Current TV Boxset Addiction

[Hawkmumbler]

Oh it's absolutely a solid, almost Saturday matinee watch. The kaiju monster of the week tradition propagated for decades through Ultraman seems to really have taken off in the west over the last few years, almost as a counter balance to the over long, saturated prestige TV market.

Pacific Rim Black is great, people should check it out for some fun action pomp.

[Tiplodocus]

BAND OF BROTHERS rewatch and I'm nearly at he end
 "Why we fight" is a brilliant but very hard watch.

[pictsy]

I'm still working through SG:U.

The teen stuff has been on hiatus as the micro-politics of the show took centre stage.  I managed to get past the very uncomfortably pro-military, anti-civilian, anti-democracy episode.  I am still unsure what the writers intended.  Young is awful, they show knows he's awful but it's treated like it's ok because he's military.  So it's got this gross might is right mindset.

Right after this are two of the most memorable episodes for me.  An enigmatic alien planet and character development for Dr Rush.  The latter is just for Robert Carlyle to demonstrate that he owns the show and makes it far better than it would otherwise be.  Chloe is starting to become a more interesting character at this point as well.

I know there is another hump to get over with an invasion, but there's a lot about late season 1 and season 2 as a whole that I don't remember.

[TordelBack]

BAND OF BROTHERS rewatch and I'm nearly at he end
 "Why we fight" is a brilliant but very hard watch.

Impossibly hard. The eldest has been doing the Holocaust in school (interestingly they covered genocides as a topic, rather than treating it as a WWII event, which was a welcome new tack for me), and I was tempted to stick that episode on for him - but in the end I just couldn't find the heart. It's harrowing.

[pictsy]

One Punch Man Season One

More like One Joke Man.  Maybe that's harsh, but it stopped being amusing pretty quickly.  I didn't like the homophobia in it either.

Aside from that it was ok.  Decent animation and good music.  I don't think the story is going anywhere interesting and it's a very weak satire, so I'll leave it at just Season One.  It's a shame, because I would have loved a more critical, harsh and funny take down of shonen anime/manga.

[Hawkmumbler]

One Punch Man Season One
It's a shame, because I would have loved a more critical, harsh and funny take down of shonen anime/manga.

You might want to check out CHAINSAW MAN when the anime drops later this year. Its and absolutely genius piss take of both American and Japanese comic tropes.

[Smith]

After rediscovering a load of (mainly horrible) early 90s anime that I used to be into, I've just started watching Cowboy Bebop, what must be the most recommended-to-me-anime-series of all time, and it is excellent. I should have watched this sooner. Curse my reactionary spirit!

what anime do you recommend? Never really watched any. Not sure if Speed Racer from the 70s counts lol

JoJos Bizarre Adventure.

[The Legendary Shark]

The Goodies Rule O.K. (?) I have all the Goodies episodes and hardly ever play them - and watching this special has me asking myself why. This 50 minute episode is simply stuffed with surreal ideas from an infectious dance that cripples the economy, to shop dummies staging a coup, to a ban on entertainment enforced by Mediaeval-style masked enforcers (who burn footballs and guitars and even (shockingly) club a baby in a pram for making his mother smile), to a rebellion by famous entertainers who have somehow got their voices mixed up which leads to Sooty becoming Prime Minister. It's bonkers - utterly, gloriously, hilariously bonkers.

I'd put the best episodes of The Goodies alongside the best episodes of Monty Python any day of the week. It should be as beloved as Python, in my not-so-humble opinion, but has, criminally, been "cast aside like a half-chewed liberty bodice."

Wonderful.

[TordelBack]

Good call there, Sharky. The Goodies remain my high-water mark for unforced silliness, and I've greatly enjoyed the subsequent work of each and every one of those lovely men
Even the owl-botherer.

Upright. A biased review from me,  because I unashamedly love Tim Minchin and all his works, but this is a neat little mini-series on Sky.  It's a funny and engaging two-hander road movie with shades of Priscilla and Wilderpeople, and while it suffers a bit from Minchin's tendency towards schmaltz that does make some of the grimmer undercurrents more palatable.

Milly Allock plays a rather improbable 13, but she delivers foul epithets with range and gusto, and has a great on-screen rapport with Tim. (By contrast there's a strange lack of agency in some of the other female characters (the sister-in-law and a middle-aged fan, for examples, seem to exist solely as plot devices)).

Tim gives himself a good few opportunities to play piano in character, and it's all great.  I hope this has done as well for him as it seems to have, he deserves every success.

[The Legendary Shark]

I, Claudius. Still magnificent after all these years. So many outstanding performances it's impossible to pick out a favourite. So many outstanding scenes it's impossible to pick out a favourite. John Hurt's Caligula is utterly terrifying, Patrick Stewart's Serjanus and Siân Phillips' Livia are chilling and Derek Jacobi's Clau-Clau-Claudius is sublime.

Brian Blessed's "Is there anyone in Rome who hasn't slept with my daughter!?" scene is both hilarious and horrible at the same time and his portrayal of Emperor Augustus' death is virtually perfect.

A true high water mark in television history - little else comes close.

[TordelBack]

I, Claudius. Still magnificent after all these years...
A true high water mark in television history - little else comes close.

No word of a lie.

[The Legendary Shark]

Just finished Season Three of Black Sails and shiver-me-timbers it's good. It's a proper rip-roaring adventure serial and I'm bloody loving it. Haven't had as much fun since the Saturday morning Flashing Blades and Robinson Crusoes of yesteryear.

[Barrington Boots]

After rediscovering a load of (mainly horrible) early 90s anime that I used to be into, I've just started watching Cowboy Bebop, what must be the most recommended-to-me-anime-series of all time, and it is excellent. I should have watched this sooner. Curse my reactionary spirit!

I've finally wrapped up watching this. Overall I don't think the series is as good as it's hyped to be or as good as I thought it was on the post I made above, but it was very good although the ending seemed to come out of nowhere a bit. The soundtrack, whilst mainly not to my liking, was superb throughout.

The final line of "You're gonna carry that weight" is one I've been turning over in my head a bit. I know it's from a Beatles song, but here I think can be interpreted in a couple of different ways: as a warning, that you have to carry the weight of your actions and decisions with you at all times, or as a positive, that despite the weight of such things you'll manage to carry it, ie. it won't be so heavy as to be immovable and you can keep going on your journey through life. I wasn't expecting to come away from what was a fairly lighthearted series feeling so introspective, so it's got that over Angel Cop for starters.

[TordelBack]

Thanks to the extreme generosity of a certain mythical Selachimorph, I've finally been able to slot Babylon 5 into the current family viewing rotation. Oh it's good to be back.

Some thoughts: the transition from the reworked version of the pilot (The Gathering) to the first proper episode (Midnight on the Firing Line) is jarring mainly because of the massive improvement across the board. I think this was my first time through the newer version,  and while I definitely miss the Copeland clanging and clanking, there's seems to be a lot more to enjoy on this cut: more foreshadowing for a start. The only character whose later absence I regret is Dr Kyle, Johnny Sekka's performance being so different to everyone else's that I think he could have been a great addition. Ivanova on the other hand is immediately a big step up from Takashima.

It's remarkable how accomplished that first proper episode is. In my memory, B5 took a while to find its Season 1 feet, but with the absence of Lennier and Franklin, it's really all there at the start.

[pictsy]

Yeah, it does really hit the ground running.  The first three seasons are top quality.