Not Much News, So You Get Reviews!
May. 29th, 2021 09:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogI barely left the house today; Eleanor never did. She split her day between preparing for a presentation she's doing tomorrow morning for a Buddhist study group and working on the molding going into the bathroom reno. I divided my time between cleaning up floors and doing bills, both outgoing and month-end time to pay next month's.
So we'll report on some things we've been catching up on from mostly the wonderful world of streaming. It still gets confusing AF which of the (now) Seven Sisters have any given program: Netflix, Hulu, Amazon with the former CBS/now Paramount addon, Disney+, HBO Max, PBS Passport, and now Peacock, an even more premium service to supplement NBC's original landing on Hulu. We have access to all of these that either we pay for, the kids do, or through our public broadcasting station membership- except the latter, and are probably going to at least do the free trial for it if only to see this, a series featuring singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles who we adore.
It gets confusing. Our latest binge on Home Box has been a very well done series called Hacks with Jean Smart as a late-career standup comic and a younger comedy writer who she mentors against both of their wills. It's a Universal Studios production, so you'd expect it on Hulu or Peacock, but who knows why it's on HBO? Other shows are on Netflix streaming in one country but not here, or vice versa; we still get the DVDs from them, and I ordered Republic of Doyle, an 20teens police procedural from Canada which Alan "Not the Title Character" Doyle of Great Big Sea sings on the theme for and acts in several episodes. (He has a new post-GBS EP just oot, which I've heard this track from and want to hear more from.) You can still watch it streaming in his home and native land, but not here.
In addition to Hacks, as I briefly mentioned the other day, we're down to the final episode of Kate Winslet in Mare of Easttown, which Jean Smart also has a supporting role in. It definitely stands out from your basic whodunit, if only by the early extent to which they reveal the who, or the maybe who, or the who but not of all the what or the why. That will all be figured out by Memorial Night, or maybe sooner if it drops before 10 p.m. tomorrow.
Also on Max: The Nevers, a creation of Joss Whedon with his standard cache of female badasses. It's a split season where the seventh episode was the first half finale. And,...wow. We knew there would be some twist that would explain many of the clues and gaps in the previous six, but he took us to a place we never expected and that may or may not be a known or even close one in terms of time, space and meaning. Nick Frost is really the only actor we were very familiar with going in, but all of them, particularly the primary badasses, truly shine.
We also really enjoyed Ghosts on that service, including their most recent episode from the Beeb that was a Christmas special not but on the Max Pax. I've heard from Across Amy that series three is in the can and will be out sometime soon!
So much else on there we haven't scratched among the new material, plus, you know, going back to entire binges of Sopranos, or Six Feets, or documentaries....
----
As for the others:
Disney+ is probably our biggest minus among them. We mainly got it for the combo of Marvel, Star Wars, Muppets and occasional new animation. But while I got into WandaVision, Eleanor didn't, and even I haven't had the time for any of the other MCU spinoffs they've been putting out. Likewise, while we certainly loved The Way of The Mandalorian, there's a ton of back and side stories still waiting. Emily loved Soul until she didn't, and Flora and Ulysses was fun, but the Mouse has been slacking compared to the other services of late.
I started the most recent season of Handmaid's Tale on Hulu. Didn't last half an episode. Still seems too much like a documentary, the way state Lej's are daring the Supremes to overrule Roe (and don't be fooled for a second, your right to birth control from Griswold v. Connecticut is right behind with this lot). They have been showing good commercial-free films that would have never been streamed pre-pandemic, from the wonderful and sweet Nomadland that took most of the Oscar hardware to Supernova, a tale of old love in its fading moments with Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci.
Haven't seen much on the PBS Passport. Waiting for Endeavour to go another year into the 70s, but that just began filming in the UK last month and I don't expect it to cross the pond until late this year, if at all.
Prime/Paramount was mainly for Discovery, and I got about halfway through Lower Decks before I just decided it was a little too cute for its own good. But when Picard returns, I shall make it so. There are also often good standalone films over there, as well as Mrs. Maisel and Atypical that are expected to return.
Wait- Atypical is Netflix. See what I meant about confusing?
But Also Netflix are the occasional gems that come through the mail. Tonight was one I ordered several weeks ago when we got hold of two of the three "Barrytown trilogy" films featuring Colm Meaney from TNG and DS9. We're still waiting to get to The Conspirator, a Redford-directed film about a woman complicit in Lincoln's assassination which Colm is also in- but today, The Journey arrived, and it couldn't be more timely. He plays Sinn Fein leader Martin McGuinness, and Timothy Spall is equally amazing as Ian Paisley from the Ulster loyalist side. They take a one-hour drive in "Scotland" to reach the Northern Ireland peace agreement almost entirely on their own. There are only 21 actors in the entire cast, including no-slouches Toby Stephens, Freddie Highmore and John Freaking Hurt, but for most of the length of the film, the other 19 are sitting in their trailers drinking Guinnesses while Spall and Meaney just entrance us. The story of peacemaking resonated with Eleanor on account of the presentation she's doing tomorrow; for me, though, I want to send screeners to the chief diplomats of both Israel and Hamas now that they've laid down their weapons for the ever so short time being. A few weeks ago, long after ordering this film, I Facebooked these words after seeing the exteme positions of Bad Jew and Bad Palestinian being meme'd all over my page:
Ambassador Ray is going to solve the Middle East problem:
You're both wrong.
I don't care who's wronger, who started it, who's breathing who's air back there. I'm turning this car around. Y'all have had 73 years to make nice- after centuries of fighting with each other over an oilless pile of desert and dirt.
I'm sorry the Brits fucked it up by dividing it the way they did. They also fucked up Ireland over a similar sized piece of real estate, with centuries of hate persisting into bombings and killings and all the shit you're still doing. But ya know what? Eventually they all got sick of it and made nice- and even Brexit isn't gonna fuck it up.
So I'm giving you two years until 2023, the 75th anniversary of the final implementation of the Balfour Declaration. If you haven't worked your shit out by then, the Security Council's taking it all back. The walls and fences come down, the guns and bombs are confiscated (including your nukes, Bibi- I know it's a breach of protocol to say out loud what everyone knows about you having them), and the whole patch goes back under international jurisdiction. It's not Israel, it's not Palestine. Call it George for all I care. Act like adults and you'll be treated like them in the international community. We'll welcome whatever resolution you work out, as long as it includes you silencing and disarming your own radicals who will hate anything that gives anything to "them." There is no "them." Only "we." Or Zuul. One or the other.
That was not quite two weeks ago and already we have a cease-fire. Now keep going. You can't fight in here; this is the Armageddon Room!
So we'll report on some things we've been catching up on from mostly the wonderful world of streaming. It still gets confusing AF which of the (now) Seven Sisters have any given program: Netflix, Hulu, Amazon with the former CBS/now Paramount addon, Disney+, HBO Max, PBS Passport, and now Peacock, an even more premium service to supplement NBC's original landing on Hulu. We have access to all of these that either we pay for, the kids do, or through our public broadcasting station membership- except the latter, and are probably going to at least do the free trial for it if only to see this, a series featuring singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles who we adore.
It gets confusing. Our latest binge on Home Box has been a very well done series called Hacks with Jean Smart as a late-career standup comic and a younger comedy writer who she mentors against both of their wills. It's a Universal Studios production, so you'd expect it on Hulu or Peacock, but who knows why it's on HBO? Other shows are on Netflix streaming in one country but not here, or vice versa; we still get the DVDs from them, and I ordered Republic of Doyle, an 20teens police procedural from Canada which Alan "Not the Title Character" Doyle of Great Big Sea sings on the theme for and acts in several episodes. (He has a new post-GBS EP just oot, which I've heard this track from and want to hear more from.) You can still watch it streaming in his home and native land, but not here.
In addition to Hacks, as I briefly mentioned the other day, we're down to the final episode of Kate Winslet in Mare of Easttown, which Jean Smart also has a supporting role in. It definitely stands out from your basic whodunit, if only by the early extent to which they reveal the who, or the maybe who, or the who but not of all the what or the why. That will all be figured out by Memorial Night, or maybe sooner if it drops before 10 p.m. tomorrow.
Also on Max: The Nevers, a creation of Joss Whedon with his standard cache of female badasses. It's a split season where the seventh episode was the first half finale. And,...wow. We knew there would be some twist that would explain many of the clues and gaps in the previous six, but he took us to a place we never expected and that may or may not be a known or even close one in terms of time, space and meaning. Nick Frost is really the only actor we were very familiar with going in, but all of them, particularly the primary badasses, truly shine.
We also really enjoyed Ghosts on that service, including their most recent episode from the Beeb that was a Christmas special not but on the Max Pax. I've heard from Across Amy that series three is in the can and will be out sometime soon!
So much else on there we haven't scratched among the new material, plus, you know, going back to entire binges of Sopranos, or Six Feets, or documentaries....
----
As for the others:
Disney+ is probably our biggest minus among them. We mainly got it for the combo of Marvel, Star Wars, Muppets and occasional new animation. But while I got into WandaVision, Eleanor didn't, and even I haven't had the time for any of the other MCU spinoffs they've been putting out. Likewise, while we certainly loved The Way of The Mandalorian, there's a ton of back and side stories still waiting. Emily loved Soul until she didn't, and Flora and Ulysses was fun, but the Mouse has been slacking compared to the other services of late.
I started the most recent season of Handmaid's Tale on Hulu. Didn't last half an episode. Still seems too much like a documentary, the way state Lej's are daring the Supremes to overrule Roe (and don't be fooled for a second, your right to birth control from Griswold v. Connecticut is right behind with this lot). They have been showing good commercial-free films that would have never been streamed pre-pandemic, from the wonderful and sweet Nomadland that took most of the Oscar hardware to Supernova, a tale of old love in its fading moments with Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci.
Haven't seen much on the PBS Passport. Waiting for Endeavour to go another year into the 70s, but that just began filming in the UK last month and I don't expect it to cross the pond until late this year, if at all.
Prime/Paramount was mainly for Discovery, and I got about halfway through Lower Decks before I just decided it was a little too cute for its own good. But when Picard returns, I shall make it so. There are also often good standalone films over there, as well as Mrs. Maisel and Atypical that are expected to return.
Wait- Atypical is Netflix. See what I meant about confusing?
But Also Netflix are the occasional gems that come through the mail. Tonight was one I ordered several weeks ago when we got hold of two of the three "Barrytown trilogy" films featuring Colm Meaney from TNG and DS9. We're still waiting to get to The Conspirator, a Redford-directed film about a woman complicit in Lincoln's assassination which Colm is also in- but today, The Journey arrived, and it couldn't be more timely. He plays Sinn Fein leader Martin McGuinness, and Timothy Spall is equally amazing as Ian Paisley from the Ulster loyalist side. They take a one-hour drive in "Scotland" to reach the Northern Ireland peace agreement almost entirely on their own. There are only 21 actors in the entire cast, including no-slouches Toby Stephens, Freddie Highmore and John Freaking Hurt, but for most of the length of the film, the other 19 are sitting in their trailers drinking Guinnesses while Spall and Meaney just entrance us. The story of peacemaking resonated with Eleanor on account of the presentation she's doing tomorrow; for me, though, I want to send screeners to the chief diplomats of both Israel and Hamas now that they've laid down their weapons for the ever so short time being. A few weeks ago, long after ordering this film, I Facebooked these words after seeing the exteme positions of Bad Jew and Bad Palestinian being meme'd all over my page:
Ambassador Ray is going to solve the Middle East problem:
You're both wrong.
I don't care who's wronger, who started it, who's breathing who's air back there. I'm turning this car around. Y'all have had 73 years to make nice- after centuries of fighting with each other over an oilless pile of desert and dirt.
I'm sorry the Brits fucked it up by dividing it the way they did. They also fucked up Ireland over a similar sized piece of real estate, with centuries of hate persisting into bombings and killings and all the shit you're still doing. But ya know what? Eventually they all got sick of it and made nice- and even Brexit isn't gonna fuck it up.
So I'm giving you two years until 2023, the 75th anniversary of the final implementation of the Balfour Declaration. If you haven't worked your shit out by then, the Security Council's taking it all back. The walls and fences come down, the guns and bombs are confiscated (including your nukes, Bibi- I know it's a breach of protocol to say out loud what everyone knows about you having them), and the whole patch goes back under international jurisdiction. It's not Israel, it's not Palestine. Call it George for all I care. Act like adults and you'll be treated like them in the international community. We'll welcome whatever resolution you work out, as long as it includes you silencing and disarming your own radicals who will hate anything that gives anything to "them." There is no "them." Only "we." Or Zuul. One or the other.
That was not quite two weeks ago and already we have a cease-fire. Now keep going. You can't fight in here; this is the Armageddon Room!
no subject
Date: 2021-05-30 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-30 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-30 03:20 pm (UTC)THAT does it!
Date: 2021-05-31 12:05 pm (UTC)Joss Whedon--I signed on with the Firefly series. Just typing this makes me want to binge it again. :D My recommendation is for The Orville--have you seen it? Starts out like a spoof or rip off of Trek but quickly becomes its own series, and a really good one, too. I fell in love with all the new Trek series, starting with Discovery. Can't wait for more!
Buddha? Why I hardly....
Date: 2021-05-31 01:45 pm (UTC)If you want, I can PM the summary she worked from. The peace effort was a decades-long bond between the then-leader of the SGI (the offshoot of Nichiren Buddhism she practices) and the widow of former Chinese premier Chou En-Lai however that's now anglicized. After Tiananmen Square, Japan and most of the world ostracized China, and their leader was one of the first to break the Asian ice between the countries.
Re: Buddha? Why I hardly....
Date: 2021-06-01 10:06 am (UTC)