DVD Logging
Dec. 5th, 2011 07:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckBurn Notice season 4 DVD 1-4 - I mostly enjoyed this season. I think the new character, Jesse, added something. Wondering what he'd find out when and how he'd react created tension. I'm not sure I could sum up the story arc. That's likely more because I've lost the details than because they weren't there. It's fun to see the team doing what they do with competence. I do wonder how long they can drag out Michael being stuck in Miami. The show pretty much ends when he goes elsewhere, but the complications simply build into an unsustainable structure.
Clannad 1-4 - There wasn't enough to these episodes to keep me watching the show. I kept hoping that something would happen, and nothing did. There were tiny fragments in each episode of a girl alone, in an oddly lit world, building a robot, but they didn't seem to be connected to anything else and didn't intrigue me enough to carry me forward. So far as I could see, this was about a relatively ordinary high school age boy meeting a bunch of different girls. The girl he spent the most time with was trying to restart the drama club and running into difficulty over it. That wasn't enough to keep me watching.
Defying Gravity episodes 1-2 - We didn't find enough in the first two episodes to keep us watching. We only watched the second episode because we were hoping that it would improve and become more interesting. I'm not sure how a show with such an interesting premise-- a small crew sets off on a several year voyage of exploration through the solar system-- could put us off so badly. We weren't even curious about the mysterious something that's manipulating events to make sure that some people are part of the crew and some people aren't. I was also incredibly put off by the female character who'd had an illegal abortion who kept hearing the sound of a baby crying. It made me really angry.
Eden of the East - I had to look up the definition of 'NEET' in order to understand what was going on in this one. The characters use the term a lot. I liked the paranoid conspiracy feel to the story. The main character has amnesia, so viewers can find out what's going on as he does. He has a special phone that's a direct line to a concierge who can do anything. For a price. He has a certain amount of money to spend, and each request costs him. He has to figure out what's going on. I enjoyed the series. The ending wasn't fully satisfactory, but it was a lot better than I feared it would be-- Massive conspiracies/puzzles like this are a lot easier to set up in a story than they are to resolve. Many writers throw in things they can't carry through logically.
Hunter x Hunter 1-5 - I will probably watch more of this eventually, assuming Netflix doesn't lose some of the DVDs (that happens too often with anime series). I did feel like everything that happened was coming from a different point of view than the hero's. That is, I always felt like what I was watching was about other characters observing Gon. It's been a long time since I read the manga, but I didn't notice any major deviations from it. The challenges of the Hunter Exam intrigued me.
Karin 1-2 - This was cute and potentially sweet, but too much depended on the main character's embarrassment, so I gave up. Based on having read some of the manga, I kind of expected that I would give up on it when I let the show come to the top of my queue, but I wanted to try it. The story's about a girl in a family of vampires. The rest of her family are normal vampires, but she, instead of drinking blood, produces excess blood and has to inject it into other people. In the first episode, she meets a boy whose proximity makes her body produce blood faster.
Kim Possible: A Sitch in Time - I think this movie would have worked better if I knew Kim Possible better. I did enjoy it, but I knew nothing about who the villains were, and I'm sure I missed in jokes. The plot involved time travel which is always fun. I'm also impressed with Shego as a villain. She seemed better able to plan than any of the others.
Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian - This was pretty silly. It was fun to watch as long as I didn't think too hard. When I thought about it, I wondered where the Smithsonian night guards were and why every place around the museums seemed to be deserted. The villain wasn't very scary and was relatively easily defeated. We had hoped to get Delia to watch this as she liked the first movie, but she refused (for reasons still unclear to us).
Sorcerer's Apprentice - The phrase 'Prime Merlinian' is never going to not make me laugh. The movie's about a kid who finds out that he's a sorcerer. He has to learn how to make magic work before the bad guys hunt him down and destroy the world. I like the fact that he ends up using science to help him win (I don't think him winning is a spoiler-- It's a Disney movie; he's not going to lose). I doubt I'll remember much about this movie in a month. The details have already mostly faded, and it's only been a week.
Stranger Than Fiction - As a man goes about his everyday business, he starts to hear a voice, a woman's voice, narrating his actions. She's always right, and she says he's going to die. The story manages to be funny and touching as the guy searches the woman writing his life.
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip DVD 1 - This was okay. I can't give it more than that. The dialogue was clever, and the characters were distinct, but it never rose above okay. Possibly, if we'd seen it before West Wing and before Sports Night, we'd have rated it more highly, possibly not. It's lacking something. Scott commented that it felt bloated to him, like it would have been better off at half the length per episode. I'm not sure that would have helped. I suppose it might have. I put the next DVD of this in our Netflix queue, but I'm not going to move it up. It'll be there if we're ever, for some reason, looking for a show that's okay.
Tron: Legacy - We didn't finish this. Partway through, we looked at each other and agreed that we simply didn't care. The acting was flat, and the visuals were uninteresting. I kept looking for something, anything, more interesting on my computer during the combat sequences. It was dull.
X-Men: First Class - I never quite connected with any of the characters in this movie. I wanted to, but there were so many of them that I had trouble tracking who was who. I did think that Charles Xavier had things too easy. I didn't believe that he actually understood how much privilege he had and what it meant not to have it. I didn't think that Erik's moment of putting on the helmet worked. I simply didn't buy it. At any rate, I'm glad to have seen this one simply so that I know what other people are talking about when they discuss this movie. I'm not really glad for any other reason.
Clannad 1-4 - There wasn't enough to these episodes to keep me watching the show. I kept hoping that something would happen, and nothing did. There were tiny fragments in each episode of a girl alone, in an oddly lit world, building a robot, but they didn't seem to be connected to anything else and didn't intrigue me enough to carry me forward. So far as I could see, this was about a relatively ordinary high school age boy meeting a bunch of different girls. The girl he spent the most time with was trying to restart the drama club and running into difficulty over it. That wasn't enough to keep me watching.
Defying Gravity episodes 1-2 - We didn't find enough in the first two episodes to keep us watching. We only watched the second episode because we were hoping that it would improve and become more interesting. I'm not sure how a show with such an interesting premise-- a small crew sets off on a several year voyage of exploration through the solar system-- could put us off so badly. We weren't even curious about the mysterious something that's manipulating events to make sure that some people are part of the crew and some people aren't. I was also incredibly put off by the female character who'd had an illegal abortion who kept hearing the sound of a baby crying. It made me really angry.
Eden of the East - I had to look up the definition of 'NEET' in order to understand what was going on in this one. The characters use the term a lot. I liked the paranoid conspiracy feel to the story. The main character has amnesia, so viewers can find out what's going on as he does. He has a special phone that's a direct line to a concierge who can do anything. For a price. He has a certain amount of money to spend, and each request costs him. He has to figure out what's going on. I enjoyed the series. The ending wasn't fully satisfactory, but it was a lot better than I feared it would be-- Massive conspiracies/puzzles like this are a lot easier to set up in a story than they are to resolve. Many writers throw in things they can't carry through logically.
Hunter x Hunter 1-5 - I will probably watch more of this eventually, assuming Netflix doesn't lose some of the DVDs (that happens too often with anime series). I did feel like everything that happened was coming from a different point of view than the hero's. That is, I always felt like what I was watching was about other characters observing Gon. It's been a long time since I read the manga, but I didn't notice any major deviations from it. The challenges of the Hunter Exam intrigued me.
Karin 1-2 - This was cute and potentially sweet, but too much depended on the main character's embarrassment, so I gave up. Based on having read some of the manga, I kind of expected that I would give up on it when I let the show come to the top of my queue, but I wanted to try it. The story's about a girl in a family of vampires. The rest of her family are normal vampires, but she, instead of drinking blood, produces excess blood and has to inject it into other people. In the first episode, she meets a boy whose proximity makes her body produce blood faster.
Kim Possible: A Sitch in Time - I think this movie would have worked better if I knew Kim Possible better. I did enjoy it, but I knew nothing about who the villains were, and I'm sure I missed in jokes. The plot involved time travel which is always fun. I'm also impressed with Shego as a villain. She seemed better able to plan than any of the others.
Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian - This was pretty silly. It was fun to watch as long as I didn't think too hard. When I thought about it, I wondered where the Smithsonian night guards were and why every place around the museums seemed to be deserted. The villain wasn't very scary and was relatively easily defeated. We had hoped to get Delia to watch this as she liked the first movie, but she refused (for reasons still unclear to us).
Sorcerer's Apprentice - The phrase 'Prime Merlinian' is never going to not make me laugh. The movie's about a kid who finds out that he's a sorcerer. He has to learn how to make magic work before the bad guys hunt him down and destroy the world. I like the fact that he ends up using science to help him win (I don't think him winning is a spoiler-- It's a Disney movie; he's not going to lose). I doubt I'll remember much about this movie in a month. The details have already mostly faded, and it's only been a week.
Stranger Than Fiction - As a man goes about his everyday business, he starts to hear a voice, a woman's voice, narrating his actions. She's always right, and she says he's going to die. The story manages to be funny and touching as the guy searches the woman writing his life.
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip DVD 1 - This was okay. I can't give it more than that. The dialogue was clever, and the characters were distinct, but it never rose above okay. Possibly, if we'd seen it before West Wing and before Sports Night, we'd have rated it more highly, possibly not. It's lacking something. Scott commented that it felt bloated to him, like it would have been better off at half the length per episode. I'm not sure that would have helped. I suppose it might have. I put the next DVD of this in our Netflix queue, but I'm not going to move it up. It'll be there if we're ever, for some reason, looking for a show that's okay.
Tron: Legacy - We didn't finish this. Partway through, we looked at each other and agreed that we simply didn't care. The acting was flat, and the visuals were uninteresting. I kept looking for something, anything, more interesting on my computer during the combat sequences. It was dull.
X-Men: First Class - I never quite connected with any of the characters in this movie. I wanted to, but there were so many of them that I had trouble tracking who was who. I did think that Charles Xavier had things too easy. I didn't believe that he actually understood how much privilege he had and what it meant not to have it. I didn't think that Erik's moment of putting on the helmet worked. I simply didn't buy it. At any rate, I'm glad to have seen this one simply so that I know what other people are talking about when they discuss this movie. I'm not really glad for any other reason.
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no subject
Date: 2011-12-06 01:32 am (UTC)Re: Stranger than Fiction, I agree 100%. I loved the story and all the characters in it.
Word on Tron: Legacy. What a disappointment.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-06 01:45 am (UTC)I was a little dubious about Stranger than Fiction. I could see too many ways for the premise to go wrong. It managed to hit the right notes, though, and not to put me off in the least. I liked Emma Thompson as the writer, particularly.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-06 05:15 am (UTC)We just finished watching the second season, and I would recommend it highly, with the caveats that a) some of the plotlines are very sad, second season in particular, and b) the deal with the girl and robot in the empty world is not fully explained till the finale.
Eden of the East kept me on my toes! I had a really hard time keeping track of the plot. There is a movie sequel which picks up three months after the end of the series and does not do *any* recap - I was wishing I'd rewatched the series and taken notes. Agree that it handled the twists and ending better than many conspiracy stories.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-09 01:51 am (UTC)I have to try the Eden of the East movie a try. I'll have to see if Netflix provides the DVD or if I'm stuck with streaming it (which means watching the dub in most cases).