We watched The Nutcracker with my beloved. It was without live music and children in the production, but it didn't cost a third of our monthly salaries either, which normally it would if we choose to go to the National Opera building instead. It was very nice, my first ballet experience, probably not my last, but apart from Swan Lake I don't think I'll feel motivated enough to revisit this type of art. Still, it beats opera, opera is torture for me. At a few points, there was a scent of mint in the room and I couldn't tell if it was part of the production or I got a stroke, but overall it was a lovely experience, but a part of me is glad I watched it as an adult, because as a child I couldn't stand to sit quietly through something I didn't fully understand.

InkyMoondrop wrote:
We watched The Nutcracker with my beloved.

Interesting!
I was just musing on the form nutcrackers (inspired by the ballet) take now- or at least a stylised image of them used in decorations. The version that has recently become popular is a FAKE traditional style that seems to be based on a very narrow semi-traditional style, but it's overused, over represented and the designers have NO idea what it's based on.

To me it looks like the design is a bastardised version of an Austrian hussar from the 18th century- with his powdered white wig transformed into a shaggy shock of white hair. It's so damn stupid -_-

I think the Nutcracker in the story was supposed to be an infantry soldier?

How is he portrayed in Hungary?

Ozoneocean wrote:

InkyMoondrop wrote:
We watched The Nutcracker with my beloved.

Interesting!
I was just musing on the form nutcrackers (inspired by the ballet) take now- or at least a stylised image of them used in decorations. The version that has recently become popular is a FAKE traditional style that seems to be based on a very narrow semi-traditional style, but it's overused, over represented and the designers have NO idea what it's based on.

To me it looks like the design is a bastardised version of an Austrian hussar from the 18th century- with his powdered white wig transformed into a shaggy shock of white hair. It's so damn stupid -_-

I think the Nutcracker in the story was supposed to be an infantry soldier?

How is he portrayed in Hungary?

You're on point actually.

Brief Google search of images from the original 1816 Hoffman story show a hussar. The Dumas adaptation usually has a light cavalryman (chasseur) which has many hussar features. The modern image is a pure fantasy soldier epaulets some lace and knots looking like nothing so much as a British guards officer or Danish royal guardsmen. Its supposed to be a prince so an officer in some guard regiment makes sense. Who knows what Drosselmayer intended?

As for what I'm watching? Black Adder, Stargate SG-1, Babylon 5.
Just finished Key, the metal Idol and a marathon of the original The Outer Limits.

And most interesting Four Tankmen and a Dog. It's a Polish TV series that ran from 1966 to 1970. Briefly, it's a mash up of 1960s US TV shows Lassie and Combat! But with a tank. It actually touches on a lot of the actual events of 1944-5 during the Soviet invasion of Poland. It's entirely in Polish with subtitles. Me and my subtitles.

Just finished watching Lower Decks. What a great finale to a pretty awesome show!

I liked Arcane season 2. Overall better than the 1st, and I liked that a lot already. I think it paints an unusually nuanced picture for a 18-episodes series loosely based on a video game and achieves about just as much in depth of character portrayal as Attack on Titan or Game of Thrones often in many more seasons. What I didn't like is how they just put the core class struggle conflict aside when it was time to unite some power, I mean you people don't like Battlestar Galactica, but that was much more realistic about what can be expected from such a proposal. But yeah, I think we live in turbulent times, almost explosive times when it comes to division and anger, I guess it won't end well, but I still would rather watch hopeful shows about looking for a solution than black and white ones about how to bleed out your enemy slowly, while feeling righteous at the same time.

It reminded me a lot of Fate/Apocrypha. Which is absolutely my favorite installment from the Fate series and is one of the most underrated anime I've seen. It's a perfect blend of action, storytelling and character drama, + it actually feels complete, which is not something Fate usually does.

Ozoneocean wrote:
The Last Man on Earth went in silly directions… it was mostly funny but it really seemed to me that the creators approached the original concept as a goof- a pilot they weren't really invested in and didn't know if it'd be picked up.
The writing has a sort of “on the fly” feeling to it and it's not well rounded out. They have arcs and other characters, but it feels like they're faking it, pretending to have a bigger plan to the whole series, they're really just winging it.
Secondary characters are just not fleshed out at all, they're like cardboard cutouts and are only given a bit more life and motivation in the few solo scenes they have, in scenes with the two main characters they're limited to simple reactions.

It's like a tutorial in bare bones writing.


———————

On the subject of minimal writing, I've been watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
That started out very bare bones, like something a group of friends came up with through improvisation and the characters were impossible for me to differentiate from each other, but as you go on through the episodes and series it gets MUCH better, cleverer, and more nuanced!
Initially the comedy is very, very cringey, almost pianfully so, but it moves away from that a bit as it goes on.
Banes recommended this to me and I'm glad. It's great. :D
All the characters are evil, awful people.

Omg I have a hard time watching things on my own because I often wanna give things my full attention and also enjoy it with friends/family. Meaning, I just end up watching Youtube all the time D,X. I randomly put It's Always Sunny and it has been my hero during college grinding. I loved it start to finish. I understand that it's very mundane at the start, but the intensity of the writing means that it would be a bit too much to try to enter the series at any other point honestlyy (at least for me. Proof? my family/friends couldn't get into it when I continued watching where I left off). So I believe the mundanity is valuable for easing people into the degeneracy lol.

It's always sunny is probably what Friends would be like without the laugh tracks. :D

InkyMoondrop wrote:
It's always sunny is probably what Friends would be like without the laugh tracks. :D

Oh yess, It's Always Sunny is probably attracts people who don't like sitcoms (I wonder what that says about me lol).

I watched Northern Exposure when I was a kid. Not even 10. Rewatching it now, feels good. The nostalgia hits hard and since it's not exactly a sitcom, it's not only underrated, but also pretty much forgotten. Everyone has those favorite 90s shows they mention… and this is a really interesting and unique 90s show that resonates with me a lot, perhaps because I'm also writing my comic about the residents of an odd little town.

There were so many good ones in the 90s.

Babylon 5 still is great to watch.

Northern Exposure was great. Lost track of it when I moved overseas. Is it streaming anywhere. Guess I'll find out and catch up.

I saw that a bit back in the 90s. My mum loved it then, but she can't even recall it now haha|!

———

I saw Red One, the action Christmas movie with the Rock, Chris Evens and JK Simmons.
It's a fun action film for the family.

As a Christmas movie it's flawed in a way that old, badly written, poorly thought out Christmas movies back in the day sometimes were in that:
Santa Claus is American, and all of the North pole staff are American, massssssively American.
The other thing was that it's assumed that the entire world's population celebrate Christmas. Explicitly so. And that America is responsible for that…
OMG…

Now I am a pro-Christmas guy, I love it and I know many people around the world who are not the least bit Christian who happily celebrate the holiday as a secular thing. That's great for them. But this film ASSUMES way too much and that's dodgy…

It's a very “Trump” era Christmas movie. -_-

BUT, if you can turn off your brain and think of it just as a Christmas movie and nothing else, don't think about the implications of the thoughtless world building etc, it's good and does what it's supposed to.

Frankly, we're talking about the Rock. I'm not saying him being in a film is guaranteed for it to be poorly written, but I've yet to see something he's in that DOESN'T set out to be a turn-your-mind-off and enjoy kind of entertainment, fine-tuned for the taste of masses in America. The most promising looks to be the series “Ballers” and based on the trailer, even that seems to be the kind of US sports success story where the definition of success is borrowed from money-throwin', ass-slappin' rap music videos.

Sure, Moana was okay, and of course the people it represents love it, even if the sequel is just plain bad with a bunch of side-characters who contribute almost nothing and does not get developed.

I've seen Megalopolis. It sucks.
Actors are great, photography is great, effects are great, direction is great, but the plot just sucks.
It basically compares modern days USA to the decadent Roman Empire (or perhaps Republic, not clear) but in a very stereotyped way, where the fall of the republic (empire?) is due to generic immorality, mostly of the sexual kind, which is quite stupidizing.
There are three character fighting for power, one is Francis Cicero who is kind of a good meaning conservative, but like without actually a platform other than telling the other guy that he is daring too much, the second is Caesar Catiline, who is the protagonist and apparently good even if he has the name of two dictators, and his plan consists in urban renewal with a magic metal he just created. The third is an idiot who tries to be a populist just because he hated Caesar Catiline, and also is sexually ambiguous (this probably is supposed to create the feeling of “decadence” but ends up stereotipyng gays or trans).
Also common people don't really exist apart from like one scene where they are strumentalised by the third guy.
Really stupid, but not because the plot is stupid but because the “ideology” behind it is infantile.

InkyMoondrop wrote:
Frankly, we're talking about the Rock.

I often like his generic comedies.
I loved his stuff with Kevin Heart, including the two Jumanji movies.

marcorossi wrote:
Really stupid, but not because the plot is stupid but because the “ideology” behind it is infantile.

Most writers in Hollywood are not the smartest people in the world and that shows mostly when they try and make serious films with a point. In dumb comedies, action films and horror films and such you have a lot more leeway and people will never notice the writer has the critical thinking of a 12 year old, but in “smarter” films (and Scifi for some reason) it becomes too embarrassingly obvious and you wonder why they didn't get some oversight :(

Poor things was a good example of that- good acting, direction, effects, costumes, sets etc but it the writer was trying to make a deep point but failed because of their own inexperience of the world and reality.
The idea there was to make a point about women, motherhood and what they suffer with the expectations of men and society etc.

This issue was that in the handling of that they totally forgot that women are humans first and most of the issues the character faced were human issues we all suffer, her realisations and insights were mostly universal humans ones, but the way things were canted was that anything masculine was just just paper cutout strawmen, only there to bracket the suffering of the protagonist and provide impetus for her to have her realisations and tell us: this is the lot for women, women suffer and overcome in these ways… It takes full grown woman born anew as an innocent child to properly realise how exploited women are and to gain her full independence within society.

fair enough if that's what they're after! There's no issue with that as a meaning, the problem is that you can't really get there by showing us things that apply to everyone.

It's like a movie trying to show how bad slavery was for stolen African people but trying to do it in a clever way by showing a modern black office worker and flubbing the meaning because most of the problems shown apply to all office workers.

-And that's not how you make stuff universally relatable in order for you to understand the particular issues of that character. You make their issues applicable specifically to THEM and then you make us see through their eyes, not the other way around.
-Like a mother loosing a child: you don't make is so that we can relate that to ANY death and loss, you make is so that we understand HER pain first as relates to the loss off her OWN child. Her OWN devastation.

Just finished watching Season 2 of Squid Games. Really enjoyed it! They dove deeper into some of the characters and took it a step further with trying to unravel the head ups of the deadly games. I'm excited to see season 3 whenever they release it! They leave you hanging at the end of season 2.

I watched Stardust again.
It was even better this time 💙
Lovely fantasy movie, up there with princes Bride.

Lots of references in it that are certainly not suitable for children, but the film doesn't feature much violence and no nudity of swearing so I wonder why those bad references are there?

Anyway it's lovely and I recognised the two hero swords as REAL swords as soon as I saw them (rare in fantasy and another similarity to Princes Bride).
One was a British 1803 infantry officer sabre and the other was a modified Kyber knife, both from the same period and both historically fit the “real world” period of the film. That's amazing attention to detail.

Jason Moon wrote:
Just finished watching Season 2 of Squid Games. Really enjoyed it! They dove deeper into some of the characters and took it a step further with trying to unravel the head ups of the deadly games. I'm excited to see season 3 whenever they release it! They leave you hanging at the end of season 2.

I'm not sure if this is limited to movie/television culture in Korea, Japan, etc or how much of it is as it is in real life, but I noticed that in almost everything, even the most serious dramas, there are a few who play pretty much stone-cold (and very well too, I mean the Front Man's whole aura reminded me of Mads Mikkelsen) and there are others who act like they're in a goofy comedy and overplay it. Now, it's not THAT noticable here, because “Thanos” the “rapper” is probably meant to be cringey and ridiculous (and I wanted to strangle him every second of screentime he had) just like in American movies some rappers (especially white ones) are like oversized toddlers. So here that was more relatable to someone who saw similar in western entertainment. But generally speaking… almost every Asian movie, even the old black and white ones seem like some actors believe they're doing Shakespeare and others are acting like clowns in a circus. It's so weird to me and I can't possibly understand just how much of this is natural to them, off camera, on an every-day life basis.

@Inkymoondrop- I totally agree! I was actually thinking the same thing! It honestly reminds me of elements from an anime show the way some of these villainous characters act. I wrote off “Thanos” the rappers over the top charisma and mannerisms as effects from taking the drug pills out of his cross necklace. It seemed like those drugs made his mind in his own little world instead of the present. And you hear one guy say he forgot his lyrics on a gameshow before being put into squid games so it seemed to me all the years of him abusing that drug just made him more and more out of touch with reality and non empathetic.

Much goes back to the turn of the 20th century when naturalistic acting met traditional stage acting.
There were always stylized portrayals of certain character types and they persist even with different acting styles.
There's also the traditional role of the “fool” across Western and Eastern theater. There are some things that are universal in the human experience.
So you'll have King Lear and his fool in Shakespeare morphing easily into Kurosawa. And then you'll have “My Favorite Brunette” with Bob Hope playing off of Peter Lorre (who could do broad comic portrayals himself like “A Comedy of Terror” )

A lot in modern media is just old Hollywood on repeat and that is all the traditions of the stage across the world going way back.

Someone since told me that it could be because they're expected to “be professional”, meaning to hide their emotions through everyday life (especially in Japan, but Korea's like that as well) so when it comes to acting, they want to see the portrayed emotions magnified. That makes sense.

InkyMoondrop wrote:
Someone since told me that it could be because they're expected to “be professional”, meaning to hide their emotions through everyday life (especially in Japan, but Korea's like that as well) so when it comes to acting, they want to see the portrayed emotions magnified. That makes sense.

This isn't just Asian. Reserved audiences can absolutely love over the top performances. Depending on what is being done you can exaggerate and play it broadly or not. This is Groucho Marx versus Arthur Treacher. Michael Palin versus John Cleese. Broad and exaggerated versus reserved and refined characterizations. As Slappy Squirrel used to say “Now that's comedy”

And Stargate SG-1 is off Amazon Prime and I only got to season 5. I jumped ahead to watch a few later episodes but now I'll just have to stick to Babylon 5. Also been watching the You tube channel Bedtime stories which do different true crime, cryptid or paranormal stories. Usually also does some fact checking of sources so there's some skepticism. I came into Bedtime Stories from watching a sister channel Wartime Stories which was specifically about paranormal stories of military personnel.

That style of having an over-the-top fool is old, like Bravo says. Nothing strictly Asian about it, it's just that it's considered twee and embarrassing now in English speaking culture and most of western European culture, but the legacy shows up a little - Jim Carrey, Jerry Lewis, Mr Bean etc -but those are more subtle and fitting rather that weird odd notes. Those characters are the stars rather than oddly goofy sidekicks.

The style was strong in the classic Commedia dell'arte troops I believe.

———————

I watched the entirety of Rules and Engagement
It was a blandish, simple, sitcom, but that's what I SOOOOO needed at this time of year with my state of mind. Just a regular, old fashioned, reliable, good, well acted show.

I started watching it because I saw it on the TV of my mum's hospital room. I recognised David Spade and Patrick Warburton and looked up what they were in together so I could find the show name.

I only realised after it finished that the title refers not just to the war like jousting of the main married couple, Jeff and Audrey, but the fact that the other couple are still engaged…The show ends when they marry.

I think it was a VERY gen X show which is rarer and rarer these days. But Patrick Warburton and David Spade were both born at the very end of the baby boomer period (1964),and that's reflected in their characters, Warburton's especially. But I think they're playing older Gen X.
Warburton's Jeff was a huuuuuge throwback caveman sort of character who only cared about not looking girly or gay, eating steak, drinking beer, and sports. Spade's character was a perv and a player, but less repellent than Warburton's.

The engaged couple Adam and Jennifer acted as almost the Millennials to the older Gen Xers, though the actors were true Gen Xers

Adhir Kalyan, playing Timmy Patel, was a later addition to the regular cast. He's an Indian heritage man with very particular English mannerisms. He explains he's from South Africa- Which is true for that actor. I liked that complexity, usually people who are not white are racially stereotyped in very simple ways.

All in all I liked it and I am sad it's over.

It's not the over-the-top fool type that I didn't understand, but its use in more serious productions, dramas, where other characters would play seriously.

InkyMoondrop wrote:
It's not the over-the-top fool type that I didn't understand, but its use in more serious productions, dramas, where other characters would play seriously.

King Lear is the classic example. It's a contrast to the other serious characters and often plays off them by reflecting them as if in a fun house mirror. They're the only ones acknowledging the ridiculous nature of the situation.
They can also be the incredibly perceptive and wise character because they've shed the pretenses of serious society and are on the outside looking in.
Again, Jerry Lewis, the Marx Brothers and so many others. Joker and Batman? Here's the serious, deep world of crime and then there's Joker.

It seems to me that American actors act differently from Italian actors, who act differently from Japanese actors and so on.
I think partly is different acting traditions, part is that people from different countries have different mannerism, and partly perhaps different cultural stereotypes that result more evident when you are not used to them.
In particular for asian actors it seems to me that there are also problems with dubbing, perhaps because voice actors have problems with the different mannerisms and thus overact.

Speaking of different mannerism, I rewatched recently the movie Nirvana (1997) of wich I already spoke.
In that movie, the lead is Christophe Lambert who is French-American and Emanuelle Seigner, another French actress, has an important-ish part, but other actors are italian actors ( many from cabaret) and there is a Japanese-Italian one (born in Japan but worked for decades in Italy).

They have very different acting styles: the Japanese still retains some japaneseness even in the undubbed italian, Lambert and Seigner are dubbed (they acted in french) but act in a way that looks too rigid relative to the Italian actors, however my cousin who watched the movie with me disliked the italians instead (who were too cabaret-like to his tastes and who played on italian stereotypes, that in his opinion made no sense in the sci-fi setting)

So, in case it wasn't already evident, I'm currently quite hyped about the Nirvana (1997) movie, hence I'm continuously gushing about it in this thread.
This christmas, I got the original DVD as a present, because I couldn't find it on Netflix or Youtube.
However, it turns out that, in a bit of sincronicity, someone uploaded the movie on youtube in italian (with english subtitles), in english dubbing, or in french (most of the actors are italian, but the lead, Christopher Lambert, is french, so both the french and the italian version could be considered the original version).

So here are the links: Italian with subtitles, english, french

It is a bit funny to see all the small differences between the original and the dubbing/subbing, for example in the italian there is an obvious reference to Chun-Li (the Street Fighter charachter) but in english it is translated Chang Lee, or at some point one character says “I understood it all. It is horrible” and in the english “It's terrible. Downright sinful”.

Wonka (2023)

A seafaring Huckleberry in his early twenties arrives in Western Europe at the turn of the century around the time of the industrial revolution. He is forced into employment as a lavandier (launderer) when his really big dream is to make chocolate out of imported ingredients and giraffe milk.

==

Mufasa (2024)

An orphaned lion adopted by a tribe of aristocratic lions with European accents travels a great distance with his adopted brother, Taka, to find the legendary land of Malaylay. Joined by a seer Mandrill, a lioness that smells of Duck Flowers, and a hornbill navigator, the group faces an elephant stampede and a murderous pride of albino lions before discovering Pride Rock.

Mufasa’s early life reflects the Old Testament story of Moses (Young Mufasa) and Ramses II (Taka/Scar). The love triangle between Mufasa, Taka, and Sarabi was a nod to Cyrano de Bergerac.