Film and Episodic Content Discussion Thread

Principals or principles? I presume the one means you hate Robbie & Gosling, the other means you're not keen on Barbie as a concept.

I'm ok with either interpretation

Edit: Apologies, I didn't read your earlier post. Seems you do indeed like the principals.

 

"If you love Barbie, this movie is for you. If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you."

The marketing for this is sheer genius.

 

Whoa ! In all seriousness PB and I’m not being facetious nor sarcastic, that’s one of the best diplomatic lines I’ve ever come upon. You may have missed your calling. Merits an Epic thumbs up. [/QUOTE]

Thanks for the kind words.

I'm curious which calling you think I may have missed (I can think of a number of them)..

 

Thanks for the kind words.

I'm curious which calling you think I may have missed (I can think of a number of them)..[/QUOTE]
Diplomat. That’s how a diplomat would have worded the fact that he doesn’t quite like something; unless I misunderstood your meaning.

 

Barbie is banned in Vietnam.

I'll stick to something less controversial, like the latest in the Star Wars saga.

 

Seems to be a new season of Warrior but my isp doesn’t stream it anymore…
@purr1n iirc you were a big fan too!

 

hapa leading man, count me in!

 

Well, this is gonna be weird, since I inveighed in these pages against director Nicholas Winding Refr's work: I didn't care for the films ONLY GOD FORGIVES & NEON DEMON; and hated the 2019 Netflix series, TOO OLD TO DIE YOUNG. I found the latter glacially slow, inert, off-putting.

Yet here I am, strongly recommending NWR's latest Netflix series, COPENHAGEN COWBOY. Why I recommend it is hard to explain, because the series has no conventional plot, dialogue, or characters. IMO it's masterfully directed and shot, with saturated neon colors + a slow-mo K-hole vibe that are distinctive, to say the least. This series really got to me, I suspect because this time I'm curious about the opaque characters, and admire the surreal cinematography and iconography (which substitutes for plot)..

Here, style is everything: style = narrative. It's a hellish fairy tale with deep-color magic realism played out in the Copenhagen night by thugs w/violent, deviant impulses (and their victims). In episode 5 there's a typically long, slow, sequence in which the enigmatic main character's backstory is narrated while she slowly rotates through space, striking dance poses with rainbow light beams shooting skyward from her limbs. It's f'ing bonkers--a gorgeous opium dream. .

Try an episode or two and see if you don't get sucked in, too:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16969944/?ref_=nm_flmg_t_2_wr.

 

ok im trusting you with my time, only bc ur pharmaboy and it seems we both hate the same Refns...

 

Just finished Episode-2 of the new season of THE LINCOLN LAWYER. I liked Season-2 reasonably well (it's a by-the-numbers adaptation of the Michael Connelly book--not inspired but still entertaining) but so far, Season-2 isn't working for me.

Will have more details after another couple episodes, but I'm surprised by the dropoff in quality. I think they rushed this production.

 

Rec me pls a show I can binge—Succession is over, and I need something to fill that hole quality-wise.

Classic HBO-tier shit, doesn’t have to actually be from HBO, but that kinna level.

many seasons would be a plus, but a mini-series is great too.

Btw, I tried watching Severance but dam, just no,

 

Severance is EXACTLY what I was thinking of as my best possible suggestion. Why no to that? It was the best damn debut season of almost any show I've ever seen, and desperately looking forward to S2.

 

Severence is literally the only thing I've liked on Apple+.

 

hear, hear, and it wasn't even that good. and it was meh, ok. i will put it on the bg sorta show.

apple tv+ -- good bitrate, good quality stream, terrible content.

 

Speaking of bitrate: one of the peculiarities of Netflix' business model is that still, today, if you want to get true 4K content from Netflix, you have to pay their top-tier price, which used to be $17.99/month, which then went to 18.99/month, and recently got bumped to 19.99/mo w/o any notice. The arrogance of these porkers is amazing. And of course, it's not "ad-supported."

When I got my 77" LG OLED 5 years ago, I had no problem opting for the highest plan. A TV like that knocks your eyes out with true 4K content. No regrets.

But now I read the news and find that Netflix has obliterated it's mid-tier price that covered HD, all content, no commercials. So now the only option for new customers is the very pricey top tier or the 3rd class, lower cost tier Neflix instituted at some point, which is ad-supported.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how this helps them. Do they really think people will flock to an ad-supported streaming platform when they don't have to do that?

As usual, Prime has a rather different approach to this. When you join Prime, you have access to all content, HD or 4K, no distinctions. But...(there's always a but) over the past couple years the number of titles Prime relegates to "Freevee," their ad-supported sub-platform, has grown exponentially. Now most of the growth of titles on Prime is in Freevee, not trad, non-ad supported Prime.

For reasons that would take too long to explain, I watch a fair amount of FreeVee content. And I have noticed the total ad duration in these shows has climbed by at least 50% in a year or two. That means either of two things (or maybe both):

1 - That Prime is selling a TON of ad time on Freevee, more than before

2 - And there's this possibility (I'm putting on my tin-foil conspiracy theorist hat to type this). What if Prime servce ads dynamically to Freevee, in response to individual viewer's content consumption pattern--meaning that frequent Freeviee viewers, or viewers who go deeper into a given series on Freevee, receive longer duration ad sequences? This is probably technically feasible, though I can't be sure it's actually happening..

(New and obnoxious ways to get fucked over by service providers)

 

I'd add Ted Lasso and Slow Horses. But yeah, most of Apple+ isn't for me.

Either way, I just can't jive with the the idea that Severance wasn't any good. It struck that perfect balance of weirdness, mystery, tension, and answered enough to have me wanting more. And the main and accessory cast were all phenomenal.

 

It is good.

"I like/hate it therefore it is good/bad" doesn't really apply to film or TV criticism. Of course anyone can say what they want and feel how they want, but there are objective criteria in art that are immune to personal feelings. Severance is a well written, well acted, well shot, well edited show. This doesn't mean people have to like it though.

 

Nup, everyone has to like exactly what I like /s

On that note, I can't believe that there are two movies being released tomorrow that I actually want to see, that I might go to the theatre for. Oppenheimer and Barbie. The dissonance is hurting my brain.

 

Go see Oppenheimer and have Aqua playing through IEMs. Two birds!

 

“Get two birds stoned at once.” Ricky [Trailer Park Boys]