The Sword and Laser discussion

on episode 6 of ATLA live action in netflix - much improvement from the ghastly, traumatic movie.

Tamahome wrote: "Finished JK Rowling's CW Strike detective series. The last season has quite the ending. Another season is being created. Oh when will Robin and Cormoran get together?? I'm tempted to read the lates..."

the series has finished? what season is it?

Not finished. 5 seasons so far. Book 6 is filming.

Watched this on YouTube and it was fun little thing

The Real Stars and Scale of Sci-fi

https://youtu.be/0r2x7G0hwCw?si=_3dW9...

The creator managed to cram in an impressive volume and diversity of different source material. Lots of SL reads in here, including a reference to Downbelow station. 3

I finished True Detective Night Country. It was excellent.

Jennifer wrote: "I finished True Detective Night Country. It was excellent."

so good and surprising....

It's definitely a "cold and female" version of the first season. I'm confused by the frozen people.

The younger female cop reminds me of Lola Teariki from the Arliss Cutter mystery/thriller series, also set in Alaska.

Has anyone watched the great Australian series called 'Mr Inbetween'? It's semi comedy about a hit man and as far as I can tell the title is because he's somewhere between good and evil. I believe it's on FX in the US. Some of you may have come across the numerous clips on YouTube.

Tamahome wrote: "Not finished. 5 seasons so far. Book 6 is filming."

dang, I only watched up to 3 seasons. Hard to get access to UK shows in my country.

Pen reviews!

26 Excellent Everyday Pens — Best 5
https://youtu.be/kr-7-j9bAm8?si=tt8sd...

In Search of Perfection | The Perfect Pen
https://youtu.be/AQkjH_06KUE?si=Ch3-W...

Speaking of pens, I'm still watching "how I annotate" videos. I saw a $35 pen at barnes & noble yesterday, Kate something.

AndrewP wrote: "Has anyone watched the great Australian series called 'Mr Inbetween'? It's semi comedy about a hit man and as far as I can tell the title is because he's somewhere between good and evil. I believe ..."

I absolutely loved this show, my favorite part was his discussion at the anger therapy session.....

Speaking of pens, a recent post by author Marko Kloos inspired me to purchase a Lamy (not the 2000, just the entry-level Safari) in a hard-to-misplace bright red, and a set of the notebooks he spoke well of.
https://www.markokloos.com/?p=3427
I have always been interested in fountain pens but have mostly been a dabbler.

Pen obsession feels like it is peak hipster, but I don't care, I am here for it.

A Lamy then not a Lankie.

Wow, he handwrites his books.

I just binged through "The English", 6 part western series featuring Emily Blunt and Chaske Spenser, really well done and beautifully shot...lots of unexpected stuff

Finished watching The Winter King Season One on MGM Plus. The show is based on the novel The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell. It tells the story of King Arthur realistically. There is a lot of action and violence, but there also is a little fantasy nature magic in the show also. I thought it was very well done. The show adapted the first novel of the trilogy. I hope they will make two more seasons of the show to finish the trilogy.
The shows that I want to watch next are Black Mirror Season 6 on Netflix and Good Omens Season One and Two on Amazon Prime Video.

Mrs. Trike started watching St. Elmo’s Fire at midnight last night, a film I saw twice 40 years ago but discovered I could quote verbatim. I had no idea that it was buried in the back of my mind.

She was asleep halfway through, so I then tried Class of ‘85 which is a recent film about that era and it was… let’s say “less than good”, so I bailed after 10 minutes.

Then I rewatched Gravity, intending only to watch the opening scene but got sucked in and watched the whole thing. It is so good, and was reminded all over again why Neil DeGrasse Tyson should shut up about movies because he’s a terrible reviewer who misses key details and has no appreciation for art.

i have watch Amazon prime video/tv called Red Queen. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20883126/

Francis x wrote: "i have watch Amazon prime video/tv called Red Queen. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20883126/"

Plus there is novel , https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Not in English, but an incredible simulation

Trike wrote: "Mrs. Trike started watching St. Elmo’s Fire at midnight last night, a film I saw twice 40 years ago but discovered I could quote verbatim. I had no idea that it was buried in the back of my mind.

..."

Awe you should have her watched About Last Night. Total GenX favorite set in Chicago and one of my favorite bars at that age/time. Mothers.

But I can hear the St. Elmo's song in my head now...and it will be there all day I bet.

I'm caught up on Three Body Problem and have one new Shōgun episode to go. I wish I could stream the 80's show. I'll have a lot of reading to do if I want to know all the source material.

Started watching Extraordinary on Hulu. It’s about a world where everyone gets a superpower at 18, except Jen. It’s British, so the humor is wackadoo. One guy’s power is summoning fish out of thin air. He can’t talk to them like Aquaman, just make them appear. Another guy’s power is 3D printing anything… with his butt.

It was quite amusing but we were watching it on Hulu. We have the tier that includes ads, which rendered the show unwatchable. It’s not like normal TV where sitcoms have a commercial break every 10 minutes, the ads just showed up randomly and there were so. Damn. Many. We gave up after 2 episodes.

Also tried watching Invincible on Amazon and same problem. 7 ads in half the episode, so I gave up. We already pay $125 a year for Prime and now Amazon wants another $3 to go ad-free? F**k that. It’s just pure corporate greed trying to nickel and dime us to death.

At this point I just want all the streaming services to go belly-up so we can return to regular TV like the old days. When we suffered through commercials then it was because the service was free. I’m not keeping a service I already pay for if it also has ads. That’s bullship.

Have been watching ST: Picard after giving it a miss when it came out. Now up to halfway through S2. Does anyone want to talk about it? I've posted at length on Discord and thoroughly failed to ignite a conversation. Perhaps I'm just too late to the party.

Netflix:

Gyeonsong Creature
Alice in Borderland
Glitch

Prime:

Death's Game

Rewatched:

Blood Simple
Thunderheart

Both 5 stars.

Blithe Spirit from 1945. So classic! Ghost comedy.

Netflix
Reboot: Guardian Code
3 Body Problem

Amazon
Fallout (vault no pets allow)

Hulu
the TV series, ;not dead yet'
FX , Shōgun

I watched Fallout on Amazon because it doesn’t have ads (yet).

It’s really good. After all of these bad adaptations (Halo, LotR, Wheel of Time), it’s nice to finally get one that doesn’t suck.

Oh, one of the reasons I hadn't started yet, was I was dreading the ads, since the one other thing I watched on there since they have been implemented was awful with them. And yet there was nothing I wanted to watch bad enough to pay the extra not to have the adds.

Fallout was great. I enjoyed the whole series.

Ella Purnell is great as Lucy. I liked her in Yellowjackets as well.

I loved her wide eyed optimism, that came off as naive and misguided at times, but was charming.

Walter Goggins and Kyle MacLachlan were fantastic, as we have come to expect.

These aren't SF&F but I recently watched the movies Cyrano with Peter Dinklage and Women Talking, written and directed by Sarah Polley. I enjoyed both quite a bit.
Cyrano is a musical version of the classic story with the main character being short rather than big nosed. I've always liked the story, possibly because I identify with the character more closely than I should. They manage to not tax Dinklage's singing voice too much.
Women Talking is precisely that. The women in an Amish type colony get together to discuss leaving while all the men have gone to town to bail out the men that have abused them all their lives. It's all quite effective and moving and thoughtful. Well done.
They're both on Amazon Prime right now, listed as leaving soon, which means in the next month or two.

Phil wrote: "These aren't SF&F but I recently watched the movies Cyrano with Peter Dinklage and Women Talking, written and directed by Sarah Polley. I enjoyed both quite a bit.
Cyrano is a musical version of th..."

I remember watching the Peter Dinklage Cyrano a while back and thinking it was just okay.
Then over the next few days, I kept going back to the soundtrack on Spotify. It definitely grew on me.

Watching Shogun. Up to ep 3, has been excellent.

Shogun is great. Just finished Godzilla minus one - also great! Really gets back to the Godzilla roots where it was about war and the nuclear bomb

Watched the available episodes (6 maybe?) of the second season of The Big Door Prize on Apple TV. Just as good and funny and weird as the first season.

https://youtu.be/Mu-KfLd-d9U?si=leguw...

Watched Dune 2.

I didn’t like Dune because it felt like the Cliff’s Notes version of the book. But boy, Dune 2 fixes all that. I can’t remember the last time a movie series went from 1 star to 5 stars for me.

Watched Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and it was as good as the Last Mad Max movie. Definitely one of the best in the series.

Watched ep 1 of The Acolyte and lost my interest before it ended. Story and writing really subpar. Maybe I will watch ep 2 in case it gets better.

Silvana wrote: "Watched ep 1 of The Acolyte and lost my interest before it ended. Story and writing really subpar. Maybe I will watch ep 2 in case it gets better."

Yeah, I'm kind of "Meh" about it. The twist about the bad guy was obvious and the other characters, particularly the old classmate, don't seem quite right to me. And the dorky side of me keeps thinking "wait, these travel times and places seem way too compressed". I'll keep watching hoping it get gets better.

Phil wrote: "Silvana wrote: "Watched ep 1 of The Acolyte and lost my interest before it ended. Story and writing really subpar. Maybe I will watch ep 2 in case it gets better."

Yeah, I'm kind of "Meh" about it..."

I did watch ep 2 and the ending (view spoiler)[live action wookiee jedi (hide spoiler)] made me want to watch ep 3 ;p

I watched Acolyte and was surprised how much it hooked me in, So, this will now be first in the Star Wars timeline.

We watched two excellent based-on-true-stories movies last night on Netflix:

Dumb Money about the GameStop investing thing a couple years ago. It has a surprising number of big stars in it. 5 stars.

Hit Man about a psychology teacher who does part-time AV tech for the police suddenly has to fill in for an undercover cop to catch someone trying to hire a hitman. Turns out he has a natural gift for it, but then things get complicated when he falls for a suspect. 4 stars.

After-credits stuff in both films showing the real people.

I am watching Fallout on Amazon Prime Video. It is an adaption of the video game Fallout, though it is not a straight adaption of any of the games in the series. It uses the game’s background with new characters. I’m up to the last episode now.
The shows that I want to watch next are House of the Dragon Season 2 on MAX starting on June 16, 2024, (Based on the book Fire & Blood by George R.R. Martin) The Acolyte Season 1 on Disney Plus, Black Mirror Season 6 on Netflix and Good Omens Season One and Two on Amazon Prime Video (Based on the novel Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett).

Fall Out
Curb Your Enthusiasm season 3

Just finished season 2 of Blood of Zeus on Netflix. I'm not a huge fan of that style of animation but I am of some of the voice actors and also Greek mythology and this wasn't bad. Similar feel to the Castlevania series that was on there.
Also finished bingeing Psyche. Lot's of good fun in this fake psychic detective series and as a bonus for me it was filmed around Vancouver.

Watched the first 3 episodes of Star Wars: The Acolyte. I see what they’re trying to do but it’s just so boring.

I just watched the third episode of The Acolyte. It's not perfect but it's ok. Some parts were pretty silly.
My biggest problem isn't with the show but with the incels and their influencers who have review bombed it, as they do with anything they deem too woke for having a diverse cast or characters. They always try to come up with some other reasons to hate on something but it odd how it's always the shows with leads that aren't straight, white males. This episode had a Rotten Tomato critic score around 85% (a little too high in my opinion) but an audience score of 17% (way, way too low). I guess the good thing about these guys is they probably won't breed.

The third episode fell flat for me. Hopefully that is the end of the flashback as the acting by the twins as children was pretty bad.

I've been watching the latest Doctor Who. Anyone else? There's been a modest discussion on Discord, I don't know if anyone else is interested.