What else are you watching? Showing 1,251-1,300 of 2,084

[Trike]

I also thought Guardians Holiday was good fun. And, they’ve got a new spaceship, the Bowie.

[Mark]

Jennifer wrote: "I loved it ! It was a great song !"

The playlist is over at https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[John (Taloni)]

I watched the GotG Holiday Special last night. Loved it start to finish. The whole "we're being nice but have no cultural references for this" bit really fit the GotG motif. Only odd thing was how close Earth was by ship, whereas the original had them so far out Quill had little chance of getting home.

[Jennifer]

Mark wrote: "Jennifer wrote: "I loved it ! It was a great song !"

The playlist is over at https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/..."

Thanks for that ! The music was excellent.

[John (Taloni)]

Crosspost: Still into Dr. Who season 1, tonight The Aztecs. This one's a big one for philosophy. The Doctor says you can't change time. A decent enough sentiment, but he didn't seem to have any such concerns when he took on the Daleks. That concern seems saved for Earth's history. It comes up again decades later in Waters of Mars, where Tennant's Doctor proclaims that he is master of the laws of time, and "they will obey me!" Well, they don't, and his actions only lead to despair and suicide as people feel out of joint when they are wrongly saved. Was always great the way Doctor Who respected its continuity. I'd be glad if the new series got back to that instead of retconning everything in sight.

One funny moment: When Ian defeats Ixta using his thumb. I would swear that's a straight up Vulcan Neck Pinch. Makes me wonder if Nimoy was a Dr. Who fan...

[Silvana]

Halfway through Andor and I really like it. Probably even more than The Mandalorian.

[Ian (RebelGeek)]

Silvana wrote: "Halfway through Andor and I really like it. Probably even more than The Mandalorian."

Andor is top knotch!

[John (Taloni)]

Crosspost from Discord: Dalek Invasion of Earth now done. The ending with Susan shocked me when I first saw it some ten years or so back. On rewatch I see the signs. Also, not gonna front, I found Susan's character annoying. She was always overdone. Not at all peeved to have her left behind.

Looks like an early take on Cybermen with the Robomen. I'm kinda curious if Terry Nation was playing with that concept then.

[Trike]

Watched Nope last night. Super great. Scary but not too graphic. Someone in the behind the scenes stuff referred to it as “Close Encounters turns into Jaws,” which is accurate.

[Silvana]

After Andor, I finished Tales of Jedi. So glad to meet Ahsoka again! I hope the live action won't suck.

[AndrewP]

Found the complete series of the weird 1960s show The Prisoner so I'm watching that.

[Mark]

Binging iZombie on Netflix instead of reading. I watched the first season when it was broadcast but didn't catch later seasons. I'm entertained. I didn't realize until season 2 that the star, Rose McIver, is also starring in current broadcast tv show, Ghosts.

[AndrewP]

Watched the Silvester Stallone movie 'Samaritan' on Prime. Good old fashioned superhero movie without having Di$ney politics rammed down your throat.

[Trike]

AndrewP wrote: "Watched the Silvester Stallone movie 'Samaritan' on Prime. Good old fashioned superhero movie without having Di$ney politics rammed down your throat."

What are “Di$ney politics”? That orphans are better protagonists? Single-parent families means free added angst and they don’t have to pay another actor?

[John (Taloni)]

Crossposting from Discord, where I bag on the Good Doctor. Perhaps a bit much, but eh. Middle of the second season left me cold.

Continuing on with the First Doctor, now in the second season. We're watching more for historical interest than anything else. Some are enjoyable despite being overdone by today's standards, like the overacting Iago type in The Aztecs. Dalek Invasion of Earth held up. Middle of the second season though, not so much.

First a two-parter set up just to introduce Susan's replacement. The actress was over 30 but she's apparently playing a young teen, so there's a constant incongruity. Then The Romans, just silly throughout. I could really have done without the "Emperor's New Clothes" bit with the lyre, that stood out from my first watch of that serial several years back as something way overblown.

After that, The Web Planet. A decent concept, but the constant beeping drove me over the edge. Okay, ants beep. We get it. Stop the constant beeping! Included some terrible sets, deliberately blurred scenes, and fairly ridiculous costuming. In our informal poll of "worst Dr. Who serial" this one replaced the Land of Fiction for overall terribleness.

[Iain]

Bored. Watched Morbius. That was bad. Fridging, poor plot, poor acting. Monologuing. 2 hours I won’t get back.

[Jennifer]

I watched Bullet Train. It was just ok. A person is missing nothing by noth watching it. Just saying.

[Tamahome]

I watched the new Pinocchio on Netflix. A little grewsome and on the nose, but nice stop motion animation. I assume it's more authentic to the original tale? It might scare little kids, lol. Del Toro wants to do an animated Lovecraft adaption with the guy who made Mad God on Shudder.

[Oaken]

I don't know that it was more accurate. Del Toro was saying he used the backdrop of Mussolini’s Italy to show how Pinnochio was able to find his own humanity and will in a time where everyone else was acting like a blindly obedient puppet. He deviated from the original story’s themes of obeying authority by making his Pinocchio virtuous for questioning the rules and forging his own set of morals.

[Trike]

I finished the last 3 episodes of s3 of Star Trek: Lower Decks last night, and they were solid. Not as laugh-out-loud funny as some have been, but amusing and actually a decent Star Trek-themed story arc. I particularly liked when Boimler called out the California-class starships and basically named 30 California cities in about 11 seconds. 😆

Here’s the clip - spoilers, obvs: https://youtu.be/J-8FtwsamtY

[John (Nevets)]

I actually liked how season 3 of ST:LD in general was less about the humor, and more about the story, and overall character development. I thought it showed they had more confidence in the story they were telling, instead of just being a series of callbacks to previous trek series. While I enjoyed the previous seasons, I’d say season 3 was my favorite so far.

[Misti]

I'm watching Willow. Some of the acting isn't great, but there are some fun, laugh-out-loud moments. I think Boorman may be my favorite character.

My one major complaint is that it's very dark and hard to see what is happening, especially in the action scenes. Sadly, a lot of TV shows/movies are that way these days. I've tried adjusting the brightness on my Samsung TV but it doesn't help.

[Trike]

Misti wrote: "I'm watching Willow. Some of the acting isn't great, but there are some fun, laugh-out-loud moments. I think Boorman may be my favorite character.

My one major complaint is that it's very dark and hard to see what is happening, especially in the action scenes. Sadly, a lot of TV shows/movies are that way these days. I've tried adjusting the brightness on my Samsung TV but it doesn't help."

It’s not you, and there’s very little the viewer can do to affect the image when it’s delivered that way. It’s the same problem with sound design these days, when the dialogue sounds like whispers and the effects sound like bombs.

I don’t know why these things are all the rage in production these days, but it sucks.

The best thing I’ve watched lately where you can actually see what’s happening at night is Nope, but it was shot day-for-night by combining regular images with processed infrared images, so it appears to be nighttime but they actually filmed it in the middle of the day.

[AndrewP]

Trike wrote: "It’s not you, and there’s very little the viewer can do to affect the image when it’s delivered that way. It’s the same problem with sound design these days, when the dialogue sounds like whispers and the effects sound like bombs."

A lot of that problem can be alleviated with a decent soundbar/system. The problem with that is most people don't want to spend more on their sound system than they did on their TV.

[John (Taloni)]

We use subtitles for almost everything. It's especially helpful for stuff in foreign languages, like Dr. Who or other programs from the BBC. *ducks*

[Tamahome]

Me too. Especially for song lyrics. These days actors seem to mumble.

[Trike]

Just got back from Avatar 2.

It’s impressive as anything you’ll ever see, but if you didn’t like the first one then you won’t like this one.

MASSIVE TRIGGER WARNING - if you can’t handle animals being hurt then definitely do not see this movie. The scenes are necessary but incredibly unpleasant to watch. It doesn’t matter that they’re animated alien animals, it feels real, that’s how good the CGI is.

Several people were openly weeping in the theatre (which was about 1/3 full for a 1:45 show, amazingly). Cameron & co. do not pull any punches here. So yeah, maybe skip this one for the more sensitive.

That said, at the end several people applauded. We left just as the credits were starting in earnest, which was three hours and six minutes after it started. It doesn’t feel that long at all, but don’t try to burst your bladder.

I liked it quite a lot.

[John (Taloni)]

^In my long tradition of having opinions on movies I've never seen due to box office vs budget after a long stint in film distribution, I'll be watching the numbers this weekend.

Current riff: According to frothing industry articles Black Adam is somehow "bad" because it won't recoup until video. That's the expectation within the industry, and only a few massive hits manage to earn back budget + prints/ads from theatrical, but every lurid film finance article somehow manages to miss this. But somehow Avatar might lose money on theatrical but that's okay because it's like a big promo for streaming. Uh...duh? That's how the frickin' market works!

Bonus stupidity points to article writers if they don't understand that box office isn't film rental. In fact I rarely see the term "film rental" or anything approaching the concept in these articles.

[Tassie Dave, S&L Historian]

John (Taloni) wrote: "We use subtitles for almost everything. It's especially helpful for stuff in foreign languages, like Dr. Who or other programs from the BBC. *ducks*"

There are American shows that require subtitles. Some people, from some of those southern states have very thick, unintelligible accents.

We are countries divided by a common language.

[Iain]

Tassie Dave wrote: "John (Taloni) wrote: "We use subtitles for almost everything. It's especially helpful for stuff in foreign languages, like Dr. Who or other programs from the BBC. *ducks*"

There are American shows..."

I am just glad he agrees that Americans do not speak English....

[Iain]

Tassie Dave wrote: "John (Taloni) wrote: "We use subtitles for almost everything. It's especially helpful for stuff in foreign languages, like Dr. Who or other programs from the BBC. *ducks*"

There are American shows..."

The original Mad Max was dubbed in the US. Hilarious southern accents....

[Trike]

Iain wrote: "The original Mad Max was dubbed in the US. Hilarious southern accents..."

I don’t think there are any Southern accents in the dubbed Mad Max. Definitely not for any of the main characters. I recall a fair bit of Midwestern and California ones, though.

When we finally got the original voices back, they mixed the sound in a weird way that made it all muddy. So the new release was actually worse than the original. The sound is so bad that it’s almost unwatchable. I’ve seen the dubbed version at least a dozen times, but I’ve only watched the original 1-1/2. I donated the DVD to a library sale.

One thing I’ve never been able to get Americans to understand is that “mad” in “Mad Max” means “crazy”, not “angry”. They have no problem getting that concept when it comes to the Mad Hatter, but not with Max.

[Tina]

John (Taloni) wrote: "We use subtitles for almost everything. It's especially helpful for stuff in foreign languages, like Dr. Who or other programs from the BBC. *ducks*"

LOL, Back in the day when “Upstairs, Downstairs” was all the rage on broadcast TV, and before CC was a thing, I tried to watch and couldn’t understand anything due to the strong accents.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

Trike wrote: "...One thing I’ve never been able to get Americans to understand is that “mad” in “Mad Max” means “crazy”, not “angry”. They have no problem getting that concept when it comes to the Mad Hatter, but not with Max."

I dunno. He seemed fairly upset to me.

[Oaken]

Tina wrote: "LOL, Back in the day..."
We originally lemmed Peaky Blinders because of that in the first episode. When a friend insisted we go back and try again because the series was so good we did. It took a few episodes of CC to get through it but he was right - it is a great series.

[John (Nevets)]

Trike wrote: "Iain wrote: "The original Mad Max was dubbed in the US. Hilarious southern accents..."

I don’t think there are any Southern accents in the dubbed Mad Max. Definitely not for any of the main charac..."
Funny how things worked out. I understood Max to be a bit crazy from the first time I saw him. But I’m pretty sure I saw the original trilogy in reverse order. Was interesting to see near the end what drove (no apologies) him to become unhinged. It’s also been a while since I saw Mad Max, but I think I’ve only seen the original, not the dub. But I could easily be mistaken on that. I do remember thinking that the Aussie accent was thicker in that than it was in the other two, but not un-understable.

[Tamahome]

Prisoners (Denis "Dune" Villeneuve) on Netflix was so gripping and disturbing, and yet I'm still a little confused about what happened. I hit one of those "Prisoners movie explained" videos and that helped. It's like a Christopher Nolan movie (Tenet) in that way. I want a "cop reacts to Prisoners movie video" to judge how authentic the cop was. Definitely in the top 10% of Sturgeon's Law non-crap.

[Aaron]

For a moment I thought you were referring to the Israeli TV series that inspired Homeland, but that is Prisoners of War. I keep meaning to watch that but haven't had the time/focus for a serious drama in a foreign language.

[John (Taloni)]

Aaaand keeping my promise: Figures are in for Avatar 2. Well under projections for Domestic at $134 million. "A loser! Bark bark bark!" - goes the industry press. But wait! International is over double that at 300 million. Film rental percentages for Foreign are less than Domestic, especially China and its $57 million contribution to Foreign box office, but still that's enough to tip the balance.

I run the figures through the Quackometer Model* and conclude this film will be in profit shortly the end of Theatrical, or at worst start of Video. A bona fide hit. Not as huge as Fox would like given its pedigree, but a hit nonetheless.

Quickie "Quackometer" estimates:
Ultimate Domestic Box Office: $400M => Film Rental $250M
Ultimate Foreign Box Office: $700M => Film Rental 350M

Production Budget: $250M
Prints/Ads/Marketing: $300M (best guess for a film so heavily promoted, figures run 0.5 of budget to over the production budget which is where I'm assigning it.)
Total cost: $550M
Theatrical take: $600M

The underpants gnomes say: "Profit!"

* "Quackometer Model" is a 30-second proforma calculation using historical trends from first weekend box office to ultimate box office, and historical film rental percentages for films in similar situations. It expressly avoids gnats-eyelash computations such as film rental by week or theater, video channels and over or underperform. It's for "Sense God Gave A Duck" computations which the industry press somehow manages to miss week after week.

[Tassie Dave, S&L Historian]

James Cameron says it needs to make $2 Billion to break even.

He may be exaggerating. 😉

I would be surprised if it didn't get above $1 Billion and I think it will be closer to $2 Billion once Box Office, Film Rentals & Movie Sales are added up.

This will have a longer tail that most blockbusters. People who love it will want to see it multiple times on the big screen.

[John (Taloni)]

^ Movie people are famously oblique regarding financial information. Just parsing the "$2 billion" statement a bit:

* It could be him throwing in the cost for Avatar 3 as part of the overall cost. That's about the same so we'd be looking at doubling the reported budget for Avatar 2 ($250M) and throwing in prints/ads/marketing for Avatar 2.
* Participations could eat into the studio share from first dollar, and no one knows his participation deal better than him. (Participations to Arnold on Terminator 2 were part of what killed Carolco. It was...a lot.)
* Perhaps the marketing cost is even higher than the "insane" estimate. Lord knows you can't get away from ads for this thing.

For a true SWAG at film rental, take the reported box office worldwide and cut it in half. That's the film rental the studio gets. Doing it that way ignores a wide variety of considerations, such as the percent of box office to film rental is substantially higher in week 1 domestic, and very low in China at any time (something like 20%.) Europe is lower than Domestic. You could project the entire world, by country, week by week, and still wind up in the same ballpark. Just with a lot more detail.

Funny story, and one reason why I go with a SWAG regularly. While at Fox Home Video we had an MBA intern in the finance department. He was doing a kind of "make your own internship" project and decided to study whether or not it made sense to do detailed finance projections for films. He found that identifying the genre, star level and budget was as good a predictor of profitability as much more detailed analyses. You can strain at the gnat but the camel is the same size. The finance department looked at his findings, thanked him, and kept on doing things the same way. Why? Because "finance" wasn't about decision making. It was about making the decision makers feel important.

[John (Taloni)]

Oh, and agreed on the long tail. Aka "overperform." I didn't bother getting into video because the film will be in profit before then. Reports of this film's "failure" are greatly exaggerated, mostly by people trying to sell papers. Well, at this point, justify internet subscriptions as the selling of paper is out along with the old "video rental" concept.

[Trike]

I don’t know how Disney is structured internally, but I rather doubt Avatar 2 will turn much of a profit. Ancillary sales pretty much don’t exist any more, and the best they can hope for is a bunch of on-demand video rentals and digital purchases between the time it leaves theatres and when it debuts on Disney+.

The days of “make money in home video” + “make money from cable” + “make money from broadcast TV” are dead and gone, so there’s a very narrow window to make bank on a film. The Streaming Wars are all but over, too, as subscriptions are flat. Big movies and hit TV series no longer pull in more subscribers, which is why everyone is going to go to some version of their service that includes advertising: it’s the only way to ensure income.

The one holdout may be Amazon, whose video division is an afterthought to their core businesses, so it doesn’t really need to support itself. They might offer it just because everyone else does, and it’s more money in their pocket, but I figure they’ll do it last. Maybe I’m reading that all wrong, but that’s what I foresee currently.

As for Avatar, I think if it earns at least $650 million then Avatar 4 will get made. Avatar 3 is reportedly already done except for final VFX. They likely have enough footage for quite a bit of A4 & A5, if previous comments by Cameron are taken at face value. Apparently A2 was originally 5 hours long. No reason not to shoot some of that stuff while you’re already on set, and in the final film you can kinda see where it’s entirely possible some scenes and character arcs were much longer and more fleshed out.

As it is, the 3+ hours doesn’t feel that long, and I would happily watch a 5-hour extended cut at least once. The Blu-Ray extended cut of Avatar only added like 15 minutes, but two of those scenes were excellent additions.

[John (Taloni)]

^ Yeah, that's the question, innit? Go back 25 years and I would confidently tell you Video approximately equaled Theatrical for receipts back to the studio, because that's what I saw on distribution statements. Pay TV and Free TV each about a quarter to add up to half of Theatrical.

Now? Video Rental concept is gone, but it's replaced by streaming. What is "video," exactly? There's still sell through. Cable still exists and so does Free TV. Worth a little less but not gone.

Studios famously hide financial information, but that's not the same as being unable to do an analysis. Simply by the fact that large budget movies get made when they regularly won't recoup on Theatrical tells you that there's a healthy ancillary market. But what is the size?

So (Trike) if you wanted to you could argue that "Video" of streaming plus sell through was half of Theatrical and still be within defendable parameters. I'd say it's more like 80%. PTV/FTV each about 20%, that is, less than before but still there.

Streaming will have a longer tail as it cannibalizes sell-through, so there's some offset.

So, FTR the "Quackometer" is:
Domestic: 60% of BO to Film Rental
Foreign: 50% of BO to Film Rental
Total Video (includes Streaming): 80% worldwide Film Rental
PTV/FTV (traditional definitions): 40% worldwide Film Rental

Drop those in your back pocket and have fun with the headlines next big release.

[John (Taloni)]

Crosspost from Discord: Watched the unaired Doctor Who premiere. I can see why it wasn't aired. Susan didn't get introduced until a good five minutes in and was substantially weirder. The Doctor was much more hard line about Ian and Barbara and seemed on the borderline of suggesting their executions. His laugh at one point was just plain evil. What eventually aired was much softer.

Have also finished out the First Doctor and watched his regeneration on Youtube. More on that later.

[Trike]

Watched Top Gun: Marty Stu tonight. Solid Star Wars ripoff. 2-1/2 stars.

https://youtu.be/ZK9meaHDLUc

[AndrewP]

I watched "Dr Strange - In the Multiverse of Madness' over the holiday... the less said about that the better I think.

[Janet]

We watch several shows 'at once' meaning we cycle about seven + shows over the week...
As far as Scifi, we frikking L O V E D Andor... just finished over New Year's.
We are watching all of SEE (Jason Momoa on Apple tv). Cool concept and the story is well played out over time.
Fantasy -- We are so enjoying Wednesday...nicely done and far better than any other Addams Family show made!
BUT the current most loved fantasy that we are watching is The Witcher: Blood Origin... one last episode to watch the end of this week. And hard to wait!
I also (by myself because the spouse is not a fan of anime) finished watching Dragon Age: Absolution on the 1st of January.

[Trike]

Janet wrote: "We watch several shows 'at once' meaning we cycle about seven + shows over the week...
As far as Scifi, we frikking L O V E D Andor... just finished over New Year's.
We are watching all of SEE (Ja..."

Have you watched Dragon Prince and Arkane on Netflix? The first is by the same people who made Avatar and Korra, and the second is just really good.

[Janet]

Trike, thank you for the suggestions... I was just perusing NetFlix for some more to add and I think I came across Dragon Prince!
I will log back in and find these two.
Love new ideas from like-minded peeps.