Still ploughing through classic x files. On season 6 now, it's mostly new to me at this point, I remember a couple of episodes that I must have caught first time around.

Also watching…

The walking dead. The second half the series is (so far) a lot better than the first half which was tedious.

Arrow, that's usually entertaining.

The flash, which has been very strong this year.

The 100, which isn't really hitting the mark so far this year. Last season was excellent.

Grimm, always a but if cheesy fun.

Other than that…

I rewatched snatch the other day. Still a great film.

Reservoir dogs, I watched it for the first time since the 90s and I'd forgotten just how good it is. Still the best film Tarantino has directed.

My otaku friend showed me a couple of episodes of two new anime that look really good. Gangsta about gangsters reeally dark and a lot like Black lagoon and Gate which has the JSGDF invading a fantasy world. Very reminiscent of the old Sonny Chiba movie Time Slip where a group of JSDF troops including a helicopter and tank end up in 16th century Japan.


And for myself I'm still looking at Space Battleship Yamato 2199 the 2014 reboot of the classic series. They spared nothing for this and it shows. And the plot is so much more intricate with a lot of characterization. Yamato is a kind of war icon to the Japanese with the movie Men of the Yamato about the real life battleship. I hear Arpeggio Ars Nova will be adding Musashi and Bismarck to its ship mix.

Lucifer!

The lady cop is annoying, but her daughter is one of those rare actually cute kid actors, and the lead is fantastic at naughty.

Deadpool, it actually lived up to the hype. it's a blast, unlike mad max fury road which was good but failed to live up to the hype.

@Genejoke… Mad Max Fury Road was exceptionally great, hahaha, our tastes veer in different directions I think. ^_^

————

@Bravo- Gangsta starts off well, really well, but fails towards the end. What I mean of is that it starts of raw, gritty and strikingly original, but then halfway through the series it shifts gears and falls on to the straight line traintrack of boring typical anime tropes and doesn't get out of that again, just trundles right along on the cliché line, all the way.

*Spoiler*
You literally get bubblegum chewing schoolgirls who are super strong and kill or beat up everyone, no matter what their skill level, meanwhile commenting how bored they are and no one is enough of a “challenge”. Very disappointing, considering the lead-up and the development of all the great characters and the power balance in the city etc.
From what I heard the company that produced it went out of business and that can be seen in the downward shift in quality of the show.

———–

I'm currently watching all of the Venture Brothers.
I only ever saw one episode of it, while I was in the US. I liked it but it just wasn't on here in Australia outside of cable and I can't be bothered with cable so I missed out.
It's a really cool show, I love it. Not as great as Archer or Bob's Burgers maybe, but certainly great in its own right. I love it as a take on the superhero genre as well as a cool parody of those ‘70s cartoons about scientist superheroes like Jonny Quest etc.
It’s pretty cool the way it goes into the politics of super-scientists and their relationship with the US government as well as supervillians and supervillian politics etc, all in a very funny way, but it builds a more interesting and believable world than actual serious superhero shows!

I also hear that the new season of Durarara is really worth a watch. I'm still stuck with such a busy schedule I can't watch anything and only live vicariously through others.

Mad max looked great, had amazing stunts and some cool characters, but it was lacking. it felt hollow.

Watched the first episode of Hap and Leonard. Great stuff. I love the books by Joe r Lonsdale the series is based on and I was worried that the dialogue would be toned down. Luckily not, The offensive language is lar5fely intact.

The last witch.hunter hunter. I wasn't expecting a great film and I didn't get one. It's a passable nights entertainment though.

I've started watching the silly kids cartoon anime One Piece.
It's entertaining, surprisingly violent and brutal and badly drawn in a cute way- it reminds me very much of the original Dragon Ball cartoon, before DBZ when it got too serious.
It's reasonably addictive.

Also Pandora Crimson Shell: Ghost Urn.
I spotted right away this had Masumune Shirow influence. The title was an obvious clue, but then you see characters that are full cyborgs and some mentions of androids and things.
But unlike Shirow's usual stuff this is very, very saccharine, cutesy, sexual, and very silly. It's based on Shirow concept and created by someone else.
It's so weird to see obvious shirow ideas and concepts in it, mecha designs and things that are so him, but the treatment and attitude is a 180 from him.

I'm interested to see where it goes.

When I have time I'm slowly catching up on The Flash. Is that irony? I don't know any more.

One Piece is ridiculously brutal for something that looks and sounds so much like a show for young kids. And not brutal in a bugs bunny way either- an adopted mother of two young girls gets her arm crushed so that the bones twist and deform inside of it, then she's shot dead - the gun in her face blows away her head. In front of her kids.
Such a strange cartoon. I'm glad that wasn't around when I was a little kid!


I tried to watch Ted 2 last night. GOD that was AWFUL!! So formulaic and they hammed up those Boston accents way too much. Yuk! Not charming, silly and fun like the first one, just gross, heavy handed, predicable, and boring. I quit out of it halfway through.

I made it through Ted 2. One part was hilarious but the rest.. meh!

Have been watching daredevil season 2 when I can. Fantastic stuff. The best version of the punisher put to screen yet.

Agreed on Daredevil 2; it's awesome!

Currently watching Kid on the Slope (Sakamichi no Apollon), which actually translates as Apollo on the Slope. Recommended to me by Ozoneocean. Wonderful jazz anime with a soundtrack by Yoko Kanno (who did the music to Cowboy Bebop, and is a Goddess). I am loving it. It's a wish-fulfillment fantasy for jazz geeks.

So glad you like it man!
A 3rd of the way through the plot went in a direction I found annoying, but it comes good in the end!

The last anime I watched was a slice of life series called Silver Spoon and it was about farming.
I was in bed with a sprained back and didn't have any options but I enjoyed it and keep hoping they'll make a third season. It was on Netflix if you're interested.

Finished daredevil season 2. Fantastic stuff.

Next up? Well this week's arrow was weak but did seem to end the awful oliver/felicity relationship and made digs at celebrity couples being named by merging their names. Despite that it was still a weak episode.

Grimm is… well it's grimm. The writers know how absurd and convoluted the plots and character relationships are andnit hey play on it.

Watched Electric Boogaloo, the documentary about Cannon Films, earlier tonight and it was fantastic. If you grew up in the 80's, you'll no doubt be familiar with a good volume of their catalogue: Delta Force, Cobra, Lifeforce, Bloodsport, the later (more insane) Death Wish installments. Basically, if it was a movie that leaned hard on White Guy Karate as its gimmick, they probably put it out. They also released Superman IV, and Masters of the Universe - both of which could have been huge moneymakers were it not for the fact that the company was run by lunatics. Highly recommended. It's available to watch on Netflix.

Thanks, Sway! I've been meaning to check that one out!

Sway wrote:
Watched Electric Boogaloo, the documentary about Cannon Films, earlier tonight and it was fantastic. If you grew up in the 80's, you'll no doubt be familiar with a good volume of their catalogue: Delta Force, Cobra, Lifeforce, Bloodsport, the later (more insane) Death Wish installments. Basically, if it was a movie that leaned hard on White Guy Karate as its gimmick, they probably put it out. They also released Superman IV, and Masters of the Universe - both of which could have been huge moneymakers were it not for the fact that the company was run by lunatics. Highly recommended. It's available to watch on Netflix.

I watched that! Fun trip down memory lane. I remember really liking Delta Force back in the day.

I watched batman vs superman… well half of it. I went in with low expectations and was still let down. Painfully pompous with zero humour and tedious action scenes.

I saw Glengarry Glenross last night, on the recommendation of Banes.

The acting was top notch, Jonathan Price was wasted though, he's as great an actor as the rest but had nothing to do.
The story was very intelligent as well as entertaining, but I don't think it was translated well to film. It still seemed too much like a play, especially with the dialogue: it was in that extremely repetitive, over-stylised form that's typical of mid to late 20th Century plays, which is FINE for a play but here in this film it's upping the realism level, it's not on a stage, the sets are way better, the atmosphere, sound FX, lighting, SFX like rain etc, people driving in cars, all make it more real but the stylised dialogue takes you back out of that.

That's a significant criticism but it was still a very good film.
Being a play gave it a lot of good points too: I liked how tight it was, the story was very compact and neat with no blubber or waste. There was a very limited bunch of locations used. The whole story took place over about 24 hours so that was nice and compact too. Then there's the limited cast of characters so you get to know everyone somewhat, even the minor guys like Jonathan Price and Alec Baldwin- but you don't get their whole life stories either, you get just enough hints through dialogue with other characters that it rounds out who they are.

The clever twist of the story and the downfall of Jack Lemon's character was also very neat and impressively done. No melodrama, just the beautiful dawning realisation of how far he's fallen.
A good story about unwinnable situations and young bucks taking over from the old guard.

Anime: Grimjar of Fantasy and Ash

This is about a bunch of kids who wake up in a fantasy land with no memory and have to get by in the usual Dungeons and Dragons inspired dungeon crawling way that you do in computer RPGs.
Except for them this RPG is solid reality.

There are a LOT of shows in that genre but where this is different is that no one thinks they're in a game or even knows what a game is. Indeed, I'm up to episode 8 and nowhere in the show has it been said that it's a game world, even though that's what all the interactions and mechanics are based on.

The other thing that mightily sets this apart, and I even find very inspiring, is the treatment of the grunt enemies they fight- the low level goblinsL
So normally in any game it's just unsaid that you go and kill the low level grunts to level up. They're just walking XP, nothing more. Even in fiction they're simply low-level evil, venal creatures who the good guys do the world a favour by getting rid of.
However, in Grimjar, when our heroes go on a goblin hunt they typically find the goblins kicking back and fishing, or minding their own business and eating by a warm fire. They attack totally unprovoked and he poor creatures scream in surprise and terror and then fights back as hard as it possibly can ro try and stay alive while screaming for help the whole time.
And when the kids kill they don't do it with balletic skill, no, they do it like murderers, stabbing at random while the thing bleeds and struggles to get away, fighting on.

It's horrific to watch the fight scenes, not heroic or glorious. And it that it does SO well!
They manage to humanise these non-speaking monsters using only their actions, without complex backstories or stupid lines like “I'm gonna retire tomorrow and go camping with ma' wife…” or “Tell my wife I… love… her… ahh….”
In that it's a lesson to us all!

ozoneocean writ:
I saw Glengarry Glenross last night…

Glad you saw it. Those are some lucid, valid points you make. I don't know why, but I feel like that's a movie everyone should see. Even if you don't like it, you should see it.

it's just so…I don't know…depressing. haha!

But for the Alec Baldwin scene alone, it's worth it. Such a cultural touchstone, that scene. Although it's the painful sequence of Jack Lemmon desperately trying to sell in a customer's living room that always comes to my mind. And Jack Lemmon in that whole movie. Amazing.

When he says to Kevin Spacey, “You ARE a shithead, Williamson…”, it always busts me up.

Just saw “Hush” on Netflix. Great movie!! Wow! If you like the masked killer outside the house type of thing, that is.

Funny, I had this idea about a woman in an isolated house, and isolated life, being stalked by a masked killer. Didn't get too far with it, but HUSH is better than anything I'd have come up with. Making the main character deaf was genius! Quite scary, and a fantastic performance.



Every time I read a review of a home invasion movie, the critic (or blogger) talks about how overdone that genre is. I'm kind of a horror fan, but I haven't seen all that many! I liked “You're Next” and “The Strangers” a lot, but I don't know many others. Of course, that genre is an offshoot of slashers like “Halloween”, one of my faves.

When I hear of a “masked invader” flick it's ALWAYS worth a look to me! “Funny Games” was one I just couldn't take. Didn't make it twenty minutes. Maybe because they didn't wear masks?

I saw The Fore Awakened last night, rented in HD off of Google Play. I had to do some jigging to watch it IN HD though on my big old comp with to good speaker system.
You CAN'T play it in HD in Chrome, you need to get the Google movies desktop app instead.


OK, the movie…
Quick review:
It was fun, had some great scenes in there, didn't do anything too annoying, and it looked fantastic. The call-backs to the first film were too obvious, the CG was often only console quality and dialogue was too childish in parts. Mainly It was a worthy addition to the franchise and I am too old for Star Wars now.

Long review and spoilers:
My main lasting impression of the film for me was that it felt small, like a very small group of actors running around green screens all days and everything is filled in digitally. It never really rose up to be a BIG enough, awesome expanse of a movie like it needed to be- none of the bigger places were made real enough for me to see them as big places (Like Jaku and he Death Star planet), it all could have been done as a play or a weekly TV show in a studio with a live audience and they just cut to digital pre-recorded clips when they need to and show them on big screens.

It seemed like a low budget affair. They really skimped badly on the CG, they limited the amount of actors and extras, most of the sets were mostly CG… Maybe all the budget went to getting Ford back in there? I seriously reckon it did.

Things it did right were the practical effects and the CG enhancements of practical effects and most CG robots and ships were done ok, except notably the Millenium Falcon which seemed like they used the old Jurassic Park crap CG on that. The actors they chose were all great and the characters they played fit well in the world. There were good battle scenes, especially with the star fighters, and the way they handled NOT making Rey a damsel in distress with Fin as her saviour was done well too. The overall story was just the first film re-done but that was deliberate and it worked ok.

Unfortunately what they didn't learn from the prequels is that space is bloody HUGE and you need to give some sense of that. Instead they had all action taking place as if everywhere was just across the road - individual people amongst the billions of others separated by billions of miles of space etc. Travel takes zero time and communication is instantaneous: While Leia and the staff are back at the rebel base they know what's happening in REAL time during the battle on the death star planet!
That was amazingly idiotic… You have scenes of general staff following battles in the first and third films, but there it was set up that way: They're on board battlefleet flagships that are supporting the battlesquadrons they they've travelled there with. In THIS film all the X-wings just blast off from a planet on one side of the galaxy to fight on a planet on the other side of the galaxy in only a few minutes and leia and the gang just lounge around watching everything as it happens in the control room.
So the internal logic of the world is very thin: space means nothing. You may as well not bother with big spaceships, all you need is little fighters.
Also the blast from the deatstar planet moves visibly slowly, just creeping across the sky, and yet it's apparently crossing the vastness of space…

I could go on and on (there's WAY more), suffice to say the internal logic of the film is closer to the shit in the prequels the the simple but sensible stuff in the original trilogy. You CAN put it out of your mind and enjoy the film, but it really cements Star wars as being something for kids. Not much thought has gone into the world as shown in the film (even in terms of a fantasy world and not Scifi), even though the story was broadly good and the film was entertaining.

Brooklyn Nine Nine, season 3. Funny stuff. I can see how Andy Samberg is not for everyone; I was never a fan, really, until this show. And Season Three is even funnier than the first two (of the four S3 eps I've seen so far)

I watched Captaon America civil war which is excellent. Ozone probably wouldn't like it that much though. One of the best marvel movies to date.

Have been watching Dexter again, now into season 8 and it's getting hard work.

Just about caught up with Hell On Wheels, the story of the trials, tribulations (and Hell) of building the transcontinental railroad. Excellent characters, lots of action – I'm going to miss this one when it's over.

And then Sunday nights it's Game Of Thrones and Penny Dreadful (which may drop off the list–the acting is still solid, but the story doesn't know what it wants to do)