Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 24, 2019 10:09:36 GMT -8
I’m in the middle of my trial of Acorn TV. I think I’m going to keep it. For $5.99 (or $59.99 for an annual subscription), the price is right. I balanced the books by canceling my Apple News+ subscription which was $9.99 a month. I can always go back. They offer no annual deal. It’s month-to-month. And although I did find a cadre of magazines that I liked, I just didn’t read them enough to warrant the cost. Acorn TV seems to have a surprisingly wide selection of offerings of things I didn’t even know existed. I miss my old FilmStruck channel that was great in this regard. You could find all sorts of things you had no idea you were looking for. Acorn TV has a bit of that going for it. I have Britbox as well. And there’s some overlap between the two. So which is better? Acorn TV vs. Britbox. For now, I have both, although it seems there is now a Criterion Channel classic movie streaming services that has risen out of the ashes of FilmStruck. It’s $11.00/month with a 14-day free trial. I may try that out, but it’s a bit pricey. And with both Apple TV and Disney coming out with channels in the Fall, I doubt I’ll take on the Criterion Channel. From looking at their offerings, it seems a bit too foreign and art-housey, even for my tastes, although it’s unlikely I’ll subscribe to either Disney or Apple’s channel. With Acorn TV, I’ve been able to reacquaint myself with the Inspector George Gently series. I had watched all the seasons of it that had been available on Netflix (or wherever I had watched it). I had forgotten how interesting and obnoxious this series could be at the same time. I’m not sure where I left off, but they do have at least two seasons (7 and 8) that I haven’t seen and which are now streaming on Acorn TV. I watched the opening episode of season 7, Gently with the Women. Because our cultural Commissars (artistic or quasi-journalistic) have become such dependable and regular liars, it can be difficult for me to know what is virtue signaling and what is real. This episode is full of male disdain for the problems of women, particularly those who claim to be raped. They have typically been dismissed if the police haven’t actively worked hard to get the women to detract their accusations. Sometimes George Gently’s sidekick, Sergeant John Bacchus, is the voice of Progressivism, dutifully mouthing the party line of today for back in 1960. In this case, he plays the villain, showing us what is clearly presented as widespread anti-female attitudes that existed in the day. (I think they’re still in the 60’s or early 70’s.) I don’t know if this is overkill (virtue signaling) or representative, within the confines of artistic license, the realities of the day. But except for the ending which you knew was coming and that you’ve seen a million times, this was a compelling and well-written episode. This reminded me of both why I loved watching this series and how much eye-rolling one had to do from time to time at all the virtue signaling. But in the end, whatever the reality is, it shows why this show has lasted at least 8 seasons (2007-2017). What was also nice to see on Acorn TV was the entire Rumpole series. Not only is it looking in fine form (far better than the DVDs I have), but subtitles are included. And they seemed (at least in the two episodes I watched) to have fixed the sound. Many of the episodes have so much base that it makes it difficult to understand what they are saying. With apparently cleaned-up sound and subtitles, this is now a joy to watch. Quite literally, many of these episodes on DVD (or when I originally watched them on public TV) were hard to follow because I couldn’t understand half of what anyone was saying. And since much of Rumpole’s wit is in the utterances he says under his breath, you can miss a lot. This is a series that is still under-rated. The cast, from top to bottom, is superb. I’ll romp around and check out some of the other stuff and let you know if I run into anything interesting. But certainly if you’ve never seen Rumpole or Inspector Gently, a relatively inexpensive streaming service such as Acorn TV could be right up your alley. Some other notables in their lineup: • Monty Don’s Paradise Gardens (okay…this one is just for me to bookmark) • Penelope Keith’s Village of the Year (I think this is part of the series I saw that was so outstanding) • Penelope Keith’s Hidden Village (or it’s this one…they have both) • Penelope Keith’s Hidden Coast Villages (or all three!) • Poirot • Doc Martin (I quickly tired of this series, but they do have it, and the early season are the better ones) • I, Clavdivs • Reilly: Ace of Spies • Murdoch Mysteries • Midsomer Murders • Wire in the Blood (I need to check this out again) • Vera (one of Mr. Kung’s favorites) • The Brokenwood Mysteries (never heard of it, but bookmarked for my own benefit) • The Story of Women and Power (okay…just joking, but they actually do have a series called this) • Foyle’s War (not sure there are any new ones that I haven’t seen) • Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey And there’s quite a few series and mini-series that I’ve never heard of. Most are likely flotsam but there are often gems to be found amongst the gravel. |
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Post by kungfuzu on Aug 24, 2019 13:38:36 GMT -8
Acorn TV sounds like it might be something that even I might be willing to shell out for. If one can do a monthly plan as opposed to a yearly plan, I just might have a look into this.
Thanks for the info.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 24, 2019 14:39:23 GMT -8
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Brad Nelson
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עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 28, 2019 7:08:14 GMT -8
So far so good with Acorn TV. Yesterday I watched a 3-part series based on a real-life murder on Twickenham Common (only in England, such a name) in 2004: ManhuntMartin Clunes ( Doc Martin) plays DCI Colin Sutton who is put in charge of the investigation. This could be a career-maker or career-breaker, depending on how it goes. His slimy wife (that’s how I view her) even advises him to quit the investigation while he is still ahead and hasn’t been tainted by its failure. Nice spousal support, but they have other issues. This is a “dramatization” of the events so you’re always left wondering what is real and what is staged. If that’s the way rival police departments “cooperate” in a major murder investigations, shame on these guys. Is that drama or is that real? Whatever the case may be, the confrontation because DCI Sutton from Metro and a local yokel is one of the best scenes in the series. The investigation puts you right in the seat where you can view it from the start from the investigator’s perspective, starting with almost nothing and then building from there. Rightly or wrong, DCI Colin Sutton charges ahead with what little he has. Again, the police don’t come out looking too good in this. All most of them can do is whine about the workload, although Sutton does have two close and loyal subordinates (played wonderfully by Katie Lyons and Stephen Wight) who are the professionals of the bunch. And if you don’t believe evil exists, wait until you see the suspect. He’s played chillingly well by Celyn Jones. Interestingly, they decide to include significant segments that include the parents of the murdered girl. She’s French and the parents are escorted from France and put up in a nice hotel. Generally this works quite well if only to add a little variety to the story. But it also seemed a bit like virtue signaling. Isn’t the job of the police to catch the bad guys not grief counseling? Maybe the do actually try to do both in today’s English police force. Clunes, who otherwise might be considered typecast as Doc Martin, does a nice job playing an understated, methodical detective. In his first introduction to this unit he says something like, “I don’t give big speeches. I’m not Winston Churchill. I’m more like John Major.” I’d say he puts in a very fine performance and shows his range. Murder mysteries are a dime a dozen, even ones based on real life. What makes this particularly watchable is that they have the genius and restraint to limit it to three episodes. I’d say 75% of series (even good ones) are marred or even ruined because they try to stretch the material out into double or triple to the content they have. They do not make that mistake here. It’s tight and interesting all the way. |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 30, 2019 20:59:58 GMT -8
I finished out the George Gently series. Why? Why is there air? as Bill Cosby once asked on an album cover.
The writing is spotty. Some of it is atrocious. The weird thing was, an episode would often start good and then just fall of a cliff. There was one particularly awful episode. But the next one started with a good old fashioned bank robbery. How could they screw that up? But they even squeezed the life out of this one.
There’s a big spoiler alert here. But the writing is so abusive of the characters and audience with the way the series ended, I don’t think I could actually spoil anything. The series-ending episode has George Gently being gunned down by an MI5 agent. Why? Because he has evidence (already handed over to an MP, thus Gently's out of the paper trail on this) that instead of huge mall-like redevelopment project, the government is actually going to create an American Air Force base.
The whole point of the episode was to get a jab in. One astute reviewer summed it up well:
The idiot writers, as another reviewer noted, basically ignored history in order to get their jabs in:
Oddly, they don’t really resolve or much address the huge storyline from the previous episode. While re-investigating an old case, Gently discovers that his partner, John Bacchus, was not only negligent but fraudulent in the way he handled the case. They sent an innocent woman to jail. Gently has had it with Bacchus, reads him the riot act, and tells him he’s through in the police force and he’ll be bringing charges.
All this is almost forgotten in the next (and final) episode of the series. Strange as well was how in the last couple of seasons they made Bacchus out to be a rather unsavory character. That said, Lee Ingleby as Bacchus did yeoman’s work putting a professional and well-acted face on some dodgy material. His performances were always stunningly realistic. He held this series together.
On the other hand, George Gently himself is a bit of a bore. I think he got even more one-dimensional towards that end. That said (and a sign of the truly terrible writing), they have a seen where he’s balling his eyes out. It’s a bit uncharacteristic of him.
But by all means, start with season one and see what you think. And don’t be afraid to skip an episode if it’s turning out to be a dog. There are good ones and bad ones. But mostly the are all about midland-to-above-average in the scheme of things, each episode usually having good content and some with lame stuff. Tread gently
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Post by timothylane on Aug 31, 2019 6:07:53 GMT -8
I could hardly get this here in the nursing home, but in any case I figure there's enough Ameriicaphobic TV without needing to see more. The moment you mentioned that the villainy involved a new American base (which I doubt would be secret anyway), I had this pegged.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 31, 2019 6:36:00 GMT -8
I wouldn’t mind a plot of American villainy, per se. But this one is so tacked on. And how interesting that the writers were willing to basically trash their own character in order to score a political point.
But this episode (the final in the series) obviously jumped the shark when Gently goes to meet the man who murdered his wife (an ongoing theme in the seires…she had been run down by a car and Gently thought he had already found the murderer). He brings no weapon. No backup. No support. And has no plan. He takes a weak swing at the much bigger man and then is pinned to the car helpless. Yawn. And so out of character for a man who usually was thinking two steps ahead.
It turns out she was run down by this MI5 agent as part of some vast plot to sidetrack Gently years ago (from what and why, I have no idea). It doesn’t make any sense to me now upon reflection either. There’s an obvious possibility (I don’t think this will happen) of Bacchus and Rachel Coles anchoring a new series a la Inspector Lewis. The Gently series ended in October 2017 and I’m unaware of any such spin-off at this point.
Very few shows know how to end well. This one didn’t. Not that the writing was ever particularly tight. But this final one went off the rails which is a shame. There are many fine qualities to the show and characters. None of them were used to any benefit as a grand finale.
Strangest of all was in the previous episode when Gently goes all Biblical on Bacchus. Back then, standards of police behavior were very different. Whatever Bacchus did, it was not at all in the realm of an egregious offense. In that earlier investigation (before Gently had come on the scene), Bacchus had just had his mind set that someone was guilty and “streamlined” things a bit so it would work out. He even reminded Gently that he was part of a team and that there was a judge, jury, defending counsel, and prosecutor in the process as well.
Besides all that, Gently was constantly using Bacchus as his “bad cop” for various things, including obviously illegal things from time to time (normal illegal searches, maybe looking the other way when Bacchus roughed somebody up, etc.).
So even assuming that Bacchus did something so terrible in the previous episode to demand firing, there is no resolution to this. They try to patch it all up with Gently asking Bacchus if he was planning a retirement party for him. As far as Bacchus knew, he was persona non grata as far as Gently was concerned. In fact, the viewer was left scratching his head wondering why the two were interacting at all in this final episode without addressing the point of Gently bringing charges on Bacchus.
And why if Gently was gunned down are Bacchus and Coles supposedly free and clear? They were the ones who actually recovered the incriminating documents and gave them to the former MP. Again, even for a television program, this is extremely slipshod writing. You have all these elements in place. You know the show is ending. And then you just swing and whiff on the final episode of your creation. Mind boggling.
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Post by timothylane on Aug 31, 2019 7:11:44 GMT -8
I suspect my reaction is based on the nature of the American "villainy". Constructing a new airbase is NOT what I consider villainy, but it would appear to be the implication of the series. Contrast this with the Soviet renegade's plot to set off a smuggled nuclear bomb on or near an American airbase in Germany in Octopussy and the similar plot to set off a smuggled nuclear bomb on or near an American airbase in Britain (for the purpose of enabling Labor to defeat Margaret Thatcher and then select a hard left government in the book, though this unsurprisingly didn't get mentioned in the movie) in The Fourth Protocol.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 31, 2019 8:56:04 GMT -8
According to this one Communist ass (aka “Member of Parliament”) in the Gently episode, America was trying to turn Britain into an aircraft carrier. Not an exact quote, but he also said something like “We must not look to America for the future but to the east, to the continent.”
A very large part of me just wants to flush Europe down the toilet because they have it coming. But as it turns out, Britain is trying at the moment to decidedly not tie itself as closely to the continent. I wonder what Europe would look like now if we had just sat out both world wars in Europe? Maybe, in retrospect, they would want even more U.S. air bases in Britain.
I love the plot from Octopussy, even though the aging (aren’t we all) Roger Moore in clown garb didn’t rate highly with many. But of all the plots for screwing with the West, I thought this was very plausible. For example, I found it hard to stay with Clancy’s “Red Storm Rising.” It just wasn’t a very plausible scenario.
But something like an “accidental” U.S. nuclear bomb going off in West Germany as a way to destabilize NATO? Its a great plan, simple and likely effective if they ever had tried it.
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Post by timothylane on Aug 31, 2019 9:28:55 GMT -8
Who knows, they may have tried it sometime. You can bet that no one would have wanted to expose it if we had caught them. Detente and all that -- even before the term was used for our policy.
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Post by kungfuzu on Aug 31, 2019 9:48:50 GMT -8
The same applies to Pop Music. Luckily for the music industry, they could just lower the volume and fade away to make room for the next commercial. TV series do not have that option so the weakness is very often glaring.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 31, 2019 10:20:02 GMT -8
It would seem to me the difficulty of the project would be twofold: secrecy and forensics. I don’t think there’s a moral dimension to this from the Soviet point of view.
1) Secrecy. Absolute secrecy and plausible deniability are a must. In that regard, a cover story like “a rogue group of KGB agents” would be a must. This would resemble a good novel because you’d have to operate like a rogue band (except for the one guy at the top who knew the master plan) so that the people engaged in it (and recruited for it…sold that it was a rogue plan) would believe that this really was a rogue plan. Then, if needed, you could feed some of these agents to the West in a sort of false mea culpa should it ever be determined that the bomb came from the Soviet Union or the plan was uncovered.
2) Forensics. It’s probably harder than we think to pull this off. From what I understand, nuclear bombs from various countries have their own signature. Obviously the Soviets would try to replicate this. But there’s no assurance that after-the-fact forensics wouldn’t uncover a rat.
Even better plausible deniability could be gained if the bomb went off in a West Berlin base (assuming the West kept any nuclear bombs in the city). Thus East Berlin would likely be damaged as well. The Russians would also gain some false moral leverage and a pretext if they were to then invade Western Europe. Waiting for “disarmament” is a long-term and mushy goal as was the goal in Octopussy. That could take years, even decades. And there’s no guarantee that the West wouldn’t just increase (even double) their conventional forces and pull the nukes back as part of a deal to placate European sensibilities.
No, if what you want is to invade the West, you need a more immediate plan. It would still be highly risky for the Soviets to mount an offensive, but they would at least start with the West on their back leg. With a quick surprise rush into West Germany, would NATO (as was always their public plan) deploy nuclear weapons to offset Soviet conventional superiority? And if the Soviets were already 50 miles inside West Germany, would NATO risk irradiating the ground of one of its own members?
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Post by timothylane on Aug 31, 2019 10:56:40 GMT -8
I know what you mean about ending popular songs. They just sort of fade out. As for TV shows, I suspect most of them, at least in the past, didn't know they were ending. The final episodes of Star Trek, Gilligan's Island, Batman, Hogan's Heroes, and Perry Mason were typical stories, though the use of a lot of crew members of the latter in bit roles suggests they at least knew it would be over. The Fugitive was famous for an actual resolution of the plot precisely because it was so unusual. The Andy Griffith Show sort of ending by setting up the follow-up show, Mayberry RFD starring Ken Berry (who was available because F Troop had ended).
MAD Magazine once had an article with short endings for various shows. I remember MASH (the war ended, allowing them all to go back home, but they decided to stay and maintain a lifestyle they had all become accustomed to), Gunsmoke (after Doc fixes Matt Dillon with glasses, the marshal retires and takes up ranching with Festus, after which Doc now understands why Matt never married Miss Kitty and decides he needs a good, stiff drink), and Columbo (LAPD gets him to retire early -- he has a great arrest record, but they never hold up in court and the accused sue for false arrest -- and his wife, realizing that he's going to be home all the time, shoots him).
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 31, 2019 13:08:35 GMT -8
Lisa McGrillis played PC Rachel Coles in the last ten episodes of Inspector George Gently. There’s no easy way to know if this show portrays the treatment of women, in general, in the British police forces accurately (that is, badly).
Interestingly, DI John Bacchus becomes the poster boy for Misogynist Man. In earlier episodes, he was often berating the older George Gently for his old-fashioned (but never conservative) views. Bacchus was more hip and with it.
So you can see that this show was more than willing to twist characters and plots to fit an agenda. Lee Ingleby, who played Bacchus, must have found his rapidly-changing character difficult to keep up with. By the end of the program, he was tarnished as a misogynist, cheating (he was having an affair with a married woman, and not just any married woman but the wife of a fellow police officer), corrupt, bad-attitude detective.
So in the end, instead of Gently having tamed the young man and turned him into a fine detective in his own image, Gently cuts him loose (sort of). In fact, Martin Shaw had always had a thin grip on his character. And the writers had a thin grip on him as well. Just an episode or two before cutting Bacchus loose, they are both challenged in a case whether to pursue it or not. It could tarnish both their careers to dig up the dirt that we probably have to do. But Bacchus, newly made a detective, tells Gently that it was his job to pursue the truth, no matter what. Gently (and it felt stilted at the time) tells him “It’s a pleasure to serve with you, John.” That seemed phony and stilted at the time....lines badly delivered by Shaw.
Lee Ingleby did a splendid job bringing the character of John Bacchus to live. But Martin Shaw seemed bored with this character and didn’t put much life into him. The poor writing for him didn’t help. Bacchus had all the juicy stuff.
Interestingly again, is the choice of Lisa McGrillis to play the token woman, DS Rachel Coles. She’s not a ball-buster….and nor is she a wallflower. She takes a lot of abuse with grace. But it’s funny that she looks and acts like a woman. Not only that, in the final two episodes or two she’s wearing go-go boots and a short skirt as her usual uniform. It’s hard to believe a woman wanting to be taken seriously would wear that to work. It’s also interesting that a show which is shoving feminism down our throats would turn this character into mere eye candy.
That said, she looks terrific in the go-go boots and short skirt. Her character is a little thin if only because they’ve turned her into a bit of a token woman whose purpose is just to be a target for misogynist comments (especially from Bacchus). That said again, the actress has infused a lot of likability and charm into her character that weathers even the storm of stereotyping and thin writing. At the end of the day, I like her.
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Post by kungfuzu on Aug 31, 2019 15:14:18 GMT -8
Your comments on the George Gently series made me think of a commentary I wrote about one of the early episodes. I closed that piece with the following:
This touched a raw nerve with one reader of ST who wrote a somewhat unhinged reply.
I pretty much gave up on George Gently after that episode. I did watch an episode, here and there, but I don't recall if I could sit through them until the end.
As to his shunning Bacchus, didn't Bacchus take a bullet for Gently in one episode? So much for gratitude and loyalty on Gently's part.
I have to say, I also found the Gently character to be a rather phony.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 31, 2019 21:19:33 GMT -8
He can be quite insufferable. He’s pompous. I don’t mind him having high standards. But he’s a guy who talks about half speed just to keep the attention on himself. Although Bacchus turned into a disreputable fellow near the end, he is an interesting character. But you can definitely tell from show to show that there wasn’t a strong underlying principle to the show. I mean, love him or hate him, but Inspector Morse was always Inspector Morse. But this show just wanders all over. It makes me wonder if the books are better. So why do I even bother? Well, beggars can’t be choosers. There’s just not that much good content out there. It’s the same reason I suffered the insufferable Inspector Foyle of “Foyle’s War.” Actually, that program is much more coherent. Unfortunately, his sidekick token female character is a horrible actress and detracted from the show quite a bit. Still, it did have its moments, and more toward the early shows. Other than the excellent “Manhunt” mini-series with Martin Clunes, I haven’t run into anything that I was already aware of that I would heartily recommend. Perhaps I’m being too picky, but several series I’ve tried and gave up after 3 minutes. You could just tell. I’m now going to watch Above Suspicion with Ciarán Hinds. Some of you will remember him from one of the “Shetland” plot lines, or perhaps most likely as the best portrayal of Julius Caesar I’ve ever seen or ever expect to see in the HBO series, “Rome.” I’ve still got to send Mr. Kung those DVDs if I can find them. I did watch the first episode of “Penelope Keith’s Hidden Village” and it was excellent. |
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Post by timothylane on Sept 1, 2019 5:57:09 GMT -8
Didn't we have a discussion of Hidden Village on ST? There was something like that, anyway.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 1, 2019 10:17:42 GMT -8
Yes, we had mentioned “Hidden Villages” at ST. What I didn’t know is now Penelope Keith is the presenter in three series connected with that same theme. As for “Above Suspicion,” which I mentioned above as a possible series to watch, I crapped out on that after 5 minutes. I may sound fickle but I have a highly-advanced filtering process. It might be interesting to know how that works. First, they were doing all kinds of crazy camera work in the opening. Zooming in fast. Quick cuts. Lots and lots of motion. Totally amateurish. They were trying to create a sense of urgency and tragedy but it was overdone. Second, I could see that this was going to be a cliche-ridden series. The opening scene is of an area cordoned off with police tape. There is a body in a state of advanced decomposition. And then, of course, the rookie cop (almost always a woman, and this one was) sees the corpse and soon vomits. I went back and read one review and the reviewer wrote that it was basically an okay series but nothing special. The characters were one-dimensional and the episodes full of cliches. That’s certainly what I saw as well in that short time. What finally pushed me over the top was when this woman comes back into the police station. The camera pans down and shows her shoes and lower pants legs are splashed with mud. At the crime scene she had had to walk through a large patch of mud to get to the body. And this doesn’t sound like much, but the way it was done made me realize that this series would never, and could never, rise above an amateurish aesthetic. To take such a self-conscious look at muddy clothes when that had already been established was really fishing. So the highly-tuned filter spat this one out. I moved onto something else that looked interesting. There’s a 1hr 25 min TV movies from 2013 starring Nathaniel Parker ( The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, currently playing on Britbox) called Still Life: A Three Pines Mystery. Parker plays a Canadian cop, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. This is a book that one reviewer says is far superior to the movie. But the movie, at least so far, is watchable. It’s a little quirky, and subtly so. There are some lines that creep in that are decidedly not cliches. I like the moment when the inspector is interviewing the passerby who discovers a body in the woods. He questions him rather pointedly. The fellows says something like, “Are you treating me as a suspect?” He’s aghast the his act of reporting a crime could turn against him. The inspector answers, “Yes, but don’t take it personally. So far, there are some small details such as this that keep it interesting. This isn't rated highly at IMDB so I do expect it will fall off the cliff. We'll see. |
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 1, 2019 12:29:04 GMT -8
I finished “Still Life: A Three Pines Mystery.” As a piece of interesting mystery, it held together as a means from getting from point A to B to C and then maybe up to the letter T. But the resolution of the mystery was horrid and still doesn’t make any sense to me. And the person who was the murderer was a horrible actor (or actress….not letting on). It wasn’t even a performance that would pass soap opera standards. The Louise Penny enthusiasts voted this one down harshly. One said this TV dramatization had turned the entire plot into a soap opera. Because the general gist of this TV adaptation wasn't horrid, that suggest the books might be a worthy read. Here’s a list of her books: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache Series. They had three of them available at the online library so I checked out Glass Houses and will give it a try after I’m done with my current Inspector Ian Rutledge mystery by Charles Todd book, The Gate Keeper. So far I’m 16% into this one and it’s going well. I got turned off of these books a bit after the truly horrible last 1/3 of No Shred of Evidence. Avoid this book at all costs. I couldn’t finish it. It really lost me. A Long Shadow was very much better and I did finish it. The first of his novels I read, A Pale Horse, was certainly readable for the endurance reader. It tended to just cycle and recycle the same scenario. But it had its qualities. |
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 1, 2019 18:35:17 GMT -8
Let me introduce something that might put a slightly different perspective on your judgement of this and some of the other movies or series you have critiqued.
I was just channel surfing and came upon Rocky IV. Now, I was not a great fan of Rocky, but it was a feel-good story with some pleasant scenes. I can barely remember Rocky II and Rocky III, and had forgotten Rocky IV until tonight. Upon landing on it, I immediately remembered that it was a bad movie, but continued to watch, mainly because seeing a young Sylvester Stallone and Dolf Lundgren(?) took me back to my salad days.
I should have changed the channel after 5 or 10 minutes, but I foolishly continued to watch. All the stupidity and nonsense which one might see in film-making was soon displayed in the fight scene. It was total garbage, rubbish and displayed the worst of the film industry. It was simply HORRIBLE and as it is still being broadcast, is still an embarrassment to film-making.
There is a lot of trash on view on both the large and small screens, but Rocky IV is some of the worst. Frighteningly, I believe Stallone made five or six Rocky movies. I shudder to think what the final two might b like.
Which brings me to my point, and philosophy of life and films, to wit: "No matter how bad things (films) are, they (films) could always be a damn sight worse. So be thankful for what you've got (seen) and be happy."
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