Last night I finally got around to watching Echo In The Canyon, the doc about the music scene in Laurel Canyon in the late '60s. It contained a lot of great vintage footage and stories from many of the participants, but I found the cover versions by Jakob Dylan, Regina Spektor, Fiona Apple, Norah Jones, Beck and friends took up too much screen time- for instance, the version of "Expecting To Fly" at the end just didn't have the power that the original performance would've had. These are great songs, but the original artists are also great performers. You really can't separate the songs from the production and performance when considering the cultural impact of that scene.
Still, it was worth it for the stories from those who were there.

Dexter teaser trailer looks good Fall of 2021.

This looks hysterical. I’ve seen the first episode and so far I’m liking it.

'evil' is finally coming back......BUT......its on pay TV.....paramount+

shapes of things to come.

If you have Netflix, check out the detective series Unbelievable. Stars Toni Collette and Merritt Wever. Based on a true story, it’s like the HBO series True Detective except with female leads.
The first episode is a little rough because it describes the crime but the magic between the two leads takes off in episode two.
It’s so good you wish that it was a real TV series with multiple seasons.

Also Mr In-Between season three starts tonight. A fantastic Australian dark comedy about the crime world, it’s also a don’t miss show on FX.

There hasn’t been a mention here but the best show on TV in the past month has been HBO’s Mare Of Easttown starring Kate Winslet as a female detective investigating a disappearance and a murder in a small town.

Talk about twists and turns, this has it all. Even SNL did a skit about it.

Even Steven King has tweeted about the show saying he doesn’t believe who we think is the murderer is the actual murderer.
He should know.

The finale is this Sunday evening and if you haven’t watched an episode you have missed one hell of a show.

HBO has been hitting it out of the park with these limited series recently with Big Little Lies, The Undoing and now Mare Of Easttown.

Yep - this show has been fantastic. I watched the first episode with the attitude that they'd have to hook me. I love Kate Winslet, so my concern was everything around her. The story has been better than I expected after the first episode. Some excellent plot twists, some that seem a tad forced or hamfisted. Jean Smart has been great in the show. I still haven't seen this past week's episode - I spent the week watching disaster shows (aka, the Penguins' playoff...saunter? It wasn't a run.). Now my dilemma is do I try to squeeze this ep in before Sunday, or just binge them both Sunday night. Tougher decision than it seems with the Friends reunion, the final season of Lucifer, and the Peng...oh, yeah, right.

The SNL skit was actually very well done. Especially because they highlighted the hybrid PA accent, which to my ears sounds more like a mix of Philly and Pittsburgh rather than one specific region.

THR calls in its crack apologism team to make excuses for the Olympics:

Olympics TV Ratings Haven’t Fallen More Than Broadcast TV as a Whole

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv ... 1234990915

my 2 cents on the olympics:

too many channels showing different events at the same time (nbc, golf, tnt, etc)

too much jumping around if you do decide to stay on one channel. tried to watch gymnastics the other night and i turned my head and swimming was on......too much swimming by the way, way too much swimming.

Yeah, my partner was getting frustrated. It’s bad enough that we already hear the results way ahead of the broadcast, but the jumping around stuff is stupid. She just wanted to see the gymnastics finals.

Streaming is the only way to watch the Olympics. You can find the event you want and watch it from start to finish, live. Network TV just isn't set up to compete with that.

It’s partly a failure to fully adapt to the current reality. Despite the fact that it’s not live and that the results get out much more easily now (heck, a lot of the events on the prime time show are covered live earlier), they still cling to that old model where they parcel out an event to keep you tuned in all night. Like the gymnastics final - show the first three rotations, then cut away to other events for what, 45 minutes? Finish the damn event, then move on.

I kind of like that they have the multiple channels that give you a chance to focus on certain events. We’ve watched very little of the the main NBC broadcast. But I do enjoy watching some of the sports that don’t get much coverage at other times - archery, beach volleyball, some of the fencing. I do enjoy the cycling, but ended up watching most of the endings on recordings because I can’t justify staying awake until 5 AM. But I haven’t watched any of the golf, tennis, regular basketball (just a little of the 3-on-3).

The soccer coverage has been a disappointment because the US has been on at times that I’m not up to watch. Today’s was - but I was off so I slept in. I did get up in time to see the last 10 minutes or so of extra time and the penalties.

I’m not as glued to this stuff as I used to be, but I do still enjoy some of this stuff. Having the pros has taken away some of the appeal.

Here's an interesting article on NBC's Olympic challenges.

https://nypost.com/2021/07/29/nbc-faili ... y-dilemma/

I just finished watching the first season of Better Than Us, the first Russian original series on Netflix.

It's dubbed into English, of course, or I probably wouldn't have watched it.

The story takes place in 2029, where androids serve humans in various positions, even replacing them in many menial jobs. China's one-child policy has led to a critical shortage of marriageable women - due to the routine practice of aborting less desirable female babies, don't you know - so an engineer designs an advanced robot named Arisa. She is programmed to be a wife to a man and mother to adopted children, and unlike all other robots, she does not abide by Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. She is designed to protect her family, which includes herself. However, her creator dies and Arisa is sold to the Russian robotics firm CRONOS. Arisa accidentally kills a man at CRONOS who tried to use her as a sex robot without proper authorization, and she then flees. She encounters a little girl named Sonia and automatically bonds with her and makes herself the child's guardian and later adopts Sonia's family.

The series follows four storylines: that of Arisa and the somewhat troubled family she adopts; the family's son Egor Safronov and his girlfriend Zhanna as part of the anti-droid militant group called the "Liquidators" - DEATH TO ROBOTS! - and the secrets of Viktor Toropov, the head of CRONOS, as he tries to hide the fact that they cannot make another Arisa, and Toropov is himself a sociopathic murderer along with his henchmen, and with his access to money and power that makes the bastard a formidable foe. And a police inspector hunting down the killer, and his team, and his boss who hinders the inspector at most every turn since the boss just can't believe the inspector's theories. A robot that kills? Impossible.

Coincidentally, Toropov ruined Sonia's father's life a while back - he's a doctor and when Toropov's son died since the doctor failed to save him despite the 100 to 1 odds he'd die anyway, he got him fired and discredited and that sort of broke up the doctor's family life - and Toropov's, as his wife was inconsolable. And now Toropov's new robot falls into their family's lap, of all people.

16 episodes in season 1, each just under an hour, so it's bingeable - season 2 scheduled to start filming later this year - and I enjoyed it. It's bingeworthy as a good bit of science fiction for the near future and a look at Russian society where it seems most men routinely don't shave often and have several days growth of beard - cuz their rugged men or something, or they don't have razors - I dunno.

Recommended.

I personally kinda liked the Olympics this year. I saw some sports I had never seen before like taekwondo and skateboarding as well as some stuff I hadn't bothered watching in awhile like men's basketball and women's diving. Add that to the women's beach volleyball I saw, the equestrian stuff, and awesome swimming by Katie ladecky and I'd say the Olympics were pretty much spot-on this year.

Anyway I mainly wanted to say that the second season of creepshow started tonight, and it's sure off to an awesome start. I don't think King wrote the short stories tonight but they were very Stephen King like anyway and things certainly got off to a screaming start, lol.

Last nights episode of the Wall had a couple that had not only never heard of the Beatles but didn't even recognize the titles of the songs they had to choose from. Apparently these younguns have never heard the oldies station, 'cause if they had they would have at least been familiar with can't buy me love or love me do. Also the woman's husband was supposedly a huge movie buff who could watch movies all-day but for some reason he didn't realize Daniel Day Lewis had played Daniel Plainview in there will be blood. Sad pathetic and shocking all at the same time.

my wife watches that show, i can't stand to watch even one second of it. so so so contrived and totally out of the hands of the contestants.

I like the trivia part of the show more than anything, but rooting for the contestants is kinda fun too.

I don't generally watch game shows any more at all - there are better things to watch. I dislike reality TV, too, for the most part. When I was a kid, though, I would watch many game shows. Nothing else on TV then.

I did like Chris Hardwick's show, @midnight , which was not a serious game show but played for laughs with a long list of regular comedians, any random 3 the players for that night. A brief example.

I was a little pissed they canceled that show. Shortly after, he started hosting The Wall. I watched one episode of that. That was enough.

All I really watch on TV are game shows, reality TV, food network stuff, Disney channel stuff, SpongeBob, and reruns of the golden girls, Raymond, and the King of Queens.

Gone are the days of 7th heaven, touched by an angel, E.R., Early Edition, home improvement, full house, etc.

I can't believe yet another boring magician with no stage presence and yaps way too damn much ends up winning AGT instead of the much more deserving nurses choir, Victory Brinker the nine year old golden voiced Opera singer, or even Lea the amazing quick change artist. Just like Shin Lim before him there's no way in hell Dustin should have won AGT, and for that matter that boring ass poet from last year shouldn't have won either. Another season gone by, another disappointing winner, some things never change.