[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Is anyone else familiar with the Shardlake series by C J Sansom? They're murder mysteries set in Tudor England.

The TV adaption starts on 1st May on Hulu/Disney+ and I'm really excited after this first look!

Trailer

Sean Bean as Thomas Cromwell (fully expect that to be just be an extended cameo) and Arthur Hughes as Matthew Shardlake. It's nice to see they've gone for a disabled actor to play Matthew - Hughes was the first disabled actor to play Richard III for the RSC the other year too.

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 23 April 2024 - 01:18 PM

[worry]

Not familiar, but that does look good. Cool setting for a whodunnit.


Baby Reindeer -- finished this tonight. At least in the US, it's on Netflix. This series hits a lot of notes -- tense, funny, scary, pathetic, sad, vulnerable -- and does them all really well. And at least in my opinion, got better with each episode, up to and including the finale. A lot more nuanced and varied than its thriller-ish tagline lets on.

[Primateus]

I've been watching Resident Alien. This is funny stuff.

I tried getting into it before, but couldn't, for some reason.

Now I regret giving up on it, because this is amazing!

[Tiste Simeon]

I finished Shogun. It was a beautiful, pondering masterpiece of an adaptation and despite feeling like it spent far too long building to something that never really came to pass, I was satisfied by the ending. Some people are saying they should do a season 2 about the establishing of the Shogunate and Blackthorne settling there but I think they're probably done with it.

[Abyss]

Y'know what's really confusing.....?


Watching SHOGUN and BLUE-EYED SAMURAI around the same time.

[Tsundoku]

Watched and enjoyed House of Ninjas on Netflix. Very well done all round.

I will say that normally I prefer dubs to subtitles because I prefer not to have to read my TV shows and miss half of what's going on on the screen, but I had to with this one as the English dubbing was fucking horrendous. I had to switch over to subs with original Japanese sound after 10 minutes, it was that bad. Happily it didn't interfere too much with my enjoyment of the show though.

Fun fact: the grandma in the show was the main actor in Tampopo and A Taxing Woman back in the 80s! Some of the earliest Japanese live action stuff I saw on SBS back in the day (early 90s).

An easy eight shinobi (not ninja!) out of ten.

[Tsundoku]

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Tsundoku, on 27 April 2024 - 01:49 PM, said:

Watched and enjoyed House of Ninjas on Netflix. Very well done all round.

[...]

An easy eight shinobi (not ninja!) out of ten.

Quote

Ninja is the on'yomi (Early Middle Chinese–influenced) reading of the two kanji "忍者". In the native kun'yomi reading, it is pronounced shinobi, a shortened form of shinobi-no-mono (忍びの者).[8]

The word shinobi appears in the written record as far back as the late 8th century in poems in the Man'yōshū.[9][10] [...]

Historically, the word ninja was not in common use, and a variety of regional colloquialisms evolved [...] Along with shinobi, these include monomi ("one who sees"), nokizaru ("macaque on the roof"), rappa ("ruffian"), kusa ("grass") and Iga-mono ("one from Iga").[6] In historical documents, shinobi is almost always used.

Ninja - Wikipedia

Quote

Compound phrase comprised of 忍び (shinobi, "sneaking", the [...] "continuative or stem form") of verb 忍ぶ (shinobu, "to endure, to bear; to hide, to conceal oneself; to sneak into or out of a place")) +‎ の ([pronounced] no, possessive particle) +‎ 者 (mono, "person"). Literally a "sneaking person, person of sneaking".

忍びの者 - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

Shinobi | no | mono
Sneaking | 's | person

(no no mo' no!)

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 04 May 2024 - 12:02 PM

[Slow Ben]

Tiste Simeon, on 26 April 2024 - 06:14 PM, said:

I finished Shogun. It was a beautiful, pondering masterpiece of an adaptation and despite feeling like it spent far too long building to something that never really came to pass, I was satisfied by the ending. Some people are saying they should do a season 2 about the establishing of the Shogunate and Blackthorne settling there but I think they're probably done with it.

This is all accurate. I don’t know how a show spends 10 episodes building to something and having such an anticlimactic ending still be so satisfying.

Really really freaking good. Hiroyuki Sanada is awesome in everything. And Anna Sawai (Mariko) was absolutely phenomenal.

[Tiste Simeon]

Slow Ben, on 04 May 2024 - 07:07 PM, said:

Tiste Simeon, on 26 April 2024 - 06:14 PM, said:

I finished Shogun. It was a beautiful, pondering masterpiece of an adaptation and despite feeling like it spent far too long building to something that never really came to pass, I was satisfied by the ending. Some people are saying they should do a season 2 about the establishing of the Shogunate and Blackthorne settling there but I think they're probably done with it.

This is all accurate. I don’t know how a show spends 10 episodes building to something and having such an anticlimactic ending still be so satisfying.

Really really freaking good. Hiroyuki Sanada is awesome in everything. And Anna Sawai (Mariko) was absolutely phenomenal.

Agree with you about the actors. Just brilliant.

Started watching Justified, what a great show! Thought it was a Western but it's kind of a modern cop show with a real Western vibe throughout, I guess in a similar way to the first season of True Detective. Timothy Olyphaunt is great.

[worry]

Finished the Fallout series. I have never played the games, but have some context through cultural osmosis. Thought the show was pretty good. It runs on largely the same wavelength as the Twisted Metal show, with the comedy dialed back just a notch or two.

[Tiste Simeon]

worry, on 13 May 2024 - 10:07 AM, said:

Finished the Fallout series. I have never played the games, but have some context through cultural osmosis. Thought the show was pretty good. It runs on largely the same wavelength as the Twisted Metal show, with the comedy dialed back just a notch or two.

One of my favourite shows of recent times. Walter Goggins is brilliant and Ella Purnell is a delight to watch! I bought Fallout 4 off the back of it.

[worry]

Yeah. Goggins is always magnetic. Ella Purnell and Aaron Moten have to both play kinda naive and ambitious, but from like opposite corners, and they both have real solid arcs with good performances. Of the four mains, the brother character has more of a plot arc than a personal arc, and maybe gets short shrift in that regard, but it's still interesting stuff. Pleasant surprise all around.

[Abyss]

Slow Ben, on 04 May 2024 - 07:07 PM, said:

Tiste Simeon, on 26 April 2024 - 06:14 PM, said:

I finished Shogun. It was a beautiful, pondering masterpiece of an adaptation and despite feeling like it spent far too long building to something that never really came to pass, ...

This is all accurate. I don't know how a show spends 10 episodes building to something and having such an anticlimactic ending still be so satisfying.
...

Book and the first TV series did the same, it worked both of those times too.

[Slow Ben]

Tires on Netflix is freaking hilarious.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Quote

The Sublime Weirdness of Max's Most Popular New Show

[...] nails the weirdness of Australia.

[...] Its limitlessness works as a sort of Rorschach test, inviting you to spew your own experiences between the cracks [... of] never-ending constant chaos [...] packed with grimy little details and spasmodic vibrations [...]

To understand what I mean, there are two Australian terms I need you [...] to get a handle on.

Spoiler

[...] The second is "dag," which forms the basis of "daggy" and "dagginess"; a "dag" is someone who is shabby, odd, tedious, faded, just a little off.

[...] Cusack's Australians are shrill, cruel, and psychotic, ugly in a way that a carnie running for mayor is ugly; they're chillingly visceral realizations of our nation's bounty of giant, bloated, melty heads. His Australia is banal and barbaric. [...]

But what Cusack has always had a real eye for is the daggy atmospheres and biomes that function as the enclosure for us Australian munters. [...] We are not rife with giant spiders and venomous snakes or that kind of excitement, but rather a kind of daggyness that has, and will, drive a person troppo (translation: nuts). Cusack's cartoons home in on the oddly unreal daggyness of so much of Australian life, be it our faded cul-de-sac-chugged suburbs and black-mold-riddled sharehouses, or the tepid emotional atrophy of a society that runs on insincerity and takes most of its pride in high rates of LCD TV ownership.

Smiling Friends on Max: The key to understanding the bizarre series. (slate.com)

And in case you didn't already know a new season of The Boys premieres tomorrow (spoilers below are actual spoilers):

Quote

While The Boys' latest run may not feature a jaw-dropping sight to equals last season's premiere-episode

[actual spoiler]

Spoiler

sex scene, [but sex-scenes aren't pr0n, right, Tsundoku?]

that's not for lack of trying; from a

[actual spoilers]

Spoiler

human centipede-style clone orgy and a photo of a gaping rear end to a gaggle of suped-up animals and, ultimately, a "murder boner,"

[it] habitually pushes the boundaries of good taste. Such sensationalism is, on the one hand, simply a byproduct of its out-there sense of humor, which includes ceaseless creative profanity. However, it's also central to its critique of a modern world that's gone increasingly mad. [... The series ...] is vital for the ways in which it ridicules not merely its genre but, additionally, the current, perilous state of the union.

[link contains spoilers]
'The Boys' Season 4 Review: Fascism, Blood, and SPOILERS (thedailybeast.com)

[Lady Bliss]

Azath Vitr (D, on 12 June 2024 - 12:35 PM, said:

And in case you didn't already know a new season of The Boys premieres tomorrow (spoilers below are actual spoilers):

Quote

While The Boys' latest run may not feature a jaw-dropping sight to equals last season's premiere-episode

[actual spoiler]

Spoiler

sex scene, [but sex-scenes aren't pr0n, right, Tsundoku?]

that's not for lack of trying; from a

[actual spoilers]

Spoiler

human centipede-style clone orgy and a photo of a gaping rear end to a gaggle of suped-up animals and, ultimately, a "murder boner,"

[it] habitually pushes the boundaries of good taste. Such sensationalism is, on the one hand, simply a byproduct of its out-there sense of humor, which includes ceaseless creative profanity. However, it's also central to its critique of a modern world that's gone increasingly mad. [... The series ...] is vital for the ways in which it ridicules not merely its genre but, additionally, the current, perilous state of the union.

[link contains spoilers]
'The Boys' Season 4 Review: Fascism, Blood, and SPOILERS (thedailybeast.com)

The Boys' is back tomorrow?! It's about time. I need a new show to watch.

[Slow Ben]

Dark Matter on AppleTV is really damn good.


I loved the book, so I went into it skeptical, but they did a great job. All the changes they made for the show were either for the better or didn’t affect the quality.

They also left it open to a season 2. Which could be cool, as long as they leave the Jason, Daniela, Charlie from the book/season 1 alone. But the my fleshed out multiple side characters and other versions of Jason enough that a season 2 could work.

[Slow Ben]

Now we’ve got The Bear season 3 up. Let’s gooo

[Tiste Simeon]

Slow Ben, on 07 July 2024 - 09:14 PM, said:

Dark Matter on AppleTV is really damn good.


I loved the book, so I went into it skeptical, but they did a great job. All the changes they made for the show were either for the better or didn’t affect the quality.

They also left it open to a season 2. Which could be cool, as long as they leave the Jason, Daniela, Charlie from the book/season 1 alone. But the my fleshed out multiple side characters and other versions of Jason enough that a season 2 could work.

Ah that's great to hear! I don't have Apple TV but I'm considering it for this show and a couple of others...