Holy Cow, when did they get these great graphics?

Watching Better Than Chocolate again for the first time in years. Fantastic!

Having recently commented in our 'favorite TV series' thread that I suspect I Claudius likely to have withstood the passage of time rather well, I decided to test my theory by seeking it out at YouTube. I did NOT find episode one there, but did find episode two and many if not all later episodes. They are severely cropped, probably to prevent take-down, which sometimes takes a heavy toll on character framing. Despite that I soon found myself utterly engrossed with the script, line delivery and facial acting. I was especially impressed by the actress who portrays Augustus' wife Livia. Augustus himself (Brian Blessed) has some fine moments too. But the entire cast does a creditable job, with no obvious weak links. Yes, the acting tends toward 'stagy', but in the right way. The series modest budget is most evident in its lack of anything beyond small soundstage sets.

By mid episode three I knew I wanted to own the series on disc if possible. Online research showed that it is currently available on DVD (not blu-ray) in a 5-disc 35th anniversary edition, which utilizes original BBC episodes rather than their censored American equivalents, and includes a decent amount o bonus material. What's more, it's part of a Barnes and Noble 30% off sale, making it very nearly as cheap as ordering off Amazon. I bought the set while in town today.

I've already watched the movie-length first episode and rewatched episode two. Good stuff, though I feel the series doesn't quite hit its stride until the second episode. Image quality, which has undergone a bit of restoration, looks impressive for its age and source when upscaled to 1080p.

Here is episode two as it appears on YouTube, cropping and all.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: May 18 2016, 11:00 AM

A few months ago I bought all four seasons of Wiseguy on dvd. Last night I finally started watching them. Even after all these years, it is still excellent. Ken Wahl just chews the screen, and I almost cheered when I first saw Jim Byrnes, with more dark hair than grey.

Today I saw the first episode of Mercy Street. I put it in my queue mainly because of Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Let me say that again, Mary Elizabeth Winstead. But the entire cast is outstanding. I was impressed with the show, set in a Union hospital in Alexandria at the beginning of the American Civil War.

A shipment arrived from Amazon this morning, just prior to lunch. It contained, along with Guy Gavriel Kay's newly released book Children of Earth and Sky, two home videos. Both replace already owned discs. The first is All Quiet on the Western Front, part of the Universal Pictures 100th Anniversary Collector's Series. It sports improved image and sound, and is indeed appreciably better in both regards than my early All Quiet... DVD. Added bonus, it comes with both a DVD and blu-ray discs, so that I'll see ever better image quality once I make the jump. I meant to watch only enough of the opening to verify the improvements, but ended up seeing it through to the end.

Second is the Cohen Film Collection edition of D.W. Griffith's Intolerance. I own it on laserdisc, but have never been overly thrilled with that edition's choice of music track. The Cohen features a specially composed orchestra score by Carl Davis, whose silent film work I admire. The irony here is that I elected to buy it on blu-ray rather than DVD, though I do not yet own a blu ray player and remain uncertain as to when I'll order one.

I watched no further I Claudius episodes, but might do so ere retiring tonight.

ADDENDUM: I indeed watched episodes three and four of I Claudius this evening. Livia remains my favorite portrayal. I swear she can give the best/worst of the Game of Thrones ladies lessons in intrigue, manipulation and out and out ruthlessness. Augustus, who seems amazingly clueless as to his wife's nature and . . . oops, I'll say no more lest I spoil things.

ADDENDUM 2: During the 19th I watched episodes five through seven of I Claudius.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: May 20 2016, 11:02 AM

Yesterday, 20 May, I watched episodes eight and nine of I Claudius. I also watched All Quiet on the Western Front again.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: May 21 2016, 09:33 AM

Yesterday evening I watched the remaining three episodes of I Claudius on DVD. Such a marvelous series! Gonna be hard to follow it up. I still have the last few episodes of GoT season 1 and all of season 2 to watch on DVD, but haven't been able to drum up much interest in doing so.

I have been having a Transformer movie marathon. Certainly no deep characters or intricate plots. But fun if you do not expect much. Plus excellent eye candy when watching the blu-rays on a 4k television.

One prop I do have to give to Michael Bay is that in these movies I actually do enjoy and even care about the 'little people' (a.k.a. the humans). The first movie especially had a whole cast of interesting human characters, that I wish they had done more with. Even Shia LeBeof's character was interesting, even if his acting was not. Too bad they didn't get someone like Toby McGuire or Elijah Wood for the role. They are really good at doing the ordinary, everyman type characters, and can actually act.

I didn't even mind Megan Fox. In fact, I liked her in the first two movies, and really missed her in the third. I thought she was a lot of fun. It would have been nice if they had just wrote out Shia LeBouf and gave her the extra screen time. OTOH, I did love the parents of Shia's character. Their scenes are always hilarious.

Except for the completely stock and stereotypical white guy military leader, the army people were cool as well. Tyrese Gibson always gets my attention. He's not much of an actor, but he has charisma, and always chews up the scenery in every shot he is in. The Latin guy who was always speaking in Spanish was fun too (wow, a Latino in a movie! Isn't that illegal? Donald Trump will probably build a wall around Hollywood to keep Latins out of films in the future).

The hot Australian computer chick was neat, as was her black guy hacker buddy (who I will always think of as Antwon Mitchell thanks to the same actor's role in The Shield). Jon Voight was awesome as the Secretary of Defense. An actually sensible, reasonable man who is also a politician!

I just finished the Sonny Steelgrave arc of Wiseguy. Wow. This is one of the best gangster stories ever done. Sonny's bachelor party was chilling. The next episode his world came crashing down, when he finally learned that Vinnie was an undercover agent and he was trapped with the Feds closing in. Sonny's final moments were one of the best uses of a song to say all the things the characters cannot bring themselves to voice.

Sadly the dvd version did not use Nights in White Satin. They must not have been able to get the rights. That is one of the disappointing things about many shows that use popular music. When they go to dvd the rights to use the songs often cost too much, so they go cheap and replace it with some canned garbage.

Next up is the Mel Profitt arc. I am really looking forward to that. It is the first time I ever saw or even heard of Kevin Spacey. I think it was his big break in fact. He was pure awesome as an insane international arms dealer.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: May 29 2016, 06:08 PM

I transformed my Transformer marathon into a Megan Fox one. Which means I just watched Jennifer's Body. It was fun, better than I expected. Though still nothing special. Well, it did have a kiss between Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried. That is pretty special.

Heh, I do love the Transformers films, the first three at least(I refuse to watch the fourth). But then, I've been a fan of Transformers since I was a kid. Sure, the plots aren't great, and Shia Lebouf is Shia Lebouf, but like you say Subrosa, there are some damn good characters. It's just a shame some of the Transformers ended up being so gimmicky.

But as much as I love seeing Michael Bay's Tranformers transform, I still prefer the original animated movie

Yesterday, I watched The Quick and the Dead, which was a damn good film, though it got a little absurd right at the end. And of course, like every other Western, allows for unreasonable levels of accuracy with those revolvers

My only dislike with the 4th Transformer movie was that it was way too long. And that was because it had the problem that so many shows and movies have - it is trying to tell too many stories at the same time. It was really two movies squished together. One was Stanley Tucci's ignorant company resurrecting Megatron/Gravitron and whole new horde of Descepticons. The other was the Space Bounty Hunter Transformer sent to corral up Optimus Prime. Either would be a fine plot for one movie. But doing both made it drag on way too long.

I remember the Transformers when they were toys. But I was already too old to play with them then, and that was before the first animated show came out.

Yesterday I finished my Megan Fox-athon with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was nothing special, but I thought it was fun. The standout for me was Megan Fox. I really liked her in this, and I am glad to hear that she is in the sequel.

It was also funny to watch this after seeing Daredevil recently, because there are some obvious homages to Daredevil. Daredevil was trained by Stick, the turtles are trained by Splinter. Daredevil's big nemesis was The Hand. The Turtle's big enemy is The Foot.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Jun 1 2016, 08:41 PM

I still haven't gotten past the second Transformer's film. The second the n-wordbots showed up, I was out.

Yesterday I finished watching the first season of Aquarius. It was good. While Charles Manson is a character (and one I'd love to strangle), it is not a historical retelling of his rise (or fall) to infamy. Rather it is more like historical fiction set in the late 60s, and Manson is just one character in the cast. Most of the other characters are fictitious. But the events and organizations around them that are real.

David Duchovny really shines here, in a way I never thought he did in X-Files. He was always a little stiff before, a little too deadpan. But here he really gets it right. Decades of acting experience really show in his performance. His character of Sam the homicide detective really chews the screen in the show. He's a hard ass, straight arrow, square as they come LA cop. Which makes him believable. But at the same time shows if not a more liberal side, a more world-wise side. Like when he talks to another cop about how he grew up with a father who smoked pot ("your generation thinks you invented everything" he even laughs to the other, younger cop).

The rampant corruption and prejudice of the LAPD is also center stage here, which is nice. Because the show does not try to sugar coat the ugliness of the society it is set in. In other shows where the hero cop gets told by his superior to drop a murder case because those on high want it to disappear he always takes a moral stand, bucks the system, gets the bad guy, and comes out smelling like a rose in the end. In Aquarius when Sam is told to drop a murder case, he drops it, because he knows that some battles you cannot win.

TBH, I think it like most is simply the premise of a cop show set in the period it is, rather than the Manson stuff, which takes a lot of screen time. I would have been happy if they had left that all out. But it isn't really terrible either. All in all, it was a good show. I look forward to the second season (when it eventually comes out on disc next year).

I am halfway through The Whisperer In Darkness. It was made by the Howard Phillips Lovecraft Historical Society (or HPLHS) - the same people who did The Call of Cthulhu. Unlike CoC, this one is not a silent movie. But like CoC, it is very cool so far. It stays very close to Lovecraft's story, as well as his style - starting slowly and steadily building to a climax, when the Ultimate Horror™ stands revealed. Most people would probably find it boring. But if you are Lovecraft fan, you will love it.

Ok, just finished it. Not long after the halfway mark the movie diverges from the short story. But that is because that is where Lovecraft's story ended. The movie carries on, and takes the entire tale to a much more exciting, and horrible, conclusion. I absolutely loved it. Now I think I will have to rewatch Call of Cthulhu.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Jun 9 2016, 02:30 AM

Watched some of this year's superhero films today, Deadpool and Captain America: Civil War.

I quite liked Deadpool. The jokes weren't all to my taste, but the action sequences were fun and it was a refreshing take on the hero genre.

CA:CW was ok. The whole film was basically one long action sequence, as expected, but that's all one really needs. The story was a disjointed and confusing mess, but the characters (both new and old) were fun. I particularly enjoyed this version of Spiderman, whose appearance in this film was better than all of the actual Spiderman films combined. I hope to see more of him.
Ant-Man also makes an appearance, and I've added his film to my 'to watch' list as I've yet to see it.

A whole bunch of Lovecraft-inspired movies came in the mail yesterday. Whisperer in Darkness was only one, and I still want to watch the behind the scenes stuff on it (the ones from Call of Cthulhu are hilarious!). Pickman's Muse, The Dark Sleep, Color Out of Space, and In Search of Lovecraft came in the mail as well. It's going to be a week of Eldritch Horror!

I just finished watching Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It was absolutely brilliant! Easily it was the best movie I have seen this year. It follows P&P pretty closely, but with zombies! Elizabeth and the other Bennett sisters were all trained at the Shaolin temple, and Mr. Darcy by samurai. The lake scene is even in the movie, albeit cut short. There is a deleted scene that picks up from the second half of it though, with zombies of course!

It is even on 4k. So it is another reason to buy a 4k tv and player.

I've been dying to test this one out; really glad you gave it the thumbs up!

Oooh...The pain you must have felt throughout... ...

Aaaamywho...We went to see the second Turtles film last weekend...She was pretty much the best thing about it...

The actors did well with what they had...But...Oy...

Also AAaaamywho...Continuing with our semi-regular Saturday night Marvel-athon this evening with Guardians Of The Galaxy...which we much enjoyed in the cinema and thusly are likely to again...

Boo, and indeed, yah...