the armed forces to cooperate with the filming.
The events are so far removed from me (both of my parents were yet to be born) that it's weird to think that for the audiences of the time they had happened only twelve years earlier, and that the war had ended only eight years earlier. That is less time passed than since 9/11 for us, which feels like just yesterday.
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Post by Rey Kahuka on May 13, 2020 16:33:39 GMT
Wow, I’m surprised by that. I’ve always thought Lewis was pretty good, from Band of Brothers to Homeland, but I haven’t seen Billions. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh as Billions is so fresh on my mind. He was good in Band of Brothers (what a great series that was) and I thought he was mostly fine in Homeland. But he isn't particularly good in Billions. The character is supposed to be a supremely cunning and calculating chess master and he basically just goes through each episode without any charisma and then at the end, pulls an Ocean's 12 and says "see, I was really doing this all along!" It's just forced, everything about the show the past season plus comes across as forced. Also, Lewis had about 2 minutes of screentime in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, playing Steve McQueen in a glorified cameo. He's jarringly misplaced in it, even if he kinda looks like McQueen. I don't know if he was miscast or if he just had no idea what to go for here, which seems odd for a Tarantino character. Either way, there's no fucking way that Steve McQueen ever sat on the sidelines pining over a girl that got away. I just didn't buy it. Maybe it's true, I'm not up on my Hollywood social circle news from the late 60s. Agreed on Lewis. Band of Brothers is the only thing I've ever liked him in (well he hosts Spy Wars, but hosting a docudrama series isn't really acting). I don't watch Homeland, but he looks awful in the promos and I have zero interest in Billions. For the life of me I don't understand why he was cast as Steve McQueen.
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Post by bluerisk on May 13, 2020 16:37:42 GMT
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Post by tristramshandy on May 13, 2020 18:04:05 GMT
I watched “From Here to Eternity” (1953) last night. I had probably seen it before, a long time ago. Some parts seemed very familiar, like the affair between the Burt Lancaster and the Deborah Kerr characters and the Japanese attack, but others not so much. Anyway, very good movie. I wasn’t aware that it was based on a novel that was very successful at the time but caused so much scandal that it was initially considered unfilmable. Apparently the movie had to be toned down significantly to get the armed forces to cooperate with the filming.
The events are so far removed from me (both of my parents were yet to be born) that it's weird to think that for the audiences of the time they had happened only twelve years earlier, and that the war had ended only eight years earlier. That is less time passed than since 9/11 for us, which feels like just yesterday.
It's the weird way that personal experience affects our sense of time. I was born in 1970, so even though I know the following is not true, the gap in time between classic rock and punk rock feels to me like is much longer than it logically is. 1967 is Sgt. Pepper, The Doors debut, Are You Experienced?, Disraeli Gears, Their Satanic Majesties Request, etc. 1977 is Never Mind the Bollocks, The Clash debut, Damned Damned Damned, Pink Flag, Marquee Moon, etc. That gap seemed enormous to me - - still does. And yet, what is the difference between 2010 and 2020 in music? I think of The Strokes debut as being recent - - it was released in 2001. Nineteen years before the '77 punk albums would have been 1958. The major artists of 1958 are Bobby Darin, Paul Anka, and Lloyd Price - - and yet that's the difference in time between 2001 and now.
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Post by screamingtreefrogs on May 13, 2020 18:09:34 GMT
Dark Side of the Ring - The Last Ride of The Road Warriors
This should be a good one folks - arguably the greatest tag team ever - I'm thinking it goes into the end days - i.e. the downfall with Hawk and his substance abuse issues.
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Post by Rey Kahuka on May 13, 2020 19:08:35 GMT
I watched “From Here to Eternity” (1953) last night. I had probably seen it before, a long time ago. Some parts seemed very familiar, like the affair between the Burt Lancaster and the Deborah Kerr characters and the Japanese attack, but others not so much. Anyway, very good movie. I wasn’t aware that it was based on a novel that was very successful at the time but caused so much scandal that it was initially considered unfilmable. Apparently the movie had to be toned down significantly to get the armed forces to cooperate with the filming.
The events are so far removed from me (both of my parents were yet to be born) that it's weird to think that for the audiences of the time they had happened only twelve years earlier, and that the war had ended only eight years earlier. That is less time passed than since 9/11 for us, which feels like just yesterday.
It's the weird way that personal experience affects our sense of time. I was born in 1970, so even though I know the following is not true, the gap in time between classic rock and punk rock feels to me like is much longer than it logically is. 1967 is Sgt. Pepper, The Doors debut, Are You Experienced?, Disraeli Gears, Their Satanic Majesties Request, etc. 1977 is Never Mind the Bollocks, The Clash debut, Damned Damned Damned, Pink Flag, Marquee Moon, etc. That gap seemed enormous to me - - still does. And yet, what is the difference between 2010 and 2020 in music? I think of The Strokes debut as being recent - - it was released in 2001. Nineteen years before the '77 punk albums would have been 1958. The major artists of 1958 are Bobby Darin, Paul Anka, and Lloyd Price - - and yet that's the difference in time between 2001 and now. Agreed. If I show my 5 year old son a movie from 1984 -- 30 years before he was born, it would be the equivalent of me at 5 watching a movie from 1947-- which makes my head hurt. Time before and after you're born feels incomprehensible that way. I remember collecting comic books as a kid in the late 80s, I had a comic book from 1964 which seemed impossibly old. Any current comic book I bought off the shelf as a kid is older now than that comic book was then. You also have to consider how we view contemporary life in our heads compared to history. Meaning you think about events or people in any given time period, but you don't understand the subtle nuances in how language or fashion may have changed decade by decade. Of course the farther you go back, the slower change is going to be; it's not like the 20th century and on where globalism, mass media and truly expendable income make it possible for so many people to consume culture, forcing it to evolve at a faster rate. That and of course modern technology, which builds on itself at such a rate as to make life even 20 years ago feel impossible to return to. As an aside, I like to imagine the life of a person born in 1875 who lived to their late 90s. They would've been 6 years old when the gunfight at the OK Corral happened; old enough to remember hearing about it in real time. That person lived to see man walk on the moon. Bringing it back to music, I've mentioned before my difficulty in judging modern music. To me, it feels like the 1990s (and really only the first half) were the last decade to have a distinct sound. Maybe it's because I'm too old; but I do think a lot of it has to do with how much music emulates past eras these days. There's a ton of faux 80s synth pop out there, as well as retro rock with a 60s or 70s sound. One difference in pop music I can think of is the inclusion of little rap riffs in the middle of songs, though it's really because pop has been infused with hip hop for 30+ years now. Rock branched out into 'alt rock' (which again is really code for 'this sounds like a combination of things you've heard before') while pop mutated into a kind of 'hip pop' (yes I just made that term up and I want copyrights now!). I don't listen to hip hop anymore so I can't really comment on how or if it's evolved over the last 20 years. Seems like a lot of talking without much effort put into lyricism, unlike the rap of my youth-- but again, that's probably just an old guy's opinion. Another musical shift I find noticeable is how all 'country' music now is just slightly twangy pop crossover stuff. I was never a country fan, but my mother used to listen to it when I was a kid, so I can hear how it's changed. The kind of stuff Garth Brooks was getting criticized for 'selling out' for back in the 90s is like 100% of modern 'country' as far as I can tell. What the change in music in the late 60s through the 70s and beyond shows you is how enormous the cultural shifts really were, not just in music. I'll bring up comic books for the second time in this post because I'm a nerd. Stuff from the early 60s was incredibly sexist; female characters always questioning their own value in thought bubbles, etc. Fast forward to the 80s when I was a kid reading comics, women were leading superhero teams and nobody thought twice about it. The characters didn't discuss it, it wasn't relevant. The women's movement had drastically altered the landscape for the better. Likewise the continued questioning of the status quo and the blending of musical ideas from across different nations as well as ethnicities brought about stuff in the 1970s that you simply could not have imagined in 1958. And it only took off from there. One of the fun things I do is flip through the presets in my car (XM) and see how all of the different types of music connect. Some are farther apart than others, but almost all of them are cousins at the very least. We've come a long way from the 1950s, but if you listen hard enough, you can trace the audio DNA back for decades.
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Post by tristramshandy on May 13, 2020 21:10:32 GMT
As an aside, I like to imagine the life of a person born in 1875 who lived to their late 90s. They would've been 6 years old when the gunfight at the OK Corral happened; old enough to remember hearing about it in real time. That person lived to see man walk on the moon. Those always blow my mind. My grandmother lived until 85, but she would have been 100 this year. Somebody who is 100 would remember the Great Depression, remember Prohibition as well as what is going on right now. The other thought experiment that always makes me philosophical is the person who dies just before some momentous event happens. For example, Pauline Kael, the quintessential New York City film critic, died 8 days before 9/11. Kobe Bryant died having no real knowledge of the coronavirus in the United States. They missed these moments by days and yet the world changed so much in just that short period of time.
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Post by Aj_June on May 14, 2020 7:05:10 GMT
Just finished The Spiral Staircase (1946). Really good horror-thriller with a solid cast - Ethel Barrymore , Elsa Lanchester, Dorothy McGuire, Rhonda Fleming and George Brent. I did have 100% confidence in who the murderer was right from the beginning but it sill was a great watch. Great acting and some really good dark photography made it a perfect thriller. Directed by: Robert Siodmak
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Post by Deleted on May 14, 2020 7:38:05 GMT
Been working my way through every series of Red Dwarf on DVD, again.
Except series 9, Back to Earth... because it's shite, nobody likes it, nor considers it canon.
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Post by WullieFort on May 14, 2020 8:35:43 GMT
On a similar theme, my father died in 1976 and from time to time I imagine that he is resurrected and that I have to re-introduce him to the world. Although I am a Celtic fan, he proudly supported the other lot and not only do I have to explain that the Zombies sign Catholics (akin to African-Americans being allowed to set foot in some US restaurants in the not too distant past), that there are very few Scotsmen playing football at Ibrox and that his beloved team had to spend some seasons in the lower divisions of the Scottish League. Then there are the internet, Amazon, mobile phones with cameras, Sky TV, EBay, electric cars, Eurotunnel, etc., etc., etc. He most likely would have another heart attack.
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Post by Midi-Chlorian_Count on May 14, 2020 14:34:29 GMT
Just binge watched the first season of Fargo.
Absolutely brilliant. Without doubt the best series I've watched since Breaking Bad. Anyone else seen it?
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