Movies and TV logging
Mar. 19th, 2019 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckBad Times at the El Royale - DNF. I watched a bit more than half of this and spent more time considering the set design than I did wondering about the characters or the plot. The acting was actually quite good, and I expect it would work really well for someone who was after something different than I was. The way in which the story was structured was kind of fascinating because it shifted character focus pretty regularly and stepped back in time to show another fragment of bigger picture. I probably would have watched the rest if renewing it had been an option, but I felt no regret about returning it unfinished and am unlikely to make any effort to watch the rest.
Continuum season 3 DVD 1-2 - I think we've given up on this one. It's been at least a year since we last watched an episode, and neither of us have felt any urge to watch more. I'm kind of not sure what any of the characters want or why the barriers they face are interesting. Possibly, things might snap into clarity if we watched more, but the show has lost my interest. There isn't anything pulling me along through the slow parts or through the parts that move fast but aren't coherent.
Crazy Rich Asians - I really loved this one. I just really wanted the heroine to spend a while hurling pillows at her boyfriend's head for not warning her. I can understand not telling her when they met, but not telling her before she started packing? That's an asshole move. All of the performances by the actors were excellent. And the heroine's social mistakes and the ways she reacted to the social sabotage she encountered weren't played for audience laughs. A lot of other things were very funny, but those bits weren't.
The Dragon Prince seasons 1-2 - I bounced off of this the first time I tried it, but Scott talked me into trying again after the second season came out (he'd watched it without me and was willing to deal with the damned remote so that I could watch it). I like the characters, generally, and am intrigued by the worldbuilding. I'm not sure what to make of the aunt refusing to become regent given that it was very, very clearly a job that needed doing and would have needed doing even if Ezran had been immediately available. Callum wouldn't be old enough to act as regent and is also, you know, missing.
Elementary season 4-6 - This is still more about the characters for me than it is about the cases of the week. I'll have a long wait before the library gets the next season (it's currently airing, I think. Possibly, I could figure out how to watch it before the library gets it, but I don't care that much).
The House with a Clock in Its Walls - Well, that was a movie I saw. The balance of the story felt wrong, as if there could be something fascinating. It went rather paint by the numbers in terms of how the Evil Plot (tm) worked.
The Iliad of Homer - Great Courses lecture series of 12 half hour episodes by Professor Elizabeth Vandiver of the University of Maryland. I checked this out because of the group on DreamWidth intending to read/reread The Iliad. I didn't end up reading the epic, but I found the lectures fascinating because I hadn't realized how narrowly focused the story was. I also knew less than I thought I did about the context.
iZombie season 1 episodes 1-5 - I liked this much better than I thought I would. I was worried about grossness and creepiness but didn't find either overwhelming. I liked the humor. I wasn't much interested in the case of the week aspect (I generally am not for most shows), but I love the characters and enjoy seeing the actress playing the protagonist as she plays variants on her character each episode.
Kusama Infinity: The Life and Art of Yayoi Kusama - This is a documentary about an artist. I had known that. I hadn't realized that it would be captioned. There were parts of it that I couldn't follow because of that. The artist's work isn't really my cuppa, but the artist's biography was interesting and kind of depressing. There were a lot of terrible things that happened to her due to sexism and racism.
Miraculous Ladybug seasons 1-2 - I've been watching this on Netflix. I have a little trouble with it because it won't give me captions without me needing to change the settings each time a new episode starts. I haven't been doing it because I find the remote extremely difficult to use. Changing profiles so that Cordelia doesn't complain about me watching things on her profile is already a big barrier. I can see a certain amount of Sailor Moon influence here and some Card Captor Sakura, too. This is it's own thing, but I don't think it was created apart from the Magical Girl tradition or from the more general tradition of transformations and secret identities. I wish I was more able to focus enough to pick up details about supporting characters.
No Ordinary Family episodes 6-10 - We're still enjoying this. I've concluded that part of it is that the parents-- parents of teenagers-- are allowed plot focus. The story is about the whole family, and the parents have physically active superpowers while their kids have mental powers. I think we're halfway through the series now.
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms - Extremely pretty, but there wasn't much there beyond that. None of the acting was bad. The story was very much pitched at kids and might be the sort of thing that is much loved a decade or three from now by people who saw it at 7 or 8 years old. I suspect that it will be the sort of thing that kids build layers into.
Star Wars Rebels season 4 - This was fairly solid, not spectacular, not terrible. I was confused by Kanan and Hera's romance arc because I had assumed, in season 1, that they were married, with a solid relationship that wasn't any more plot important than other relationships on the Ghost.
Tea with the Dames - I think this only works if a viewer has an investment in the specific people involved or in the history of theater and/or film. My suspicion is that the producers wanted everything to be spontaneous and actually had that backfire because there were a number of points when the ladies seemed to be waiting for a cue and not quite sure what was wanted of them. Possibly giving them more time to prepare might have yielded more anecdotes. The interesting stories were things that seemed to be trying to avoid anything that might hurt the subjects of the stories (if still living) or their surviving family. That's not the sort of decision to make on the fly.
Timeslip episodes 1-2 - This is a BBC time travel show that ran one season in 1970. The bits that we watched were kind of terrible. It involves some kids stumbling through some sort of portal to 1940. The episodes were in black and white. The IMDb says that the show was mostly filmed in color but that only one episode survived in color. The time portal had sound effects that reminded me and Scott of TARDIS sounds.
Venom - DNF. I found all of the characters irritating, and we only got about half an hour in. I kept asking the characters what on earth they thought would happen when they made the choices they did.
Continuum season 3 DVD 1-2 - I think we've given up on this one. It's been at least a year since we last watched an episode, and neither of us have felt any urge to watch more. I'm kind of not sure what any of the characters want or why the barriers they face are interesting. Possibly, things might snap into clarity if we watched more, but the show has lost my interest. There isn't anything pulling me along through the slow parts or through the parts that move fast but aren't coherent.
Crazy Rich Asians - I really loved this one. I just really wanted the heroine to spend a while hurling pillows at her boyfriend's head for not warning her. I can understand not telling her when they met, but not telling her before she started packing? That's an asshole move. All of the performances by the actors were excellent. And the heroine's social mistakes and the ways she reacted to the social sabotage she encountered weren't played for audience laughs. A lot of other things were very funny, but those bits weren't.
The Dragon Prince seasons 1-2 - I bounced off of this the first time I tried it, but Scott talked me into trying again after the second season came out (he'd watched it without me and was willing to deal with the damned remote so that I could watch it). I like the characters, generally, and am intrigued by the worldbuilding. I'm not sure what to make of the aunt refusing to become regent given that it was very, very clearly a job that needed doing and would have needed doing even if Ezran had been immediately available. Callum wouldn't be old enough to act as regent and is also, you know, missing.
Elementary season 4-6 - This is still more about the characters for me than it is about the cases of the week. I'll have a long wait before the library gets the next season (it's currently airing, I think. Possibly, I could figure out how to watch it before the library gets it, but I don't care that much).
The House with a Clock in Its Walls - Well, that was a movie I saw. The balance of the story felt wrong, as if there could be something fascinating. It went rather paint by the numbers in terms of how the Evil Plot (tm) worked.
The Iliad of Homer - Great Courses lecture series of 12 half hour episodes by Professor Elizabeth Vandiver of the University of Maryland. I checked this out because of the group on DreamWidth intending to read/reread The Iliad. I didn't end up reading the epic, but I found the lectures fascinating because I hadn't realized how narrowly focused the story was. I also knew less than I thought I did about the context.
iZombie season 1 episodes 1-5 - I liked this much better than I thought I would. I was worried about grossness and creepiness but didn't find either overwhelming. I liked the humor. I wasn't much interested in the case of the week aspect (I generally am not for most shows), but I love the characters and enjoy seeing the actress playing the protagonist as she plays variants on her character each episode.
Kusama Infinity: The Life and Art of Yayoi Kusama - This is a documentary about an artist. I had known that. I hadn't realized that it would be captioned. There were parts of it that I couldn't follow because of that. The artist's work isn't really my cuppa, but the artist's biography was interesting and kind of depressing. There were a lot of terrible things that happened to her due to sexism and racism.
Miraculous Ladybug seasons 1-2 - I've been watching this on Netflix. I have a little trouble with it because it won't give me captions without me needing to change the settings each time a new episode starts. I haven't been doing it because I find the remote extremely difficult to use. Changing profiles so that Cordelia doesn't complain about me watching things on her profile is already a big barrier. I can see a certain amount of Sailor Moon influence here and some Card Captor Sakura, too. This is it's own thing, but I don't think it was created apart from the Magical Girl tradition or from the more general tradition of transformations and secret identities. I wish I was more able to focus enough to pick up details about supporting characters.
No Ordinary Family episodes 6-10 - We're still enjoying this. I've concluded that part of it is that the parents-- parents of teenagers-- are allowed plot focus. The story is about the whole family, and the parents have physically active superpowers while their kids have mental powers. I think we're halfway through the series now.
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms - Extremely pretty, but there wasn't much there beyond that. None of the acting was bad. The story was very much pitched at kids and might be the sort of thing that is much loved a decade or three from now by people who saw it at 7 or 8 years old. I suspect that it will be the sort of thing that kids build layers into.
Star Wars Rebels season 4 - This was fairly solid, not spectacular, not terrible. I was confused by Kanan and Hera's romance arc because I had assumed, in season 1, that they were married, with a solid relationship that wasn't any more plot important than other relationships on the Ghost.
Tea with the Dames - I think this only works if a viewer has an investment in the specific people involved or in the history of theater and/or film. My suspicion is that the producers wanted everything to be spontaneous and actually had that backfire because there were a number of points when the ladies seemed to be waiting for a cue and not quite sure what was wanted of them. Possibly giving them more time to prepare might have yielded more anecdotes. The interesting stories were things that seemed to be trying to avoid anything that might hurt the subjects of the stories (if still living) or their surviving family. That's not the sort of decision to make on the fly.
Timeslip episodes 1-2 - This is a BBC time travel show that ran one season in 1970. The bits that we watched were kind of terrible. It involves some kids stumbling through some sort of portal to 1940. The episodes were in black and white. The IMDb says that the show was mostly filmed in color but that only one episode survived in color. The time portal had sound effects that reminded me and Scott of TARDIS sounds.
Venom - DNF. I found all of the characters irritating, and we only got about half an hour in. I kept asking the characters what on earth they thought would happen when they made the choices they did.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-19 05:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-28 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-28 10:28 pm (UTC)I loved the final scenes of the season six finale. I thought they could have easily ended the series there.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-19 06:27 pm (UTC)*wince* your ML experience sounds exhausting. I wonder why Netflix makes you turn on the captions every time?!
no subject
Date: 2019-03-28 09:58 pm (UTC)I'm wondering if the captioning problem is some sort of annoying AppleTV thing. I know that some people don't like captions. My FIL will turn them off on our TV if he's ever watching anything here.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-08 06:37 pm (UTC)Urgh, that does sound likely! How annoying, you'd think they'd still save your last preferences. :(
no subject
Date: 2019-03-19 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-28 09:56 pm (UTC)