Netflix

[Cube]

Hopefully better than the film (it was possibly one of the worst films I've seen).

[Sméagol]

I'm not watching a lot of Netflix at the moment. I've tried watching La Casa de Papel, but I'm not really enjoying it (despite the plethora of Spanish babes in it).

However, I am enjoying The Queen's Gambit right now.

(and yes, she's the reason I tried it straight away)

[bob]

We're watching Giri/Haji on Netflix right now. I assume it was originally on terrestrial tv since it has a BBC log at the beginning, but we missed it at the time. It's really good so far, we're halfway through, and it reminds me of a cross between a Yakuza game and The Bill.

[Will]

8 minutes ago, bob said:

We're watching Giri/Haji on Netflix right now. I assume it was originally on terrestrial tv since it has a BBC log at the beginning, but we missed it at the time. It's really good so far, we're halfway through, and it reminds me of a cross between a Yakuza game and The Bill.

Great show, really enjoyed it when we watched it earlier in the year. Look forward to hearing your thoughts once you've finished it.

[bob]

Finished watching Giri/Haji.

What the fuck was that ending? The show was fantastic up until that point! The weird interpretive dance bit was odd (it felt like something you would see at the Edinburgh fringe festival), but I was willing to let that slide. The ending though....it seems like they didn't really know how to tie up all the loose ends, so they just...didn't.

They didn't tie up the Kenzo/Sarah relationship, or the Kenzo/Taki one, or Kenzo and his wife. The brother just waltzes off after ruining so many lives. We don't know what happened to Sarah since she was harbouring fugitives. Presumably she went to prison along with Kenzo? I guess Rodney was trying to rebuild his life by going back home, but it wasn't really an ending, since his mum seemed like a massive flake.

What happened with the best character Roy!?

Yeah anyway, good show, shit ending.

 

[Ashley]

On 29/10/2020 at 8:24 AM, bob said:

We're watching Giri/Haji on Netflix right now. I assume it was originally on terrestrial tv since it has a BBC log at the beginning, but we missed it at the time. It's really good so far, we're halfway through, and it reminds me of a cross between a Yakuza game and The Bill.

If I recall correctly it was a joint venture between BBC and NHK. 

Really need to catch it one day. 

[bob]

On 28/10/2020 at 9:39 PM, Sméagol said:

I'm not watching a lot of Netflix at the moment. I've tried watching La Casa de Papel, but I'm not really enjoying it (despite the plethora of Spanish babes in it).

However, I am enjoying The Queen's Gambit right now.

(and yes, she's the reason I tried it straight away)

We're about halfway through this at the moment. It's really good, but I cannot get past the horrible casting of this guy:

The guy is clearly a good actor, but he simultaneously looks like the main actress dressed as a boy, or a 12 year old boy pretending to be an adult. He's like a real-life Vincent Adultman got a part in the show, and no-one else has noticed but me. 

I know the actor can't help looking youthful, but he just doesn't fit the part of swaggering, maverick chess champion, and every time he's on screen I just want to slap someone.

[Sméagol]

25 minutes ago, bob said:

We're about halfway through this at the moment. It's really good, but I cannot get past the horrible casting of this guy:

The guy is clearly a good actor, but he simultaneously looks like the main actress dressed as a boy, or a 12 year old boy pretending to be an adult. He's like a real-life Vincent Adultman got a part in the show, and no-one else has noticed but me. 

I know the actor can't help looking youthful, but he just doesn't fit the part of swaggering, maverick chess champion, and every time he's on screen I just want to slap someone.

Yeah the chess cowboy. I liked him for his acting, but yeah, I agree he doesn't look the part. I was thinking myself he needed to buff up. That was all what was needed.

[MindFreak]

Oy, that's the boy from Love Actually! Wow. He's grown. 

My wife saw Queens Gambit while I watched Watchmen. I'm guessing it's not for me, though I acknowledge it's supposed to be quite good. 

[bob]

Oy, that's the boy from Love Actually! Wow. He's grown. 
My wife saw Queens Gambit while I watched Watchmen. I'm guessing it's not for me, though I acknowledge it's supposed to be quite good. 

Has he though? He still looks about 12.

Having said that, I Googled what he looked like in Love Actually, and he looks like an embryo in that, so I guess he is aging in the right direction.

[Sméagol]

I don't think is actually part of Black Mirror, which is why I'll post this here, but:

Not much to go on as of yet, but it seems we'll find out what this is all about soon enough.

Edited December 10, 2020 by Sméagol

[killthenet]

22 hours ago, Sméagol said:

I don't think is actually part of Black Mirror, which is why I'll post this here, but:

Not much to go on as of yet, but it seems we'll find out what this is all about soon enough.

Charlie Brooker has done these sorts of things before on UK television, an irreverent look back on the events of the preceding 12 months (a special version of his Screenwipe show) so this will likely just be a more international version of that, with much higher profile contributors. If you want an idea of what to expect you should be able to find previous editions of the Annual Wipe on YouTube

[bob]

My wife and I have been watching quite a few subtitled shows on Netflix recently (we're very cultured like that), and every so often it'll just miss out a line of dialogue, leaving you to try and translate what was said on your own.

Is this some sort of new initiative to get viewers to learn a new language by immersion? Or is it Netflix fucking up?

[Magnus]

31 minutes ago, bob said:

My wife and I have been watching quite a few subtitled shows on Netflix recently (we're very cultured like that), and every so often it'll just miss out a line of dialogue, leaving you to try and translate what was said on your own.

Is this some sort of new initiative to get viewers to learn a new language by immersion? Or is it Netflix fucking up?

This is only tangentially related, but while we're on the subject of Netflix and subtitles...

I find it kind of weird how Netflix defaults to the English dub for non-English shows. I've noticed this several times when my mom's been watching foreign shows. A while back, she was watching a show I didn't recognize and it had clearly been dubbed into English but it's like, fine, she doesn't seem to mind so it's whatever. The ironic thing, of course, is that she doesn't speak English, so the dub is completely wasted on her anyway. She's watching with Swedish subtitles (that bit's important for the rest of the story).

So one day, she calls me into the room and says that there's something wrong with the subtitles - there aren't any when certain characters are speaking. So I think, okay, they're probably speaking, like, Russian or something and the main characters aren't able to understand what they're saying. But then she rewinds to show me what she means, and the character has been dubbed into English? So I switch over from the dub to the original language, and it turns out that it was a Danish show. I had no idea! The characters without subtitles? Swedes.

So in their infinite wisdom, Netflix decided that, hey, we don't need Swedish subtitles when the characters are already speaking Swedish - but also, let's default to the dub where all of the characters are speaking English and still use the same subtitles.

Baffling.

[Will]

12 hours ago, bob said:

My wife and I have been watching quite a few subtitled shows on Netflix recently (we're very cultured like that), and every so often it'll just miss out a line of dialogue, leaving you to try and translate what was said on your own.

Is this some sort of new initiative to get viewers to learn a new language by immersion? Or is it Netflix fucking up?

Netflix does this A LOT, it’s a real pain for us. We watch most things in English and have Japanese subtitles on and constantly have to deal with the subtitles just disappearing when they feel like it. Usually find the quickest way to deal with it is rewind, change to another language, change back and they usually get back to it from there.

11 hours ago, Magnus said:

So in their infinite wisdom, Netflix decided that, hey, we don't need Swedish subtitles when the characters are already speaking Swedish - but also, let's default to the dub where all of the characters are speaking English and still use the same subtitles.

This is also incredibly frustrating. We’ve just finished watching The Man in the High Castle on Amazon prime and the languages were absolutely infuriating. Bits in German, bits in Japanese, mostly in English. Whenever the characters spoke Japanese the subtitles would disappear and the terrible accents combined with my fading language skills meant we’d have to rewind, change the language, watch again, then try to get it back onto Japanese subtitles at the random point in a conversation where they’d convert over to speaking English. 

I have no idea why they directed the characters to flip languages half way through conversations, totally weird when it would happen multiple times per episode with seemingly no pattern to it. Also, why do the subtitles disappear when characters speak the original language? If you’re watching the show with subtitles because you actually can’t hear you’re screwed.

Total madness all round.

Edited December 11, 2020 by Will

[Will]

Oh, the other annoying thing about Netflix translations is that the subtitles and dubs are generally done by totally different teams and don’t align at all. Can be incredibly annoying to get a slightly different flow and feel to shows dependent on which option you’re using.

[bob]

12 minutes ago, Will said:

Netflix does this A LOT, it’s a real pain for us. We watch most things in English and have Japanese subtitles on and constantly have to deal with the subtitles just disappearing when they feel like it. Usually find the quickest way to deal with it is rewind, change to another language, change back and they usually get back to it from there.

This is also incredibly frustrating. We’ve just finished watching The Man in the High Castle on Amazon prime and the languages were absolutely infuriating. Bits in German, bits in Japanese, mostly in English. Whenever the characters spoke Japanese the subtitles would disappear and the terrible accents combined with my fading language skills meant we’d have to rewind, change the language, watch again, then try to get it back onto Japanese subtitles at the random point in a conversation where they’d convert over to speaking English. 

I have no idea why they directed the characters to flip languages half way through conversations, totally weird when it would happen multiple times per episode with seemingly no pattern to it. Also why the subtitles disappear when characters speak the original language, if you’re watching the show because you actually can’t hear you’re screwed.

Total madness all round.

Good to know it isn't just us. We have a reasonably old TV, and half of the things that go wrong I usually attribute to the TV being old and slow, but it seems like this issue is with Netflix themselves.

 

I mean yeah I guess I could just learn Spanish, but what if I was deaf, am I just supposed to learn how to hear again Netflix? Hmmm?!

[MindFreak]

15 hours ago, Magnus said:

So one day, she calls me into the room and says that there's something wrong with the subtitles - there aren't any when certain characters are speaking. So I think, okay, they're probably speaking, like, Russian or something and the main characters aren't able to understand what they're saying. But then she rewinds to show me what she means, and the character has been dubbed into English? So I switch over from the dub to the original language, and it turns out that it was a Danish show. I had no idea! The characters without subtitles? Swedes.

So in their infinite wisdom, Netflix decided that, hey, we don't need Swedish subtitles when the characters are already speaking Swedish - but also, let's default to the dub where all of the characters are speaking English and still use the same subtitles.

 

Bron? (The Bridge) 

Well, I can explain that. We Danes do not understand Swedish when spoken, but the Swedes often understand Danish fine (if spoken slowly). So the subtitles are perhaps for the Danish people watching a native show and Netlfix just translated those without adding in the dialogue that was not subtitled?

[Magnus]

2 hours ago, MindFreak said:

Bron? (The Bridge) 

Well, I can explain that. We Danes do not understand Swedish when spoken, but the Swedes often understand Danish fine (if spoken slowly). So the subtitles are perhaps for the Danish people watching a native show and Netlfix just translated those without adding in the dialogue that was not subtitled?

Nah, it wasn't Bron. I looked it up just for you, and it was The Rain.

Anyway, I'm not sure that your theory holds water. I think it's just Netflix being Netflix, honestly.

[MindFreak]

Just watched Christmas Chronicles 2. Watched the first one when it came out and enjoyed it alright. This one? Stay away. Terrible story and actingz terrible CGI, and just lacking in humour in general. Yuck. 

Edited December 12, 2020 by MindFreak

[Glen-i]

I've been watching Aunty Donna's Big ol' House of Fun. It's incredibly stupid, makes very little sense and it's the kind of thing I just adore.

The season starts with a song titled "Everything's a Drum", which pretty much says it all.

EDIT: Oh hey, I found a video on their YouTube channel with the exact song.

 

Edited December 14, 2020 by Glen-i

[Mr_Odwin]

On 11/12/2020 at 1:54 PM, bob said:

Good to know it isn't just us. We have a reasonably old TV, and half of the things that go wrong I usually attribute to the TV being old and slow, but it seems like this issue is with Netflix themselves.

 

I mean yeah I guess I could just learn Spanish, but what if I was deaf, am I just supposed to learn how to hear again Netflix? Hmmm?!

It may be somewhat device-related as I have fewer subtitle issues with the smart TV app for Netflix, over casting it to a chromecast.

[Glen-i]

Charlie Brooker has released a 1-hour special that's basically Newswipe.

Death of 2020, it's called. Highly recommended.

Edited December 28, 2020 by Glen-i

[MindFreak]

I watched the stand-up show Ari Eldjárn: Pardon My Icelandic on Netflix the other day. That was frigging hilarious, very well-written material and a great performance. I don't usually watch stand-up in foreign languages as I think stand-up is mostly best when it displays the culture that I know of but this was great. Recommended.

[Sméagol]

I watched Equinox this weekend.

I urge you not to make the same mistake.