2021 TV

[Ssnake]

If anything, Fleming's theme was the emerging dangers from non-state actors, terrorist or the white collar crime of ultra-rich oligarchs; the only novel/film that I can think of that had the Soviets involved as enemies was "From Russia with Love".

I must to say though, the Gates', Bezos' and Musks of the world don't really live up to Fleming's projections. Way too bland. Supermodels, supervillains... Edna said it all.

 

[Angrybk]

3 hours ago, Ssnake said:

If anything, Fleming's theme was the emerging dangers from non-state actors, terrorist or the white collar crime of ultra-rich oligarchs; the only novel/film that I can think of that had the Soviets involved as enemies was "From Russia with Love".

I must to say though, the Gates', Bezos' and Musks of the world don't really live up to Fleming's projections. Way too bland. Supermodels, supervillains... Edna said it all.

 

I think we got it now -- new Ethnic James Bond has to infiltrate evil woke social media company, gunfights ensue. Everybody wins!

[BansheeOne]

Where can I pre-order tickets? 😁

[Stuart Galbraith]

8 hours ago, Angrybk said:

A Bond of Color would actually be pretty rad and one of the Patels would be a good choice. There's also a school of thought that future Bond films should be set during the Cold War, which I'm sympathetic to but ultimately disagree with. 

The irony is, the majority of the Bond films set during the cold war, barely referenced it. Most of the time they were fighting  SPECTRE so they could get away from the East/West dynamic.

Ironically there is a recent book out by the nephew of Ian Fleming that suggests, after looking at Eastern Bloc archives, the Soviet authorities shit a brick about Bond anyway...

https://www.thebookcollector.co.uk/features/bond-behind-iron-curtain

They need to do something different. The arc that Craig carved has come to an end, so they could either go another story arc set in a different era, or go back perhaps to stand alone episodes as we saw in previous Bonds. I think personally the last has more to commend it. The former will, just like the Craig arc did, get tied up with decisions made by previous directors, and end up tripping over its feet. I never liked the entire 'Brofeld' angle for example.

 

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

7 hours ago, Ssnake said:

If anything, Fleming's theme was the emerging dangers from non-state actors, terrorist or the white collar crime of ultra-rich oligarchs; the only novel/film that I can think of that had the Soviets involved as enemies was "From Russia with Love".

I must to say though, the Gates', Bezos' and Musks of the world don't really live up to Fleming's projections. Way too bland. Supermodels, supervillains... Edna said it all.

 

There was a few where the cold war impinged. Russia with Love, the Spy who loved me, You only live twice, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, The Living Daylights and View to a Kill. Even Goldeneye is a cold war film, sorta kinda. However, most times the Soviets (and more often the Chinese) are not the enemy at all, sometimes just a cobelligerant of the main enemy, sometimes even a reluctant ally of Bond. The Brocolli's really did try to get away from making the Commies the bad guys all the time. Im not entirely sure why, because they remain the main enemy in the Bond novels, specifically Smersh IIRC. Perhaps they even had hopes of selling Bond to the Soviets at one time.

4 hours ago, Angrybk said:

I think we got it now -- new Ethnic James Bond has to infiltrate evil woke social media company, gunfights ensue. Everybody wins!

I feel curiously stimulated. Greta Thunburg as the senior villain? Steven Segal as her loyal henchman Pointless Prat?

[Stefan Fredriksson]

Peacemaker. One of the main-characters is black, woman, a bit over-weight and gay. And it feels like a big "screw you" at wokism and inclusionism. John Cena is awesome in the title-role. Support cast is good too. It is funny, a bit sad, and very entertaining. And it has one of the best intros I have seen. Usually skip past them, but not here.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Not sure if this is film or TV, but it will be one to watch out for.

 

[Sardaukar]

Tulsa King is pretty good.

Stallone is doing quite good role as (ex- and current) mob boss.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16358384/

 

[Stargrunt6]

On 12/24/2022 at 8:45 AM, Stuart Galbraith said:

Not sure if this is film or TV, but it will be one to watch out for.

 

I really want to learn more about this generation of British fighters. 

[DB]

Vampire was in pretty much every respect better than early Meteor and spawned the Venom which was incrementally better again, certainly keeping up with later Meteors. Don't confuse the Venom with the Sea Venom - a completely different and notably mediocre beast.

[sunday]

New season of Clarkson's Farm

First victim has been the Facebook page of the local council authority, very deservedly.

Edited February 13, 2023 by sunday

[Harold Jones]

I find the show at times infuriating and hilarious.  I'm also kind of amazed at the sheer volume of regulations and regulatory bodies involved in trying to run a farm in the UK.  I'm too far separated from farming as it's done in the US to know if we have the same amount of gvt involvement/intrusion on this side of the pond.  

[sunday]

The plight of that dairy farmer that lost half her herd because of a zoonotic disease spread by a protected species is heartbreaking.

[Angrybk]

Am not loving The Last of Us, the dialogue and script are just kinda weird. Poker Face is nonsensical but quite fun to watch. 

[DB]

9 hours ago, sunday said:

The plight of that dairy farmer that lost half her herd because of a zoonotic disease spread by a protected species is heartbreaking.

I'm guessing that's Bovine TB, spread by badgers. Lots of interesting stuff here: https://www.mammal.org.uk/2020/11/position-statement-badgers-and-bovine-tuberculosis/

It seems that a major cause of the spread of bTB was restocking after the culls resulting from the last major foot and mouth disease outbreak.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Just seen episode 1 of 'The Gold', a BBC sponsered series about the 1983 Brinks Mat Heathrow robbery. Early days yet, but this looks very, very good. They got the period down perfect, the first episode could almost be an episode of 'The professionals'.

 

[BansheeOne]

On 6/18/2021 at 12:02 PM, BansheeOne said:

Again, this is "Abyss" by Roland Emmerich, a melange of every maritime disaster/monster/sci-fi movie you've ever seen, written by someone who loves his action as much as his science. I like to call Frank Schätzing the probable result of a coke-and-booze-driven genesplicing party involving Michael Crichton, William Gibson and Stephan King back in the 70s.

His enthusiasm tends to border on parody; in "The Swarm", you have soldiers and scientists admonish each other that they are not some competing movie stereotypes, then proceed to act exactly like those. People will miss their ringing phones trying to warn them of impending disaster, and will trip running from the tsunami to the saving helicopter, which will then escape by an aerodynamically impossible maneuver.

You have a Canadian whalewatcher who everyone thinks is a local Indian, but really just wants to forget his true Inuit background while facing off with a former employee-turned-activist who is white, but self-identifying as an Indian. You have a female Asian-American general who is barking mad in the finest tradition of one Jack D. Ripper. You have an LHA fitted with lockout capabilities for high-speed minisubs and an entire secret section of rooms hidden from the uninitiated crew. You have bloodthirsty sharks and whales, and exploding bioweapon lobsters. And I cannot wait for them giving it the millenial Hollywood treatment to crank it up from 11 to 12! 😁 

Well ZDF is streaming the first six episodes of "The Swarm" now, and unfortunately the millenial treatment rather has cranked it down to about 5. Schätzing himself split from the production team over creative differences, and shortly before launch of the result offered some scathing criticism that while parts of it were great cinema, the rest was rather weak TV which remained far below the possibilities in view of current issues like world power conflict and climate change. Succinctly, he called it "more pilchering than swarming" in reference to ZDF's adaptions of Rosamunde Pilcher's Cornish romances.

Now it's not unusual for authors to hate the screen adaptions of their books - Stephen King did Kubrick's "Shining", even though it's a classic. But critics were lukewarm, too - "Spiegel" noted that the cast is "young, diverse, and dry behind the ears", and the show would have benefited from "more water and anger". The problem is not the inevitable woke recasting on the reasoning that "a modern audience won't believe a relationship between a 50-year-old white man and a younger woman"; most of the book's characters, which were heavily based upon real scientists, could be exchanged in identity while still holding the same positions.

The real problem is that the great conflict lines in the source have mostly been watered down in favor of relationship angst within the researcher community. Tellingly, that's even true where original characters were actually caught in conflict involving their ethnic identity. The dynamics between the Canadian "First Nations" whalewatcher who tries to escape his actual Inuit origins and his more radical environmentalist white US ex-employee who self-identifies as a Native American have all but gone away as the latter is now black, and both are working for some maritime research organization.

Episode 5 went so emo that I quit halfway through it. There you have emerging evidence for a coordinated global threat rising from the world's oceans, and researchers are busy dealing with their feelings about their dominating professor, the ex which once used your expertise to greenwash an energy project, how to introduce your gay lover to your Muslim family, and why your mother never talks to you before notifying you she has to undergo surgery. I might resume watching eventually, but for now I make use of the capability to make my displeasure known by the exact point I stopped streaming ...