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It appears the Netflix thread is gone, so I’m not sure where to put this, but David Fincher and Robert Towne are working on a Chinatown prequel series for Netflix

This is the right place! Also: gimme

I'm pretty hot and cold on The Crown, and thought that overall this last season was its worst yet. However episode 7, Moondust, was not only the best of the entire series but one of the best episodes of television I've ever seen. The way they combined the moon landing with the trapped feelings of one man, and placed measurable action alongside faith as contrasting determinations of meaningfulness, was intricately and intelligently conceived. The projecting of dreams onto others only to be shattered, as is inevitable, turns into a mirror that reflects light so bright it dissolves the duke's already fragmented self and the final surrender brought tears to my eyes. Combining existentialism and faith so seamlessly is no easy feat, but the successes are so good they are among my favorite films. This is the best attempt made in this area since The Leftovers, though you need to sit through the whole series for the episode to hold the power it does.

Well, my week's shot: I just discovered Discovery is streaming the entire series of their fascinating It Takes a Thief reality program from the mid-00s for free! This show was the best: hosted by two former thieves, one would break into a house and rob it with abandon while the owners watched on video. The thieves would then give the owners advice on how to protect their home from the break-in they received. They'd then show up unannounced to try to break in again and see if the home owners' took their advice/altered their bad habits

RE: Chernobyl

Reverend Drewcifer wrote: Thu Jun 06, 2019 3:52 pmThis hearkens back to a very special window of time when HBO original movies and miniseries were leveraging genuine masters like John Frankenheimer and craftsmen like Joseph Sargent, Roger Spottiswoode, and Chris Gerolmo to make damn good movies.

That's really an excellent comparison. I remember stuff like And The Band Played On, and lots of other really good films that stood apart from just being what was expected of TV movies at the time. HBO has been reclaiming their ground on this with films like O.G. and The Tale.

But getting back to And The Band Played On, this is comparable in terms of how humanely told this tragedy unfolded. Nothing is aggressively played for shock value, the horror is shown completely for what it is and there's no overt sense of the otherness of Russia in relation to how it feels as an American. The fact everybody speaks English and there are no attempts at Russian accents at all actually works to it's favor in terms of this being able to happen to anywhere else in the world.

I loved Patriot on Amazon, for it's mix of dark, dry humor and it's own twisted view of the spy genre. But Perpetual Grace, LTD., also from Steven Conrad, didn't work for me. Some of it did, mostly seeing Ben Kingsley channeling a bit of what made Don Logan such a visceral affecting performance. It goes into a little more goofier territory (like hearing him sing "When Doves Cry" in one episode). Jimmie Simpson is a fabulous supporting actor but I'm not quite sure he's enigmatic enough to be the center of the storm like he is in this show.

Just picked up a copy of Russell T. Davies mini speculative fiction epic, Years and Years, and am sorry to report that HBO's Region 1 DVD set is a MoD burn, not pressed, which is disappointing because it's also priced as an import, at least here in Canada.

Interested parties should probably just stick with the digital versions from Google Play and Apple, which are priced at a couple of dollars an episode.