Tv

Sons of Anarchy

I'm half way through season 4 (of 7). I love this show! As ETR said in this thread on July 18, 2014 -
The thing that makes the show so watchable is that it is populated by the most intriguing and messed-up bunch of sell-serving, delusional sociopaths I have ever seen, if one disregards "Breaking Bad".

For the slow to download and the reticent to watch:

SPOILERS

Fear the Walking Dead

Season 1

Sags in the middle. We were fantastically lucky the season was only 6 episodes. Otherwise we would have been treated to weeks and weeks of National Guard. The military as untrustworthy agent with all the power was the wtf ruination of 28 Days Later and it's been boring ever since. DON'T TRUST YOUR INSTITUTIONS! As it was, that stuff was over quickly. I nearly cheered out loud when they showed signs of abandoning the fence. That leaves us with hoping against hope that the only other drag on this show, the teenagers, can be bumped off quick. But they won't be. The "family drama" aspect of this incarnation of fear of the flesh means the parents must drag around this pair of youthful dimwits and those same dimwits must remain constitutionally incapable of mature action.

Howevaire.... those same teenagers could be, might be, likely won't be, the best resources the show has. The finale demonstrates that this show is about the deconstruction of people. It tore down Liza. It tore down Travis. It coincidentally tore down Exner as well. It's possible these two teeners will be for this show what Carl isn't quite for The Walking Dead. Or they'll be whiny sources of conflict.

That said, a boat is a bad idea.

It happens sometimes when I watch TV that I start watching the teeth. The most recent Z Nation, the teeth where like beacons in an ugly world of yellowing age. I want white teeth.

(Z Nation btw has lifted it's game considerably. The dark days of season 1 are over. They did have a giant wheel of cheese this last episode, but from the first episode on season 2 has thus far been killer.)

new from amc:
"Into the BADLANDS"


A southern eastern western - oh, yeah.

Also...



Marvel's Jessica Jones - a whopping 13 episodes of which are presently available for bingeing.

I watched the pilot. The production values and story-telling are high end, and also very familiar, which may or may not be a bad thing. Shall watch more.


Pilot synopsis: Jones was a superhero. She quit, and is now a punchy, hard-drinking private eye. The reason she quit may have found her again.

Also...

Coming tomorrow, Syfy's new show, The Expanse.

The Expanse

Like a JJ Abrams Star Trek without the lens flare.

Well, they packed a lot into the pilot (including two elements you won't know about unless you've read the books), and it still seemed to finish too soon. Can't tell if that was good or bad. What it definitely is is an extremely promising hard scifi show. Also very glossy and lovely to look at, and they definitely could have been a little more Kubrik in that regard. This show without sound in a vacuum would have equalled mind blown. Will nonetheless watch again.

 

Nothing useful. Just want to pad my post count.

In about three weeks, starting Jan 24 to be exact, The X-Files will plod the earth again in the form of a six episode miniseries return. It has of course been twenty-two freakin years since the X-Files first aired so Mully and Sculder are looking somewhat... not young anymore. But anyway, in celebration of all my other shows not currently running, I've elected to watch the damn show again.

Well I'll tell ya, tv has changed in 22 years. I'm still on the first season, and sufficiently irritated at having to sit through monster of the week episodes I've started looking up ep guides to see which eps to skip. I want to stick to the mythology arc and turns out that means passing over nearly all of season one. But that does get me quicker to season two and there's some favs in there. Duane Barry and DPO for instance. I don't know how much past season two I'll go, but anyway that's me set up for the next week or so.

The other thing but damn if tv from twenty years ago isn't literally hard to watch. So much of the framing and scene work is head and shoulders closeups. Soap opera framing, basically. And nothing like the cinematic style one has become accustomed to. I have to lean back from the screen to see anything properly.


Also, MKVs, MKVs as far as the eye can see. VLC Media Player doesn't handle them well. I've had to find a new favourite player.

Ash vs Evil Dead, the series.

Bruce Cambell and the Raimi brothers are back, boomstick, chainsaw, and all!

Make some popcorn, crack open your copy of the Necronomicon, and enjoy.

The X-Files is returning and I don't know what to think because guess who didn't stay young:



Jan 24 the new six-episode miniseries premieres. Regular weekly broadcasts start the day after. In anticipation, I have been watching old episodes. The X-Files, as apparently no one knows, was always much more a monster-of-the-week show than a mythology show. Any given season always had fewer of the ongoing alien abduction/invasion eps than of the weird, the silly, or the supernatural. But, like any good X-Filer, I watched mostly the mythology eps. Right up until Sein und Zeit and Closure in season 7, which, in my humble opinion, is where The X-Files ended. The show nevertheless continued on for another two-and-a-half seasons and formally finished with the enormously trite double-episode, The Truth. During that two-and-a-half season anti-climax, Scully had a baby and Mulder and Scully started kissing. Also, Doggett and Reyes. It was hard to watch and I skipped most of it. I do't know what to think.

Well it's ridiculous, especially how gravelly everyone's voices have become, but I'm enjoying the hell out of it.

 I watched this short Aussie show called "The Wizads of Aus" which had a splendid premise. A wizard from your stereotypical Middel Earth-Krynn-Faerun type realm gets sick and tired of the irrational behaviour and nonsensical structure of said realm and migrates to Australia. It was a really good premise but it was destroyed by relying on superflous cursing and a complete abandonment of plot.