Whatcha watchin'/streamin'...

[|iR|Focalor]

CHOO-CHOO!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvAqn_kCSss&ab_channel=JoeFusco

[|iR|Focalor]

I came across clips of this show browsing shorts on youtube. It's called Mr. Inbetween.

Mr. Inbetween (TV Series, FX, 2018–2021)




An Australian made show I guess, set in Australia I think. It's a partly gritty action, partly crime-thriller, partly drama, partly comedy kind of show. It ran for 3 seasons from 2018 to 2021 on FX. It's really good, one of the best shows you probably never heard of. 30 minute episodes, so it's easy to find time to watch.

IMDB synopsis says: Ray Shoesmith is a father, ex-husband, boyfriend, brother and best friend; tough roles to juggle in the modern age. Especially, when you're also a criminal for hire.

My synopsis: It's about a hitman/enforcer for hire, divorced, has shared custody of his 8yr old daughter. Wants to raise his daughter right and be a good role model for her, but still leads a life of crime and violence. It's not really a "comedy", but every so often veers that way when absurd and awkward moments occur. It goes from action to funny to sad and everywhere else in a natural well-written way, interesting characters, good character development. I'm about halfway through the last season now (s03) and so far I'd rate it a 9 out of 10 - one of the best shows I've ever seen. It's so good, it's a shame there's only 3 seasons. But I suppose a good show running too long can be as bad as a bad show. I watched The Walking Dead for all of it's first 9 seasons before I got bored and stopped following it. Just recently got around to finally downloading seasons 10 and 11, the last 2 seasons. Pretty soon I'll start re-watching that show start to finish... and I'm not entirely looking forward to it. 

Some of the Aussie accents are a little thick. I can understand 99% of it, but some Americans have trouble understanding some British, Irish, Aussie, or Scottish accents. If this is you, I'd recommend streaming it directly from some paid service that offers english subtitles.

[|iR|Focalor]

I had never watched Snow White all the way through before even though we had the Disney channel when I was a kid... and back then they actually showed all the old Disney animated stuff, from the old feature length movies to all the Disney character shorts from the 40's/50's/60's, and even the earlier Silly Symphonies and Max Fleisher type stuff.

So I finally got around to downloading Snow White and watching it start to finish. Wow. Maybe it's not all that remarkable to a lot of folks, but if you think about what movies were like at that time (Snow White was released in 1937), Snow White was absolutely AMAZING. All of the action was filmed with live actors and then drawn out by artists frame by frame (the "rotoscope" technique).

As far as Disney animated movies go, Snow White is certainly not my favorite. My favorites are Alice in Wonderland, Sword in the Stone, and Robin Hood... and I guess Lilo and Stitch too, that one's pretty good,... and I think it might've been the last classic cell-style animation movie they did as well although I think technically it was all done on computers.

An interesting video about Lucille La Verne, the terrific actress who was the voice of the evil queen and the witch.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsi7btQY1Kk&ab_channel=Dizographies

[mcbass]

https://youtu.be/h-M3JDG4z90

[0rbisson]

I came across clips of this show browsing shorts on youtube. It's called Mr. Inbetween.

Mr. Inbetween (TV Series, FX, 2018–2021)




An Australian made show I guess, set in Australia I think. It's a partly gritty action, partly crime-thriller, partly drama, partly comedy kind of show. It ran for 3 seasons from 2018 to 2021 on FX. It's really good, one of the best shows you probably never heard of. 30 minute episodes, so it's easy to find time to watch.

IMDB synopsis says: Ray Shoesmith is a father, ex-husband, boyfriend, brother and best friend; tough roles to juggle in the modern age. Especially, when you're also a criminal for hire.

My synopsis: It's about a hitman/enforcer for hire, divorced, has shared custody of his 8yr old daughter. Wants to raise his daughter right and be a good role model for her, but still leads a life of crime and violence. It's not really a "comedy", but every so often veers that way when absurd and awkward moments occur. It goes from action to funny to sad and everywhere else in a natural well-written way, interesting characters, good character development. I'm about halfway through the last season now (s03) and so far I'd rate it a 9 out of 10 - one of the best shows I've ever seen. It's so good, it's a shame there's only 3 seasons. But I suppose a good show running too long can be as bad as a bad show. I watched The Walking Dead for all of it's first 9 seasons before I got bored and stopped following it. Just recently got around to finally downloading seasons 10 and 11, the last 2 seasons. Pretty soon I'll start re-watching that show start to finish... and I'm not entirely looking forward to it. 

Some of the Aussie accents are a little thick. I can understand 99% of it, but some Americans have trouble understanding some British, Irish, Aussie, or Scottish accents. If this is you, I'd recommend streaming it directly from some paid service that offers english subtitles.

Being Aussie I love this show. Fun Fact there was a movie called "the magician" with the same guy who plays ray shoesmith as a hitman so you can say it was where they got the idea of the show from. The magician was a meh movie but worth the watch. Also the magician movie is referenced in an episode of mr inbetween as seen here


https://youtu.be/wJLdZfgr4Nw?si=rbRUacnYDCk0UIRk


The Magician full movie on youtube


https://youtu.be/Dn99Y3sXweU?si=ZSnatoS2ZRwjBmqF

[|iR|Focalor]

Yonna cuppa, mate?

What a great show. One and only thing I didn't like about it was the fact that there were only 3 seasons of it. The characters were so good with so much potential, it probably could've gone on for another 4 or 5 seasons, I really wish it would've.

[0rbisson]

If you enjoyed that show look up "underbelly" True crime aussie series.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underbelly_(TV_series)

You can try create an account for aussie tv for free to watch https://www.9now.com.au/underbelly not sure if it will let you from the usa but i am sure it will

[|iR|Focalor]

I have a list a country mile long of shows I want to binge start to finish. Like I said before, I gotta go back and re-watch all of The Walking Dead since I finally downloaded the last 2 seasons of it... and before that, I'm gonna re-watch all of Yellowstone because I haven't seen the last season of that yet either. And seeing shorty clips of it in my Youtube feed has me also wanting to rewatch all of Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy again. At some point last year, I downloaded a few British shows: Absolutely Fabulous, The Young Ones, Bottom, A Bit of Fry & Laurie (Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie - sketch comedy), and The Benny Hill Show. I finished AbFab, Young Ones, and just recently finished off Bottom... so I still have all 58 episodes of the Benny Hill Show (plus 11 more vids included in the additional "Lost Years" and "Extras" part of the collection) as well as Fry & Laurie.

I also downloaded a few kiddie shows I watched as a youngster: PeeWee's Playhouse, Beetlejuice cartoon, and He-Man. Probably not gonna binge those - I don't think I could take that. Maybe take on one at a time, watching 1 episode each morning with breakfast or something.

 

So if I stick to my "to do" list of things to watch, I might be done by next Christmas.

I also got into the habit of watching Louder with Crowder everyday, and thats usually 2 hours a day Monday through Thursday.

Ha! And I also have a bunch of movies I wanna get around to eventually... some old 50's historical/roman/biblical stuff like Quo Vadis, The Robe, Demetrius and the Gladiators... some new ones like Gladiator 2, Thelma, The Exorcism, etc.

And I know what's gonna happen... I'm gonna keep seeing shit I wanna watch and keep adding it to the pile. I think they have a name for it...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_hoarding

And yeah, I'm starting to get to max capacity on my external 3.63TB hard drive. Time to buy more hard drives.

 

[|iR|Focalor]

... Disney animated movies ...

Yeah, I forgot to mention I also had a bunch of Disney animated movies on my to do list. Been slowly working through them, 1 every day or two.

One of the lesser known Disney animated movies that was a pretty bad flop at the time (supposedly it damn near destroyed the company when it failed to make it's budget back at the box office)...

The Black Cauldron (1985)


I never saw this one as a kid, even though it came out when I was 5. Back then the Disney channel used to show all of their animated movies on there a lot. I remember watching Cinderella, Dumbo, Robin Hood, Alice in Wonderland... but they never showed the Black Cauldron at all. I don't remember the movie, commercials about the movie, or even any passing reference to the movie on there.

Yeah, I can see why it flopped. The story is just clunky and awkward. The black cauldron is a magical cauldron that gives its owner the ability to raise an evil undefeatable army of the undead. The evil horned king is looking for it. So far so good, right? The protagonist is a young boy with a pig... but the pig is magic and when it sticks its nose in a bowl of water and you say some hocus pocus magic phrase, it shows you visions in the water, like where to find the black cauldron. And that's where the clunky weirdness starts. A pig? Really? Even kids would be like, "Really? That's so dumb."

Anyway, I won't bore anyone with the WHOLE story. And I mean it's not absolutely terrible, but it's just not on par with what you'd expect from a Disney animated movie considering what all they had put out up to that point.

It's good points:
1.) The voice talent of John Hurt as the evil Horned King.



He was a terrific actor, one of my favorites of all time. He could do ANYTHING, and during his long career, he pretty much DID do just about any type of role you can imagine. And he didn't play villains often, but he knocked this one clean outta the park and over the interstate. He effected a very bass-heavy gravelly tone for this role and it made the villain the scary terrifying monster he should've been. He was THE BEST PART of the movie. It was certainly no fault of the villain character or John Hurt's vocal portrayal that contributed to this movie failing. He was perfect. And sadly, he passed in early 2017 from pancreatic cancer.

2.) The voice talent of Phil Fondacaro as Creeper, the Horned King's little goblin assistant.



He's my favorite dwarf actor. He's been in TONS of stuff, including one of my all-time favorite "bad" horror movies called The Creeps (about Dracula, Mummy, Frankenstein,... except their all dwarfs). He's not an actor the caliber of John Hurt, but he's a swell dude, and I like anything he does.

[|iR|Focalor]

HEY! DO YA ABSOLUTELY HATE WHAT DISNEY DID TO THE STAR WARS FRANCHISE!?!

Yeah me too. So I can't wait to see how Amazon ruins the James Bond franchise.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjd35zm5zl4o?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

[|iR|Focalor]

Another thing I saw in my firefox feed...

How Streaming Is Making Us All Cinema-Illiterate

The oldest title available on Netflix last month was 1973’s 'The Sting.' Where does that leave the next generation of film lovers?

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/streaming-impact-classic-fillms-algorithm-1236146209/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

Yep. I think a lot of folks who are probably also my age (mid 40's now) are reluctant to give older movies a try. I'll admit that I think a lot of movies like the types they tend to play on Turner Classics aren't all that great. A lot of it has to do with the standard "Style" of acting that was just the normal thing at the time. Guys like Humphrey Bogart who are considered to be all-time greats in some of the most acclaimed films of the period... I don't feel like he was really all that good. And I think that peculiar "style" of acting that you find in all those old black and white 1940's movies probably turns off some people. Like I said, I don't really like it... but I watch some of them anyway.

I've seen a lot of older Westerns that I really liked. The older ones focused more on telling compelling stories. Can't go wrong with John Wayne movies, they all tend to be pretty good. James Stewart did a few good ones.

I'm just a big fan of movies, I like all kinds. I just want to encourage people to branch out more and dig into older movies. Some of them are really good. And considering the fact that a lot of the crap they're churning out these days are nothing but superhero movies, remakes and reboots,... might as well.

I'd highly recommend ANYTHING directed by Alfred Hitchcock. But in particular... definitely see Vertigo (1958), in my opinion, Hitchcock's best movie, and one of the best movies of all time. And he had so many really good ones. Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), Rear Window (1954). But seriously, pick ANYTHING he ever directed, it's ALL good.

And I'm always looking for something new. If anybody knows of any decent older movies I should see, please make a recommendation.

[|iR|Focalor]

October is horror movie marathon month for me. I've downloaded probably 60 or more movies to watch. I won't list them all but here's some of them:

...

• Vampyr (1932) old black & white 1930's German-made vampire movie... if you couldn't tell from the title. No idea what it's about, will be the first time I've ever seen it. Watch it here.

I am somewhat of a horror movie fan, but at the same time, I find most of the movies labelled as "horror" to be pretty ridiculous, so I also tend to avoid horror movies... until October rolls around, and then I binge the living hell out of them, assuring that I don't feel the need to watch them any other time of the year unless I really want to.

It's not October yet... but I'm starting my yearly Halloween Horror Binge a month early this year. I downloaded a CRAPLOAD of movies, and I probably won't get through them all by Halloween.

Some good ones I've seen so far that I would recommend...

House of Wax (1953) - Starring Vincent Price.
The Body Snatcher (1945) - Starring Boris Karloff, a smaller role played by Bela Lugosi
The Mummy (1959) - Starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as the Kharis/The Mummy - Hammer studios got permission to do remakes of the old Universal classic monster films, such as Frankenstein (Hammer version: Curse of Frankenstein), Dracula (Horror of Dracula), and The Mummy with Boris Karloff - not sure if they did any others. I'd recommend all 3 of these Hammer remakes, especially Curse of Frankenstein.

Watched this one for the first time:

White Zombie (1932) - Starring Bela Lugosi - Not great, but not terrible either... considering its a movie from the 30's, and also considering the star is Bela Lugosi (I'm not a Lugosi superfan) - Its awkward and silly at parts, but like I said, that's just how some movies were back then. It was "the style".

And one that I DO NOT RECOMMEND.



Satan's Cheerleaders (1977)
It's very bad. Some movies are so bad that they're good. NOT THIS ONE! This one is just plain bad. Stay away! The dialogue is fucking terrible. The story is terrible. The cast is mostly terrible. It has Yvonne DeCarlo in it. Even her part is horrible because of the dialogue. She obviously didn't give a shit about what roles she took around that time. I saw another horrible one with her in it that she did right after this one in 1979 called Nocturna. It was SO BAD. One of the worst bad b-movies I've ever seen. Well now it doesn't stand alone as the single worst halloween/horror movie, I'd put Satan's Cheerleaders right beside it. Trust me, you CAN'T BE bored enough to make watching this movie worth it.