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Totally forgot about Recess. It was a good one.
Just to let you know, Season 2 of Homecoming has been confirmed.
NARCOS MEXICO
Finally got a chance to catch up with this and despite it being quite slow in spots, as well as generally being tough viewing, it was very rewarding. Both Diego Luna and Michael Pêna are very good in it. Even though it's very much its own thing (you could jump into it even if you hadn't seen the other seasons) it had a couple of nice tie-ins to the Escobar era. All the stylistic traits remain - gritty cinematography, brief but graphic explosions of violence, generally awful people on both sides of the law - and a subtle but strong ending sets up a potentially exciting second season.
At just over 20 minutes each, it is so easy to watch a number of episodes in one sitting. I have already watched:
On Leather Wings
Christmas With The Joker
Nothing To Fear
The Last Laugh
Pretty Poison
The Underdwellers
P.O.V
The Forgotten
Be A Clown
Two Face: Pt I
Two Face: Pt II
I watched this show back in the 90's, and didn't remember much. But watching it now, more things are coming back to me. I love this Batmobile. I love the Art Deco style in general, but I love the Batmobile especially.
I happen to agree with @Creasy47 with regards to Narcos: Mexico. Also, I'd never complain that it was "slow in spots". I thought the pacing was measured and on the nose, considering what it was building up to. This is one of the most consistent adult shows on TV right now. I understand that Season 2 of Narcos: Mexico is already being shot as I write, which is very good news.
Absolutely. I had heard of the story and how it ended and I think they did great justice to the power struggles that led to the cataclysmic final episode. Very much looking forward to Season 2.
It's funny that they actually sort of "reveal" the ending in season one of Narcos when Holbrook's character brings up Kiki Camarena, and how he changed the scope and handling of the war on drugs.
Glad we have another fan! It’s such a fun show - then and now.
I was browsing Netflix and came across this English thriller series starring Michael C. Hall. I wouldn’t have given it another look except for the fact that Hall is in it. Dexter is one of my all time favourites, and so I decided to check this out and I’m glad I did. It’s set in an English suburb, and Hall, a resident surgeon and widowed father, sports a shaky English accent throughout. It’s a bit jarring at first to hear him speak in this fashion but one gets used to it quickly enough. The show plays like a standard whodunit, where we are presented at the outset with a scenario which rocks the neighbourhood (in this case a murder and a missing person related to Hall’s character) and then get to learn more about the town inhabitants (and possible suspects), their lives and their secrets during successive episodes (which include flashbacks) until all is revealed at the conclusion. It’s a bit caricatured and soapy, but also reasonably slick and entertaining. It doesn't feel stuffy or old fashioned at least. Hall is a compelling presence as an anxious father, but I couldn’t quite shake the serial killer vibe from him throughout. Hannah Arterton (Gemma’s sister) co-stars.
Great cast, production design and locations, with masterful direction by "Oldboy" legend Park Chan-wook.
"The Night Manager" was good, I think this one is even better, more compelling story.
It's Never Too Late
I've Got Batman In My Basement
Heart Of Ice
The Cat And The Claw Pt I
The Cat And The Claw Pt II
See No Evil
Beware The Gray Ghost
Prophecy Of Doom
Feat Of Clay Pt I
Feat Of Clay Pt II
Having forgotten about so much of this show, so much is now flooding back with each episode. And watching through the eyes of an adult, the quality really holds up. I can see why there are people who feel this show has the 'definitive Batman/Joker/Batmobile etc...'.
Have to say, I'm a sucksr for this show and have been waiting over 20 years for this whole series to be released.
I think the problem you have when you attempt something like this is what more can you say that hasn't already been pretty much captured in a previous adaptation.
Whoever takes on Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, be it Kenneth Branagh or as we have here John Malkovich, they are inevitably compared to David Suchet's definitive reading of the Belgium Sleuth.
It's not that Malkovich is terrible here, he lends Hercule some depth that Suchet granted was investing in his performance as the excellent and definitive ITV series did as it went on. Early episodes of Poirot were somewhat cosy and bright and zipped along with some jollity, although as it went on and they shifted to full length format and started to tackle the more famous Christie novels and not the short stories it took on a more eerie and serious tone.
Though my Wife and I still plump for Lumet's film version of Murder On The Orient Express, Finney for me still is the one that I would place 2nd to Suchet in the role although, the TV series version was really that good there would be a gap between them.
Peter Ustinov is good fun and is first 2 adaptations are entertaining but never really gelled with him in the role, as for Branagh I've yet to see his version.
Anyway I digress, apart from the BBC's version of Then There Were None, the writer Sarah Phelps has worried with her changes to the last 2 adaptations, I was just bored with Ordeal By Innocence and the way she changed Witness For The Prosecution was sacrilege.
Here they've done the reverse of making it a prequel and positioned him later in his career and like Casino Royale to a degree none of the comfortable traits. No Miss Limon, no Captain Hastings. No Inspector Japp (well briefly), replaced by a rather unpleasant Rupert Grint as far removed from Ron Weasley as he could get. Hercule is also disgraced for some reason or other related to his relationship with Japp which isn't really explained that well.
Phelps seems to want to take that ego away from Poirot, not have his disciples playing to his opinion of himself as the greatest, I guess this might be interesting but too much as been jettisoned from this at times you wished they'd tackled one of the non HP or Marple stories instead changing the character to the point of almost seeming like a stranger rather than Hercule Poirot.
Malkovich's version is also deadly serious and totally missing that devilish glint and humour other versions especially Suchet invested in the character. It's at times just quite miserable and gloomy. I've argued that Se7en especially when it comes to UK detective series as informed their look and mood more than any film since. Serial Killer films and TV shows have been playing catch up ever since. This version of the ABC Murders plays out very much like a serial killer story rather than a Poirot adventure and has some quite frankly unnecessary gore and unpleasantness, feeling like cut-price David Fincher.
Granted this was something different for the detective with him being toyed with rather than being hired to solve a murder, plot elements have been removed and the final moment between Hercule and the killer is like a more subdued version of the Joker's and Batman's interrogation in The Dark Knight, where the killer tries to convince Poirot he's his friend rather than his enemy, possibly reminiscent of Elijah Price to David Dunn in Unbreakable. The Nolan element that some will just find irritating that Bond fans have not been impressed with in the last 2 Bond films
Although the most insulting and a definite that the writer is being influenced by Nolan and recent Bond's, even an origin story for our detective. When this idea started to become popular it was somewhat a novelty but now it seems every property needs to do this and robbing Poirot of the mystery of how he came to be, despite some hints is the final nail in the coffin. Why they did this is likely to be the question most fans of the author and the character, it's no wonder the Christie Estate never gave their blessing to this.
It could be eyed as curiosity but please a one off, I don't see a need for Malkovich to return to the role, especially if Susan Phelps is determined to be more impressed with what she can do rob it of all what made it what it is rather than be loyal to source. I'd be quite happy if she was kept well away from Agatha Christie's work for rest of her life on the evidence of this and the previous 2 adaptations she tackled.
After watching Don Stroud today in LTK, I felt compelled to see him as Mike Hammer's buddy Pat Chambers. Great rapport with Stacy Keach.
DEAD MAN'S RUN
Mike's buddies await him on New Year's Eve and reminisce an old case. I believe this episode was cobbled together while Keach was in prison.
Fun episode I recorded nearly 30 years ago off of the USA network. Pity this series was never released on DVD or Blu-ray. Maybe in 2019?
I don't know why the 1984-87 series hasn't been released, when 2 of the 4 tv movies with Keach as Hammer have been released, as well as the short lived 1997-98 series.
Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed what I have seen of him as Hammer, but I think Keach deserved to play Hammer in a theatrical film. I'm thinking... maybe De Palma in the directors seat, Keach as Hammer and Sharon Stone or Kim Basinger as Velda.
After watching Agatha Christie given the Luther make over my Sarah Phelps I needed this 1992 Poirot adaptation of the story.
The more I think about of 2018's Christmas version of this Christie's classic the incensed it gets me. If you can't honour the text properly why bother at all, why not just make a new story?
I've seen people already defending this in numerous places but to me the shoehorning of Oswald Moseley's shadow into proceedings comes across as the most unsubtle Brexit baiting nonsense.
Poirot is not some tortured soul, yes he's had his moments and the later adaptations that Suchet did got darker and more layered. Although Malkovich played him more like William Somerset from Se7en than the Dame of Crime's celebrated Belgian sleuth.
As much as I don't mind an updating of a character, I've applauded most of the ones that have happened with Bond in the Craig era and to me at least the Fleming elements have been blended well with the cinematic ones.
Although with Poirot in this new version I saw little to remind me of the character I was more than familiar and happy with. It seems portraying him as he was written wasn't good enough.
So sitting back with my Wife this afternoon to see Suchet as Hercule, Hugh Fraser as Hastings and Phillip Jackson alive and well as Inspector Japp was like putting on a nice comfortable pair of slippers after the dour treatment I witnessed on Saturday.
It had been sometime since I'd seen this version but I thoroughly enjoyed it, Agatha Christie is what it is, somewhat absurd and daft at times but entertaining and a plot that moves along at a pace leading to our detective unmasking the culprit.
No one has ever nailed Poirot like Suchet did and his vanities, fastidiousness and his companions around him are all part of the character, even when adaptations with him have been without his friend they've never betrayed this.
Some might think seeing Hercule stripped of all these attributes makes for a refreshing take on him and I've already had conversations with some that have liked it but give me this version any day over what BBC served up over Christmas here in the UK.
Is there anyone here on the forum besides myself and @Agent_99 that have seen this? If you like the Jean Dujardin OSS 177 films, you're going to enjoy this!
It's on Netflix, so I'd imagine so. I watch with Norwegian subtitles.
The early episodes are unmatched IMO, Heart of Ice is brilliant, still my favourite episode.