I find that certain Hallmark Christmas movies are fine as long as you approach them with the right mindset - specifically, anything with magic is actually a horror movie and we're watching the monsters get what they want while the ordinary humans have their lives torn asunder by the magic of Christmas. The height (or depth) of these is "Christmas in Evergreen" in which a little girl doesn't want to fly to Florida for Christmas so she makes a wish to stay in Evergreen and a BLIZZARD shuts down the entire region, causing who knows how many deaths. It's the old Twilight Zone episode with Christmas instead of the cornfield.
As for captioning vs dubbing people's own languages, I first saw that technique in a Jackie Chan movie, where he traveled the world and spoke several languages, all captioned into English (including spoken English) so we heard what people actually sound like and could read to get the meaning. I liked it.
Thank you for the reviews. I do look forward to viewing several of these.
For a wonder, we both watched pretty much the same shows this week. The Holiday Special was fun, and thankfully not Pratt-centric. I don't dislike the actor, but I have been less than thrilled by the GotG series-hazards of remembering the original comic a bit too well. The opening song was a blast, and hopefully will become a standard. ;) Haven't finished WEDNESDAY yet, but with two episodes to go, I feel comfortable enough commenting. The thing that struck me from the get go was that while the real darkness in the series has always been there, the more violent aspects have always been implicit, rather than explicit, and WEDNESDAY pretty much throws that out the window. Wednesday herself has a bit of growing up to do, and as is common to coming of age stories like this, seems to be making progress. I guardedly agree with you about Guzman-though I think it is more an underwritten and marginalized role rather than a failing of the actor. Pugsley, on the other hand, seems far too placid, fishing techniques notwithstanding. Does Fester show up in the last two episodes? If he's been there at all, I think I must have blinked. We really should talk more about this anon-
Finally, 1899...I can't remember when a series or a film kept me guessing ( and frequently guessing wrong) about where it was going right up to the end. And I still have questions, though if this winds up being the run of the series, I will content myself with considering it the apotheosis of surrealism in cinema.
I find that certain Hallmark Christmas movies are fine as long as you approach them with the right mindset - specifically, anything with magic is actually a horror movie and we're watching the monsters get what they want while the ordinary humans have their lives torn asunder by the magic of Christmas. The height (or depth) of these is "Christmas in Evergreen" in which a little girl doesn't want to fly to Florida for Christmas so she makes a wish to stay in Evergreen and a BLIZZARD shuts down the entire region, causing who knows how many deaths. It's the old Twilight Zone episode with Christmas instead of the cornfield.
As for captioning vs dubbing people's own languages, I first saw that technique in a Jackie Chan movie, where he traveled the world and spoke several languages, all captioned into English (including spoken English) so we heard what people actually sound like and could read to get the meaning. I liked it.
Thank you for the reviews. I do look forward to viewing several of these.
For a wonder, we both watched pretty much the same shows this week. The Holiday Special was fun, and thankfully not Pratt-centric. I don't dislike the actor, but I have been less than thrilled by the GotG series-hazards of remembering the original comic a bit too well. The opening song was a blast, and hopefully will become a standard. ;) Haven't finished WEDNESDAY yet, but with two episodes to go, I feel comfortable enough commenting. The thing that struck me from the get go was that while the real darkness in the series has always been there, the more violent aspects have always been implicit, rather than explicit, and WEDNESDAY pretty much throws that out the window. Wednesday herself has a bit of growing up to do, and as is common to coming of age stories like this, seems to be making progress. I guardedly agree with you about Guzman-though I think it is more an underwritten and marginalized role rather than a failing of the actor. Pugsley, on the other hand, seems far too placid, fishing techniques notwithstanding. Does Fester show up in the last two episodes? If he's been there at all, I think I must have blinked. We really should talk more about this anon-
Finally, 1899...I can't remember when a series or a film kept me guessing ( and frequently guessing wrong) about where it was going right up to the end. And I still have questions, though if this winds up being the run of the series, I will content myself with considering it the apotheosis of surrealism in cinema.