Category: screen

This is quite a story, even without the Disney spice. They dramatized it just the right amount I think; enough to reel in what I’m assuming is a massive audience without turning off hardcore sports movie fans like me.

I’ve said, “this feels like the future” before and I’ve only been half serious. Well, this feels like the future, for real. House of Cards is a modern political thriller representing Netflix’s first foray into original content that has a couple of futuristic aspects.

I got sucked in to Downton about a year ago and it’s been quite a ride. My enjoyment of it has many facets. At times it’s a guilty pleasure, at times it’s a historical reference, and at other times it’s a commentary on class dividing lines applicable to today’s society. This thing has some range.

This is the end of the run, and it’s about time. All of the remarkable story lines are played out and the last ten episodes have been a fitting series ending. Once again, it uncannily pulled in relevant topics that interested and enlightened me, which is baffling, considering the series is over five years old.

So these 30 for 30 things by ESPN are showing up on Netflix streaming. I was just flipping through the documentaries and Straight Outta LA popped up. Despite my hatred for the Worldwide Leader, I do love these sports documentaries, but I haven’t seen many of them. I hit play on this one thinking I’d check it out and I checked it out for an hour (I watched it all, yes). This is where you realize that not having cable doesn’t exempt you from becoming a TV-watching zombie.

I think everyone should make it a point to see each Denzel Washington movie. If not at the theatre, at least after the fact. He’s especially reliable for gratuitous TV watching on hotel HBO. He makes it a pretty safe bet that you’re going to get something worthwhile.

I have a friend whose daughter went to Kenyon, a small liberal arts college near Columbus, Ohio. He mentioned this movie a few months ago because the writer/director/star and a bunch of cast members went to Kenyon. It was filmed on location while his daughter was there. I kind of forgot about it, then Gail and I were flipping through iTunes looking for a movie one night and just before we were ready to hang it up and not watch anything, we saw this was available.

I don’t do movie marathons. I wouldn’t, for example, entertain the thought of re-watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy on a snowy winter weekend. I don’t do all night sessions with TV shows. I don’t really even have a desire to get “caught up” on anything. I have the attention span of a gnat combined with a guilt complex that forces me to stretch media consumption over a weirdly extended period of time. That is, until now; until Homeland season one.

Somewhere, between sci-fi and fantasy, falls the super hero sub-genre. Of these three sub-genres, super hero is my least favorite; it seems to distract from the social commentary and political intrigue often present in the other two. That should set the scene for my take on this movie.

This could probably be the most distinctly gratifying Bond film yet. It sets this franchise up nicely. In that vein, I saw a review that compared this to The Dark Knight, and I can certainly see that. It has the same type of serious back story that serves as a new beginning. Really cool stuff.