Casual Conversation

I’ve been slowly working my way through some 80s slashers.

This week I watched Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and 5: The Dream Child.

4 was decent, 5 was awful.

DS9, almost done with season 2 so its starting to get good

Finally worked down my list to Andor. It was good. I don't regret waiting to watch it, it still resonates quite a lot with the politics of my country (US).

I've been watching One Punch Man. I'm not a big anime guy outside of the Dragonball Z series.

It's funny. It's very anime-ish to me. With the long inner monologues and so forth. I like it

Watched "Weapons" the other day. Pretty good, overall. 8/10 maybe.

Celebrity Traitors, and it was worth every second!!

Pluribus, Vince Gilligan's new show is more X-Files than Breaking Bad, and I'm loving it so far.

My wife and I are re-watching House, M.D. (2004). It was a comfort show back in the day and it's been over a decade since we watched it. We're watching a handful of episodes each night.

I like that it's kind of a Sherlock Holmes mystery show, except instead of solving crimes, they're solving medical mysteries. (Get it? Holmes... House...) It's the only medical drama I've ever been able to get invested in.

I got into Scrubs (2001) once upon a time, but that was more comedy with a side of drama than a true medical drama show. I only saw 4 seasons of that show back in the day, so I need to re-watch it and actually finish it.

It's taken me almost forty years, but I finally got around to watching Dragon Ball (1986) for the first time ever. I'm starting with the original series and marathoning the entire franchise, including all the movies and specials. I just finished season 1 last night.

Of course, I'm watching the original Japanese version, in Japanese. Not the bastardized American version that censored and edited large parts of the story.

I never watched Dragon Ball as a kid, but I was aware of it. When I lived in Japan for a few years, a buddy of mine got into the show and I sat in for a few episodes. One character was charging an attack and I watched as he spent 3 whole episodes charging it up... then missed. I very quickly checked out after that.

But... Dragon Ball is a huge cultural phenomenon that's been around literally since the year I was born (the manga started in 1984), so I figure I need to at least watch it once.

Let's see... I've also got my hands on the Max Fleischer's Superman shorts. They're 17 eight-minute cartoon shorts made between 1941-1943. I'm about halfway through that collection this week.

It's kinda cool seeing the classic Superman who was just a bit stronger than an actual human being, not the invincible god he is today.

In one short, he was crushed by falling rubble and it drew out tension, like he might not be able to survive it. In another, he couldn't redirect an asteroid heading to Earth by sheer strength alone, so he had to repair a giant magnet that pulled it to Earth in the first place and have Lois reverse the magnet. It's kind of cool seeing actual stakes in a Superman cartoon.

My wife and I binged the Vampire Chronicles movies a few days ago. Those include Interview with the Vampire (1994) and Queen of the Damned (2002), the first and third stories in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles book series, respectively.

I also just found out there were two TV shows based on the Vampire Chronicles series: Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire (2022) and Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches (2023). I might have to track those down.

My wife and I also watched The Imaginariun of Doctor Parnassus (2009) for the first time ever. It was Heath Ledger's final film before his unfortunate passing, and they had to re-write the plot to explain his absence in parts of the movie they hadn't filmed yet. They literally cast three other famous actors to play his role, then rewrote the plot to explain how his face changes in those scenes. It was pretty cool.

I was a little late this year, but I did my annual watch of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966) earlier this week.

I always feel bad for Linus. He somehow mixed up Santa Claus and Halloween and now expects a "Great Pumpkin" to rise out of the most sincere pumpkin patch and give gifts to the good kids. Every year, he misses out on trick-or-treating and Halloween parties because he's sitting in a pumpkin patch, waiting on the Great Pumpkin. In this special, he even drags along Sally, Charlie Brown's little sister, and causes her to miss the holiday festivities too.

And that's what I've watched this week.

I finished watching Usagi Drop (avoid manga), and Terminator Zero (in Japanese Voice, English Sub)

Good stuff. Mixture of wholesomeness, and then Terminator... you know, its terminator.

Some scenes fron Terminator Zero were good, I like the premise, but like the story is kinda meh. We have a character doing philosophy debates with an AI... kinda not that interesting ngl. But I like the concept of the origin stories of the characters that came from the future, from time travel. More interesting than whatever slop they came up with after the T2 movie (TSCC is okay, but the 3 4 5 Dark Fate sucks, except like the beginning scene in T5, that one scene is good, but mostly it's just: so much action, not much story in most of the movies after T2)

I just started watching the TV show, Devs. It's a trip and a half sci-fi show. I was planning to watch just the first episode and maybe another one tomorrow. Not. I ended up watching the first three episodes out of 8.

Film - The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920) - it had been decades since I last watched it through. Still as wonderfully grotesque, and the influence on Tim Burton is clear.

TV - Pluribus - The first episode could pretty much be a standalone, with an excellent performance from Seahorn. Overtones of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and a lot of '50s sci-fi. Really interested to see how this develops.

TV - Down Cemetary Road - another Mick Herron adaptation but, unlike Slow Horses, this one doesn't seem to have found a consistent tone and some of the Darren Boyd scenes, particularly, were really over-egged. I'll continue though.

TV - Leonard and Hungry Paul - cozy and heartwarming are woven through this one. If that's what you are looking for, it definitely delivers.

TV - Wolf Hall - season 2 continues with writing and performances just as good as the first. Excellent and intelligent drama.

I watched The Chef of South Polar and it's pretty good. A bit hard to find tho, there's one on some russian video site (search "Nankyoku.Ryorinin.2009.EngSub vk") and a BDrip on 1337x ("Nankyoku.Ryorinin.2009.BluRay.720p.AC3.x264-YYeTs.mkv").

I watched Tron Ares and Megan 2 last weekend. enjoyed Tron quite a bit. meh to Megan.

randomly got sucked in to watching the first half of Avengers Ultron.
(love that "this feels wrong" part)

watched TV show The Middle this week.

I watched the first few episode of the anime "Chainsaw Man", off a friend's recommendation. The animation is fun to watch but it hasn't really hooked me yet. Maybe i need to find a character I like still..

The recent movie has a 9.20 on MAL, so I have high hopes?

Watched Bone Lake, thinking I'd leave it in the background while doing other stuff. Pleasantly surprised at how they pulled it off and ended up not getting anything else done. Also started Solo Leveling, it's been a nice surprise just getting straight to the point.

MRE https://youtu.be/nMu8hYvIlj8