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Season 2 of Alice in Borderland has really great parts and is also really boring for multiple episode stretches.
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Dec 28, 2022 04:05
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Grandpa Palpatine posted:how is Tales from the Loop? I thought most of the episodes were pretty great. Great soundtrack too. Devs also came out the same year, and if you're into melancholy sci-fi I recommend you check it out too. I think it's on Hulu. precision posted:Aside from a couple jokes he seemed more to be a Steve Jobs type than Elon This makes me wonder if Steve Jobs ever threw a party. I read him as way more Elon though.
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Dec 28, 2022 07:38
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mcmagic posted:Season 2 of Alice in Borderland has really great parts and is also really boring for multiple episode stretches. I thought it was okay though I enjoyed the first season a lot more. Establishing a mystery box is much better than explaining one. The final episode pulls a loving Sherlock of all things, which really annoyed me. "Maybe it's aliens! Maybe it's just a trauma dream! Maybe I'm making up these explanations! Fuuuuck that. Sherlock did that same bullshit after a season cliffhanger once and it was bad there too.
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Dec 28, 2022 07:44
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The White Lotus isn't a bad site by any stretch of the imagination, but it reminds me a lot of Patriot where the more it goes on, the more and more it feels like misery porn.
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Dec 28, 2022 09:13
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White Lotus is good as hell though it deffo did give me anxiety at some points. i think of handmaid's tale as the ultimate misery porn show.
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Dec 28, 2022 10:20
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precious
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Yeah, White Lotus was simultaneously better and worse than I expected. Like, "here's a bunch of rich assholes on a vacation resort" put me off from even trying it for the longest time, but when I did start watching after all I was relieved that the show went "you're right, gently caress these people", and does deliver a few solid hits along those lines. But even with that in mind, at least season one felt like it was just kinda spinning its wheels. It's just a parade of garbage people being garbage to each other and themselves, the handful of decent people get hosed over, and then it just kinda ends without really much of a resolution.
Perestroika fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Dec 28, 2022 |
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Dec 28, 2022 13:58
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I think White Lotus is horror television, I don't know why it isn't officially considered that
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Dec 28, 2022 14:56
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S2 of white Lotus has a much more tight and interesting plot than s1
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Dec 28, 2022 15:23
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veni veni veni posted:I felt mixed on Glass Onion just like I did Knives out. Fun, probably too long, but kind of bs as a mystery. It creates mystery by omitting a bunch of information and then feeding it to you in an info dump at the end. There’s no fun in guessing cause it doesn’t tell you what you need to know to begin with. Also I know I’m supposed to love the performances but imo a lot of them are corny and not great. More or less how I felt. I won't say they're bad films, but I found them entertaining but little more. And typical of "mysteries" that just pull some convuluted solution out of the air, proclaiming it as only logical solution. When I first started to read mystery and crime fiction, I was surprised how common that is as a solution, even in Agatha Christy - holding back information, some cheap pop psychology then a crazy complicated explanation are accepted plots. However I did appreciate Benoit's first solution, solving the setup "murder". And Janelle Monae is charming as hell. And the absurd machinations of the plot are part of the attraction. So, I prefer the comedy / hijinks of Glass Onion to the straight take of Knives Out.
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Dec 28, 2022 16:06
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Perestroika posted:Yeah, White Lotus was simultaneously better and worse than I expected. Like, "here's a bunch of rich assholes on a vacation resort" put me off from even trying it for the longest time, but when I did start watching after all I was relieved that the show went "you're right, gently caress these people", and does deliver a few solid hits along those lines. But even with that in mind, at least season one felt like it was just kinda spinning its wheels. It's just a parade of garbage people being garbage to each other and themselves, the handful of decent people get hosed over, and then it just kinda ends without really much of a resolution. You should watch season 2
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Dec 28, 2022 17:44
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I kind of think the sexual politics of season 2 toe the line of being outright embarrassing, but season 1 was better in that respect.
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Dec 28, 2022 19:09
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graventy posted:I thought it was okay though I enjoyed the first season a lot more. Establishing a mystery box is much better than explaining one. The final episode pulls a loving Sherlock of all things, which really annoyed me. "Maybe it's aliens! Maybe it's just a trauma dream! Maybe I'm making up these explanations! Fuuuuck that. Sherlock did that same bullshit after a season cliffhanger once and it was bad there too. Yeah I was pretty annoyed by that at first lol, but then I remembered how many volumes the manga is (18 volumes) and I'm like, there is no way they're gonna reveal it now. Way too early. Overall I enjoyed the season as a whole about as much as the first. The finale did drag a fair bit though, but every episode leading up to it was great.
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Dec 29, 2022 08:03
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Papercut posted:In the book Tyler is just a straightforward violent Christian cultist so it's possible for the show they wanted to give his character more depth and just didn't pull it off. Personally I thought the whole show was incredible, especially considering how mid the book is. This is exactly true. Book was just alright. Show was great. Recently read Emily St. Mandel's latest novel Sea of Tranquility due to the rapturous praise it's gotten and its lukewarm literary fiction crossed with very half-assed science fiction. Book critics are insane.
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Dec 29, 2022 11:21
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Rental Sting posted:This is exactly true. Book was just alright. Show was great. Recently read Emily St. Mandel's latest novel Sea of Tranquility due to the rapturous praise it's gotten and its lukewarm literary fiction crossed with very half-assed science fiction. Book critics are insane. SF fans have long and rightly grumbled about how when a literary author does science fiction, it's inevitably praised for its invention and imagination, while plundering a century of tropes. Not that the SF community doesn't have abysmal taste but ...
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Dec 29, 2022 12:25
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Caught The Laundromat and Tucker: The Man and His Dream on Netflix. Interesting but ultimately flawed little films. Tucker is late era Coppola with Jeff Bridges in full Dream Lebowski Crazy Eyes, it has some well shot moments and a fun enough cast (Dean Stockwell has a short cameo as Howard Hughes) but it's a lot more basic biopic than I wanted, it needed to go full Hudsucker Proxy. The Laundromat was okaaaay, sorta boring but about an important topic (shell companies), seemingly forgotten Soderbergh with a typically solid ensemble cast. Gary Oldman is doing a really goofy German accent and theres a lot of breaking of the fourth wall. It's got low reviews because people say it's just copying The Big Short, which honestly is just silly. The reason The Laundromat is ehhhh isn't because of that, as if that stupid Big Short film invented all these tropes...it's more because it's like a leftist meme from the era where people would try to cram ten paragraphs of text on a funny picture. It's infotainment. It's an interesting pamphlet.
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Dec 29, 2022 17:21
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nonathlon posted:SF fans have long and rightly grumbled about how when a literary author does science fiction, it's inevitably praised for its invention and imagination, while plundering a century of tropes. Not that the SF community doesn't have abysmal taste but ... They are right to do so! There are examples of it working, though; I'm into Ishiguro's forays into science fiction. This is a really broad generalization, but I think it works better when dedicated science fiction writers happen to be great prose stylists, as in the case of LeGuin, Wolfe, and Ballard.
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Dec 29, 2022 22:17
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I wrote an essay on how writing for science fiction TV & film has been stuck in a loop for ~40 years when Something Awful was soliciting front page articles. The bottom line is that the concept of doing "x, but in space" (where x=any grounded story) has been largely forgotten as a basis of storytelling.
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Dec 29, 2022 23:21
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Edward Mass posted:I wrote an essay on how writing for science fiction TV & film has been stuck in a loop for ~40 years when Something Awful was soliciting front page articles. The bottom line is that the concept of doing "x, but in space" (where x=any grounded story) has been largely forgotten as a basis of storytelling. "x, but in space" is fine as a window dressing but that's not what essence of science fiction is (imo). SF is first and foremost speculative fiction that asks questions about how some scientific concepts or technologies would shape the world / humanity. Maybe that's "hard sci fi" nowadays, I dunno 
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Dec 30, 2022 00:13
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Finally watching Bros and it definitely delivers on the premise of being an actual honest portrayal of gay guys Edit: finished, what a seriously great comedy. And says a lot of really worthwhile things precision fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Dec 30, 2022 01:50
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precision posted:Finally watching Bros and it definitely delivers on the premise of being an actual honest portrayal of gay guys I saw it in the theater, and while I liked it for the most part, I think it spent too much time trying to justify its existence to straight audiences rather than just fully going for it. Other than that, I just had some real nitpicky things like, nobody would ever actually be able to have a conversation in a gay club like that, or that everybody wore the exact same kind of underwear, which was all pretty straight looking to boot. It did have a pretty accurate portrayal of certain aspects of the gay community, and I liked that pretty much every single role (except for that one cameo) was portrayed by a queer actor. The funniest scene was the foursome scene.
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Dec 30, 2022 04:20
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Yeah it's refreshing to see dudes kissing and being able to tell they're both actually into it. Jim Rash was fantastic and he is right, everyone ignores bisexuals!!
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Dec 30, 2022 06:33
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documentary now! is on Netflix and i'd never heard of it. just watched episodes about a fictional 70s musical cast recording and it was funny as hell.
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Dec 30, 2022 06:42
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Catching up on all the shows and Im here to recommend Gaslit. Crackling take on the Watergate burglary done really well woth excellent acting and dialogue. Shea Wigham, Dan Steven's, and Julia Roberts all do fantastic work. Really slept on imo
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Dec 30, 2022 06:45
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Lazy_Liberal posted:documentary now! is on Netflix and i'd never heard of it. just watched episodes about a fictional 70s musical cast recording and it was funny as hell. It's going to make me watch so many documentaries, I'm aware of some of the ones they're making fun of but I definitely haven't seen them all.
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Dec 30, 2022 18:15
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Lazy_Liberal posted:documentary now! is on Netflix and i'd never heard of it. just watched episodes about a fictional 70s musical cast recording and it was funny as hell. It's very good, hardly any weak episodes. Watch them all.
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Dec 30, 2022 19:33
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Field Mousepad posted:It's very good, hardly any weak episodes. Watch them all. I'm trying to watch the Stop Making Sense parody episode, but it's not clicking for me. Seems like it's just an excuse for Fred Armisen to bust out some new wave/Talking Heads parody songs he couldn't find another avenue for. Maybe I shouldn't have started with an episode that's so specific?
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Dec 30, 2022 19:49
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Stayne Falls posted:I'm trying to watch the Stop Making Sense parody episode, but it's not clicking for me. Seems like it's just an excuse for Fred Armisen to bust out some new wave/Talking Heads parody songs he couldn't find another avenue for. Maybe I shouldn't have started with an episode that's so specific? They're all so loving specific. So there's gonna be episodes that just don't hit, and it differs person to person. Man I really liked Blue Jeans Committee, but feels like that won't work with someone who doesn't have any familiarity with Chicago. e: the place AND the band
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Dec 30, 2022 21:53
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Lazy_Liberal posted:documentary now! is on Netflix and i'd never heard of it. just watched episodes about a fictional 70s musical cast recording and it was funny as hell. Arroz con pollo episode loving kills me everytime
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Dec 30, 2022 22:36
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The Gary Larson episode is also good because again it's specifically making fun of some documentary where some guy wanted to make a big deal of trying to meet Bill Watterson (who would rather just be left alone.)
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Dec 31, 2022 00:39
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The Swimming to Cambodia episode always had a special place for me since I went through Spalding Gray phase in college right before he killed himself.
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Dec 31, 2022 01:40
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The REAL Goobusters posted:Arroz con pollo episode loving kills me everytime the sequence with retrieving the bucket of milk on time is something I think of often, it's great
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Dec 31, 2022 04:17
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I thought that Glass Onion was hilarious, and IMO Janelle Monae should be in more movies no matter what kind of accent she puts on.
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Dec 31, 2022 05:27
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I loved the accent stuff. she actually does that accent switching in real life - her "stage" accent is more like the sister that was murdered, and her natural accent is like the other one. You can hear it in the interludes in her older music.
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Dec 31, 2022 05:31
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I found Glass Onion to be more cartoonish and less interesting than Knives Out, with a somewhat unsatisfying ending, but it had good actors bouncing off each other in baroque ways so I still enjoyed it. Having Ana De Armas and Chris Evans in the mix and in the center just made the thing more substantive.
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Dec 31, 2022 06:25
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Shageletic posted:I found Glass Onion to be more cartoonish and less interesting than Knives Out, with a somewhat unsatisfying ending, but it had good actors bouncing off each other in baroque ways so I still enjoyed it. It definitely didn’t have the heart of the first one. I remember getting a little teary eyed at the end of the first one when Blanc was explaining how Marta instinctually gave the correct medicine because she was a good nurse and had a kind heart. Something about that juxtaposed with how lovely the whole family was got me. Nothing like that in the second one which was really goofy but I still loved it. Am just happy we are getting at least one more of these.
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Dec 31, 2022 09:20
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Papercut posted:You should watch season 2 Done that (White Lotus season 2), and it certainly was an improvement! It felt a lot more focused, with actual plotlines that have actual resolutions and centers some protagonists that you can actually root for. It still spends a fair amount of time on characters that couldn't bring myself to care for or about (I positively do not give a poo poo about Aubrey Plaza's character's marriage), but the signal to noise ratio felt a lot better now.
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Dec 31, 2022 11:41
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Nu-Willow somehow managed to achieve the unimaginable feat of making GBS threads the bed even harder than Rings of Power after the first couple of semi-promising episodes... jesus christ is it getting really depressing with all these incredible misfires like RoP, WoT, Foundation and now this boring piece of trash. Warwick Davis tries his damnedest to make it at least tolerable but these last few episodes were just unspeakably dire garbage. Had to cheer myself up by rewatching the original movie to confirm that yes, it was and still is awesomely charming and just perfect.
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Dec 31, 2022 14:06
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poronty posted:Nu-Willow somehow managed to achieve the unimaginable feat of making GBS threads the bed even harder than Rings of Power after the first couple of semi-promising episodes... jesus christ is it getting really depressing with all these incredible misfires like RoP, WoT, Foundation and now this boring piece of trash. Warwick Davis tries his damnedest to make it at least tolerable but these last few episodes were just unspeakably dire garbage. Yeah I'm sticking with it but I don't know why. It's like an AI was given the instructions "create fantasy show with all the required plot points". It's so goddam tropey, they did the "oh no someone is falling off a cliff/bridge and they're slipping until someone grabs them at the last minute" twice in the last episode. The week before we had the mandatory "I believe love is the most powerful force in the universe" quote. The use of modern music in it is jarring too, going from a fantasy show to remakes of Black Hole Sun and Enter Sandman in the credits is just weird
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Dec 31, 2022 15:52
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Definitely feels like we're in the fantasy equivalent of whatever the hell happened to superhero movies in the 90s, with one or two absolute hits that people not really fans of the genre chae ineffectually to recapture. Nu-Fantasy. Leather Swords and Magic. The Limp Bisket of Genre Eras.
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Dec 31, 2022 16:17
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graventy posted:I thought it was okay though I enjoyed the first season a lot more. Establishing a mystery box is much better than explaining one. The final episode pulls a loving Sherlock of all things, which really annoyed me. "Maybe it's aliens! Maybe it's just a trauma dream! Maybe I'm making up these explanations! Fuuuuck that. Sherlock did that same bullshit after a season cliffhanger once and it was bad there too. Alice in Borderland spoilers. I think i would have preferred that they had kept it more ambiguous not knowing what actually happened with all those possibilities being live. The show pretty clearly ends with it all being in their heads after the meteorite hits. I hate "it was all a dream" stuff on principal.
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Dec 31, 2022 16:24
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