Random other things watched during the Winter 2017/2018 season

Despite being an anime weabo, I also watch other things. In fact, I’ve watched a lot of live action stuff given how meh the last anime season was. Here’s some notes on those things.

Voltron Legendary Defender Season 5 (I think- whatever the most recent one is)- fine. The Netflix model of releasing this in half season blocks is really stuffing this show over in my opinion. The first half of the last two blocks of episodes have been kind of wasted reminding everyone what the situation is. Can’t say I like the trajectory of quality since… Season 2? Season 1 maybe?

Sopranos S1+ *some of* S2- is fine. I think I’ve watched too much great TV from post-Sopranos that makes it seem less good/revolutionary. In undeniably great but it just hasn’t grabbed me. May come back to it later, may check out The Wire first.

Star Wars Rogue One- not as good as I remembered from cinema but still quite good. Probably my favourite of the recent movies.

Star Wars II- Attack of the Clones- WAY better than I remembered. It used to be my most hated of the Star Wars movies but it jumped a few ranks for me. Having lived through the awkward, dumb and painful reality of teenage love; the Anakin-Padme love story was much better than I recalled (not saying that was George Lucas’ intention though)

Hateful Eight- good but very long. Also seeing the Weinstein Logo at the start kind of puts the whole film in a bad vibe.

Ready Player One- somehow worse and more disappointing than the very average book. Talk about not understanding female characters. What happened to Spielberg’s magic?

Pacific Rim 2- fine. The first one was fine and didn’t really need/deserve a sequel. This sequel didn’t really jusitfy it’s existence.

A Clockwork Orange- a clear case of “Akira-itis”: clearly revolutionary for it’s time but with the hindsight of the modern world it was quite tame and perhaps even bland.

Survivor (US) S36 great! It’s all the drama of politics with one of the consequences of the wrong people winning XD.

Bachelor in Paradise (Australia)- what the hell, how is this so entertaining?! I can’t believe how many episodes have been pumped out or that I’ve consumed them all.

Star Trek Discovery- really good, Mostly. Got a bit twist happy towards the middle third with writers appearing to try and 1-up the previous episode. And I’m surprised at how they ended it. But compared to the first season of TOS/TNG/Voyager/DS9 it’s much much better than any of those in my opinion.

Black Mirror S4- very tired. The edge of S1 and S2 has been lost. There seems to basically be 2-3 ‘stories’ in Black Mirror and each episode is just a  re-skin of one of those stories. Going for a shared universe has really hamstrung it’s ability to do some unexpected and ‘deep’ commentary on society.

Lethal Weapon S2- pretty fun. Although the old lady character who’s been intorduced to play off Riggs just shits me to no end. Also the release shcueld of this show s weird- only one epsiode in the last two months.

Star Wars Rebels S4- having not finished The Clone Wars, I still feel Rebels never quite managed to reach the heights Clone Wars did. And they did have to deal with the inevitable plot issue of ‘where did these Jedi go before A New Hope when Luke was the last Jedi’. But it was fine. Perhaps even good. Probably equals with Rogue One as the peak of the Disney-era Star Wars for me. Which probably says a lot about the rest of Disney era star wars.

Night of the Living Dead- clearly a cutting edge horror in its day. Now a cutting edge comedy. Highlight was when my friend, myself and two random girls sitting in front of us were yelled at by some random dude for laughing too much.

Game of Thrones S1- a comedy podcast I listen to has a spin off show about videogames. That show has just started a spinoff about rewatching Game of Thrones in the lead up to the final season next year. Having read the books years ago (they’re ok) and thus been a snob too good to watch the TV shows, this seemed like a good chance/excuse to catch up. Is a really good show. Looking forward to it becoming great, excellent and then shithouse as the seasons progress and overtake the books.

Black Panther- fine. A friend described it as ‘Pax Americana sans America’ which was pretty accurate. A good movie but I’ve definitely checked out of the Marvel movie stuff.

Coco- good fun. But I left it too late and people oversold it’s greatness. There is a kids-level twist in it which was fairly obvious from about 10 minutes in. But yeah, good fun

Three Billboard near Epping- for some reason, I thought this would be an In Bruges style dark comedy. it wasn’t. Was still pretty good. I guess. as like halfway through an international plane flight so my measure of it may be way off in any direction.

What We Do In the Shadows- so funny. Have watched it a couple times now and every time I do I see something new. Excellent movie.

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