Be Excellent To Each Other

I think the Dexter hate is mostly down to it starting off brilliant and going so badly downhill after the first 3/4 seasons.

Except it didn't start off brilliant. Natch.

Wut.

I SAID IT DIDN'T START OFF BRI... etc.

The characters were the main problem: Weak caricatures of comic book characters.

The cop, Doakes, was the worst offender (Hah. Cause he was a cop, GEDDIT?) with his often ridiculous anger towards and pursuit of Dexter. Debra too as the goofy sister who, obviously, falls for the worlds 2nd best serial killer. It was like a terrible James Patterson novel (basically all of them starting with Pop Goes the Weasel). Then there's the latin police chief, LaGuerta, who is about as convincing as a chief captain as Doakes is as convincing as the badass street cop. Rita is this weedy prey for Dexter but soon forgets about her past rapes when she wants some nookie with non-nookie nookie-rookie Dexter. Her voice is also annoying. I quite liked Angel but he's a poor bystander character.

There's a lack of drama, a lack of horror of the things that a serial killer does (which aren't, it turns out, very horrible) and even though Dexter is introduced as the ultimate killer who hides in day light he is quickly unraveled in the first two seasons so we never really see how excellent he is as a psychopath cause he soon starts fucking up and making a load of mistakes. Tut.

Well I'm loving Season One for what it is, entertaining telly that doesn't necessarily stand up to much scrutiny (three episodes left I think). I have to say though, my takeaway from it overall is that to bag the chicks you should be a serial killer.

Also, it has boobs in it.

The tech stuff is a bit embarrassing, but then again it always, always is in telly and films.

Well your face didn't start off brilliant.

Heh. Quite literally, sometimes.

Except it was only good for about two seasons, then was a bit rubbish, then was brilliant, Mr Backwards.

S4 was John Lithgow!

S4 for Lithgow and S2 for naked english lady.

Heh. "Oops, pardon my tits."

Exactly.

So, was:

S1: good
S2: good
S3: not good
S4: good
S5: good (this is Julia Stiles' series)
S6: good (this is the series with the four horsemen episode and Mos Def in half the series.
after that it falls apart.

except add Helix, Salam, Justified etc to the list!

I'm just finishing the first book and am surprised how much I am enjoying it considering I have seen the series first.

I think the third book is where it all goes properly mental. Or maybe the second. I enjoyed them, but VERY different.

Yes, I'm now interested in picking up the others. I only read this as it was a gift, or I wouldn't have bothered.

Daredevil is fantastic.

Makes Gotham look really amateurish.

Well that's Season One of Dexter finished and it actually had me watch three on the trot this evening so it must be doing something right.

I appreciate there's a lot (all?) of it that's totally ridiculous but that doesn't necessarily mean it can't be watchable telly. And I also doff my cap to the guy who plays Doakes as I've never seen anyone do CONSTANTLY ANNOYED for so long and with such incredible consistency.

I like it, looking forward to getting started on Season Two tomorrow.



Also I recommend COLD IN JULY as a film to watch, (I think I already have done in the movie thread), that's got Michael C Hall in the title role but I hadn't seen any of Dexter before I watched that. I may well go back and rewatch Cold In July now as it'll make his performance doubly interesting. (He was very good in Cold In July, but that was before I'd watched him be Dexter.)

Game of Thrones (S5) starts tonight

Already some avi of the first 4 episodes on some tracker sites and NG

I'll be waiting as I like 1080p only for this show

I'm waiting as well. Don't want to wait a month for the rest, having had the poor quality binge.

Liking Daredevil, it's well put together.

Aye, first 4 GOT just popped onto ("Netflix" - Ed)

Presumably you'll be waiting until the Bluray comes out.

Depends really for some shows you get 1080p long before the Bluray, the latest Mad Men was well over 2.5GB and was saying it was 1080p?

Certainty when the BluRay is out you get episodes of 4GB and above in size, so I suppose I will get the biggest I can at the time I watch it and maybe go back and get better quality when they show up.

I wouldn't be interested in the first 4 leaked episodes as they are from some leaked review DVD and are 300MB is size. The show is well worth the wait!

The HBO GO app streams at 1080p so it should be available at that res even without a Bluray release.

Definitely worth remembering that heavily compressed 1080p like what you get from torrent sites and such is usually visibly lower quality than uncompressed video you get off a blu ray.

For most stuff 720p compressed is fine by me. For stuff that's not particularly visually intensive (like a comedy show or something) sub-720p is fine too.

IMO, 480p is more than fine for character and drama stuff. Everything except visual spectacles, if I'm honest.

As long as it's 60fps.

Obviously the display you are watching it on, how close to the display you are and the eyes you are watching it with are also factors.

Oh, I can see the compression. It just doesn't bother me.

I like to watch it at the best quality available and then buy the Bluray 12 months later and watch it again at its most visually spectacular. Honestly, the Blurays are just fabulous.

Can't be arsed with physical media any more

Aye, I mostly meant that no ones preferences or indifference are "wrong".

I know it's been out for a while, but The 100 just popped up on Amazon Prime and it's surprisingly not terrible.

Aye, and even more surprisingly, it gets progressively less not terrible as time goes on.

If found that it got better, but then season 2 was properly dull.

The middle of it dragged quite badly but it started and ended well.
All the more reason to restrict shows to 13 episodes per season.

I highly recommend "the last man on earth". It's very very funny.

A new series of Silicon Valley has started.

That's great. I loved the first one, but I was afraid it got cancelled.

Hmm. Appear to have watched all of Daredevil. Oops.

Watched the first episode of Daredevil and enjoyed it. Still can't quite get my suspension of disbelief into the fight scenes as yet, but I'm sure we'll get there.

They do cover how come he has such mad skills later on, it's an origin story but it's not told in a totally linear fashion. I really like how realistic the fight scenes are, I can't remember the first episode specifically, but later on you see him get tired in the middle of fights, and resorting to more of a brawl type fighting when he loses his temper.

The fight scene at the end of episode 2 is fantastic.



I watched another episode of Gotham and it is really hard not to laugh at how bad it is after having watched Daredevil. It does some things well, but it is a bad show overall.

The fights are really quite excellent - and I really like the way they weave the origin stories into the various episodes.

The actor’s actually blind, isn’t he?

No.

Don't think so, no

Vincent D’Onofrio did actually gain all that weight though.

Ah, it was a badly written guardian article that was complaining about how it isn't shown with audio descriptions for the blind, and they made some comment about someone being registered blind and it read like they meant the actor.

However he was the hero in Stardust

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardust_%282007_film%29

Hah. American Superhero in being English Shocker!