What was the last show you binged, and was it worth the time?

[HipKat]

Kobra Kai!!

 

[O_P_T]

OK, I know Rings of Power has been mentioned multiple times, but The Drinker eviscerates it in this review.

NFSW and Spoiler warning

Another video about this, sort of.

His two quotes attributed to Michael Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy and Amazon's Rings of Power, is striking.

 

[Hawg73]

OK, I know Rings of Power has been mentioned multiple times, but The Drinker eviscerates it in this review.

NFSW and Spoiler warning

I don't know if it really cost a billion, but I'm not planning on watching a second of it and I'm a huge LOTR fan.

I don't know how a streaming service evaluates the success, or lack thereof, of a series like this, but they have certainly
alienated a lot people. I hope that the people responsible for this mess pay a price for their decisions and others in the industry think twice before
they wreck a franchise like this because they are trying to check as many Hollywood boxes as possible. Enough is enough.

 

[Alk]

I don't know if it really cost a billion, but I'm not planning on watching a second of it and I'm a huge LOTR fan.

I don't know how a streaming service evaluates the success, or lack thereof, of a series like this, but they have certainly
alienated a lot people. I hope that the people responsible for this mess pay a price for their decisions and others in the industry think twice before
they wreck a franchise like this because they are trying to check as many Hollywood boxes as possible. Enough is enough.

If you are a huge LOTR fan why would you not at least give it a chance instead of listening to what others have to say? I have been watching it and think it's pretty damn good.

 

[jayShomp]

OK, I know Rings of Power has been mentioned multiple times, but The Drinker eviscerates it in this review.

NFSW and Spoiler warning

I'm pretty much neutral on the show but only a few minutes in I can already tell this "review" is not being honest and over the top so I didn't bother watching the rest.

Spoiler: Spoiler

Like Galadriel being right and everyone wrong was cliche, but it was explained early that everyone was purposely being kept in the dark.

And most of the acting is actually pretty good, with a couple of exceptions, but that's going to happen in every single show with this many characters. It's still after all a TV series. For instance as good as GoT was, the first few seasons anyway, I thought the acting by Emilia Clarke and Sophie Clarke especially was cringe worthy at times. I do agree with the budget some of it actually does look weirdly cheap though. The visuals have been mostly awesome, but the Elf armor for instance looks like heavy gauged tin foil and chintzy. Still it's entertaining enough for someone like me who hasn't read the source material, and I'm guessing I would hate it if I did. Edit: Or maybe not since it appears Alk likes it.

Anywho, no way would I consider that a fair review, just someone being over the top negative to gain viewers, like the Felger of show reviews.

 

[Patriots44]

If you are a huge LOTR fan why would you not at least give it a chance instead of listening to what others have to say? I have been watching it and think it's pretty damn good.

I've seen like 4 or 5 episodes and I find it entertaining. I'm not someone who is going to complain that the "lore" isn't correct or whatever people are complaining about. I haven't read a review or watch any video reviews.... I'll watch and make my own decision on it.

 

[BostonTim]

Pretty much with Hawgy. Relationship with the original Books is based on The Ancient history and Mysticism, the beloved characters as written, the nearly automatic willingness to suspend my disbelief in this epic battle of good versus evil and maybe most importantly the backstory. Tolkien lost beloved friends in the Great War. He himself was at the Battle of the somme where 125,000 british soldiers died. He felt after losing his best friends who he felt were destined for great accomplishments, that he had to carry on on their behalf. A huge sense of duty. In addition, he was a language icon, inventing new languages on his own while still at Exeter, Oxford. The war experience including the venues in which he served, his friends, his languages, and much more I think of as forming an immense venue for his writings. The original movie disappointed me in places. I felt somewhat against the enterprise as I was among those who knew for certain that there was no way to make a successful movie out of this huge story. Peter Jackson set out to prove me wrong and succeeded in spite of my little disappointments. He did so by trying every bit of the way to understand and honestly translate Tolkien's works. I've been to many theater performances where colossal changes are made. The greatest disaster I ever saw (in my mind, it had some critical success) was a post-apocalyptic Richard the III. Imagine "A nuclear warhead. My Kingdom for a nuclear warhead." My personal shallow mind perhaps but I could not deal with those kinds of changes. And thus, I'll not try to deal with some modernized remake of the Lord of the Rings.. My choice.

Cheers

 

[Hawg73]

Pretty much with Hawgy. Relationship with the original Books is based on The Ancient history and Mysticism, the beloved characters as written, the nearly automatic willingness to suspend my disbelief in this epic battle of good versus evil and maybe most importantly the backstory. Tolkien lost beloved friends in the Great War. He himself was at the Battle of the somme where 125,000 british soldiers died. He felt after losing his best friends who he felt were destined for great accomplishments, that he had to carry on on their behalf. A huge sense of duty. In addition, he was a language icon, inventing new languages on his own while still at Exeter, Oxford. The war experience including the venues in which he served, his friends, his languages, and much more I think of as forming an immense venue for his writings. The original movie disappointed me in places. I felt somewhat against the enterprise as I was among those who knew for certain that there was no way to make a successful movie out of this huge story. Peter Jackson set out to prove me wrong and succeeded in spite of my little disappointments. He did so by trying every bit of the way to understand and honestly translate Tolkien's works. I've been to many theater performances where colossal changes are made. The greatest disaster I ever saw (in my mind, it had some critical success) was a post-apocalyptic Richard the III. Imagine "A nuclear warhead. My Kingdom for a nuclear warhead." My personal shallow mind perhaps but I could not deal with those kinds of changes. And thus, I'll not try to deal with some modernized remake of the Lord of the Rings.. My choice.

Cheers

Thank you. This is like somebody writing and performing new Beatles music with zero connection whatsoever to the real band and the results are predictable.

I've done two water color paintings and neither was any good, but if I had enough money to pay whoever holds the rights to the name Monet, I could claim I'm the new Monet
and people are supposed to look at my stuff and give it a chance because I had the paperwork.

Peter Jackson did a fantastic job with the source trilogy because he was a very skilled filmmaker that wanted to do justice to the brilliant work and loved it, as did most everybody that read it.

When you love something, then you don't have to apologize for not being interested in something that exists only to exploit that which was special to you.

 

[Flagg the Wanderer]

I care a little bit about the inclusion and diversity in the casting, but only because engagement depends on realism and that is tied to things like "can I tell the groups of people apart."

Rings of Power is gorgeous to look at on the whole (though in the details it falls down sometimes). But for a viewer that knows not even the legendarium, but just the map of Middle Earth, the story doesn't make a ton of sense. The amount of time required to travel boils down to "whatever is convenient for the story," and if you thought that "one does not simply walk into Mordor," one DEFINITELY does not simply swim across the entire breadth of the Sundering Seas, Valinor to Lindon, even if one is counted among the Eldar (elves).

Put everything else aside. Just THAT, the logistical problems, would make Tolkien spin in his grave. This is a man who calculated how much ground could be covered in a day over different types of terrain by hobbit-sized strides vs elven strides vs human and dwarven strides, and calculated the calendar and timelines driving his work accordingly.

I'm torn. I know I'll end up continuing to watch, partially because I want to, partially out of morbid curiosity, and partially hate-watching. But I kinda feel bad about watching because I want such a hackneyed stab at this to fail. Especially one with so much money behind it.

 

[Alk]

I think I figured out why I'm enjoying the series while so many hate it. Even though I had read the LOTR trilogy (ONCE!!) and The Hobbit (ONCE!!) I am still nowhere nearly as vested in this entire "universe" as the majority of the people that hate TROP. Same goes for any of the Marvel universe stuff. I guess I'm just a casual fan that is easily entertained. What a way to go through life.

 

[Flagg the Wanderer]

I think I figured out why I'm enjoying the series while so many hate it. Even though I had read the LOTR trilogy (ONCE!!) and The Hobbit (ONCE!!) I am still nowhere nearly as vested in this entire "universe" as the majority of the people that hate TROP. Same goes for any of the Marvel universe stuff. I guess I'm just a casual fan that is easily entertained. What a way to go through life.

That's how I am with most things. It's a win. But I love LOTR, The Hobbit, the Silmarillion, the Book of Lost Tales...even Tolkien's letters. The legendarium, the history, the languages, the world...that stuff IS the story, even more than the story itself.

 

[O_P_T]

Pretty much with Hawgy. Relationship with the original Books is based on The Ancient history and Mysticism, the beloved characters as written, the nearly automatic willingness to suspend my disbelief in this epic battle of good versus evil and maybe most importantly the backstory. Tolkien lost beloved friends in the Great War. He himself was at the Battle of the somme where 125,000 british soldiers died. He felt after losing his best friends who he felt were destined for great accomplishments, that he had to carry on on their behalf. A huge sense of duty. In addition, he was a language icon, inventing new languages on his own while still at Exeter, Oxford. The war experience including the venues in which he served, his friends, his languages, and much more I think of as forming an immense venue for his writings. The original movie disappointed me in places. I felt somewhat against the enterprise as I was among those who knew for certain that there was no way to make a successful movie out of this huge story. Peter Jackson set out to prove me wrong and succeeded in spite of my little disappointments. He did so by trying every bit of the way to understand and honestly translate Tolkien's works. I've been to many theater performances where colossal changes are made. The greatest disaster I ever saw (in my mind, it had some critical success) was a post-apocalyptic Richard the III. Imagine "A nuclear warhead. My Kingdom for a nuclear warhead." My personal shallow mind perhaps but I could not deal with those kinds of changes. And thus, I'll not try to deal with some modernized remake of the Lord of the Rings.. My choice.

Cheers

Speaking of Peter Jackson, have you seen "They Shall Not Grow Old"?

He was asked by the Imperial War Museum, to go through their archive of WWI film and put together a documentary in time for the 100th anniversary of the 1918 armistice.

It's frickin brilliant.

His restoration of the source material is amazing, and there was a follow-up after the film where he explained how they went about the whole thing.

The first thing they had to do was fix the contrast. A whole bunch of film was mostly black or mostly white, and they digitally fixed that.

Then they had to compensate for the frame rate.

Modern film is 24 frames per second, but cameras back then were hand cranked, so the frame rate was between 15 and 20 frames per second, and could vary during the course of any given take. That's why when you see film from those days the people seem to move in a herky-jerky fashion. So they came up with a way to interpolate between the individual frames to get everything to 24 frames.

Then they had to colorize it.

Jackson explains that he never worried about the color of the uniforms, since they had examples and who in the audience would know exactly what color any give uniform was. He was most worried about grass, trees, etc., since everyone knows what they look like in color.

So he went on a road trip in France and Belgium to take a boatload of photos of just what shade of green the foliage was there.

Then came the dialog.

All the film was silent, so no sound was recorded.

They brought in lip readers to figure out what the people were saying, and then got voice actors from the same region of England that any given regiment was from to read the dialog, so they'd have the right accent.

One thing about this movie answered a question about my grandfather. He fought in France in WWI, and he refused to eat bacon. I always found this strange when i was growing up, since who doesn't like bacon?

Well, there's a scene in the movie of a solider cooking up their bacon in a tin can, in an alcove cut into the side of the trench. When I saw this scene, I realized that bacon brought back memories to my grandfather that he'd rather not recall.

All in all, a must see movie. It's on HBO Max right now.

 

[Flagg the Wanderer]

Speaking of Peter Jackson, have you seen "They Shall Not Grow Old"?

He was asked by the Imperial War Museum, to go through their archive of WWI film and put together a documentary in time for the 100th anniversary of the 1918 armistice.

It's frickin brilliant.

His restoration of the source material is amazing, and there was a follow-up after the film where he explained how they went about the whole thing.

The first thing they had to do was fix the contrast. A whole bunch of film was mostly black or mostly white, and they digitally fixed that.

Then they had to compensate for the frame rate.

Modern film is 24 frames per second, but cameras back then were hand cranked, so the frame rate was between 15 and 20 frames per second, and could vary during the course of any given take. That's why when you see film from those days the people seem to move in a herky-jerky fashion. So they came up with a way to interpolate between the individual frames to get everything to 24 frames.

Then they had to colorize it.

Jackson explains that he never worried about the color of the uniforms, since they had examples and who in the audience would know exactly what color any give uniform was. He was most worried about grass, trees, etc., since everyone knows what they look like in color.

So he went on a road trip in France and Belgium to take a boatload of photos of just what shade of green the foliage was there.

Then came the dialog.

All the film was silent, so no sound was recorded.

They brought in lip readers to figure out what the people were saying, and then got voice actors from the same region of England that any given regiment was from to read the dialog, so they'd have the right accent.

One thing about this movie answered a question about my grandfather. He fought in France in WWI, and he refused to eat bacon. I always found this strange when i was growing up, since who doesn't like bacon?

Well, there's a scene in the movie of a solider cooking up their bacon in a tin can, in an alcove cut into the side of the trench. When I saw this scene, I realized that bacon brought back memories to my grandfather that he'd rather not recall.

All in all, a must see movie. It's on HBO Max right now.

Agree, it's fantastic.

 

[Patriots44]

Speaking of Peter Jackson, have you seen "They Shall Not Grow Old"?

He was asked by the Imperial War Museum, to go through their archive of WWI film and put together a documentary in time for the 100th anniversary of the 1918 armistice.

It's frickin brilliant.

His restoration of the source material is amazing, and there was a follow-up after the film where he explained how they went about the whole thing.

The first thing they had to do was fix the contrast. A whole bunch of film was mostly black or mostly white, and they digitally fixed that.

Then they had to compensate for the frame rate.

Modern film is 24 frames per second, but cameras back then were hand cranked, so the frame rate was between 15 and 20 frames per second, and could vary during the course of any given take. That's why when you see film from those days the people seem to move in a herky-jerky fashion. So they came up with a way to interpolate between the individual frames to get everything to 24 frames.

Then they had to colorize it.

Jackson explains that he never worried about the color of the uniforms, since they had examples and who in the audience would know exactly what color any give uniform was. He was most worried about grass, trees, etc., since everyone knows what they look like in color.

So he went on a road trip in France and Belgium to take a boatload of photos of just what shade of green the foliage was there.

Then came the dialog.

All the film was silent, so no sound was recorded.

They brought in lip readers to figure out what the people were saying, and then got voice actors from the same region of England that any given regiment was from to read the dialog, so they'd have the right accent.

One thing about this movie answered a question about my grandfather. He fought in France in WWI, and he refused to eat bacon. I always found this strange when i was growing up, since who doesn't like bacon?

Well, there's a scene in the movie of a solider cooking up their bacon in a tin can, in an alcove cut into the side of the trench. When I saw this scene, I realized that bacon brought back memories to my grandfather that he'd rather not recall.

All in all, a must see movie. It's on HBO Max right now.

saw it in theaters when it made that limited run or whatever the deal was
been trying to see it on streaming (don't have HBO Max)

amazing how they did all that

 

[BostonTim]

I think I figured out why I'm enjoying the series while so many hate it. Even though I had read the LOTR trilogy (ONCE!!) and The Hobbit (ONCE!!) I am still nowhere nearly as vested in this entire "universe" as the majority of the people that hate TROP. Same goes for any of the Marvel universe stuff. I guess I'm just a casual fan that is easily entertained. What a way to go through life.

I know you neither said, nor meant me, but for the record. I don't know anything about TROP. haven't watched a minute. and surely don't hate it. If you wish to throw hate ( but still prolly not) in, I do at least dislike the premise and the concept and the money. Folks is folks, so enjoy.

Cheers

 

[BostonTim]

Speaking of Peter Jackson, have you seen "They Shall Not Grow Old"?

He was asked by the Imperial War Museum, to go through their archive of WWI film and put together a documentary in time for the 100th anniversary of the 1918 armistice.

It's frickin brilliant.

His restoration of the source material is amazing, and there was a follow-up after the film where he explained how they went about the whole thing.

The first thing they had to do was fix the contrast. A whole bunch of film was mostly black or mostly white, and they digitally fixed that.

Then they had to compensate for the frame rate.

Modern film is 24 frames per second, but cameras back then were hand cranked, so the frame rate was between 15 and 20 frames per second, and could vary during the course of any given take. That's why when you see film from those days the people seem to move in a herky-jerky fashion. So they came up with a way to interpolate between the individual frames to get everything to 24 frames.

Then they had to colorize it.

Jackson explains that he never worried about the color of the uniforms, since they had examples and who in the audience would know exactly what color any give uniform was. He was most worried about grass, trees, etc., since everyone knows what they look like in color.

So he went on a road trip in France and Belgium to take a boatload of photos of just what shade of green the foliage was there.

Then came the dialog.

All the film was silent, so no sound was recorded.

They brought in lip readers to figure out what the people were saying, and then got voice actors from the same region of England that any given regiment was from to read the dialog, so they'd have the right accent.

One thing about this movie answered a question about my grandfather. He fought in France in WWI, and he refused to eat bacon. I always found this strange when i was growing up, since who doesn't like bacon?

Well, there's a scene in the movie of a solider cooking up their bacon in a tin can, in an alcove cut into the side of the trench. When I saw this scene, I realized that bacon brought back memories to my grandfather that he'd rather not recall.

All in all, a must see movie. It's on HBO Max right now.

Indeed And it is amazing. All that you said and more. He was, in all that he touched, as precise and detailed as a former QB of ours and maybe even Tolkien himself.


cheers

 

[BostonTim]

Finished Goliath Last night. I would say the first three seasons were good but a bit confusing in places with the strained brain I sport these days, But the 4th and final season was super, imo.

No spoilers. just In this story He , Billy, (Billy-Bob Thornton) and his lawyer pal, Patty, go after Big Pharma and the opioid peddlers. And it captivates.

Cheers

 

[Big/Sky/Fly]

Finished Goliath Last night. I would say the first three seasons were good but a bit confusing in places with the strained brain I sport these days, But the 4th and final season was super, imo.

No spoilers. just In this story He , Billy, (Billy-Bob Thornton) and his lawyer pal, Patty, go after Big Pharma and the opioid peddlers. And it captivates.

Cheers

And did a big victory line of fentanyl afterwards?

 

[Roberto71]

I'm bringing up Andor again....Episode 6 was broadcast yesterday, and it was spectacular. Many reviews are rightly causes it one of the best Star Wars piece of entertainment, movie or TV episode ever. It's so nuanced and dark with no light sabre or force silliness. No emperor or Vader.

Just ordinary people trying to get by and do spectacular things and it's the best look at the Empire you will ever see. Concentrating on the middle and lower tiers or control and management.

As said before, it's Star Wars for grown ups. It's stunning.

 

[jayShomp]

I'm bringing up Andor again....Episode 6 was broadcast yesterday, and it was spectacular. Many reviews are rightly causes it one of the best Star Wars piece of entertainment, movie or TV episode ever. It's so nuanced and dark with no light sabre or force silliness. No emperor or Vader.

Just ordinary people trying to get by and do spectacular things and it's the best look at the Empire you will ever see. Concentrating on the middle and lower tiers or control and management.

As said before, it's Star Wars for grown ups. It's stunning.

Rogue One was the best of the all the new movies so it doesn't surprise me.