A bit late to the party, but I finished season 1 of Foundation on Apple TV+ last night and I absolutely loved it! When it was first announced I asked a friend who had read the books what he thought and he said he found them to be repetitive after a while, so my excitement for the show dropped significantly and when it arrived it wasn't really a priority. Glad I decided to give it a go after all.
Today Netflix drops The 3 Body Problem, the new sci-fi show from Benioff and Weiss of GoT fame/infamy, based on the fantastic books by Cixin Liu. Read them last year and they were truly epic in scope, so I'm excited to see if they nailed it with the show or not.
@FuriousMachine The first season of Foundation is excellent. Season 2 I did not find as good (there is a certain character introduced and felt they were used too much conveniently as a plot device). I thought Lee Pace was fantastic, but took me awhile to work who he is, as I've only seen him in stuff when he is full make-up! š
Despite the slight dip in Season 2, I am still intrigued by what happens next in Season 3.
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
@JohnnyShoulder I first encountered Pace in Halt and Catch Fire, where he was brilliant also. He works particularly well as brother Day, especially as one can see the subtle differences in the first brother Day we meet and the second one (and also kudos to Terrence Mann for portraying his second brother Dusk in line with Pace's first brother Day).
Excellent show so far!
@JohnnyShoulder Watched Lee Pace years ago in Pushing Daisies which was a truly odd show that got cancelled too early. Kept seeing him pop up in stuff and yeah, heās a bit like Doug Jones in that he disappears into roles.
Finished bingeing 3 Body Problem on Netflix last night and as I consider the books to be among the best I read last year and, in the case of book two and three, one of the most epic and interesting sci-fi stories I've read in a long time, it is reasonable to say that expectations were high.'
Series creators David Benioff & D.B. Weiss (of Game of Thrones fame/infamy) and Alexander Woo (True Blood) transplanted most of the action from China to England and got rid of most of the main protagonists from the novels, opting instead to "remix" them into a group of diverse, young scientists based in London (some claim that the group seems "unrealistically" diverse and serve just to tick off the diversity box, but I disagree; the group felt natural to me)
Despite these changes, I would say they pretty much hit it out of the park as an adaptation. They manage to convey all the concepts and storylines from the book in a deeply satisfying manner, so I was very, very happy with it.
The show seems divisive, though, so your mileage may vary. If you're a fan of sci-fi you should definitely give it a go. If you're a "book purist" you may find the changes detrimental, though.
I mentioned this earlier as a side note on another thread, but I've been slowly yet surely making my way through Babylon 5. I wanted to make a post about it since the most recent episode I've seen was The Coming of Shadows, which... if you know the show, you know why that would be an episode to make someone want to talk. It didn't win that Hugo award back in the day for no reason!
I'm a big, big fan of anything sci-fi, so this was always one of those shows in the backlog I needed to get to eventually. Hearing bad things about the first season always made it go down the list as I'm not someone who likes to suffer through some bad TV to "get to the good part", but when I picked it up I was pleasantly surprised. Of course, it took a bit to get used to the 90's acting and the visual effects again, but in the end it was fantastic. I actually had a great time with the first season and while there's definitely some lesser episodes, I never felt it was actually bad TV like how many seemed to have experienced it. Maybe it's better being to binge it nowadays or maybe I'm just more forgiving to the episodic structure of it, but either way, it made me feel stupid for waiting this long!
Now that I'm in the second season though, whew. I knew this show was going to get even better, but I wasn't quite prepared for that latest episode. And that's just the start of the upwards spiral from what I know! I'm very excited to continue and learn more about the world. I've become so addicted I've started listening to podcasts discussing the episodes, which is something I've never done for any specific show or game. It's crazy how big I've gotten into this after being in a TV rut comparatively to my earlier years. Clearly all I needed was just a big, epic, sci-fi space opera to get me going and I've finally found it here. Anyone else a big fan of this show? I know there's a large subset of Star Trek truthers on this forum, so I can't imagine there's no overlap here.
@Tjuz Interesting. I watched a few episodes back when it first came out, but could never get quite into it and I more or less forgot about it. You've convinced me to give it another go, so I'm definitely tracking this down now.
Hope you'll find some other fans to discuss it with in the meantime, though, because it may take a while for me to get there
@FuriousMachine Glad to hear I've convinced you to give it another shot! I hope you'll get along better with it this time around. If you care about viewing orders and the like, the first season had a big mess in terms of continuity and production delays resulting in a viewing order far different from what was intended. I personally followed the viewing order someone created based on what's best for the first season character arcs while also keeping continuity intact. Here's the link to that if you'd like to use it. It worked well for me and possibly made my experience with the first season better than some! Also, do note that the first season was preceded by a pilot episode a year earlier called "The Gathering". It's a TV movie for than anything, which is why some streaming places might not include it in the full show or place it as the first episode. It does have some cast changes compared to the show proper and some people say it's not a particularly good episode, but I would advise starting with it as I enjoyed it myself.
Depending on how quickly you go through the show (if you get into it at all), it might not be that hard to catch up to me! The episode I mentioned is only the ninth of the second season, so about 32 episodes in overall. I'm not a fast watcher... maybe a few episodes a week on average, so if you're a true binger I'm sure that'd sound like nothing to you, haha!
@Tjuz Thanks for some good tips; I'll definitely make use of that link Hit a minor snag, though: It is not available on any streaming service in Norway as far as I can tell, and my pirating days are long behind me.
An old friend used to have the entire series on DVD so I will check to see if he's hung on to them and, if so, he'd be willing to part with them for a few months. I find it odd that they're not available on streaming here, though, as the show was fairly popular around these parts when it came out.
@FuriousMachine Ah, that sucks! I don't know how sensitive you are in terms of video quality from the DVD's of old, but I know they just recently released the full remastered version of the show on Blu-Ray. I've been watching the remastered edits of the episodes and they've helped it hold up quite well. Of course getting a full box set of it not even knowing if you'll be into it might be too big of an ask with the price point, but at least you'll be aware that it's there if you do get into the show and would like a some better video quality to go along with it! Either way, hoping your buddy will part with the DVDs for a while. One of us, one of us, one of us...!
@Tjuz There are a handful of movies in my DVD collection not available elsewhere at the moment and while it's far from ideal, they get the job done, so unless the B5 DVDs are of very poor quality I should be fine. My friend will hand over said DVDs the next time I see him, so I may be going "gooble gobble" along with you before long
Really enjoying ShÅgun, Iām definitely not a āprestige dramaā person and ultimately think itās killing TV long term but itās been a brilliant show.
Wasn't really sure where to post this but did anyone else stay up until almost 5am to watch the first half of Wrestlemania? š I loved wrestling as a kid, got back into it hard in my 20s, really soaking up everything, not just WWE. BritWres, American indies, NJPW, those deathmatch feds where its like dudes taking bumps on cinderblocks and glass in front of like 10 people in a field. All of it.
I think doing this though really burned me out so I've kinda gone back to being a casual in the last five or so years. I watch a little WWE, a little AEW, keep on top of WWE news and try to watch at least a couple of the big PPVs.
As such I went into this with a very limited grasp on what was currently going on in WWE and so maybe that changed my perspective on things but I thought this was kinda not very good?
Rhea and Becky had like no in ring chemistry at all, match felt overlong and really awkward. The six pack ladder match was silly fun, but nothing more. Maybe it doesn't need to be, but these matches are always in the shadow for me of the early 00s when WWE could do actual hardcore matches properly. I had literally zero interest or investment in that Mysterio or Women's tag match. I thought the Uso match was just really corny, with it mostly just being them throwing superkicks and crying the whole time. I also swear every few months when I check back in with WWE there is another Bloodline Civil War of some flavour, just a bit naff.
Zayn winning the IC title was kind of my emotional peak of the night. I absolutely loved this moment. When I was getting back into wrestling as an adult fan, this was the height of Zayn's powers in NXT and he and Owens were a huge part of what made me fall in love with wrestling again. That said, the match itself was... fine. I feel like the babyface just taking an absolute battering and refusing to stay down, and then eventually getting the win in the end is like the oldest story in wrestling and so we have so many classic examples of this now, this one just felt okay in that pantheon.
And then the main event came and by this point it is like 4am in the UK, I was so tired by this point, I don't know if this match actually was overlong and really boring, or I was just dead at this point. Seeing the Rock in the ring again was cool, but he kinda hit his signatures and mostly took a back seat. Maybe that is how it should be, but it sorta doesn't work when Reigns also wrestles like that as well. I think Cody is incredibly overrated, find him really boring in the ring. No idea why the crowd is so into him, guess I needed to be there. Didn't get it in AEW either. Seth was really working overtime in this match, and I assume all the work he was doing on selling the knee is going to tie into Night 2 in a major way. I guess we'll see if the somewhat pedestrian feel to this was intentional because the Night 2 match is gonna be a bloodbath.
While I wouldnāt say Night 2 of Wrestlemania 40 was a masterpiece or whatever, I thought it was a noticeable step up from Night 1 and is probably one of the best end to end Wrestlemania cards we have had for years.
Iyo and Bayley stole the weekend for me. Not only was it an incredible pure wrestling match, but the way the story interwoven through this is peak wrestling for me. But every match on this card was solid. McIntyre and Rollins set up the night perfectly, with pure wrestling poetry with everything that happened after the match. And then the main event might have been a little overbooked and it is easy to dream of all the things it could have been, but I think it delivered what it needed to deliver. Was it all it could have been? Maybe not. But it was a great story, with great character work, solid wrestling and all the wow moments and cameos a Wrestlemania main event now demands.
If this is the level of this so-called new era under Triple H, I am in. I was there for the peak of NXT 2015 - 2018, if it can be even a fraction of that quality, WWE will be the best it has ever been.
Tackling the Orlando nightclub shooting is brave given how toxic the world continues to be, but wow it was brutal. Gutted about Gambit and Magneto, but then there were Banshee, Marrow, Callisto and so many others. That specific point being made about a group of people celebrating what makes them different, and then being killed for those differences, itās worryingly prevalent still. This really has been a bright spot among Marvelās output.
Today I have watched the whole season 1 of Fallout in one sitting and it was awesome! They captured the tone of the games so damn well! Also, there were tons of easter eggs in there!
"War ... war never changes!" - was used so well!
The only Fallout game I have ever finished was Fallout 3 and now I am pumped to play Fallout 4 until its end!
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