7th Station ~TV, movies, games~

[erilaz]

I saw this decades ago, and it's still far ahead of its time, and of this era as well...

Have you ever seen Parajanov's The Color of Pomegranates? It's really, um, something.

[TotallyUncool]

I need to see it - I've heard a lot about it!

[Celedam]

A friend of mine recommended Continuum as a good sci-fi series to watch, so I added it to my Netflix queue. And now it’s due to expire off of Netflix in a few weeks, so I’m rushing to watch it.

But after the first four episodes, this series seems to be just another twist on the recent fad of police/medical procedurals featuring socially awkward geniuses. In this case, the “socially awkward” is due to the lead being thrown decades into her past (from 2077 to 2012), and the “genius” is due to her still having the benefit of her future knowledge and tech while in her past / our present. So yeah, there is a veneer of sci-fi, but it’s a very thin veneer.

Can anyone tell me this series will get significantly better, and soon?

[Nayoko-Kihara]

I think you've already made it further than I did.

[Celedam]

To be fair, iZombie is essentially the same: a police procedural with a sci-fi twist, in which an attractive female lead plays the socially awkward genius. “Socially awkward” because she’s a brain-eating zombie, and “genius” because she can access the memories in the brains she eats. So it’s not like I’m generally opposed to such shows.

But iZombie is charming and fun. Continuum is not.

[Zunu]

Lately I've been less and less interested in my Netflix queue. The last thing I watched there was Jessica Jones, and I even put that off because I didn't want to finish it up too soon. Just checked my queue, there's maybe forty titles on it, and out of them only four still interest me: a 2016 documentary on Minimalism, and getting around to the final seasons of three partially watched shows: "A Series of Unfortunate Events," "3%," and "Kim's Convenience." The "Top Picks for Zunu" list hasn't been doing the trick either. There's nothing on there that piques my interest right now. I don't know if they have run out of good things to show or if their recommendation algorithm is off. That may be the case -- after having watched the first two seasons of the aforementioned "3%," Netflix weirdly only gives me a 55% match for the final season. Huh?

Conversely Amazon Prime has been doing a lot better for me at finding quirky idiosyncratic matches that maybe are not great cinema or television but will hold my attention. I'm really looking forward to "Undone" when I can carve out a nice bloc of time.

[Celedam]

Conversely Amazon Prime has been doing a lot better for me at finding quirky idiosyncratic matches that maybe are not great cinema or television but will hold my attention.

Speaking of…

Amazon Orders Two Seasons of Critical Role’s Animated ‘Legend of Vox Machina’ Series
https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/critical-role-amazon-prime-video-legend-of-vox-machina-1203388522/

For reference…

viewtopic.php?p=242933#p242933

Spoiler: show

[Nayoko-Kihara]

Thanks to my sister I was able to check out Disney+ on launch day.

However, none of the originals they launched with seem particularly interesting; I don't care about "Star Wars", my sister said the live action ":Lady & The Tramp" remake was just okay, I extra don't care about High School Musical Jr., and the rest of the reality series are the kind of shows I might watch once in a while (or leave running in the background while I'm cooking, if I had the ability).

I got more excited when I saw the old cartoons available. Then I looked for the one I really wanted to revisit, "Pepper Ann", and they don't have it. They have "Bonkers", something I never expected to see, but not PA. Rude, Disney. That's just rude.

[Celedam]

I'm in the process of winnowing my home library — on the "mid-life crisis" sort of realization that I really don't need to keep physical copies of readily available, non-reference books — and I'm rereading some of them before I put them in the donation box. I've had some of these books literally for decades (since I was in and just out of school), and this is probably the last time I will care enough to reread any of them.

Right now I'm alternating between Neal Stephenson and Connie Willis, to keep from getting bored with either one, and I'm having more realizations along the way…

First, early Stephenson (Zodiac, Snow Crash, some parts of The Diamond Age) was an edgelord — the kind of guy who thought cheap satire could substitute for actual storytelling or commentary. I think I didn't notice it at the time because I was young as well and easily impressed by such writing. I like mid Stephenson (other parts of The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle, Anathem) much more, and I'm disappointed but not surprised that late Stephenson (Reamde, Seveneves, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell) seems tired and self-indulgent.

Second, all of Willis' stories (Fire Watch, Doomsday Book, Bellweather, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Passage) are essentially the same. The premise and tone might vary from book to book, but the blurb for each one could be "A very English comedy of errors in which a researcher struggles against administrative bureaucracy and the sheer bloody-mindedness of everyday life in order to achieve a breakthrough that will change our fundamental understanding of the world." They're all enjoyable, and Doomsday Book and Passage are particularly beautiful in their own way, but still.

[JonCC]

Finished watching all 4 seasons of 'The Man in the High Castle' on Amazon.
What a thoroughly impressive show. They really pulled out all the stops for the final season.
They nail the aesthetic & design from first episode to last.

Well worth the price of Amazon Prime if I didn't have it already.