Sunday!
Surprisingly, I’ve heard nothing but good things about Guardians so far. Like, even from respectable outlets.
It’s like they wish that they could make fun of it, call it drek, go off on a rant about the perpetual adolescentization of Hollywood being exemplified by yet another comic book space opera with as much money spent on cross-over advertising as on the nonsensical special effects.
Half-apologetically, they come out and say “yeah, it’s pretty good.”
So I’m less apprehensive about looking forward to it.
And, after I watch it, I’ll try to give you actual details.
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
Hoping to make it to Guardians today myself.
Hell on Wheels started back up last night. Man, I love that show. And there’s a preview for the new Walking Dead season out. Looking forward to October.Report
Mike, are you watching The Strain? It’s not very good (IMO) but it might fill the bill for you until TWD comes back.Report
No – that didn’t seem very appealing to me. Normally I am not much of a horror guy but TWD has been a favorite from the start.Report
Deposition transcripts!
Also still reading the Cornish trilogyReport
Listening to How Few Remain.
Finishing up Orphan Black. Not sure what’s next, maybe White Collar.Report
I like Suits. And Royal Pains. For my summer bubble-gum viewing on USA Network.Report
..Which was actually a phase that was over I think last summer when I tried to get back into it and it just didn’t happen. Suits is good, though.Report
Suits is great. The actor for Mike Ross actually appeared in Orphan Black as a tow truck driver and love interest.Report
I’m a big fan of Suits. Another show I may have recommended is Vikings on the History Channel. They are only two seasons in and the next one won’t be back until next year so you have plenty of time.Report
Vikings is on my radar. Trying to get caught up in current shows before starting more, though.Report
Just to pile on, Turn is pretty fun as well.Report
Just back from Guardians. As I mentioned on FB, this is what summer movies are supposed to be. Well done Marvel.Report
Yeah. Walking out, I said “this was much more candy bar than steak” but, you know what, sometimes a candy bar is just what the doctor ordered.
It had comedy, pathos, tension, tension relief, and (perhaps most importantly) likable characters.
If more superhero movies were like this, folks would complain less about superhero movies.Report
Tonight is the NFL Hall of Fame game.
Too bad the Giants are considered to be the road team; I still haven’t gotten used to the white jerseys with red numbers. This is in spite of them winning two Super Bowls wearing those uniforms.
For those who haven’t been to the stadium, it is very unimpressive in person. That’s because it is primarily used for high school. In fact the day I saw the stadium a local high school was using it for baseball practice.Report
The NFL is experimenting with a new rule.
Over the last three years, extra point kicks are successful 99.5% of the time. Therefore tonight and the first two weeks of preseason extra point kick attempts will be snapped from the 15, rather than the 2.Report
I’m glad to see the league doing something about the extra point. My position is that the league should do away with the extra point completely and make everyone go for two. Much more exciting and not anywhere near the success rate that even kicking from the 15 will be.Report
I dig the idea that says a touchdown should be worth juuuust a little bit more than two field goals.
I don’t know how to make that work without getting rid of the extra point/two point conversion entirely, though, and just decreeing that a touchdown is 7.Report
My position is that the league should do away with the extra point completely and make everyone go for two.
That would eliminate the decision of whether to go for 1 and the tie, or 2 and the victory. Which means you’ll deprive television announcers of many minutes of inane blathering. Clearly it’s a monstrous idea.Report
I finally got my hands on a copy of Skin Game, and I blew through it yesterday.Report
Awesome. Thoughts?Report
I really enjoyed it, as partially reflected by the fact that I started reading and then just keep reading it for 4 hours until I was done.
It was kind of a diversion from the arc that has developing, and I’m keen to see where the Winter Court thing is going, but as diversions go it was a lot of fun. Plus the scene with Butters and the Yvtug Fnoer bs Snvgu was priceless.Report
I also very much enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy. I watched a documentary on Bettie Page which was really interesting, although I honestly would’ve preferred more about her life and less attention paid to her (gorgeous, gorgeous) photos. I’m in the middle of the movie Submarine which is very odd, but so far good.
Bookwise I have been gorging myself… lots of readers’ advisory books (genre-specific) and a neat YA biography of Lewis Micheaux (a Harlem bookseller and civil rights activist). A bunch of fluffy novels. A bunch of books about psychotherapy. I’m in the middle of an interesting novel set in Prince Edward Island during the 70s, about a kid who drops out of college and becomes a park warden – Beach Reading, by Lorne Elliot.Report
I think I may have mentioned that my son and I pick a show to watch together, and most nights that he’s at my place we’ll sit down and watch at least one episode. It’s usually something sci fi, and really he’s the one who picks them (though I offer suggestions, about 2/3 of which are shot down immediately). We’ve watched Warehouse 13, Eureka, Season 1 of Defiance, Continuum, and a few others. Right now we’re watching Sliders.
Now when I suggested it, I remembered watching Sliders in the mid-90s and enjoying it, but what I didn’t remember is that I only really watched Season 1 and maybe an episode or two of Season 2. If I had continued on back then, I would not have suggested this show, because man, in Season 3 it just implodes in spectacular fashion. First, they get rid of one of the main characters, then they replace him with a woman who can’t act and who, judging by the way they shamelessly dress her in tight white shirts and constantly film her bending over, was added because the producers felt like they weren’t getting high enough ratings in the perv demographic. This results in some of the worst television episodes I’ve ever seen. Then things are made worse by the fact that the original female lead, who can act and isn’t used as a pair of walking breasts, leaves the show at the beginning of season 4. Her leaving apparently irked the writers and producers, because they explain her absence by telling us that she is in a “breeding camp” where she is forcibly impregnated by aliens, in perpetuity, in order to produce alien-human hybrids.
What the fish?! Now we have to find a new show to watch.Report
I had forgotten how far off the rails that show went. It got even worse in the 5th season.Report
It was shocking how fast it happened. I had noticed some changes in the quality of the writing (which wasn’t Shakespeare to begin with, mind you) over the first part of Season 3, but then there was a two part episode to get rid of John Rhys-Davies out of nowhere (apparently he was fired) and introduce Kari Wuhrer (who I understand was just in Sharknado 2, Revenge of Sharknado, or whatever it’s subtitle was), and it was, and I do not say this lightly, one of the worst things I’ve ever seen on television. It was so unbelievably stupid that I felt embarrassed for everyone involved with it. And then the show got even worse! I mean, there was an episode with an entire plot designed to put Wuhrer in a skimpy dress and seduce men for 40 minutes, complete with a Species-coming-out-of-the-pool moment, which I assume everyone recognized in 1997 or whatever year that episode aired. It had no other discernible point.
Can anyone think of another equally rapid and thorough train wreck in the history of television? It can’t be a show that got unexpectedly cancelled but gave the writers a few episodes to try and wrap the series up, because that almost always fails miserably.Report
Russel T. Davies (His Dr.Who, particularly season finales)
And the worst part is, he was told not to do it.
Moffat may be a taffer, but at least he understands suspense.Report
Heroes is the only thing I can think of to come close. They couldn’t decide from one week to the next what direction they wanted the show to go in.Report
@chris — Sounds like they watched Anita Sarkeesian’s stuff but got confused and thought it was a guidebook.Report
the original female lead, who can act
Sabrina Lloyd, who was so terrific on Sports Night.Report
Right! I knew I had seen her in something else, but I could not think of what it was, and I was too lazy to look it up this morning.
Sliders is an example of Hollywood’s problem with women. It starts with a strong female lead, a computer geek who’s smart, resourceful, and independent, and played by a good actor, but when ratings aren’t as good as they like they throw in a poor but very attractive actor wearing tight clothes that show a ton of cleavage, playing a character who is on the surface strong (a military officer) but is in practice just ogling material who frequently needs to be rescued by the men.Report
Sabrina Lloyd was quite…fetching on Sports Night.
What I’m saying is, I had a TERRIBLE crush on her as a brunette.Report
@chris
Was Lloyd strong in Sliders? I watched it very little, but I recall her mooning after the handsome hero but being too shy to tell him how she felt. Which annoyed me; Natalie would have had him wrapped around her finger by episode three.
@glyph
I feel the same way about Jennifer Morrison of House. She’s a blonde in real life, but God obviously intended her to have dark hair.Report
@mike-schilling Her crush on Jerry O’Connell’s character was part of the first season’s story line, though it only seemed to be a major part of it for the first episode or two. After that, she had several love interests through the first 3 seasons, though her flame for Quinn occasionally came up.Report
This might be my favorite Sabrina Lloyd scene from SP. It also serves as a great reminder of why shows that are truly funny should never, ever have a laugh track.
Report
They got rid of the laugh track by season two. It’s pretty painful, though.Report
Towards the end of the episode she gets him a third time. Judging by Josh Charles’s reaction, it was unscripted or at least he had no idea it was coming. Best thing ever.Report
I recall reading that Sliders did that to multiple characters. I can’t remember where, and didn’t see enough of the show to know which ones bgure guna Yyblq naq gur negvpyr zragvbarq Wbua Qnivrf.Report
@chris
Yeah that show did go badly wrong, and getting rid of John Rhys-Davis is almost always a bad idea.Report
Getting rid of John Rhys-Davies is always a good idea.Report
5 rainbows this weekend, including a sunset rainbow.Report