Too Much TV! Summertime Viewing Summary (On and Off My Shelf) PART I
The summertime is a weird time for movie-watching for me. Fall and Winter -- the longer, darker evenings makes those "movie watching" evenings for me. Summertime? When it's light out until 9:00 o'clock at night, you just don't feel like settling in for the evening with a couple of movies at 5:00 PM. (At least, that's how I feel).
So, summertime is time for catching up on TV (30-minute episodes we can watch during dinner, and then devote the rest of the sunny daytime hours to productive activities) and we've done that this summer aplenty.
FARGO - Season 1
This series is based on the Coen Brothers movie of the same name. It's violent and full of people behaving weirdly and horribly to each other... but not, I might say, with the same flair as they do in an actual Coen Brothers movie. It did not feel as believable or real as a Coen Brothers film.
Fargo, the movie, is exquisite in its weirdness and tone -- and when people do horrible things, it's mainly just funny. It might be one of my favorite movies. Whereas, the first few episodes of Fargo (the TV series) are kind of painful and disgusting to watch. It comes close to achieving the feeling a a Coen Brothers piece, but winds up feeling more like a parody (or, even, I daresay, a rip-off) than anything else. I will say -- there were some good performances in this show. Billy Bob Thornton did a really, really good job as "evil guy" -- and Martin Freeman entirely redeemed himself from my poor estimation of his skills based on The Hobbit. Allison Tolman played the lead female, and she was likeable -- and Tom Hanks' son, Colin, is one of the lead guys, and he was quite charming. (If disconcerting, because I kept feeling distracted by how much he does -- and doesn't -- look like Tom Hanks...) By the end of the series, I was somewhat invested in the main characters (and seeing how the anti-main character gets his comeuppance) but then, I was actually kind of let-down by the ending of the show. It was actually a weak, anti-climactic ending. (I really wanted to like this show because of how much I like the movie, but I just don't think I'll have a desire to watch it again.)
Not Recommended (Unless You Really, Really Like Swearing, Gore and People Being Awful to Each Other and Want to See More That Happened in a Less Engrossing Version of the World the Movie Took Place In).
LOVEJOY - Season 1 We've been hearing about the mid-eighties British mystery series Lovejoy (starring Ian McShane) for some time, and finally decided to give it a go; Lovejoy is a (marginally crooked) antiques-dealer who also (sometimes) solves crimes.
Season one doesn't quite seem to know what it is -- is it an action-packed adventure show, or a cute, cozy mystery show about antiques? Most of the plots make it seem more like action-mystery -- the music makes it sound like a cute, cozy mystery, so in that first season seems a bit weird and uneven. But Ian McShane was quite enjoyable as Lovejoy, so I'd recommend it if you like mysteries. And antiques. And British stuff.
RECOMMENDED (with reservations about tone, pacing and British stuff).
STRANGER THINGS - Season 1 (First Three Episodes)
Okay, I admit it, I only got about three episodes into the show, because it just wasn't doing it for me.
Oh, I liked the basic premise -- and I was glad that it wasn't as over the top about references to E.T. and other pop-culture things as everybody said it was -- but, honestly, by the end of episode 3, I just wasn't hooked. The main characters felt like paler versions of the kids on Freaks and Geeks, and I hadn't found a character that I liked or cared about enough to go on watching the show, so I quit.
NOT RECOMMENDED (But I did only watch the first three episodes. Maybe it got really good after that.)
DANGER 5 - Season 1 Perhaps you've heard about a fake trailer that went around quite a bit in the early 2000's -- for a fake movie called Italian Spiderman. (Here's the trailer...)
... If you've seen Italian movies from the 60's (which, coincidentally, I have), this is really funny. And so we were rather excited when we discovered that at least part of the team behind Italian Spiderman formed a new company and actually created a TV series along the same lines for Australian TV called Danger 5. We tracked down a DVD of the first season and watched it. Here's the trailer for it...
So, the same sort of thing. It's a WWII spy-team story that takes place in the 1960's (yes, I know that WWII wasn't in the 1960's, but that's just one of the many things that don't matter in the telling of this story), and does an excellent job of capturing the look of both spy TV of that era, movies of that era and foreign films of that era -- while also getting weirdly surreal and goofy (e.g. talking dogs and dinosaur Nazis, grotesque violence and rude implications). I would say, on a whole, that it's not quite as funny as you would think, but when it is funny it's extremely funny, so it's worth a watch. (If you like that sort of thing).
RECOMMENDED... if you like that sort of thing. And can tolerate the parts between the jokes, and quite a bit of "inappropriate" humor.
MORE TO COME IN PART II
So, summertime is time for catching up on TV (30-minute episodes we can watch during dinner, and then devote the rest of the sunny daytime hours to productive activities) and we've done that this summer aplenty.
FARGO - Season 1
This series is based on the Coen Brothers movie of the same name. It's violent and full of people behaving weirdly and horribly to each other... but not, I might say, with the same flair as they do in an actual Coen Brothers movie. It did not feel as believable or real as a Coen Brothers film.
Fargo, the movie, is exquisite in its weirdness and tone -- and when people do horrible things, it's mainly just funny. It might be one of my favorite movies. Whereas, the first few episodes of Fargo (the TV series) are kind of painful and disgusting to watch. It comes close to achieving the feeling a a Coen Brothers piece, but winds up feeling more like a parody (or, even, I daresay, a rip-off) than anything else. I will say -- there were some good performances in this show. Billy Bob Thornton did a really, really good job as "evil guy" -- and Martin Freeman entirely redeemed himself from my poor estimation of his skills based on The Hobbit. Allison Tolman played the lead female, and she was likeable -- and Tom Hanks' son, Colin, is one of the lead guys, and he was quite charming. (If disconcerting, because I kept feeling distracted by how much he does -- and doesn't -- look like Tom Hanks...) By the end of the series, I was somewhat invested in the main characters (and seeing how the anti-main character gets his comeuppance) but then, I was actually kind of let-down by the ending of the show. It was actually a weak, anti-climactic ending. (I really wanted to like this show because of how much I like the movie, but I just don't think I'll have a desire to watch it again.)
Not Recommended (Unless You Really, Really Like Swearing, Gore and People Being Awful to Each Other and Want to See More That Happened in a Less Engrossing Version of the World the Movie Took Place In).
LOVEJOY - Season 1 We've been hearing about the mid-eighties British mystery series Lovejoy (starring Ian McShane) for some time, and finally decided to give it a go; Lovejoy is a (marginally crooked) antiques-dealer who also (sometimes) solves crimes.
Season one doesn't quite seem to know what it is -- is it an action-packed adventure show, or a cute, cozy mystery show about antiques? Most of the plots make it seem more like action-mystery -- the music makes it sound like a cute, cozy mystery, so in that first season seems a bit weird and uneven. But Ian McShane was quite enjoyable as Lovejoy, so I'd recommend it if you like mysteries. And antiques. And British stuff.
RECOMMENDED (with reservations about tone, pacing and British stuff).
STRANGER THINGS - Season 1 (First Three Episodes)
Okay, I admit it, I only got about three episodes into the show, because it just wasn't doing it for me.
Oh, I liked the basic premise -- and I was glad that it wasn't as over the top about references to E.T. and other pop-culture things as everybody said it was -- but, honestly, by the end of episode 3, I just wasn't hooked. The main characters felt like paler versions of the kids on Freaks and Geeks, and I hadn't found a character that I liked or cared about enough to go on watching the show, so I quit.
NOT RECOMMENDED (But I did only watch the first three episodes. Maybe it got really good after that.)
DANGER 5 - Season 1 Perhaps you've heard about a fake trailer that went around quite a bit in the early 2000's -- for a fake movie called Italian Spiderman. (Here's the trailer...)
... If you've seen Italian movies from the 60's (which, coincidentally, I have), this is really funny. And so we were rather excited when we discovered that at least part of the team behind Italian Spiderman formed a new company and actually created a TV series along the same lines for Australian TV called Danger 5. We tracked down a DVD of the first season and watched it. Here's the trailer for it...
So, the same sort of thing. It's a WWII spy-team story that takes place in the 1960's (yes, I know that WWII wasn't in the 1960's, but that's just one of the many things that don't matter in the telling of this story), and does an excellent job of capturing the look of both spy TV of that era, movies of that era and foreign films of that era -- while also getting weirdly surreal and goofy (e.g. talking dogs and dinosaur Nazis, grotesque violence and rude implications). I would say, on a whole, that it's not quite as funny as you would think, but when it is funny it's extremely funny, so it's worth a watch. (If you like that sort of thing).
RECOMMENDED... if you like that sort of thing. And can tolerate the parts between the jokes, and quite a bit of "inappropriate" humor.
MORE TO COME IN PART II
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