7th Station ~TV, movies, games~

[erilaz]

^ I am, too, but it doesn't really bother me if I'm just watching it on a screen and the smoke's not getting into my nose and lungs.

I don't realize how good I have it here in California (even considering how many of my co-workers are smokers) until I have to deal with all the people who smoke like chimneys in Germany and Japan. In 2007 I took the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Nagoya during Golden Week, even though that's one of the times that guidebooks advise against traveling in Japan. People had to line up for the trains, and if the next one filled up (as it invariably did), they had to wait for the one after it. I had accidentally gotten into a line for a smoking car and didn't realize my mistake until I was seated. Since ℃-ute were performing in Nagoya at 1 p.m., I didn't have time to go through the waiting game again, so I decided to stay put, trapped in a box full of cigarette smoke all the way there. Two hours and seven minutes of absolute hell, unquestionably my worst experience in all of my trips to Japan.

[Nayoko-Kihara]

I have totally fallen in love with Lucy Worsley. I like history enough already, but she's so damn charming even an hour-long show about the living room ends up seeming 5x more interesting. I'll never get a special of her diving into American history, so if anyone knows an American equivlent of equal appeal please do share.

[Nayoko-Kihara]

Today I learned that the creator of "Lizzie McGuire" is working on another show for the Disney Channel, with what seems like a similar premise. I'm avoiding getting excited about it after the rough start and relatively quick end to "Girl Meets World", but if it hits the right notes I'll be happy to have something to fill that tiny (non-anime) slice-of-life McGuire/As Told by Ginger-gap in my entertainment.

I was also running through some of TCM's upcoming movie airings when I found "Belladonna of Sadness" among the listed movies, the first piece of animation I've seen on the schedule since I started paying closer attention to the channel.

[Celedam]

I still don't like how Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. shoehorned the Inhumans into the MCU, but golly this has been a good season. This week's mid-season cliffhanger* had me literally shouting at the television.

* Actually the second one this season, but the first one was over the holidays along with most other shows, so… *shrug*

[Amped]

The Nintendo Switch is about to launch. Almost Midnight in East Coast.

I'm hoping to get one for Christmas if the price goes down.

[Celedam]

He's coming…

[Jessi]

Hey guys! Does anyone play the Sims/Sims 4???

I started a blog based on my history challenge that I completed a few months ago. Its basically a legacy challenge where I started in the Prehistoric era and worked my way through the present day.

I don't know if anyone is interested, but I'll be updated on Mondays and Fridays until I'm finished.

Introduction http://sims4historychallenge.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-journey-begins.html

First Post: http://sims4historychallenge.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-prehistoric-era.html

Second Post: http://sims4historychallenge.blogspot.com/2017/03/early-bronze-age.html

[Nayoko-Kihara]

I love challenges like that, and it's become more and more difficult to find them. I'll probably check it out.

[Celedam]

Legion (FX) is some of the best television I've ever seen…

Legion, based on the Marvel Comics by Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz, is the story of David Haller (Dan Stevens), a troubled young man who may be more than human. Diagnosed as schizophrenic as a child, David has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for years. Now in his early 20's and free once again, David loses himself in the rhythm of the structured regimen of daily life: breakfast, lunch, dinner, therapy, medications, sleep. David spends the rest of his time in companionable silence alongside his chatterbox friend Lenny (Aubrey Plaza), a fellow patient whose life-long drug and alcohol addiction has done nothing to quell her boundless optimism that her luck is about to change. The pleasant numbness of David's routine is completely upended with the arrival of a beautiful and troubled new patient named Syd (Rachel Keller). Inexplicably drawn to one another, David and Syd share a startling encounter, after which David must confront the shocking possibility that the voices he hears and the visions he sees may actually be real.

It's like part Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies) and part David Lynch (Twin Peaks) — brilliantly weird without tipping over into weird-for-the-sake-of-weird. Everything has a purpose, as long as you remember what that purpose is: to piece together the secret history of a telepath/telekinetic who is so powerful that his own mind became schizophrenic in order to protect itself from… itself.

Unreliable narrator, non-linear narrative, some truly psychedelic visuals, respect for the source material, possible tie-ins to other X-Men adaptations, and Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) cast as a beatnik scientist/guru stuck on the astral plane. This is scratching an itch I didn't even know I had.

I want to applaud whomever it is at Fox that is finally taking their X-Men license seriously and greenlighting productions like this, Deadpool, and Logan.

[Nayoko-Kihara]

I didn't start to appreciate or enjoy "Legion" until the third episode. I can't say it's my favorite show every week but I absolutely would not object to more comic book shows with this kind of tone. I'm happy it didn't turn out to be a disappointment the way "Preacher" was last year (Ruth Negga couldn't even keep me around for that).