Streaming Recommendations (Netflix, HBO, Amazon, etc.)

Quote: ams288

Quote: terapined

I loved the old Westworld movie from the 70's
Now watching the updated series on HBO NOW
wow.
Really enjoying this
HBO spent a lot of money on this and you can see it on the screen

Show Spoiler

Totally hooked me with the 1st beginning story. One of those you think you know exactly what's going on and then boom, the rug gets pulled out from underneath you and you think yea, that makes sense. Some of the tourists on the trains are robots

How many episodes have you watched?

I watched the first four as they aired, then I kind of fell off when The Walking Dead came back (they have the same timeslot). The rest are on my DVR waiting to be binged.

In the middle of episode 3
Nice to see Anthony Hopkins. Always been one of my favorites.
Kind of neat that each episode so far starts with Delores waking up

Love the cowboy in the black hat with no name

Quote: terapined

Kind of neat that each episode so far starts with Delores waking up

Reminds me of Dollhouse (like Firefly another one of Joss Whedon's failed TV series ) with only 26 episodes explores similar themes. The Dolls are real human beings who have agreed to be memory wiped and used as rich people's toys for two years. Before each use, they are downloaded with skill sets and memories pertinent to their characters. Although sex is a factor, if you are only after sex it is much cheaper to simply hire a prostitute.

Joss Whedon is known to be ultra loyal to his actors, so he recasts Eliza Dushku who was Faith on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff series Angel.



The barefoot people are dolls, while the other cast members control them.

I'm a huge Joss Whedon fanboy.

Dollhouse was great. Season 1 was good, but felt like they were trying to adhere to the standard procedural TV show template.
The show was never a hit. The fact that it got a season 2 was a minor miracle. By the time they got to season 2, it was like the showrunners said "screw trying to bring in more viewers, we're doing what we want to do." It was great.

Quote: Joss Whedon

"The problems that the show encountered weren't standalone versus mythology [episodes]," Whedon said. "Basically, the show didn't really get off the ground because the network pretty much wanted to back away from the concept five minutes after they bought it. And then ultimately, the show itself is also kind of odd and difficult to market. I actually think they did a good job, but it's just not a slam-dunk concept."

"People responded to ['Dollhouse' by saying], 'This is trafficking. This is sex for money.' It wasn't just sex," Whedon said. Part of the problem was "the other implications of what was originally supposed to be somewhat more of a fantasy. The real-world version of [this kind of activity] was I think what made the network really twitchy and I can't really fault them for that. I just thought when I went in and pitched it ...you know, it frightened me too [but I thought] we all got that that was what we were doing."

The OA, a science fiction original series premiers in three days on Netflix.

The team have produced two science fiction and one thriller films in the past few years. All are independent films released by Fox Searchlight in less than two hundred theaters so you would probably have to search for them to have seen them.

This new series is about a blind woman who vanishes and returns after 7 years. She can now see, but has amnesia. The actress is age 33, but her character seems to be considerably younger in the series. The initial release will be eight one-hour episodes. There is now clue as to what the acronym OA means

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvHJtez2IlY

It co-stars the Spanish actress Paz Vega. Paz had a successful career in Spanish language films, but her costar in 2004 in "Spanglish" alongside Adam Sandler, Tea Leoni, and Cloris Leachman did not launch a hoped for successful career in English films.

Watched the Netflix Keith Richards documentary

My favorite story is when they 1st went big, TV shows tried to get them booked
The Rolling Stones said they were only interested if the TV show booked their personal music heroes
So the shows asked who are your heroes
The Stones wanted Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Buddy Guy ect (my heroes also)
The TV shows did not know who these black artists were but went out and booked them
The Blues artists really appreciated the Stones and the Stones appreciated the music their heroes created
Mutual admiration :-)

My favorite scene is the Stones jamming with Muddy Waters in a small blues club as he performs his classic "Mannish Boy"
I personally have an audio recording of that show and what a show it was

The Stones made it a point to record in the same studios as their heroes
They recorded at Chess Records
They recorded in Muscle Shoals.

Quote: terapined

I loved the old Westworld movie from the 70's
Now watching the updated series on HBO NOW
wow.
Really enjoying this
HBO spent a lot of money on this and you can see it on the screen

Show Spoiler

Totally hooked me with the 1st beginning story. One of those you think you know exactly what's going on and then boom, the rug gets pulled out from underneath you and you think yea, that makes sense. Some of the tourists on the trains are robots

I just finished episode 7 of Westworld. Big twist at the end.

I'm sure I'll be done with season 1 by the weekend.

I watched Spectral on Netflix It was more like playing a video game than watching a movie. It had a kind of brisk momentum which made up for the fact that it was a rip off of Aliens, but in a cold computer graphics image kind of way.

Pretty high body count.

Just finished Jessica Jones.

I liked it, even though I am not a big superhero-genera fan.

Quote: ams288

I just finished episode 7 of Westworld. Big twist at the end.

I'm sure I'll be done with season 1 by the weekend.

Like you, I loved the movie, so I watched Westworld every Sunday till the end, and I didn't like it, here's why.

The intro with credits is tooooo long, like two+ minutes per episode.

The stories are mostly told to the audience, rather than shown. Some stories are just too convoluted, like with Arnold and Bernard and Delores and Wyatt. It's like they force feed it to us and expect us to catch it as they say it, instead of just showing us simpler stories by acting them out. I watched every episode and still don't know what happened in the end, and I don't care.

I realize that hosts can be killed and guests can't. But there were a LOT of scenes where guests couldn't possibly by guaranteed their safety, like with the gattling gun during the train heist, or any bomb blast where shrapnel can go anywhere. How can all the guests possibly know all the other guests, and just shoot randomly? I get that hosts might know each other by invisible chips or bluetooth or whatever, but do bullets or arrows also have bluetooth and disintegrate before hitting a guest? So silly, since killing robots and screwing robot prostitutes is what Westworld is selling. Is that really worth the $40,000/day price? Man In Black has been coming back for 35 years just to kill Delores or something? Silly. Many scenes are robots wandering the streets or playing poker in the tavern killing each other even when there's no guests present! I envisioned the Sims computer game....would they kill each other while I'm at work, not watching? LOTS of scenes where hosts are taking guests out into the woods, and meeting with other hosts/guests, and shooting starts all over the place....how do guests NOT get shot?

Writers seemed to change storylines throughout regarding Hopkins' Ford character, or Ed Harris' man in black. Like, the early episodes wouldn't have gone that way given what we learn later in the series. That will become more evident for those who binge-watch. Like, why does MiB search for the maze so determinedly? How did he learn of it? Seems like a manufactured plot for no reason.

In the start, I thought the female leads weren't attractive enough to hold my interest. In a show with lots of nudity, Thandie Newton did a few scenes (nice), and wanted to see more Clementine (kinda on the fence whether she was fine-as-hell, or kinda oddball looking, finally decided she was fine-as-hell), and I never cared to see Evan Rachel Wood nude, and she never did. Maybe next season they can cast more nude-worthy actresses in a nude-friendly series. It IS HBO after all. Nice they cast that niece actress from Banshee, but then never nude? WTH? That girl fine!

I welcome feedback and explanations.