Tag: TV shows

I've finally got my hands on the DVD with the documentary series "The Lion Ranger". The events of the series begin a year earlier and tell the story of Kevin Richardson and the inhabitants of "The Kingdom of the White Lion," home to golden and white lions, hyenas, and black leopards — although the last of these are left off-screen. The private reserve itself was created for the filming of the feature film "White Lion", which flops at the box office because of video piracy, and now its inhabitants will be sold off unless Kevin can find a way to make "The Kingdom" self-sustaining.

Also, in two weeks the film "White Lion" comes out on disc in the USA, and you'll finally be able to buy it anywhere in the world. You can preorder the DVD or Blu-ray version right now using these links.

Since the question is translated into Russian incorrectly and with a lot lost, I'll answer the original version, which I first read on Twitter. I won't be able to write properly in English, so I'll write in Russian.

My answer is Fringe («Грань» or «За гранью»), I was eagerly waiting for its return, which exceeded my expectations. The first part of the season turned out very interesting and original, week after week I eagerly waited to find out what would happen to Olivia and Bolivia. As for «jumping the shark», it's hard to say, I hope it won't be soon, but I have a suspicion that it happened in the previous episode — it resolved an unusual situation and let the tension that had built through the first episodes of the third season drop. Now the show should return to its usual course and I don't know whether interest in it can keep growing from here. Then again, most people find it more interesting to watch unconnected standalone episodes, so the ratings might even go up. We'll see what the next episode shows, the one coming out in a few hours.

Also this year Smallville and Dexter made good comebacks, for «Smallville» this is the final season and they jumped the shark long ago, but even at the end they keep delighting and pleasantly surprising us. With «Dexter» it's more interesting, after the previous season's ending you might have thought the creators wouldn't be able to keep the interest up, but the show is setting records again.

The rest of the returning veterans disappoint to varying degrees, and there aren't really any notable newcomers this season yet.

I watched the first season of the new English series "Sherlock," loosely based on Conan Doyle's stories about Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, except the events on screen take place in modern-day London. My impressions are mostly positive, but the only episode that raised no complaints is the last, third one, into which they crammed as much as possible.

Genre-wise, it's only partly a detective story; the creators put the emphasis on spectacle, sacrificing the great detective's intellect. There's plenty of action and tension, of course, though in that respect it's far behind Guy Ritchie's Holmes, but from an American comic-book adaptation you don't expect much, while this was the work of the English themselves, and the moves made to attract a mass audience are somewhat disappointing.

I didn't like that in the first episode Sherlock failed to recognize the murderer when they met, after he had fully described the criminal's behavior, so that even viewers who hadn't read the original and hadn't seen the Soviet adaptation were able to figure out who the culprit was. In the second episode, I was downright astonished that some random girl was able to grasp the principle of the cipher that Holmes had been fruitlessly struggling with for several days.

The last episode nearly disappointed me — in it, too, it's clear to the viewer from the very start what's going on, and everyone on screen nudges the viewer toward it, except for Sherlock, who in the end admits that he understood everything from the start. I liked the finale most of all, since a decent portion of it is devoted to the detective element, thanks to the unraveling of five cases at once, all tied together. And Holmes turned out to resemble Holmes, staying one step ahead.

They did a good job moving the deductive method into the modern world; it's interesting to watch how the reasoning gets adapted. Introducing an overarching Moriarty storyline makes what's happening look more far-fetched, but at the same time it draws you in more. I'll be waiting for the second season; I hope they do go ahead and make it.

I've watched the show up through the tenth episode of the second season. Just a great show — rarely do I laugh so much and get so many positive emotions from watching. I don't watch current comedies — 22 minutes not every week is too little. But the old ones are very nice to watch, rewatching several episodes at a time.

I don't know whether I'll watch the last two seasons with Charlie Sheen in the lead role. I just really like Michael J. Fox, this is his last big role on television. He left "Spin City" because of Parkinson's disease, and after that he mostly appears in supporting roles and voices leading ones.

One interesting thing is that in "Spin City," in two episodes the main character's mom was played by the same actress who played the mom of Fox's character in the popular 80s show "Family Ties" — for him that was his first big role on television. To be honest, I hadn't heard of the actress Meredith Baxter until now; as I understand it, she's popular. I'll have to also watch Family Ties — its first five seasons are available to download. It's just a shame that without English subtitles I miss a lot in sitcoms, and these shows weren't translated into Russian. I only found English subtitles for the first two seasons of Spin City.

Another interesting observation: in this show TLK is mentioned a couple of times. Once in the sixth episode of the first season:

- This is exciting. Chance to see democracy in action. Allowing the citizens to speak directly to the people responsible for governing them. I'd like to be a part of that. What? - I've just never seen this side of you before. This is the side that loved The Lion King, right?

And once more, already in one of the last seasons:

Charlie: I couldn’t face have lost my father, and I runaway from my home. I lived alone, without my family, but, I lived many adventures, and I have many friends. Psychologist: Well Charlie, that’s very interesting. Caitlin: Of course it is, it’s The Lion King!

In the next show from Bill Lawrence, "Scrubs," it's also mentioned, but that one isn't hard to find. Scrubs also featured many of the main actors from Spin City in important guest roles, including Michael J. Fox.

A-a-awesome!

That's it, then.

The series finale stirs up a lot of emotions; right now I could almost envy sensitive people.

It's better to watch it this way with the ads, and the enjoyment was stretched out over 2.5 hours, and during the breaks you could digest what you'd seen — a lot happened in that time.

Still, it was a unique phenomenon in the history of television. It's unlikely anything like it will be repeated or that anything similar will come along soon. Yes, we didn't get answers to some of the questions, but that's not important. The story is more valuable, the way it was presented, the feelings it conveyed and food for thought. You can keep imagining what will happen, everyone will have their own version, but this is the end of the story, a proper end.

So, now "Jimmy Kimmel Live" is starting, with the actors and creators of the series, and 3 alternative endings will be shown. It'll be interesting.

UPD. All the "alternative" endings were in the style of the show, lots of laughs and nothing serious. This only confirms that the series was originally meant to have one ending and everything was heading toward it.

I have to watch TV series in English without subtitles. addic7ed.com has been down for several days now and there's no telling when it'll come back up, and I haven't found any alternative resources :( I watch the HDTV 720p versions, but most resources put up subtitles for the standard 350 MB rips, and on notabenid.com they translate exactly those versions too. Not only does the group translation leave a lot to be desired, but in some cases you also have to struggle with synchronization, so all that's left is to watch the original — good thing about 80-95 percent is understandable.

tvsubtitles.net is down from time to time too, but for me that's not a problem, since 720p versions of the subs were rarely there, the files themselves were in archives, which made it harder to save them and copy them onto an external drive for watching on the TV, and on top of that the site would incorrectly append a link to itself at the end of the subtitles, which meant the TV's hardware player couldn't see them.

I'd never have known I understand the language so well :) Too bad it still doesn't apply to "House" — even with Russian subtitles I can't understand part of it.

Yeah, a powerful ending to the episode — even in the eighth and final season they can still surprise you and stir up emotions, though this isn't the first president killed off in the show, it is the first non-American one, and the way they did it too. There hasn't been a quiet hour in the show for a while now, I'm curious what comes next.

Last year Cherry Jones won an Emmy for her role as the president in 24, I wonder whether Anil Kapoor will get something this year for his role as the Islamic president. He made his name with "Slumdog Millionaire", as I understand it.

Still, these two hours turned out to be gripping, unlike the 14th hour last time, when they sent a squad of the very best mercenaries against Jack Bauer — the outcome of that unequal standoff was clear right away, the mercenaries didn't stand a chance.

This one episode alone was maybe reason enough to watch "Dollhouse." The ending is awesome, and that's not even the finale. How the scene with Amy Acker's and Summer Glau's characters would end was clear from its very first frames, without any spoilers, but that didn't diminish the emotional weight and tension of what was happening. But I really didn't expect such an ending to the episode — I'm surprised, should I maybe rewatch the whole series?.. Once again, disc and digital sales will be many times higher than the broadcast viewership.

I'm terribly curious what will happen, and how, in the final episode and in "Epitaph Two" with Felicia Day. It's a shame nobody watches it on air and it got canceled. There'll be comics for sure, I think, but it's just not the same — I don't particularly enjoy the "Buffy" and "Angel" comics. I read them a couple of times a year. And Joss Whedon really is a genius :)

Lately everyone's been talking about "Avatar," and the fans of TV series and the relevant sites have also been talking about "Dexter." I can't watch the first one in proper quality yet, unlike the second, which I'd been wanting to start watching for a long time. After I saw the reaction to the last episode of the fourth season, I decided to watch the show sooner rather than later, before I accidentally found out what happened in it and ruined the experience.

Yeah, broadcast series are no match for cable ones, only waiting for the cable ones for 9 months is more agonizing. Before this year I tried not to start watching them, but this year I started two at once, though I dropped "Mad Men" because of the delays in the English subtitles coming out and the pure-drama genre — I'll finish the third season over the holidays. I also need to catch up on "Castle" and maybe "The Vampire Diaries" :) And why not? After all, the actor who plays Dexter's dad is going to play the dad of the main characters. I have no desire to go back to the too-procedural "Bones" and CSI — that's good to watch on TV without straining yourself, not on a monitor with subtitles fully immersed, when you've got other things to do too. I also really don't like it when subtitles don't show up on the day of the broadcast; I don't like keeping in my head which shows to look out for subtitles for over the next few days.

P.S. A bit more about "Dexter" and lions :) Yeah, among other things, I liked the last episode of the first season, called Born Free, also because in it there were lions set to John Barry's song from the film of the same name, even if only on a screensaver.

Watched the premiere of "Fringe" season two, watched it inattentively, missed most of the Easter eggs, didn't catch where the references and hints at "The X-Files" were. And I didn't immediately get that the start of the episode happens at the same time as the end of the previous one, but in a different reality this time. I'll need to rewatch everything, and rewatch season one too, they've just started showing it on Noviy Kanal.

Too bad — turns out Kirk Acevedo was telling the truth on his MySpace after all: he had been fired from the series. A sad, unexpected ending to the episode. Even though they didn't kill him off abruptly or in the usual way, it'll be interesting to see his character in the upcoming episodes. In his place they added Meghan Markle to the regular cast as a young FBI agent who always believed in things beyond the realm of the possible. I hope the creators don't start repeating themselves too much, introducing a new character for whom everything fringe and Walter's behavior is novel, while the established characters already take for granted a shapeshifter soldier from another world, or someone making custard while cutting open a corpse. But now at least you can definitely say which of the characters is most like Fox Mulder.

Reading about the series, I stumbled on a wallpaper for season two, and immediately wanted to cut it up and make an animated poster. For season one they released a huge number of posters that were just begging to be made into gif animations, since they were all in the same color scheme and only the central object or character changed. And for season two they released just one poster, with 16 different objects hidden in it from the previous ones and from the series' mythology. There were no more posters, but they did release three wallpapers, differing only in the characters, and in the end this is the poster I got:

It's nearly mid-spring, and seasons or whole TV series are starting to wrap up. Watched the last episode of the second season of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" ("Terminator: The Battle for the Future" in REN TV's translation).

I watched the first episode of the series Knight Rider (2008), which I mentioned in a recent post. It looks like this is the last episode of this show I'll ever watch — and not just for me.

In the morning, before I started downloading from TvTorrents.com, I dropped by EZTV.it out of habit to make sure the episode was there, and out of curiosity read the comments on the release. I was wrong to be skeptical about those messages back then — after watching it I can agree with every one of the reviews written there, even though I usually don't agree with upset fanboys.

A question came up while watching. Is this show really supposed to be a sci-fi action series? It comes across like some kind of comedic parody… I didn't think anyone could make trash like this with a straight face, and on top of that in the pilot episode and under a name as big as Knight Rider. I can understand the writers of "Smallville," who exhausted themselves by season 8 and write nonsense, but this is the first episode of the first season. And even so, Smallville is taken more seriously than this, and I was even unhappy with what was going on in "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles"…

The February movie is perfectly watchable — at least the sci-fi stayed within some bounds, with none of these ridiculous situations. Of course, a show like this will suit kids, but it's hardly going to be watched by those who once watched "Knight Rider," and they could have made something worthwhile for a wider audience. All that's left is to see how the second episode rates — plenty of people watched the first one, after a relatively decent movie. Maybe this is exactly what the average American needs; the ratings will tell.

Still, there's an upside — I think the nostalgia it stirred up will push up sales of the Knight Rider (1982-1986) series on DVD, along with the seed ratings of whoever's seeding it on torrents. Ah, where could I find "The Knight Rider" with the ICTV dub? The DTV "Knight Rider" is everywhere, but it's not the same, and besides, in Ukraine they always translated and dubbed series better than the Russian TV channels did, which can't be said about the movies.

Autumn has arrived, and among other things, that also means the start of another television season, 2008-2009, in the US. Right now I'm watching 8 series whose broadcasts will soon resume: "House, M.D.", "Heroes", "Supernatural", "Lost", "Bones", "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Las Vegas", "Smallville", "Terminator: The Battle for the Future". I'll also be watching 3 new shows that premiere this season: "Dollhouse", "Fringe", "Knight Rider" (2008). I love watching science fiction series, I watch crime dramas when I can, and the rest don't interest me.

Below, in more detail, how I started watching each of them and why I keep watching. The series are listed in order of priority for me; the ones that haven't aired yet are kept separate, but arranged on the same principle. Titles are in English, Russian and Ukrainian.

House, M.D. / Доктор Хаус (season 5, September 16)

I got interested in the show last September, when I came across mentions of it with good reviews on a forum, on the local network, and on the internet. So I decided to watch it on Domashniy; at first I watched with my back to it, sitting at the computer, and then more attentively. After the channel cut off its broadcast at the start of the second season, I downloaded all the available episodes from the net and started rewatching from the very beginning; once I ran out of episodes with Russian dubbing (the start of the third season), I started downloading them in the original from the internet.

It's hard to say exactly why I watch it — it's a masterpiece, so there are a lot of reasons. People say plenty about it as it is, I won't add anything new.