What Are You Watching

[kinuta]

Damages Episode 5 coming up shortly.

[A Lark Ascending]

The US has been producing better 'middlebrow' drama for some time now.

UK TV has become swamped with 'reality' TV, fly-on-the-wall docs, cooking and make-over programmes and 'talent' shows (where people pretend to be someone else). Most of the money left for drama goes into rather fey costume dramas. What I find really irritating is the habit of taking excellent books and reducing them to a 90 minutes zip through (Ian Ranking, Henning Mankell etc).

I've loved things like 'The West Wing' (yes, I know it's not really like that) where stories evolve, characters develop or disappear over long time spans.

I don't care for the Lost type things or sci-fi. But I've just started the first series of 'Mad Men' and it has me gripped.

[jazzbo]

[Free For All]

How is that show, Lon? The premise seemed interesting, but does it deliver?

[jazzbo]

Overall I'd say it does deliver. There are several directions it's taken that I wouldn't have, but I'm not a writer for the show. It's entertaining. One actor's work sort of bores me, unfortunately he's one of the main characters. He's sort of like a blend of the finer acting skills of Nick Cage and Keanu Reeves. But hey, chicks dig him.

I think they know the versatility of the premise and will milk it pretty competently.

There are actors from Lost, Mad Men and a few other shows here. It was beginning to sag around episode 8 or so of the ten they've broadcast. It's been on hiatus and is returning in three weeks. Whether it's going to be better. . . or worse. . . or unchanged is anyone's guess right now.

Edited February 25, 2010 by jazzbo

[BruceH]

Halfway through Season 2 of "Dexter" and the quality is still high.

[jazzbo]

Damages

[Shawn]

I'm glad this place turned into a Rose Byrne fest!!!!

[kinuta]

Coming up shortly Damages Episode 6

[BruceH]

So Damages is all about Rose Byrne?

[jazzbo]

http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/music_other_music/watch/v16370560QnPfseYT

[Jazzmoose]

http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/music_other_music/watch/v16370560QnPfseYT

Feh. Blakey could have done it with two hands in one take...

[jazzbo]

I don't think so.

So Damages is all about Rose Byrne?

Nope. It's far more complicated than that. But it is fun to post pictures of Rose Byrne.

Edited March 3, 2010 by jazzbo

[Van Basten II]

Mad Men episode 8 , season 1

[Jazzmoose]

I spent some time on Hulu tonight, watching Ghostbusters II and an episode of Nanny and the Professor, discovering that sometimes, on rare occasions, a film and/or television series reaches a level that actually lives up to your memory of how incredibly bad things can be...

[ejp626]

Saw the first episode of "The Ricky Gervais Show." It's hysterical.

An animated version of 3 guys (Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington) sitting around talking nonsense. For me, it took a little while to get tuned into their accents, but once I got over that ...

My understanding is that he has had someone animate a bunch of podcasts he did several years back for the Guardian (which I downloaded at the time) but he might keep it going with some new episodes.

[A Lark Ascending]

Mad Men episode 8 , season 1

Me too!

Now waiting for disc 3 to arrive. I'm really enjoying this series.

[Matthew]

Toronto Blue Jays vs. New York Yankees. It's very nice to have baseball back.

[Van Basten II]

Friday night fights UK version which kicks the ass of the US version almost every time.

[kinuta]

BBC Storyville- How Vietnam Was Lost Robert Kenner, USA, 2005

Really excellent. The Homepage blurb sums it up better than I could--

In one weekend in 1967, two occurrences at opposite ends of the world began the process whereby Americans convinced themselves that the Vietnam War was not worth fighting.

One of these was the ambush of an American battalion by the Vietcong, resulting in 61 casualties. The other was at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where state police ejected students who were campaigning against the presence presence on campus of recruiting agents for napalm manufacturers Dow Chemical.

This brilliant film works so well because its focus is so narrow. We see survivors of the ambushed battalion and we see the women who lost their husbands and who still recall, so many years later, their grief.

We are also able to understand how, throughout universities in America, students became, (in the word of the time), 'radicalised' through their opposition to the war.

It's interesting, of course, to compare those events with the American scene now: with the war in Iraq, opposition has likely been milder because the American army no longer relies on the draft.

[kinuta]

Damages 307

[jazzbo]

I just started watching my recorded version of that.

[BruceH]

"Breaking Bad" starts up again soon. Can't wait.

[jazzbo]

Today I started this; the dvd set has three or four episodes never aired, which is good as they left us all hanging.

Last night's was another good Damages episode. Ellen is learning how to "give back."

[jazzbo]

Today I started this; the dvd set has three or four episodes never aired, which is good as they left us all hanging.

Last night's was another good Damages episode. Ellen is learning how to "give back."