rigorousintuition.ca

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De0x8T2XqnA


Fictional mini-series based on the large, real-life multinational gang of jewel thieves the Pink Panthers. I'm half way through & don't want it to end, but it's well worth viewing more than once.

The only complaint I have is the opening credits montage; not very original in that it seems to copy the 1st season opening of 'True Detective'. Also, David Bowie's 'Blackstar' doesn't fit the story/atmosphere, imho... Annoying beginning to each episode but easy enough to fast forward...

Opens w/a great heist scene (also good is the 3rd episode's prison heist).

(In another thread Mac wrote about brilliant actress Samantha Morton...I agree; in every role I've seen her, it seems that she eclipses the other performers. She gets star billing in this, but she's not the focus--at least not so far--a lot of other fine actors, characters & subplots. Also, one of John Hurt's last performances.)

fwiw...Finished the 'The Last Panthers' series..........the second half focuses less on heist(s) and more on the history, geopolitics (past, present & future) of Balkan countries. Also, Samantha Morton's & John Hurt's characters, along w/others' intertwining relationships, feuds & loyalties are more developed.

But I found the final episode & ending very disappointing. Even wondered if I'd somehow missed a whole episode between the end of 5 (Morton's character Naomi's actions didn't make any logical sense to me) & 6. It was wrapped up too quickly; some scenes implausible (are loud gun fights in apartment buildings & garages in London so commonplace that nobody calls the police and the participants can linger?). The final scene was meant to be poignant, I guess, but I found it so unlikely it was almost comical. Still, worth watching again, for what I missed or didn't grasp (a lot).

A good 1990's series w/Robbie Coltrane as a criminal psychologist:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuWwqjDNWU

DrEvil » Fri Nov 03, 2017 8:48 pm wrote:Oh, and Mr. Robot season 3 has started, and things are actually starting to make sense, plus it's moving into some honest to god science fiction territory.

SPOILERS THEN.


Spoiler:Huge disappointment. OWS is eschewed, it was all a terrible mistake. We end up with Evil Corp as a necessary evil, a bulwark against the real threat: THE YELLOW PERIL!!! Effeminate sneaky Chinese perpetrates 9/11 times 50! PLUS she sets up a false-flag Trump election to be blamed on Russians. Several insultingly preposterous turns that could have had credibility only as another all-a-dream rewind, including the sudden lesbian seduction and the RIDICULOUS protection of the siblings responsible for all the carnage by the FBI at the end. (And Ms. Yellow Peril also lets them off for a reason no more solid than "we sure hope to get a fourth season out of this.") Also the TRIPLE-RIDICULOUS idea that everything could be restored to status quo ante hackum. The Fight Club rip off actually went all the way to a literal Eliot-Mr. Robot fight, which was just embarrassing to watch -- I mean, for me especially, for still watching this crap 10 episodes in. Only the three minutes on the Knight Rider theme almost made the whole thing worth it. Given that this is RI, one should rightly wonder if the CIA took over the show running at some point after Season 1.

La Ley Secreta or Undercover Law on Netflix is another dynamite Colombian series.
This one follows 5 female undercover agents infiltrating the biggest drug cartel in Colombia.until all their investigations converge.

If you watched La Niña you’ll recognize a few of the same actors. I really loved this show and didn’t want it to end.

Has anyone seen Homecoming (TV Series 2018– )? I saw a trailer and noted some explicit MC themes, so I came here to ask about it.

Checking previous posts to see if Homecoming had already been discussed, I saw Jack's Mr. Robot spoiler remarks, and recognized Mr. Robot as the work of Sam Esmail, who is also an executive producer of Homecoming, along with its star Julia Roberts and others, and is the series' director.

The Homecoming trailers made me think the series might, to some degree, be an exposé of sorts.

Then I read Jack's review of Mr.Robot, now I'm especially curious about Homecoming. See at least the last sentence in Jack's Mr. Robot spoiler. (I have not seen Mr. Robot.)



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbIrdxTCmf8


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbnRPItgpLA

JackRiddler wrote:

DrEvil » Fri Nov 03, 2017 8:48 pm wrote:
Oh, and

Mr. Robot

season 3 has started, and things are actually starting to make sense, plus it's moving into some honest to god science fiction territory.

SPOILERS THEN.

Spoiler:Spoiler:Huge disappointment. OWS is eschewed, it was all a terrible mistake. We end up with Evil Corp as a necessary evil, a bulwark against the real threat: THE YELLOW PERIL!!! Effeminate sneaky Chinese perpetrates 9/11 times 50! PLUS she sets up a false-flag Trump election to be blamed on Russians. Several insultingly preposterous turns that could have had credibility only as another all-a-dream rewind, including the sudden lesbian seduction and the RIDICULOUS protection of the siblings responsible for all the carnage by the FBI at the end. (And Ms. Yellow Peril also lets them off for a reason no more solid than "we sure hope to get a fourth season out of this.") Also the TRIPLE-RIDICULOUS idea that everything could be restored to status quo ante hackum. The Fight Club rip off actually went all the way to a literal Eliot-Mr. Robot fight, which was just embarrassing to watch -- I mean, for me especially, for still watching this crap 10 episodes in. Only the three minutes on the Knight Rider theme almost made the whole thing worth it. Given that this is RI, one should rightly wonder if the CIA took over the show running at some point after Season 1.[/quote]

^^I've seen the first few episodes and like it so far. The visual and audio style is very similar to Mr. Robot.

I'm still not sure where they're going with the plot, but definitely some kind of mind control / conditioning angle.

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Other than a few minutes back in the age of channel-flipping, I never watched anything out of the 12 seasons of the neo-Doctor Who and also barely anything out of the old-older stuff of the Baker and pre-Baker era.

Got drawn in by the sex change and trying on the new series to see what the "message" is. Gad, is it positive! A universe with infinite uplift, but it's humorous enough. The "companion," which I understood to have always been one person at a time, has turned into a diverse trio from Sheffield. They have kind of a sitcom feel about them. All premises are preposterous, most well-worn. Sure, every time my time machine is misdirected and I land in a random spot out of all the possible universal space-times, it will be just in the right place-time to stop some racist time-traveling alien from preventing Rosa Parks's protest.

I like that the Doctor plays it plucky-daffy and is a kind of unpretentious Cosmic Pangloss -- everyone can be a friend! -- insofar as she'll never kill anything no matter how ultra-evil, dangerous, and threatening, but only ever outwit or persuade'em. So exuberant and likable. So willing to launch off spontaneously into the worst-advised, dumbest ideas for adventures. And guess how it always turns out? Got better once the setting-up was done. Still makes no sense. I liked the one with the autonomous hospital ship and the little universe-eating beast. Who wouldn't? The one just now, with the scenario set in Punjab at Partition, struck me as something you'd pretty much never see on American TV. American time travelers are almost always doing American time travel, or something Anglo, or Romans and Greeks.

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I watched the whole season of Homecoming. Pace was a bit slow, nothing like Jed Mercurio’s stuff but was quite good anyway.

It is an expose’ and I’m glad that someone with the clout of Julia Roberts is tackling this subject matter. I think Homecoming is an example of a TV show on military mind control abuse that can educate and raise consciousness instead of muddy the waters with sensationalized disinfo.

Very pleased with Homecoming, may check out Mr. Robot next.

Thanks for those notes on Homecoming! Maybe I'll watch it someday. It does at least look like a compelling storyline, which helps.

It seems like the whole world is watching multiple TV series, plus movies, while I don't know how I'd find the time for it. I'm also a little afraid of becoming addicted to TV again.

Heaven Swan » Sat Dec 01, 2018 6:30 pm wrote:I watched the whole season of Homecoming. Pace was a bit slow, nothing like Jed Mercurio’s stuff but was quite good anyway.

It is an expose’ and I’m glad that someone with the clout of Julia Roberts is tackling this subject matter. I think Homecoming is an example of a TV show on military mind control abuse that can educate and raise consciousness instead of muddy the waters with sensationalized disinfo.

Very pleased with Homecoming, may check out Mr. Robot next.

Very good, though slanted; finished Season 1 & starting Season 2.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkOKkS7mKfY


Streaming on Netflix so I'm unable to watch, but a discerning friend recommends:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LYiAEV_XnA

(I'm reading the Grisham book it's is based on and finding it compelling; a good read.)

Is Netflix taking over the whole screen world?

Only new show I watch in a while is The Orville. I would call it Star Trek Lite.

^^I honestly think it's a better Star Trek show than Star Trek Discovery. They have the cool ideas of Star Trek plus some excellent humor, and they're not afraid of touchy topics, like gender reassignment or porn addiction.

I am also watching True Detective season 3 and Counterpart season 2. They're both still good, I just hope they don't botch the ending of True Detective, like in season 1 (the whole crying in the wheelchair and babbling about love thing with Rust. It was so completely out of character).

Le Bureau des Légendes also recently finished off its final season, and it's an excellent show.

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Watching both, of course, quasi involuntarily. And here I skipped every single Star Trek since the 1967 series except for the movies and the animated series, having seen only a couple of episodes of Deep Space Nine.

Disco is much more effective emotionally in the second season, having crammed way too much to establish its multiple empires and universes in the first. It's pure space opera with copious soap and either you like it or you don't.

Orville is much more in the original ST mode of one complete parable per episode, and more willing to have single-joke alien species. The porn and gender reassignment episodes were indeed ambitious and surprisingly nuanced. As with all filmed SF, there is way too much threat of total world/universe destruction in almost every episode of both series.

In propaganda terms, both are in the mode of a benevolently militarized super-tech post-money galactic wish-fulfillment American socialism with room for total individual actualization within a corporate team ethic wherein every principal character gets their turn to surprise, shine, and achieve their next experience level while doing exactly whatever has to be done to save the universe/planet/ship with just seconds to spare and too much music, after which the ship-family-team finds they are even closer and warmer to each other than ever, despite their crazy species and character differences.

Orville is explicitly like an HR saga, taking elements of Parks and Recreation and The Office into "space." Every single element of the Trek universe is adopted with different names for Klingons, the Federation, warp, etc., and matter transformers that provide every imaginable consumer object instantaneously, holodecks, no concerns about zero gravity ever or any sudden epidemics that don't have a plot function and can't be cured, unbelievably large and stylish quarters on a goddamn warship, etc., except that in Orville they don't have transporters, which is an excellent choice.

Neither is speculative fiction in the sense that this is about the future, it's all about the present-day globalized United States, kind of like every Trek since 1967.

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^^ Um, what he said.
Just kidding.
When it first aired I didn't know what to make of it. I thought it would be balls-out comedy considering it came from Seth Macfarlane. I guess Fox advertised it wrong which I believe Seth said as much.
I think Alara leaving was bullocks. She was one of my favourite characters in the show's short run.