I am currently watching television programmes

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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby Nordic » Tue Mar 20, 2012 11:49 pm

When I was younger, about the only thing I would watch were British TV shows that made it over here.

Anybody remember "Reilly, Ace of Spies"? And "Danger UXB"? Probably the two best shows I've ever witnessed until The Sopranos came along.

Danger UXB had the most unbearable suspense. Sometimes they would kill a major character when the bomb defusions went badly! So you never knew just how it was going, just like the characters in the show who didn't know if they were going to live or die day-to-day.

Reilly Ace of Spies was based on a real character, one of the most fascinating rogues of all time. Worthy of its own thread I'd say.
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby sunny » Tue Mar 27, 2012 7:35 pm

Simulist wrote:
And yes, Sunny! Absolutely. True Blood is perfectly awesome. And Jason Stackhouse is a riot.


Yes he is! I think the main problem most people have with taking True Blood seriously is that the references are so couched in hokey, folksy melo-dramedy it's hard to see what they're on about.

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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby Project Willow » Tue Mar 27, 2012 8:19 pm

sunny wrote:The only show I care about, have cared about since Soprano's is True Blood. Well, I'm obsessed, I won't lie. I won't belabor it here except to say that True Blood gets a bum rap. This shit is deep. The subtext is all tangled up in a mind-fuck narrative so twisted and complicated practically no one will believe me when I try to explain it. It has to be obsessed over to 'get it'. For the casual viewer it's pure sex, blood, sensationalism. That is, if they haven't turned away yet in disgust as many fans claim they've done.


Sunny, have you read the books?

True Blood is violent as hell, but I like it anyway because it's all about secret specialness, and how those things take on a whole new meaning down South. I don't quite get the specific subtext you're getting, but it's all close enough. Closed off skeptics of the North could benefit from some Southern folk wisdom, open up their senses a bit.

I'm only through season 3. Netflix doesn't stream it.

Your description of Downtown is spot on, BTW.
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby sunny » Wed Mar 28, 2012 9:10 am

Project Willow wrote:Sunny, have you read the books?


I haven't and have no desire to read them. In the books Bill unambiguously raped Sookie several times but he's still considered 'suitor' material. The author, Charlaine Harris, seems to have taken up a professional association with some of his ardent fans [two of them wrote material for her companion book that smells a lot like retconning] and is now busy ignoring the sordid history of that relationship.

True Blood is violent as hell, but I like it anyway because it's all about secret specialness, and how those things take on a whole new meaning down South....Closed off skeptics of the North could benefit from some Southern folk wisdom, open up their senses a bit.


True that. The Southern ambiance and characterizations feels very authentic.

I don't quite get the specific subtext you're getting, but it's all close enough.


How is your take different from mine? I knew you would see what I see, at least to an extent, and have very often thought of you when writing about Sookie as a victim of RA/MC.

I'm willing to toss the 'Supersoldier' part of the theory but something to do with human experimentation is going on.

I'm only through season 3. Netflix doesn't stream it.


Season 4 is more of a mind fuck than all the other seasons combined. I am thisclose to being sure that at the end of season 3 Sookie was kindapped into a Matrix-style pod and what we saw was a totally manufactured alternate 'reality'. In past seasons many isolated scenes or sequences had the distinct smell of screen memories but season 4 went above and beyond.

If you have HBO, season 4 encore begins April 5.
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby Project Willow » Thu Mar 29, 2012 1:55 am

That's good to know about the books, others have recommended them to me, but I haven't yet pursued them.

sunny wrote:How is your take different from mine?


I wouldn't know where to start because I haven't seen the series in many months and could only provide a bare gist of my reactions. I'll post again when I view the newer season. Regardless, I don't think I'd approach this work as if there is some determinate meaning to be discovered.

Where can I read your writing?
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby sunny » Sun Apr 29, 2012 10:09 am

Mad Men.

Twice in a row this season--5.05, 'Signal 30', and 5.06, 'Far Away Places'-- a walk on actress has passed through a scene wearing a pink suit and pillbox hat. It's 1966 in MM universe, so I'm thinking the Jackie doppelgangers are foreshadowing some interesting discussions on Mark Lane's Rush to Judgement, published in '66. Should be very good, considering how well the show handled the assassination itself.
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby Pierre d'Achoppement » Sun Apr 29, 2012 10:55 am

I have been following one series last couple of months and it was breaking bad, which i mostly liked for the actors in it, especially the father from malcolm in the middle who has a really intresting face.
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby sunny » Wed Jun 13, 2012 1:53 pm

For Sim:

Image

:jumping:
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby Simulist » Wed Jun 13, 2012 10:31 pm

sunny wrote:For Sim:

Image

:jumping:

Hey Sunny, thank you! Yep. Jason is my absolute favorite True Blood character. He's cute, he's sweet, and he's so dumb that he cracks me up. Totally.

My two favorite Jason Stackhouse quotes:

    "You've reached Officer Jason Stackhouse. If this is an emergency, dial 911 and ask for me."

... and ...

    "It's like if a tree falls in the woods... it's still a tree, ain't it?"

:D
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby sunny » Wed Jun 13, 2012 10:43 pm

Oh, I love this game!! Hee.

“That sonofabitch! It's like he sucked out my brain and planted all his own babies there.”


"I've already been to heaven. It was inside your wife".

"I didn't think I was smart enough to get depressed".

Jason: “There's werewolves? Big Foot, is he real, too?”
Sookie: “I don't know, I guess it's possible.”
Jason: “Santa?”
Sookie: Jason, focus!


"That's the nicest "I love you" I ever got from anyone, man, woman, or otherwise".

"I love when shit applies"

The full quote:

Andy: In my book, if no one thinks we’re heroes it don’t count.

Jason: Of course it counts. It’s like if a tree falls in the woods it’s still a tree ain’t it? The whole point in being a hero is to do something greater than yourself. It’d be easy to do it for the glory or the girls but we’re bigger men than that.


Jason is an absolute darling. The poor boy is incapable of lying and I love him for it. :lovehearts:
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby Simulist » Wed Jun 13, 2012 10:58 pm

Oh wow. The full quote provides context that displays his true character. I like how he's been evolving over the years.

And that Santa quote is just SO sweet...

You know, when I started watching True Blood, I wasn't sure at all that I was going to like Jason — but the episode where he drank a full vial of V started humanizing him, and many of the decisions he's made along the way, including his long-suffering compassion for the residents of Hotshot made me respect him.

True Blood: THE best show on television, in my opinion.
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Dark Skies

Postby MinM » Fri Jun 15, 2012 8:48 pm

sunny wrote:Mad Men.

Twice in a row this season--5.05, 'Signal 30', and 5.06, 'Far Away Places'-- a walk on actress has passed through a scene wearing a pink suit and pillbox hat. It's 1966 in MM universe, so I'm thinking the Jackie doppelgangers are foreshadowing some interesting discussions on Mark Lane's Rush to Judgement, published in '66. Should be very good, considering how well the show handled the assassination itself.

Dark Skies covered in one season about the same time period Mad Men has in it's run. Although in Dark Skies these historical events were used as plot devices central to the overall storyline. All of this set against a backdrop of an ongoing alien invasion stemming from the 1947 Roswell Crash.

This tidbit from the Educational Forum in a thread about Danny Casolaro of all things prompted me to check out the Dark Skies dvd...
St. Louis Magazine, August 2008

Stalking the Octopus


For 20 years Kenn Thomas of Steamshovel Press has been tracking the oily tentacles of world conspiracy — and shaking readers out of their reality tunnel

by Stefene Russell

Recent history is a vast record of a vast conspiracy to impose one level of mechanical consciousness on mankind. –Allen Ginsberg

...Thomas even wonders out loud if he and fellow conspiracy newsletter publishers Greg Bishop, editor of the now-defunct Excluded Middle, and Jim Martin of Flatland were perhaps the inspiration for The X-Files' Lone Gunmen; in fact, he saw smatterings of Steamshovel in Mel Gibson's Conspiracy Theory, too.

"Everything in there, everything this cab driver guy spots, is right out of Steamshovel Press," Thomas says. "There are two anthologies, basically back issues of Steamshovel. Brian Helgeland, the screenwriter, bought both of those books [Popular Alienation and Popular Paranoia] from Jim Martin at Flatland Press." Thomas says he's also seen material from the Steamshovel website show up on TV: "There was a show called Dark Skies on the SciFi channel that mixed in real historical figures with this whole alien story. I did some research one week on Dorothy Kilgallen; the next week, Dorothy Kilgallen was a character on the show. So I write a column about Carl Sagan—in the '60s Sagan presented a paper to all these rocket scientists on aliens—and the next week, Carl Sagan was a character on the show. So they're cribbing off the website." Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. "I've been told many times that I need to go to Hollywood and exploit this," Thomas laughs. "The thing about living in St. Louis is, for $200 you can go to any city in this country, and L.A.-centered stuff, New York–centered stuff—that's part of the conspiracy. It's part of the homogenizing of the world. I don't want to be part of that. I want a bigger picture. And you have to work harder to live in L.A. I think I've stumbled upon the perfect place." ...

viewtopic.php?p=465448#p465448

Unfortunately, as with some other slightly subversive (by U.S. Network standards) shows of that time (Nowhere Man and VR.5) and more recent examples (Rubicon and Alcatraz)...
Simulist wrote:There are only two television shows we keep up with on broadcast TV: Modern Family and Fringe (and, starting in January, Alcatraz of course). I totally love JJ Abrams' stuff, propagandistic though it may be (and, sometimes, surely is).

But we've also been having lots of fun on Netflix lately, watching The Tudors. (If Henry Cavill is in something, all he really has to do is just stand there, okay? He doesn't even have to speak! — although movement is greatly appreciated, and he really is quite a fine actor — and there'd be a good chance I'd want to watch it. Hey, I admit to being frivolous and superficial — but, remember, my superficiality only goes so deep!)

But that's about it with us for television. For me, reading is really where it's at.

Image
This week Alcatraz had a scene right out of the brainwashing montage in the Parallax View. :offair:

'Alcatraz': The Only Innocent Man On The Rock Isn't So Innocent Anymore (VIDEO)

rigorousintuition.ca :: "Pharmacologic Waterboarding" at Guantanamo

rigorousintuition.ca :: Mind Kontrol Themes on TeleVision

viewtopic.php?p=452920#p452920

the show only lasted one season. :offair:
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby Simulist » Fri Jun 15, 2012 9:41 pm

Yeah. That brainwashing thing was hard for me to watch, for reasons I'm not brave-enough to go into right now.
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Re: Dark Skies

Postby MinM » Fri Jun 15, 2012 9:45 pm

Image
A couple more thoughts on Dark Skies:

The portrayal of the killing of Dorothy Kilgallen is spot-on as to the why, the where, and the how. Not so much the who.

Also as with Nowhere Man...
A Special Ops guy in silhouette has some interesting revelations in the Nowhere Man DVD.

1) He claims that if he had to do it over, he would not have let himself be used as a tool of the MIC, or Big Government as he puts it. Perhaps he had a Pat Tillman-like epiphany? I tend to doubt it since he's involved with the likes of Surnow.

2) Since 1967 "Big Government" has been using TV as a form of Visual Hypnosis. There was also an episode that explored this phenomenon.

3) "Big Government" could have staged a 9/11 False-Flag in order to further extract concessions from Americans, and expand government authority. Although he is careful to couch this with the admonition that he is 150% sure that OBL did it...

So if you happen to get Nowhere Man through Netflix, before Netflix goes under, check out Special Features on Disk 9. Then click on Fact or Fiction?:
Nowhere Man: Fact or Fiction? - True Stories of CIA Mind Control Techniques (Video 2005)

An anonymous ex-CIA operative reveals real world government conspiracies, mind control techniques and how fragile our identity really is...

Director:
Evan Geerlings
Writer:
Lawrence Hertzog
Stars:
Baz and Bruce Greenwood

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0491796/

viewtopic.php?p=426547#p426547

the commentary (Signal-To-Noise: Uncovering Dark Skies) is probably more interesting than the individual episodes.
Image
Including a little nugget about shooting a scene in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel (shot in a scene totally unrelated to the RFK assassination which they were going to cover in season two).
sunny wrote:Mad Men.

Twice in a row this season--5.05, 'Signal 30', and 5.06, 'Far Away Places'-- a walk on actress has passed through a scene wearing a pink suit and pillbox hat. It's 1966 in MM universe, so I'm thinking the Jackie doppelgangers are foreshadowing some interesting discussions on Mark Lane's Rush to Judgement, published in '66. Should be very good, considering how well the show handled the assassination itself.

Dark Skies covered in one season about the same time period Mad Men has in it's run. Although in Dark Skies these historical events were used as plot devices central to the overall storyline. All of this set against a backdrop of an ongoing alien invasion stemming from the 1947 Roswell Crash.

This tidbit from the Educational Forum in a thread about Danny Casolaro of all things prompted me to check out the Dark Skies dvd...
St. Louis Magazine, August 2008

Stalking the Octopus


For 20 years Kenn Thomas of Steamshovel Press has been tracking the oily tentacles of world conspiracy — and shaking readers out of their reality tunnel

by Stefene Russell

Recent history is a vast record of a vast conspiracy to impose one level of mechanical consciousness on mankind. –Allen Ginsberg

...Thomas even wonders out loud if he and fellow conspiracy newsletter publishers Greg Bishop, editor of the now-defunct Excluded Middle, and Jim Martin of Flatland were perhaps the inspiration for The X-Files' Lone Gunmen; in fact, he saw smatterings of Steamshovel in Mel Gibson's Conspiracy Theory, too.

"Everything in there, everything this cab driver guy spots, is right out of Steamshovel Press," Thomas says. "There are two anthologies, basically back issues of Steamshovel. Brian Helgeland, the screenwriter, bought both of those books [Popular Alienation and Popular Paranoia] from Jim Martin at Flatland Press." Thomas says he's also seen material from the Steamshovel website show up on TV: "There was a show called Dark Skies on the SciFi channel that mixed in real historical figures with this whole alien story. I did some research one week on Dorothy Kilgallen; the next week, Dorothy Kilgallen was a character on the show. So I write a column about Carl Sagan—in the '60s Sagan presented a paper to all these rocket scientists on aliens—and the next week, Carl Sagan was a character on the show. So they're cribbing off the website." Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. "I've been told many times that I need to go to Hollywood and exploit this," Thomas laughs. "The thing about living in St. Louis is, for $200 you can go to any city in this country, and L.A.-centered stuff, New York–centered stuff—that's part of the conspiracy. It's part of the homogenizing of the world. I don't want to be part of that. I want a bigger picture. And you have to work harder to live in L.A. I think I've stumbled upon the perfect place." ...

viewtopic.php?p=465448#p465448

Unfortunately, as with some other slightly subversive (by U.S. Network standards) shows of that time (Nowhere Man and VR.5) and more recent examples (Rubicon and Alcatraz)...
Simulist wrote:There are only two television shows we keep up with on broadcast TV: Modern Family and Fringe (and, starting in January, Alcatraz of course). I totally love JJ Abrams' stuff, propagandistic though it may be (and, sometimes, surely is).

But we've also been having lots of fun on Netflix lately, watching The Tudors. (If Henry Cavill is in something, all he really has to do is just stand there, okay? He doesn't even have to speak! — although movement is greatly appreciated, and he really is quite a fine actor — and there'd be a good chance I'd want to watch it. Hey, I admit to being frivolous and superficial — but, remember, my superficiality only goes so deep!)

But that's about it with us for television. For me, reading is really where it's at.

Image
This week Alcatraz had a scene right out of the brainwashing montage in the Parallax View. :offair:

'Alcatraz': The Only Innocent Man On The Rock Isn't So Innocent Anymore (VIDEO)

rigorousintuition.ca :: "Pharmacologic Waterboarding" at Guantanamo

rigorousintuition.ca :: Mind Kontrol Themes on TeleVision

viewtopic.php?p=452920#p452920

the show only lasted one season. :offair:

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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby sunny » Sat Jun 16, 2012 9:34 am

Unfortunately Mad Men did not follow through on the JFK foreshadowing this season but there's always next year.

I've never even heard of Dark Skies. I'll have to check it out.
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