DVD and TV Logging
Jan. 18th, 2021 01:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckThe Age of Henry VIII - Great Courses lecture series of 24 thirty minute lectures by Professor Dale Oak of the College of William and Mary. I enjoyed this because I have enough background to hang some of the details on. I lose a lot of what I see/hear in these lecture series, but I context for this already. Main conclusion: Henry VIII was an absolute asshole.
The Assassination Bureau - The dialogue here sounded like it was playing two rooms over rather inside the room I was in. Fortunately, there were clear captions, so I mostly followed the plot. I just didn't find it as clever as I think I was supposed to.
Bride and Prejudice - Rewatch. I still love this movie. It's colorful, and the songs are great fun. Pride and Prejudice translates pretty well to modern day India with Darcy as an American.
Children who Chase Lost Voices from Below - Animated Japanese movie. The plot is only semi-coherent in as much as there's portal fantasy travel to a setting with a lot of things only barely sketched in. I think it might have been more interesting as a series, but I also wasn't very interested in the two characters from our world.
Cranford part 2 - I had difficulty watching the doctor's courting plotline here because the utter disaster approaching was clear from the first conversation. The ladies of the town cooperating to help Miss Matty after she loses everything was very sweet without taking any of them out of character.
Doctor Who (4th Doctor) season 1 - This season is about half UNIT episodes on Earth and half stuff with Sarah Jane and Harry accompanying the Doctor into space. The special effects include a lot of rubber suits and other things that fit the BBC budget. Some of the stories should have been shorter than they were (by an episode or three), but that's common for the era.
Doctor Who (2005) season 12 - Scott was mightily displeased by the characterization of the Master in this season because he feels that the Master has never before been a Nihilist and that the Master's more usual megalomania is much more interesting in an antagonist. He allows that future developments may justify the differences, but it was a major disconnect for him.
Enola Holmes - I enjoyed watching this, but I also thought that the plot was a mess that focused on things I didn't find as interesting as the things that were skimmed over lightly. The mystery behind the murder attempts and the motivation for them was... um... unsatisfying. The acting was generally good, and many of the actors were pretty. I'd have liked something closer to the books or something that went further into Enola's mother's activities and her friends. Still, if they make a sequel, I will watch it.
The Frankie Drake Mysteries season 1-3 - This is a mystery series set in Toronto in the 1920s. Frankie and Trudy run a detective agency but have trouble getting a lot of people to take them seriously because they're both women and because Trudy is Black. They have help from Mary, a morality officer with the Toronto police, and Flo, an assistant in the coroner's office. Mary wants to be a full police officer, and Flo wants to be a doctor. Frankie is the least interesting character in the extended cast. The mysteries are only so-so.
Hilda season 2 - I'm so happy that this show got a second season, and I really hope it gets a third. I still find Hilda a charming protagonist, but I'm glad that the show hit her with some consequences and with some reminders that she's not automatically the center. I liked seeing Frida get some attention, and I thought that Hilda's mother was trying very hard to be a good parent. "Don't lie to me about where you're going" really isn't all that onerous as parent-child relationship expectations go, at least in this situation. Hilda's lies came across not so much as her not trusting her mother as her not seeing why she should bother taking time to talk to her mother. Anyway. Trollberg remains as weird as ever with all sorts of interesting and unexpected corners. I had fun watching.
John Wick 1-3 - I watched these because I'd seen some exchange requests that intrigued me and an article or three that talked about the worldbuilding. Having watched all three, I'm curious about the worldbuilding, but I am so not the audience for the movies more generally. I can't follow the visuals worth a damn, so long sections of the movies are just so much vertigo inducing blur. That makes finding the bits that interest me much more difficult.
Jojo Rabbit - I'm conflicted about this movie. It's well written, acted, directed, etc. Parts are funny; parts are heartbreaking. I just... I feel like it's decades too soon for this movie. I also felt like the bits that were heartbreaking were so understated that they could easily be missed. It felt a lot like reading some of the plays that I read in college during a Spanish class on theater of protest under Franco. As if plausible deniability was necessary and desirable.
Little Women (2019) - Cordelia got this for Christmas. I can't remember if we gave it to her or if some other relative did. I'd had it on my to-watch list for quite a while, so I borrowed it and watched it. I enjoyed the acting and the writing. Each of the girls was quite distinct from the others, and I quite liked the implication that Jo's marriage was added to the story by editorial fiat rather than because it was genuinely autobiographical.
Lucifer season 1 - We've been getting this on DVD from Netflix. I think I prefer it that way because I find full seasons of most shows too much all at once. I find Lucifer charming as a fictional character, but I'm quite sure I'd hate spending time interacting with a person who acts as he does. I'm not very invested in the police investigation plots or in any of the potential romances. We'll be going on with the series, though.
Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears - I could see the bones of a decent movie underneath this, but all of the stuff that fleshed out the story was bad. Racist, terribly plotted, and crossing genres for reasons that I never figured out. I don't need Phryne Fisher as Indiana Jones; I don't want Phryne Fisher as Indiana Jones. I didn't want or need supernatural elements here. This would have been a better story if 90% of it took place in England. The massacre during the war could still be a part of it, but I'd like to see the survivors with agency and intention. A great deal of what happens in England in the movie could be explained by those survivors trying to find the people responsible.
Murder on the Orient Express (2017) - I'll start with the obvious-- Branagh's mustache was horrifying; but for the lack of visible tails, I'd swear he had two lavender mice pasted on his face. Possibly two petite lavender ferrets? Dead animals of unnatural color anyway. The rest was perfectly fine but no more than fine.
Murder She Wrote season 7 - I enjoy these, mostly, but they're very... of their time. Some of the plots absolutely wouldn't work in our present day, but I so very much love Jessica Fletcher as a soothing backdrop while I write.
My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising - Movie in the same setting and with the same characters as the anime series. The class of would-be heroes is assigned to take care of an isolated but populated island without oversight by adult heroes. The early parts of that work involve a lot of jump starting tractors and finding lost pets. Then the island is attacked by villains, and the students have to try to protect the population for the hours it will take for help to arrive. The students use their powers cleverly and cooperate to take down opponents well beyond their weight class. I cared a lot more about the supporting characters than I did about Izuku and Bakugo.
Noein episodes 1-24 - I should have written this one up sooner. At this point, I mainly remember that parts of it were vastly incoherent. There were multiple timelines and dimensions and multiple versions of the characters. There was something about choosing the world that would survive and about trying to collapse everything into a single and permanent static reality. The series was good enough that I finished it, but it wasn't memorable or emotionally compelling. Some of this may have been because I watched it on DVD from Netflix over the course of a year, but I don't think all of it is.
The Ottoman Empire - Great Courses lecture series by Prof. Kenneth W. Harl of Tulane University. Thirty six lectures on the history of the Ottoman Empire. Prof. Harl does a lot of history lectures for Great Courses and is reasonably good at it. I only gave this course about half my attention. I think I still learned things, but I doubt I can remember specifics about any of the historical figures I met here for the first time.
Phineas and Ferb: Candace Against the Universe - This was fun, very much like a long episode. It's been a few months, and I only vaguely remember plot details, but I know it didn't stop moving and that I laughed.
A Simple Favor - This is a mystery/thriller. A SAHM makes friends with another mother, one who works. There are a lot of signs that the other mother has secrets and is calculating a lot of interactions. Then the other mother vanishes. The SAHM and the other mother's husband both try to figure out what's happened. I wasn't surprised by anything that happened, but I think I was supposed to be. Decent acting.
Spies in Disguise - A superspy ends up getting turned into a pigeon and has to team up with a science/gadgets guy in order to save the world. The movie's animated and funny. I enjoyed it much more than I'd expected to and would recommend it to people who like this sort of story.
Steamboy - DNF. The dub isn't bad in as much as I'd listen to Patrick Stewart read a dictionary. The animation was difficult for me to follow, though, because it looked muddy to me, browns and grays, primarily, with a lot of the action happening in places with low light.
Timeless season 1-2 and Finale - I both enjoyed this and found the story arc frustrating. The time travel only had consequences when they would propel the plot. The enemy organization never made solid sense to me which meant that the stakes were confusing as well. I liked the characters, and I enjoyed the episodes enough to handwave the opposition. I just never quite felt like the stakes were solidly real.
Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia - I enjoyed this show quite a bit but liked it less than I did 3Below. I suspect that that's partly because I found 3Below funnier. Trollhunters had the burden of setting up the characters and the parameters of the world. It also had a running plot about the protagonists hiding what's going on from the adults around them.
Wizards: Tales of Arcadia - I liked this show less well than I did Trollhunters. I still quite enjoyed it, but I didn't like the inevitability of events around the time travel. I also didn't connect particularly with the new characters.
The Assassination Bureau - The dialogue here sounded like it was playing two rooms over rather inside the room I was in. Fortunately, there were clear captions, so I mostly followed the plot. I just didn't find it as clever as I think I was supposed to.
Bride and Prejudice - Rewatch. I still love this movie. It's colorful, and the songs are great fun. Pride and Prejudice translates pretty well to modern day India with Darcy as an American.
Children who Chase Lost Voices from Below - Animated Japanese movie. The plot is only semi-coherent in as much as there's portal fantasy travel to a setting with a lot of things only barely sketched in. I think it might have been more interesting as a series, but I also wasn't very interested in the two characters from our world.
Cranford part 2 - I had difficulty watching the doctor's courting plotline here because the utter disaster approaching was clear from the first conversation. The ladies of the town cooperating to help Miss Matty after she loses everything was very sweet without taking any of them out of character.
Doctor Who (4th Doctor) season 1 - This season is about half UNIT episodes on Earth and half stuff with Sarah Jane and Harry accompanying the Doctor into space. The special effects include a lot of rubber suits and other things that fit the BBC budget. Some of the stories should have been shorter than they were (by an episode or three), but that's common for the era.
Doctor Who (2005) season 12 - Scott was mightily displeased by the characterization of the Master in this season because he feels that the Master has never before been a Nihilist and that the Master's more usual megalomania is much more interesting in an antagonist. He allows that future developments may justify the differences, but it was a major disconnect for him.
Enola Holmes - I enjoyed watching this, but I also thought that the plot was a mess that focused on things I didn't find as interesting as the things that were skimmed over lightly. The mystery behind the murder attempts and the motivation for them was... um... unsatisfying. The acting was generally good, and many of the actors were pretty. I'd have liked something closer to the books or something that went further into Enola's mother's activities and her friends. Still, if they make a sequel, I will watch it.
The Frankie Drake Mysteries season 1-3 - This is a mystery series set in Toronto in the 1920s. Frankie and Trudy run a detective agency but have trouble getting a lot of people to take them seriously because they're both women and because Trudy is Black. They have help from Mary, a morality officer with the Toronto police, and Flo, an assistant in the coroner's office. Mary wants to be a full police officer, and Flo wants to be a doctor. Frankie is the least interesting character in the extended cast. The mysteries are only so-so.
Hilda season 2 - I'm so happy that this show got a second season, and I really hope it gets a third. I still find Hilda a charming protagonist, but I'm glad that the show hit her with some consequences and with some reminders that she's not automatically the center. I liked seeing Frida get some attention, and I thought that Hilda's mother was trying very hard to be a good parent. "Don't lie to me about where you're going" really isn't all that onerous as parent-child relationship expectations go, at least in this situation. Hilda's lies came across not so much as her not trusting her mother as her not seeing why she should bother taking time to talk to her mother. Anyway. Trollberg remains as weird as ever with all sorts of interesting and unexpected corners. I had fun watching.
John Wick 1-3 - I watched these because I'd seen some exchange requests that intrigued me and an article or three that talked about the worldbuilding. Having watched all three, I'm curious about the worldbuilding, but I am so not the audience for the movies more generally. I can't follow the visuals worth a damn, so long sections of the movies are just so much vertigo inducing blur. That makes finding the bits that interest me much more difficult.
Jojo Rabbit - I'm conflicted about this movie. It's well written, acted, directed, etc. Parts are funny; parts are heartbreaking. I just... I feel like it's decades too soon for this movie. I also felt like the bits that were heartbreaking were so understated that they could easily be missed. It felt a lot like reading some of the plays that I read in college during a Spanish class on theater of protest under Franco. As if plausible deniability was necessary and desirable.
Little Women (2019) - Cordelia got this for Christmas. I can't remember if we gave it to her or if some other relative did. I'd had it on my to-watch list for quite a while, so I borrowed it and watched it. I enjoyed the acting and the writing. Each of the girls was quite distinct from the others, and I quite liked the implication that Jo's marriage was added to the story by editorial fiat rather than because it was genuinely autobiographical.
Lucifer season 1 - We've been getting this on DVD from Netflix. I think I prefer it that way because I find full seasons of most shows too much all at once. I find Lucifer charming as a fictional character, but I'm quite sure I'd hate spending time interacting with a person who acts as he does. I'm not very invested in the police investigation plots or in any of the potential romances. We'll be going on with the series, though.
Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears - I could see the bones of a decent movie underneath this, but all of the stuff that fleshed out the story was bad. Racist, terribly plotted, and crossing genres for reasons that I never figured out. I don't need Phryne Fisher as Indiana Jones; I don't want Phryne Fisher as Indiana Jones. I didn't want or need supernatural elements here. This would have been a better story if 90% of it took place in England. The massacre during the war could still be a part of it, but I'd like to see the survivors with agency and intention. A great deal of what happens in England in the movie could be explained by those survivors trying to find the people responsible.
Murder on the Orient Express (2017) - I'll start with the obvious-- Branagh's mustache was horrifying; but for the lack of visible tails, I'd swear he had two lavender mice pasted on his face. Possibly two petite lavender ferrets? Dead animals of unnatural color anyway. The rest was perfectly fine but no more than fine.
Murder She Wrote season 7 - I enjoy these, mostly, but they're very... of their time. Some of the plots absolutely wouldn't work in our present day, but I so very much love Jessica Fletcher as a soothing backdrop while I write.
My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising - Movie in the same setting and with the same characters as the anime series. The class of would-be heroes is assigned to take care of an isolated but populated island without oversight by adult heroes. The early parts of that work involve a lot of jump starting tractors and finding lost pets. Then the island is attacked by villains, and the students have to try to protect the population for the hours it will take for help to arrive. The students use their powers cleverly and cooperate to take down opponents well beyond their weight class. I cared a lot more about the supporting characters than I did about Izuku and Bakugo.
Noein episodes 1-24 - I should have written this one up sooner. At this point, I mainly remember that parts of it were vastly incoherent. There were multiple timelines and dimensions and multiple versions of the characters. There was something about choosing the world that would survive and about trying to collapse everything into a single and permanent static reality. The series was good enough that I finished it, but it wasn't memorable or emotionally compelling. Some of this may have been because I watched it on DVD from Netflix over the course of a year, but I don't think all of it is.
The Ottoman Empire - Great Courses lecture series by Prof. Kenneth W. Harl of Tulane University. Thirty six lectures on the history of the Ottoman Empire. Prof. Harl does a lot of history lectures for Great Courses and is reasonably good at it. I only gave this course about half my attention. I think I still learned things, but I doubt I can remember specifics about any of the historical figures I met here for the first time.
Phineas and Ferb: Candace Against the Universe - This was fun, very much like a long episode. It's been a few months, and I only vaguely remember plot details, but I know it didn't stop moving and that I laughed.
A Simple Favor - This is a mystery/thriller. A SAHM makes friends with another mother, one who works. There are a lot of signs that the other mother has secrets and is calculating a lot of interactions. Then the other mother vanishes. The SAHM and the other mother's husband both try to figure out what's happened. I wasn't surprised by anything that happened, but I think I was supposed to be. Decent acting.
Spies in Disguise - A superspy ends up getting turned into a pigeon and has to team up with a science/gadgets guy in order to save the world. The movie's animated and funny. I enjoyed it much more than I'd expected to and would recommend it to people who like this sort of story.
Steamboy - DNF. The dub isn't bad in as much as I'd listen to Patrick Stewart read a dictionary. The animation was difficult for me to follow, though, because it looked muddy to me, browns and grays, primarily, with a lot of the action happening in places with low light.
Timeless season 1-2 and Finale - I both enjoyed this and found the story arc frustrating. The time travel only had consequences when they would propel the plot. The enemy organization never made solid sense to me which meant that the stakes were confusing as well. I liked the characters, and I enjoyed the episodes enough to handwave the opposition. I just never quite felt like the stakes were solidly real.
Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia - I enjoyed this show quite a bit but liked it less than I did 3Below. I suspect that that's partly because I found 3Below funnier. Trollhunters had the burden of setting up the characters and the parameters of the world. It also had a running plot about the protagonists hiding what's going on from the adults around them.
Wizards: Tales of Arcadia - I liked this show less well than I did Trollhunters. I still quite enjoyed it, but I didn't like the inevitability of events around the time travel. I also didn't connect particularly with the new characters.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-18 05:22 pm (UTC)I stopped watching Timeless (with extreme prejudice) at the episode where it turned out that the main character's mother knew all about the conspiracy. Just no. And yes, the enemy organization was made no sense at all.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-23 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-18 06:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-19 05:05 am (UTC)Yes, I agree with you on Lucifer. He's such an entertaining and fun character to watch, but he would be exhausting to deal with in daily life.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-23 07:27 pm (UTC)I think that, if I met Lucifer, I would spend a lot of time feeling frustrated about how much he gets away with and worried about being in the splash zone when the universe finally snaps back on him.
And that's without me having any awareness of him being anything but human.