Reads, Listens, Watches

My one disappointment so far: The first couple episodes has some stronger and better written characters that seem much more true to themselves. By episode four/early episode 5 they’re feeling white washed and almost caricatures of themselves. Certainly by episode four Mrs. Maisel has somehow morphed into a somewhat older Rory Gilmore (from Gilmore Girls). All the characters eventually seem to have the same witty banter and methods of speech (including the time period) which mirrors Amy Sherman Palladino’s work in Gillmore Girls. Some of Mrs. Maisel’s grittiness from the early episodes simply disappears, and not as an evolving result of her character arc.

While I can appreciate that the writer certainly has a “voice”, she should be able to modulate it to better differentiate her characters going forward. I’ll keep sampling it through the end of the season, but if the tenor doesn’t improve, I’m sure to give up on future seasons.

Watched on Amazon Prime.

It’s been a few years since I watched this, but even the “Cheer up Charlie” song doesn’t grate on me like it once did. I used to think it was the worst part of the film and now it’s vaguely tolerable–still not great–but tolerable at least.

I had re-read the book last year and put a tracker on the film version. Netflix just added it to their mix last week, so it’s now available there for a while.

Watched on Netflix

Rating:

Entertaining, but the narrative was a bit too on-the-nose with large chunks of explanation moving the plot along. The characters were a bit annoying and inconsistent. Dr. Strange was reasonably well developed but didn’t have a serious arc to speak of. His sharp wit would have been more entertaining if I wasn’t constantly comparing the character to Deadpool the entire time. I’m not sure Cumberbatch was the right chose for this type of “comedy”. I didn’t get any chemistry at all between the two supposed romantic leads.

I feel like I watched more Benedict Cumberbatch movies in the last two weeks than I saw movies during the entire last year…

Watched on Netflix on Kindle Fire 7″.

Rating:

The film holds up reasonably well all these years later. The cinematography isn’t as off-seeming as many late 70’s pictures typically feel.

Jacky Gleason was a great caricature here and never seemed to break. His repeated use of the appelation “boy” was quite grating though he did seem to evenly apply it to almost everyone in the film.

In all, still an interesting romp despite the period cultural deficiencies.

Watched on Showtime (HDR)

Rating: