DVD and TV Logging
Mar. 26th, 2020 01:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckThis is #2 of either three or four posts.
I watched some of these more than a year ago (and others even longer ago). I'm very far behind on logging the things I've watched. This means that I've forgotten a lot of details about some of the movies and series.
Mary Poppins Returns - This movie felt like it was made out of plastic. None of it felt remotely human in emotional content. It was pretty enough, but it was also remote and contrived. Now that the Mary Poppins movies have been collapsed into a single AO3 category, I shan't offer Mary Poppins again because I have no intention of ever watching this movie again.
MIB International - I didn't think this was as bad as the reviews painted it. It wasn't great by any means and relied heavily on viewers not having time to question the chain of events. There were a lot of things that made no real sense, but mostly the spectacle worked as spectacle.
Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers season 1 - Sadly, this has no captioning; fortunately, there's not much in the way of overwhelming complications. The episodes lived up to (down to?) my expectations in terms of cheesiness and rubber monster suits. I just wanted something ridiculous that I could follow with about 10% of my attention. I have no nostalgic attachment to the series, never having seen any bit of it before, and the library has dozens of different DVDs from various sub-series.
Mirai - I really enjoyed this movie. A little boy with a brand new sister has a series of magical adventures that show him bits of his family's history and future. The family issues in adjusting to the new baby rang completely true to me, and the animation was beautiful.
Murder She Wrote season 5 - Angela Lansbury must have been busy doing something else during season 5 because at least a quarter of these episodes focus on other characters entirely with her in short framing snippets as if the episodes are stories she's telling the audience. As always, these episodes are exercises in both 'It's that one actor. You know, the one who's in everything,' and 'OMG, am I just not supposed to notice the racism, sexism, etc.?' I'm pretty sure that most of the latter is simply the assumptions of the people making the show and weren't particularly out of step with the audience of the time. I still enjoy the predictable rhythms, and I watched season 6 right after Glastonbury Fayre when I really needed something that didn't require much attention.
My Hero Academia season 2 pt. 1 - This was tedious because it was all sports festival. I know that these long fights are a feature of the genre, and the sequence introduces and/or fleshes out a lot of supporting characters, but... Tedious.
My Hero Academia season 2 pt. 2 - I liked this set of episodes better. I particularly liked the one that focused on the other kids and their internships. The Stain fight was longer than it needed to be, but Stain and his philosophy have long term repercussions. I think that some of my frustration is that the canon puts a lot of emphasis on things that fic writers don't bother with. I read some fics first and tend to prefer those over canon.
My Hero Academia season 3 pt. 1-2 - This season covered a good bit more of timeline than I expected. Again, I felt off balance because the focus was on things that differed from what I expected based on fics. This had the training camp and the provisional licensing exam.
My Little Pony season 1 DVD 1 - For some reason, I thought there was a story arc in this. I ended up returning the season set to the library unfinished because I wasn't tracking the characters and episodes.
Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki - Cordelia sat with me to watch this. We both ended up kind of nodding off, and I think it's that a lot of what people say in the documentary is culturally filtered and therefore kind of opaque to the two of us. The interview responses are all very even, and the visuals aren't particularly arresting. It's easy to get distracted and to miss information.
No Ordinary Family season 1 - A family on vacation crashlands in a swamp. They all survive and get home. Then they discover that they've all gained superpowers. The teenagers have mental powers while the parents have physical powers. There's a complicated conspiracy in the background that slowly comes into focus.
Phantom Boy - This is an odd animated movie. The titular phantom boy is a cancer patient who finds that he can leave his body and wander around the hospital and city, including being able to fly. He ends up helping out a hospitalized police detective (who's on the verge of being fired) and an intrepid reporter as they try to locate a criminal who is threatening their city.
Raffles episode 1 - DNF. I was so very, very bored. Plus there weren't any closed captions. I could still follow what people were saying, but it's easier with captioning. The supposedly dashing costumes were occasionally kind of... astonishing.
Ralph Breaks the Internet - Parts of this were cute, and parts were funny. Ralph learns a pointed lesson about him not owning Vanellope and about his efforts to curtail her choices being toxic. It's a kids movie, so they end the story as friends again, but they're long distance friends, and Ralph has had to find a way to live that's completely different from how he used to. People change. Paths diverge. I think I viewed this largely from the point of view of being a parent with a child whose path may lead her a long way away some day, but I could also see shadows of toxic romantic/sexual entitlement. I like the idea of a kids movie that never shows Vanellope as wrong to follow her dreams and doesn't reward Ralph for his persistence of attachment.
The Real History of Secret Societies - This is a 4 DVD Great Courses set with 25 lectures. The lecturer is Professor Richard B. Spence. I found this course both fascinating and frustrating. The lecturer seemed to be trying hard both to come across as an expert and to emphasize that a lot of the interconnections weren't documented. He also never addressed the possibility that a lot of the reach of these secret societies was more in terms of an old boys' network than a pre-planned, agenda driven conspiracy. The lectures came across as rambling things with a lot of 'you can fill in the gaps' omissions and suggestions about might-bes and maybes. I got lost a lot when I missed some bridging sentence.
The Road to El Dorado - DNF. I didn't connect with the characters, and I felt very uncomfortable with the plot once they had crossed the Atlantic.
Room Service - Marx Brothers. I know there was some semblance of a plot, but really, I mostly watched for the schtick. I spent some time trying to assign the brothers to specific commedia dell'arte roles, but I don't remember the clown roles particularly well.
I watched some of these more than a year ago (and others even longer ago). I'm very far behind on logging the things I've watched. This means that I've forgotten a lot of details about some of the movies and series.
Mary Poppins Returns - This movie felt like it was made out of plastic. None of it felt remotely human in emotional content. It was pretty enough, but it was also remote and contrived. Now that the Mary Poppins movies have been collapsed into a single AO3 category, I shan't offer Mary Poppins again because I have no intention of ever watching this movie again.
MIB International - I didn't think this was as bad as the reviews painted it. It wasn't great by any means and relied heavily on viewers not having time to question the chain of events. There were a lot of things that made no real sense, but mostly the spectacle worked as spectacle.
Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers season 1 - Sadly, this has no captioning; fortunately, there's not much in the way of overwhelming complications. The episodes lived up to (down to?) my expectations in terms of cheesiness and rubber monster suits. I just wanted something ridiculous that I could follow with about 10% of my attention. I have no nostalgic attachment to the series, never having seen any bit of it before, and the library has dozens of different DVDs from various sub-series.
Mirai - I really enjoyed this movie. A little boy with a brand new sister has a series of magical adventures that show him bits of his family's history and future. The family issues in adjusting to the new baby rang completely true to me, and the animation was beautiful.
Murder She Wrote season 5 - Angela Lansbury must have been busy doing something else during season 5 because at least a quarter of these episodes focus on other characters entirely with her in short framing snippets as if the episodes are stories she's telling the audience. As always, these episodes are exercises in both 'It's that one actor. You know, the one who's in everything,' and 'OMG, am I just not supposed to notice the racism, sexism, etc.?' I'm pretty sure that most of the latter is simply the assumptions of the people making the show and weren't particularly out of step with the audience of the time. I still enjoy the predictable rhythms, and I watched season 6 right after Glastonbury Fayre when I really needed something that didn't require much attention.
My Hero Academia season 2 pt. 1 - This was tedious because it was all sports festival. I know that these long fights are a feature of the genre, and the sequence introduces and/or fleshes out a lot of supporting characters, but... Tedious.
My Hero Academia season 2 pt. 2 - I liked this set of episodes better. I particularly liked the one that focused on the other kids and their internships. The Stain fight was longer than it needed to be, but Stain and his philosophy have long term repercussions. I think that some of my frustration is that the canon puts a lot of emphasis on things that fic writers don't bother with. I read some fics first and tend to prefer those over canon.
My Hero Academia season 3 pt. 1-2 - This season covered a good bit more of timeline than I expected. Again, I felt off balance because the focus was on things that differed from what I expected based on fics. This had the training camp and the provisional licensing exam.
My Little Pony season 1 DVD 1 - For some reason, I thought there was a story arc in this. I ended up returning the season set to the library unfinished because I wasn't tracking the characters and episodes.
Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki - Cordelia sat with me to watch this. We both ended up kind of nodding off, and I think it's that a lot of what people say in the documentary is culturally filtered and therefore kind of opaque to the two of us. The interview responses are all very even, and the visuals aren't particularly arresting. It's easy to get distracted and to miss information.
No Ordinary Family season 1 - A family on vacation crashlands in a swamp. They all survive and get home. Then they discover that they've all gained superpowers. The teenagers have mental powers while the parents have physical powers. There's a complicated conspiracy in the background that slowly comes into focus.
Phantom Boy - This is an odd animated movie. The titular phantom boy is a cancer patient who finds that he can leave his body and wander around the hospital and city, including being able to fly. He ends up helping out a hospitalized police detective (who's on the verge of being fired) and an intrepid reporter as they try to locate a criminal who is threatening their city.
Raffles episode 1 - DNF. I was so very, very bored. Plus there weren't any closed captions. I could still follow what people were saying, but it's easier with captioning. The supposedly dashing costumes were occasionally kind of... astonishing.
Ralph Breaks the Internet - Parts of this were cute, and parts were funny. Ralph learns a pointed lesson about him not owning Vanellope and about his efforts to curtail her choices being toxic. It's a kids movie, so they end the story as friends again, but they're long distance friends, and Ralph has had to find a way to live that's completely different from how he used to. People change. Paths diverge. I think I viewed this largely from the point of view of being a parent with a child whose path may lead her a long way away some day, but I could also see shadows of toxic romantic/sexual entitlement. I like the idea of a kids movie that never shows Vanellope as wrong to follow her dreams and doesn't reward Ralph for his persistence of attachment.
The Real History of Secret Societies - This is a 4 DVD Great Courses set with 25 lectures. The lecturer is Professor Richard B. Spence. I found this course both fascinating and frustrating. The lecturer seemed to be trying hard both to come across as an expert and to emphasize that a lot of the interconnections weren't documented. He also never addressed the possibility that a lot of the reach of these secret societies was more in terms of an old boys' network than a pre-planned, agenda driven conspiracy. The lectures came across as rambling things with a lot of 'you can fill in the gaps' omissions and suggestions about might-bes and maybes. I got lost a lot when I missed some bridging sentence.
The Road to El Dorado - DNF. I didn't connect with the characters, and I felt very uncomfortable with the plot once they had crossed the Atlantic.
Room Service - Marx Brothers. I know there was some semblance of a plot, but really, I mostly watched for the schtick. I spent some time trying to assign the brothers to specific commedia dell'arte roles, but I don't remember the clown roles particularly well.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-26 05:33 pm (UTC)I've added Mirai to my Netflix queue on the strength of your recommendation.
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