I think I or someone else mentioned Halt and Catch Fire earlier in this thread (or maybe another). I really loved the show. Won't say anything else.

I am watching Punisher season 2. Punisher guy is nowhere near as good as Thomas Jane was but I enjoyed the first season and I'm actually enjoying the second season more so far (only a few episodes into it). Probably because a lot of stuff "is" happening vs watching a lot of stuff that "did" happen in the past.

For anyone that likes the Thomas Jane Punisher I always recommend looking up Punisher Dirty Laundry on YouTube. Jane reprises the role and it's only about 11 minutes if I remember right. Too bad he didn't get a sequel. Punisher TV show is trying to be too realistic. It works, it's good, but it takes away something to provide something it couldn't otherwise. Most of the Netflix Marvel shows suffer/benefit from the same thing.

This Punisher is an enjoyable show, but the character is basically just an invincible killing machine meathead. I liked Tom Jane's Punisher (dirty laundry as well) and I really liked his character in The Expanse (which I highly recommend).

I've only finished three episodes of Punisher season two, but I like it better than season 1. Frank Castle seems to have embraced who he is. In Daredevil S2 he was the Punisher, then he gave it up until the very end of Punisher S1, now he's back in S2.

Netflix is super dumb, because the show has been hiding Billy Russo's face (which I assumed was super mangled) for the first few episodes. We finished episode 3, then stopped to go to bed. But before we get to see Russo's face in the show, they show it (quite unmangled) in the image preview for the next episode, BEFORE you watch the episode. As in, you have to see it in order to select the episode. Duuuuuuumb.

I might have already mentioned in another thread but The Orville has really matured. It's a pretty damn good show. A recent episode even managed to evoke some Star Wars nostalgia from me from the action in certain scenes. The Rookie has also turned out to be really good and NBC seems to have a really good show with The Enemy Within. We've slowly been working our way through Hanna. That's pretty good as well.

They've finally cancelled Lethal Weapon which is what I've been waiting for to see what they did with the show after after killing Riggs. I didn't want to help prevent cancellation by adding even just one more viewer.

Surprisingly, Agents of Shield is renewed. I haven't watched that for a few years now. To think of it, there are tons of Marvel shows out there I haven't seen yet. It's actually amazing how many they have.

I was giving a few of the CW DC shows a shot but it was way too LGBTQLMNOP heavy for me. I really have no problem with gay story lines, my wife and I pretty religiously watch Grey's Anatomy, but the Arrow-verse (plus and especially Supergirl) was just too heavy handed and condescending for me.

I link this as an example of this new trend of Youtube 'video essays' ripping off Every Frame a Painting.

So much of this video is meh. I think the only thing he pointed out which I remember from my two-episode stint of this show was the use of wide-angle lenses. The rest is just screenwriting 101 or the most banal praise of vague aspects of the show. I guess it garners clicks from people who already like the show and want their opinions confirmed..

I really liked the movie this is based on, but I don't have time to watch the show.The movie felt pretty bloated so I'm curious how the show compares.

I don't remember the movie very well at all but I'm pretty sure they went in a pretty different direction. This first season of Hanna is only eight episodes so it was easy to get through an episode at a time over a relatively short period. Binge watchers can do it in a day.

Catch-22 on Hulu is pretty good. You should watch it.

Bought The Wire on Blu-Ray. Updating to 16:9 HD over the 4:3 SD is a huge upgrade. It's like a different show almost.

One of the scenes struck my empathy nerve hard this time. There's a scene where Wallace (~14 year old dealer) wakes up the local kids all living in his apartment. The whole sequence is a fantastic take on poverty. It's played so straight and routine. And not rubbed in your face. But you notice the small things like Wallace using a water bottle to wash out his mouth because the apartment has no tap water.

Really is the best show and the new Blu-Ray is just incredible.

I watched it for the first time about a year ago and I can’t wait to watch it again. It’s the freakin’ best.

The Deuce is also really really good. I haven’t seen Treme yet.

Updating 4:3 shows to 16:9 is usually pretty sketchy. Apparently they did an okay job with The Wire, I've never seen the show. Here's a video with an example of a show (I've also not seen) where they didn't do so well:

Apparently David Simon was heavily involved in the process and reframed every scene to give the best effect. I'm personally not a purist and nothing has stuck out yet as weird to me.

He did write about it here: http://davidsimon.com/the-wire-hd-with-videos/

Even if some scenes end up a bit worsened, I still prefer this version.

Haven't seen The Deuce, but I should give it a shot seeing how much I like The Wire. You watched both seasons I'm guessing?

Yeah, that HD version looks bad. I guess that's the difference between a dedicated team of the same creative vision, vs. a halfass team trying to complete the project as quickly as possible. TBF, Joss Whedon could have sucked up his pride like David Simon did and just ensure the process would go well.

Whoever shot those day for night scenes in Buffy made a mistake, though. Day for night looks awful always, lol.

At least with The Wire it looks like they had widescreen material to work with. I'm usually not bothered with deviating from the director's "vision" but I'm horrified when native 4:3 content is cropped to achieve 16x9. Similarly, back in the days of VHS I would try to find letterboxed versions of my favorite films and detest "full screen" DVDs (unless it's the native format).

Yup... twice! And eagerly awaiting the third.

I've talked to some people about the show, and many have had a similar experience with it as me. The first season can feel like a bit of a slog because it's so dark, but in the course of the second season I came to really admire and become invested in the characters, which retrospectively made the first season so much better (and then I rewatched it and loved it even more).

the video essay as a genre bums me out

The children watching adults swearing while playing with toys genre bums me out.

I finally got around to watching the last season of The Leftovers. It was definitely an interesting show, in some respects. I did like how it teased the viewer by hinting that almost every supernatural event that occurred could have a naturalistic explanation, or it could have a supernatural explanation -- very existential, in that assumed how the presupposition was that individual people finding meaning in their lives was the ultimately source of that meaning. There are a lot of things I liked about it. It could get tedious, though, in much the same way that Lost could.

For every good one, there's a thousand godawful imitators. But there are good ones to be found if you can siphon out the crap, thankfully.

But I suppose I too feel a bit of genre fatigue there. Seeing the glut of knockoffs and wannabe critics is a bit aggravating.

Some people are genuinely informed and offer a perspective that I wouldn’t get elsewhere. Lindsay Ellis comes to mind. But I feel so icky watching it on YouTube in a way that I don’t with other YouTube content. I feel like I’m wasting my time just because I’m watching YouTube, even if I’m watching something that’s thoughtful and intellectually engaging. I wish these people would just write medium articles instead.

Ellis has credible documentary filmmaking chops. If she just wrote medium articles she’d be tossing away at least half of her talent, and then I’d be asking why I’m reading some MA bloviating about movies instead of a published paper

There are many reasons why video is an effective medium for her particularly, given what she does. For example, it’s way easier to talk about video in a video than it is in writing, because you can just show the thing you’re talking about rather than trying describe it in words (although there is some value to having to describe, as it inevitably entails interpreting the cited clips and possibly making more explicit what one is trying to draw attention to, even if that value doesn’t surpass the value of simply showing the clip).

I think I want contradictory things here.

Ellis is great. I think it matters how people use video in their essay. Many seem to be people just reading a script while random video plays in the background. These are usually pretty bad. If the video actually makes use of the video medium to make commentary on what you see, it's more likely to work.

I watched a few more episodes with this in mind. You can definitely see some scenes were framed for 4:3 and look a little weird. Usually it's just extra stuff on the side so it doesn't matter, but sometimes you see the actors look a little cramped together in the middle of the frame. It doesn't bother me too much and it's not super common, but it does happen.

This channel, Every Frame a Painting, kind of kickstarted the trend of Youtube video essays. Most of his are really good, this one in particular is a very good example. Early I was lauding Scorsese for combining exposition with scenes which exemplify the points being made, EFAP does very much the same. This is an example of using video as a core component of the essay instead of just using it as a backdrop for a written essay. He also makes interesting points, instead of vaguely praising or criticizing something without much substance.

I really like the Now You See It channel for this kind of thing.

Perfect example of a video essay basically being a Medium article spoken over unrelated footage. It's not good.

I didn't see any whining in here about Game of Thrones. I liked the final season. Sure, there's a lot of stuff that got omitted, things they never bothered to give any reason for being in the show, but I thought it was fine. Lot's of people are apparently unhappy with the season but I don't really get why and I think it's interesting to contrast this with Star Wars.

Most of the criticism of the new Star Wars films seems to be that people just don't like it. Disney managed to foster a bigoted base to blame this on but if you take that away the majority of fans just didn't seem to like the new trilogy much, at least when TLJ came around. With the last season of Game of Thrones the most legitimate criticism seems to be that the season felt rushed but the opinion that I've seen most in media is that too many white males survived compared to other characters.

Regardless, I guess these are both examples of we want our things our way. I do think the difference is with Game of Thrones, similar maybe to The Walking Dead, the characters you like have a high likelihood of dying whenever the writers feel it's appropriate. That shouldn't be a surprise. That has not been the expected case in Star Wars up until now.

which, uh... which media have you seen sayin' that

I used an alternate wording to be less spoiler-ish.

It’s probably not a coincidence that while both GoT and the Star Wars sequels have inspired all sorts of obnoxious and whiny fan outrage, that the latter is highly politicized and the former hasn’t been at all.

oops

I wonder if it’s because what most HBO subscribers have in common is that they are relatively wealthy and educated which generally correlates to being liberal, whereas the demographics of the Star Wars fan base is much more diverse, and so the it contains a wider array of political opinions.

Maybe GoT could’ve gotten away with more clumsy woke politics, and, in fact, it would’ve appealed more to the fan base than it does for Star Wars.

Or maybe Star Wars fans complain because that sort of thing is legitimately annoying and that’s that.

Just a guess, considering Star Trek: The Next Generation had a diverse audience (prime time broadcast television) and nobody ever complained about it, despite being basically hyper-progressive communist propaganda.

It's probably the fact that huge corporations have figured out that wealthy "educated" liberals will fall over their wallets to defend any ol' crap that purports to be progressive. So maybe when outrage becomes politicized it's not the fans' fault. Maybe the outrage became political because the creators wanted it to be political.

Another example of "hiding peas in your lasagna" politicization vs. "selling burnt, awful lasagna as a must-have for pea-lovers to stick it to the nazis" politicization, have you noticed how many of the Marvel movies so far have had shockingly anti-establishment messages? They're all crazy political, and if people even mention it, it's with awe. But most of them are also good movies. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The end of the final season of Game of Thrones was pretty ****ing bad, and it has nothing to do with "fans not getting what they wanted" (unless that was just 'good writing'), and nothing to do with any identity politics "racial balance of who's left alive in the end" crap (maybe I'm representing that wrong, never heard of it until this thread??).

IDK, people complained about all the black people dying first in Apocalypse Now, and in the SF-LOVERS chain mail I read they thought Star Wars/Empire didn't have nearly enough women in 1980. People have seemed to notice that kind of thing for a long time.

That's not why people didn't like GoT primarily though. It's like 100% fan consensus that it was just not good. Nobody was even really mad about it, just a flat neutral "bad".

The reason people don't like the SW sequels (aside from a few idiots mad women don't **** them) is they don't bother developing their characters well, so once all the OT characters die there's nothing to care about. It's a different kind of poor writing.

It should be noted that this is not just limited to Disney films. Criticizing "woke brands" is the latest thing. Nike can publish a long "inspirational ad" shot in 2:1 ultra wide screen, featuring Colin Kaepernick and celebrating black athletes. Doesn't even feel like an advertisement.

Is it something worth celebrating? Yes. Is it still cynical marketing? Yes. Are people right to be annoyed by it? You decide.