What TV series are you watching?

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Re: What TV series are you watching?

Postby OL » Mon Jul 24, 2017 3:25 pm

Yeah, finally just watched the first episode of Castlevania...
Here it keeps getting touted as a Castlevania "anime," and it isn't even that. I didn't spot a single Japanese name in the credits. It's just another western-made anime wannabe. It's no more "anime" than The Boondocks.
But yeah, the writing's not great so far. I can appreciate the actual story setup and all, but the dialogue is pretty weak, and the voice acting has an oddly... boring sound to it so far. Kenny mentioned a bar scene in episode 2 being particularly droning (haven't watched that yet, so I dunno), but there's one at the tail end of episode 1 as well, and it's just some farmer talking about hitting a guy with a shovel because he fucked a goat. Each episode is barely 20 minutes long, and they felt it was necessary to waste precious time on this scene... why exactly?
I've never been a fan of Warren Ellis anyway, so I shouldn't find it surprising.
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Re: What TV series are you watching?

Postby sand4fish » Mon Jul 24, 2017 6:15 pm

I don't watch many animated series, but given from what I've seen from the likes of Justice League Dark and The Killing Joke, I welcome the way Castlevania's writing is presented on screen (episode 2 onward) as it has a certain live action drama quality to it like any other Netflix or HBO show instead of being just a standard cartoon. But well, it's just my opinion and though I don't know much of Warren Ellis' work, I really like what he did for the show given how short it is.

On another matter, gotta say again how I love the new Twin Peaks. When you are just comfortable with the slow and mundane yet strange in one episode, suddenly hell just breaks loose on all fronts in the next one. I'll certainly miss the show by the time the season finale comes around, and yet glad it will get a proper closure for its characters and story.
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Re: What TV series are you watching?

Postby AnimeGamer183 » Thu Jul 27, 2017 9:31 pm

Batman TAS Season 4 is a HUGE departure from the rest of the show, from animation style change, and new characters, and old characters doing things I have never seen before (are Harley and Ivy lovers?). Pretty sure Nightwing pops up soon, and I have never seen any of these episodes. Glad I picked up where I left off from when I was watching about a year ago though, I need to finish off this show, even though the nostalgia kind got killed with all these changes to Season 4.
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Re: What TV series are you watching?

Postby OL » Fri Jul 28, 2017 1:50 am

AnimeGamer183 wrote:(are Harley and Ivy lovers?)


No.
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Re: What TV series are you watching?

Postby Rakim » Mon Aug 28, 2017 2:07 am

Iron Fist and his girlfriend are so annoying. The Defenders is pretty aight otherwise.

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Re: What TV series are you watching?

Postby OL » Tue Aug 29, 2017 3:23 am

It was okay. There was only one truly great action scene in the entire thing (the office fight, when they all finally meet), and I don't think the end result was quite as epic as they were probably aiming for. Honestly I thought the whole show felt weirdly cheap compared to, at the very least, the level of polish that seemed to go into the first two seasons of Daredevil. Makes me a little wary of the future of Marvel's Netflix shows, what with Luke Cage being generally underwhelming, Iron Fist being flat out bad, and Defenders being a bit ho-hum.
Hopefully the Punisher will make up for all this. Jon Bernthal was mesmerizing as hell in DD season 2, so I hope that carries over. Lord knows Daredevil is pretty much a lost cause now, with Matt Murdock and the entire supporting cast having been rendered as whiny pussies now.

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Re: What TV series are you watching?

Postby Rakim » Mon Sep 04, 2017 4:10 am

Anybody know if The Video Game Years on Amazon is any good?
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Re: What TV series are you watching?

Postby shredingskin » Tue Sep 05, 2017 4:36 pm

Fuck Twin Peaks, really 18 1 hour episodes were needed for that ??

I will not say that I did not enjoy some of it quite a bit, but fuck, there's not 18 hours of content there.

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Re: What TV series are you watching?

Postby elfshadowreaper » Tue Sep 05, 2017 4:47 pm

shredingskin wrote: Fuck Twin Peaks, really 18 1 hour episodes were needed for that ??

I will not say that I did not enjoy some of it quite a bit, but fuck, there's not 18 hours of content there.


It took me a few episodes to get into the new season. But I was really enjoying it. Episodes 16 and 17 were awesome. Then episode 18 happened. I realized with about 30 minutes left in the last episode that we weren't getting everything tied up. I didn't really expect that but I expected a little more than we got.
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Re: What TV series are you watching?

Postby shredingskin » Tue Sep 05, 2017 5:08 pm

Pretty much should be called Twin Peaks "The McGuffin".

Not only that, I think they actually fucked up what made Twin Peaks great. It was pretty much a soap opera, following the occult life of a suburban place mixed with a "who dunnit" and some surrealism.

The new Twin Peaks is about throwing some surrealist bullshit, about nothing in particular, with characters we don't get to see any development, with a "mystery" that it's a "mystery" in itself... Really, there was not really ANY sort of progression there:

There are two coopers, after 16 episodes we finally get to the actual "this is where we left off", everything about doogie was actually inconsequential. He already had the ring, and he had to track down evil cooper. 16 episodes in the drain. In between that we can see the FBI looking for him, the only thing we get in those episodes is that there's a big force called judy, and that Diane had an encounter with evil cooper. Nothing else.
A lot of the old characters just appear because, it's not really interesting in any way, just "this is what they're doing now".
A random guy with superpowers is introduced, and he kills bob because he has super powers (let's say it's a ex machina resource, ok).
They sprinkled some of the surrealist stuff, most of it just was "ok this is Bowie", most of it was just occlusion of the story just throwing random shit to give it a sense of deeper meaning. All that it was pretty much sums up to "there are other realities/dimensions at play, and some guys jumped through those".


Really, was there something else I missed ? I feel that there could be some snippets of the chapters 1-15 and then the last three episodes and EVERYTHING will turn out the same.

How the fuck did they manage to do it 18 episodes long ?
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Re: What TV series are you watching?

Postby elfshadowreaper » Tue Sep 05, 2017 6:16 pm

I remember seeing the tag line for the new season "It's happening again." But after the end I still couldn't point to anything and say "It did happen again." I too wanted it to be a whodunnit. I wanted Cooper solving a case.

I loved everything with the FBI agents. I loved Sheriff Truman and Hawk. I liked Mr C(New killer Bob) ok. I didn't like the younger cast like the druggy guy and the psychopath guy Richard. And they brought back major characters from the original series only to give them a couple of scenes of no consequence. Like Ed and Nora and whatever his wife's name is. And then you've got the radio host guy. I realize they needed some new blood but they brought in new blood at the expense of major characters we had history with.


They set up so much I fully expect them to do more but if that's the case Lynch better get crackin'.
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Re: What TV series are you watching?

Postby Henry Spencer » Sun Sep 10, 2017 5:40 am

phpBB [video]
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Re: What TV series are you watching?

Postby Clint » Thu Sep 14, 2017 8:28 pm

Really enjoyed the new Twin Peaks.

As a massive fan of the original series, I found myself conflicted at the extreme slow pace, and difference in direction that Lynch wanted to take the Series in. Not sure what the rest of you guys thought, but in similar fashion to Shenmue, I'm glad that we got to see more.

It's vastly different, and I welcome the change. Even if the majority of the new Season is based upon ' a dream', it was nice to see some of the old cast back together. I would need to watch the entire Series again, but my initial thought was that the new direction is the portrayal of what occurred inside the Black Lodge - after Cooper gave up his soul (Season 2 finale)

I enjoyed the ending. (episode 18) My initial conclusion is that there are two 'dreamers' - both Laura and Cooper. They are each trying to find a way out of the Lodge. Together; they keep failing. It leaves the door open for a potential Season 4 but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't happen. Fans have been asking for a continuation of the Series for such a long time that this is perhaps the final product.

I'll watch it all again and make another post on the subject, but I'm convinced there's much more to be decoded in Season 3, and that multiple timelines/dreams/real-life events are occurring simultaneously. Lynch is the master of experimenting with alternate realities, and ultimately, still manages to provide the audience with their own personal interpretation of what's occurred, without losing credibility. I can't think of one other film director who is so good at finding such a balance. Love him or hate him, his work is an experience, like a fine art which can take a lifetime to digest, and just as long to question why you indulged yourself to begin with.

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Re: What TV series are you watching?

Postby Henry Spencer » Sun Sep 17, 2017 2:27 pm

Clint wrote: Really enjoyed the new Twin Peaks.

As a massive fan of the original series, I found myself conflicted at the extreme slow pace, and difference in direction that Lynch wanted to take the Series in. Not sure what the rest of you guys thought, but in similar fashion to Shenmue, I'm glad that we got to see more.

It's vastly different, and I welcome the change. Even if the majority of the new Season is based upon ' a dream', it was nice to see some of the old cast back together. I would need to watch the entire Series again, but my initial thought was that the new direction is the portrayal of what occurred inside the Black Lodge - after Cooper gave up his soul (Season 2 finale)

I enjoyed the ending. (episode 18) My initial conclusion is that there are two 'dreamers' - both Laura and Cooper. They are each trying to find a way out of the Lodge. Together; they keep failing. It leaves the door open for a potential Season 4 but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't happen. Fans have been asking for a continuation of the Series for such a long time that this is perhaps the final product.

I'll watch it all again and make another post on the subject, but I'm convinced there's much more to be decoded in Season 3, and that multiple timelines/dreams/real-life events are occurring simultaneously. Lynch is the master of experimenting with alternate realities, and ultimately, still manages to provide the audience with their own personal interpretation of what's occurred, without losing credibility. I can't think of one other film director who is so good at finding such a balance. Love him or hate him, his work is an experience, like a fine art which can take a lifetime to digest, and just as long to question why you indulged yourself to begin with.


phpBB [video]


SPOILERS herein:

I always think that what Lynch is driving at ultimately is that mystery is a beautiful thing. Mystery is exciting as a concept since it always drives us to discover more and want to uncover more, just think if scientists knew everything and we as a species knew everything, things would be dull. Lynch ties his love of mysteries (and of the unknown) in with his own 'dream logic' - I think he's pretty much accomplished what he wanted, he wants people to ask questions and theorise, just in the same way that we do about other things in life.

He isn't sequel baiting (like some seem to think he might be, wanting to make another season or film, not to say that he won't or anything), he just actively hates conclusions and things done in neat little bows. His work always requires patience but I think he gave enough answers (and was actually pleasantly surprised by how much him and Frost answered about the Black Lodge, the Red Room and its inhabitants) whilst also teasing and horrifying in equal measure and brought back the mystery that made me love the first Season so much in the first place.

Like, Judy, the Experiment (which is possibly 'Mother' - the creature that spewed forth the likes of BOB into the world), the Tulpas, the Woodsmen/Ghosts and Sarah Palmer - there's still so much we know nothing about but honestly those creatures are best left mysterious in a way. Those...things made the series scary and thrilling to watch (alongside Evil Coop, of course). Kyle MacLachlan possibly put in his best performance in his career. I also really enjoyed most of the new characters as well, especially Robert Knepper's and Jim Belushi's mobsters, Tim Roth and Jennifer Jason Leigh's hillbillies and Richard Horne.

On the theories of dreamers - Audrey is definitely one of the dreamers, that much is obvious, maybe Gordon Cole is another, Cooper is another - the evidence of this is pretty much since we see so many scenes from their perspectives and the fact that they keep referring to dreams and each of them have a 'wake up' moment each.

Perhaps Phillip Jeffries is another dreamer, since he was actually the one with the answers in the first place - recalling back to Fire Walk With Me he actually says "We live inside a dream" To be honest the dream logic actually does a job of explaining all of the weird random occurrences in a way but it doesn't cheapen things either since if you think about all of the events people normally experience during dreams - living the life of another despite still being the same person - Cooper>Evil Coop>Dougie (x2 - one who ends up back in the Red Room, one that Cooper inhabits)>Final Cooper (who is probably best of thought as a separate entity as well).


I'm really glad they got to make this season. The atmosphere was 10/10 throughout, felt like the past 8 years of no Lynch projects was worth it for this 18 hour long trip. Loved it from start to finish. Think it's actually surpassed the original series for me, haters be damned. Not that the original series doesn't hold a special place in my heart, just feel like this was on another level (without all of the soap opera satire and terrible side storylines that took up too much time like Season 2 suffered from immensely).
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Re: What TV series are you watching?

Postby myshtuff » Sun Sep 24, 2017 9:42 am

Gonna start watching the new Star Trek Discovery later tonight when it premiers. I hope it doesn't absolutely suck. On a related note I watched episode 1 of The Orville. I was surprised with it honestly. It wasn't the greatest show, but it was enjoyable.
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