DVD Logging
Oct. 26th, 2016 06:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckApril and the Extraordinary World - This was fairly light in some ways while still dealing with some difficult themes. There was a fair amount of action, too. I didn’t quite like the color palette. It wasn’t terrible, and it fit the story, but it didn’t appeal to me. I think that the story could have remained interesting if it had been stretched out a bit. Oh, and the dresses in the closet at the grandfather’s house broke my heart.
Beginnings of Judaism - Twenty four half hour lectures by Professor Isaiah M. Gafni of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It took me a little while to adapt myself to the lecturer’s cadences and accent, but once I did, I was fascinated. Most of the focus was on the Second Temple period, and there was a lot about the surviving writings and when and where various works might have originated and what language they might have been originally written in. Many survive in translations of translations. I expect this was pretty basic, but it was mostly stuff I didn’t know or knew without knowing details.
Evillious Chronicles - I watched the videos I could find for this on YouTube, all fifty nine of them. My impression is that that is far from the entire story. There are apparently several light novels, and I found a rather large wiki. Based on that, I decided not to offer this for Yuletide because I couldn’t actually figure out where to find the nominated characters. But I found the series kind of fascinating to watch and to try to track the threads of the different stories. I don’t think I’d have spent all of that time on it if I hadn’t been intrigued. Somehow, in spite of all the terrible things that happen to people in the videos, I didn’t feel depressed or stressed. I liked the way that the stories circled and shifted with a new focus changing what had gone before. I have the impression that there are different versions of the videos because I tried a Thai subbed one right after seeing the same song subbed in English, and the art was quite different, so now I’m curious about the variants.
Ghostbusters (2016) - I need to rewatch this at some point when I don’t have Scott and Cordelia watching me to see how much I like it. My attention kept drifting away because I was very tired, and I found the sexism that the female characters faced both realistic and depressing. I think that watching the movie split over the course of two nights didn’t help because it put all of the grinding nastiness the first night and all of the triumph the second.
K-9 and Company - I had seen this before, back around 1990 on a VHS tape about six generations from the original recording. This was meet as a stealth pilot for a spinoff from Doctor Who featuring Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith. The problem is that the dratted thing is actually both dull and silly. Sladen does well enough, but the only other character that interested me was a teen who was an unwilling villain. Maybe I should figure out the character’s name and ask for fic about him next Yuletide.
The Kids in the Hall: Death Comes to Town - Eh. I think the Kids in the Hall are best in brief sketches. Sustained plot just doesn’t work nearly as well because it stops being funny after about thirty seconds. We only watched a bit of this because we were just not interested.
Legend of Suriyothai - This is a very pretty movie, but there is child murder in it, and the lead up to that is quite disturbing. I ended up deciding that I couldn’t go on just a little after that, and mostly it was that that decided me. I had little historical context for what was going on, even after reading several Wikipedia articles on important people of the era. The movie was made for people who already knew who Suriyothai was and what she did (though Wikipedia is dubious that she actually did what legend says-- sacrifice herself to save her husband’s life in battle). I lost track of who was who fairly often because there were a lot of characters. This is the first movie in Thai that I have watched.
A Prairie Home Collection: Hello Love disc 2 - I listened to this rather than watching once I figured out that there wasn’t actually anything much to see. It’s just a video done of a performance of the radio show, so it’s all aimed at listeners rather than viewers. That said, I enjoyed it. I don’t remember any details. I just know that it didn’t make me work particularly hard.
Queen Victoria’s Children - I knew surprisingly little about Queen Victoria and her family, so most of what was covered here was new to me. I have no idea how much of what was presented here was accurate. The talking heads seemed to be historians with, you know, actual credentials, and they pulled a lot from letters and official documents and such. Such a very unhappy family!
The Servant - I just couldn’t get into this. Somehow, I wasn’t very interested in any of the characters. I think I watched about forty minutes before giving up and taking the DVD back to the library.
Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Four - Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke. I think that Brett will remain my vision of Holmes. He just seems right to me. This movie was better than I feared it would be-- Most of the Brett Holmes movies I’ve watched have been no better than mediocre and definitely not on a level with the Brett Holmes series. This one actually seemed like a Holmes story and put most of its focus on Holmes and Watson and the things they were doing. I was more than a little iffy on the character of Tonga, but he didn’t actually appear much. I’d have liked him to be something other than a plot device, but… It could have been worse?
Snoop Sisters: Corpse and Robbers - There were changes in the casting of continuing supporting characters between this movie and the previous one I watched, and I found that distracting. Apparently I just enjoy oddball mystery series. Most I try, I really can’t watch much of, but an older woman (or women) as detective makes a difference. In this movie, one of the sisters starts getting phone calls from an old friend who is supposed to be dead.
Snoop Sisters: Fear Is a Free Throw - I expected more basketball in this than there was. This show is so very 70s. One supporting character was wearing a spectacular pair of plaid trousers, and this episode had several characters spouting slang that was current when the movie was made. I spotted the clue to the murderer immediately and then got kind of irritated about it.
X-Men: Apocalypse - We laughed a bit but not at the things we were supposed to find funny. It wasn’t terrible. It’s just that a lot of it didn’t make very much sense at all. Some of the moments of dramatic tension also just plain didn’t work for either of us because it tended toward us knowing exactly what had to happen and getting really irritated at being made to wait.
Beginnings of Judaism - Twenty four half hour lectures by Professor Isaiah M. Gafni of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It took me a little while to adapt myself to the lecturer’s cadences and accent, but once I did, I was fascinated. Most of the focus was on the Second Temple period, and there was a lot about the surviving writings and when and where various works might have originated and what language they might have been originally written in. Many survive in translations of translations. I expect this was pretty basic, but it was mostly stuff I didn’t know or knew without knowing details.
Evillious Chronicles - I watched the videos I could find for this on YouTube, all fifty nine of them. My impression is that that is far from the entire story. There are apparently several light novels, and I found a rather large wiki. Based on that, I decided not to offer this for Yuletide because I couldn’t actually figure out where to find the nominated characters. But I found the series kind of fascinating to watch and to try to track the threads of the different stories. I don’t think I’d have spent all of that time on it if I hadn’t been intrigued. Somehow, in spite of all the terrible things that happen to people in the videos, I didn’t feel depressed or stressed. I liked the way that the stories circled and shifted with a new focus changing what had gone before. I have the impression that there are different versions of the videos because I tried a Thai subbed one right after seeing the same song subbed in English, and the art was quite different, so now I’m curious about the variants.
Ghostbusters (2016) - I need to rewatch this at some point when I don’t have Scott and Cordelia watching me to see how much I like it. My attention kept drifting away because I was very tired, and I found the sexism that the female characters faced both realistic and depressing. I think that watching the movie split over the course of two nights didn’t help because it put all of the grinding nastiness the first night and all of the triumph the second.
K-9 and Company - I had seen this before, back around 1990 on a VHS tape about six generations from the original recording. This was meet as a stealth pilot for a spinoff from Doctor Who featuring Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith. The problem is that the dratted thing is actually both dull and silly. Sladen does well enough, but the only other character that interested me was a teen who was an unwilling villain. Maybe I should figure out the character’s name and ask for fic about him next Yuletide.
The Kids in the Hall: Death Comes to Town - Eh. I think the Kids in the Hall are best in brief sketches. Sustained plot just doesn’t work nearly as well because it stops being funny after about thirty seconds. We only watched a bit of this because we were just not interested.
Legend of Suriyothai - This is a very pretty movie, but there is child murder in it, and the lead up to that is quite disturbing. I ended up deciding that I couldn’t go on just a little after that, and mostly it was that that decided me. I had little historical context for what was going on, even after reading several Wikipedia articles on important people of the era. The movie was made for people who already knew who Suriyothai was and what she did (though Wikipedia is dubious that she actually did what legend says-- sacrifice herself to save her husband’s life in battle). I lost track of who was who fairly often because there were a lot of characters. This is the first movie in Thai that I have watched.
A Prairie Home Collection: Hello Love disc 2 - I listened to this rather than watching once I figured out that there wasn’t actually anything much to see. It’s just a video done of a performance of the radio show, so it’s all aimed at listeners rather than viewers. That said, I enjoyed it. I don’t remember any details. I just know that it didn’t make me work particularly hard.
Queen Victoria’s Children - I knew surprisingly little about Queen Victoria and her family, so most of what was covered here was new to me. I have no idea how much of what was presented here was accurate. The talking heads seemed to be historians with, you know, actual credentials, and they pulled a lot from letters and official documents and such. Such a very unhappy family!
The Servant - I just couldn’t get into this. Somehow, I wasn’t very interested in any of the characters. I think I watched about forty minutes before giving up and taking the DVD back to the library.
Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Four - Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke. I think that Brett will remain my vision of Holmes. He just seems right to me. This movie was better than I feared it would be-- Most of the Brett Holmes movies I’ve watched have been no better than mediocre and definitely not on a level with the Brett Holmes series. This one actually seemed like a Holmes story and put most of its focus on Holmes and Watson and the things they were doing. I was more than a little iffy on the character of Tonga, but he didn’t actually appear much. I’d have liked him to be something other than a plot device, but… It could have been worse?
Snoop Sisters: Corpse and Robbers - There were changes in the casting of continuing supporting characters between this movie and the previous one I watched, and I found that distracting. Apparently I just enjoy oddball mystery series. Most I try, I really can’t watch much of, but an older woman (or women) as detective makes a difference. In this movie, one of the sisters starts getting phone calls from an old friend who is supposed to be dead.
Snoop Sisters: Fear Is a Free Throw - I expected more basketball in this than there was. This show is so very 70s. One supporting character was wearing a spectacular pair of plaid trousers, and this episode had several characters spouting slang that was current when the movie was made. I spotted the clue to the murderer immediately and then got kind of irritated about it.
X-Men: Apocalypse - We laughed a bit but not at the things we were supposed to find funny. It wasn’t terrible. It’s just that a lot of it didn’t make very much sense at all. Some of the moments of dramatic tension also just plain didn’t work for either of us because it tended toward us knowing exactly what had to happen and getting really irritated at being made to wait.
