What are you watching now?

[George K]

Black Bird on Apple TV+

"Inspired by" the story of a convicted drug dealer sentenced to 10 years who is given the opportunity to reduce his sentence by getting a suspected serial killer to confess to his crimes.

I put "Inspired by" in scare quotes because this usually means a lot of liberties were taken with the facts for the sake of Hollywood. From what I've read, this is a remarkably accurate telling of the story with the exceptions of two minor details: 1) Role of the female FBI agent is amplified and 2) The corrupt prison guard is fictional. Otherwise, it looks like a really faithful telling of the story.

Very tense, well acted, and Ray Liotta's last role (as father of the protagonist). The serial killer is beyond creepy. Greg Kinnear is, as always, great. Worth a watch to learn about a story I was unaware of.

Link to video

[George K]

@bachophile said in What are you watching now?:

Fauda. On Netflix. It means chaos in Arabic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fauda

I’m now on season four.

Not for everyone. A very gritty but accurate look of undercover special forces in the Israel Palestinian saga.

It’s not called chaos for nothing.

Halfway through season 2. Hope to finish that season today.

Well done, and not too-badly dubbed (but keep the subtitles on). Somewhere I read a review that said the production doesn't have the big budget of other stories, so they focus on the intimate relationships among the protagonists.

"Gritty" is an understatement.

How accurate is it, @bachophile ?

[Aqua Letifer]

Just watched this last night. It was pretty damn good.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3127902/

"Sixty-two year old Richard Turner is renowned as one of the world's greatest card magicians, yet he is completely blind."

Two interesting elements to the story:

First of all, I already heard about Turner before and knew he was awesome at cards. So you're like, "oh wow, yeah, amazing he can do what he does despite being blind."

Yeah, that's not it. I didn't even know the shit he does with cards was even possible. It shouldn't be. He can take a new deck of cards and very quickly learn what each one is, immediately by touch, which is fucking amazing by itself. But the shit he can do with that knowledge...

He was on Penn & Teller's "Fool Us," and they didn't even walk back to their chairs to try to discuss how he did what he did. According to him, in about a minute, minute and a half, he conducted about 13 sleights to pull off his trick. They just immediately gave up.

Secondly, his eye condition is genetic: his sister got it, too. And they're close but for a long while, they had very different perspectives on their condition. It's interesting to see the reason why he started to come around. His sister got a wake-up call when her husband was hospitalized after a car accident. Richard's came later.

He's a crazy bastard, but an all-around good guy. He seemed far more proud of sending his son off to college than he was getting inducted into Magic Castle's Hall of Fame.

Here's the Penn & Teller segment:

Link to video

[LuFins Dad]

Lucas and I finally finished Season 5 of The Expanse last night and will try to binge Season 6 this week.

Really disappointed with the Alex resolution considering it’s been 3 years, and there still has been no conviction or even lawsuits…

[taiwan_girl]

@Aqua-Letifer That was quite cool. I wonder if he uses decks that have slightly raised ink. Probably a seeing person would not notice, but his sense of touch is probably very very good and could tell slight differences in the feel, which would help him tell what care is what.

[Horace]

@taiwan_girl said in What are you watching now?:

@Aqua-Letifer That was quite cool. I wonder if he uses decks that have slightly raised ink. Probably a seeing person would not notice, but his sense of touch is probably very very good and could tell slight differences in the feel, which would help him tell what care is what.

In fairness, he uses braille cards.

[Aqua Letifer]

@Horace said in What are you watching now?:

@taiwan_girl said in What are you watching now?:

@Aqua-Letifer That was quite cool. I wonder if he uses decks that have slightly raised ink. Probably a seeing person would not notice, but his sense of touch is probably very very good and could tell slight differences in the feel, which would help him tell what care is what.

In fairness, he uses braille cards.

He does not. He can't even read braille.

[Aqua Letifer]

@taiwan_girl said in What are you watching now?:

@Aqua-Letifer That was quite cool. I wonder if he uses decks that have slightly raised ink. Probably a seeing person would not notice, but his sense of touch is probably very very good and could tell slight differences in the feel, which would help him tell what care is what.

He uses a standard Bee pack.

[taiwan_girl]

@Aqua-Letifer Wow! Well, they do say that when you lose one sense, your others gain.

[George K]

@Mik said in What are you watching now?:

1 episode in.

Epic and very, very good. Loving it. Nice set up for conflicts that will haunt the next 15 episodes.

Harrison Ford is great (of course) and Mirren is charming.

And then, there's Big Sky @jodi.

[jodi]

@George-K

[George K]

My enthusiasm for 1923 is waning. The stuff about the range wars is absolutely fascinating. Mirren and Ford are spectacular, and they carry the show. The supporting cast is strong, with a couple of weak links.

But...

At times, it's getting a bit too soapy and unbelievable for me. The whole "Africa" subplot is unnecessary, other than to serve as a vehicle for more pretty big sky shots. The Spencer character is more than a bit of a caricature of the "big-game hunter" and his exploits with the runaway bride are contrived - c'mon the captain of the tug dies in his sleep, and THEN the tug gets rammed?

I'll plow through the rest because I'm retired and have the time. Hope the season ends on a good note to see more @jodi.

[LuFins Dad]

@George-K said in What are you watching now?:

My enthusiasm for 1923 is waning. The stuff about the range wars is absolutely fascinating. Mirren and Ford are spectacular, and they carry the show. The supporting cast is strong, with a couple of weak links.

But...

At times, it's getting a bit too soapy and unbelievable for me. The whole "Africa" subplot is unnecessary, other than to serve as a vehicle for more pretty big sky shots. The Spencer character is more than a bit of a caricature of the "big-game hunter" and his exploits with the runaway bride are contrived - c'mon the captain of the tug dies in his sleep, and THEN the tug gets rammed?

I'll plow through the rest because I'm retired and have the time. Hope the season ends on a good note to see more @jodi.

Yeah…

I’m not sure if I liked or disliked the whole scene where the rich guy showed the running water and electric lights to the Irish guy.

[LuFins Dad]

Lucas and I finished The Expanse last night. Frankly, it wasn’t a great season. The cast chemistry felt off and it wasn’t the best storyline of the novels, IMO. It would be a shame if that’s really how it all ends.

I do respect them for deciding to not try and shoehorn some completely different ending…

[brenda]

@Mik said in What are you watching now?:

I find them all disturbing but very human. Like it.

+1

[jodi]

@George-K said in What are you watching now?:

My enthusiasm for 1923 is waning. The stuff about the range wars is absolutely fascinating. Mirren and Ford are spectacular, and they carry the show. The supporting cast is strong, with a couple of weak links.

But...

At times, it's getting a bit too soapy and unbelievable for me. The whole "Africa" subplot is unnecessary, other than to serve as a vehicle for more pretty big sky shots. The Spencer character is more than a bit of a caricature of the "big-game hunter" and his exploits with the runaway bride are contrived - c'mon the captain of the tug dies in his sleep, and THEN the tug gets rammed?

I'll plow through the rest because I'm retired and have the time. Hope the season ends on a good note to see more @jodi.

I love the scenes with Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren, they really are awesome, I do like the backstory with Spencer. But I am not into soap operas, and I haven’t watched Yellowstone for that reason. There have been a lot of scenes in this I have fast forwarded through. Too violent, too cruel, of just felt like they were not necessary to the story (the whole part with the prostitutes in both 7 and 8, for example (how many ways do we need to be reminded that Timothy Dalton’s character is terrible). I am very briefly in episode 7, and I walk across the street right after Zane rides his horse around the corner in episode 8, but didn’t make it into any of the camera shots they used in that scene. One of the takes, somebody else didn’t make it to their mark, (we cue off of each other) so I ended up crossing the street too soon (Zane rides down the hill from the group outside the bank) and I got in the middle of the road before him (instead of after) and he had to stop his horse and wait for me…

[Doctor Phibes]

We finished watching The Last of Us last night.

Snowflake alert: There is some gayness in it. The guy from Parks and Rec. gets it on with another guy before they both die. The main character might be a bit gay. They don't show any of that as she's just a kid.

All in all, a pretty good adaptation of possibly the best story-driven computer game ever made. They didn't muck about with the story too much.

The girl who played the main character Ellie was exceptional. The guy who played the Mandalorian played the father figure Joel, so it's a bit like Baby Yoda but with flesh-eating zombies.

[jodi]

@Doctor-Phibes I would like to see that series. Steve really liked the game. I tried playing it but only got a little ways in and couldn’t manage the combat. I’m not really a video gamer, though I liked both Horizon games, and The Legend of Zelda BOTW, because I could use a bow and arrow from a distance easily in each of them.

[Doctor Phibes]

@jodi said in What are you watching now?:

@Doctor-Phibes I would like to see that series. Steve really liked the game. I tried playing it but only got a little ways in and couldn’t manage the combat. I’m not really a video gamer, though I liked both Horizon games, and The Legend of Zelda BOTW, because I could use a bow and arrow from a distance easily in each of them.

Yeah, I found the controls a bit tricky on the Playstation, presumably because I'm not 15. They're releasing it on the PC, which might make it a bit easier if you can control it with a mouse. I found the game was just amazing in the way that it brought you into the story. I found that I really cared about the people, and the developing surrogate father/daughter relationship between the two main characters was something else. It made me think that just maybe video games could occasionally fulfil their potential of being a step up from film in terms of involving us in the story.

[George K]

A Spy Among Friends

The story of Kim Philby. Kind of interesting seeing Damien Lewis not faking an American accent.

I loved Ben MacIntyre's book upon which this is based.