Watching stuff
Dec. 27th, 2025 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiggymalvern
Heated Rivalry I'll admit, I almost didn't watch the gay hockey show. People have tried to make me watch so much desperately mediocre TV over so many years just because it was queer or slashy that I'm pretty jaded about it, and sports TV doesn't interest me at all.
But it's actually good! It's entertaining and funny and sweet, and sometimes sad, in a mix that hits just right. It's paced beautifully, with some engaging dialogue and it amused me immensely from episode one.
It's also a masterclass in how to write sex scenes. There are a LOT of sex scenes, especially in the first two eps, and none of them are repetitive. Each one of them has something different to say about these people and who they are, and how their relationship is evolving, and that's absolutely how it should be. There's nothing more boring than a sex scene that's just dropped in there because 'the audience will be expecting one now' and none of these are. Really nicely done.
10 Dance I enjoyed this, for most of it. Beautifully filmed, incredibly pretty repressed man desperately trying to avoid his feelings. It wasn't setting me on fire, but it was following the expected script in an entertaining enough way and looking good while doing it. Until it just stopped. There wasn't an ending, there was just the credits suddenly, and I'm all, 'Huh?' The film's called 10 Dance, they're training for the 10 Dance, and they don't even compete in the 10 Dance!
So I did some research, and it's based on a manga, but only part of the manga, so of course it doesn't have an ending because the manga's continuing on. Which will be fine, I suppose, if the film gets a sequel to tell the rest of the story, but so far I'm not seeing anything to suggest there will be. Which it leaves it standing there with a weird and deeply unsatisfying non-ending. Meh.
Wake Up Dead Man Absolutely loved it. The first Knives Out was entertaining and a lot of fun, Glass Onion was a sadly disappointing miss. They were both basically about what arseholes rich people can be, which is fair, but not exactly news. The difference between them was in the plotting and the writing, which worked so much better in the first film.
This third film actually has something to say. Layers about abuse of power, about how it's turned on family and naive children and the desperate, about the people who stand by and see it happening and do nothing, about greed and corruption. It still has all the detective elements with a weird murder and a long list of suspects, but it adds so much more to that and becomes genuinely good. Even if it is still weird seeing Daniel Craig turning himself into Mads Mikkelsen, with the hair and the beard and the clothes 🤣🤣🤣
But it's actually good! It's entertaining and funny and sweet, and sometimes sad, in a mix that hits just right. It's paced beautifully, with some engaging dialogue and it amused me immensely from episode one.
It's also a masterclass in how to write sex scenes. There are a LOT of sex scenes, especially in the first two eps, and none of them are repetitive. Each one of them has something different to say about these people and who they are, and how their relationship is evolving, and that's absolutely how it should be. There's nothing more boring than a sex scene that's just dropped in there because 'the audience will be expecting one now' and none of these are. Really nicely done.
10 Dance I enjoyed this, for most of it. Beautifully filmed, incredibly pretty repressed man desperately trying to avoid his feelings. It wasn't setting me on fire, but it was following the expected script in an entertaining enough way and looking good while doing it. Until it just stopped. There wasn't an ending, there was just the credits suddenly, and I'm all, 'Huh?' The film's called 10 Dance, they're training for the 10 Dance, and they don't even compete in the 10 Dance!
So I did some research, and it's based on a manga, but only part of the manga, so of course it doesn't have an ending because the manga's continuing on. Which will be fine, I suppose, if the film gets a sequel to tell the rest of the story, but so far I'm not seeing anything to suggest there will be. Which it leaves it standing there with a weird and deeply unsatisfying non-ending. Meh.
Wake Up Dead Man Absolutely loved it. The first Knives Out was entertaining and a lot of fun, Glass Onion was a sadly disappointing miss. They were both basically about what arseholes rich people can be, which is fair, but not exactly news. The difference between them was in the plotting and the writing, which worked so much better in the first film.
This third film actually has something to say. Layers about abuse of power, about how it's turned on family and naive children and the desperate, about the people who stand by and see it happening and do nothing, about greed and corruption. It still has all the detective elements with a weird murder and a long list of suspects, but it adds so much more to that and becomes genuinely good. Even if it is still weird seeing Daniel Craig turning himself into Mads Mikkelsen, with the hair and the beard and the clothes 🤣🤣🤣
no subject
Date: 2025-12-28 09:16 am (UTC)https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/dec/08/heated-rivalry-ice-hockey-tv-show-review
https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2025/12/heated-rivalry-the-unbearable-lightness-of-having-a-dump-truck-ass/
I wanted to watch "Wake up Dead Man" but Doug wanted a month's Apple Sub for his birthday, so we're watching that stuff first. I really liked Glass Onion :) All the reviews of no.3 have been wildly positive, so really looking forward to it.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-28 02:17 pm (UTC)Which is partly true, but one of them is a very snarky sports dudebro. I do take issue with the article that says they don't behave like guy gays - I mean, they start by fucking a lot and barely talking at all, there's definitely a subset of gay culture in that! (It's also noticeable that the critical article is only three eps in. Doesn't mean they changed their mind later, because I was engaged from ep one, but the deeper exploration of masculinity and homophobia in sport that they were looking for definitely does come up later.)
no subject
Date: 2025-12-28 02:25 pm (UTC)https://substack.com/inbox/post/182655135?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
no subject
Date: 2025-12-28 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-28 02:43 pm (UTC)https://www.outsports.com/2025/12/18/24124380/heated-rivalry-brock-mcgillis-gay-pro-hockey-player-nhl/
no subject
Date: 2025-12-28 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-28 08:47 pm (UTC)