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Just want to take this chance to mention "The Baby" movie, from 1973, which is one of the weirder and creepy films I've ever accidentally stumbled on on TV late one night.

I watched the first episode of The Baby and it was kinda funny but I haven't watched another yet.

Finally watched season 1 of Stranger Things this weekend. It was OK, but I won't be returning for 2, 3, or especially not 4, which I gather each episode is three hours long?

All except the last episode, which is 7 hours, 67 minutes

I quit Stranger Things after Season 1, and just watched the second episode of Season 4, because it was on while I was at my mum's.

Was quite fun and hugely easy to fill in the blanks, so I might just skip ahead and miss the middle seasons. It was TOO LONG (one hour twenty) and some of it was rubbish but it's good knitting viewing.

One of the things I liked about it initially, the Close-Encounters/early-Spielberg style cinematography, seems to have completely flattened out though

I wanted to like The Baby, but my partner vetoed it after the dog died.

Also I was hoping it would be funnier?

Watched a bit of The Baby, but heavily dislike like the sexist trope that every female parent (or woman who works in pediatric care) is some kind of ghoul or idiot or Victorian nanny

I liked the first episode of The Baby. Somewhat surprised to hear a show written and directed entirely by women is sexist, but I don't think I've encountered any of the characters you're referring to yet.

Stranger Things is good to watch if you're zonked on cold medicine in my recent experience

I was starting to laugh about how much filler is in the newest (half!) season. You can really make things go a lot more episodes if you decide that 1. all the characters need to get together to solve things 2. two groups of characters are busy doing side quests across a half-dozen southwestern states or two different countries before getting together

I'm half expecting some u-turn where someone has to travel to china to check on the price of tea before they can confront the monster in the second half

part of why I have trouble with today's serialized blockbuster tv shows is that you know the final boss battle ain't coming to the season finale, and all of the middle episodes are mini-Video Game Objectives in getting there, some of which are more interesting in others.

on good shows, they navigate that well with good writing and stakes, on bad ones, you feel like "is this Waiting for Godot? dafuq"

i haven't seen the newest ST but season 3 had some of that with me

I laughed at the young actors pointing out that because of the Covid break and out of sequence filming they can look younger or older from scene to scene

reminds me of those Benny Hill sketches where he does the movies with shit continuity

Unsurprisingly, I love everything about Heartstopper: the stellar young cast (plus the invaluable Olivia Colman), the synth-pop soundtrack, the cotton-candy visual aesthetic, the careful treatment of the slipperiness inherent in adolescent friendship and romance ([show hidden text].

Equally lovely is Alfred's review of the show, which I hope he won't mind me linking here: https://humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2022/05/12/on-the-modestly-epochal-heartstopper/

― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko)

Sorry I missed this. Thanks! I've watched the series twice.

Watched a couple episodes of "Stranger Things." Could probably shave several draggy minutes off by just cutting down on the number of times a character sees something off screen and mutters "guys, look at this ..."

Shame the effects are still terrible though. It’s like Buffy Seaaon 4 on a Close Encounters budget with Resident Evil CGI

I'm 2 eps in, I like it, but each episode is far too long.

Watched the first episode of Danny Boyle’s Pistol, his Sex Pistols series on Disney based on Steve Jones’s book. There’s a lot of inaccuracies that will infuriate a punk purist or even just someone with a passing acquaintance of the main elements of the Sex Pistols story. And both the McLaren and Westwood portrayals are appalling bad….But the Boyle montage style is quite effective and it is watchable - so will keep going.

Keep seeing bus shelter ads for that.

i feel like it will scratch a similar itch to The Offer, the kinda crappy Godfather series

ie i will watch it

I watched about 10 minutes of that and couldn't get any farther. I thought the straight-into-the-camera sermonizing of the We Own This City finale was the worst thing I'd watch all day but Pistol was stunningly bad.

Feel like Sid and Nancy already scratched that itch long ago.

Around the time I used to run into Susan Spungen at parties, but we weren’t supposed to mention her sister.

Pistols show reminds me to find out when the Rip It Up And Start Again doc is coming out

"Hacks" S2 has some funny moments, but the premise/narrative feels kind of forced to me this time around - as if it were a ltd. series that they're straining to find ways "keep going" in a second season. That said, things come together somewhat in Ep. 6 (the most recent one).

Pistols show reminds me to find out when the Rip It Up And Start Again doc is coming out

― papal hotwife (milo z), Tuesday, May 31, 2022

That is something I'm looking forward to

First episode of "The Bear" on FX/Hulu, about an over-qualified Chicago chef returning to run his brother's sandwich shop, was pretty good.

Killing It on Peacock is a lot of fun with some heart.

I had no idea Love, Nick existed. Cute, but from its sitcom beats to its characters' perfect hair it's everything Heartstopper.

First episode of "The Bear" on FX/Hulu, about an over-qualified Chicago chef returning to run his brother's sandwich shop, was pretty good.

I'm three episodes deep and yeah, it stays good. Lots of surprising cameos.

Also watching The Old Man on FX/Hulu — a seven episode series starring Jeff Bridges as the title character, a long-retired spy with Secrets (and two dogs who eat people he doesn't like) and John Lithgow as his former friend turned nemesis. Based on a very good book by Thomas Perry.

Three episodes in now, too, and "The Bear" is as good as anything else I'm watching these days. Acting, writing, casting, direction - all excellent.

Yeah, it's really, really good, and sticks the landing.

Just watched Last Night In Soho on HBO Max. It's much better than I expected; I didn't think it would be much deeper than the costumes and the camera angles, but it turns out to be a really good horror movie, almost Argento-esque.

Soho is a practical, technical marvel, and after hearing a bunch of mixed stuff I was surprised at how solid I found it as well. Kind of like a feminist response to giallo, while simultaneously working as homage to same.

Yup, it's a keeper. Surprised it didn't get as much traction as it should have.

I feel like it was one of those movies that got rolled out with a whole "Experience The Magic Of The Theater Again!!!" campaign and people were (quite sensibly) like "Yo, fuck that."

IIRC, it came out around the same time as Spiderman, and audiences made their choice loud and clear.

Not Spiderman, but one of those other tentpoles blew it away.

A combo of Dune, Halloween Kills, and No Time To Die apparently.

last night in soho sucked ass. laughable final thirty minutes

the mirror trickery in the beginning looked cool but the smoky ghost men who could only say “bitch” looked like garbage

beyond which i’m pretty sure the twist made the movie feel pointless to me

unwatchable lead too (i heard she’s good in leave no trace)

Yeah the "twist" was awful. The ghost men looked like a bad Goosebumps made-for-TV movie. Last 30-45 min truly killed the movie.
Some of the shots were really great, as you'd expect from Wright, but I found it such a disappointment.

also there’s absolutely no argento in it, not if you give a shit about style. it’s like wright made it after someone vaguely described what giallo is to him. i don’t think it’s very feminist either!

for a good modern-day giallo that gets playful with the genre conventions pls proceed to knife + heart

Horror academics have reclaimed giallos for feminism to such an extent now anyway that I doubt a response is necessary.

I couldn't make it through Last Night in Soho, had to turn it off halfway through. the impressive visuals couldn't make up for how uncomfortable it was to watch, maybe I wasn't in the right mind for it. I did read a plot summary of the last half and I don't feel I missed out

Weird, I liked the ghost men. Reminded me of what Peter Jackson did in "The Frighteners," which I assume was some (now) quaint hybrid of practical makeup/FX and early CG. And the garish colors alone is what ties it to giallo/Argento, though of course there is a lot more. Anyway, the strong/negative reactions here just add to the head scratching for me, as this was one of the rare films the entire family really enjoyed. I mean, I didn't think it was scary or suspenseful, but then, I don't think anything by the usual Italian suspects is scary or suspenseful, either, and I don't even want to get started on the plots/twists of those things.

fwiw I've seen a few features on Wright where he is forthcoming on the film's influences. This one, curiously, doesn't include Argento, but it does mention Bava:

https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/last-night-in-soho-edgar-wright-films-inspiration/small-world-of-sammy-lee/

btw, speaking of Hulu, I've noticed an interesting trend. Whenever a particularly intriguing "foreign"/genre film shows up, I almost compulsively torrent it the second it gets out there. More often than not they just hang out on my hard drive, unwatched in an infinite queue I never get to, but increasingly they eventually seem to land on Hulu. For example, Censor, Titane, Benedetta, Sputnik, In the Earth, Pleasure, Possessor, Hunter Hunter, Bad Luck Banging, The Beta Test, Saint Maud, Worst Person in the World ... I don't know who or what decides which movies end up where, but Hulu seems to be sucking in some good stuff, plus top-notch originals.

Yeah, agree. I keep forgetting that Benedetta's on there, but I'm gonna check it out soon, I swear.

for a good modern-day giallo that gets playful with the genre conventions pls proceed to knife + heart

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Monday, July 4, 2022 3:43 AM (twelve hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

xp josh there's definitely some deals Hulu made with notable distributors/indie studios in the past couple years (A24, Neon, etc). really started when some of them started breaking contracts and shipping movies directly to Hulu during Covid to make up for lost theater revenue and feels like it didn't really stop