What am I watching? Right now?

At this moment, I am watching TLC's Married By Mom and Dad because I am curious to see how letting parents make that really important life decision would play out in the Western world. I trust and love my parents very much, but I do not know if I could trust them with selecting my future husband.

Arranged marriages would make life so much easier.

At the moment I've just stared watching Daphne Of The Brilliant Blue.
I picked it because of the title. It's an anime… I like for a couple of reasons: even though it's not high concept and the animation style is certaly not top notch the plot intrigues me and the costumes effing ROCK!
Two of the female detective characters basically wear a skimpy cup bikini, thigh highs and a C-string and nothing else when on a job. A C-string! That means to all intents and purposes they're basically bottomless. Yeah.

Aaaanyway, the set up is there are a bunch of women running an od-job detective agency that fix issues for people, big and small from capturing criminals to finding lost cats and they were sexy clothes doing it- so far so ho-um whatever, right?
Well what intrigued me was that it didn't start out focussing on the kick arse skimpy ladies, rather the entire focus was on this 15year old girl who just completed school and was looking for a job so she could keep her house. She was going to get one with this high profile marine agencey and it looked like a certainty but it didn't go through. She had to look for another job all over the city, couldn't find one and got evicted. She couldn't find another place to stay even though she ended up on the more dangerous, down trodden side of the tracks and so she ended up on the street.

That was what the first two episodes were about! Eventually she gets mixed up with those detective ladies, but as a victim/casualty who they take cruel advantage of instead of helping. But she proves herself self sufficiant and so they decide to give her an aprentace like position and living space.
So this setup has made it feel a lot more real than the usual shitty anime about skimpy kickarse detective women.

I just watched BIG again, after all these years- because it was a free purchase on Google Play, so I watched it on my Chromecast on the big screen.

It was so magical and cool when I was little, total awesome wish fulfilment, but OH SO unremittingly creepy now. SO, so creepy…
As an adult watching this it was so cringeworthy. Skinscrawlingly weird and wrong.
No wonder we all grow up with such twisted expectations.

I remember thinking the same when I saw it again last year.

Re-watched another classic last night: The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.
-I love that my phone remembers the spelling of that name because I never can.

I loved this film from the trailer alone. The film was better than I ever hoped when I actually saw it… And when I come back to it again I just see more stuff to love about it.
With The Life Aquatic I can truthfully say that it makes me laugh AND cry. Some well handled pathos in there, lots of jokes, lots of stuff that would have been wish fulfillment for me when I was a little kid- all the ship travel and oceanographic stuff.

It's a smart, fun, sentimental film with a lot of heart, about the love of a father and being a father to someone. And who wouldn't want Bill Murray as their dad?
It was the first Wes Anderson movie I ever saw. I've since seen others by him and I really like them all, but The Life Aquatic is still my fave.

Creed. It's a very good addition to the Rocky series. It's not original in the slightest but it all works very well and reminds you how good an actor stalling can be.

Last weekend I re-watched Fury Road four times on the biggest screen in the house.
Also my son has recently become obsessed with Doctor Who, so that same weekend we watched the 9th doctor's season. This weekend we've been pecking away at the 10th doctor.
Other noteworthy binging this month:
F is for Family is a good show. If you grew up in the 70 it's a great show.
I finally got through the final season of Justified that had been on my dvr for almost nine months.
I watched season three of House of Cards in preparation for season four.
I re-watched The Guild…
Master of none is really good, up to the last minute where I found myself saying “Dev, you idiot!” (I won't spoil why. Also, some would say he did the right thing.)
As for shows on actual channels, I've been keeping up with Supergirl, Agents of Shield, and Face Off just started back up.
Stuff I'm waiting for… Legends of Tomorrow, House of Cards 4, Dare Devil 2, Walking Dead 6.2, Game of Thrones 6, Better Call Saul 2, Agent Carter 2.

I just hope the rest if the season of the walking dead is better than what we have had so far. It hasn't really worked for me this season, some good elements but some really bad pacing and the whole Glenn thing… guh! It's a shame as I've always really liked the show up until now.

Still rewatching ds9 and just started series 3 finding the switch between plot based war episodes and episodes of the week jarring. They really didn't work the overarching plot in all that well.

Oh, man, you're in for a treat, GJ. I thought DS9 really kicked into gear toward the end of season 3. Some really extraordinary episodes for the time…and then season 4-6 are some of the best TV ever!

Oh, wait…you said REwatching. Just realized. I was gonna say I envy you getting to watch those seasons for the first time.

But I can rewatch, too! So I'll skip the envy this time!

I'm psyched to see the new X-Files and check in with Mulder and Scully after so long! Looks like Darin Morgan wrote one of the new eps; he did those great semi-comedic stories in the old series.I think his episode this time around is the one that features Rhys Darby, who is absolutely hysterical on Flight of the Conchords.

Really? I preferred the old style DS9. When I was whatching that I just kept thinking “when are they going to reslove that crap like that usually always do? Why are the Klingons enemies again??? Dammit!”
It was frustrating for me.

I finshed Daphne in the Brillaint Blue and it was just as good as it promised to be. The overarching story had some holes, like they usually do in anime, but the character dynamic was unusual and really fun to watch! It also had some reasonably clever Scifi elements in there in the context of the future world it was set in- most of the earth's surface is submerged and people live on scattered islands, they get from city to city using Ekronoplanes- huge planes that use the ground effect force to fly.
Anyway, it was good.

I'm now watching Btoom and Good Luck Girl. Btoom is about a bunch of people dropped off on an island and forced to fight to the death to get the chance be allowed to leave- using bombs. It's farely realistic, very grim. It's reasonably well done, but people's personalities tend too much toward “evil”, as always happens in these Lord of the Flie scenarios… Whihc is a little silly, but it's a trope and it makes a good story, even if it spoils the realisim.

Good Luck Girl is a welcome funny parody anime about a bitchy big boobed girl who has all the luck and hapiness and even sucks it out of people around her, and a poverty god sent to make her normal. It's a hell of a lot of fun and just gets better and better. It's very self aware and constantly breaks the 4th wall.

Hmm…interesting! Well, I thought the depth of character, and the humor really found its groove shortly before Season 4. Subjects like sex, spirituality, and moral uncertainty were explored more authentically than Trek ever had before (or since).

I loved the serialized storytelling, which was apparently difficult to fight for at the time. Despite the humor, the thing had more darkness to it than the other Treks, but was still ultimately positive and…I guess the most “human”?

p.s. Season Four also features the episode “The Visitor”, which is just an extraordinary standalone story. If you can get through that one without welling up, you may need to check your pulse! :D

I watched the visitor the other night, a great episode, I'd never seen that one before.
I took a break from DS9 today and have had the x-files on, I'm working my way through the whole series… but still on series one. I've seen all of season one before, and probably all of 2 and I think 3. I think it was around season 4 or 5 that I started loosing track of it. certainly I've not seen any of the last few seasons.
I watched the first episode pf season 2 of agent Carter. Very good stuff, although noticably more humourous than the first series. A very underrated show.

Chappie. It had a lot of negative press when it came out but I really liked it. I wonder if the accents put people off? To me that's part of what I liked about it. It didn't feel like an American or English film, it had a definite cultural identity, or rather a mishmash of them. The action was really well directed, which makes it a shame Neil Blomkamps alien 5 has been put on the back burner and may not happen.

My run through of the x-files continues. I'm now about halfway through season 3. It's funny that I've seen less of the season than I had previously thought. Then again around the time it was showing originally I was discovering night clubs and binge drinking.
One thing I've noticed watching it is how well it's aged, sure consumer tech has come a long way since then but it still holds ito own against more modern shows.

I'm all about the binge watching, so I don't generally catch what's current, with an exception for Lucifer (good casting with the lead and fantastic music), which just started here in the States.

In the past few weeks I've finished up:

Mr. Robot (loved it)
Galavant (an adorable MUSICAL)
Spiral (gritty French police/detectives, thank heavens for subtitles. For whatever reason, I imagine Genejoke could get into this. Certainly Bravo, with his savoir faire et al)
Mozart in the Jungle (via Amazon video, re trials and tribs of NYC orchestra)

Currently watching Longmire (a sheriff in current day Wyoming).

Spiral and Longmire are off of Netflix, which always has something good: The Fall (Gillian Anderson with a convincing British accent is after a serial killer in Northern Ireland); of course House of Cards (Kevin Spacey); and funny/sweet Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Out of all those I only know House Of Cards, but I've only seen the British version.

I just watched The Brothers Grimm.
So typically Gillaim in a lot of ways- Jonathan Pryce, stuff happening during the reign of Napoleon, magical reality, children being weird, blood and guts and Bones, bugs… The CGI wasn't quite up to scratch but the conflation of all the fairytails was very clever- the wicked queen was the snow queen, Rapunzel, the wicked stepmother, and the evil witch in the gingerbread house… As well as the bad fairy godmother too I suppose.
Loved the outfits and uniforms. The pace was pretty clunky though.


I finished the Anime Snow White with Red Hair.
This was so weird. I THINK it was aimed at girls. The lead character, chihiro or something, falls in love with a prince but also wants to be independent and have her own job and status. It was weird because although it kept setting up big dramatic things they never went anywhere and everything stayed really small scale, day to day and peaceful.
- which was JUST what I was after actually. I'm SO tired of anime where they ramp up the drama, add melodrama for spice, and then raise the stakes so high that you couldn't care less anymore.

The world's going to end if the hero doesn't kiss his sweetheart and she doesn't remember when he pledged marriage to her when they were both just 3 years old playing in a sandbox? Well then maybe it SHOULD if that's what it all comes down to. A world like that isn't worth living in.

I just tried watching Scott pilgrim… That was a mistake. It's all kinds of terrible. I cannot fathom how people enjoy it. It's right up there with Juno and adventureland for shit films trying to be cool.

Bates Motel, season three is on Netflix. It had been a year since I'd seen season 2, so I'd forgotten a lot of details.

This series is fantastic - I'd never have thought a prequel series about Psycho would have worked, let alone worked so damn well.

IMO, it's the best of the movies-turned-series genre, (though I like FARGO a lot, too), and one of the best prequels I can think of offhand.

It doesn't seem to suffer from the prequel problem of having no tension/anticipation.

Maybe I'll write something about that on The Duck this week.

I watched the first season, haven't tried the later ones yet. it is very good.

Right now I'm watching “Murdoch Mysteries” on Netflix.

It's campy, but surprisingly fun. It takes place around 1900, and they have all kinds of cameos from historical figures. They are always inventing things, like nightvision goggles or silly putty, it's very tongue in cheek. Great binge watching fodder.

Murdoch Mysteries sounds really cool ^_^

@Genejoke- You Philistine! XD



I'm currently going through the old anime series Hikaru No Go.
It's about a boy who becomes haunted by the spirit of an ancient Go champion called Sai when he uncovers an old antique Go board in his grandfather's attic. From then on Sai tutors him in Go and the kid becomes really interested in it and throws himself into the world of Go salons and schools, playing matches and tournaments.

It's strange for an anime about such a simple board game be so compelling, but it IS. I'm loving it. It teaches you about the Go culture in Japan and in surrounding countries as well as about the game itself. There's a nice simple plot progression to follow too with the main character getting better ad better at the game, unlike the stupid made up drama and ridiculously enormous stakes you get in animes about crappy made up modern games like Yugio or even the tournament anime that style derives from like Dragon Ball Z.

When I'm drawing this is the perfect kind of show for me to watch: heaps of episodes, lots of info to impart and simple visuals so I don't have to be watching the screen all the time, enough interesting knowledge that it keeps me alert and listening, and no hyped up ultra-contrived mega-melodrama to throw me off my rhythm and annoy me.

Its funny that the Japanese characters are all big eyed, blond and red curly haired, big nosed- but the other Asian people like the Koreans and Chinese are super stereotype “Asian”. I didn't know Japanese were like that…

I don't know if you have to know Go to like the show. I don't know it well myself. I was taut it a few years ago by a guy I met in New Orleans so I understand the basics- It's just a mathematically simple territory capturing game, but can get very complicated when people know what they're doing.

The new X-Files isn't grabbing me, really. For the most part, it's a lot like the old series. I don't think it's fallen much…but the problems of a confusing/muddled “conspiracy” are still there. Kinda surprised; I expected that would be tightened up with these six eps, as that aspect of it is pretty much being reset.

The real issue is the characters and the…weird choices as far as how they've been reintroduced. I liked the third episode, about the Were-Monster. But mostly, I'm not digging the series at all.

There's one ep I haven't seen, and I think one more tonight…I've lost interest completely. I hate to be a hater but…well, there it is. Ah, well.

On the up side, Better Call Saul started up last week with Season 2, and the first episode was absolutely fantastic. Glad to have this one back at last!

I couldn't even make it through the first episode of the new X-Files. It all felt, I dunno, dumbed down and awkward. Sometimes a reunion just feels right, but other times it feels forced and unnecessary.

That first episode was horrible.

I've only seen one of them so far and that was the weremonster one. it was one of those great but terrible at the same time episodes. Great because it was light heareted and funny and it poked fun at itself. Terrible because it was a bit too absurd and comical in relation to the show as a whole. Some of the other similar episodes did the same thing but better. Ah well.

I'm still busy watching the old ones, currently on season 6. I took some time out and what a few episodes of the directors chair where Robert Rodriguez interviews other directors. Good stuff.

I agree with you, Banes. Watching last night's X-Files ending felt like I was fulfilling some sort of obligation. Too bad they tried resurrecting it; it just didn't happen for me.

I just re-watched Netflix's Happy Valley when looking for the name of the actor who shares a semblance with ozoneocean. Another gritty police/crime drama … I must be in some kind of phase; I'm really liking them.

I just had to look that up- James Norton. Sort of has a me thing happening. A little bit more squarish, but it's there. XD


In my continuing anime Odyssey I'm now going through Kids on the Slope, set in 1960s Japan. A boy moves to a small town and makes friends through his shared loved of jazz.
It's really nice, no magical stuff, no SciFi, pervy, cute stuff or anything else, just a realistic story about 1960s Japan. -With a lot of the boy-meets girl, highschool tropes though. Ah well. Seems good so far.


Hikaru No Go was good up until about episode 60. Till then it'd all been about the boy's slow progression as a Go player. At about episode 60 he loses his ghost companion and has a breakdown, turning into a “Shinji Ikari” (if ya know what I mean), for most of the last 15 episodes. Ruined the show. He redeems himself at the end but it was way too little too late.

Due to the revival,I've been binge watching all the old X-Files from Netflix. Been a long while.
Also watching, weekly:

Supernatural
Agent Carter
The Flash
Arrow
Shanarra Chronicles
Legends of Tomorrow
Elementary
Supergirl
The Magicians

On Netflix, finished watching last episode of Spiral, which was an unresolved cliffhanger. That's the downside of Netflix, you don't always know if there's another season to resolve the show.

Now I'm onto Hell On Wheels, which for whatever lame reason I thought was a biker show. Au contraire, it's about the construction of the Union Pacific RR immediately post Civil War. It seems they've attempted some authenticity with costumes, weapons, etc. Almost inspires me to read up and see how many characters are actual historical figures. Almost. Instead I'm just on a binge with this show.