Watched the first half of the Netflix 3 Body Problem tonight, was pleasantly surprised by it mostly staying true to the books (aside from moving the setting from China to London, though it kept the Mao era stuff), seems pretty good. My wife likes it too and she didn’t read the books.
I thought the in-game stuff would be hard to relay to the screen but they completely nailed those scenes.
Heck yeah. True cinema the way it was meant to be seen.
Plus you don’t have to read the terrible writing of the author! It’s great!
I enjoyed it. I thought Ye was good even without getting nearly as much as in the books (though of course we don’t get as much for almost anyone). Will stuff was good, but that may be partially from having read the books, but I imagine the sequence where he bought the star was a highlight for non readers too.
Enjoyed Davos as Wade. Dr. Cheekbones was a bit much. Liked Cheng, looking forward to her stuff going forward. Saul was decent but he has a lot to live up to, that character in the book is great.
ETA biggest loss from the book was obviously getting more of Da Shi.
going through sopranos S1 with junior, probably haven’t seen this season in 20 years, amazing how much Livia is exactly like today’s Q-pilled boomers. “I’m not going into the city, they throw babies off of bridges” literally sounds like every suburbanite today when you mention any urban area. And really, NYC was what, 20x more dangerous in 1998? Rudy had “cleaned it up” or whatever and crime levels weren’t close to what they were in the 70s-80s but still a lot worse than now, yet every white person over 40 thinks urban crime is worse than ever
Livia was supposed to be over the top but nope, just a standard boomer in 2024.
I have no idea what you two are talking about. Liv is basically a caricature of someone with Borderline P.D.
yes and she sounds like a mainstream 2024 suburbanite GOP voter
this could literally be from any suburban nextdoor replies when someone says they went into the city to do something
“I don’t answer the phone after dark” sounds like any number of q-pilled morons I’ve interacted with
my point is that usually in the 1st season characters are more 2-dimensional while the writers kind of figure out the flow and vibes, but livia is already fully formed, completely realistic. When you saw it in 1999 she seemed ridiculous but in 2024 now you see the masterstrokes…
Fallout is A+. I really felt like it was true to the style, humor, and storytelling of the games, but also my wife isn’t a gamer and really enjoyed it just as a good show. Walton Goggins is great. I felt like a couple of the middle episodes dragged a little but it picks up towards the end and the last episode is amazing, can’t wait for S2.
Really looking forward to seeing the Fallout show after I completely finish replaying Fallout 3 and NV and maybe F4 and then catching up on Shogun…
I disagree with the excessive use of parentheticals
I feel personally attacked by this post 
But yeah I liked the article, and I don’t know that the situation it describes is so bad. There’s still lots of TV out there that’s trying new things and wants to be good, and studios are still funding that stuff (the author notes these exceptions while largely slamming Apple TV), and it seems kinda like what the article describing is simply the worst TV improving in quality and becoming…fine. That’s great! For my next flight I’ll load up downloads of Murder At The End of the World starring Emma Corrin (she played Diana in The Crown!) on my phone and that flight will zip right by, it’ll be great. Is that state of affairs really so bad? The author bemoans the wide availability of middling content but I don’t know that they really made much of a case that the good stuff is worse, and that’s what matters.
I also couldn’t help but laugh:
Mid TV, on the other hand, almost can’t be bad for some of the same reasons that keep it from being great. It’s often an echo of the last generation of breakthrough TV (so the highs and lows of “Game of Thrones” are succeeded by the faithful adequacy of “House of the Dragon”).
We’ve been blasted by ads for the new HotD season during NBA playoffs, and my wife winces when they’re on, and I asked why and she said “because that show’s so bad but I know I’m going to watch it”.
This is why I rewatch the same half dozen shows (The Wire, BrBa, BCS, Mad Men, The Sopranos, The Americans) and usually miss the “new show” for years. I can’t tell you anything interesting that happened in HotD or For All Mankind S3.
I saw this while visiting family this weekend, they’re Seinfeld fans and must have caught the wrong article claiming this movie was good. It’s pretty bad!
There’s zero evidence Seinfeld has any talent. He owes Larry David every cent.
