7th Station ~TV, movies, games~

[esm]

Been watching Black Mirror. I'm addicted to it now.

[Celedam]

I just watched all 10 episodes (so far) of The Gifted. I really liked it, except the mom character was super annoying in almost every scene she was in. It's just the whole protective parent thing, but still...

I just finished Episode 10 as well. (All 13 episodes are now available on Hulu. I'm still catching up.)

The show as a whole does a surprisingly good job of capturing that side of the X-Men comics — "that side" being the government persecution of mutants and the general feeling of hatred and paranoia towards mutants, which was not entirely undeserved considering that many mutants were in fact dangerous and uncontrolled.

The whole point of the X-Men was that they were caught in the middle between the public and other mutants, protecting them both from each other. The whole point of mutants, in contrast to the more traditional superhumans on the Avengers side of Marvel Comics, was to explore what “normal” people and even children might do with powers they didn’t ask for or earn.

So, in that regard, I'm enjoying the show. That's exactly the sort of social commentary Stan Lee and then later Chris Claremont intended. I'm also kinda sorta enjoying how they’re adapting classic X-Men characters like Thunderbird, Polaris, and…

Spoiler: show

…the Stepford Cuckoos, i.e., the clone "daughters" of Emma Frost. I knew who Esme was from the moment I saw her and heard her name, so the big reveal at the end of Episode 10 wasn't a surprise to me. But it was still cool to see them together. And since I watch with CC turned on for various reasons, I saw that they were actually called the "Frost Triplets" in the script, so Emma Frost herself is confirmed to exist in the show's continuity. I assume they'll go into more detail in Episode 11, which is titled "3 X 1" — the Stepford Cuckoos are also known as Three-in-One in the comics.

This interests me because I still want to see how the continuity of this show links up with the continuity of the movies and/or the comics, if at all. In the movies, Emma Frost was merely a henchman in X-Men: First Class. She's much more important in the comics, which is why the Stepford Cuckoos were created as characters in the first place, so I want to see what sort of retconning they will do to make all of this work.

Of course, this is Fox's Singer-verse, which bears only a vague resemblance to the X-Men comics, but I've made my peace with that.

viewtopic.php?p=228104#p228104

Unfortunately, the actual writing of the show leaves something to be desired. Flat characters and strangely episodic, in the sense that everything seems to reset back at the Mutant Underground headquarters at the end of each episode. It's very much a Fox primetime series. Hopefully things will improve in the second season, which was announced a few weeks ago.

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I'm digging the new season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..

I'm still digging it. Much better than last season.

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Been watching Black Mirror. I'm addicted to it now.

I want to watch it, but the first season was so damned unpleasant that I'm reluctant to go back and I keep finding other things to watch instead. (See above.) I'm already a libertarian who is skeptical of technology and social media, so I don't need cringe-inducing parables to that effect no matter how insightful and well written they might be.

[esm]

^ I like the episodes in the 2nd and 3rd seasons more (minus maybe 1-2 episodes). The 4th season wasn't as good overall, but there were some good episodes.

I also liked that they play with the overall aesthetics in some episodes.

I need to watch the last episode of The Gifted... then I'm officially looking for something new to watch.

edit: Ohhh, season 2 of One Day at a Time is out. Of course.

[Nayoko-Kihara]

I didn't think I missed SyFy's "The Magicians" that much, but the first episode of the new season left me surprisingly happy. I love it; and it came at just the right time to feel refreshing against the rest of my current TV viewing.

[Celedam]

The Gifted

I just watched the last three episodes and finished the season. Given what happens in the season finale, and given how much more both the X-Men and the Brotherhood are mentioned (as a way of reminding the viewer of the wider context and planting the seeds for the next season), it looks like this is in fact the X-Men series that N-K asked for. The whole “Mutant Underground versus Sentinel Services” storyline was just a setup. I approve, and I’m even more interested in seeing how they resolve the continuity since...

Spoiler: show

...they pretty much said flat out that Polaris is the daughter of Magneto. Which she is in the comics, along with Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. I just didn’t know if they would actually go there.

My only real continuity complaint is that the Brotherhood and the Hellfire Club are supposed to be rival organizations of “evil” mutants, not working together, or one working as a front for the other, or whatever it is they’re doing in this series. (They’re supposed to have very different philosophies: the Brotherhood led by Magneto is militant and wants to wipe out humans before humans wipe out mutants, while the Hellfire Club uses its power and influence to secretly rule over humans.) But that’s a minor complaint at this point.

Now for a crossover with Legion.

[Nayoko-Kihara]

^ It did end up basically being what I was hoping for, and I was mostly pleased with it. I had a few complaints but no show is perfect - and I'm willing to see where they go in season 2.

[Celedam]

"Reach for the sky!"

[Celedam]

Studio Ghibli Fest 2018, coming to a theater near you…



https://www.fathomevents.com/series/studio-ghibli-fest

I'm annoyed by the absence of my personal favorites, Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind (1984) and Kiki's Delivery Service (1989).

I'm also annoyed that the promo mispronounces "Ghibli".

But it's Studio Ghibli in theaters, and that's never a bad thing.

(i kinda wanna go to Grave of the Fireflies just to sit in the back and watch the audience's reactions.)

[Zunu]

No "Whisper of the Heart" either, not that I'm in the least bit surprised.

With Nausicaä's not technically being a Ghibli movie, maybe they couldn't get the rights? I mean I enjoyed TCR personally (see above) but I don't know that it belongs in what should be their 9 best films, taking up Nausicaä's spot.

I would watch the hell out of a corny live-action Asakura Kiki's Delivery Fanservice.

[Celedam]

The Scribbler (2014)



I just watched this, before it expires off of Netflix tomorrow (February 20). It's a pretty nifty genre-bender: part psycho-horror, part murder mystery, part superhero origin story.

The acting, directing, budget, and gratuitous nudity (just a few scenes, but still) definitely make it a B-movie. And I think it would have been better executed as a television mini-series, maybe on SyFy, to give the secondary characters time to develop before they're killed off. Nevertheless, it's… pretty nifty.

If you have 90 minutes to spare tonight (February 19) and a Netflix subscription, I recommend it.