What are you all watching that’s good? I haven’t gotten around to Fleishman Is In Trouble yet but clearly I’ll have to rectify that. Recent watches for me:
I was very excited to see there’s a Last Chance U: Basketball, season 2, because season 1 was incredible. It was pretty good but also a little bit of a letdown compared to S1, I think the players’ stories are a little less interesting (S1 set a high bar, it’s so hard to watch without feeling an incredible amount of empathy for what the kids are dealing with). Nonetheless, this version of LCU - moving away from the high-powered football programs that felt like summer camp for D1 dropouts (at least, EMCC certainly felt that way, I didn’t watch the Independence seasons), and going to places (first Laney College football, then East Los Angeles College basketball) where players are working their asses off just to scrape by and hopefully get any D1 offer - continues to be extremely captivating.
The new Knives Out movie on Netflix is, unsurprisingly, great.
I’m rewatching andor, it’s worth it. Latest season of rick and morty was decent. Been working through the madoff documentary series on netflix. I didnt know he had nearly 10% of the stock market trading volume at one point.
I watched the first couple episodes of season 2 of Rise of Empires: Ottoman (this season is styled as “Mehmed vs. Vlad”) on Netflix. It seems much like the first season so far, which is good; it’s a docudrama showing scripted dramatizations, mixed with historians (and the narrator, Tywin Lannister) talking about the actual history.
Both seasons are about Mehmed II (Mehmed the Conquerer); the first covered his capture of Constantinople, the second is focused on his conflicts with Vlad III (aka Vlad Dracula or Vlad the Impaler), ruler of Wallachia (southern part of modern-day Romania) and frenemy of Mehmed. It’s cool to get an in-depth history that’s both informative but less dry than typical history documentaries, my wife finds it really engaging and had a lot of questions about the history of the region & the Ottomans after watching for a bit and she was excited to see there was a season 2. And while this just scratches the surface by focusing mostly on Mehmed, it’s cool to learn more about such a transformative empire that you don’t learn much about in Western history education and is so intertwined with the Balkans and the Middle East.
If that sounds like anyone’s cup of tea, you’d probably enjoy it!
Slow Horses on Apple’s 2nd season is as much fun as the first, see Gary Oldman chew the scenery as an old spy in charge of spies who’ve fucked up. Nice modern day spy thriller.
Best Picture: This looks to be between Fabelmans and EEAAO
Best Director: This looks to be between Fabelmans and EEAAO
I gather best director will go to Spielberg. Is Fabelmans one of his top 3 films…obviously no. But Spielberg is obviously one of the GOATs. Fabelmans is best picture favorite, but I lean towards EEAAO best pic and Fabelmans best director
Best Actor: This was supposed to be a gimme for Brandon Fraser. But I don’t know what odds Austin Butler is at…but I like his odds after he won the golden globe
Best Actress: Critics say Tar is Cate Blanchetts best performance. Haven’t watched it. But she already has two oscars, and Yeoh is a blast is EEAAO.
Best Supporting Actor: Looks like Ke Huy Quan is lock, dude is awesome
Best Supporting Actress: uhh…
Angela Bassett won in the golden globes for Black Panther. I guess that makes her the favorite now…but really?
Looking at historical Asian Oscar winners, and Israel, Lebanon, and Armenia have about as much representation as China, Korea, and Japan. I wouldn’t count out Blanchett just because of racism.
Binged Welcome to Wrexham (FX/Hulu) over the past week or so - if you haven’t heard of it, it’s a documentary about Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds buying Wrexham AFC, a soccer team in north Wales that’s in the 5th tier of English football.
It’s kind of a sports documentary, like Sunderland 'Til I Die (great choice btw if you haven’t seen it and like sports documentaries, also minor spoiler but that team suuuuuucks and you kinda get to enjoy their pain since Sunderland is one of the most Brexity places in England), but spends a lot less time on the field & following the results of games than most. Instead, they spend a lot more time with players and fans off the field, focusing a lot on Wrexham as a community & what the team means to it, as well as with Rob and Ryan to follow their budding bromance and their experience with the team. It’s also interesting to follow as an experiment - like, what if someone with (relative to the 5th tier of English soccer, anyway) infinite money bought your crappy team and was like “we’re gonna pour a bunch of money in to get better coaches and better players because we want to win, and that sounds fun?” Well, in this show you can find out!
My wife isn’t super into sports but she really liked the show too.
Just started this. I’d be curious to see a sample of the different orders people get to know how different they actually are. So far our order has been:
For some weird reason (weird because I unabashedly love musical theatre) I just watched The Greatest Showman for the first time.
I guess I never realized how many recognizable songs were from that movie.
I know it was critically panned because PT Barnum wasn’t a great dude and the movie definitely glossed over that part, but I never saw it as an attempt to rehab his image. Anyway, fuck critics, I liked it.
I think it was goofy who recommended the If Books Could Kill podcast but I’m halfway through ep 1 and it’s a certified banger. This could be the bad book podcast I’ve been craving ever since I Don’t Even Own A Television went into semi-retirement.
