MisterGlass

There actually are several garlic festivals (really) so I never saw that one coming.

I remember hearing about this one before the world shut down, and now that it showed up on Netflix I gave it a watch. There are some bits that cross a line for me, like the intimation about what happened to Eddie Marsan's character. That will prevent me from recommending this to too many people. Michelle Dockery's character is on the verge of token, though she gets every bit out of it that she can. The language is excessive. However, it is on the whole a good caper movie, if not heist movie. Charlie Hunnam and Hugh Grant stole the show. The interplay between Ray and Fletcher was excellent. Colin Farrell was also good.

Watched this last night after watching a positive YouTube review. I agree if you go in with no particular expectations this is a pretty fun B movie. The Roger Rabbit comparison is direct, but Roger Rabbit is tilted more to the adult side of the scale, and this is tilted more to the kid side. The story is pretty straight forward and the stakes are lower than in Roger Rabbit. The references, in jokes, and world building give this a little something extra. They achieved something by working in not just digital, but muppet and stop motion characters. Surprisingly the human character was the one that worked the least for me. The performance felt a bit too conscious that this was a kid's movie/make believe. But maybe that was because she is the POV character for kids in the audience. Enjoyed Ugly Sonic and Dennis Haysbert as Zipper. The best brief cameo was a pair of cats from the CATS movie fighting in an alley in Uncanny Valley.

I think he mentioned wanting a lizard in his ideal apartment search. I hope the cast all find good future projects.

I wasn't expecting Titi B to be recurring either. I know she's the antagonist but she's a little too annoying. I did appreciate the continuity that all her dogs are white and blend in with the floor. A debate could be interesting. Arpi is there in the mix too.

I enjoyed this one. The influencer business was far from subtle, but I'm also on the outside of that generation, so it reflected a lot of my feelings about it. This episode was perfect use of Jayden. A little slapstick, a little lowest common denominator logic, a little humanity. "If there's one thing I know it's how to keep it simple stupid." I am completely in favor of this direction. Jayden and Arpi are also good foils for each other.

I like this addition to the theme of whether to be remembered as a cool mayor and or to be mocked as a useful mayor. I loved that Neil threw out the development of velcro as a benefit of space technology, and then opened and closed Arpi's velcro bag for emphasis. A short article on the space elevator concept. The funniest thing about the shelf of minions was that it was just there, and no one said anything. I also laughed at Tommy's The Voice audition. I like to think of Arpi as having a cabinet full of blackmail material going back decades.

They found a good way to bring in Orly's mother. She was a failed actress but a sincere mom, even if Neil took what she said to some extremes. I can understand the kids' frustration in the broadband delay since it was a matter of years not weeks or months. They had some great manipulative stories for the various council people. I loved Arpi's 80s campaign ad. This. They get a little carried away sometimes.

I did love the HR lady arbitration of appropriateness. And that Arpi continues to be just a little nuts underneath the veneer of dedicated public servant. I think they need to find a way for Tommy to grow as a character and as a member of the government, in the same way that they have started with Mikaela. I hope this wasn't the extent of the sister cities plot. I was hoping they might try for more.

I thought Chet's street walk at the beginning was quite funny. Jayden's inability to remember Neil's name could have been a beat shorter.

I snorted when Arpi said that fighting the other women in her demographic with sharp haircuts for ceramics felt too much like cannibalism. I enjoyed the final anti-fraud commercial by Fran Drescher.

I like that they are continuing to nudge Mikaela toward actually being a public servant with Arpi as a harsh but real mentor. And I was so relieved to see Jayden get a win, however short lived. I'm surprised there wasn't more Arpi rage directed at golf courses. I wonder if they'll revisit Teri the homeless woman.

If you ever feel like giving one more a try, I'd skip ahead to episode 6. Starting with that episode they began to improve. It's still not a must watch for me, but I'm enjoying it on the whole.

"Col. Brandon from Elinor" would have delighted me but that's probably not broad enough.

I thought it was fun overall. "I want to be part of democracy...ending." I am mildly interested in whether the private/public collaboration story goes somewhere. The DMV line is the great leveler of society. That and the jury duty waiting room. Though, I must complement the last two DMV offices I went to for pre-screening applications at the start of the line.

I love The Truman Show, and the nods to it were some of my favorite bits. I didn't know those were real gaming commentators, that was interesting.

I would almost prefer the anachronism of the paper arriving. Maybe even a paper copy of an online only newspaper. Or a paper version of a website news feed, to go all the way into the fantasy aspect. The show wouldn't be the show without the cat bringing the news. In the original series Gary was destined to hand the paper off to a young girl he met, like Mr. Snow was destined to hand it off to him. It could be interesting if this turns out to be her. While it could mean Gary is no longer in this world, it could be a way of exploring what came next for him in flashbacks.

It would be interesting if they judged them blind. I could see a path to it where the hosts present the showstoppers to the judges, delivering an explanation written by the contestants.

Apparently a continuation is in the works. We'll have to see how it goes. Part of me thinks it will be harder to continue the concept than it would be to restart entirely.

Sidney Poitier's character trying get payment from the mother superior in Lilies of the Field. It's minor by comparison, but I always enjoyed him as the put upon straight man in the ensemble cast of Sneakers.

I started rewatching Elementary recently, and was surprised to see a link to an Odker website on a phone in Season 1. It's interesting to see the company mentioned that far back in the series since it became prominent later.

This was a mostly entertaining wrap-up to a mostly entertaining season. I'm not sorry to have watched, but don't think this will be on my rewatch list. They really committed to Don's relationship with the chicken. They really needed a few more STEM people working on the technobabble. It always felt like the show wanted to be hard science based, but the technical parts could be frustrating. Like when the shield bubble protecting Hogwarts at the end of Harry Potter showed up over the colony.

The thing that annoyed me most in this episode was the doctor promising that Will, with a massive heart injury, was certain to survive. I knw they were trying to give cover to the parents bugging out to deal with robots, but that required some extra handwaving.

I actually thought the Fortuna was going to turn out to have caused some planet wide catastrophe, and the Robots were after humans for revenge. It is more interesting to have the robots acting for themselves to prevent control by another intelligent species.

I think Will believes this is an alien keyboard and the sounds are the letters, and he has some hope of using the sounds to craft a message to the robots. I'm picturing an end scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This feels like a miscalculation by the show. I was fully expecting Grant Kelly to look about 5 years older than Judy when he got defrosted. He even referred to himself as being in the same class as Maureen in astronaut training. They could have covered him being older by saying that the cryosleep is more like a medical coma, and the astronauts still age in it. However, they then showed a young astronaut in the other cryotube, and Grant doesn't have the mentality of someone who feels 28 but is in an older body. He did mention that he missed ice cream and his mother, which could have supported the latter scenario. However, I think they wanted Judy to have a father-like relationship with him, which would have been difficult with a younger actor or a character who was younger in spirit. They could stick either Vijay or Penny's new boyfriend in it to stop the relationship drama sucking oxygen out of the room.