What are you watching and enjoying?


SuaveStar

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Yeah, the Cosby Show, and in fact many of the sitcoms of the early 90's, have aged alright since topical humor has been kept to a mininum. Contrast with Family Guy where, while I find it funny, early episodes are very dated.

In stuff I've watched recently, Pocahontas. It's not terrible Disney animation but after a number of just awesome animated features (Basically everything from The Little Mermaid through Aladdin. I still hate The Lion King, even if it is a great film) this is the first that's simply above average. Also, I prefer to think that Grandmother Willow is a dark spirit trying to cause strife. Just saying.

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That first season or so of The Cosby show, before everyone became too good to be true, was pretty much a striaghtforward "this is what it's actually like to be in a family" show. Theo got lousy grades because he was lazy as hell, like 14-year-old kids everywhere, not (as they tried to tell us later on, when normal human foibles were no longer allowed on the show) because he was dyslexic.

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So, I've started to get this Saturday Morning Cartoons collection that they have on Netflix. It's mostly Hanna-Barbera fare with a little bit of Warner Brothers thrown in for good measure. It's alright but damn if some of these cartoons are forgettable. Precious Pup is only good because his voice is what Muttley would be a few years later. Still, I found myself liking Top Cat more than I remember. I'm currently on the first disc of the 60s and the second disc should come today. Hopefully if I don't fall into bed immediately after work tonight, I'll get a chance to watch it.

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This weeks Curb Your Enthusiasm: Bland. What happened to this show? It used to be so good, and now, it just seems so bland.

Breaking Bad: You know, I'm starting to think this show has way too much build. Three weeks in a row of setting up later stories, it's starting to get tiresome. I know it's all going to pay off, but watching this week by week, is getting slightly tiring.

Funny People: That title is flagrant false advertising. Eric Bana is the only person actually funny/interesting in this film.

Just Go With It: Adam Sandler produces some shit these days. Generic "Friends pretend to be together so's he can bang a girl he likes, and he falls for a friend" the film just sort of ends with no proper conclusion to about half of the plot. Nicole Kidman was great as the unlikable bitch from college, but everyone else was just phoning it in.

Hellraiser: You know, this film isn't about Pinhead, Julia, the stepmother is a fantastic villain. This film is all about her and her downfall to an evil murderous bitch. Watched it from her perspective after listening to Clive Barkers commentary, and it makes the film better than it already was. I kind of wish the films continued in this vain, with the cenobites, less is more, the less we see of them, the more I wanted them on screen, which made when they did show up, so enjoyable.

Hellraiser II: Not as good as the original, but still a great film. Clive Barker says that the original plan was for Julia to be the antagonist for the series from this point, and my god, does she steal the show. You can keep the cenobites, Julia is the true villain of these movies. It does take a leap in logic, with the Doctor killing several people to help Julia as Kirsty is going towards the house (How do they get all those people tied up in the room so quickly with no one asking questions, in the first film it's over several weeks that the murders happen) Great film, but again, inferior to the first.

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Hellraiser: You know, this film isn't about Pinhead, Julia, the stepmother is a fantastic villain. This film is all about her and her downfall to an evil murderous bitch. Watched it from her perspective after listening to Clive Barkers commentary, and it makes the film better than it already was. I kind of wish the films continued in this vain, with the cenobites, less is more, the less we see of them, the more I wanted them on screen, which made when they did show up, so enjoyable.

I'm not disagreeing with any of that, but with the exception of the 3rd & 4th films, the Cenobites really don't get overused (which I believe Doug Bradley always got a bit miffed about as he liked actually doing stuff). You can't exactly say that Pinhead & Co aren't villains to some extent, but Julia is definitely the main antagonist of the first two films.

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The Cenobites absolutely aren't villains in the first two, to the point of heroism at the end of Hellbound. They're simply a force, no more or less, which is the main thing the sequels neglected and often flat out ignored.

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The Cenobites absolutely aren't villains in the first two, to the point of heroism at the end of Hellbound. They're simply a force, no more or less, which is the main thing the sequels neglected and often flat out ignored.

Spoiler tags for a 20+ year old film, but:

After striking a deal with Kirsty for her to deliver Frank to them, didn't Pinhead still try and drag her to Hell and thus negate their contract?

I definitely agree with their innate heroism in Hellbound though.

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The Cenobites absolutely aren't villains in the first two, to the point of heroism at the end of Hellbound. They're simply a force, no more or less, which is the main thing the sequels neglected and often flat out ignored.

Spoiler tags for a 20+ year old film, but:

After striking a deal with Kirsty for her to deliver Frank to them, didn't Pinhead still try and drag her to Hell and thus negate their contract?

I definitely agree with their innate heroism in Hellbound though.

I might be wrong in this, but:

Pinhead never actually agreed to let her go, he just said find me the person who escaped from hell, and if you're lying I'll tear your soul apart, however, if you're telling the truth, then I'll just mutilate you in hell for eternity, he never outright says you can go free if you find Frank. She still opened the box by her own hands, so she has to punished for her curiosity.

That's how I think the situation went down.

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The Cenobites absolutely aren't villains in the first two, to the point of heroism at the end of Hellbound. They're simply a force, no more or less, which is the main thing the sequels neglected and often flat out ignored.

Spoiler tags for a 20+ year old film, but:

After striking a deal with Kirsty for her to deliver Frank to them, didn't Pinhead still try and drag her to Hell and thus negate their contract?

I definitely agree with their innate heroism in Hellbound though.

I might be wrong in this, but:

Pinhead never actually agreed to let her go, he just said find me the person who escaped from hell, and if you're lying I'll tear your soul apart, however, if you're telling the truth, then I'll just mutilate you in hell for eternity, he never outright says you can go free if you find Frank. She still opened the box by her own hands, so she has to punished for her curiosity.

That's how I think the situation went down.

And yet:

Pinhead didn't allow the Cenobites to take Tiffany because she didn't have the desire required to open the puzzle box. Kirsty was the same, whereas Frank and Elliott Spencer both opened the box for sadomasochistic reasons.

Granted that's the sequel, but it still happened. Anyhoo...

Toy Story 3: I haven't been putting off this film, because I loved the previous films - I just didn't get round to seeing it at the cinema. And even though I didn't reckon a third film could surpass its predecessors, I was welling up by the end of the runtime. It's an excellent, hilarious film and my love for it is certainly helped by Timothy Dalton playing a Shakespearean hedgehog!!

Drop Dead Gorgeous: I knew this film was a black comedy about beauty pageants, but NOTHING prepared me for this. This is a stunning film - the humour is outrageous in a good way, almost every character is hilarious and has you believing in the acting talents of Kirstie Alley, Kirsten Dunst and Denise freaking Richards. For context, this was released the same year as The World is Not Enough where Denise Richards failed as a po-faced Bond girl, whereas she shines here as the thoroughly unlikeable beauty queen-elect. This is going on my Amazon wishlist, because I've been bowled over by this movie.

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Farscape

I really liked this show for about a season of it's run once I finally gave it a shot, but never went back to see the whole thing. Picked up the first season this week and I'm honestly rather enjoying it. The aliens are a significant improvement over Star Trek and the story is something akin to a proto-Firefly. Not as good obviously, but still enjoyable. Compare this with something like Voyager and it's no contest, Farscape is the far better space exploration show. Better than Stargate too IMO. Of the space shows of the period I'd really only put DS9 ahead of it.

edit- Jesus, the crew just chopped off the arm of their pilot in otder to use it for barter with a genetic scientist! I remember this show being a little harsh, but not this bad!

If only Voyager had been forced to chop off Harry Kim's arm.

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1988's Ruby-Spears Superman series. It's not half bad. It was produced for Superman's 50th anniversary, and was the first Post-Crisis version of the character to hit screens. The stories are fairly rote Saturday morning stuff, but it looks great. Character designs by Gil Kane mean that this is, far and away, the most accurate-to-the-comics looking Superman ever (the DCAU version was a much better show all around, but while I love Bruce Timm's character designs for BTAS, but I never really got on board with the way his Superman looked). And Michael Bell is an awesome Lex Luthor.

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Just finished the first season of Farscape. Great textbook first season, they explored a lot of concepts that Star Trek doesn't, they demonstrated the high quality of the production design (best looking sci-fi show on TV imo, the cgi, the makeup, the animatronics puts everything else to shame), and the made a proper arc out of bringing the crew together. For most of this season it's all been about forging this group together into something that works, and through all the backstabbing and infighting the core team is now pretty darn solid, brought together by the main character and just in time for their first real holy shit crisis.

Yes there have been some shit episodes, but first seasons are all about finding your feet and this show did it as fast as any sci-fi show I've seen. Great cliffhanger, thoroughly looking forward to season 2.

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I'm halfway through my Shake & Blake homework for tomorrow's recording (feedback at shakeandblake@earth-2.net) but I'm too distressed to watch the 2nd episode of Blake's 7 we're covering until I get in from work tomorrow.

As such, I'm going to cheer myself up by watching Street Fighter, with commentary provided by Morphine Jim and his Destructoid pals at Podtoid, circa 2009.

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The bank job An alright Jason Statham film. It wasn't fantastic, but for a time filler, it was enjoyable. 2.5 out of 5.

Black Swan: I will never watch this film again. Like requiem for a dream, it's a film I need to watch once, and that's it. It's a great film, but it's just so dark, and it doesn't let up, it's like a car crash, I couldn't look away. 3.5 out of 5.

Beverly Hills Cop III: George Lucas makes a cameo as the guy who Axel steals the spider wheel car from. I never noticed that before. A fun film, and as always the Beverly Hills Cop theme is awesome. Not the best film, but really enjoyable. 3 out of 5.

The Golden Child: Classic Eddie Murphy movie from the 80's. It's cheesy, it's stupid, but dammit it's an enjoyable film. 3 out of 5.

Frost/Nixon: Wow. Just wow. What a film. You'd think the story of how the Nixon interview was arranged would be dull, but it wasn't, it was so engaging. The film does fall apart when they get to the fourth and final interview, and becomes a sort of Rocky clone, with Frost making a heroic comeback in the discussion. So apart from a poor last twenty minutes, this was a fantastic film. 4 out of 5.

American Gangster: Dull. I hated this. I was so bored an hour in, it wasn't that good, it just keeps going and setting the stage for something to happen, before it just sort of reaches a pretty piss poor conclusion. Denzel phones it in as the drug dealer bringing his family into his crime ridden world, and Russell Crowe doesn't seem to really give a shit. What a disappointment.

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I really liked Contagion but the over-all plot of the story comes down to,

If you cheat on your husband, you will become patient zero for a disease and you will die and take 20% of the human race with you. Except your husband. He's coincidentally immune.

Overall though, it was a good look at the consequences of a plague that size hitting the world. Just harrowing and often wonderfully acted. It felt a little like Robert Altman in the number of plot threads going on but still, overall, a good film.

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