Planned Summer Intake Thread

[Viridis]

I suggest giving Better Off Ted a go. Funny dialog, fun characters. Has an oddly Arrested Development feel at times.

[Kerensky287]

Hey, so, that image macro of The Rock reminded me of something.

Anybody looking for a good movie to spend an afternoon with?

Go rent Faster.

No, not Fast and the Furious. It's called Faster.

It's an action movie. The main character is a former getaway car driver played by The Rock out for revenge on the people who murdered his brother. A dude gets shot in the face in the first five minutes.

It is also the deepest, most intellectual movie I have seen in ages.

Honestly, the title gets namedropped at one point. An assassin's talking about a run-in with the main character. "No, he's not as fast as me. He's FASTER."

It's not just a title drop. Without spoiling anything, it is a goddamn motherfucking metaphor.

...I mean, we're talking about stuff to fill up the summer with, right? Faster is one of those movies that looks like a dumb action flick but really, really isn't. I implore you all to give it a chance, fill up one single afternoon with this movie, and go in with an open mind.

[Lumenskir]

Ok, if you want the indie scene to be the savior, please feel free to ignore what actually gets made. I'm sure you do the same thing for movies that don't stay as long in theaters because they don't make enough money, or bands that only put out one album because they don't make enough sales, or etc. etc.

I mean, congrats on breaking the code that the mass public doesn't always like the greatest things. It still doesn't change the fact that those one/two season wonders actually got to see the light of day.

EDIT: And godammit, watch fucking Fringe or Community before you start spewing shit about how modern television doesn't allow for experimentation. And that's just modern stuff. Because, god fuck, what is your definition of experimentation besides a show where a guy brings his dead girlfriend back to life but then can't touch her again, or a space western, or a show told entirely in flashback with a pre-ordained ending, or a sprawling televised novel about the death of the modern city, or a show about being a teenager in a small shitty town in the 80s, or fucking any show past midnight on Adult Swim? What does 'experimentation' have to be to count?

DELAYED REALIZATION EDIT: This is the exact fucking situation described in my signature!! You can't just sit around and mourn the shows that don't come back while hoping there's a golden age up ahead. We're. In. The Fucking. Golden. Age!

CALM EDIT:

I suggest giving Better Off Ted a go. Funny dialog, fun characters. Has an oddly Arrested Development feel at times.

And the entirety is on Netflix! Also, agreed on the AD comparison; It was never quite fast enough to match it, but it was damn admirable anyways.

Speaking of great two-season comedies entirely on Netflix, Party Down!

[Fifthfiend]

I mean I haven't seen a lot of HIMYM but what I have seen pretty much played like an upmarket version of an early 90s Fox sitcom, which I'm not even saying is bad, but Seinfeld did shit that nobody else had ever done, a lot of which nobody's done anything like as well since.

Like IDK how you get on Cheers for doing stuff that's been played out, but then Seinfeld was only pretty good because, what... there's a lot of shows that built an entire episode around its characters being obsessed by a game of Risk, which ended when they pissed a Ukranian man off on the subway?

EDIT: cast of hikym



cast of Seinfeld



I mean come on.

[The Sevenshot Kid]

I actually really like HIMYM. The characters feel like actual people compared to a lot of other shows. It still doesn't hold a candle to Community or Park and Rec. but it's good stuff. If any of you decide Smallville is your thing you could get a head-start on watching the whole series this summer before Season 10 hits DVD.

And Game of Thrones is alright. Not as good as the likes of Deadwood or Dexter but it's okay so far. True Blood should be starting up soon so I'm down for that as long as the vampires stop floating around and all that fairy bullshit get taken care of quick. And no, I'm not making any derogatory remarks about gay people (Lafayette is totally my favorite character on that show). There are actual fairies. Yeah.

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by Lumenskir

Ok, if you want the indie scene to be the savior, please feel free to ignore what actually gets made. I'm sure you do the same thing for movies that don't stay as long in theaters because they don't make enough money, or bands that only put out one album because they don't make enough sales, or etc. etc.

Completely different because...

It still doesn't change the fact that those one/two season wonders actually got to see the light of day.

As a result of getting cut short, they never reached their full potential. The very article you pointed me toward explains that as the main problem with Firefly.

Further, they're never resolved. Most of those shows have some kind of over arching plot (In Pushing Daisies it was Ned's past, in Firefly it was Summer), that never gets adequately resolved short of a bunch of people buying DVDs and getting a movie made (Serenity).

A movie that bombs is still finished and fully contained. A cult classic movie doesn't leave the audience feeling cheated because the movie was never resolved. The same is not true of television series that are killed before their prime.

FURTHER: You're ignoring the fact that without an indie scene to show large corporations what's possible, that lots of good shows end up on the cutting room floor and DON'T see the light of day because they were too risky. Or are slotted in times that are terrible. Or are moved around randomly because something that's a more sure fire hit would do better in that slot.


And for the record I honestly really like Fringe.

And yes, experimentation happens in a purely corporate world, but a LOT slower than it happens when you have an indie scene.

AND I'm not saying TV is all terrible. It's not really for me in general, but that's not saying it's terrible and without merit. However, you are so far out in left field when you say that it's the best medium for artistic expression today hands down that you have officially left orbit.

You may like it better, but that doesn't make it the best medium. It has a lot of problems relating to being entirely corporate controlled. It evolves and experiments, but much more carefully and more slowly than other mediums, specifically because it has no 'indie scene'. Everything that gets on has to convince corporate suits that it's going to get them ad revenue and turn a profit. You can't pitch a television series with "This is new and I think people will like it." Not unless you're a lucky son of a bitch.

With Movies, and Video Games you can say 'this idea worked really well in this indie game/movie, people liked it, if we polish it and put it in our own with our own twist to it, we can really make some money (see narbacular drop)' or you can just make them yourself, release them online, or at an indie film festival. With books you can self publish, and a publisher can actually read the entire book and decide if it has merit instead of judging off your pitch and maybe an introductory episode done without funding. With sculpture and paintings you can just DO it. Show it to critics who don't give a flying fuck if they can make money off it, just whether it has artistic merit.

I don't understand why this is such a horribly insulting idea to you. You've subscribed to it yourself in the past vis a vis music when you pointed out that most good rap and country isn't what you're going to hear on VH1 or the Radio (entirely correct, by the way. Both genres have good stuff, but you'll rarely hear it aired on music channels or the radio).

That's what Television is. It's music, if the only music that ever existed is what you could hear on the radio. That doesn't make it worthless as a medium, and it doesn't mean that it never pushes boundaries or tries anything new (jut that it's going to do this slower), but it certainly hobbles it and makes comments about how it's the best medium worth giving you a crazy eye.

Edit@Fifth: I called Cheers dated, not played out. I said its jokes were played out 20 years ago, because that was when Cheers was originally on. I was giving Lumen shit for planning to spend his summer watching Cheers and then having the gall to insult Kerensky and My tastes for enjoying Castle. Which isn't a better show than Cheers, but isn't really worse, either, and at least is, you know, not something everyone else saw 20 years ago.

[Krylo]

Actually, speaking of Fringe, my DVR crashed and lost about three episodes of it, so I was like I'll just watch it on my sister's Hulu account (on her xbox), but Hulu has it on web only, and really I just want to say Fuck Hulu.

[Fifthfiend]

AND I'm not saying TV is all terrible. It's not really for me in general, but that's not saying it's terrible and without merit. However, you are so far out in left field when you say that it's the best medium for artistic expression today hands down that you have officially left orbit.

It's not really at all an uncommon view.

IDK, you're kind of spending a lot of time decrying the nature of TV as corporate and stifling to experimentation while saying how much you hate any given example of the incredibly experimental and subversive storytelling of which there's been an explosion in TV programming over the last ten years. I mean it's like you're saying that the big movie studios won't let anything good get produced while saying that Goodfellas was "okay" and Clockwork Orange was "offensive for the sake of being offensive".

Series DVD sales and the subscriber networks like HBO stepping more into creating original programming have hugely changed the kind of shows that can and can't get made. IDK how anyone can watch the Wire and not be amazed that this kind of storytelling is getting done in any entertainment media. (God knows it's not comfort food programming - I mean like it's actually pretty much the fucking anti-life equation, I can't actually make myself watch anything past halfway through season 5 because it's just that goddamn depressing - but it's still an achievement.) Mad Men explores personal politics in a way that their own network can't even seem to figure the fuck out, yet somehow that show keeps getting made.

[Fifthfiend]

Man you know what shows you should watch Krylo, is Psych and Burn Notice, those both own.

Are those getting new episodes this summer? Because if they are that is totally what I am watching this summer. God even the Sam Axe prequel movie was great.

[Krylo]

Yeah, I don't get HBO so I am apparently missing out on the golden age of television. I got it back when the Sopranos were on, but not anymore. I also guess I didn't see enough of Deadwood to see where it stood out as totally amazing (got it on DVD), though. 'Cause all I really saw was 'oh another western, but with more cussing and tits. Welp.'

That said, Psych and Burn Notice both are pretty excellent, but I don't watch as much Psych as I should.

Part of it, is probably a time thing for me. I have hobbies and people to talk to, and even though I spend a lot of time at home, I just don't have time to sit down and watch a lot of television. Same reason I don't see many movies.

Edit: I also liked Chaos. Did anyone else see Chaos before they cancelled it mid season? 'Cause like, I thought it was pretty clever and well written comedy, but it totally bombed in ratings.