Modern Vespa

I highly recommend checking out Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, and Henry Selick's Wendell & Wild. Both are currently streaming on Netflix.

It has been a FANTASTIC year for stop-motion films!! These are no exception.

Pinoccio, especially, is truly amazing. I just cannot say a bad thing about that movie. It's gorgeous and striking and took me on far more of an emotional trip than I expected. My former colleagues that got to work on it have all been gushing about how great a production it was. I was lucky enough to catch it in the limited theatrical release.

It's a bit on the goofy side in some aspects, but Wendell & Wild was surprisingly good, too. I mean, of course the animation is great. No question there. But the main storyline? Wow. I am so impressed Selick was able to tackle it, and of course Key & Peele know what they're doing. Very good collab with a really neat visual style.

I recently read that for some insane reason, Disney just gave Selick the rights to the ill-fated Shadow King that got scrapped a while back. I'm super psyched to see how it gets revived.

My wife and I are watching Black Summer on Netflix currently. We kind of missed that last year.

I totally love the desolate atmosphere, which is greatly enhanced by incredible camera work and a low FPS. You really feel like zombies could come and catch you anytime...

Now just into season 2 (it's a 2-season series, as of now) and it starts to feel a bit repetitive. But we'll see if it catches up with the first season.

I enjoy watching westerns. Just watched the movie Shane for the first time. The story was OK to good but this has got to be one of the most beautiful movies of all time. It was filmed in the Wyoming Grand Tetons and the mountains are seemingly in every shot.

Worth the watch.

Chris from CLE

Watched Home Alone 1 and 2 today for the umpteenth time , still find them hilarious . Slapstick genius

I saw the first one again last week. I hadn't seen it in a long time, and hadn't really watched it since after I'd gotten into the film industry. Y'know? There is just so much well done about that film, and it holds up amazingly even now. Every moment has something important in it, and aside from most of the gags being over-the-top for the Wet Bandits (and it's obvious it's supposed to be that way), there's not much to interrupt getting drawn into the film. And of course the soundtrack is amazing.

The only kind of negative thought I had after my most recent rewatch was the fact that there's no way in hell Kevin would have cleaned up the mess on the main floor in time before his family came home.

Finished the first season of Space: 1999, and am now about half-way through the second season.

Umm, yeah. I enjoyed the first season. The theme song was funky, in a 1970s kind of way. And similar funky '70s music popped up throughout each episode. Sure, the special effects are primitive, but it was the '70s. The acting, while not Emmy worthy, was decent.

The second season is so much worse. They dumped the funky music. The plotlines switched from episodes being more philosophical in nature to being more action-oriented. They changed the uniforms, which makes no sense at all - why would they revamp their uniforms when they have limited resources on the Moon? Everyone now has a "badge" with their name & photo on it. There are less than 300 people on the Moon. They spent a year together without the badges, surely they know who each other is by now, or at least know if they don't belong in an area.

It could be compared this way:
Space:1999 Season 1 : Star Trek: TNG :: Space:1999 Season 2 : Star Trek: TOS

I'll keep watching it, because why not?

Shane is great. If you like westerns, try "The English" on Prime. Slow boiler with great landscapes, strong characters, and detailing a violently wild time in the US West. Reminded me a bit of the "Lonesome Dove" series.
Dave

The Banshees of Inisherin, with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson.
Very strange movie set during the Irish Civil War. I laughed out loud quite often, and also wondered what the movie was about. Still not sure, but it was entertaining.

Anyone watching "The Peripheral" on Amazon Prime? It's pretty good. Near-future dystopia, based on a William Gibson novel.

Finished it a while back. Agree, it was really good. Let's hope for a second season...

We liked "The Peripheral" and "The English". I will start season 3 of "Jack Ryan", we liked the first two seasons. There is a lot of not good stuff on Amazon, but we do like many of their series.

Thanks for the suggestion, Dave. I will check it out.

Thanks,

Chris from CLE

In the couple of weeks before Christmas, my wife and I make a point of watching a Christmas movie each evening. Most are the usual classics (except maybe "Rare Exports", ), but we watched one of our favorites last night - "We're No Angels". For those of you who haven't seen it, this is a lesser known 1955 classic starring Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, and Peter Ustinov. It isn't often you see Humphrey Bogart in something this light hearted, but it works well. A good change of pace from "White Christmas".

The English was really good 👍🏽 👍🏽
"1883" in the same vein, even better IMO

After rewatching The Expanse I picked up the audiobooks to complete the series. Really interesting story arc. I'm now halfway through the TV series books.

I've become addicted to Letterkenny

Every holiday break we binge a series. Recently it's been Harry Potter, Star Wars, LOTR/Hobbit for movies and we've done GoT, Orange is the new Black and Breaking Bad for shows.

This year is the Marvel movies in order of timeline (not release) and it's a doozy. We're at Black Panther and still have a few to go.

Took a break last night and watched Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and I can't recommend it enough. A stellar cast and they do not disappoint. The story is a fun ride and worth a second watch to catch all the Easter eggs.

Watching "Nobody" again for the "I lost count" time. A really underrated film with Bob Odenkirk (Better Call Saul)...

Fun film. Del Toro is pretty versatile. After seeing some of his other films, there's a notable lack of blood.

I'm generally not a fan of scifi/ horror, but man, The Orphanage, Pan's Labyrinth and the Shape of Water were all awesome works.

Just finished the series, For Life on Hulu, based on the real life story of a Black man falsely imprisoned who gets a law degree in prison and eventually exonerated.

I love Nobody, it is hilarious! Best of all, the training for Nobody saved Bob Odenkirk's life later on. Banshees of Inisherin was fun too; I'll never look at shearers the same!

I've been watching Maniac, a series on Netflix. Super bizarre and enjoyable.

Mad God the film by Phil Tippet is the best I've seen last year.

It's all good, man!

The health officer on the series (Better Call Saul), after around "12 minutes of CPR" had someone take over for her, and ran to her car for a defibrillator, which was used on him tree times. "Which is actually a lot," Odenkirk said. "I was told later when the defibrillator doesn't work once, that's not good. When it doesn't work the second time, that is kind of like – forget it. But then they jacked it up a third time, and it got me back to a rhythm."

Check out The Menu. It's so on point in so many ways.

I found episodes of "Porridge" on DailyMotion and downloaded a bunch of the source files and I'm re-watching those.

My goodness, Ronnie Barker and Richard Beckinsale were genius on screen. Well worth the watch. Good tv for sure.

(If'n you like that sort of thing Ronnie Barker was great in "Open All Hours" and Richard Beckinsale was in my favorite, "Rising Damp.")

Oh man, that was an EPIC.

Well there's this

Just watched "Bone Tomahawk" with Kurt Russell. Doesn't have that old-school western feel but not a bad flick. Very graphic violence so it might not be your thing. I've never seen "Shane". I may give it a try. CHEERS!

Dude,

I have seen Bone Tomahawk. It truly is the opposite end of the spectrum in Westerns from Shane. To me it was almost a sci-fi set in the old west.

I am currently watching "1883". It is kind of in the middle of these two as far as graphic violence. I have seen four episodes and find it a little bleak - no hope for anything but tragedy.

Watching this violates one of my life rules - no TV series. I like stories that completely resolve in 90 minutes… now I am stuck in the middle of an eight hour saga. I need to get a life but think I will keep watching.

Chris from CLE

yeah Bone Tomahawk is a genre mash-up, part western, part horror. I really enjoyed the writer-director's follow-up film, Brawl in Cell Block 99, a prison thriller that starts slow and just builds and builds into a wild homage to 1970s grindhouse flicks.

absolutely a standout movie of late. Off the scale, even.

We tried watching it last night but either me and my partner are going death, the TV needs renewing with surround sound or the actors are mumbling because we struggled to hear a lot of the words.

I saw that recently. Pretty good flick. It was good to see Christopher Lloyd still working, too.

Not a fan of "Brawl", lol. Just couldn't buy Vince Vaughn in that role. I generally like the guy, though.

I watch reality TV.

But not all reality TV.

I watch Survivor and The Amazing Race. I used to watch Big Brother, but I realized that the contestants are usually a bunch of a-holes, so I stopped. The Mole is fun.

A year or so ago I ran across The Circle on Netflix. It's based on social media. All contestants are in apartments, in the same building, and the only interaction between/among them is via The Circle - the "social media" application the show created. This means the players can chose to play as themselves, or they can "catfish" as someone else, because the other players will only see what they present. Until they are "blocked" from The Circle (voted off). Some players play as themselves and play a 100% honest game. Others catfish and scheme throughout. And others use a combination.

A couple weeks ago Netflix suggested Insiders. It's similar to Big Brother in that they are all housed in one complex. But the difference is the contestants are told that they are still in the casting stages, that there are only two rooms that are being filmed, and that the cameras in the complex won't be active until the show starts. They give them activity monitoring wristbands to collect data that is fed into an algorithm which generates a profile that the producers use to find The Perfect Contestant. Except that part is BS. The data isn't collected, and the "algorithm" is just the producers sitting around and deciding what stats each player should have. They'll adjust them from time to time, just to mess with the players. It's interesting to see how differently the players act when they think they aren't being recorded vs. when they know they are. It was originally produced/aired in Spain, so all the players speak Spanish, but there's an option to have it dubbed in English.

I will say that my all-time favorite reality show was The Joe Schmo Show. It was set up as if it was a real reality show, but all the contestants but one or two were actors, and situations were set up to make the non-actor think everyone was crazy. The first season was like Big Brother. The second season was like The Bachelor/Bachelorette, and the third season was set up for the contestants to try to earn a job as a Bounty Hunter. The first season was the best one, in my opinion.

Anyone watched Search Party on BBC iPlayer (not sure what it's on over the pond)?

Mystery comedy drama set in New York about entitled self-absorbed millennials..

Doesn't sound like the sort of thing I generally enjoy, but I've binged 30 of the 50 episodes this week after getting sucked in!

Just catching up with things I've missed over the last few years. Just finishing up season 2 of Russian Doll which I recommend. Last night we watched Get Out which was a great movie and a rare gem in the thriller/horror genre.

Friday we watched the new JLo movie Shotgun Wedding which was awful though the premise was good. I may have been comparing it to Glass Onion in my mind and that is a much better film.

Just finished watching episode 7 of "Firefly", the great yet quickly canceled SciFi/OldWest show, tonite on PHX channel 3.2. It's running all evening, and I'd continue watching, but Father Brown is on.

Check out Australian Survivor. The new season just started, and I think it's a lot better than the newer version of Survivor we've seen over the last few years. You can probably stream it, and eztv changed their site so you can stream the latest shows they have.

Another great movie is Babylon. I saw it last night. Now that's a party. The music is incredible.

We watched this the first time around.

My name for it was "Snip/F**k"

Definitely (IMHO) the best science fiction ever made for the screen.

OK, maybe Blade Runner.

I had read most of the books before watching it and, even with some of the plot changes, it captured the essence of the story and characters exceptionally well.

I highly recommend the books.