I'm currently re-watching all episodes of Detectorists and it's one of my favourite tv things ever, so I thought maybe Tildes would be interested. Detectorists is a single camera sitcom about two men and their friendship around their metal detecting hobby.

Here's the link to the BBC Four webpage for it: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06l51nr

Some review sites -

Rotten Tomatoes 100% (few reviews), 99% audience score: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/detectorists

IMDB 8.6 : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4082744/

Guardian review (because she writes about it far better than I can): https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/dec/09/detectorists-rich-portrait-unremarkable-lives-gone-slightly-awry-mackenzie-crook

Detectorists is about nothing and everything. Made with palpable love, it’s about people and their passions; camaraderie and community. As a portrait of male friendship, it is closer to documentary than drama, delving beneath the topsoil of mid-life ennui via the sparsest of exchanges. You won’t find a laughter track, or smart-arse punchlines or an oh-so-subtle veil of irony here; instead of begging for your attention, Detectorists is notable for its avoidance of snark. It’s the drama least likely to culminate in alpha plonkers blowing up cars, taking down baddies or ravishing beautiful women.

Instead, it lingers lovingly over dewdrops on grass, magpies on gateposts, scudding clouds and gently fluttering leaves. Even an alfresco wee takes on a painterly aspect, viewed solely through the steam cloud billowing from behind a sunlit tree. Meanwhile, the camera makes high art out of Lance’s face in closeup, crestfallen as he unearths a scaffolding bracket instead of an Anglo-Saxon nugget, and from Andy’s silent incredulity when a colleague jokes about Richard Attenborough when he means David.

Radio Times review https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2017-12-13/detectorists-series-3-review/

If all British programmes took this much care over their tone, look and overall distinctiveness, the golden age of television would never go away.

Modern comedies are often predicated on cruelty: laughs are hard, clanging or sharp as barbed wire. In its quiet, undemonstrative way, Detectorists has ploughed its own furrow. Buried in its field of fun are evergreen truths about life, and the things we don’t say but should. So if kindness and companionship are unfashionable, I know which side of the hedge I’d rather stand.

Apple has spent a lot of money on The Morning Show for its new tv service. It has a bunch of actors that I love. In particular I'm excited to see Anniston, Duplas, Carell, and Crudup in this.

Metacritic gives it only 60. https://www.metacritic.com/tv/the-morning-show Sometimes a single terrible review can drag that number down, but that doesn't appear to be the case here. There are a few bad reviews, and lots of mixed reviews.

I don't know much about critique or how reviewing works, so I'm curious: is The Morning Show bad, or are critics terrible at reviewing, or is something else going on?

Here's the IMDB page for The Souvenir (distributed by A24). https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6920356/

IMDB users give the score as 6.6, and the user reviews are stuffed full of people who hate it. The critic reviews are almost entirely positive though.

Here's the Cherry Picks page for The Souvenir. https://www.thecherrypicks.com/films/souvenir

They use reviews from "female-identifying and non-binary film critics", and as a result the film gets good reviews.

I find the reviews surfaced by Cherry Picks to be more thoughtful, more considered, and more useful to me than those surfaced by IMDB or MetaCritic (even though they all pull critic reviews from many of the same sources).

I've found some great films via Cherry Picks.

Turn of Mind is a mystery. It's for the most part written in journal format. Interestingly it's a journal that sits in the house of a person with Alzheimer's disease.

Jennifer White was an orthopedic surgeon in Chicago. Once brilliant, Dr. White is now in the later stages of the disease and the journal is written in by family members and housekeepers to help her remember who she was and who she is. A fractured portrait emerges of a cold and strong minded woman who has had a full life that she remembers in bits and pieces. Amidst the pages is mention of a neighbor, Amanda, who has been murdered. Slowly things come together for the reader while Dr. White's disease progresses into confusion.

Yet she still has moments of lucidity, remembering the details of her profession, where she was considered one of the best and most respected hand surgeons in the country. Her deterioration is something she's at times very aware of, and it is this that makes the book so powerful.

The narrative often lapses into Jennifer's past memories of both her parents and her children. This adds authenticity to her mental condition but also made me impatient for what seemed to be more important details. As Jennifer is interviewed by police officers and pulled into interaction with her grown son and daughter, we can begin to understand the horror of this disease, especially regarding how hard it is to trust people who may be trying to manipulate the sufferer for their own purposes.

I'd put this near the top of my list for books enjoyed in 2019. It brings to mind The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon, narrated by an Aspberger's spectrum person. Turn of Mind is a hard book to read, but it's even harder to put down once you get into it.

Channel 4 describe the programme "Series that captures the work of police, probation, prison, prosecution and parole".

Here's a link to the first episode: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/crime-and-punishment/on-demand/64655-001

Crime and punishment is a documentary series that looks inside prison to tell the stories of the criminal justice system from the viewpoint of those involved.

The first episode spends some time talking about the unjust "Imprisonment for Public Protection"[1] sentences (these are no longer given by the courts but there are thousands of prisoners still imprisoned on them), how they went wrong, and the awful effect they have upon prisoners. It's a difficult watch. It shows how severely the mental health of prisoners is when they're on this type of sentence, including their serious self harm.

Episode two talks about pressure inside prisons and how that results in "riots", about how prisoners use the only power they have available to them.

I like the programme because it avoids judgmentalism. The prisoners are not reduced to the bad guys; the officers are not simplified to the good guys. You hear a little bit about some of the offences committed by the prisoners

Here's a Twitter thread from someone working in the English NHS. She works in forensic services as a psychologist. https://twitter.com/SarahE_Davidson/status/1173707912981700608

I guess Channel 4 On Demand have geo-blocking. I don't know if it's available on other services, or on torrent.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprisonment_for_public_protection

Some of the works of Peckinpah had been on my watch list for months, sitting there in a subfolder of a subfolder. From the choice of Straw Dogs and Cross of Iron, I chose the aforetitled, liking the idea of embarking on a bit of a journey through Mexico with a gritty protagonist as we experience splatterings of violence and negotiate the thoughts of a down and out vagabond making a ran for his riches.

The film left me with mixed feelings. I enjoyed the path of Benny, experiencing how his character is unwavering in his desire to take that last lucky ticket out of debauchery street, but didn't care much for his journey's partner. While I appreciated the dynamic of the relationship, the understanding they both had that they weren't in love with each other, but all they both had, the chemistry and dialogue didn't really resonate with me at parts. I actually was rather glad when this relationship came to its abrupt end as the film entered its final 3rd.

On top of that, there was major issues with the sound which made it difficult to fully immerse myself in the journey at times. I found myself feeling I was watching a caricature of a 70s movie now and again, as opposed to be engrossed in a gritty noir-esque adventure.

But all in all, an enjoyable film which has left an impression. I always appreciate watching unpolished characters navigating circumstances plotted outside their usual courses, then watching how they deal with the inevitable implosion. From what I've read since, the film was one which perhaps accurately portrayed the director's life at the time of filming; dealing with various booze-infused demons. That rawness definitely shows, as does the inevitable imperfections in this movie's execution.

7.5/10

This is a British cookery show. They take a bunch of people who cook for a living but who have basic skills. These people are paired with a chef who has four Michelin stars and eighteen restaurants. They visit different restaurants around Europe to have competitions to cook that restaurant's own food.

Things I enjoy about it: it does a good job of showing that people who have somewhat fucked up lives will always find a place in cheffing. They could have stayed in the UK but they decided to go around Europe.[1] There's a couple of incidents of poor behaviour being corrected (some of the women chefs are ignored and spoken over by some men, the women stand up for themselves and get an apology).

Things I don't like: there's some cheffy bollocks around the pressure and discipline of a brigade; it's still a reality-show competition and that introduces some artificiallity; they send people home each week and I always hate that aspect of programmes.

It's available on Pirate Bay.

Here are some reviews which I think are fair.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jul/30/the-chefs-brigade-review-a-cookery-challenge-worthy-of-willy-wonka

https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/the-chefs-brigade-bbc2-episode-1-review-jason-atherton/

[1] I can't describe how pathologically awful Brexit has been for the UK. :-(

Since we're fast approaching the second half of the year, I think it's a good time to look back on the first half, to the movies that came out this year and to share our favorites. I'm giving my favorite 10 (though in no particular order) but if more or fewer stood out to you and you want to share all of them, feel free! Blockbusters, indies, comedies, dramas, whatever stands out to you from 2019 so far. Don't feel pressured to write anything but the title or a basic synopsis if you don't want to.

• Apollo 11: Okay, I know I said this list isn't in order, but this one is definitely #1. It's history in motion, and its images and editing will surely be seared into my mind as the way I think of the Apollo launch.
• An Elephant Sitting Still: Technically came out in 2018 in some regions, but has a 2019 release in my country, which is the order I'm organizing this list in. A beautiful and heartbreaking journey into universal pain and suffering and catharsis in the tiniest things. At nearly 4 hours and with an oppressively melancholy tone, I struggle to recommend it to everyone and anyone, but if the description interests you, definitely give it a look.
• The Farewell: Hilarious and sad, often in the same moment. My love of this may well have been colored by my experiences as an immigrant under very similar circumstances as its main character, but it's an interesting look at differing cultural philosophies of the worth of the individual on their own versus their relation to society.
• The Last Black Man in San Francisco: A layered critique of gentrification and the personal individual obsessions that keep us from truly seeing it and other issues in our world as they happen. It's filled to the brim with things to say, sometimes to a detriment, and some of the screentime spent just showing the sad beauty of San Francisco could've been used to further flesh out some of its ideas, but I still found it extremely compelling all the way through.
• John Wick: Chapter 3- Parabellum: I think the John Wick movies get a little more bloat on them every entry(much like their titles, actually), but the action only seems to get slicker. I still like the balance of the world, character work, and action in Chapter 2 the best, but while I think 3 drags itself down into its lore a bit too much, its setpieces are still top of the line. I find Keanu endlessly killing people left and right to be incredibly cathartic. Should probably talk to someone about that.
• Burial of Kojo: This doesn't say "Netflix original" on it, but it does seem to be distributed by them in all the countries I checked, so I don't know what's happening there. Regardless, there's a good chance you'll find this on Netflix in your country. I'm willing to admit this movie is heavily, deeply flawed. It overtelegraphs many of its plot points repeatedly, for one. But I also think it is filled with a gorgeous charm. It's light fantasy and grounded fairy tale feels half Tarsem and half Guillermo del Toro, and I was captivated from beginning to end.
• Booksmart: I find the new crop of female led high school movies (Booksmart, Edge of Seventeen, Eighth Grade) to be far more relatable and interesting than the dozens of high school movies of decades prior. It feels like the hands of the filmmakers is more on the pulse of the struggles of modern kids. Booksmart is very much a heightened comedy compared to the other examples I mentioned, but it is great at it. It's hilarious, even if there's one scene in particular that goes on forever. The comparisons to Superbad are mostly warranted, and I still lie awake at night, sad at the fact that I saw this opening night and the theater was mostly empty.
• Dear Ex: The Netflix revolution of every indie movie ending up on streaming services and leaving the theaters to the blockbusters isn't quite happening at the speed originally anticipated, but it definitely seems like more and more of my favorites of the year end up being a streaming original. Dear Ex is a Netflix film about different people grappling with the loss of one man, and it shows the power of the individual to connect the lives of the people they love, and of the many tools we employ to try to get over losses in our lives.
• High Flying Bird: Yet another Netflix movie. Steven Soderbergh is one of the people who can make a bearable heist movie in this day and age imo, and he lends that gift to this to make a movie where the heist isn't money or jewels, but the basic rights of human beings being trampled on by a system that creates middle men to suck up money, leaving the real workers with pennies. It's shot on an iPhone, and there are moments where that seems like a limitation, but honestly, a lot of it looks really impressive.
• Ash is Purest White: This is Jia Zhangke well within his comfort zone, looking at the strain put on human relationships by the passage of time and the everchanging effects of globalization and shifting national landscapes. The World(2004) (aka Shijie) is still my favorite of his, and it is definitely an idea he's explored before, but his ideas and commentary on it have never failed me to keep me enthralled all the same.

I have a list of all the 2019 movies I see that I consider "good" here (29 films at the time of writing this) if anyone wants to take a look at all of them.

Mythbusters is back, but in a tweaked format.

Adam Savage fronts with a team of six young people. Jamie, Kari, Tory, and Grant are absent, only appearing in video flashbacks to the previous show.

Mythbusters with kids could have been horrific, but they've managed to make this entertaining and informative. They've increased the amount of STEM stuff. We see people doing a bit of math while planning something out. The kids are smart, and the show allows them to be smart while also being children. Adam is a great fit, being a big kid himself but also filling the role of a pseudo parent and giving friendly advice (often around safety, such as the tag strap used to manoeuvre huge steel plates).

The old show had a some problems. They'd have too many pre-break "what's coming next" and post-break "here's what happened before", and they'd chop up the myths being tested into tiny little bits. They still do that, but not nearly as much.

It's a fun, entertaining watch, and it's safe for families to watch together.