7th Station ~TV, movies, games~

[Zunu]

^ I go out of my way to avoid promos/teasers/previews of things I know I'm definitely going to see barring an intervening thermonuclear holocaust, so no comment as to the above. But speaking of things I like, WHAT KIND OF SICK JOKE is it to put the Expanse and Legion on the same day and time? These shows need to be cross-pollenating not stealing each other's viewerships.

[Celedam]

I just watched the director's cut of Amadeus, because it's expiring off Netflix.

The restored scenes — most in the first half of the film, some in the second — make it much clearer that Salieri is a cruel and hypocritical villain, while Mozart is essentially decent but naive and simply desperate to maintain his artistic integrity in a world of patronage and courtly manners. His seeming childishness is just an expression of his naiveté, and the only reason why we might find it offensive — rather than annoying but ultimately harmless — is because Salieri puts the thought in our minds very early on.

One scene in particular sets up the final confrontation between Salieri and Mozart's wife Constanze over Mozart's death bed. I never realized before how nonsensical it is without the setup. In the theatrical cut, Salieri and Constanze barely know each other so there is no reason for her anger at him. In the director's cut, however… whoa.

And with everything so much clearer, the reaction of the priest at the end — the priest who stays up all night to hear Salieri's confession — is like a punch in the gut. You genuinely share his heartbreak and disgust at Salieri's villainy.

[Celedam]

It's happening y'all!

Man, the action certainly looks better animated . Though it's weird seeing so many characters alive who are now well and truly dead in the manga... And the manga is a hell of a clusterfuck compared to where the anime is. I mean, there's trench warfare in the latest chapter, lol.

The first episode is up on Crunchyroll/VRV…

https://vrv.co/watch/GR75QX11Y/Attack-on-Titan:Beast-Titan

[Zunu]

^ Also, Hulu.

[Celedam]

Oh? *checks own Hulu watchlist* By golly, there it is…

https://www.hulu.com/watch/1056905

Hulu isn't known for same-day availability, so I didn't even think to check there.

Crunchyroll/VRV doesn't require an account, though. At least not for this.

[Celedam]

A reminder that Kimi no Na wa. (Your Name.), one of the most successful and best reviewed anime films ever, is getting a limited theatrical release in the U.S. and Canada this Friday…



https://www.funimationfilms.com/movie/yourname/

[esm]

^ I watched that on the plane a few months ago. I liked it a lot.

[erilaz]

^
^ I went to a matinee today and enjoyed it very much.

I saw it with subtitles, which I always prefer to dubbing on foreign films, but now I kinda want to see the dubbed version, just to find out what they did in the scene where Mitsuha (in Taki's body) was struggling to find the right way to say "I" when talking to Taki's friends.

[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.

So the first season is done. Eight episodes is plenty for a story like this, and since they didn't need to stretch the budget, it didn't end up looking cheap like Agents of SHIELD.

Anyhow, it was very satisfying, and I genuinely didn't expect quite that ending. There had better be a second season, or we riot.

And like every good Marvel movie, it had a post-credits scene. Heh.

On the technical side, I loved their use of both music and CG. In particular…

Spoiler: show

…when Lenny killed Walter in Episode 7. That really freaked me out.

Also…

Spoiler: show

I look forward to Lenny and Oliver together. The two most interesting characters played by arguably the two most interesting actors. Road trip!

Furthermore…

Spoiler: show

I like what they did with Clark, a.k.a. the new "Eye". The man is terrified, he stated exactly why, and in most ways that matter he's right. A lesser show would have followed through on making him the new villain — it writes itself, a vengeful bigot commanding jackbooted thugs, always just one step behind our heroes — but this show immediately made it clear how silly that would be. Well done.

For anyone who wants to give it a try, the entire first season is on Hulu…

https://www.hulu.com/legion

[Celedam]

Wait, what? How did I not know this is a thing…



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloak_%26_Dagger_(TV_series)

Well, Freeform used to be ABC Family, so it's a Disney property, so I guess it's a possible outlet for these MCU series. In addition to ABC proper and Netflix.

And it's definitely an MCU series — the Roxxon Corp sign at 1:36 establishes that.

It doesn't look like it's for me, though. It's an origin story with lots of angsty teen romance, which is expected for Freeform but I'm not Freeform's target audience. When Cloak and Dagger appeared in the comics I read as a kid, they were already established as young adults well past their days as runaways.