Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

I don't know if it's up now or not, but it'll be available on the Peacock streaming service, i.e. NBC. It's called Mr. Monk's Last Case and it sounds quite amusing. They got the entire band back together, so should be fun! We're planning on getting Peacock on either a free trial or we'll pay for one month to watch it as Russet was a big fan and wants to see it.

No idea if it'll be available for a limited time or not.

Monk originally aired on the USA network. No idea why it hopped over to NBC.

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/13/1218765740/mr-monks-last-case-review-tony-shalhoub

The first is on Apple TV+, called Ted Lasso, starring Jason Sudeikis.

This is an amazing show. About half an hour long, and I guess you'd call it a dramady. It's a fish out of water story - sort of - about a Kansas college football coach who is hired by a UK premiere league football (soccer) club to take over as team manager. The couple who owned the club just divorced, the woman who now owns it hates the misogynistic manager and sacks him, and brings over Ted and his head coach, Coach Beard. Ted has a very unique style in coaching, having taken a team from literally the bottom of their conference to winning their first championship - in one year. And sadly there's not much I can say about the show except that it's quite amazing. There's ten eps in the first season, wife and I finished number seven last night and will probably polish it off tonight. I believe the second season has been committed.

The great thing about this show is that it is truly a feel good show, and well worth watching in these wretched times. It also benefits from a rewatch, and amusingly redeems the word 'wanker'. But you have to have Apple TV+.



The second show is a bit more easily accessed, it's a crime drama on HBO called Deforeigners. It's a Norski show with subtitles, perhaps dubbed? I haven't watched it yet but the concept is very interesting.

It's based in Oslo. A portal opens up outside of Oslo Harbor (in the water? Huh?!) and people from the Edwardian era, Vikings, and stone age people come through! No one has any idea how they got here. Time passes, the vikings and stone agers settle in the woods, I guess the Edwardians are assimilated, and a year later one of the Edwardians is murdered. Thus the series starts.

I'll be watching the first ep in the next couple of days.



Having just now watched the trailer, looks like there's some pretty intense content there!

It has been one of my Desert Island books basically since I first read it, and I have a first edition signed by Sir PTerry! Now if I could get Neil to sign it....

We've been taking it easy watching it, watched the first two Sunday night, Russet had to work Monday, and watched #3 last night. I love how they're filling in little bits and pieces here and there yet still sticking to the core story. Just a marvelous job, definitely will buy the set when it releases.

John Kovalic posted this cartoon today, I thought it was quite marvelous.

http://www.dorktower.com/

Loved that ending!

For those who haven't seen it, it's sort of a hard R-rated version of Bill Murray's CaddyshackGroundhog Day, updated. Nadia leaves her 36th birthday party with a stranger for sex, sees her cat Oatmeal that's been missing for three days, runs across the street to get it, gets hit by a car and is killed.

Finds herself in the bathroom at her birthday party that she'd just left a few hours earlier. Rinse, repeat. Always finding herself in the bathroom at her birthday party that she'd just left a few hours earlier after she dies, it's her game savepoint or something.

The trailer is amazing and makes it look a lot more amusing than I found it - it's a very dark program of eight approx. half hour episodes, so it's a fast binge, Russet and I did it in two nights though I'd previously seen the first one or two episodes shortly after it released to check it out before roping her in.

One thing that I really did not like about the show: I'M SICK AND TIRED OF NEW YORK CITY! I realize that not all New Yorkers are like Nadia. But I'm just tired of so many movies and TV shows being set there. I've been in and through something like 80% of the continental USA states and there's so much more to this country than NYC! My sincere apologies to people who live or have lived there.

But the production values! Man, the continuity people must have been going insane with this production, not to mention the costumers! This one definitely deserves some award nods when the next awards season come along. And a great rocking sound track! And some great dialog! "You carry so much guilt around with you, you should have been a Jew!" says the born into but non-practicing Jew. Another fantastic line that I won't say as we think it's revelatory. I would have loved to have been working on that production as a video historian!

It's going to be interesting to see what they do with the second season!

The show was created by Natasha Lyon, who plays Nadia (also in Orange is the New Black), and Leslye Headland (Bachelorette, Sleeping With Other People), and Amy Poehler (Parks & Recreation, SNL). The three of them are also executive producers, so they're maintaining firm control.

It's good stuff. Very foul language, strong adult topics, and some pretty sudden and violent deaths. And recommended if you have Netflix. I might buy this when it comes out if it has a lot of good bonus material. Not my normal cup of tea, but still, we enjoyed it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Doll_(TV_series)

This is based on an awesome New Zealand movie of the same name by Taika Waititi, maker of Thor: Ragnarok, and he's involved in the production of this, so it should contain the same sort of humor. He was also involved in Flight of the Conchords. It's a mockumentary that's basically Big Brother with a house full of vampires. The original movie is a huge amount of fun, this one is set in Staten Island instead of Wellington, NZ. Looks like otherwise it'll be fairly faithful to the movie. Releases March 27.



https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/02/fx-adaptation-of-what-we-do-in-the-shadows-looks-as-good-as-original/

I highly recommend the original movie, and hope I can configure FX so I can watch this. Otherwise, I guess I'll have to wait for the DVD.

We watched eps 3 & 4 of Orville last night and we're really enjoying it. I feel like they're getting in to some real Classic Trek social commentary ground, especially with 3, and 4 felt like a Classic Trek ep with The Computer Controlling The Society that was played over and over again.

Discovery, sadly, we did not get to see. I spent last week in Phoenix and I didn't program it in to the DVR before I left. I tried to program it in remotely via an iPhone app, but it didn't take. And even though it was free on broadcast, CBS in their infinite (idiotic) wisdom no longer has it available. Even their Apple TV app only has it available if you subscribe to their streaming service, and I'm really not inclined to pay for it right now. So I guess we won't see it for now. We'll either wait until the half-season or full-season is over and subscribe for a month, binge it and drop it, or we'll buy the DVD set when it comes out.

Personally, I can't see the CBS streaming service succeeding long-term. Netflix and Amazon succeed because THEY AREN'T THE ONLY ONES MAKING CONTENT FOR THEIR SERVICES. If CBS were buying content from other sources, previewing it online so we could see what it looked like before committing to paying for it, then it would make their service a lot more attractive. I have a feeling that there's very little chance of that happening and their service won't last more than a couple of years before it gets bought out by someone else.

In other news, it looks like my Onkyo popped another something while I was in Phoenix and the HDCP is now completely fried, so it will no longer work as an HDMI switch. I can plug in two HDMI cables in to my TV, so Apple TV and my DVD/BR player. But I really hope to lay my hands on a Nintendo, which will require its own HDMI connector, which will require a switch. And I don't want to spend $300+ for a new receiver right now. So we'll have to live with lousy sound for a while. Had I known it was fried, I could have looked for a used receiver in Phoenix that would have worked as a HDMI switch. Oh, well.

I knew nothing at all about this and stumbled upon it yesterday while looking for some movie trailers on the iTunes store. Apparently this started in 2007, Eric Idle et al staged Life of Brian as an oratorio, complete with full orchestra, chorus, pipers, and four major opera singers (the mezzo is an O.B.E.) at the Royal Albert Hall.

This is a 'making of' 30 minute featurette. All of the Pythons returned for it, except for Graham Chapman who was excused on account of being dead, and no John Cleese, for reasons undisclosed. Cleese left the TV show after the third season because he thought they were mostly rehashing old material, perhaps he didn't want to be involved in any 40th anniversary folderol (40th of the TV show, 30th of the Life of Brian movie).

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/not-messiah-the-road-to-albert/id374287357

iTunes has a soundtrack album for the production for $10 and the DVD and BluRay were released last week.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_the_Messiah_%28He%27s_a_Very_Naughty_Boy%29

Life of Brian is one of my very favorite films, definitely on my 'Stranded on a Desert Island' list. I saw it during its original theatrical run and own it both on Laserdisc and DVD. I am absolutely massively looking forward to picking this up later this week or ordering it from Amazon.

Speaking of which, there are already five reviews up on Amazon!

http://www.amazon.com/Not-Messiah-Eric-Idel/dp/B003DF44SI/

From the TVShowsOnDVD.com newsletter:
Los Angeles, CA - Shout! Factory and Warner Home Video, a division of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Inc., announced a multi-property alliance to bring the highly anticipated Warner Bros. television series Max Headroom and The Norm Show to the home entertainment marketplace. Under its multi-year agreement with Warner Home Video, Shout! Factory will be the exclusive media company to distribute Max Headroom and The Norm Show DVDs for home entertainment releases in the United States and Canada. The announcement was made today by Shout! Factory founding partners Richard Foos, Bob Emmer and Garson Foos; and Jeff Brown, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Non-theatrical Franchise Marketing for Warner Home Video.

Production has begun to develop a wide range of bonus content for Max Headroom: The Complete Series DVD box set, as well as re-transferring the episodes from the original elements to provide the highest picture quality.

"Max Headroom is a uniquely sought-after television property, boasting a large fan following and consumer interests. We have been pursuing this property with Warner Bros. for years, and we're thrilled that it's finally coming to fruition," state Shout! Factory founding partners. "We're pop culture fanatics at Shout!, and both of these shows are loved by fans of TV and are highly requested. We'll do them justice with great extras and packaging."

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Max-Headroom-DVDs-Planned/13399

Best Buy has season 1 DVD set with six discs for $20! Full price is $50, so it's a heck of a deal. Needless to say it has beaucoup bonus material.

We picked this up recently at Barnes & Noble for around $25. It collects three John Cleese movies made in the mid 70's and include: How To Irritate People, The Strange Case of the End of Civilization As We Know It, and Romance with a Double Bass. Aside from Cleese, Connie Booth is the only Python to appear in all three. (I think she deserves credit as a Python considering how often she appeared in the series)

First, quality of production. It really isn't very good. The transfer did not include a cleanup of wherever they got the movies from and it shows it. That's not to say that the quality is bad, it just isn't very good. It's acceptable for 70's TV. Also, there is zero bonus material on these three disks. That was rather disappointing, but when you see what a low-budget production this is, you won't be surprised. One can only hope that some day they are fully restored and re-released. The three movies are 65 minutes, 55 minutes, and 45 minutes long respectively, and they're all at the television standard 4x3 aspect ratio.

On to the films!

( Read more... )

The best thing about Strange Case and Double Bass is that we get to see a young(ish) Cleese doing consistent acting in a long format, as opposed to the shorter sketches of Flying Circus. He's sort of manic like he was in Fish Called Wanda and lots of fun to watch. And, as a bonus, we get lots of shots of a fully naked Connie Booth in Double Bass, what a lovely lady! (With HUGE... tracts of land!) Cleese is also naked, but they don't have any full frontals of him. Booth was also naked in a Python Sketch (whose title I will not get precisely correct), 'A Day in the Life of a Stockbroker.'


I so wish the US didn't have this 'violence good, nudity bad' attitude as opposed to the reverse throughout a lot of the rest of the world.