I have been watching The Bridge (Bron/Broen). The original Scandinavian version that is, not the American copy (why is there always a copy of every successful European movie or tv show, the original is always better?)

There were some plot events that left me scratching my head, but the characterizations are really well done. It is a character-driven piece after all. Sofia Helin really steals the show with her performance of a Swedish detective with Asperger's Syndrome (or something very near to it). The things she blurts out sometimes are just so unintentionally hilarious. It is worth watching just for her.

Just finished The Battle of the Five Armies. It was good, though I would not call it great. There was a little too much battle, without any pause to catch ones breath. It became numbing by the end. Still, it had its good points. It was fun seeing Galadriel pulling out all the stops and showing just what the oldest elf in Middle Earth can do. I am also probably one of the few people who enjoyed the Taariel parts.

It is sad that the whole thing is over now. Then again, if Disney held the rights, they would put out a LOTR movie every year - like they are going to dilute the Star Wars franchise. So maybe fewer is better.

In the middle of watching some fascinating documentaries called 'Killer Tanks'. It's about various tanks from World War Two. Really great stuff.

Have decided - while I still have the marbles to do so with - to watch the entire of Dragonball Z again...All 291 episodes...

Have gotten through the first 5...And have realised that while the story is excellent, the pacing is utterly terrible...So am liberally using the 1.5x watching technique while much of the repeated posing shots with added "Gnurgh!" "HAH!" "Whooaaaarrr" things are going on...


McDaughter is going through Gundam Wing too...Awesome child... ... ...



We enjoyed the Galadriel bits too...Very excellent...

We also very much enjoyed the Tauriel stuff too...I thought it was an excellent addition, personally...*Shrug*...The ladies certainly appreciated the whole of that stuff with Kili and Tauriel anyways...

I'm looking forward to all this Star Wars stuff...Though I'm currently struggling with the decision as to whether to bin all the 100+(?) novels I've got from the Expanded (Expunged) Universe™...

This post has been edited by McBadgere: Apr 2 2015, 06:38 AM

Right now I´m watching Anger Management

Just finished watching Atari: Game Over on Netflix. As a person who remembers Pong and the Atari 2600, I loved it. It follows both the rise and fall of Atari back in the 80s, and documents a gaming archaeologist's efforts to find the mythical site where Atari supposedly buried all of its copies of its ET game. There are interviews with lots of folks, including the guy who made the ET game. He did it in 5 weeks! The crunch time was to make Christmas sales. All in all, it was very cool. If you love video games, and the old Atari, you will be enjoy this.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Apr 5 2015, 12:24 AM

I spent last week watching Turn: Washington's Spies on Netflix. It was really good. I was impressed with how much fact is in the fiction. Be it Roger's Rangers (who really existed, and whose command really did shift from Rogers to Simcoe during the war, down to little things like Anna Strong signaling Caleb by putting a black petticoat on her laundry line. Though granted the latter is not absolutely proven fact, but it is how the story goes, and that still made it into the tv show. Ben Talmadge did lead a raid on Long Island that took him back to his home of Setauket. But in reality it was not until years after the show is set. The main characters are of course all real members of the Culper Spy Ring, America's first real spy network.

It was really nice to see Angus MacFayden again. I loved him as Robert the Bruce in Braveheart. But sadly his career never really went anywhere after that. He's the only actor I really know. Though I have seen the guy who plays the main character Abe Woodhull in some smaller part here and there, such as the younger brother in Man On A Ledge. I loved the guys playing Ben Talmadge and Caleb Brewster, and the woman playing Anna Strong is just a joy to watch on screen.

The bad guys are well represented too. From Angus as the truly badass ranger, Simcoe the diabolical psychopath. Burn Gorman (who I remember from Torchwood) as the befuddled commander of Setauket, and of course Major John Andre, whose name most Americans ought to be familiar with due to his unfortunate association with Benedict Arnold. I really liked how they presented Andre. Though they got some of his timeline off. In reality he was still being held as a prisoner of war when the series began. But hey, it still works. IRL, he was generally presented as a dandy, and aside of being executed instead of Arnold, he is most famous for the party he gave in Philadelphia to celebrate Lord-General Howe's retirement. You still see that dandy exterior in a rather wild party he gives for other British officers. But in the show we also see a much more steely plotter under that velvet glove. It all comes together to make him a delightful character.

They even worked in some good and realistic African-American characters, former slaves of Anna Strong. There were slaves in the North as well as South, though at that time there were not the huge numbers as there would be after the cotton jin was invented, making cotton plantations in the South hugely profitable. And just like IRL, they were technically given their freedom by the British. Though of course they were not really free. One - Jordan - was sent to New York to become a laborer for the British Army, the other - Abagail - became Major Andre's house servant. Jordan joins Rogers Rangers, and gives us a great view of Rogers through his eyes. Likewise Abagail provides us with a view into Major Andre's affairs, and becomes an invaluable link in the spy chain.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Apr 13 2015, 07:07 PM

SubRosa, I've seen this advertised on the tellie. Thanks for the great review. My entertainment dance card is 100% playing in Skyrim with a voracious elf right now, so it is good to get the 'executive' version of such shows.

If you can talk Buffy into perhaps taking a little break to stop and smell the roses for a while, you might like the show. Speaking purely as a writer, the American Revolution is a fantastic setting for a story. It is a time when wars were still gentlemanly affairs, all full of courtesies and formalities. Yet at the same it was a time of back-stabbing political intrigue, guerrilla warfare, executions, personal vendettas, and all sorts of truly vile behavior. Just as Rebels and Loyalists clash, so too is there a clash of Old World ideals vs. New World realities on both sides. It is fertile ground for all manner of storytelling, not just war stories, but spy tales like this one, romance, crime, you name it.

I was also thinking just now that the actor who plays Ben Talmadge - Seth Numrich would make a great replacement for Chris Evans, if the rumors are true that he plans to step down from playing Captain America at some point.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Apr 13 2015, 07:17 PM

well the first 4 episodes of Game of Thrones season 5 have been leaked so I just had to watch them all (naturally). As a TV show it's still really good and I enjoy it. As a conversion from book to TV it's quite frustrating, and some material in the TV show spoils the books that are yet to be written. Incredibly annoying.

Why bother basing something on a book if you're not going to follow the story? Same thing happened with The Hobbit films - feels like a fan fiction spin-off. *sigh* such is modern entertainment I suppose.

This post has been edited by hazmick: Apr 13 2015, 09:28 PM

Watched the first episode of Breaking Bad last night.

Looks promising, think I'll carry on watching it.

Also saw the first episode of Olympus, which looked kinda cheap. Don't think I'll bother with it.

Same here. My excitement at the thought of some high quality super cool and interesting Greek mythology stuff was crushed within the first few minutes. Such a pity.

I did an Iron Man movie marathon over the last few days, and I noticed something interesting. In the first movie the terrorists who kidnapped Tony were called The Ten Rings, or some such thing, and they had a logo with 10 circles and a pair of crossed scimitars in the center. Guess what logo we see in the 3rd movie? Yep, the Not-Mandarin Ben Kingsley is using the exact same logo in all his broadcasts.

Yeah, it sounded great, but those low quality backgrounds and everything just killed it.



Yup, the Ten Rings, a little nod to The Mandarin. I never noticed the logo in the first film, but finding out about the Mandarin later I got the reference. One of their little nods to the comics, even if the films don't fit into the same universe.



Currently watching Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Kind of an odd film, I think maybe it's trying a little too hard to keep me guessing at it.

They may be not quite so different. One of the bonus features on the Thor 2 blu-ray is a short called All Hail The King, with the Ben Kingsley Mandarin in prison. At least until the real Mandarin - who is quite ticked off - makes his feelings known...

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Apr 17 2015, 12:03 AM

*Grumbles about blu-ray special features*

So, there is going to be the actual Mandarin then. Cool.




As for Tinker tailor Soldier Spy, the film was pretty much junk. The whole thing felt scattered and disconnected, like they tried to be inscrutable and missed, badly. The plot didn't really work, the idea that there's a mole in MI6 is completely undermined by he lack of any real consequence of that. You see one agent killed at the start of the film, and then there's nothing. There were chunks of story thrown in which add nothing at all to the plot, and despite how much the film tries to make it look personal to Gary Oldman's character, he was so devoid of emotion as to be completely unbelievable.

Currently rewatching the first season of The Vikings to get back in the mood for Skyrim.

I have Season 2 & 3 on standby, haven't watched them yet. But it's been more than two years since I watched the first season, so I wanted to refresh my memory before I dug into the new material.

I really like how Travis Fimmel brings Ragnar to life. And Floki as a character is probably the most fascinating one of them all. But I just can't get enough of Lagertha - she is just the sort of strong, independent woman that I love to write about.

Lagertha is by far my favorite in that show too. For her hair if nothing else! Grits and I were talking at one point about how great the hair is on that show. From Ragnar's braided top-drop, to Beorn's old school Frank back of the head shaved off look. Lagertha always has the best hair of everyone though.

Vikings is really good at the moment, and it just keeps getting better! There's so many great characters - my personal favorites include Ragnar, Floki, Athelstan, and King Ecbert. They're all so complex and feel so well developed in such a short amount of time.

If I was in a cartoon I'd get heart-eyes every time Lagertha appeared on screen

This post has been edited by hazmick: Apr 18 2015, 02:26 AM

OMG! I love that outfit! Can someone put that into Skyrim so my Alise can find it and channel a little bit of Lagertha's ferocity??