What I Watched: The first three released episodes of the newest season of The Boys. Based on this one viewing, I was left feeling vaguely dirty. The sets appear grimy, it is difficult to root for anyone, and it starts with a rather filthy and violent scene. (Yup, I am probably clutching my pearls here.) However, many reviews were quite favorable; CNET says “‘The Boys’ Season 3 Review: The Perfect Antidote to Marvel Fatigue”.
What I Read: I went against my usual genre and red some detective novels: The Dead Cold Series: Books 1-4 (A Dead Cold Box Set Book 1) by Blake Banner. The burb says “Detective John Stone of the NYPD has the best arrest record in the 43rd precinct. But he’s a dinosaur who belongs to another age. Detective Carmen Dehan has such a bad attitude that nobody at the precinct can stomach her. Captain Jennifer Cuevas wants them both out of the way and thinks they make a perfect pair. So she gives them the Cold Cases file – the cases nobody gives a damn about. She has no idea just how hot a cold case can get.” I am really enjoying it; the plots are intricate, the partner interactions are sharp, and the cases seem plausible.
What I Listened To: I LIKE TRAINS – The Truth; Cuffed Up – “Bonnie”; and Furrows – Grey Cities.
Thank you for playing Brain Drain! What is up with you, dearest DeadSplinterites?
I’ve been busy watching Netflix docs and movies.
LA Confidential. I don’t know how the hell I missed this one, but I did. It is a very good movie for those like me who haven’t watched a nearly 30 year old neo-noir film that launched the careers of Russell Crowe and Guy Pierce. Now I know why all these neo-noir films and movies about the devils in the City of Angels showed up in the late 90s/early 2000s.
Meltdown: The Three Mile Island disaster. If you want to hate the corporations and the government equally, watch this fiasco. I will state that my dad was a nuclear engineer and worked for Ontario Hydro so nuclear power is part of my life. However, some folks (especially those who are profit driven only) should never be put in charge of a nuclear power plant. I don’t blame the folks living near the plant who feel the way they do.
Bad Sport: If you love sports then maybe you shouldn’t watch these scandals. Like the previously mentioned Meltdown, money fucks up everything.
I feel like LA Confidential is a film I missed as well. (Adds to watch list).
LA Confidential is so damn good. I’m gonna have to watch it again.
When it comes to The Boys, I think I stopped watching somewhere mid season 2. With a name like that, I don’t know why I expected more from the show.
I am always rather taken aback by the…well…filth and gore. As you say, I guess that I shouldn’t be.
I watched Stranger Things. I liked it overall but is it my imagination or did they completely change Robin’s character? I remember her being the grounded one in the friendship with Steve and him being a ditz. The season she’s more of a manic pixie dream girl that causes Steve to roll his eyes a lot. I’m annoyed by this because it’s got a girls are so silly, amirite vibe.
I think you’re right. She never seems to be doing anything except being there. Steve isn’t doing much either, and a lot of the show seems to be just shuffling extra characters around.
They seemed to struggle with aging the cast; plus that age is just a tough go anyway.
…I haven’t seen all of the new episodes of the boys yet…but on balance I think it’s done a mostly decent job of adapting the comics…although there are some aspects of both that I’d probably argue are questionable mostly for reasons of being largely redundant with overtones of gratuitous…they’re still a somewhat straight up satire of the superhero genre with some occasionally funny bits thrown in…& people were pretty complimentary about it when they spun peacemaker off from that james gunn suicide squad movie…that said, I think there’s aspects of the way the framing device works in the comics that don’t (or maybe can’t would be fairer) translate to the tv show version & watching it has me thinking maybe I should find & read the rest of the comics I never got around to?
…on the other end of the superhero spectrum I did see the first episode of ms. marvel…which I’ve also read a chunk of (but not all of) as a comic…& it seems like it’s off to a promising start…very much in spite of yet more of the astroturfed gamergate-style oh-my-god-it’s-awful-it’s-about-a-girl-who-isn’t-even-blonde-&-not-entirely-directed-at-white-guys-over-30 reception that tried to pre-emptively shit on it before most people could even have watched that first episode…which to be clear barely even gets the bulk of the place-setting done much less gets into things
[…it’s also a little different in some ways from the comics…there’s a kind of braclet-thing in the show that I’m pretty sure are meant to either be (or reference) a previous incarnation of a captain marvel (or iirc in that case mar-vell) who had “quantum bands” or something…so the whole powers thing works differently…the comics are good, though…if you like that sort of thing…as (on a largely unrelated note) are the kate bishop (rather than clint barton) hawkeye ones…but that’s probably enough comic-rambling out of me?]
I annoint you as the DS comic specialist, and request a few posts!
…I don’t think I could claim to be altogether up to date…but…once upon a time I may have written the odd actual essay about that sort of thing
…not sure if that’s an argument for or against subjecting people to more of me talking about comics…but I guess stranger things have happened?
Yeah my friends and I were entirely expecting douchewaffles to get really pissypants about Ms. Marvel.
It’s going to be entertaining when that blows up in their faces when the fans get more vocal just to spite the douchebags.
What I watched: Finished watching all of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which is an absolutely fucking hilarious show. It started a little tough to like–as most new shows do–but the writers quickly found their groove and kept it going…right up to the last season, which was really sort of a season 7.5, rather than season 8. I have a feeling that they lost most of their core writers during the covid shutdowns between 7 and 8 because the groove was totally gone. There were a few funny episodes, but mostly it was just cringy to watch at the end. If you haven’t seen it, I suggest stopping at the end of 7 because nothing particularly interesting happens in 8–and the series finale is pretty weak.
What I read: I’m just now past the halfway point on that fucking book.
What I listened to: Our latest stop on the tour of the best engineered albums of all time brings us to a real classic–Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits. This album featured the return of engineer Neil Dorfsman from the Love Over Gold sessions, and is another of the pioneering digital albums to be recorded on Sony’s 24-track machine. AIR Studios, where the main sessions were conducted, was so small that they were cramming amps and musicians in all kinds of tight spaces–including having the synth player in the control room itself. Two of the more interesting audio tidbits involve the kick drum and Knopfler’s guitar. The kick was recorded using both an Electro-Voice RE20 and an AKG D12, which is not typical at all, but it does manage to make great use of the warmth of the RE20 and the punch of the D12. Knopfler’s Gibson guitar sound on Money for Nothing came as the result of a happy accident. They were planning to record the song the morning after a late night session, and the guitar tech, Ron Eve, heard Knopfler warming up before Dorfsman had gotten around to resetting the three microphones used on his amp. Knopfler’s amp was mic’d with a Shure SM-57, and AKG C-451, and a Neumann U-67. Multi-mic settings for guitar amps are pretty common (probably the most extreme example of this is SRV’s Wall of Doom), but these three were in a state of disarray, with one pointing at the floor, one slightly off-center from the amp and one “somewhere else.” However, the sound was exactly the type of ZZ-Top feel that they were looking for, so Eve told Dorfsman to leave it alone.
This album is one of the best selling albums of all time, racking up over 30 million sales and counting.
Music tends to be remembered in life vignettes for me. When this record was playing I wasn’t in the best place, and now I do not think of it fondly. Respecting that is was a good record.
I think Brooklyn 99 went down quickly because of the times. By their final season there was a whole movement to stop glorifying/endearing cops and cop culture.
Which, for a show like Chicago PD or Law and Order, that makes perfect sense. But, this was a screwball comedy which didn’t glorify cops at all. If anything, it made them all look like buffoons. So, suddenly becoming “serious” was just plain unnecessary.
…also…strange new worlds is making a fair bid for becoming my favorite star trek
…somehow never seem to get around to getting through the first episode of the obi-wan kenobi show
…but did eventually finish out the killing eve stuff…& although I think I get why everyone had a bunch of nice stuff to say about it I could have done with the spies & assassins side of the narrative/plot coming off like less of an afterthought…it made the resolution feel undercooked…which might be the point…or at least part of the point…but I could have used there being a bit more to it?
Adds strange new worlds to watch list…
I will watch strange new worlds on your recommendation.
…in that case I hope you enjoy it…for context…there were some time-travel-based shenanigans in the star trek: discovery show so the enterprise in strange new worlds showed up in that but they’re now in very different timeframes…partially to wave away the part where they had the main character of discovery be a human-but-raised-on-vulcan sister of spock…because…fan service or something…I dunno
…but it’s pre-capt-kirk enterprise…the guy in charge is called pike & there’s no dr mccoy or scotty but there is an uhuru…it seems to work but you might have to roll with it a little if you’re not arguably over-familiar with star trek?
I saw the new Stanley Tucci and my biggest reaction was… just four episodes?
I can’t believe it’s a super expensive show to produce, or even all that time consuming. More than some cheapo Food Network show, but probably no more than a standard reality show or ESPN 44 minute segment.
CNN is pretty clearly run by dummies.
Negroni. That is all.
I was so fucking pissed when I realized they were stopping at 4 episodes this time. They did 6 last time so clearly it’s not like it’s a huge burden. Aside from CNN being run by a bunch of fucking clowns, I’m clinging to the idea that Stanley’s schedule was too tight to do more this time–but they’d damned well come back for a 3rd round (I will not dignify them by calling them “seasons”).
They even did one of them in London where he lives!
The thing about those shows is most of the work is in the scouting and advance work. Tucci still spends time doing multiple takes, but he’s a pro and knows how to hit his marks and say his lines. It’s just not that time consuming. And they can shoot around his schedule too — it’s not like they have to do it all in four straight weeks.
CNN would rather just give in to dysfunction than commit to an obvious winner.
Right??? There’s like 20 regions in Italy, have a larger season!
My neighbor randomly invited me to go see the new Jurassic Park movie last night.
It was …fine… Just what you would expect. I enjoyed seeing them get the original gang back together.
But you were in an actual movie theater. Was there popcorn involved?
I had popcorn and a Diet Coke for dinner. Dinner of champions!!!
i just found a recently released song….like two weeks ago that im listening to
i am dying here….thats the most pettiest thing i have ever seent!
im not taking sides here…. just dying from laughter
i mean….its about the furthest you can get from gracefully taking the win….
yeah..i have a fucked up sense of humor
I take sides. Fuck both those domestic abusive fucks.
i think im on your side here
that sounds like the correct side
(edit) oh wait… you meant depp and mason….not depp and heard
eh…still the correct side
Rolling Stone did an amazing piece about Manson last fall, November maybe? It basically went with the perspective of “what if he had been telling us all along exactly what he was like and people just assumed it was an act” and damn it was a good but rough read. Fantastic writing and journalism, rough content.
I saw the new Top Gun in the theatre and IDGAF what any of you think. I was 6 when the first one dropped and I loved it…leave me alone.
It was AWESOME. Awesome as in nothing but a pacifier for the nostalgic…but what a pacifier it was.
Don’t @ me.
Nice!
The only criticism I’ve heard so far was that they wanted more flight scenes, but that was from a coworker who is former air force so I’m guessing that’s not something most viewers would complain about. 🙂
My main criticism is that there was literally no character development whatsoever. Hence “pacifier for the nostalgic”.
It was FUCKING AWESOME for the nostalgic though.
To be fair, Top Gun had no character development except for their call signs so expecting more than that in Top Gun 2.0 The Mavericking would be superfluous.
I’ve started the new Netflix doc series about the FLDS Mormons with Warren Jeffs. It has been interesting because episode 1 is mostly about before Warren Jeffs took over and like…definitely still fundamentalists but also not nearly as cult-ey until after he took control.