Nothing but Star Wars: Rebels at the moment, but we just picked up a second Chromecast, for our spare bedroom (we are nice to our guests), and it came with 2 months of Hulu plus. Is there anything particularly good on Hulu that I wouldn't have access to anywhere else? I'm inclined to not even redeem the offer.
I started watching this really good German miniseries called Generation War, which is about five young people during World War II. It's kind of Band of Brothers, but told from the German side, and at first, I didn't think I would like it, or feel sympathetic towards any of the charactes, because, you know, it's about German soldiers, but the show does an excellent job at showing what it must have been like for the average German citizen during the early 1940s. The conflict and rivalry between the normal German soldier and the SS, the gradual loss of humanity as it became less about winning the war and just trying to survive, etc.
I'm really surprised at how good this show is, which, given the subject matter and my own background, I never would have expected. I'm also really impressed at how "honest" this show is at portraying some of the horrible things that the Germans did during WWII, considering that this is a German TV show. Having lived in Japan for three years, I can't imagine the Japanese making a show like this showing the atrocities and crimes that their own people committed during the same time period.
The show is three 90 minute episodes and is available on Amazon Prime, unfortunately not free. If you want to watch the show by "other means," it's readily available.
Definitely worth checking out if you like Band of Brothers type shows, World War II, or just good drama.
Here's a link to the trailer in case anyone is interested:
So, Pete & I liked Madoka & Kill la Kill. Is there any anime on Netflix that we should watch next? It's kinda hard to judge based on the covers and captions.
Man, its worth using a vpn just to get different shows on netflix. Like Community and Misfits are only on Hulu Plus in the US afaik but they're on the Canadian and UK Netflix.
I've started on True Detective now. It's slow paced, but not in a bad way. All the better to watch these two guys act their faces off. Very good performances.
Overall I'm very happy to see such high quality TV coming in episodic or serial nature. I don't have time for TV. I watch the majority of it while working out, so I love things that are only 1 episode or 1 season long.
Suits is back, been catching up with it. It's so repetitive it should be boring, but it somehow avoids being terrible. It's loosing me though if they can't stop being so soap-opera-y and get back to doing lawyer shit.
Tudors... anyone like that show? I think I'm done halfway though season 2: I just can't even. I like all the elements, but, one more episode that is indistinguishable from the last and I'd shiv myself in the kidneys. The best I can say is that it's good background for builds in Minecraft because its about as repetitive as building towers block by block. So maybe I'll eventually suffer through to the good stuff.
Steven Universe is best animation. I am so into it I think I stopped caring that new Adventure Time is also going on. Each episode is simple, yet just keeps piling on the cool stuff and the references and everyone is awesome.
The Fall Into season 2 and I don't know how I'm supposed to feel watching the show. Gross, confused, turned on, turned off, worried, uncaring... I don't know. Do they know? Is that the point? I can stomach it because Scully and the seasons are short.
Girls und Panzer It's an anime, but I'm not going to venture into an anime thread to point out that I watched this show and it was cute and sorta fun but for some reason I can never suspend the disbelief enough to overlook that these are girls shooting high energy shells at each-other and being IN a tank is bad enough, being unbuttoned and hanging out outside the tank while its all going on is just asking for someone to come home without an upper torso. Like, my mind gets it, that its a show and there's plot armor so thick that it's been acknowledged by the characters yet not quite, but regardless there's that part of my mind that knows what really happens and its so far from plausible that what they are doing can exist, yet so well portrayed that its in an uncanny valley of danger. Part of that might be from paintball, which is a real sport we play and does involve shooting other people, and does require everyone to carefully observe safety rules and because the few cases where things have gone wrong are well documented and known about... and so we are disciplined: and the tank show just says "fuck all of that because fantasy" and it doesn't exactly work.
That being said though, if some of the safety risks were worked out (not using actual rounds, requiring everyone be buttoned up in the tank, using specific cordoned off areas for battles) I would love to see actual Sensha-do type games (though of course inclusive to all genders) There is some precedent in the UK of armored vehicles shooting ping-pong balls at each-other; and in paintball we have tanks that fire foam Nerf footballs using air cannons and those battles are epic.
They don't replicate actual tank combat, where armor and angles and gun size and all that matters, but they do replicate a sort of 2.5D dogfighting in vehicles that require teamwork to operate and that's most of the fun.
Question about Suits: I never watched it but I recall seeing a trailer where some lawyer was going to get outed for not going to law school. If he is an active lawyer then he had to have passed the bar? Wouldn't passing the bar without having gone to law school be mad bragging rights?
He (unofficially) passed the bar by writing it for someone else. One of the conflicts in the show is that the firm he works for has a policy to only hire Harvard graduates.
Below might be minor spoilers, I guess? It depends how much you care about minor background details being revealed.
But the basic rundown is that the kid, Mike, is super good at law but also is not from a prestigious background and to help earn money in highschool and college, he was charging people to take exams for them (and help a friend who sells pot from time to time) Then he gets caught by a school official at Harvard with the cheating bit and is denied entrance forever (even though he was accepted already)
Then he passes a job interview at a major law firm, but they only hire people who went to Harvard so the guy who hires him decides they will conspire to lie and say he did, even tho, no, he diddn't.
And the show is going on the idea that you have to have graduated law school to even take the bar (which IRL only requires 2 years of schooling in NY) so he couldn't just take the bar, having not graduated (especially not at Harvard)
By the time he starts working as a full lawyer and not a glorified paralegal, they had found ways to basically hack into the various systems and forge paperwork so on paper he had all the credentials, and even people who looked at the bar database would find his name; but there are a few small gaps in the paperwork yet, and so that plus gaps in his knowledge of the school and its culture and such lead to various conflicts in the plot.
I think the fan consensus is that they had ways in the first season or two for everyone to go straight more-or-less as long as a few key people were informed and they covered up a few details, and were willing to wait a year or so for the kid to go actually take some classes and do the exam.
But by the 3rd season and beyond, its too late to go legit without the whole thing collapsing and crushing multiple careers. So everyone's stuck in the same boat on this dumb secret.
Frankly, they'd be best off at this point paying the kid a shitload of money to go retire somewhere in good faith that he'll stay away from everything and not have to work, and hope the paper trails and statutes of limitations expire on anything he touched. But that'd be too easy and it goes against the whole 'You gotta play in the big leagues' mentality the main characters have.
Steven Universe is best animation. I am so into it I think I stopped caring that new Adventure Time is also going on. Each episode is simple, yet just keeps piling on the cool stuff and the references and everyone is awesome.
New season of Top Gear is awesome. I can't believe that show has that many seasons and is still great TV. I like the hill climb race spot and was pretty amazed at Richard Hammond's time. The producers obviously wanted to show the champion of the hill climb cars though, great photography, I wish they released more photos at higher resolutions on their website.
10 days. I went through seasons 1 and 2 again. Such a great show. I really enjoy the the moments when there is no dialogue but looks from either Frank or Claire.
I started watching House of Cards a couple of months ago, but things got in the way and the show was kind of too "dense" (not as in stupid, but as in things you have to pay attention to every episode) for me at the time. Started watching from episode one again today and I will pace myself. Show is excellent but I think your mind would explode if you tried to marathon it.
Comments
I'm really surprised at how good this show is, which, given the subject matter and my own background, I never would have expected. I'm also really impressed at how "honest" this show is at portraying some of the horrible things that the Germans did during WWII, considering that this is a German TV show. Having lived in Japan for three years, I can't imagine the Japanese making a show like this showing the atrocities and crimes that their own people committed during the same time period.
The show is three 90 minute episodes and is available on Amazon Prime, unfortunately not free. If you want to watch the show by "other means," it's readily available.
Definitely worth checking out if you like Band of Brothers type shows, World War II, or just good drama.
Here's a link to the trailer in case anyone is interested:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=8sFQJLy0_cg
So rough for James May cracking 3 ribs is no joke.
Nationalistic grudges are stupid.
In addition to that I'm really enjoying the come back of Justified.
I've started on True Detective now. It's slow paced, but not in a bad way. All the better to watch these two guys act their faces off. Very good performances.
Overall I'm very happy to see such high quality TV coming in episodic or serial nature. I don't have time for TV. I watch the majority of it while working out, so I love things that are only 1 episode or 1 season long.
Tudors... anyone like that show? I think I'm done halfway though season 2: I just can't even. I like all the elements, but, one more episode that is indistinguishable from the last and I'd shiv myself in the kidneys. The best I can say is that it's good background for builds in Minecraft because its about as repetitive as building towers block by block. So maybe I'll eventually suffer through to the good stuff.
Steven Universe is best animation. I am so into it I think I stopped caring that new Adventure Time is also going on. Each episode is simple, yet just keeps piling on the cool stuff and the references and everyone is awesome.
The Fall Into season 2 and I don't know how I'm supposed to feel watching the show. Gross, confused, turned on, turned off, worried, uncaring... I don't know. Do they know? Is that the point? I can stomach it because Scully and the seasons are short.
Girls und Panzer It's an anime, but I'm not going to venture into an anime thread to point out that I watched this show and it was cute and sorta fun but for some reason I can never suspend the disbelief enough to overlook that these are girls shooting high energy shells at each-other and being IN a tank is bad enough, being unbuttoned and hanging out outside the tank while its all going on is just asking for someone to come home without an upper torso. Like, my mind gets it, that its a show and there's plot armor so thick that it's been acknowledged by the characters yet not quite, but regardless there's that part of my mind that knows what really happens and its so far from plausible that what they are doing can exist, yet so well portrayed that its in an uncanny valley of danger. Part of that might be from paintball, which is a real sport we play and does involve shooting other people, and does require everyone to carefully observe safety rules and because the few cases where things have gone wrong are well documented and known about... and so we are disciplined: and the tank show just says "fuck all of that because fantasy" and it doesn't exactly work.
That being said though, if some of the safety risks were worked out (not using actual rounds, requiring everyone be buttoned up in the tank, using specific cordoned off areas for battles) I would love to see actual Sensha-do type games (though of course inclusive to all genders) There is some precedent in the UK of armored vehicles shooting ping-pong balls at each-other; and in paintball we have tanks that fire foam Nerf footballs using air cannons and those battles are epic.
They don't replicate actual tank combat, where armor and angles and gun size and all that matters, but they do replicate a sort of 2.5D dogfighting in vehicles that require teamwork to operate and that's most of the fun.
But the basic rundown is that the kid, Mike, is super good at law but also is not from a prestigious background and to help earn money in highschool and college, he was charging people to take exams for them (and help a friend who sells pot from time to time) Then he gets caught by a school official at Harvard with the cheating bit and is denied entrance forever (even though he was accepted already)
Then he passes a job interview at a major law firm, but they only hire people who went to Harvard so the guy who hires him decides they will conspire to lie and say he did, even tho, no, he diddn't.
And the show is going on the idea that you have to have graduated law school to even take the bar (which IRL only requires 2 years of schooling in NY) so he couldn't just take the bar, having not graduated (especially not at Harvard)
By the time he starts working as a full lawyer and not a glorified paralegal, they had found ways to basically hack into the various systems and forge paperwork so on paper he had all the credentials, and even people who looked at the bar database would find his name; but there are a few small gaps in the paperwork yet, and so that plus gaps in his knowledge of the school and its culture and such lead to various conflicts in the plot.
I think the fan consensus is that they had ways in the first season or two for everyone to go straight more-or-less as long as a few key people were informed and they covered up a few details, and were willing to wait a year or so for the kid to go actually take some classes and do the exam.
But by the 3rd season and beyond, its too late to go legit without the whole thing collapsing and crushing multiple careers. So everyone's stuck in the same boat on this dumb secret.
Frankly, they'd be best off at this point paying the kid a shitload of money to go retire somewhere in good faith that he'll stay away from everything and not have to work, and hope the paper trails and statutes of limitations expire on anything he touched. But that'd be too easy and it goes against the whole 'You gotta play in the big leagues' mentality the main characters have.
I can't believe that show has that many seasons and is still great TV.
I like the hill climb race spot and was pretty amazed at Richard Hammond's time.
The producers obviously wanted to show the champion of the hill climb cars though, great photography, I wish they released more photos at higher resolutions on their website.
I'm still sad about Doug. I really liked him.