Movies, books, tv
- Thread starter zeke4ahs
- Start date
Don't feck with the boomers TV series:
Casting for a young Bridges and Lithgow were amazing.
Casting for a young Bridges and Lithgow were amazing.
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Season 6 was disappointing although still good. Helen McCrory passing away probably hurt. Arthur was practically invisible for most of the season too.
I'm sure it's already been discussed, but we're four episodes into Only Murders In The Building. Not high art by any means, but it's fun. Definitely family friendly if you don't count the occasional f-bomb. Some great cameos, too. Gomez is surprisingly good -- she's not the vapid pop tart I expected her to be.
The interaction between she and Martin and Short makes the show I think. Really good chemistry. Starting season 2 this weekend.
Has anyone watched Midsomer Murders? It is a Brit show, Tubi carries it. It is a police drama. We wanted to see it, but since the series is 23 seasons we started at 10. 5 seasons in it seems pretty smartly written.
We love the series. In some ways it is like Lasso, no way it should work but it does.
We also watched Gomez's cooking show, she seems to suffer from a serious lack of self-esteem which surprised me.
Watched the season finale of Stranger Things last night. Great stuff. Very entertaining season. Loved Eddie Munson.
I know there has been a discussion about not enough people being killed off, started by 11 actress. I agree with whichever Duffer said something like this is Hawkins and not Westeros".
I thought the season started poorly but picked up nicely.
I finally read Michael Lewis The Fifth Risk. Not much we didn’t already know about Trump and the transition. I liked hearing the individual stories of the Sammie nominations. The one Trump story I loved was when the Egypt Prime Minister called him to congratulate him, he wanted to talk about The Bangles song Walk Like an Egyptian. Perfect.
Yeah, given it’s such a huge hit with pre-teens and teens I can’t see them ever killing off a “regular.”
Earlier this year while on a road trip I wondered into an obscure used bookstore, in an obscure mountain town in an obscure region of East Tennessee. The owner was a retired AF and United pilot who wrote an obscure book of, as he said, “war stories”. So I bought it..Just finished. Thoroughly enjoyed it. He was an F111 pilot. While the F111 had a rough start it turned out to be an amazing plane. It had incredibly long range because it used efficient fan jet engines. But fan jets can’t withstand supersonic speeds, so when they took the F111 supersonic with afterburners, the air intakes would contract to protect the turbofans. The plane was the fastest around at sea level and the Russians had nothing that could keep up for over a few minutes and had no weapons that could touch it anyway.
He was in the United pilots lounge at Ohare as 911 unfolded. Interesting stuff. He lost his ESOP-based retirement when UAL took bankruptcy. The book is quite interesting if you wonder how the world we take for granted actually works with real people.
He was in the United pilots lounge at Ohare as 911 unfolded. Interesting stuff. He lost his ESOP-based retirement when UAL took bankruptcy. The book is quite interesting if you wonder how the world we take for granted actually works with real people.
"Yo, Ho, Yo, Ho, a Pilot's Life for Me!" by Lawrence Harris | Blurb Books
This is a collection of dozens of short tales from my life as a military and commercial airline pilot. Some stories are funny; some are exciting; a few are embarassing. My life in aviation.
www.blurb.com
Yes. I’ve determined it’s 80’s Robocop on steroids with much better writing. Homelander might be the greatest villain going right now
The Old Man on FX is best thing going right now. If you like Jeff Bridges. Former CIA operative on the run.
Only watched first two episodes but it gets a B to B+ from me so far. Seems like they are trying to follow the book as much as they can but the journalist is a little hard to understand.
Since Field of Dreams has been on TV a lot, and I'm on vacay right now, I decided to finally read Shoeless Joe, the novel the movie was based on. It's less a novel and more a lyrical, poetic paean to passion, writing, J. D. Salinger, and almost incidentally, baseball, too. I won't say it's bad, but I will say this: loving the film does not guarantee you will love the novel.
I've really enjoyed season 1 of Star Trek, Strange New Worlds. Sure, there are some plot developments and details to nitpick on, where it deviates from canon, and occasionally irritates the die hard Trekkers. But the story-telling has been top notch. Will be accused of being "woke" by some, but the franchise has always been painting a future without much racism, greed, hunger, etc.
They’ll be hard-pressed to surpass this episode tonight. Great stuff.
Still trying to figure out the Kim line.
Recorded it. Haven't watched it yet.
I really hope she's alive at the end of this. I don't think Jimmy would have been the guy he was in BB if she were dead.
You’ll be sweating bullets. And then maybe you’ll be able to take another breath.
Once you’ve seen it then read an excellent summary that I read this morning from Rolling Stone. As I’m an anti-linker you’ll have to find it on your own or someone else will have to link it. It’s a long paean to Gilligan and the actors. Also questions how the remaining five episodes will resolve everything.
It’s seldom that something lives up to the expectations but this episode did. Just watch Kim’s shaking in the aftermath of the shooting. Not a word, but the acting is amazing.
I am stuck in a hotel room tonight and decided to switch from my normal CNN viewing and started scanning.
I landed on Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore in Blended. This seems priceless so far for a dad of daughters. The first Tampon's scene had me on the floor because I lived that about 15 yrs ago!
Now back to the show.
I landed on Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore in Blended. This seems priceless so far for a dad of daughters. The first Tampon's scene had me on the floor because I lived that about 15 yrs ago!
Now back to the show.
This guy's going an impression of Omar (The Wire) jumping out of the window/balcony:
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Agreed. Try The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, though. I liked that much better (read it 25 years ago, though, so don't hold me to that) and it has a cooler plot:
The Iowa Baseball Confederacy tells the story of Gideon Clark, a man on a quest. He is out to prove to the world that the indomitable Chicago Cubs traveled to Iowa in the summer of 1908 for an exhibition game against an amateur league, the Iowa Baseball Confederacy. But a simple game somehow turned into a titanic battle of more than two thousand innings, and Gideon Clark struggles to set the record straight on this infamous game that no one else believes ever happened.
Terminal List is some good mindless fun on Amazon prime. Not breaking any new barriers, but some good entertaining action throughout. Reminds me of Man on Fire or The Equalizer but with Chris Pratt instead of Denzel.
Critics are panning it because it isn't sufficiently woke.
Critics are panning it because it isn't sufficiently woke.
Continuing my vacation theme of reading books I should have but didn't the first time around, this afternoon I finished The Pillars of the Earth, which several here have mentioned before. Now this was a book. Not often you come across a 1,600-page tome you can call a "page-turner," outside perhaps of Michener, but this one qualifies. The stories are compelling, the characters are interesting, and the book is filled with tension and emotion throughout. The only reason I didn't finish it last night is because I fell asleep in the middle of the penultimate chapter.
Just got done reading The Andromeda Evolution, a sequel to The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton. David E. Wilson wrote this novel . . . seeing as how Michael Crichton has been dead since 2008.
Well-written, it's just that the genre is science fiction . . . not my normal bailiwick. It sort of becomes a page turner later in the book . . . but I still went to sleep with 30 pages or so to go last night.
If you read through the Epilogue, the story is set up for a sequel to the sequel. It's a franchise now . . . .
Well-written, it's just that the genre is science fiction . . . not my normal bailiwick. It sort of becomes a page turner later in the book . . . but I still went to sleep with 30 pages or so to go last night.
If you read through the Epilogue, the story is set up for a sequel to the sequel. It's a franchise now . . . .
Ahh . . . the first book in a trilogy . . . of trilogies.
Enjoy those. If you're going to read the 80s, you might want to look into the Clan of the Cave Bear series, too.
Last week's episode of This American Life had a great piece on the novel A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, and how Kurbick's movie omitted the last chapter of the original version of the novel:
What's also interesting is that the American printing of the book also omitted the last chapter. The publisher believed American readers would not like the final chapter. Wikipedia claims the publisher refused to publish the book with the last chapter. However, a researcher later found the original manuscript of the book and the last chapter was sort of an "optional" epilogue written at the request of the British publisher, who wanted a happy ending! Also, Burgess himself wrote a screenplay version that omitted the last chapter.
Then, to top things off, Burgess later wrote a musical version which added back in the last chapter, as well as additional stuff about Alex going off to marry his girlfriend. So Burgess came around to chapter 21 being needed.
Transcript of episode is here (scroll down about 3/4 to get to "Act 3"). https://www.thisamericanlife.org/775/transcript
The end. It's bleak with a point that it's better to let people choose to be bad than to brainwash them into harmless robots, clockwork oranges, with no will of their own. But in the book, the final chapter that wasn't in the movie, it changes the meaning of everything that's gone before it.
In the final chapter Alex is back at the Korova Milk Bar with three new droogs, whole new gang. But this time when they go out to stomp on random people, Alex hangs back. Something's eating at him. It's like he's bored with all the violence now, doesn't enjoy any of this like he used to.
He wanders into a coffee shop where he runs into a member of his old gang, Pete, and Pete's wife. They look happy, living the quiet life. And Alex thinks, maybe that's what's missing. Maybe I should settle down, have a kid, hopefully a son. "I felt this bolshy big hollow inside my plott," he says, meaning his body. "Feeling very surprised too at myself. I knew what was happening, O, my brothers. I was like growing up."
What's also interesting is that the American printing of the book also omitted the last chapter. The publisher believed American readers would not like the final chapter. Wikipedia claims the publisher refused to publish the book with the last chapter. However, a researcher later found the original manuscript of the book and the last chapter was sort of an "optional" epilogue written at the request of the British publisher, who wanted a happy ending! Also, Burgess himself wrote a screenplay version that omitted the last chapter.
Then, to top things off, Burgess later wrote a musical version which added back in the last chapter, as well as additional stuff about Alex going off to marry his girlfriend. So Burgess came around to chapter 21 being needed.
Transcript of episode is here (scroll down about 3/4 to get to "Act 3"). https://www.thisamericanlife.org/775/transcript
Read it any way you like. I don’t care. Sitting here enjoying a momentous day. Altafiber (née Cincinnati Bell) is finally digging in yards on our street to install fiberoptic cable. After 34 years of horrible service from Spectrum (née Time Warner) we now have an option. Never considered any of the dish companies as everyone complained about weather-related outages. Have YouTubeTV in Georgia and it’s much better than Spectrum and I’m considering it here, but the bundling plans are convenient with cable and with (I’m assuming) Altafiber.
So, I tiptoe into the 21st century. My Georgia guy, when I went in to buy several receivers, speakers and cd players, told me he was going to bring me into this new century. “Go back to Hargray and cancel the cable set-up you just ordered this morning. Keep the internet. I’m going to set you up with a great sound bar and YouTubeTV. Nobody listens to music like you and I once did. I also have about 1,500 cds and now use Spotify and Tidal.”
Then, I go to Alamo Electronics here to buy two more TVs for Georgia and when I ask about the eventual replacement of my Sony 5-disc CD player I’m told that hardly anyone makes a multi-disc player anymore and certainly not the companies he carries. Sells high-end single players (“but not many”) and they cost substantially more than what I paid for the 5-disc player. He confirmed that most people now stream. He recommended Tidal as it has more fidelity and less compression.
The Kid Down the Hall just laughs at me. I say, “Let’s go in the den and I’ll crank up something and you tell me that it’s not many times better than what you’re listening to through those goofy ear buds.”
When Comcast installed fibre, it took 3 weeks and they started the day of the Duke/IU tournament game in 2002. I went to the top of the nearest hill and listened to WOWO in my car.
LOL re the hill.
Had a few white and green paint lines/spots appear a couple of weeks ago. Nobody knew why. Then at 0700 today multiple trucks appear and, like Minions, a flood of guys are painting orange lines all over the street and yards. I then drive down to have my car serviced and my bride picks me up. We get back and a different group of trucks and Minions are all over the street digging everywhere. We had speculated on the drive back when Altafiber might follow up with the eventual installation, never for a moment thinking it would happen the same day.
Fiber is a game changer. Metronet here in Carmel-by-the-River. The difference was astounding.
Yea I noticed on rotten tomatoes:
audience rating over 2300 reviews-95%
critics about 50 reviews-40%
