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I don't know when it will hit Netflix in the UK,* but the fourth season of Fargo has started in the US, and is already proving - again - quite excellent. I have no idea what the journey will be, but I can already guess who's going to survive towards the end and who isn't. The slightly-connected Fargo universes are not good ones to be in if you're less smart than your peers and foes.
Still also thoroughly enjoying Lovecraft Country. Aside from Re-Animator, which doesn't really touch it, and a couple of fan films, no-one has done the madness of his work anything like as well.
I have finally seen Terminator: Dark Fate. I blame the delay in doing so on what followed T-2 and while this takes the sensible decision to pretend those never happened, it's still not as good as either the original or T-2. The first fifteen minutes of setup is good, if somewhat 'we're going to take what you love and kill it', but what made the first pair so good was that the physics stayed within the bounds of believability. The volume of the shape-shifting terminator stayed roughly constant, for example, and it could never fly.
Here, some of the leaps show that someone's seen too many superhero films, and why have a solid humanoid base underneath a shape-shifting 'skin'? The two are apparently separate, but joining them doesn't change the volume and.. argh!
Some comments on Quantum of Solace on Twitter got me rewatching the Daniel Craig Bond films.
I had forgotten just how good his Casino Royale was. There are a few problems, but nothing terrible. For the good stuff, the opening eighteen and half minutes is probably the best of any Bond film and even switching the central game to Poker (where skill matters) from Chemin de fer as used in the book and most of the films (where it doesn't) is a big improvement...
.. but why the incompetence of not having the CIA and MI6 players co-operate from the start? Co-operating players have a huge advantage, and it also begs the question why they didn't buy in to more places at the table too. That's still better than having the villain's plot in Skyfall depend on being put in a cell without a mechanical lock, though.
I had not forgotten how awful Quantum of Solace is though. Not only is the script nowhere near as good, the editor being on speed through most of the process kills off huge chunks of the dramatic tension and appreciation for the craft involved in making it. Those could have been really car good chases and fights, but the insistence in not having any shot last longer than about two seconds means we don't have the chance to see that. I also compare what they did with the foot chases with a) Casino Royale, where the parkour made the first one, and b) any classic Jackie Chan film, where you can see He Really Did That.
Apparently, it's the Bond film with the most violence, despite its short length. I would add to that by taking out and shooting the air force pilot who had an old cargo plane flying straight and not seeing any danger (due to poor visibility out of the cockpit) and didn't inflict fatal damage in his first pass. And whoever sent up something that, from the holes it left, only had a couple of machine guns rather than the 20mm cannon or better that's been universal in fighters since early WW2.
The editing means doing a better fanedit is almost impossible, but the script means it's almost pointless. I'd much preferred if they skipped all the Bond-bits and just had the whole of the Tosca featured within it! Especially as the Quantum bosses should have been thrown out for talking while it was on.
* Presumably as a 'Netflix Original', ha.
Still also thoroughly enjoying Lovecraft Country. Aside from Re-Animator, which doesn't really touch it, and a couple of fan films, no-one has done the madness of his work anything like as well.
I have finally seen Terminator: Dark Fate. I blame the delay in doing so on what followed T-2 and while this takes the sensible decision to pretend those never happened, it's still not as good as either the original or T-2. The first fifteen minutes of setup is good, if somewhat 'we're going to take what you love and kill it', but what made the first pair so good was that the physics stayed within the bounds of believability. The volume of the shape-shifting terminator stayed roughly constant, for example, and it could never fly.
Here, some of the leaps show that someone's seen too many superhero films, and why have a solid humanoid base underneath a shape-shifting 'skin'? The two are apparently separate, but joining them doesn't change the volume and.. argh!
Some comments on Quantum of Solace on Twitter got me rewatching the Daniel Craig Bond films.
I had forgotten just how good his Casino Royale was. There are a few problems, but nothing terrible. For the good stuff, the opening eighteen and half minutes is probably the best of any Bond film and even switching the central game to Poker (where skill matters) from Chemin de fer as used in the book and most of the films (where it doesn't) is a big improvement...
.. but why the incompetence of not having the CIA and MI6 players co-operate from the start? Co-operating players have a huge advantage, and it also begs the question why they didn't buy in to more places at the table too. That's still better than having the villain's plot in Skyfall depend on being put in a cell without a mechanical lock, though.
I had not forgotten how awful Quantum of Solace is though. Not only is the script nowhere near as good, the editor being on speed through most of the process kills off huge chunks of the dramatic tension and appreciation for the craft involved in making it. Those could have been really car good chases and fights, but the insistence in not having any shot last longer than about two seconds means we don't have the chance to see that. I also compare what they did with the foot chases with a) Casino Royale, where the parkour made the first one, and b) any classic Jackie Chan film, where you can see He Really Did That.
Apparently, it's the Bond film with the most violence, despite its short length. I would add to that by taking out and shooting the air force pilot who had an old cargo plane flying straight and not seeing any danger (due to poor visibility out of the cockpit) and didn't inflict fatal damage in his first pass. And whoever sent up something that, from the holes it left, only had a couple of machine guns rather than the 20mm cannon or better that's been universal in fighters since early WW2.
The editing means doing a better fanedit is almost impossible, but the script means it's almost pointless. I'd much preferred if they skipped all the Bond-bits and just had the whole of the Tosca featured within it! Especially as the Quantum bosses should have been thrown out for talking while it was on.
* Presumably as a 'Netflix Original', ha.