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TeeVee and movies
Mar. 8th, 2015 01:45 pm1. Madam Secretary is back, which makes me very happy. The politics are still very "whatever" at best, but the characters and relationships are great. Granted, having watched the entire awful first season of State of Affairs might be making it look better than it would otherwise.
2. I watched the first two episodes of Secrets and Lies and will watch more, but in part because so many of my shows have wrapped up for a while. I mean, it was ok and all, but the first 2 episodes pretty actively didn't care about any PoV aside from that of Ryan Phillippe's character.
3. The first season of Star Wars: Rebels is over, and apparently I got invested along the way. And curse Star Wars: The clone Wars for making me excited about certain things coming in season 2.
( spoilers )
I'm currently reading Star Wars; a New Dawn, which is a repquel to the series about how Kanan and Hera met. The book ships them to an absurd degree, and Kanan is spending most of his time mooning over Hera when he isn't busy internally chanting "I am an angsty loner, a looonnnneeeerrrr!" while Hera occassionally tries to decide whether its amusing or annoying as she Does Important Stuff.
4. This week's Empire both proved that Lucious is the worst and most abusive father on TV (well on TV that I'm watching) and that Trai Byers really needs to win Best Supporting Actor next year. (Best Actress needs to be determined by having Taraji Henson and Viola Davis go up on stage and argue their cases for why they should win in character as Cookie and Annelise. That way, everyone wins.)
5. I watched all 31 episodes of The Fosters that Netflix has. It's very good, but also very stressful to watch at times. I'm kinda glad that I ran out, so I can take a bit of a break.
6. And then there's MTV's Eye Candy, which is about a hacker who is working with the police to catch a cyberstalker and serial killer. There are I think 8-9 episodes aired, but hulu only has the first 5. I really like Lindy, the main character (and that the character, like the actress, is biracial, when a lot of shows would have made the character white) and her friends and that Lindy is out to singlehandedly rescue all the missing/abducted people in the world singlehandedly. I don't like the stalker's voiceovers, which are ucky, don't actually add anything useful to the show, and make me want to fastforward through parts of every episode, or how the internet is apparently and evil, evil place full of nothing but stalkers and liars and creepers, and Lindy is apparently the only person ever to use it for good. It also has the typical issue I have with procedurals which is that the camera is much fonder of lingering over female corpses and death scenes than male ones.
7. I also watched some good movies recently. The new Annie was really adorable. Jack and the Cuckoo Clock Heart is a gothic steampunk fairy tale about a boy born on the coldest night ever, and whose heart is replaced with a cuckoo clock, because his real one was frozen, and his journey's through life and love. It's strange and surreal and very engaging, but probably not for kids. The Book of Life was a fairy tale of another sort entirely. I really liked it and how it went about the narrative structure (it's certainly not the first to tell a story that way, but it did it well) but I wish I hadn't felt like it was shouting "STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER" at me in all of Maria's scenes. I mean, I liked Maria, I just kept thinking the movie wanted me to pat it on the back and tell it what a great job it'd done a lot of the time.
2. I watched the first two episodes of Secrets and Lies and will watch more, but in part because so many of my shows have wrapped up for a while. I mean, it was ok and all, but the first 2 episodes pretty actively didn't care about any PoV aside from that of Ryan Phillippe's character.
3. The first season of Star Wars: Rebels is over, and apparently I got invested along the way. And curse Star Wars: The clone Wars for making me excited about certain things coming in season 2.
( spoilers )
I'm currently reading Star Wars; a New Dawn, which is a repquel to the series about how Kanan and Hera met. The book ships them to an absurd degree, and Kanan is spending most of his time mooning over Hera when he isn't busy internally chanting "I am an angsty loner, a looonnnneeeerrrr!" while Hera occassionally tries to decide whether its amusing or annoying as she Does Important Stuff.
4. This week's Empire both proved that Lucious is the worst and most abusive father on TV (well on TV that I'm watching) and that Trai Byers really needs to win Best Supporting Actor next year. (Best Actress needs to be determined by having Taraji Henson and Viola Davis go up on stage and argue their cases for why they should win in character as Cookie and Annelise. That way, everyone wins.)
5. I watched all 31 episodes of The Fosters that Netflix has. It's very good, but also very stressful to watch at times. I'm kinda glad that I ran out, so I can take a bit of a break.
6. And then there's MTV's Eye Candy, which is about a hacker who is working with the police to catch a cyberstalker and serial killer. There are I think 8-9 episodes aired, but hulu only has the first 5. I really like Lindy, the main character (and that the character, like the actress, is biracial, when a lot of shows would have made the character white) and her friends and that Lindy is out to singlehandedly rescue all the missing/abducted people in the world singlehandedly. I don't like the stalker's voiceovers, which are ucky, don't actually add anything useful to the show, and make me want to fastforward through parts of every episode, or how the internet is apparently and evil, evil place full of nothing but stalkers and liars and creepers, and Lindy is apparently the only person ever to use it for good. It also has the typical issue I have with procedurals which is that the camera is much fonder of lingering over female corpses and death scenes than male ones.
7. I also watched some good movies recently. The new Annie was really adorable. Jack and the Cuckoo Clock Heart is a gothic steampunk fairy tale about a boy born on the coldest night ever, and whose heart is replaced with a cuckoo clock, because his real one was frozen, and his journey's through life and love. It's strange and surreal and very engaging, but probably not for kids. The Book of Life was a fairy tale of another sort entirely. I really liked it and how it went about the narrative structure (it's certainly not the first to tell a story that way, but it did it well) but I wish I hadn't felt like it was shouting "STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER" at me in all of Maria's scenes. I mean, I liked Maria, I just kept thinking the movie wanted me to pat it on the back and tell it what a great job it'd done a lot of the time.
