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Post by Woody Alien on Jul 20, 2018 5:18:40 GMT -5
Has anyone watched Sacha Baron Cohen's new show? I only read some reviews but couldn't decide if it's good or not, or if it's just offensive for the sake of it.
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Post by toei on Jul 20, 2018 11:57:09 GMT -5
Has anyone watched Sacha Baron Cohen's new show? I only read some reviews but couldn't decide if it's good or not, or if it's just offensive for the sake of it. Haven't watched it yet, but my understanding is there are weaker segments that may fit that description mixed in with some on-point satire.
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Post by eatersthemanfool on Jul 25, 2018 22:50:37 GMT -5
DCU just can not figure out whether they want to be comedy or grimdark.
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Post by Woody Alien on Jul 26, 2018 8:52:23 GMT -5
I watched Ballmastrz:9009, the new, anime-inspired cartoon series from Adult Swim made by the same authors of SuperJail!. I liked that one and I like the anime style, and I read several good articles about it, so I decided to binge it in 2 days since it's just 10 episodes of 11 minutes each.
It's in fact pretty great to look at: that unique SuperJail style combined with anime sensibilities is pretty cool and dynamic, and there's some very fine pieces of animation in the mix. However for the rest I think it kinda sucked: it wants to be a throwback to ultra-macho 80s cartoons but with modern sensibilities, an anime homage and a legit sports series, but it's just a mishmash of stuff that is very rarely funny or exciting. The main characters are certainly unique to look at, but they are one-dimensional and never get past that one joke that each represents. Humour is kinda lame, the few anime parodies are mostly terrible or stale. Plus it's not nearly as surreal or psychedelic as SuperJail was and the core is the usual corny "get a team of random misfits to win" that we've seen so many times.
I don't know who the actual target audience is because compared to other AS shows is fairly tame and not nearly as memorable.
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Post by ResidentTsundere on Aug 18, 2018 2:11:43 GMT -5
I like Ballmasterz. I hope it comes back for another season.
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Post by lurker on Sept 20, 2018 10:49:32 GMT -5
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Post by Woody Alien on Oct 28, 2018 13:38:39 GMT -5
I stopped watching South Park a while ago but every now and then read summaries of new episodes. I wonder why people still like it so much since it's clearly past its prime at this point: every episode is mostly a bunch of current events stapled together without care if it's coherent or not (they often do it, like that episode that put together protests against Uber and the death of saturday morning cartoons, but at least that time they made a Wacky Races parody that was kinda funny), they carefully avoid to pick a side in order to seem more "smart" or to say "everything sucks LOL", the four boys are irrelevant more often than not and it's all about Randy and whatever flavor of the week character now, plus they seem undecided if they want to do a serialized season (much like the shitty season 20) or just random unrelated episodes like in the past. I know they launched the "#cancelsouthpark" hashtag as a joke and a marketing campaign but I think it's time to start taking it seriously.
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Post by toei on Oct 28, 2018 14:45:03 GMT -5
I stopped watching South Park a while ago but every now and then read summaries of new episodes. I wonder why people still like it so much since it's clearly past its prime at this point: every episode is mostly a bunch of current events stapled together without care if it's coherent or not (they often do it, like that episode that put together protests against Uber and the death of saturday morning cartoons, but at least that time they made a Wacky Races parody that was kinda funny), they carefully avoid to pick a side in order to seem more "smart" or to say "everything sucks LOL", the four boys are irrelevant more often than not and it's all about Randy and whatever flavor of the week character now, plus they seem undecided if they want to do a serialized season (much like the shitty season 20) or just random unrelated episodes like in the past. I know they launched the "#cancelsouthpark" hashtag as a joke and a marketing campaign but I think it's time to start taking it seriously.
I though "everything sucks lol" was basically the South Park ethos since the very beginning? Yeah, you had the little morals at the end, but what they boiled down to usually was "everybody's wrong and stupid, stop having opinions about things". I don't know, I thought it was great when I was 13, but it's clearly not for me anymore. Also, I don't think you can keep a show going that long and maintain any real level of inspiration and quality. (In other words, I basically agree with you).
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Post by eatersthemanfool on Oct 31, 2018 23:52:17 GMT -5
South Park had its moments. 'With Apologies to Jesse Jackson' is still one of the better commentaries on white privilege to have aired on television.
But then they followed it with that goddamned dolphin episode.
Recently they've had some episodes that were decent but nothing amazing. The one where Mr Hanky gets kicked off the show was pretty good, in that they didn't end up trying to make him look like the good guy.
So yea, definitely past its prime.
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Post by Woody Alien on Nov 27, 2018 9:31:53 GMT -5
South Park had its moments. 'With Apologies to Jesse Jackson' is still one of the better commentaries on white privilege to have aired on television. But then they followed it with that goddamned dolphin episode. Recently they've had some episodes that were decent but nothing amazing. The one where Mr Hanky gets kicked off the show was pretty good, in that they didn't end up trying to make him look like the good guy. So yea, definitely past its prime. A few days ago I was at a friend's and among other things we watched a few SP episodes: one from 2000, a couple from 4 years ago (the end of season 18) and one from the most recent season, by chance the one about Mr Hankey you were talking about.
I was surprised by how well the 2000 one managed to hold up, it was still funny by virtue of being mostly a mix of weird surreal humor, things seen from the perspective of children and just a small bit of social satire.
By contrast the ones from 2014 were already full of references that I didn't really catch and featured celebrities (Pewdiepie and Iggy Azalea) that are nowhere near as relevant as they were when the episode aired. The most recent one is super polished if compared to the others but it really felt flat to me, mostly because the humor parts were the same jokes repeated to no end, and their obsession for being up-to-date but still trying to skewer both sides makes it oddly preachy and unfunny, just the kind of thing they used to mock in the past.
I know there still is a lot of people that finds the show hilarious and a sharp satire, but I can't share that opinion, since I always thought turning from a surreal offensive comedy to a satire of current events caused the show more harm than good.
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Post by kaoru on Nov 28, 2018 2:21:38 GMT -5
Watched Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. It is… fine. It knows half of the appeal is "the dumb sitcom I grew up with as a kid is now dark, ohohoh!" so it sometimes needlessly edgyfies itself up to the nth degree. Also seems almost like they wrote it as it went along, since characters, plotpoints and hints at secrets kinda drop in and out of the show as the plot demands them or never come to the hinted fruition. Like the whole "the patriachy is holding us women down" angle is there because it is kinda mandatory for a story about witches, but never seems to be very important or that the show would really show us tangible effects of it. The character Lucas is completely gone after being mysteriously introduced and never doing anything as if his sideplot was simply dropped, only to reappear towards the end but still not really having anything to do. The finale is a mess of sequel bait. "Messy" is actually a good word to describe the whole show, despite having some good ideas the execution often is just messy. None of this bothered me too much, it was an... ok... enough ride, but it is not a very well written show.
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Post by surnshurn on Nov 28, 2018 14:39:27 GMT -5
I spent about 6 hours last night watching sci fi short movies on youtube (there's dozens of them). Some good, some not so good - I haven't had a real movie night in a while and the low budget thing works great with sci fi because nothing is more fantastic than the imagination. I'm a bit burnt out on it now, but I def enjoyed it while it lasted.
I was going to post these in the movie thread, but they're short enough to be watched like TV shows, go figure. A few examples:
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Post by eatersthemanfool on Nov 28, 2018 23:25:58 GMT -5
I watched the first episode of Sabrina and I'm done. The whole show seems to be a fuck you to pagans without quite straying into "we are specifically a Christian show" territory.
Here's a polarizing show: I have a fondness for Drawn Together. It's crass and deliberately offensive, and it knows it. Also the preachiest it gets is when they did an episode specifically making fun of South Park for being preachy.
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Post by Woody Alien on Nov 30, 2018 18:03:46 GMT -5
Here's a polarizing show: I have a fondness for Drawn Together. It's crass and deliberately offensive, and it knows it. Also the preachiest it gets is when they did an episode specifically making fun of South Park for being preachy. In my opinion Drawn Together was only good in its first season, when it was actually a parody of reality TV and did something with its gimmick of every character being a parody of both a specific kind of animation (Disney, Hanna Barbera, Fleischer, anime, Flash toons etc.) and a token reality TV character. I even remember some mural ads with Toot's face and the caption "Big Brother's twisted sister"!
It was actually somewhat clever, but then dropped the premise and became just an exercise in being as vulgar and obnoxious as possible. Plus they gave way too much screentime to Captain Hero who was one of the most uninteresting and flat characters around.
The only interesting stuff is that, according to something I read some time ago, it had some impact in the creation of Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, since the guys at Gainax watched a few DT episodes and wondered why the Japanese couldn't make something so crass and rude for a change.
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Post by eatersthemanfool on Nov 30, 2018 23:28:35 GMT -5
The first season was definitely the best, but I didn't absolutely hate the second season. I'm kind of glad they didn't keep going, though because it was definitely running out of material.
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