|
Post by cheerypeabrain on Oct 2, 2019 20:04:20 GMT
New Doc Martin tonight.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Oct 2, 2019 22:58:39 GMT
Eeeeeeeeeeee!!! Thanks for that, Cheery! I think I'd given up hope on that.
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Oct 3, 2019 4:06:23 GMT
We have made it to the top of the library’s waitlist for Handmaid’s Tale Season Two. Woo hoo!
|
|
|
Post by lugg on Oct 12, 2019 18:27:15 GMT
Thanks for the heads up re The Capture , Patrick - I am hooked 2 episodes in.
|
|
|
Post by cheerypeabrain on Oct 12, 2019 20:38:54 GMT
Netflix series Raising Dion Jeff loves it. Science fiction about a young boy with strange powers...sounds naff but soon gets more interesting.
|
|
|
Post by patricklondon on Oct 13, 2019 11:26:41 GMT
Thanks for the heads up re The Capture , Patrick - I am hooked 2 episodes in. Plenty of twists and turns to come! Hooray, hooray, Spiral (Engrenages) series 7 started here last night. My word, doesn't everyone have problems (except the one who had the most when the saga started)? My blog | My photos | My video clips | My Librivox recordings"too literate to be spam"
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Oct 14, 2019 17:23:29 GMT
Patrick has been expounding about the merits of Engrenages/Spiral for so long that I decided that I need to see it. I never really avoided it, but these days there are just too many things to watch. However, I have access to the first seven seasons on my TV service and have watched the first two episodes of season 1, not enough to make up my mind yet, although I was impressed that episode one (not recommended for viewers below age 12 in France) began with an opening scene of finding a spread-eagled nude female body in a trash dump in all of its explicit glory -- face destroyed by a hammer, guts ripped out and strewn around -- the usual stuff, blood everywhere... And then the investigation begins.
I will continue my viewing shortly.
I should point out that I spent the last two weeks watching all 5 seasons of Friday Night Lights, something that I would have never watched in the past because 1. American high school football and 2. Texas small town life. And yet, it is a very worthy series, even though both of those annoy me enormously. In my youth, I confess that I actually experienced the thrill of pep rallies and weekly football games and they really did seem important, although probably not as super important as in the series, but everything is bigger in Texas. As for small town life, I know more than enough about it, but I was too young to know about all of the sex, surprise pregnancies, betrayals, shitty parent problems and adult moral dilemmas dropping on the head of teenagers. Obviously the story line about the nice young quarterback living with his grandmother sinking into dementia struck a chord with me. Some of the other side stories got tiring, but I was surprisingly satisfied with how things were wrapped up in the final episode.
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Oct 14, 2019 18:20:31 GMT
Handmaid Two is done. The last-second change in plans guarantees a Season 3, which I’m guessing some of you are already finished with. Is a season 4 in the works?
|
|
|
Post by cheerypeabrain on Oct 14, 2019 18:40:45 GMT
New series tonight Dublin Murders based on Tana French's Dublin set thrillers. Got a good write up.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Oct 20, 2019 12:27:19 GMT
I just watched both seasons of Future Man, 26 episodes. It is delightfully vile although some episodes are a bit weak. I thought it was interesting that even though Josh Hutcherson is supposed to be the star, it is basically Derek Wilson who takes over the series.
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Oct 20, 2019 16:04:00 GMT
Has anyone watched My Brilliant Friend? I hear it’s good, it’s on my list, but can’t remember who recommended it.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Oct 20, 2019 16:16:21 GMT
I don't remember any conversation here about the show, Kimby, although there was a good amount about the book. I'm almost to the end of season two of Lodge 49 and find it hugely satisfying in the oddest way, since the audience & the characters, for that matter, never know what is going on. A scene from the episode I watched last night: a mysterious woman takes the microphone in an auction house and begins singing The Impossible Dream in French. After a couple of minutes a mariachi band which happens to be in the room begin to accompanying her. She finishes the song to an awed silence by the visibly moved audience, then turns around & sets the tapestry on the wall behind her on fire and exits. What could be better?!
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Oct 21, 2019 11:48:22 GMT
Well, I watched the first episode of Watchmen, and I don't think I will be watching any more of them. First of all it is much too creepy and for another, there is no way I can imagine Vietnam becoming the 51st state. The United States would feel much too threatened to absorb a country with a population of 100 million. But I suppose the writers looked at a map and figured "that looks about the same size as Florida." Oh, and the pounding "action music" was unbearable.
If anybody else watches and can explain why it rains baby squids in Oklahoma, I would be curious about that, though.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Oct 22, 2019 16:06:58 GMT
I have started watching a new French series in a genre for which the French are not generally known (The Returned being a notable exception) -- La Dernière Vague (The Last Wave). It takes place in a surf community in southwestern France. A mysterious cloud descends over the coast and a bunch of surfers disappear, only to be found safe and sound 5 hours later but with no memory of what happened to them. But each one is changed one way or another. I'll stick with it.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Oct 22, 2019 16:14:37 GMT
Another reason to finally learn French! I would so watch that.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Oct 24, 2019 19:07:20 GMT
I watched ten minutes of Peaky Blinders, season 5. Not enough to know what it was about, but that was enough for me. It looked just like a period fashion show with no substance. So now I am trying Twilight Zone instead. I'm pretty sure that it will not appeal to me either.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Oct 24, 2019 19:57:34 GMT
I threw myself at Peaky Blinders two or three times, but couldn't make it even halfway through the first episode. It comes across as very fakey to me, plus I really can't stand the lead guy's face.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Oct 24, 2019 20:11:30 GMT
The Twilight Zone episode I watched did nothing for me either. Yes, I know that each story is individual and different, so I will have to try again some other time. So now I am back to watching Spiral, as per Patrick's recommendation. I am part way through series 2, so it will take quite some time to reach series 7 and 8, but it has definitely become gripping. The main thing that isn't fair, though, is that the good guys are not completely good but the bad guys are 100% bad, which gives the bad guys an advantage.
|
|
|
Post by cheerypeabrain on Oct 24, 2019 20:27:38 GMT
I thought that Peaky Blinders was...in a word...crap. Over acting, improbable plotlines and ridiculously over promoted by the beeb.
Dublin Murders continues to be quite intriguing... now watching Giri/Haji complicated thriller set in Japan and England. OH very impressed..me not so much. I lose interest really quickly unless I really like a production.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Oct 25, 2019 0:47:44 GMT
I love the title of Dublin Murders. No one has to say, "What's it about?"
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Oct 25, 2019 4:26:42 GMT
I watched the trailer for Manhunt with Martin Clunes. It looks like it should be good.
Just watched episode one of Catherine the Great w/Helen Mirren. Good stuff!
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Oct 25, 2019 4:56:50 GMT
My Brilliant Friend is quite captivating.
Set in the outskirts of post WWII Naples, it introduces us to two smart little girls who become best friends and competitors. Lila’s family wants her to quit school after elementary school and work in her father’s shoe-making shop, while at the urging of her teacher, Elena’s parents (reluctantly at first) allow her to go on to middle school and then classical high school in the city.
The first three episodes feature excellent young actresses playing the 6 year old girls, and the next 3 feature teenaged versions of the characters played by new actresses who are also very good. We have two episodes yet to watch.
The dialog is all in Italian (I think, though it sometimes sounds French to me.) A lot of the action is set in the courtyards of the apartment blocks the young girls’ families live in, and the Kimbys are struck by how the Italians are much more dramatic - and loud - in their family interactions than we are. There’s some coming of age issues, some young love, some intense scholastic competition, and it’s all told as recollections of Elena, speaking in an adult voice, I presume as the narrator of her own book. (It is based on a series of books by Elena Ferrante.)
I like it very much. So far. There is a sequel, I believe.
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Oct 27, 2019 14:22:57 GMT
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Oct 27, 2019 16:23:17 GMT
That was one of the main points of the Italian Martin Eden movie adaptation that I saw recently, as it was set in Naples. To hoist himself up from his working class level to the haute bourgeoisie that he craves, he has to abandon speaking Neapolitan and speak Italian instead, as well as know a bit of French.
|
|
|
Post by bjd on Oct 27, 2019 16:40:25 GMT
I also read the first book and didn't like the author's voice. Then a friend lent me volume 2, I read #3 from the library telling myself, "no more". But the other day I was in a book store with a gift coupon, the choice of books in English was terrible and I don't know many French authors I feel like reading, so I bought volume 4. I haven't started it yet but am sure I still won't like the author's voice.
And Kimby, the apartment is not in the outskirts of Naples, I believe the area was fairly central and poor:Rione Luzzatti.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Oct 27, 2019 16:42:49 GMT
I know that Peaky Blinders is enormously popular, so have to grant that is has something that eludes me. But yeah, Tom Waits on the sound track is a plus.
Watched the second episode of Catherine the Great last night. No surprise, Helen Mirren and the other actors are great. What is surprising is that they're able to deliver the script without eye-rolling, laughing, or gagging. Really, the writers should be shot.
Edited to add that of course I'm curious about My Excellent Friend because of seeing Naples. But the book didn't just bore me, it infuriated me with the assumption that anyone would be interested in that meandering, boring crap.
|
|
|
Post by bjd on Oct 27, 2019 16:57:14 GMT
You didn't like it, huh?
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Oct 27, 2019 19:30:19 GMT
And Kimby, the apartment is not in the outskirts of Naples, I believe the area was fairly central and poor:Rione Luzzatti. As portrayed in the TV series, the housing compound is more or less out in the country. Separated from the city by a long highway that passes through a tunnel that allows frequent trains to pass over the highway (the “wrong side of the tracks,” literally) The feeling on the TV is that the separation from city to village is nearly complete for these kids whose parents don’t have cars. Re: author’s voice. I didn’t find the narration annoying at all. (Guess I’ll avoid the books and keep going with the series.)
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Oct 27, 2019 19:47:05 GMT
Edited to add that of course I'm curious about My Excellent Friend because of seeing Naples. But the book didn't just bore me, it infuriated me with the assumption that anyone would be interested in that meandering, boring crap. It’s “Brilliant” in English, but “geniale” in the original title.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Oct 27, 2019 20:02:19 GMT
That's one of the reasons I like you ~ because you're so insightful! Maybe the tv version eliminates the author's voice and the meandering boring crap of the novel. We can hope. I am hopeful, especially since the adaption by its very nature is forced to move along more briskly. It’s “Brilliant” in English, but “geniale” in the original title. Huh! "Genial" in Spanish would indicate something like agreeable, fun, amusing. Possibly the "brilliant" in the translation is meant the way the British use it -- it's obviously not the American usage. Coincidentally, after all the mentions of Peaky Blinders here, this popped up from The Smithsonian in my fb feed: www.smithsonianmag.com/history/who-were-real-peaky-blinders-180973328/
|
|