Anyone have any movies to suggest? I’m watching some based on coworker recommendations right now and I’ve been enjoying the ones he’s recommended. Recent recommendations from him were Wreck it Ralph (and the sequel, Ralph Breaks The Internet), Inside Out (by Pixar), Life as a House, and Boyhood, as well as the 1940 movie Fantasia.
I’m fairly genre agnostic as long as it’s not horror or something like that. I like movies that make insightful points or show aspects of life that aren’t commonly explored in media.
I haven’t watched many movies for years but recently enjoyed some about finance, particularly The Big Short. I also found Wolf of Wallstreet and Boiler Room worth watching.
I watch more YouTube and reality TV shows. IME it’s hard to find educational stuff that I can learn much from outside specific niches where people have expertise like chess or a video game. I generally like realistic stuff more than scripted, e.g. Life Below Zero, Big Timber, Outback Truckers or Mountain Men show parts of life I don’t see otherwise (those aren’t esp important things to know about though). Teen Mom 2 and others with relationships and drama (e.g. The Bachelor, Love is Blind, Married at First Sight, Marrying Millions, 90 Day Fiance) can show stuff about how people’s lives suck and how they view relationships, so I think it’s good to see a bit of that to have some familiarity. There are things like How It’s Made, Impossible Engineering and documentaries that have nice info. I also sometimes like historical fiction, esp for Greece or Rome, but anything that’s more about history rather than putting modern drama or comedy in an old setting.
The Pickup Artist (2 seasons on vh1, around 2007) was the best reality TV show I’ve seen. Bullshit was a good show.
I haven’t watched much in the way of movies in years. At some point I realized that I was going to watch movies (like in the theater) and not actually enjoying them, so I stopped doing that. Since that happened, even the number of movies I watch at home has been pretty small.
The stuff I enjoyed back in the day tended towards sci-fi and action movies (faves are Terminator 2, The Dark Knight Trilogy, the original Star Wars trilogy, the first Matrix film).
One (old) movie I saw recently and liked okay was Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World.
I have enjoyed TV more. I’ve been watching The Mandalorian and like that okay despite its plot holes. I also enjoyed The Witcher, despite some serious reservations about its portrayal of Geralt. I also enjoy ancient history documentaries like this series Roman Empire | Netflix Official Site
Old TV that I liked includes Battlestar Galactica, Joss Whedon stuff (Buffy/Angel/Dollhouse/Firefly) and Babylon 5.
Be aware though: they lie more than you’d expect in reality TV. (Kinda like the NYT lies more than people expect, even though people think they know it’s biased and lies some.)
watched episode 1 of Star Trek: Picard. seems okay. style felt very different than what i think of as a typical star trek show. it had more of a movie look in terms of cinematography. and they seem to be following current TV conventions and doing more of a continuing plot.
Finished Picard Season 1. I liked it okay. I had some issues with the finale. One issue in particular bothered me (mega spoilers):
Why would deactivating the beacon affect whether the AI Federation aliens show up? Once it’s activated, wouldn’t they be coming? Like they called it a beacon but it seemed more like a wormhole machine or something? And overall the way they handled that scene was kinda dumb. Like I thought they were setting things up for a first contact, and maybe if the aliens were hostile the Romulans and Federation would have to join forces, but then they just kinda hand waved this major threat away.
I watched A Fistful of Dollars recently. Old western. Very different pacing and style than current movies. Didn’t have a ton of jokes or one liners. Pretty simple plot. I liked it fine. I have some favorable attitudes towards western genre. Probably better to try a more recent western if you’re not a fan of genre though.
I also watched The Last of the Mohicans. I picked that movie for two reasons: 1) great actor (Daniel Day Lewis) and I saw a scene on YT that I liked a bunch. Unfortunately IMHO the movie was okay but not great, and that YT scene was like the best part…anyways it was fine. It’s set during the French and Indian War, which doesn’t get a lot of coverage in movies generally, so that’s kind of cool. Dunno if I’d recommend tho.
The first Star Wars film seems so quiet sometimes compared with the newer stuff. Newer stuff is just constant explosions, jokes, chase scenes, fighting. There is like no time to contemplate what is happening.
Just watched the 2010 version of “True Grit” and enjoyed it. Pretty recent Western, decent overall. There is a strong willed young female character who is competent at negotiating and has to deal with other people being assholes about her age and gender while trying to accomplish her goals. I thought that was interesting to watch. They also got some legal details right which I appreciated
Just watched American Sniper. Thought it was decent. It is about a real life American sniper who fought in Iraq. I thought it was relatively low on typical Hollywood BS. E.g. the action scenes were pretty brutal and chaotic, which is what I imagine war to be like (instead of being bullet ballet like in lots of movies). The historical accuracy is mixed, but apparently the sniper guy really did hit a target over 2100 yards away once, which is pretty incredible.
I don’t recommend WoT though. There’s nothing especially good about it so far. They did a bunch of dumb changes compared to the books. And on the other hand it’s super confusing if you haven’t read the books. (I still find it weird that anyone liked Game of Thrones who hadn’t read the books – way too confusing – I suspect a lot of people just didn’t care about understanding what was going on well). I kinda like WoT because I read all the books ages ago and it gives reminders. My guess so far is WoT will fail at its goal of copying GoT and thereby getting the same sort of popularity.
Yeah, I thought Arcane did a good job with the art, colors and sound. And it was all plot, no “this week, our standard characters do something” style TV that maybe has some plot advancement at the start and end of the season. And also I found it less predictable than most shows.
Awful sense of life, though. And it’s kinda disturbing to see what the fans are like and what they liked in the show. https://www.reddit.com/r/arcane/ Besides fanart, there are a bunch of threads about how hot all the characters are and how much the redditors have crushes on them, and there are threads where someone says something ridiculous and than 20 ppl comment “same”. And then when trying to extrapolate what the rest of the world is like, keep in mind that reddit is for the more literate social media users. the good news is the ppl who talk about it on social media at all are self-selected to be more into it than avg.
I’m not sure what exactly you noticed in regard to that, and would be curious to know.
I had some thoughts. For one, I found the show to be very violent, and also to be glamorizing of violence. That’s pretty standard in TV shows, but still bad.
I found there to be a lack of sympathetic characters. I liked Caitlyn the best. Caitlyn had integrity and was trying to use her mind to figure out what was going on and also do the right thing. She persisted in trying to do what’s right despite dealing with pressure from work/her social position not to do so, and despite there being big corruption in the police. She very much as an “early Commissioner Gordon” (from Batman) vibe to her. I did not like Vi much by comparison.
I know that the science on the show involves magic, but still, the portrayal of “science” seemed very much in the vein of “tapping untold demonic energies that have unnatural side effects” vibe, which I did not like. Oh, and also people seem to conduct research under ridiculously unsafe conditions with absolutely zero safety measures. It was kind of absurd.
Here’s a reddit post I found describing some of the art style and which seems accurate based on my viewing of the show and my background knowledge of what the redditor is talking about:
The style of Piltover is based off of Art Deco architecture with steampunk elements added in, and a primarily European metropolitan vibe. The metalwork on windows and doors is a really key indicator of the Art Deco style, with lots of linear geometric shapes and angles. Zaun is counter to that, with the more rounded and whimsical Art Nouveau style, and a much more run down industrial setup.
I think the used the contrast in architectural styles well to to give Piltover and the undercity very different vibes.
I actually saw some criticism of Picard that criticized it for having a single big overarching plot (as opposed to being like old style Trek that had different adventures every week). I disagreed with that criticism. The person also thought that the plot they wrote sucked, and that if you’re going to have a big season plot it better be good. I can see how having a mini plot for each ep (or really two plots, since you’d typically have an A plotline and a B plotline for an hour long show) would be less creatively risky. If you make a couple of dumb episodes out of 22, nbd, but if you make a dumb season, you might get cancelled. OTOH, I think a season long plot is so much more potentially interesting than a 1 or maybe 2 or 3 episode plot. I’m not even sure what the last show I watched that did episodic plots even was (excluding rewatching old shows).
Oh my god, I just saw Wheel of Time ep 6. The plot changes in WoT (compared to the book) are much worse/bigger than for Game of Thrones. I can’t even.
They’ve left out multiple important characters and also added in multiple major characters who aren’t in book 1. They moved the plot to the wrong major city. They screwed with things so much they have to make up new stuff to patch over the plot holes they are creating. Most of this episode was made up stuff that isn’t what happened in the books, and part of it was made up for the specific purpose of solving problems that other changes made in order to get back on track.
