Casual Conversation

I finally watched Andor. I watched the first episode a few months back and wasn’t into it at the time. This week I rewatched it and finished the season in 3 days. It’s so good.

My wife had the idea to watch Evil together. It’s weird and often awkward and cheesy, but I can’t stop watching it. I know she regrets what she started. No quitting allowed though. Three more seasons to go.

Picked up "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes". It's the start of a new story so you don't have to be hip to all the others. Good watch.

They have a really cool commentary feature where the image is shrunk to a 4:3 image so they can split it top and bottom.

The top image is the film as presented, the bottom image is the raw footage before visual effects were applied.

It lets you see how much of the film was digital and how much was practical. Complete with commentary.

https://ew.com/kingdom-of-the-planet-of-the-apes-side-by-side-raw-cut-with-unfinished-vfx-clip-exclusive-8697941

Saw The Wild Robot at sneak peek at my local cinema. Was a surprise, but really charming

British series called The Responder with Martin Freeman.

A Brazilian show called Summer Heat (Temporada de Verão) for an easy watch. I don't have the bandwith right now for something deep and meaningful and this is just right at the moment.

I finished the 2024 adaptation of Shogun and it's one of the best things I've seen in years. Elevated more so by excellent performances from Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai, the latter of whom is phenomenal.

A little bit sceptical about them making further seasons though, due to them not having any source material for it, and I'm not sure it really needs it.

• Kaos - I've only seen the first ep so far, but it looks to have promise.
• Le Bureau de Legendes - this French spy series has a slow and meandering start but picks up over a couple of episodes and the initial time with the characters pays off.
• Pine Gap - After the first couple of episodes, I'm struggling to care about the characters - and am caring a LOT about the absurd lack of a Faraday cage around the main building which would have prevented the main plot point in the first place. It is only miniseries, but I doubt that we'll finish it unless it picks up a lot and gives me a reason to get my disbelief suspended again.
• Slow Horses - the third of the spy tales that we are following at the moment and by far the most fun and engaging. Season 4 is as good as ever, and Oldman's Lamb is wonderful.
• Carol and the End of the World - a low key, introspective little exploration of self-discovery and where you find value and it's really quite charming.

Been working on Samurai Champloo and had a triple feature last night with Delicious in Dungeon and Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

Currently going through a huge backlog of torrents as I'm temporarily stuck on a ship with satellite internet not suitable for streaming.

Started with Top Gun: Maverick. Surprisingly good movie, except I found the writing for the plot-mission to be a bit lazy.

Then I saw Seven Psychopaths. It was OK. It had some funny scenes and plot twists, but summa sumarium I'd call it a pretty average movie.

I'm currently going through Rick&Morty season 6, as I've had it in my backlog for ages.

After this I'm not sure what I'll watch next, but I'm considering New York Undercover (a 90's cop show) that I found interesting 25byears ago. I'm curious if it holds up. I also have a bunch of 30 Rock that I haven't seen yet.

Oh, and I also have Season 1 of Six-Four, a series I know literally nothing about. I downloaded it mostly to have something to seed, so it could be great, horrible, or something in between. Time will tell.

Started rewatching 'Penny Dreadful.' Season 1 was excellent, Season 2's plot with Eva Green is great but the Frankenstein arc is cringe

Talk to Me(2023), great horror, I Saw The TV Glow(2024), good surrealist creep, kind ofnlike channel zero, finished shougeki no souma, last season was pretty useless, but I like a lot of the recipes in the show, The Wind Rises 2013, great ghibli, Colossal 2016, this is almost as bad as Madame Web, truly a confusing mess of a film, The FP(2011), a confusing dystopian DDR parody film that uses the n-word a LOT considering there are no black people in the movie. it was funny a couple times, but I was mostly frowning in confusion through the whole thing. I'm glad it was made, I'm glad someone felt strongly enough about dance dance revolution to make a whole dystopian underground competition movie about it. oh keanu(2016), which is just one long key and peele sketch, which was pretty fun.

Binged all of Dark Winds in the last two weeks.

Finally caught up with the new Rings of Power season. It’s actually not too bad, despite all the bashing I hear. Sauron is a very compelling villain. It’s cool to see how he never lies and basically convinces people to do his bidding by having them come up with the ideas themselves. I don’t really care about the Numenoreans and the Harfoots at this point of the story and I’m sure they’ll be more interesting in the future, but Sauron/Celebrimbor and the dwarves have been a good watch so far.

Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace

The usual assortment of anime, Agatha All Along, and a moving trans/crossdressing documentary Casa Susanna from 2023

I watched the U.S. version of Have I Got News For You. It’s on cnn, hosted by Roy Wood Jr. (though I watched an illegal upload of it on YouTube, as I don’t have cnn on my tv package in the Netherlands)

For a first episode, not bad at all. Though it is pretty clear that they don’t have a live audience. But it has potential.

One Hour Photo (again). It's probably the only Hollywood movie that I really like. Every time I watch it, it hits slightly differently.