What have you been watching?

[knightofnarnia]

Watched Space Between Us the story of a boy born on Mars who for health reasons can't come to Earth (who finally does go to Earth anyways) and falls in loved with a girl. Somewhat classic story line but good anyways.

[HermitoftheNorthernMarch]

Ariel, I suspect I'm just a little more sensitive to I Can Only Imagine's plot.

KoN, that sounds like an interesting movie.

So, Luthien's free Netflix month ended. Here's what I learned from it.

1. It doesn't have everything.
2. Some things are temporarily downloadable (which is great if you don't have internet at home).
3. The series, Puss in Boots and Trollhunters are fun to watch in Spanish. I'm taking Spanish right now. Both of the series are made for children and tweens. I only saw about 6 episodes of Puss, it focuses on a hero cat with a big ego that's trying to redeem himself from his thieving past by declaring himself the protector of a secret village of wealthy orphans that live in a town that was hidden by magic until Puss in Boots broke its protective spell. Trollhunters is more of for older kids. In it, a 15 year old is chosen by a mystical amulet to fight against evil trolls and goblins and is helped by good trolls. There is some "bathroom humor" but not really as much as I was worried about. The mystical elements (some ghosts appear in the show) and the fact that the main goal of the evil trolls is to kill the hero, make it be for an older group than the first show. Both of the shows do have a lot of characters telling lies, though.
4. Based on watching only 2 episodes of a Series of Unfortunate Events, I decided to order the 1st book from the library. I'll see how it goes.
5. Because of the deadline for cancelling Netflix, we probably watched way too much tv.
6. Soap operas are bizarre and not worth it, even if they're from the other side of the world. (I took Chinese class previously and was trying to find something interesting to watch in Chinese.)
7. Dragons: Race to the Edge has the same humor as the Riders of Berk series, but it is better animated. I'm not totally sure why Stoick is okay with all the young people of Berk living on their own island, but I'm guessing it is somehow related to Berk's property damage from the previous two series.
8. I still don't think the cost of Netflix would be worth it.

[Ariel.of.Narnia]

That’s a pretty nice run-down, Hermit! lol. I’ll admit that Netflix would be nice for the shows I do watch, but that’s pretty much it. I’ve “explored” on there before and was not much impressed, haha. And yes, it’s too easy to binge with Netflix....

Just finished Dunkirk (rated PG-13 for... well, mostly swearing, and war violence (there’s not a lot of swearing, but there are a couple f-bombs and misuses of Jesus’ name; the violence is really quite “clean”)). It’s definitely a movie that’s “cooked” differently. If you go into it expecting a story to follow, a sequence to track, a character to carry you through, you’re not going to get it. The story is disjointed, jumping around in time and between characters we only get to know so well. So far as the characters go, I think it was intentional: each man (except Tom Hardy’s character specifically) is something of an everyman. The soldiers we see are examples of the many who were in that beach; the civilians of the many who answered the call; the officers of the whole authoritative body of Britain. As for the sequencing choices that resulted in the jumps in time, I’m not quite sure what I think. In one way, they threw me off as I’m trying to figure out why it’s suddenly night or as I recognize the intersecting point between this scene and another. On the other hand, the movie spends longer portions with each group of the action (ie: the beach, the air, and the sea), so we get to see the sequence of events as each section would have seen it, rather than jumping between the groups over a single moment in time; in this way, I think the editing choices actually do more for the “big picture” than an exact sequence that interacts with all three groups at once would.
... I have no idea if any of that will make sense to anyone, heh-heh.
So yeah. If you have ClearPlay or something to filter out the swears, it’s an interesting watch. Again, it’s not about the story of Dunkirk so much as it is about the experience, so don’t go in expecting anything of the storytelling structure you’re accustomed to.

[Lucy Took]

I watched "The Greatest Showman" lately. I have mixed feelings about it. The songs were catchy, but I thought that they were over-polished. The dance numbers were great, if a little over polished themselves. I could be deep and say it was a commentary on how polished and personality-less popular entertainment is, but nah, it was polished entertainment. Nice eye candy, good characters, really nothing objectionable. The message is cheesy, but not a bad one. One thumb up.

As for Netflix....eh. I have it, but mostly because I split it with the family. I'll occasionally binge stuff on it, but I do well limiting myself to one episode a night unless I'm working on a project and I want something on in the background. I have to admit that most of what I've binged lately isn't stuff I'd recommend for the younger crowd (Stranger Things, lots of language) or in general (Riverdale....I watched it so I could talk about it with some RL friends. It's....not all that great, but the costuming is a blast and the mystery made it engaging enough while I was knitting a baby blanket. There's some weird content that's not good for younger viewers and squicky for older ones.) . If I'm going to be totally honest about what I watched most on Netflix was the Office. Yeah, I'm basic, I watch The Office on Netflix.

Oh! Series of Unfortunate Events! I read the books ages ago. I started watching the series with a family member, but then we got too busy to watch together and I never got around to finishing it alone. I should do that. The books are cleverly written and the series does a good job of mirroring that.

[hobbit_of_narnia]

@Ariel Ohhhh, I watched Dunkirk! It took me like half an hour to figure out why we were jumping around too, but after that it was really cool watching it all come together.

[Ariel.of.Narnia]

@hobbit: It definitely took a while before I figured out the time-jumps, haha. But yeah, you're right: the realization of all these pieces converging was cool.

[knightofnarnia]

watched several series most of which are not appropriate to post here as they are for adults or upper teens

[Ariel.of.Narnia]

Watched “Goodbye Christopher Robin” on the way to my friend’s wedding. Not what I expected, but it was good. I’d definitely watch it again.
And then I watched “The Nanny Diaries” on the way back. Not quite what I expected and contained adult themes I didn’t expect. Will not be watching again. Pity that its core message got sullied by some of the other stuff happening. (Though I do have to smile at Chris Evans’ character laughing at Scarlett Johansson’s character’s star-spangled costume, considering he would end up wearing one as a different character some years later.... Though in all fairness, Captain America does not look as ridiculous as that.)

[Lily of Archenland]

Most of the tv/Netflix I've been watching lately has been cooking shows because I find them entertaining without taking a lot of brain, and I've been a little under the weather (approximately) and not up for concentrating on complex plotline like I normally could enjoy.
The last movie I saw in theater (because I haven't had a lot of theater money lately) was A Wrinkle In Time, which I have Serious Mixed Feelings about. I might just copy-paste the commentary I gave to a friend, with obvious potential spoiler-warnings.

There were a bunch of little changes which added up, for me, to it having less depth of soul than the book. Was probably my biggest peeve. Mystical spirituality yes. But it felt like more of a hero's journey of self-discovery + family drama and less like - participating in a microcosm of a conflict and a reality much bigger than yourself.

Some of the things I felt like would have deepened it I can understand *why* they were cut or changed, they might have seemed like side-plots which would lengthen the storyline. But it *added up.*

Um - how do I explain.
-The Mrs were never explained on their backstory. They were there as guides, not as Stars, as warriors in their own right who had made sacrifices for the cause and had a personal stake in it.
-Aunt Beast was lampshaded but we didn't really get to meet her. Flipped past an image of her world when we were with the Happy Medium, but the way the confrontation was timed, everything happened in a row rather than that temporary tesser away - which like I said. Timing issues. But it's *valuable* to me thematically to have that idea of Meg being faced with the personhood of creatures radically different than her, and folk with other ways of understanding the world re:sight.
-Camazotz was *surreal* which was very fun for me in some ways, having reality seemingly changing around you is both an interesting visual shorthand of showing It's influence without being able to get a good screen-translation of how telepathy feels, but also - the breakdown and shifting of the illusions implied a lack of civilians. A lack of true civilian casualties outside of the Murrays. Which for one thing rather lowers the stakes, *only* fighting for the family and against evil's influence in the abstract rather than literally being faced with what that evil can do to a human mind and soul if it wins - and for another thing, again as with the Stars' backstory and Aunt Beast - it means less - less part of a - less part of a greater reality, less other worlds to fight for and value of *all* creation not just the earthlings in the equation - I don't know if I am explaining things well.

after my friend expressed concern as to whether "hero's journey" meant making Meg excessively special and deleting the fallible everygirl aspect of her character -

...Well. Not quite as bad as *that* on the hero's journey aspect. <.< She wasn't treated like some kind of anointed one, more like - humanly valuable but initially very bad at seeing and working within her potential. It was more the extent to which she was centerstaged and the sort of feel-good power-up nature of how they spun the ending which felt hero's journey-y to me??

Pluses -
-Mrs Whatsit was kind of a whimsical ditz, which is *not* how I tend to read her on autopilot but it was fun and worked somehow?
-Meg's selfconsciousness read well, as did the painfully awkward school relationships. And Calvin was a sweetheart.
-Charles Wallace: tactless, precocious, loving. *Very Creepy* when possessed. (*Not*, however, visibly borderline psychic. *Why* movie. Kything is such a lovely part of the worldbuilding!)
-their father... I've heard there was a bit of a Doug Gresham and Digory's apple thing going here for the director, bringing her feelings about recently losing her pwn father to the table with Meg's search. And I think it shows. There was some very effective pathos and longing on that front, at least to my reading.

Neutral:
-The Happy Medium is very visibly male?? Like, they weren't a character I had intense feelings about, but I'm not sure why the change.
-Mrs Whatsit's Uriel form being a plant-creature rather than a winged centaur. It *is* more distinctly alien that way and looks kinda cool in flight, but I had very much wanted to see a proper winged centaur-creature, especially after the abhorrent CG in the *old* Wrinkle in Time movie.
-their father being spun as a genius holding correct theories which were viewed as very crackpot in the community rather than being a member of team.

-It being a giant brain instead of a normallish-sized one. Sorta works but. Feel like the old version was better at - banality of evil?

...Anyway. I am glad I got to see it, and Meg was lovely, little selfconscious earnest clever firecracker that she is, but I do wish it had felt more in the spirit of the book to me!

[knightofnarnia]

Watched Paul apostle of Christ great movie. Just be careful if you don't know how to see someone in physical pain as there is a bit of that.