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43. Husbands season 1.
It's okay - not particularly original in any way, shape or form, sadly, but it's okay.
44. De udvalgte
I watched the first episode of this series back when it was shown on tv, back in - and refused to watch any more of it. It had been advertised as fantastic fiction and didn't feel the least bit like it, just a bunch of twenty-something-year-olds getting a big apartment to share and drinking and partying all night. Dull. I was reading the extra materials and found, that apparently the first episode was heavily edited for the dvd release, as was other parts, including the ending (it was originally a cliffhanger, and honestly, you can tell).
So, I decided to give it a second chance and got hold of the dvd and was actually pleasantly surprised - oh, it has issues and quite frankly, there is not a single one of the main characters that I sympathize with (some are just bastards, others start out nice and then they go and just ... anyway). Anyway, the story is of a young couple who get hold of a lovely, old apartment in Copenhagen - one of those really big ones - and decide to rent the rooms to a bunch of strangers to get money to fix-it up. But soon, strange things start to happen - gradually, as the characters find their way deeper into the apartment's secret places, the past starts to bleed into the present. Strangers keep appearing seemingly knowing so much more about what's going on than our heroes, the landlord apparently has a monster bricked up in the basement, and gradually, very gradually, the main characters start to realize that everything is tied to a scientific expedition to the South Pole 100 years ago, an expedition which they apparently all had an ancestor aboard... In between, there are ghost possession, mystical Mayan steampunk/stone tech, a dead and autopsied body waking up to have a conversation with her chest still split open, Neonazi cultists and the occasional bit of time travel and actually? It's not great, but it's no worse than so many other series I've seen - it has its faults, not least that the plot seems to be - well, the everybody-taking-turns-being-mad-at-each-other-and-jumping-from-one-bed-to-another plot progesses as if a week or more goes by each episode, while the mystery of the time bleed and the bloody big rock in the hidden safe feels more like at most a couple of days goes by between episodes, if that. So, that's not so good. And it's just plain weird watching genre television in Danish, but the writing is not as bad as it sometimes get. And the ending is very obviously edited from a cliffhanger (I read there was supposed to be a movie, with an new expedition to the South Pole (or possibly South America) - seriously, (and spoilers for the ending): if the heroine drinking the heart's blood of her idiot ex-boyfriend out of a jam jar was really enough to shut down the mystical life-draining/immortality-granting stone and kill the 100 year old neo-Nazi mad scientist bad guy, why did everybody have to run to the bloody boat?
45. Über Life
You are the hero - the land is controlled by an evil goddess and her priests, who kidnap a young woman (your girlfriend?). You search for her, have a freaky dream experience and eventually find yourself in the hidden temple/lair, confronting the high priest and the evil goddess. And honestly? This whole interactive movie lark is highly overrated - the plot gets overly simplistic compared to a normal movie, and the dvd has so little room for the scenes for the various storylines that it most of all felt like one of those Fighting Fantasy books I had as a kid, complete with annoying dead-end choices leading to having to start all over again. I mean, the scenery was nice, I liked the weird red-crystal miracles, but honestly? Why didn't they just make a rpg?
46. Underworld - Rise of the Lycans
Honestly? Dull. I mostly watched it because Jared Turner's in it, and then I spectacularly failed to recognize him, though honestly, that beard was atrocious...
47. Game of Thrones season 2.
Sad to say, I can't really get worked up to being excited about this series - this season, well, not enough Littlefinger, could have used more Tyrion (and I wanted to see his chain!), would have liked more Cersei - yeah, yeah, so I like the bad guys of the show. Of course, there's plenty of things that annoy me - like how the Stark wolves only make appearances when the plot requires their actual presence rather than being constant companions - or the fact that I still wonder who the architect at King's Landing is and exactly what he thought people was going to do come winter... Anyway...
48. Prometheus
You know, this has got to be one of the worst planned space expeditions I've ever seen. For instance, you have a medpod - a medpod calibrated to only work on men, despite the ship having two women aboard, one of them explicitly identified as the pod's owner? Why? To create five seconds extra tension in the movie, yes, but why in-story? Why? And if you go out expecting (or at least hoping) to encounter life that might very well have messed with our genetics previously or even be related to us, why don't you assume that things in that environment might make you sick and plan for that with decent quarantine protocols rather than just roasting the poor guy who winds up sick? Honestly..
49. Drive
It's okay - not fantastic, but okay. Really, why do the major criminal elements always seem to specialize in pissing off the exact person who they really, really shouldn't is beyond me :-)
50. Anno 1790 season 1.
This show reminded me of Garrow's Law, which is hardly surprising (in fact, if you were to tell me that the people behind Anno 1790 had never watched GL, I would politely not believe you) - oh, they are different - one is British courtroom drama, the other Scandinavian mystery - but still, they are quite alike. It also reminded me of En Kongelig Affære. In fact, all three are remarkably alike - in each we have a hero, an educated man, a man of the Enlightment, a man who wants to change the world for the better, get away from the darkness of the old times. In each, there is another man - a social (and sometimes literal) superior, who usually acts as employer or patron - and in each case, this man has a wife, who shares interests with our hero, and has (or is thought to have) an illicit affair with him.
So, personal storylines remarkably similar - and yet also very different. See, I also find it interesting, how in each show, the hero's struggle to bring about change in society seems to be reflected in the success of his private life. In EKA, Struensee's Enlightment project fails spectacularly along with his relationship to the queen (and his life), while in GL, Garrow is winning his cases and bringing about - slowly but nevertheless surely - social change, and he and his beloved are now together and has a chance for happiness. And then there is Dåådh, Dåådh who we are yet to see how it goes with - the series ends with him having left both his job as police inspector and been rejected by Magdalena after a single, illicit night - yet it also ends with him seemingly gathering himself and planning to go back, so... though honestly, I'd like for Magdalena to keep refusing him and stay with her husband and be awesome as she is, because frankly? I'm getting tired of the other plotline, the one with the fullblown affair - it's dull, it's predictable, it's been done and done to death. Try something new, please! In fact, I think the next late 18th century period drama I watch, I'd like to have no infidelity plots whatsoever - any recommendations?
Chaplin
I don't think I'm going to count a movie twice, just because it's been just a few months since I saw it last...
It's okay - not particularly original in any way, shape or form, sadly, but it's okay.
44. De udvalgte
I watched the first episode of this series back when it was shown on tv, back in - and refused to watch any more of it. It had been advertised as fantastic fiction and didn't feel the least bit like it, just a bunch of twenty-something-year-olds getting a big apartment to share and drinking and partying all night. Dull. I was reading the extra materials and found, that apparently the first episode was heavily edited for the dvd release, as was other parts, including the ending (it was originally a cliffhanger, and honestly, you can tell).
So, I decided to give it a second chance and got hold of the dvd and was actually pleasantly surprised - oh, it has issues and quite frankly, there is not a single one of the main characters that I sympathize with (some are just bastards, others start out nice and then they go and just ... anyway). Anyway, the story is of a young couple who get hold of a lovely, old apartment in Copenhagen - one of those really big ones - and decide to rent the rooms to a bunch of strangers to get money to fix-it up. But soon, strange things start to happen - gradually, as the characters find their way deeper into the apartment's secret places, the past starts to bleed into the present. Strangers keep appearing seemingly knowing so much more about what's going on than our heroes, the landlord apparently has a monster bricked up in the basement, and gradually, very gradually, the main characters start to realize that everything is tied to a scientific expedition to the South Pole 100 years ago, an expedition which they apparently all had an ancestor aboard... In between, there are ghost possession, mystical Mayan steampunk/stone tech, a dead and autopsied body waking up to have a conversation with her chest still split open, Neonazi cultists and the occasional bit of time travel and actually? It's not great, but it's no worse than so many other series I've seen - it has its faults, not least that the plot seems to be - well, the everybody-taking-turns-being-mad-at-each-other-and-jumping-from-one-bed-to-another plot progesses as if a week or more goes by each episode, while the mystery of the time bleed and the bloody big rock in the hidden safe feels more like at most a couple of days goes by between episodes, if that. So, that's not so good. And it's just plain weird watching genre television in Danish, but the writing is not as bad as it sometimes get. And the ending is very obviously edited from a cliffhanger (I read there was supposed to be a movie, with an new expedition to the South Pole (or possibly South America) - seriously, (and spoilers for the ending): if the heroine drinking the heart's blood of her idiot ex-boyfriend out of a jam jar was really enough to shut down the mystical life-draining/immortality-granting stone and kill the 100 year old neo-Nazi mad scientist bad guy, why did everybody have to run to the bloody boat?
45. Über Life
You are the hero - the land is controlled by an evil goddess and her priests, who kidnap a young woman (your girlfriend?). You search for her, have a freaky dream experience and eventually find yourself in the hidden temple/lair, confronting the high priest and the evil goddess. And honestly? This whole interactive movie lark is highly overrated - the plot gets overly simplistic compared to a normal movie, and the dvd has so little room for the scenes for the various storylines that it most of all felt like one of those Fighting Fantasy books I had as a kid, complete with annoying dead-end choices leading to having to start all over again. I mean, the scenery was nice, I liked the weird red-crystal miracles, but honestly? Why didn't they just make a rpg?
46. Underworld - Rise of the Lycans
Honestly? Dull. I mostly watched it because Jared Turner's in it, and then I spectacularly failed to recognize him, though honestly, that beard was atrocious...
47. Game of Thrones season 2.
Sad to say, I can't really get worked up to being excited about this series - this season, well, not enough Littlefinger, could have used more Tyrion (and I wanted to see his chain!), would have liked more Cersei - yeah, yeah, so I like the bad guys of the show. Of course, there's plenty of things that annoy me - like how the Stark wolves only make appearances when the plot requires their actual presence rather than being constant companions - or the fact that I still wonder who the architect at King's Landing is and exactly what he thought people was going to do come winter... Anyway...
48. Prometheus
You know, this has got to be one of the worst planned space expeditions I've ever seen. For instance, you have a medpod - a medpod calibrated to only work on men, despite the ship having two women aboard, one of them explicitly identified as the pod's owner? Why? To create five seconds extra tension in the movie, yes, but why in-story? Why? And if you go out expecting (or at least hoping) to encounter life that might very well have messed with our genetics previously or even be related to us, why don't you assume that things in that environment might make you sick and plan for that with decent quarantine protocols rather than just roasting the poor guy who winds up sick? Honestly..
49. Drive
It's okay - not fantastic, but okay. Really, why do the major criminal elements always seem to specialize in pissing off the exact person who they really, really shouldn't is beyond me :-)
50. Anno 1790 season 1.
This show reminded me of Garrow's Law, which is hardly surprising (in fact, if you were to tell me that the people behind Anno 1790 had never watched GL, I would politely not believe you) - oh, they are different - one is British courtroom drama, the other Scandinavian mystery - but still, they are quite alike. It also reminded me of En Kongelig Affære. In fact, all three are remarkably alike - in each we have a hero, an educated man, a man of the Enlightment, a man who wants to change the world for the better, get away from the darkness of the old times. In each, there is another man - a social (and sometimes literal) superior, who usually acts as employer or patron - and in each case, this man has a wife, who shares interests with our hero, and has (or is thought to have) an illicit affair with him.
So, personal storylines remarkably similar - and yet also very different. See, I also find it interesting, how in each show, the hero's struggle to bring about change in society seems to be reflected in the success of his private life. In EKA, Struensee's Enlightment project fails spectacularly along with his relationship to the queen (and his life), while in GL, Garrow is winning his cases and bringing about - slowly but nevertheless surely - social change, and he and his beloved are now together and has a chance for happiness. And then there is Dåådh, Dåådh who we are yet to see how it goes with - the series ends with him having left both his job as police inspector and been rejected by Magdalena after a single, illicit night - yet it also ends with him seemingly gathering himself and planning to go back, so... though honestly, I'd like for Magdalena to keep refusing him and stay with her husband and be awesome as she is, because frankly? I'm getting tired of the other plotline, the one with the fullblown affair - it's dull, it's predictable, it's been done and done to death. Try something new, please! In fact, I think the next late 18th century period drama I watch, I'd like to have no infidelity plots whatsoever - any recommendations?
Chaplin
I don't think I'm going to count a movie twice, just because it's been just a few months since I saw it last...
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But talking off your space helmet in an alien atmosphere, not to mention sending people in where machine could have done the initial scouting - *HEADDESK*!
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In the absence of a bit of forethought before launching the expedition and maybe a designated quarantine statis pod to stick him in for the duration, yeah - but still, at that point, for all they knew, he might have just had a very nasty case of space!flu. Surely the expedition ought to have been prepared for that possibility?
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(Totally fair not to count Chaplin twice. I hope it wasn't too boring to sit through it again.)
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As for De Udvalgte - it's dark and grainy a lot of the time, obviously hand-held, and it's a slow starter plot-wise, only gradually unfolding the mystery - but then, it was apparently heavily re-edited for the dvd release, and from what I read, they basically edited out 1½ episodes worth of relationship drama and characters having a drunken party from the earliest episodes, speeding things up, as well as adding bits to foreshadow the supernatural elements. So honestly? Not sticking with it at the time was probably not that surprising - from what I remember I barely lasted through the first episode...
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Hehe. I can't recall very much from that part of my life, but I think I saw an entire ep. Not sure it was the first one, however, as I think it was kind of creepy.