I couldn't stand The Walking Dead. Mainly because I hated most of the characters. Not to mention idiotic ideas like guns being extremely difficult to find in rural America. My father - who lives in rural America - owns more guns than I ever saw in two years of that show. Or people thinking zombies are just sick and can be cured, rather than the undead, so lets keep them all in the barn. I could not get past the second season.

I wrapped up Z Nation yesterday and loved it. Mainly again because I actually liked most of the characters. Even Murphy, who was purposely played to be an ass, was someone I liked seeing on screen. The acting wasn't especially good, nor the cgi, but I don't expect either of those to be good from a Sci-Fi Channel movie.

OTOH, I loved that they had different kinds of zombies. There were fast zombies (who had recently reanimated), super-fast drugged zombies, slow zombies, even radioactive zombies covered in glowing bacteria. I also liked the humor, like killing zombies with the liberty bell, and the z-nado (I laughed out loud when the one character looks at it and remarks that it sure ain't sharks in there).

I also liked the variety in episodes too. We had the cannibal episode, the christian wacko episode, the crazy general episode, the nuclear powerplant episode (which was really nice, because nuclear plants and especially their spent fuel storage would pose a huge threat to any post-apocalyptic setting), the gun show episode, and others. In the end, it was a very enjoyable show that gave me something different every episode.

It even had some nice bits of world-building. I loved how they used the term 'Mercy' for killing zombies. It struck me as a euphemism that people would cling to, as it would help them deal with the ugly reality of having to kill their family and friends. It makes doing the horrible things they have to a little easier. The talk of the "Black Summer" where many people starved to death was another good touch too. What most zombie movies ignore is that a Zombie Apocalypse will be like any other natural disaster, in that all essential goods and services will stop. There will be no more food being sent to the grocery stores, no more water coming from the faucets, etc... If you live in a place like L.A., you will die of thirst or starvation in short order, quite possibly before the zombies can be get to you. There was even an episode of Z-Nation where the team was so exhausted from lack of food and water that they could not flee the oncoming zombie horde.

All in all, I enjoyed it a great deal. I am looking forward to a second season.

I saw the preview for this and had to sleep with a night light on, lol. (same thing happened after seeing "The Last Of Us."

I'm wondering if you are going to want to watch "Salem" when it comes out?

I don't think I want to watch Salem at all. Witchcraft in movies or TV it is usually the fundamentalist Christian propaganda that Witches are all worshipers of their devil, and go around murdering people. I have almost never seen any movie or show portray my religion with anything close to realism. It just makes me furious, and I wonder how Christians would feel if they simply reversed the labels, and called the so-called Witches Christians instead, and vice-versa?

I have to agree with what you are thinking they would portray witches as in this film. I saw three separate ads for it, and it was like the network was trying to drum up suspense with the ads. The first was the most intriguing, made me wonder what the show was going to be about. The second nearly turned my stomach, and I knew I would not be watching it. The third downright made me sleep with the light on.

I will not be watching this, and have to agree with you on the portrayal of witches as evil. Not much different than blacking out a tooth and putting a wart on an elongated nose under a crooked black hat - either way it is a stereotypical derogatory portrayal that keeps that prejudicial fear of the actual Salem trials alive.

I started watching The Men Who Built America on Netflix. It is rather dry, and gets repetitive where they put the commercial breaks. But so far it is fascinating. It tells the stories of America's first great business tycoons: Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and JP Morgan. These guys all faced trials, and disasters that could have ruined them, yet rose above it all to be become the wealthiest entrepreneurs in the country. At the same time they literally did change America, and how people lived. From the railroads that linked the east and west, the kerosene that filled everyone's lamps, the steel that allowed all the skyrscrapers to be built, and of course the Model T that even an ordinary person could afford.

The show also does not flinch at showing the dark sides of these men, who were just as ruthless and duplicitous as their modern counterparts: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and so on. They went to war with one another, and ruined the lives of millions of people, just so they could have their personal revenge on the people who crossed them, or simply just to get ahead. It really shows how evil unrestrained capitalism is, and the necessity for government oversight into big business.

As long as that government oversight is not self-motivated or harboring any greed of its own; which is nearly impossible to find in government.

I loved this! Did you just dismiss the Walking Dead, a show centered upon a zombie apocalypse, patially because of what you perceive to be a dearth of firearm availability? How fantastically American does that statement sound?! That would be a little bit like saying that Doctor Who sucks because you can’t fit that much stuff inside a police box.


We watched the first six or seven episodes last season. IMHO you aren't missing much.


I still find myself going back to it every time I see it on the History Channel. You're right, it is fascinating. You should also check out The World Wars by the same filmmakers. It is amazing to think about how much of WWII came as direct consequence of the allies actions following WWI.

Edit:

Oops, forgot the reason I came in here: I held out as long as I could, but we're about to finally sit down and watch The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Wish me luck...

America is a gun nation. It is one of the reasons we are a sovereign state, and not still a bunch of British colonies! We love our guns, and thousands of us die every year because of them, but we still love them just the same. If we melted down all of our guns we could probably build a bridge to the Moon out of the iron. If they had set the show in England, I could see the problem with finding firearms, and using that as a major plot point for an entire season. But there are literally 90 guns in America for every 100 people. They may as well have made the inability to find sand in the Sahara a major plot point. I was not exaggerating about my father owning more guns than I have ever seen put together in two seasons of that show either. He literally does. If there is ever a zombie apocalypse, his place is going to my first stop.


I am looking it up on Netflix right now. I know what you mean though. The Treaty of Versailles guaranteed another war. The German troops going home actually held a grand triumphal parade through Berlin, as if they had won the war. They were not convinced they had lost! Then many of them became members of Friekorps, basically mercenary bands who controlled different slices of the country. If Hitler and the Nazis had not taken over, it would have just been some other warlord, maybe the communists, maybe Ernst Rohm. And the creation of Yugoslavia out of so many disparate ethnic groups. Only a ruthless bastard like Tito could run that place after WWII. Look what a mess that turned into after he died.



I enjoyed the first two Hungry Game movies. I am still waiting for the third one to come out on dvd before I see it. They are not great, and the world-building really stretches my ability to say "ok, I can believe that". But I think the characters more than make up for it. Cantmiss Everdeen is definitely one of my favorite heroines, she has a lot of humanity, flaws and all, to balance out her uberness with a bow. Plus Jennifer Lawrence is not difficult to look at.

For me that is usually the make or break point. Do I like the characters? If I don't, I usually cannot sit through a movie. That is not to say the characters have to be nice, or moral, even if they are the protagonist. A well done anti-hero - like Chris Evans in Snowpiercer - is just as good as a well done hero. They just have to possess something that I like, even if it is just the actor's personal charisma. For example my biggest gripe with TWD is that I just cannot stand the characters. While one reason I didn't mind the bad cgi and bad acting and sometimes silly events in Z Nation was I liked the characters in that.

NoNo - that worked due to the TARDIS effect, which works on the same principle as macaroni (which swells to several times its own size); which actually was derived from the "Sea Monkey Effect" ... (etc)

Well, the Tardis is not a police box. It is just disguised to look like one. It is really more like an alternate dimension, and what we see as a police box is just the point where it intersects with our own reality. So of course the 'inside' can be bigger than the outside. There can be an entire universe in there, because well, there is. It is not so much a ship that can travel through time and space. Rather it is another reality, which can intersect with our own at any given place, at any given when. At least that is my take on it. In the very least it is a pocket universe, existing within our own (which would actually make more sense, with travel between alternate realities being so difficult).

BEST. EXPLANATION. EVER!!


Yet somehow Rick's inability to find an uzi in Atlanta strains credulity for you!

The Hungry Games (can't seem to call it anything else now thankyouverymuch 'Rosa) was kind of meh, but The Maze Runner (which we watched afterward) turned out to be surprisingly interesting and entertaining. Don't know if it did well enough at the box office to warrant a sequel, but I find myself hoping it did.

Took me forever to remember the name "Sea Monkey," and I even got them for XMas one year (but they died, and never grew). I did get a swelling alligator from Sea World in Miami for my son, and that thing nearly took over his bedroom it swelled so huge; it billowed out of the jar; I had to decapitate it while my son was in school so he wouldn't see. I think it was going to grow into a full size one till I killed it; and it all grew from a pellet the size of a BB.


But for SubRosa - it isn't that there aren't any guns, it is that there aren't any guns around when you need one - like there is never a cop around when you need one, but when you don't want one there is always one in your rear-view mirror.

I watched the Hunger Games a while back, barely managed to make it past the first hour just because of the camera work; any remotely dramatic scene and the camera began to unnecessarily jerk and wobble about like someone had jabbed the cameraman with a cattle prod. Combined with the deathly dull directorial work and I was just turned off. A shame, really, because I liked the book.

In terms of things I'm currently watching, I've just finished marathoning the IT Crowd, which is sort of like the British Big Bang Theory, though made before the BBT and wasn't so much of an aspergers minstrel show. Also funnier. As well as that, I've got Archer, Adventure Time, Steven Universe and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure as my Friday cartoon fix, all of which are an absolute blast to watch.

I am guessing you do not mean Mozilla Sea Monkey?

I watched Taking Chance last night, and thought it was excellent. A very moving story about taking a dead marine home. In the end I realized it was not about Kevin Bacon, the marine who takes Chance home. But rather it was about Chance, and all of the lives he passed through on the way.

http://mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files...onkey_pic_0.jpg

I think I have seen that ad in comic books. But I never actually saw the real thing.

It's 3.45am, so I'm passing the time until breakfast by marathoning Bob's Burgers. I love this show.

Neither did I, mine died while still in embryonic state. Everyone knows someone whose sea monkeys lived, but mine never grew period - could have been from using tap water, though. I think they are really Krill or something.

So truthfully, I was pretty shocked when that alligator started growing and moving around the jar. (till it started growing out the top of the jar). I had already put it in a much bigger jar; when it started coming out of that huge jar that was downright frightening - straight out of one of those horror movies where the green blob comes to life and takes over. Creeped me out!

Still slowly working through Doctor Who. I just watched Turn Left, from the Catherine Tate series. Near the beginning where a Unit solder says that the Doctor is dead, I practically jumped out of my seat. I knew the voice. It was Clive Standen! Yes, Rollo, everyone's favorite giant berserker from Vikings. I love going to back to watch things and recognizing people who were not famous then, but are now.

It is uncanny how you are able to detect voices and recognize them - and can even pinpoint the actor! It is an amazing talent, or you have an extremely atuned ear, Awesome!

Voices can sometimes stir a recognition in me, but only if the voice is unique (IE: Kathleen Turner; James Earl Jones; Betty Davis; Alan Rickman; etc). Now voices like these I am able to instantly recognize - but who couldn't, lol.

Watched Guardians of the Galaxy again.

Then I went online and ordered the soundtrack

A lot of people say the sense of smell triggers memories for them. They can smell something, and instantly remember something associated with it from years ago. That has never worked for me. But sounds do register in my brain. Songs especially make me remember things I was doing years before, either when I first heard the song, or from some time when I was listening to it a lot. Belinda Carlisle's Live Your Life Be Free album always makes me think of playing Doom, because for a while it was listening it to it every time I played.

More than anything else, hearing an actor's voice helps me tell who it is. When I was watching The Road Warrior again recently I recognized the actress playing the woman-warrior of the good guys as soon as I heard her talk. It was Virginia Hey from Farscape. She plays an alien in Farscape, and wears a lot of makeup and has a shaved head. So she looked nothing like she did in The Road Warrior. But I would recognize that voice anywhere.

I'm the exact same way with faces and names - almost never forget a face; but can't remember names to save my life. Scents - there are a few that twinge a menory; Example: The smell of turkey & dressing cooking always brings up memories of my paternal Grandparent's house. Growing up that is where we were every single Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner; really good memories.

Songs are most def memory triggers for me. I can remember where I was and what was happening when I first heard certain songs; and can remember what song was playing at any major events in my life (if a song was playing at the time). Example: Every time I hear "Whiter Shade of Pale" it brings memories of a certain day in my life and what I was doing that day as it played on the radio. It wasn't the first time I'd heard the song by any means, but it happened to be playing at that moment and it is forever tied in my memory to that moment in my life; like a screen capture of a time and place.

The difference for me is in the voices. It has to be a very unique voice or accent for me to know instantly who it is. I have heard voices before and known they were familiar, but not been able to place them and it drives me nuts till I figure it out, lol. That is the closest I get to that, lol.

Just started watching Girls und Panzer. What could be better than an anime about Japanese school girls? Or one about WWII era tanks? An anime about Japanese school girls in WWII era tanks! So far it is silly and fun, and incredibly accurate artwork of the tanks themselves.

Aw, now they have to make the version with real schoolgirls and real tanks for me to watch it, lol.

I just watch a youtube video of Danish archer Lars Anderson demonstrating some totes rad archery biz.

I know that you both have Archer characters, Acadian and Subrosa, and the archer biz on that video is totes rad.

Mustard - Wowzer! That was so fun!

Here's one that focuses on flexibility more than speed and accuracy, but still neat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUOCVhCmDNY

Very cool video. I have seen some of that before, and read about a lot of the techniques when I did some research on Arabic and Mongol Archery for Teresa. Things like putting the arrow on the right side of the bow instead of the left, holding extra arrows in the same hand you hold the bow with (or pull the string with). A Mamluk archer was said to be able to shoot 3 arrows in 1.5 seconds. An English bowman was expected to shoot 20 arrows a minutes.

One thing the video does not cover is zone-shooting, which was a standard archery technique, and one that separated the archers who were simply hunters from those who were military professionals. Basically it is using high-angle fire - like a mortar - to drop your arrows into a specific area. An Islamic text I read said you should be able to put your arrows in a circle no larger than a man could spread his arms, at any range that was called out to you, in any direction. So the archers could be put at the rear of the army, and could continually fire at the enemy, over the heads of their comrades. All they needed was to be told range and direction. That is also why the kettle style helmet became popular, its wide brim protected not only your head, but also your neck from plunging arrow fire.

Should I watch the walking dead?

I'd say yes. Pretty good stuff.

As for myself I'm re-re-watching Vikings (the tv series). Absolutely love it.

Agreed.

I watched Sin City: A Dame to Kill For the other night and I liked it, though I was very confused. One character who had been killed in the first movie was there. Not A Dame to Kill For looked like a bit of a prequel, but there were events that clearly took place after the first movie and he was there!

And since Michael Clarke Duncan died before this movie was being made, the Allstate guy (Dennis Haysburt) did his role. There were many "Are you in good hands?" jokes made.

My favorite story-line in the movie was the Dame, Ava. I swear, Eva Green is just amazing.

Cool! That's next up on my Netflix queue. Thanks for the review. I wasn't crazy about the first one, but seeing that Eva Green was in this one made me want to watch it. Do you realize that there are already trailers for season two of Penny Dreadful up? The show doesn't even start airing until the end of April.

I love Eva Green. Well, lust at least. She does that mysterious, smoky-eyed look so well. Plus English accent. I loved her in Penny Dreadful. I can't wait for another season of that!

I am up to the last of the David Tenant specials. I just recognized the voice of the Elder Ood. Brian Cox! I have loved him since I first saw him in Manhunter, the original Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Completely agree...

Hell yeah!... ...Awesome series!...

I have to admit I stopped with the Doctor Who...I couldn't get any further than part 1 of the Donna finale...I realised how much I had started not liking Tennant's whiny Who at that point...Sadly, this coincided with the AC:Unity obsession and then the Destiny obsession...So I'm still waiting to get to the Matt Smith ones... ...

Otherwise, it's the usual, NCISsses, Hawaii five-o...And that lot...Oooh, Republic of Doyle too!!!...My fave programme!!...Love that one so much!!...Excellent!!...

Er...The Musketeers...

A bunch of other things that I can't quite remember at this point...Comes with the territory these days...Sadly...*Shrug*...

Well, after all the recent discussion of Doctor Who in the everything thread, I'm about to start watching series 1. It's been a long time since I last watched Eccleston as The Doctor, so I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah, I've gotten into that too. Not crazy about the kid who plays D'Artagnan (through he is by no means bad). Athos and Porthos carry the show for me.

What about Magnum PI!



Fantastic!


I have never even heard of a Three Musketeers show. Added to Netflix!

I started watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine yesterday and it's pretty good, though I don't usually watch comedy stuff so it might actually be terrible and I just have bad taste.

From what I've seen of The Musketeers (two episodes) it looks fun.

Oh!...Did I not say we finished Magnum ages ago?... ...Ooopsie... ...Sorry... ..

Ah, The Musketeers...*Sighs happily*...

It really is much fun indeed...

It doesn't follow the story to the letter at all...After the first few episodes it really is just a series of adventures that those characters - D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, Porthos, Treville, Milady, Constance Bonacieux ( ) the King and Queen etc - are involved in...

Peter Capaldi was Richelieu in the first series, but then got the Who call part way through filming. And as the Beeb had not greenlit the second series at that point, Capaldi went with the Who crew instead...

This hasn't hampered the show in the slightest it seems, as Marc Warren's Rochefort is deliciously and growly voiced bad of the most excellent Boo-Hiss variety... ...

I absolutely love it to death...It's not exactly light, but certainly not something to expect deep levels of...

I'm not sure if it's the same for Hazmick, but my complaint about D'Artagnan is that he's far too pretty... ...

I really must buy the first series on DVD...Damn it!!... ...

I just finished watching Over the Garden Wall. It's a short series that was aired by Cartoon Network and I really, really enjoyed.

It's sort of in the vein of Adventure Time, in that it's both whimsical and dark, and bears a lot of similarities to Alice in Wonderland as well. It's well written, has well-rounded characters and the ending had one hell of an emotional punch. The musical numbers in each episode were pretty nice as well, and this is coming from someone who isn't usually a fan of musical numbers. Overall, I really, really enjoyed it, and as a kid's animated series I'd rank it up with Avatar: The Last Airbender in terms of quality.

Doctor Who. Series 1. Episode 6.

That moment when the Dalek starts to fly up the stairs...

*Shudders*

Back when I was little, my brother and I were watching Dr. Who and the Daleks (starring Peter Cushing), and would always yell at the tv screen "Run up the stairs, they can't follow you up there!". So when the characters in that episode said the same thing, it took me right back. Then the Dalek fired up the anti-gravity! That was the episode that really hooked me on the new Dr. Who.

Does watching the new Jurassic World trailer over and over again count as watching something?

I also got round to watching the third Hobbit film too, which I thought was super duper.

Broadchurch... with David Tennant as a brooding, troubled detective in ill health and anxious to avoid another failure in a murder investigation....

Agents of Shield- Season 1... much enjoyment there.

Crossing Lines- Season 2... more police show goodness... with Donald Sutherland, William Fichtner.... and Gabriella Pession (oh my).

Final Season of Justified... Mrs. Treydog remarked... "You know it isn't going to end well..."

I read earlier that The Musketeers has got a third series!!...Booyah!!...Very happy...

Anyways, also loving NCIS:LA...I think I like that more than NCIS:Gibbs, as I've heard it described ( )...NCIS:Washington seems to have lost something so far in this latest series...And no, it's nothing to do with the whole Bishop/Ziva debate, I love Bishop far more than I lusted Ziva...Erm...Yeah, totally loving NCIS:LA though...Awesome show...

I'm watching 300: Rise of an Empire.

Artemesia needs her own movie.

Still working my way through series 1 of Doctor Who.

Watching that episode in 1941 London, with all the gasmasks. watching that doctor's face turn into one was creepier than the flying Dalek.

I have to think very hard - as it's not all that easy to do these days... ... - to come up with any that I love more than those two episodes...Brilliant...

Must get back to the Who actually...

Mmmm...Pond... ... ...