Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine So what are you WATCHING? Part 2

I've forgotten most Buffy lines after all these years. What was the Ghandhi line?

It was from episode 3.1, "Anne."

Buffy: Hey Ken, wanna see my impression of Ghandi? (Buffy then bashed Ken's head with a mace.)

Anne: Ghandi..?

Buffy: Well, you know, if he was really pissed off...

I've been watching a lot of kids shows lately. Victorious and most of iCarly are on Netflix. I guess there's a nostalgia factor, since I watched them with the kids when they were younger.

I've also been watching the Spiderman and Hulk and X-Men cartoons from the mid '90s. They're all on Disney+.

There's also a Spider Woman cartoon from the '70s, I think. It's pretty cheesy, but I've been watching it anyway.

Actually, if you like series from days gone by, the Tubi and Peacock apps have a ton of free stuff on them. They have commercials, but it's free.

Oh yeah, I picked up the complete series of The Wild Wild West a while back. I really liked it. I also watched the original run of Mad About You. There is so much truth about relationships in that show.

I've been mainlining the Diagnosis: Murder collection, since much of it is available on YouTube for free right now. I paid intermittent attention to it back when it was on the air: finding it hokey a lot of the times but still comforting in that "known quantity" way any TV show with a veteran actor at the helm will be.

I haven't been watching in order. I checked out the last two 90-minute specials (from 2001-2002) first. I got kind of spoiled. They were more ambitious than the regular episodes and pushed the characters into more challenging territory than you normally get from U.S. TV geared toward us old farts. Heh. There was something especially moving about "Town Without Pity" making a plea against anti-Arab bigotry given that it first aired only months after the attack on N.Y.C. It still needed to do the pat wrap-up: the summation and the insistence that real justice is possible in this life, but because the events impacted the lead character in a permanent and direct way, it left room for doubt about that. It has stuck with me in a way these things rarely do.

This would apply somewhat to the other special ("Without Warning") as well: except that the targets of bigotry are Mexican migrant workers. The villain of that piece gets rough justice for his lack of conscience, though he doesn't die himself.

So last night was my oldest daughter's 19th bday, and she's a big Broadway fan, so for her entertainment choice, we watched the newly released movie version of "In the Heights" on HBO Max.

I had not heard the soundtrack or seen the play prior, but if you are a fan of Miranda's, or his "Hamilton," you'll come away with SOMETHING to like. It's not nearly as solid as Hamilton is, but I felt it was very much a proto-Hamilton, as the rapping and musical style of Miranda and Lacamoire that made a big impact with the later work is evident in this musical, but just not quite as polished overall.

The story the musical is built around is fairly predictable, but the story is entertaining. I found the first half to be very uneven, but the second half is very solid. Standout performances by Anthony Ramos as Usnavi, Leslie Grace as Nina, and Jimmy Smitz as Kevin do great jobs, as well as Corey Haawkins' Benny, but I felt that Melissa Barrera's Vanessa was a weak character, but Barrera did as good a job as she could have done with the material.

Of course, there are a few cameos, mainly LMM himself as well as Chris Jackson, including a funny post credit sequence.

I'd give it a sold 3 out of 4 if Broadway musicals are your thing.

that's pretty cool! thanks for a balanced review, GL.

I binge-watched Trese, a Netflix animation based on a Filipino comic book of the same name. Alexandra Trese is a detective and sort of "keeper of the peace" in the Philippine capital of Manila who helps out on supernatural crimes... Lots of references to Philippine myth, and indeed some knowledge of them helps with the appreciation of the show.

Looking forward to a next season. I do think the last couple of episodes had way too many flashbacks and could have been faster paced, but overall quite nice.

https://www.netflix.com/title/81012541

Lots of DePatie-Freleng cartoon shorts! (i.e. Pink Panther, The Inspector, The Ant and the Aardvark, Tijuana Toads, Roland and Ratfink, et cetera.)

I really do think they are underrated, especially in the context of how bad most American animation was during the 60s and 70s. They may not have been as well-written as Jay Ward's Rocky & Bullwinkle, but they were beautifully designed, and often very well animated within their budget limitations.

And while there are admittedly a lot of entries that were clearly phoned in to fill a quota, there are also a lot of hidden gems. Especially some of the ones directed by Art Davis, my favorite Golden Age of Animation director whose career resurged at DePatie-Freleng.

By the way, is anyone watching Severance on Apple TV? Fing amazing...

The new *Mystery Science Theater 3000*, of course! (But we have a separate thread for that.)

Since I donated to their last Kickstarter, I also got a free month of all-you-can-watch at their offspring site: Rifftrax.

Also, I have to say that I'm really enjoying Season 2 of Picard. Very excited for the upcoming Strange New Worlds.

The last Daniel Craig Bond movie - No Time To Die - is free to view on Amazon Prime Video at the moment, so I took advantage.

What a great Bond movie. If you're into the Bond franchise, you'll likely enjoy this.

Also, since this is a LSH board, Ana De Armas, who plays agent Paloma for a hot second in the movie, is now the fancast version of Shrinking Violet in my head. I've always really liked her work, but her acting, appearance and action scenes in this make me think she'd be a pretty amazing Salu Digby in a live action Legion. Not that we'll ever get that in a meaningful way.

My old Looney Tunes DVDs. After talking so much about bad cartoons in the Spaceopoly forum, that was a much-needed corrective.

Old faves revisited included The Scarlet Pumpernickel, Duck Dodgers, What's Opera Doc, and Rabbit of Seville.




Ana is currently playing Marilyn Monroe in the Netflix movie Blonde. Perhaps she could have two roles in the same movie: Salu and Nura.

I am watching that now actually. She just needs to move the birthmark to the other side of her face and make it a star.

I've been watching Dollhouse on Hulu. It's ok. Not really up to what I consider Whedon standards. I've watched about 8 episodes. I guess I'll watch the whole series. I'm curious to see how it ends.

As is my wont, I really liked the side-characters more than the protagonist I was supposed to root for. I loved, loved, loved Eliza's Faith, on Buffy, but never really got into Echo.

Meanwhile, I totally was into Adele, Boyd, Sierra and Victor. There's an episode where they need Topher's programming skills, but he's off-site, so they load up Victor with his pattern/template/thingie and it's just amazing how well the actor does, playing the other character in a Freaky Friday sort of way.

mr_cleome and I are both big, long-time fans of The Found Footage Festival. So when they decided to do a sanctioned re-release of a super-weird kids' superhero movie called *Creating Rem Lezar*, mr_cleome picked it up for us. Hoping to watch it later tonight. A good accompaniment would be something to drink with blue curacao. To match the title character's blue union suit. Maybe stirred with a Snickers bar since the actor who played him also did a commercial for Mars. (And he's tickled that people still remember and care about this weird low-budget epic from 1989.)

Set, that's exactly the problem with Dollhouse. Since some of the characters play a different character every episode, it's difficult to have any emotional investment in them. The peripheral characters are much more interesting.

Having watched the aforementioned movie, I pronounce it... weird, tacky, and yet oddly wholesome. My favorite part is the title character and the kids who imagined him into being (Dr. Seuss-style, but without all the cathartic mayhem of a Glunk or Cat In The Hat) dancing through Central Park... accompanied by various budget version of *Pippin* extras, including a pretty good busking fiddler who looks like Mark Hamill and Bob Denver had a kid.

When the Found Footage Film Festival first unearthed the movie, they made it part of a series of segments called "Religious... Or Canadian?" in which they asserted that a lot of old kids' entertainment had this particular vibe which fell readily into one or the other of these categories. They later confessed that Creating Rem Lezar was neither. It was shot in New York City, and while it alludes to a higher power, it never actually names what that power would be.

I started watching Revenge a few months ago. It started off great, but it went 4 seasons. It then started using every soap opera trope (soap trope?) known to man. It would have made a great 1-season show, but they're just dragging it out. I am expecting the last half of the final season to be really good, because they will actually be wrapping it up.

"Aliens" starring Sigourney Weaver.

It holds up beautifully. Even the most 80s elements have a comforting glow about them. A classic of classics.

I do have to wonder why James Cameron hasn't made anything nearly as good since then. Perhaps Gale Anne Hurd's creative contributions went far beyond her producer credit.

I think Cameron's a bit too full of himself.

This week I watched the new Top Gun Maverick, completely expecting to hate watch it (I'm not a Miles Teller fan), but I really enjoyed it for the action. The story is basically a detailed prep for the Death Star trench run, but with what happens when things go sideways. The story itself is about as shallow as you'd expect, but the flying sequences are done so well that it makes the movie roll through the dull parts.

Agreed! That, combined with his idiotic comments about the 2017 Wonder Woman movie, is why I refuse to watch the Avatar sequel.


Do the pilots still wear gumball-colored helmets? If not, then I won't watch it.

Of course! The helmets are all kooky as you'd expect!