Tag: streaming

#REVIEW: The Boys, Season 3

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews, Television1 Comment

I think this is, in total, my fourth or fifth piece about Amazon Prime’s The Boys, and each time I’ve written about it my enthusiasm for the show has deepened. Well, at this point, the third season has finished– the finale was two days ago– and, well. Go watch this fuckin’ show. I don’t know how else to put it. The show has, three seasons in, so thoroughly outgrown its source material that it isn’t even telling the same story any longer, and that’s not an exaggeration. I went through the differences between the show and the comics with my wife after the finale and it is a lengthy list, not to mention that the show rather comprehensively eliminated any chance of ending the way the comics do this season. And every divergence the show has made from the comics has improved the show. This isn’t like Game of Thrones, which decided to change things from the books by adding more rape.

(And while we’re talking about that, this show is enormously better to its woman characters than the comics ever were.)

I don’t really watch a lot of television, to be honest, so calling this “the best-acted show on TV” is … kinda meaningless coming from me, but I will say that it’s really difficult for me to imagine any show loaded with more acting talent than this one has. I will repeat what I said in my last piece about this show: Antony Starr is one of the most terrifying TV villains I’ve ever encountered, and while the show passed up a couple of chances to kill characters this season, I really do feel like there isn’t anyone that has plot armor. And given where they went with a certain major plot line in the comics that only just started showing up in the show, I wouldn’t even necessarily be surprised if they killed Homelander off early next season to move on to this other thing. Will they do that? Probably not. But not definitely not, and at least one other major character has a death sentence hanging over his head right now.

So, yeah. Three seasons in, we have moved to unapologetic, full-throated endorsement of this show. It’s fantastic. You should be watching it, and I can’t wait for Season Four.

On Season 3 of THE BOYS

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews, TelevisionLeave a comment

This will be the third time I have written about Amazon Prime’s series The Boys, based on the Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson comic book of the same name, in this space. The first piece I wrote about it started with a content warning for “everything,” and mainly talked about the fact that I thought the show was problematic as hell, leaning way too much into sexism and rape and fridging female characters than anything I could be comfortable with recommending, but … well … if you could get past that awfulness, there was a pretty good show in there, somehow?

Then Season 2 rolled around, and they’d shed most of Ennis’ bullshit from the first season, in general treating their female characters a lot better, not relying on rape as a driver of the plot at all, and still keeping the insanely hyperviolent and raunchy tone of the first season, which moved the show from “Eh, if you were curious already, check it out, but don’t pay for Amazon Prime for this” to “Well, don’t pay for Amazon Prime just for this, but if you already have it, you probably ought to watch an episode or two and see what you think.”

We are, as of right now, three episodes into Season 3; my understanding is that new episodes are going to drop on Friday, although I’m not 100% sure what the actual schedule is– in other words, I’m not sure if they gave us three episodes to start and there will be 3 more this Friday, or if it’ll be on a more traditional one-episode-a-week schedule, or what, but we’re three episodes in. The season isn’t finished.

But based on those three episodes, and continuing to keep in mind that this show is not for everyone, and that I really can’t emphasize enough how much bodies literally exploding into chunky red sauce has been a part of this season, and there was a sequence in the first episode that very nearly had me hiding behind the couch …

I know Amazon Prime is $129 a year now, but … yeah, you need to be watching The Boys, if your constitution can handle it. If you know you can’t, go in peace and ignore this. But if you can?

This show has some of the best acting I have ever seen on a TV screen. Antony Starr as the Homelander is absolutely fucking terrifying in a way that I have never seen in a television character before. Like, my heart rate shoots up whenever he’s on screen. I want him to play the Joker so badly I can taste it. Karl Urban is amazing. Giancarlo Esposito is amazing. Jack Quaid is amazing. Erin Moriarty and Chance Crawford and Jessie Usher and oh my God Colby Minifie are amazing. Everyone with a role on this show is doing the job of their lives.

(Discovers that Mesmer, from last season, was Haley Joel fucking Osment, and has to take a moment.)

I really cannot express enough how much you need to see the clinic that Antony Starr is putting on here, though, managing to marry being an angry, unstable god with somebody who was very clearly so broken as a child that you almost feel sorry for him. Until, of course, you realize he’s fantasizing about killing every living person in New York City in the same disconnected, unconcerned way you might think for half a second before stepping on a bug. But you can see the scared little kid in him, and it’s just so good. And the writers, who are continuing to do adaptations The Right Way, have made it so clear that this show doesn’t even vaguely understand the concept of Plot Armor that there is literally not a single second where this man is on screen where you’re not worried about him doing something terrible at any moment. It’s been years since I had to take time to calm down after watching a TV show, and we’re only three episodes into this season and they’ve done it to me three times.

So, yeah. There’s still plenty of time for shit to go wrong, but at this point, and without relinquishing any of the previous warnings attached to previous seasons, this show is moving to You Need To Be Watching This. I’ll update again once the season is over.

Ugh

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

I had actually been having a pretty good Sunday until a few minutes ago, when the exact same settings that I’ve been using for months to create videos for my YouTube site suddenly decided to shit the bed and produce a 31-gigabyte un-openable monstrosity, and now not only do I not have my videos for tomorrow ready but I get to spend time researching how to repair damaged .mp4 files, which I don’t think is actually a thing that can be done. I’m pretty sure it’s all scams and “Okay, this will work, but send us $70 first” types of things.

Shit.

Anyway, if there’s no 4:00 video tomorrow (there won’t be) that’s why.

On jackassery

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

Did I just start a seven-day subscription with the utterly unnecessary Paramount+ solely so that I could watch the new Jackass movie?

Yes. Yes I did. I mean, I’ll point out to my wife that she can watch Picard now. She might be into that. And I will watch exactly one (1) episode of Halo, proclaim that I like it, and never watch it again, because that is how I roll.

I recorded Episode 81 of my Elden Ring Let’s Play tonight, putting me over 20 episodes ahead, and created thumbnails through Episode 100. It might take 150. I’m not joking. This game is taking all of my attention away from everything else in my life, so you may as well be watching the series.

Oh dear God that’s enough

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Okay, we’re up to like four rearrangings of the office now, and I’m done. I have to be done. Everything’s hooked up except for the supplementary lights (not really necessary any longer, unless I go back to full-time online again) and the microphone, and the microphone might be a bit of a challenge, since it needs to be positionable for both the computer and the TV.

Also, I was stupid enough to move everything around without repositioning the stuff hung on the wall first, and … fuck it, it’s gonna stay covered up by things for a while, because I’m annoyed and tired.

More later, possibly. I have Thoughts about the book I’m reading, but I probably ought to finish it before I write them up, and I’m only about halfway through the book. It’s probably not fair to write the piece just yet, but it’s all that’s in my head at the moment, so the only thing to do is to finish reading it.

In which I know nothing

On By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

Not to continue harping on this, but while it will tell you that it has been four days since I have uploaded anything to my YouTube channel (smash that subscribe button!), what that actually means is that I have acquired new equipment in the last few days and the complexity level of my setup has jumped a thousandfold. What was previously hit this button on your PlayStation and maybe make sure there’s not a fan running while you’re streaming has now grown to not only include my computer and a separate little piece of kit, but three different software packages, all of which appear to do the exact same thing but in just different enough ways that overlap isn’t helping, and I’m trying to decide which one I like the most sort of at a base level so that I can start learning how to use it. Because before, the stream didn’t look or sound all that great but there were only like four things that I could adjust, so at least I knew I was streaming at the highest quality I was going to be able to.

Now, there are fourteen million things I can adjust, and I’m also not really quite used to the tv yet– and it took a minute for me to realize that what was showing up on the television was actually not related to what was showing up on my computer monitor (in other words, if I adjust the brightness on the TV, that’s not changing anything on the stream) and so now I not only need to get the tv looking right for me but I need to adjust twelve thousand different things– some of which I’m not even sure what the settings do— so that it looks and sounds good on stream.

Meanwhile, turn off the fan while you’re streaming, you dolt is still something I haven’t quite internalized.

Anyway, what I’m doing is a lot of “adjust settings, upload a three-minute stream, delete three-minute stream” thing, and I’ll do my best to not talk about this too much more until the site is actually ready for prime time.

In which works are in progress

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, video games2 Comments

Still thrashing about trying to come up with a good name for the YouTube channel; there is now a temporary name and two streams up, both of which I’m slightly dissatisfied with for various reasons but I have Plans to fix that. That said, you should go there, and … smash? that subscribe button? I’m unsure of the proper verb. I think Subscribe buttons are smashed but I can’t be certain.

The bitmoji is probably temporary too, but I need some sort of temporary branding to go with my temporary channel name, so.

Why not just go with existing names? Well, I sort of want this (and probably my TikTok account as well, which is due for a rename) to be something I can cross-promote from here but still be something that isn’t a problem if my students discover it. I spent a moment thinking about just calling the channel Infinitefreetime Gaming, but I did an experimental Google on the phrase and it leads straight back here. Infinitegametime already exists and infiniteplaytime sounds like it’s something for small children. I could keep Luther Plays Games and just play it off as not wanting to use my real name– that is my grandfather’s name, after all, so it’s not as if I don’t have any connection to it– and so long as the word Siler doesn’t appear anywhere it ought to be fine. But I’d prefer a third choice. Possibly something making fun of my advanced age. Who the hell knows.

I spent six hours today in a Zoom meeting for my real job, which bounced back and forth between being useful and tedious depending on whether we were in breakout rooms with people from our school or listening to the presenters. Every alarm I have started going off early in the day, when one of the presenters called on someone to read the slide being displayed on the screen out loud, and then interrupted her after two sentences so that she could call on someone else to read more of it. I was not called on, but I hope y’all don’t think I’m bullshitting when I say that my mic and camera would have stayed off if I had been, and to hell with any social consequences. We’re adults. That shit borders on sin. I don’t know how the hell we’ve been conducting everygoddamnthing over Zoom for over a fucking year and people still think that kind of unbearable nonsense is the way to run a meeting.

I also got to put aside one of my projects for this summer; I’ve discovered that the earliest I can take my math test for my National Board certification is April, and as a lifelong procrastinator I’m sure as hell not going to start studying in June for a test I’m not taking for ten months. So that’s exciting. It gives me more time to plan for next year and work on other shit. It means when I do start studying I’ll have to do it during the school year, but something makes me think that’s not going to be all that much of a problem. We’ll see.

OKAY SO I GUESS WE’RE DOING THIS

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, Reviews1 Comment

First things first: this is the new YouTube channel, which right now is only barely real. I have managed to confirm that I have at least a basic understanding of how everything works and is a test video and a semi-real livestream that no one watched except for my son in the last few minutes, but I natter on to myself throughout it just for the hell of it. I have some calibrating to do on the TV, which is too dark right now; I’m not sure if the actual video is too dark as well because one of the things I don’t know is how precisely YouTube replicates what I have on the screen.

I also need to make some branding decisions; right now the channel is just called Luther Siler, because that’s how YouTube defaulted things; I’m considering adopting an entirely separate identity for this so I can share it here and with my kids if I want to. Or maybe I’ll lose interest next week and you’ll never hear about it again. Who knows? Not me!

If you do happen to watch the video and have any questions or comments– particularly about whether you can actually hear me as I ramble on– definitely let me know. Preferably as a comment on YT which will count as engagement. Also, if you have any clever names for the channel, let me know.

We finally got around to watching Raya and the Last Dragon last night, which you might have guessed from the telltale “Raya and the Last Dragon” graphic at the top of this post. Verdict: I liked it, but not enough to write a full blog post about it? It’s not up there with my absolute favorite Disney movies (Aladdin) or my favorite new-Disney movies (Frozen) or my favorite Pixar movies (Incredibles and Finding Nemo) but it’s a solid second-tier Disney film for me, where I won’t necessarily actively seek it out to watch but I’ll probably end up stumbling over it and watching it again in the future, that sort of thing. The character work and the animation are great (the character work is really great, actually) but the story itself stumbles a little bit, especially since it more or less starts off with the main character having to find the Infinity Stones. You’ve got to be really careful with any story structure outside of a video game where the character has to track down X of something before the story can start, and in this particular case I’m not even convinced that a lot of the conflict was necessary. But I liked it, and it jerks at the heartstrings appropriately, and it’s the only Disney movie I’ve ever seen where I can honestly say that the fight scenes were super cool. Check it out.

I just wrote a review about a book where I kept using the word “delightful” and emphasizing how heartwarming and life-affirming the book was, so naturally my next choice for reading material was Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, which is about the intertwining lives of two women in Kabul during the waning years of the war against the Soviet Union through to the rise of the Taliban.

This is the third of Hosseini’s books that I’ve read, and I think it’s his third actual novel, following The Kite Runner and And The Mountains Echoed, and … like, I love Hosseini’s books; the guy is a brilliant author, but his books aren’t exactly there to be enjoyed? That’s the wrong verb; it’s not what they’re for, and going from the candy-coated big gay happiness pile of The House in the Cerulean Sea to this was whiplash-inducing, to say the least. You already know most of what the story’s going to be like from the words women and Kabul and Taliban, and it’s not going to turn out that the two women are superheroes who beat the hell out of the Taliban or anything like that. Nah, they’re going to have miserable, oppressed lives, and the story ends on a happyish note but only after several decades of horror.

Is that a recommendation? I dunno. Hosseini is a brilliant writer, as I’ve said, but I kinda threw this book into my brain without thinking beforehand about how it would affect me, and I might have put it off for a while longer if I’d thought about it more.