TV Discussion Fisto's Disco: The LACWAC Social Thread

Yeah, I'm thinking that version will not see the light of day again..... Sad times.... It looks weird watching Han "step on" Jabba's tail, amongst other things.

 

Me to its just like look at the comments for the trailer.

 

The Blu-Rays are enough for me and I have the VHSs of old. If they ever release a digital version without the groan-worthy "NOOOOO!!!!!!" at the end of Jedi, I'll buy it.

 

I just found out two mind blowing things about the TPM that I never realized before.
The ending celebration and the credits have some serious foreshadowing in it
*Near the final moments of the credits you can hear Vader breathing (you can't hear it in the video) and small pieces of the Imperial March
*Augie's Great Municipal Band is just an happier version of the Emperor's theme

 

Just realized this year's This Is Madness ended. Your victor this year:

 

He has finally won.

 

So I have been watching Marvel's Daredevil on Netflix today...... Been enjoying the show so far, and it definitely isn't in the same lighthearted tone of the other MCU titles. It is dark, gritty and has a decent amount of gore. If I had to describe it, it is a blend of Nolan's Batman-verse and Sin City at times.

 

What a coincidence, because I just returned from a sci-fi convention in Gothenburg, and I got David Prowse's autograph
''David Prowse is Darth Vader''

 

Always feel bad for Prowse because he is never talked about.

 

The SpaceX CRS-6 resupply mission to the International Space Station launches at 4:33 PM eastern time. They will attempt to land the expended first stage of the rocket on the unmanned drone ship, Just Read the Instructions.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/04/spacex-will-try-to-launch-land-another-falcon-9/

This is the second attempt at a barge landing. The first attempt in January reached the barge, but failed to stick the landing after the guide fins ran out of hydraulic fluid, and it crashed onto the barge, destroying itself. Fingers crossed this one will be more successful. The amount of fluid has been increased.

A livestream will be available here (at the time of posting it hasn't yet gone live, but shows a countdown to when it goes live):

 

Hooray spaceflight! Hopefully things go well for them.

 

Scrubbed due to weather.

 

It seems like thats always the Case.

 

Finished Marvel's Daredevil and I can say they nailed the character perfectly

I fully expect there to be Daredevil and Wilson Fisk cosplays at comic conventions now

 

I just started watching this series last night and I love it.

 

Daredevil 1.01 Review:

Spoiler

Let The Devil Out​

A Television Review by Akash Singh​

NOTE: SPOILERS OCCUR!!!!!!!​

​

Marvel’s adaptation of the Daredevil comics arrived amidst some trepidation, as fans of the comics still remember the disaster that was the feature film adaptation. But unlike that fiasco, the collaborative effort to bring the superhero’s story onto screens once more works here to tremendous results. The writing is largely sharp, the acting is spectacular, and the fight choreography just brings everything home. Daredevil is absolutely the best thing Marvel has put to television along with Agent Carter and it’s ironic that the two series feel like the least Marvel-like properties put to the small screen. Marvel has earned its name from its silver screen adaptations and rightfully so, with its intricately structured universe that is impressive in its framework even though half of the content inhabiting that framework is average or mediocre. But more so than the framework of their films, Marvel has a reputation for being fun escapes compared to their DC counterpart.Daredevil and Agent Carter are the darkest chapters that Marvel has put to screen and that willingness to go to more mature places has served these stories well. Daredevil (since that’s the focus of this review)is a deep, brooding adaptation that is seeped in a melancholia that almost effortlessly bleeds from the operatic opening credits to the very last montage of crime.
Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is an evident source of inspiration, beginning with the setting. The New York of Daredevil is a metropolis seething of decay and despair, falling apart at its very seams in a fashion that is evocative of Gotham. After a massive disaster, the neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen (aptly named, that one) is trying to recover but it’s a slow climb back upwards. With the destruction of the neighborhood and little done to help it during, a corporation called Union Allied has swept in like a typhoon, garnering an obscene amount of real estate for pennies on the dollar. As a result, even the cheapened real estate quickly begins ascending once again, tidy profits ensured for Union Allies. But their reach is extending beyond mere acquisition of properties. Officers of the company are openly engaging in pension embezzlement and they will go to any length to silence those who could potentially become roadblocks in their path to power.
As in the Gotham tradition, Hell’s Kitchen is brooding with a criminal underbelly that frequently bleeds over onto the surface. There’s a bit of an exploration of this chapter in Daredevil’s mythology in the pilot, encapsulated in our first introduction to the Man Without Fear. The opening sequence is a perfect microcosm of the battle that Daredevil faces. A gang of sex traffickers kidnap three women and are shuffling them into a shipping crate before they’re attacked by a mysterious man in a mask (not the real mask yet, but we’re getting there). Unbeknownst to Union Allied, a disruption in their “cargo” is the least of their problems. Karen Page, a secretary in the Union Allied offices, confronted one of her bosses about the file she had found revealing the mentioned pension fraud, but she was laughed off with the assumption that she would just stay quiet and continue to do her job. But she did the exact opposite and the man to whom she began to reveal the truth was found dead in the morning, stabbed to death with Karen holding the knife. This murder mystery forms the crux of the episode and certain aspects of it are intriguing, but it isn’t given nearly as much weight as it ought to have. For all intents and purposes, the mystery performs its job as a narrative bridge for the pilot but little more.
The most intriguing aspect isn’t the murder mystery (which isn’t explained all that well) or even the lackluster conclusion. It’s Daredevil himself. Played expertly by Charlie Cox (known as the Irish smuggler-of-Margaret’s-heart Owen Sleater from HBO’s Boardwalk Empire), there’s a mysterious quality about the character that extends beyond the expected mystery that would develop around a masked vigilante. As a child, he was in a terrible car accident that resulted in a mass of chemicals aspiring into the streets. Even as a child, when he saw an elderly man in the path of danger, he pushed him aside to save his life. That act of kindness cost him his vision, but Matt never allowed that to become the ultimate obstacle in his path. The pain is there, the remembrance of sight stings him, but his blindness has become a facet of his life that he’s accepted. When he’s not making sharp and snide quips about his sight, he’s learning to fight figuratively and literally. “I’m not seeking penance for what I’ve done, Father. I’m asking forgiveness, for what I’m about to do.” Watch out, world. Daredevil is here.
Great Moments Not Mentioned Above:
+“He was always on his feet when he lost.”
+“About seven hours.”
+The corruption of the police department in New York was subtle and well done
+The officer killed, along with the assassin were smart narrative choices
+Incredible direction from Phil Abraham, especially in the sequence where Karen is almost choked to death in her prison cell

Great​

8/10​

Game of Thrones 5.01 Review:

Spoiler

The Casual Vacancy​

A Television Review by Akash Singh​

NOTE: SPOILERS OCCUR!!!!!!!​

​

Game of Thrones returns for its fifth season amidst a flurry of anticipation and frenzy as the adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire epic veers further and further away from the source material that gave it life. It’s not necessarily throwing out the books altogether – the major events are still there and so are a decent chance of the narrative overarches from the written page. The journey has just detoured slightly, or in some cases, significantly. The deepest challenge of adaptation the fourth and fifth books, entitled A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, respectively, is that they are sprawling volumes who spiral out beyond cohesion. The two books were intended to be a single tome before they got too big and Martin split them based on character, not chronology and that was a mistake. A Storm of Swordsis easily the best of Martin’s five volumes so far – it had a sense of propulsive energy as it bloodily finished off several plot lines and seamlessly integrated new ones to the narrative. The following volumes were elevated by Martin’s beautiful prose, but at several instances it felt as if the subplots were taking over the central narratives. Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have pulled off their toughest season yet. The story has been austerely streamlined, retaining a good deal of Martin’s strengths while eschewing those extraneous subplots. The hour is still packed to the brim (we don’t see Arya or Dorne yet), but it works stupendously.
Each season of Game of Thrones can be deconstructed through a narrative arc. Season 5 appears to be centered around a term known as “casual vacancy”. First introduced to my vocabulary through J. K. Rowling novel of the same name, a casual vacancy describes an empty seat of power that has been unexpectedly left vacant by its former occupant. There’s very much a sense of gaping vacancy in Thrones that is only further evidence of how massive Tywin’s presence truly was. The untimely departure of the Lannister patriarch has thrown open a power vacuum that has already begun to seethe. As a somber Cersei climbs the steps towards the Sept within which the body of her father lies, a long line of Westerosi nobility stands in quiet wait, the Queen Mother is perfectly aware that the lords and ladies to her side are nothing but vultures, ready to circle around and pick off the remains. But Cersei has plenty of other demons surrounding her past, present, and future outside of the nobility. The episode begins with a young Cersei and her friend Malara traversing through a forest and visiting a witch called Maggy the Frog. Cersei, who was just as pleasant as a child as she was an adult, demands to know her future, to which Maggy quickly replies “Everyone wants to know their future until they know their future.” And Cersei’s future looks to be bleak, indeed. She would not marry Prince Rhaegar of the House Targaryen, but she would marry a king. She did, King Robert of the House Baratheon. Her husband would have twenty children, but she would have three. All of her children are Jaime’s. They would all have golden manes – and golden shrouds. Joffrey, blond of hair, is dead. And a younger, more beautiful queen will along to usurp her power. Margaery? Daenerys? Sansa? Cersei’s paranoia was born at this very moment, manifesting itself slowly like a poison that would ensnare that young girl in the forest forever, unless she can cast it down the river.
The prophecy (while not the complete version found in the books) is a key to understanding the sheer amount of paranoia that Cersei has grown up with and with Joffrey’s death at his own wedding, that paranoia has only increased. And now there’s a vast amount of power right within her grasp. With the throne in her sight, the fear of Margaery, and the Westerosi nobility hungry for more power, Cersei has more than enough for a single person to handle. Yet she hasn’t forgotten about Tyrion, the little monster who is still drawing breath after committing (in her mind) regicide and patricide (truth). That is a war she will never let go of, but the subject of that war is himself in the crux of the deepest existential crisis he’s ever faced. Tyrion is hell bent on drinking his way to death, even as Varys implores that he has a vital task ahead of him. Characters this episode are prepping for the battles that are looming on the horizon, but Varys and Illyrio have been preparing for one since Robert Baratheon seized the throne. The two conspirators have the Targaryen Restoration on their mind, but Tyrion doesn’t seem to care, his mind still stuck in the double murder he committed. “Westeros needs to be saved from itself,” he cautions, sticking with the pragmatic reasoning that defines his character, noting somberly that there are more wars yet to come. He recognizes that despite the impossibility of Tyrion ever sitting on the Iron Throne himself, his intelligence is invaluable. Various describes a monarch that is almost too good to be true and Tyrion scoffs with “Good luck finding him.” “Who said anything about him?” Varys quips sharply in response.
Daenerys, the quiet subject of Varys’s planning, is herself mired in a complete cluster**** of a situation. Conquering gave Daenerys a sense of purpose, a sense of propulsive energy that has been sapped since she took up residence in the Great Pyramid of Meereen. Knocking the Golden Harpy down from the top of said pyramid is one thing, but pure symbolism is hardly enough to rule a city. Orthodox institutions like slavery are difficult to break down completely and when a revolutionary ideology arrives to topple them down from their pedestal of power, they more often than not fight back with everything at their disposal to keep that pedestal alive. That fight back has risen in the form of a guerrilla warfare group known as the Sons of the Harpy, who are going around and murdering Unsullied soldiers and Daenerys sympathizers. Their masks are similar to those of the Harpy statue that had been broken into smithereens, but from the look of the narrative, they’re not going to be broken nearly as easily. Daenerys is wary of these fighters, but she is also faced with a proposal to reopen the fighting pits, a suggestion that effectively reinstates a certain type of slavery with a euphemistic title. Those behemoth quandaries, however, pale in front of the massive problem she faces with her dragons. Her two chained children, who are now giant despite the chains, nearly burn her alive. Daenerys isn’t defined by her dragons, but her dragons are a definitive part of who she is. There’s no gaining the Iron Throne without them.
The crux of the episode takes place in the frigid North as Jon finds himself in the fairly difficult position of trying to broker a compromise between Mance Rayder and Stannis. Stannis wants the wildlings to fight for him in his battles of Westeros, which is a rather rich suggestion of him considering that he just massacred them in the previous episode. If they fight for him and he wins, they will get land and pardons in accompaniment. Mance isn’t having any of it. It’s not his pride that is preventing him from bending the knee to Stannis because **** his pride. It’s the simple reality that he would be betraying everything he stood for and he would much rather burn. It’s a classic case of a Hobson’s choice, where you’re essentially screwed no matter what, but Mance has a point. He promised his people that they no longer would shed their blood. In all consciousness, how could he look towards the wildlings he had spent his entire life uniting and ask them to sacrifice their lives in a foreign war so another ass can sit on a throne in King’s Landing? He’s seen the wights, the Ones, and the terror of the Far North that is going to descend upon the rest of the continent. That’s the true war to come, no matter who sits on the bloody Iron Throne. There’s a heavy weight of tragedy in this entire sequence, encapsulated by Ciarán Hinds’s finest performance in the role yet. Mance burns at the stake not because he was too selfish to bend the knee, but because he knew that in doing so he would be condemning all of his people to darkness and he had no right to do that. As he’s writhing in pain and about to utter a final scream, Jon releases an arrow, impaling Mance and putting him out of his pain. The two share one final glance of mutual respect before the flames consume the morbid night itself.
Great Moments Not Mentioned Above:
+The opening scene with Cersei was shot expertly – the feeling of a classic fairly tale going for a tone of full dread was kept intact throughout
+The practice of laying stones on the eyes of the dead is as creepy as it used to be
+Cersei’s sharp takedown of Jamie in the Sept of Baelor was oh so satisfying
+“He loved you more than any of us.”
+I want a montage of Cersei ignoring people
+The show manages to get an incredible mileage out of small characters. The sequence with the Unsullied soldier wanting some human contact before having his throat slit was horrifying.
+The harpy statue being taken down is a direct reference to when the Valyrians defeated the Ghiscari Empire (whose symbol was a harpy) using their dragons, here repeated with Daenerys
+“Are you a virgin?” Jon, stay away from that, despite your affinity for redheads
+The tourney at the Vale was a neat little scene, complete with this completely inappropriate line about Robyn: “He fights like a girl with palsy.”
+Sansa and Petyr Baelish riding right past Brienne and Podrick
+Loras and Olyver’s sex scene is going to be important in the future
+Margaery’s ominous “Perhaps” in regards to Cersei is perfectly haunting
+“The freedom to make my mistakes is all I’ve ever wanted.”
+The “wars to come” titular connection between Mance and Varys was well-done. Here are two individuals who are able to see long-term

Brilliant​

9/10​

 

When I first started watching the series my first reaction was "Not enough Daredevil action"....then by the end of episode 13 I was like "That was some great Daredevil action..............I WANT MORE!"

 

Tagging for Daredevil spoilers.........

Spoiler

To be fair he didn't really become and embrace the role of Daredevil until the end of the season, which I kind of liked the aspect. This wasn't an origin story in the normal sense like we have seen for like Spidey, but the way this was done was fantastic IMO. We saw him go from unnamed masked vigilante to embracing at the end of episode 13 the identity that he had been given by others. I thought that the chemistry between Nelson, Karen, and Matt was fantastic. I thought that Nelson's reaction to finding out Matt's identity was well... childish. BTW, if you recognize the actor, Elden Henson, playing Foggy Nelson that is most likely because he played Fulton in the Mighty Ducks movies. I wasn't aware of much of the casting in the series outside of Woll, Cox, and D'Onofrio. For me the only point where the series kind of lagged for me was in the second episode where it was heavy on flashbacks IIRC. Vondie Curtis-Hall I feel completely nailed the part, and was sad to see him go. Assuming they renew it for a second season (haven't been paying attention if they have or not) I feel that Karen's story will revolve around finding out Matt being Daredevil and the tragedy of him becoming Daredevil to protect the innocence of those in Hell's Kitchen which Karen lost in the course of the first season. I have to admit that I am not too familiar with the comic book history, so I don't know who else they can really introduce as a big bad for Daredevil to contend with in the future. I read somewhere that Mister Fear might be interesting, but I read the character bio and it seems to be almost a carbon copy of Scarecrow. At any rate, I want more Daredevil and gritty Marvel shows now but that won't stop me from watching AoS.

 

LIFTOFF!

Odd, twitter embedding doesn't seem to work.

Anyway, old fashioned screenshottery it is:

 

Daredevil is THE ****

I love it.

 

It's pretty amazing. I'm only halfway through the second episode but I plan on catching up tonight. What's your favorite thing that's happened so far in the show?

 

So far my favorite thing was

Spoiler

Matt vs the Nobu (red ninja guy)