Topic: All Things Netflix! Coming Soon: The Netflix Experience, Live and In Person!??

[BlackNMild2k1]

Looks like Netflix got their hands on some classic Black Sitcoms

[M.K.Ultra]

I just re-subbed to Netflix after a year hiatus and I am catching up on what I missed. I am just finishing Castlevania season 3. It is really good. I think it keeps getting better. They do a great job of balancing all the different story lines. I was explaining the show to a friend and realized there are not many serious animated shows for adults made in the US. Maybe this is the appeal of Anime to western audiences. Are there some other shows like this I am missing out on?

[BlackNMild2k1]

Just dropping this here to watch later

Death to 2020
https://youtu.be/veUqfcyZ_Bo

[BeautifulShy]

Just dropping this here to watch later

Death to 2020
https://youtu.be/veUqfcyZ_Bo

I watched this the other night to wrap up 2020 and it is very good at telling what happened this year while also taking all the personaities of 2020 and making light of them.   I like the way they did it.


Also today I just finished the 3rd season of Cobra Kai.  Yep I watched all 10 episodes today.  I like the way they showcased all three dojos and the way they are all different.   There was some nice call backs to the original movies in fun ways and it was left on a cliffhanger but one where it sets up the 4th season.

[BlackNMild2k1]

This looks like fun.

New Superhero film on netflix
Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnx6-YLXFwg

[broodwars]

Watched the 1st (and so far only) season of Pacific Rim: The Black, the 3D CGI anime series that takes place after the Uprising movie, over the weekend. I had some concerns coming into this, as Pacific Rim is one of my all-time favorite movies and Polygon Pictures has a...checkered history when it comes to their animation quality. Polygon Pictures in particular is known for "cutting frames", an absolutely idiotic premise that Japanese studios have adopted with 3D CG anime to make the animation "look more like 2D animation" by making it look like **** by cutting out animation frames to make it look choppier.

Well, I'm happy to say that The Black is excellent, overall. The Jaeger/Kaiju fights are well choreographed & animated, and the human animation is...not offensively bad. In fact, I think they generally did an excellent job of translating 2D anime character designs into 3D cel shading, better than they did in Knights of Sidonia anyway.

The story is pretty standard: kids abandoned by their Jaeger pilots discover an abandoned Jaeger training mech and decide to go looking for their parents, but get waylaid by Kaiju and a local militia warlord. There's a good focus on character development, often with the aid of the franchise's "Drift" mechanic where 2 Jaeger pilots have to share memories & feelings in order to function as one. There is one particular anime trope I could have done without, though at least it gets some payoff towards the end of the show. Suffice it to say the writers were obviously inspired by a popular action anime currently wrapping up.

My only real issues with the show are that sometimes the voice actors sound like they're really phoning it in (which, given when this show was made, is quite possible) and the season ends SUPER abruptly. It's good that a 2nd season was already greenlit from the start.

Check it out if you like the 1st movie. Maybe someday I'll actually watch my copy of the much-disliked 2nd movie.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Shadow & Bone now on Netflix

Teaser:
https://youtu.be/UHJYYd_RnJc

Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1WHQTbJ7vE

Anybody read the books on this?
reviews have kinda got my interest more than piqued, and it's only rated TV-14 so it's something I'm hoping to watch with my daughter, that's NOT ANIME!!! Hopefully it we both get into it.

Impressions have me looking forward to it. They are basically saying in some ways even better than the book.
I haven't read the book, but that's enough praise to get me to at least check out the show.

[BlackNMild2k1]

LaKeith Stanfield is Yasuke

https://youtu.be/ijKAtzQY1wc

and Castlevania Season 4 Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7iWXfZzEMc

[M.K.Ultra]

Very stoked for Castlevania. Each season seems better than the previous.

[Adrock]

Season 2 was my favorite. Season 3 was good but weird. The animation in the trailer is simply *chef’s kiss*

Apparently, Season 4 is expected to close the current arc so I’m curious how all the various threads close off. Warren Ellis has supposedly been dropped from the show presumably due to the egregious amount of sexual misconduct accusations against him. Collectively, this is such a bummer. First, control yourself. Is it really that difficult to not sexually harass others? Second, his writing on the show has been mostly excellent. I hope the writing doesn’t take a significant hit in future seasons.

[broodwars]

That was quite a good trailer for Castlevania Season 4. Unfortunately, I just watched the slow-moving, pointless dumpster fire that was Season 3, so they have a lot of ground to make up after the fantastic Season 2. I don't know why they decided to only kinda, sorta adapt Curse of Darkness, a Castlevania game so few people played that Konami set fire to the entire franchise after it and rebooted it all with Lords of Shadow. I further don't know why they decided to kinda, sorta adapt it and then not really DO anything with it.

Supposedly, the show is going to be rebooted after this season because Netflix thinks people will only watch shows with small season counts to focus on a new cast. Kinda feel like they should have done that after Season 2 if they were going to do that.

[Adrock]

Unfortunately, I just watched the slow-moving, pointless dumpster fire that was Season 3, so they have a lot of ground to make up after the fantastic Season 2.

That's fair though I'm not as hard on it. Season 3 was all escalation and setting the board for what will hopefully be a Season 4 closer to Season 2's highs. Ellis straight up didn't know what to do with Alucard, and there wasn't enough material as written for the Hector/Lenore thread to last an entire season. Season 3 was very uneven except it didn't have to be. It needed a little reprioritization. Take out Alucard's blatant stalling and maybe make Hector less of a simp-cuck. Give him a little agency, have him do something. Hector's thread was too slow of a burn. There were other, better ways to get him to be Lenore's slave than that ridiculous, unearned sex scene. For example, at some point mid-season Hector should have escaped, been found by Lenore then willingly returned with her. More manipulation to make him think he's making these choices on his own.

Otherwise, Season 3's highs are really high. Isaac's arc was excellent. The entirety of Saint Germain was excellent. Trevor and Sypha's Scooby Doo mystery thread was good until that largely unnecessary post-final battle swerve.

I don't know why they decided to only kinda, sorta adapt Curse of Darkness, a Castlevania game so few people played that Konami set fire to the entire franchise after it and rebooted it all with Lords of Shadow. I further don't know why they decided to kinda, sorta adapt it and then not really DO anything with it.

I'm glad Ellis cherrypicked parts of Curse of Darkness. He turned one of the coolest sounding Castlevania-anything (the Infinite Corridor) from a generic late-stage to a significant plot device. How much do you remember about Curse of Darkness? Game Hector was boring as hell, and the less said about what an insufferable edge-lord Game Isaac was the better along with his sister who inexplicably looked exactly like Game Hector's dead girlfriend or something. The plot was paint-by-numbers Castelvania.

[broodwars]

Yeah, my basic issue with Season 3 is that all the characters basically end where they started, with the exception of Isaac. Even Hector basically ends the season where he began, and his wasn't the only unearned (and frankly inexplicable) sex scene that season. There is just so much padding in Season 3, especially in Sypha and Trevor's story. They basically spend the whole season going "Huh. That's weird. Should we DO something?" When they DO finally do something, it's awesome but why did it take the entire season for them to get involved?

As for Curse of Darkness, you would know more than I. I haven't played it, either, mostly because it was never ported to the PS3 as a PS2 Classic (only Lament of Innocence was). Since the anime likes to reference characters from the game, any time there's a notable one I like to pull up the Wiki and see what they were in the games. It certainly helped me explain to my best friend why the show was spending so much time with Hector and Isaac in Season 2. I'm aware of the game's reputation, though.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Stranger Things S4 Teaser
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILwLN6hV-X8

[Plugabugz]

Season 2 was my favorite. Season 3 was good but weird. The animation in the trailer is simply *chef’s kiss*

This is still my overall concern because the animation on the show can be split between "we spent money here" and "we didn't spend money here". Particularly around walking scenes when they just move the joints and wobble the models to simulate walking. Everything in the trailer was fluid and moving..... did they fix it? or did they just use the well animated bits in the trailer?

[Adrock]

That’s standard for shows. Producers will limit budgets of mid-season episodes if they need to reallocate that money for the finale. Those are typically bottle episodes like “Fly” in Breaking Bad. They needed more money to pull off blowing up half of Gus Fring’s face. Castlevania has been popular enough for Netflix to renew past their normal two or three seasons so maybe later seasons will have more consistent animation quality throughout.

[Plugabugz]

That’s standard for shows. Producers will limit budgets of mid-season episodes if they need to reallocate that money for the finale. Those are typically bottle episodes like “Fly” in Breaking Bad. They needed more money to pull off blowing up half of Gus Fring’s face. Castlevania has been popular enough for Netflix to renew past their normal two or three seasons so maybe later seasons will have more consistent animation quality throughout.

It's pretty normal in TV production, but in Castlevania this spreads across every episode. Certain scenes are animated properly (nearly every one in the trailer) while the others, virtually everything outside of an action scene, are done as bare bones as possible. I can't unsee it now.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Saving budgets for those action scenes.
All the other scenes were probably outsourced as well to cut down on time and money.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Love, Death + Robots S2 Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaXtfAFva8

I've been waiting on this one, haven't watched the trailer yet, but I will when I have a moment to play audio

[BlackNMild2k1]

Masters of the Universe!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81wyj65SJIo

Saving to watch later

[ThePerm]

I feel like recreating the Motu trailer with the toys.

[BlackNMild2k1]

yo, who knew about this!?
 
Resident Evil - the TV Show... on Netflix
starring Lance Reddick as Wesker

[nickmitch]

That sounds. . .interesting.  Wonder what they'll do with a live action RE series.

[Adrock]

Casting Lance Reddick as Wesker seems like a waste of Lance Reddick. I don’t know what they’re planning with this show, but if they follow the games at all, I’d rather they cast anyone else to get murder-death-killed, and give Riddick an original role to sink his teeth into.

[Stratos]

So they closed out the live action RE series with the last film and there was supposed to be a new reboot film. did that convert to a TV show?