TV of 2022

[colinr0380]

One Redditor has exhaustively remastered, restored original audio to, and subbed an obscure and bizarre 2000 Japanese TV drama called Love Complex here

That's really interesting and I would have missed this if you had not mentioned it. I have not seen any of the films that he has directed (which includes a 2012 film called Reunion about the 2011 earthquake and tsumani starring Jun Kunimura) but I note that the writer of this series Ryôichi Kimizuka wrote a number of films that were directed by Masayuki Ochiai, including the 1997 'prologue' film to the video game Parasite Eve, released on DVD in the US by ADV Films in the early 2000s (the whole film is up here at the moment) and the 2005 film Infection (based on his own story) which was another title released by Tartan Video under its "Tartan Asia Extreme" line in the UK in the mid 2000s. Nothing else seems to have made it to disc in the West since that time so it is exciting to see where the writer of those films went next!

A quick trawl of imdb shows that Kimizuka also wrote a live action mini-series version of the story about the harrowing horrors of Hiroshima witnessed through the eyes of a child Barefoot Gen from 2007 which is better known for its 1983 anime adaptation, a similarly harrowing look at the civilian cost of warfare that came out years before Grave of the Fireflies.

[FrauBlucher]

Lord of the Ring, The series on Amazon Prime Teaser

[flyonthewall2983]

I’m on the first episode of the ILM docuseries Light & Magic on Disney+ and it’s some fascinating chunks of Hollywood history I never really investigated beyond the results until this.

[therewillbeblus]

Orphan Black sequel greenlit by AMC

Krysten Ritter to star in Orphan Black: Echoes, will premiere in 2023

[Roger Ryan]

I’m on the first episode of the ILM docuseries Light & Magic on Disney+ and it’s some fascinating chunks of Hollywood history I never really investigated beyond the results until this.

Thanks for the “heads-up” on this. I really found this docus-series fascinating as it’s packed with behind the scenes footage showing how the company achieved many of its astonishing effects. Seeing the staff’s home movies made when they were children was a delightful surprise as well. Perhaps not so surprising is how the advancement of computer animation made the whole process of creating special effects less enthralling, not just for viewers of this series, but for much of the ILM staff as well! As far as today’s technology goes, I was astounded that virtually everything seen in shows like The Mandalorian is shot on a single stage with a large video screen backdrop and a bare minimum of set dressing.

[beamish14]

I’m on the first episode of the ILM docuseries Light & Magic on Disney+ and it’s some fascinating chunks of Hollywood history I never really investigated beyond the results until this.

Thanks for the “heads-up” on this. I really found this docus-series fascinating as it’s packed with behind the scenes footage showing how the company achieved many of its astonishing effects. Seeing the staff’s home movies made when they were children was a delightful surprise as well. Perhaps not so surprising is how the advancement of computer animation made the whole process of creating special effects less enthralling, not just for viewers of this series, but for much of the ILM staff as well! As far as today’s technology goes, I was astounded that virtually everything seen in shows like The Mandalorian is shot on a single stage with a large video screen backdrop and a bare minimum of set dressing.

I couldn’t believe the quality of the rushes and behind-the-scenes material for Star Wars that we see in this. I was genuinely shocked to see Dykstra and Lucas both discuss the former’s dismissal from ILM on camera, too. Very excited to watch the entirety of the series

I really do wonder if Disney is testing the watersfor an eventual release of the unaltered trilogy. They allowed a 70mm print of Star Wars to screen at the Academy Museum earlier this year. Every single seat of the massive David Geffen Theatre (2000+ seats) sold out months in advance

[flyonthewall2983]

I didn’t realize that Lucas paid for Joe Johnston’s film school and gave USC his full recommendation in the late 80’s.

[beamish14]

I didn’t realize that Lucas paid for Joe Johnston’s film school and gave USC his full recommendation in the late 80’s.

Johnston had so much potential as a filmmaker. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and The Rocketeer (I barely started episode 3-I’m guessing it will eventually touch upon the use of digital matte paintings in both this film and Hook?) hold up so beautifully.
Him and John Dahl are two of the only major filmmakers I can think of who began as storyboard artists (there are a number of animators who segued into live action films).

[therewillbeblus]

I am very excited to see that E4's Adult Swim block is beginning to show the latest animation series from the creator of Samurai Jack, Genndy Tartakovsky, Primal

I’m catching up with this now that the new season just started- After remaining on the fence during its slow-burn beginnings, I’ve acclimated to its nonverbal structural modalities, and it’s really powerful and intricate visual storytelling. The best episodes I’ve seen resemble the blueprint of BoJack’s “Fish Out of Water” in its creative forward momentum through surprising setpieces and unexpected narrative devices, only rooted in reality.. kind-of.. sometimes.. not to be conflated with “familiar” at least! The fourth episode of the series is one of the more inventive adventures I've seen in a while, and the fifth descends into some neanderthal-Kill Bill-catapulted-into-horror fare, or more like Riki-Oh, only, you know, with a heart

[knives]

Sounds like a great furthering of the Samurai Jack aesthetic.

[domino harvey]

HBO Max is quietly deleting their own original movies from the platform

[colinr0380]

I am very excited to see that E4's Adult Swim block is beginning to show the latest animation series from the creator of Samurai Jack, Genndy Tartakovsky, Primal

I’m catching up with this now that the new season just started- After remaining on the fence during its slow-burn beginnings, I’ve acclimated to its nonverbal structural modalities, and it’s really powerful and intricate visual storytelling. The best episodes I’ve seen resemble the blueprint of BoJack’s “Fish Out of Water” in its creative forward momentum through surprising setpieces and unexpected narrative devices, only rooted in reality.. kind-of.. sometimes.. not to be conflated with “familiar” at least! The fourth episode of the series is one of the more inventive adventures I've seen in a while, and the fifth descends into some neanderthal-Kill Bill-catapulted-into-horror fare, or more like Riki-Oh, only, you know, with a heart

This was one of my favourite shows of 2020, and it deserved so much better for its UK premiere than to be tucked away on a sub-digital channel in the early hours of a weekday morning. It certainly deserved a Rick & Morty primetime slot at the very least. Hopefully E4 will get to showing the second season soon, although if they do it may be in the same timeslot, so I am keeping an eye out for it!

My favourite episodes of that first season come in the middle of the run with episodes 6, 7 and 8. Episode 6 is probably the best of the whole series as in the aftermath of the enormous fight against the Ape-Men in episode 5 (which is the big action episode of the series), Scent of Prey is a kind of tiny post-battle procedural episode about Spear trying to keep the injured Fang safe from predators, which leads to a cross country dragging of the dinosaur and escalating fending off of foes until the wonderfully cathartic final sequence that triumphantly affirms the bond between the pair and Fang's survival against the odds in such a brutal and violent world (which of course takes the form of a bonding blood bath). More than any of the narrative and subtextual plot stuff about manufactured family dynamics that is going on, if there were just one episode of the same calibre dealing with small minutiae of moment-to-moment survival in a hostile environment each season, I would be more than happy to watch the show for as long as it lasted.

Episode 7, Plague of Madness, is the most horrific of the series, as we see a disease spreading through various animals until it reaches a seemingly placid dinosaur, which turns it homicidally insane (didn't this happen in one of those dozens of Land Before Time films? ). Spear and Fang run across its path and it becomes a giant chase sequence with the added fear of our heroes getting infected if they themselves are bitten (which our main characters themselves may not entirely realise the danger of), tinged with the surprisingly painfully emotional manner that the irreversibly disease riddled dinosaur (who, compared to our main characters who watched their families be killed, instead was responsible for killing their own clan in their insanity) is almost being puppeted by its delirium into its single minded need to hunt and kill until the lava climax ends its misery and brings it to an appropriately tragic T2-esque extinction ending.

And episode 8, Coven of the Damned, is the one in which Spear and Fang are captured by a mysterious cult of women and unable to escape Spear is going to be used as their sacrifice until one member of the coven reads their minds and takes pity on the man. It is both a great way to recap events of Spear and Fang's loss of their respective families for viewers coming in late to the series and also a way of kind of saying "not all men" to the idea that they are all just violence fixated and can be callously sacrificed with impunity (as shown through the female Fang's infatuation with Spear; and maybe the suggestion that Spear is the future direction of the human animal, especially as compared to the Ape-men from earlier in the series). I found that rather moving too, especially in the way that Spear and Fang are completely helpless and at the mercy of a foe they cannot fight against, and instead it falls upon others to understand and be merciful to them, which is similar to the plague episode in showing characters just trying to survive in a cruel world where survival cannot be taken for granted at any point, and maybe all that can be managed is a certain level of understanding and empathy for the plight of others.

[therewillbeblus]

I just finished this string of episodes and they are indeed quite powerful in their own ways- as always, great thoughts! The sixth packs so much empathy into acts of survivalism, often a concept pitched against the friction of intimacy with others in our peripheries and inwards towards self-protection. The episode succeeds at harnessing the exhaustion and withering energy of staying alive, simultaneously with the adrenaline and empowerment that's reinforced as our will power increases spiritually due to natural emotional and moral rewards of our behavior.

Seven takes any devastation we were posturing at in the previous episode and turns it up to 11, transforming into a horror movie as you say, but one also rooted in empathic tragedy. Again, balancing survivalism and empathy but in a novel way. I don't know if I was quite as impressed with eight, but I really liked it (they're practically all great) and the show continues to move into new terrain incorporating this balance with magical realism, this time giving us catharsis for the 'villains' in the afterlife! In some ways, it's a nice antidote to that lava climax, hopeful that maybe the diseased dinosaur found some solace after all in a new world...

[knives]

HBO Max is quietly deleting their own original movies from the platform

WB has quickly become the worst.

[Never Cursed]

They're deleting their own TV shows en masse, too - this is all following their much-ballyhooed merger with Discovery, right?

[knives]

Yep. Discovery is seemingly trying to run this into the ground.

[therewillbeblus]

Just doing a cursory search, I had no idea how many TV shows were affiliated with WB across platforms, though it's unclear to me how much power they have over some v others. Either way, this is not good

[domino harvey]

Yes, I tried to highlight this amongst the jokes about the Batgirl movie in the DC thread— this is very, very bad news. It is so bizarre that the best streaming service could be willingly offing itself just to please a few stockholders with short term returns and short sighted results. There are rumors right now that HBO Max will literally cease to exist and become a tab on Discovery+

[therewillbeblus]

Cue a repeat of the impulsive Fox title shopping spree- though many of these HBO shows aren't released on any physical media. There are certain shows that would be catastrophic to just become muted forever, and if nothing good comes from this, at least it might prompt companies partnered with streaming services to dually release their content in physical form as well? No, I'm just dreaming

[Never Cursed]

Did a cursory look into yesterday's Warner Bros. Discovery Q2 earnings call presentation that broke some of this news, and I think a bunch of screenshots of their slide deck do a good job displaying the mentality of the new leadership (it's worth noting that a bunch of longtime Warners execs were fired in April and May following the merger).

Spoiled for lengthShow

During this slide, the presenter(s) were apparently highly critical of the production of the now-cancelled/removed HBO Max originals.


This slide came alongside the announcement that HBO Max and Discovery would indeed be merged into the Discovery+ platform.

And this one I just think is funny:

[knives]

We should have realized when Soderbergh’s films were left for DVD trash.

[MongooseCmr]

This will likely be the what, fourth streaming home Criterion loses? The most successful home video label and the most cursed on streaming

[colinr0380]

I dread to ask what the "90 Day Fiancée Universe" entails.

[Roger Ryan]

That Sex And The City is the only HBO show included in the category “Iconic Series and Characters” and it’s ignobly placed last after Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives says it all, doesn’t it?

[domino harvey]

And now they’re getting to the things I actually watch: They’ve removed At Home With Amy Sedaris