This is one kind of television show which is guaranteed to bring forth tears in Snoskred. They tend to be happy tears, though sometimes there are sad tears.
The Supervet
On every Wednesday night for the past few weeks, I’ve been tuning in to watch The Supervet on the Lifestyle Channel on Foxtel. . The operations and innovations that Noel has invented to help animals are mind boggling and quite incredible.
On a recent show there was a cat having hydrotherapy – they put a little life jacket on the animal and two people get in and support the animal in the water. This cat was meowing very loudly the whole time, as if telling the world that swimming was Not Especially Awesome, or perhaps to say that swimming is awesome fun!
The recoveries animals can make as a result of hydrotherapy can be quite incredible. And that is when the happy tears arrive – when healed animals are reunited with their owners.. In the case of the cat I mentioned, the cat meowed very loudly and quite a lot on meeting the owners, as if telling the story of what had happened in their absence.
And sometimes things do not turn out as hoped, and owners have to make difficult decisions. The show does not shy away from showing that, because that is something that happens in life. That is when the sad tears appear.
On the very odd occasion, owners arrive expecting to have to make that difficult decision to say goodbye only to discover that there has been a development which means they do not have to euthanize their much loved pet. That is when sad tears turn into happy tears.
Here is one clip from the show –
And here is Noel explaining the concept and ethos of his vet practice. He has a fantastic Irish accent. :)
Village Vets Australia
These vets live in Berry which is only a short drive from me. Because they are in the country, the range of animals they see is quite huge – they see everything from horses, cows and alpacas, plus your standard cats and dogs, plus birds and reptiles, plus many animals in between.
I enjoyed the first season of this show last year, and I’m looking forward to season two which starts this Thursday on the Lifestyle channel on Foxtel. The website for the show can be found here.
Aaron Paul as Jesse Pinkman celebrating the awesomeness of magnets.
One of the reasons I am such a fan of Breaking Bad is the fact that so much of the show is what I like to call “Planning a caper”. As in, making crime plans.
While 99% of the capers shown on the show are things I would never, ever, not in a million years attempt, there are two local capers I would consider planning, if I were at all inclined towards being a criminal.
Of course, the fact that I am sharing them here tells you everything you need to know about whether I would actually do any of these things. I’d need a personality transplant, plus, installation of a more criminal bent of mind, plus, for one of the capers, I would need to be more physically fit.
If I could commit a caper, these are the ones I would attempt.
Caper One
Within 2km of where I live, there is a field where they do athletics. They have a speaker system there. It is very, very loud. Starting around 8am on weekend mornings, an announcer starts making announcements. This goes on all day. One of the two regular announcers has taken to calling the races, like you’d hear if you were watching a horse race. It is disturbing to everyone who lives within earshot. That is a lot of people!
To fix this, I would need to plan a caper. It would likely involve “casing the joint” first – then some climbing of fences in the middle of the night – never going to happen! – and then, if possible, the cutting and removal of speaker wires. Sadly, my feeling is this would not disrupt the noise for very long.
Caper Two
They installed a new roundabout here recently. It is the only roundabout in town where you can turn right from two lanes. The amount of times I have seen someone nearly get themselves killed turning right from the left lane..
One day someone will get killed there, and then I’m gonna kick myself for not actually going ahead with this caper – which would involve going out in the dead of night and painting the turn right arrow out with black paint. Like this –
I’m thinking summer would be the better time to do this particular caper so that the paint would dry faster, however, there are some major problems with this – most problematic would be the fact that the roundabout is on a high traffic road, even in the middle of the night. I’d need some witches hats, and maybe a yellow flashing light, a high vis vest, and a ute type vehicle.
The Breaking Bad Caper
So what is the 1% of caper from Breaking Bad that I would attempt? Magnets. In the first episode of the 5th season, a laptop has been impounded by the police as evidence. That laptop happens to contain some incriminating evidence, so Walt, Jesse and Mike plan a caper. And thanks to Sony posting two videos on youtube, you don’t have to watch the whole show to see it. Here is a discussion of the possible caper –
Here is a test of the caper, which features one of the most epic Mike Ehrmantraut lines of all time, including Miller time.
And here is the actual caper itself. The music makes this all the better.
In among the new shows of late, I have been revisiting some old shows, and also watching some Emmy Contenders Interviews.
NYPD Blue
As time has gone by, I have concluded that NYPD Blue is my favourite show of all time. Once every six months or so, I start a re-watch. I usually start from season 2 episode 5 “Simone Says” which is the first episode Jimmy Smits appears in. I am not a big fan of the David Caruso days.
I am however a huge fan of Alan Sepinwall thanks to his reviews of the show, all of which you can find here. Alan now writes about TV over at Hitfix and you can find his present blog here.
The show is often on in the background while I am doing other things, and I have it in my headset while I do household chores. I know the show so well by now I do not need to see it with my eyes, I can picture all the scenes in my head. I have a lot more to write about this show but I will save it for a separate post.
The West Wing
The Soho channel on Foxtel constantly plays The West Wing, and if I happen to be flicking around and spot it, I will usually tune in if I am not watching anything else. So it could be said I am constantly re-watching the show. It is one of my favourites and it always will be. :)
Breaking Bad
This is another show which regularly plays on Foxtel – on the FX channel – so it can be said I am regularly rewatching this show as well. I was thrilled to see both Bob Odenkirk and Jonathan Banks were nominated for Emmy awards this year for Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad spinoff show.
Emmy Contenders
There was a series of Emmy Contenders chats done by the LA times, many of which I viewed. The standout chats for me were these chats – Jonathan Banks – Titus Welliver from Bosch – Jamie Dornan – sadly the latter two were not nominated. You can click here to see all the Emmy Contenders chats for 2015.
The Fall
I’d watched season one probably 3-4 times in full previously but I had only watched season two twice and I felt like it was time to revisit the show..
In revisiting season 2, I discovered that my most favourite episodes are episodes 4, 5 and 6 in season two. I love the police procedural stuff they put in, the following of Spector, plus the moment when Stella and Spector finally are face to face, that is an acting masterclass right there.
I will also like to mention that I *love* Stella Gibson as a character. I love everything about her. I love that they gave her a BMW hatchback to drive – it suits her character perfectly. I can see Stella owning that car.
There is going to be a season 3 of The Fall and I can honestly state, if Spector vanishes, they could still continue on and have a truly great show with the characters they have created, in particular the Stella character and the medical examiner Reed Smith played by Archie Punjabi are stand outs.
Fifty Shades Of Grey
Knowing how amazing Jamie Dornan is in The Fall and being a huge fan of his work, I also felt like I had to watch the movie *gulp* Fifty Shades of Grey. This is a movie, not a TV show, but it follows on from The Fall.
The two roles – playing a serial killer in The Fall, and playing Christian Grey are similar in some ways. And in fact, there is a moment in Fifty Shades where they kinda make fun of it – here is a video clip, it only goes for 1:37 and do not fear, there are *zero* sex scenes in this video –
With that said, there are a LOT of sex scenes in the movie, but nowhere near as many sex scenes as there are in the book. Yes, I’ve read all four of the books. For the most part, they are badly written smut, but underneath that is a love story. If I had to choose between reading Twilight and reading Fifty Shades, I’d pick Fifty Shades every time.
I’m not someone willing to criticise things without having experienced them myself, which is why I read the books to begin with. They made a pretty decent movie out of it and I am guessing a lot of that is down to the director who seemingly had a lot of fights with the author over the material. The music in the movie is fantastic, they picked some great songs.
I thought Jamie was brilliant in the movie with one small caveat – I wish they had just let him use his Irish accent, or if they had spent a little more money and time on a voice coach. A little too much of his accent came through. The Irish accent is a really strong one as far as accents go and it is quite a lot of work to remove all traces of it. It is the vowel sounds.
I did not expect to become a fan of Dakota Johnson but she is truly amazing in Fifty Shades of Grey. She really puts herself out there in so many ways. The casting could not be any more perfect re Jennifer Ehle – who played Lizzy in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries with Colin Firth – playing the mother of Dakota Johnson, too, they look so alike!
Lately I have been watching a couple of new shows and some of them are truly excellent viewing, so I thought I would tell you a little about them, in case you are looking for something new to view.
The first series listed below, I did not know anything about until I read the Emmys Performer Ballot. That lists every single human being who has put their name forward for consideration. Plus it lists all the names of the shows they have asked to be considered for. There are a *lot* of names on this list – 348 pages of names! How anyone can possibly narrow it down, I have zero idea. There are multiple performances on here that are Emmy worthy.
If you want a little behind the scenes look at what goes on for the people who vote, check out this post from Ken Levine.
I am a huge fan of the Hieronymus Bosch & Mickey Haller books by Michael Connolly. So when I saw the name Bosch on the Emmy list, I had to do a little digging to find out if this was related to the books at all – turns out not only is it related, the author is quite involved with the show.
Bosch is an Amazon Prime show. You may have heard of another show Amazon Prime are responsible for – the incredible Transparent.
Anyway, I decided Bosch was a must see. I was expecting good, but what I saw was *amazing*. The cinematography of the opening credits is absolutely stunning and not something I have ever seen before. The look and feel of the show is very high quality. The writing is excellent and the cast is fantastic. Here are the opening credits for Bosch –
And here is the trailer for season one –
I should not be at all surprised at the high quality of this, given Michael Connelly is involved and there are some big names on the cast. Titus Welliver is brilliant as Bosch. I also deeply love Jamie Hector as Jerry Edgar and Lance Reddick as Irvin Irving.
Sometimes when you read books you build a picture of the characters in your mind. Though I could not have drawn you a police identikit of the Harry Bosch residing in my brain, I would now find it difficult to picture any other person than Titus as Harry.
Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman
Previous to seeing The Lincoln Lawyer, I would have given you an Identikit of a slightly better looking Saul Goodman as Mickey Haller.. but then I saw the movie, and now Matthew McConaghey is Mickey in my mind. He was so fantastic in that role.. :) Would I love to see Matthew and Titus working together? You bet! It is probably unlikely to happen, and I am sure at some point we will see someone else playing the role of Mickey Haller given that Bosch has been renewed for a second season.
Good news for Aussies – you can watch Bosch via SBS One starting 29 July at 9:30pm. I’ll remind you a little closer to the start date.
In the pilot episode of this series, there is a scene that I just want to watch over and over again. It involves the two main characters – played by Rami Malek and Christian Slater – talking while on the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island. This scene must have been a total nightmare for editors and the sound techs, but it is a glorious and beautiful feast for the eyebulbs.
There is an element of Dexter in this show, though nobody is getting murdered (yet anyway!) plus there is quite an element of some former characters Christian Slater has played, in particular I see a lot of call backs to Pump Up The Volume, where his character was a pirate radio DJ.
The main character – Elliot – is played by Rami Malek and he is doing an amazing job with this role. His performance is mesmerizing. When he is on screen it is difficult to take your eyes off him however the cinematography is so incredible I do recommend giving it a try.
The pilot episode was directed by Niels Arden Oplev who also directed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and they have tried to keep a similar look to the show in the following episodes. Some of the scenes are gorgeously framed, especially anything filmed out at Coney Island.
The home of the hackers contains Skee Ball machines and various other amusements. It is a beautiful set.
How much of what we are seeing is real? What is the plan? What happens next? Will Elliot join in with Mr Robot? Or will he decide to become one of the “normal” people, watching Marvel movies and drinking Starbucks? So many questions, how many answers will we get? Nobody knows!
Wherever the show goes, we’re along for the ride – yes, both of us. The Other Half and I are watching this show together which is a pretty amazing feat in itself, we do not often like the same things. There are 10 episodes in the first season, plus it has been picked up for a season 2 as well. Here is a preview of the show.
It is presently airing on the USA Network. I do not have an air date or any info on which TV channel might pick this show up here in Australia. I do expect it will get picked up soonest, given the amount of positive reviews this show is receiving. If and when I hear of an air date, I will let you know, because this show is incredible and worth tuning in for..
In a somewhat bizarre coincidence, Jim McKay, the director of Episode 3 of Mr Robot also directed the pilot episode of Bosch.
Speaking Of The Emmys
The nominations announcement is coming up. It will be held July 16th at 8:30am LA time, which is 1:30am Thursday morning AEST. If you want to see when this is for your timezone, click here. You will be able to view the announcement online via Emmys.com, if you so desire.
Over to You –
Have you been watching anything new? Something I might enjoy? Leave me a comment and let me know about it. :)
Sometimes I am well behind the times here in Snoskredland – I just discovered the awesomeness of SBS on Demand. I will like to point out two TV shows – one older show which I saw back in 2014 – one which is brand new and starts airing this weekend but will likely be available via On Demand – plus one documentary available via this service and highly recommend them to you.
Rectify
This show is one of the slowest paced shows I have ever watched but I have loved every single second of it. Aden Young is incredible as Daniel, a man who has served 19 years on death row and now DNA evidence sees him released.
How does Daniel return to the world after a 19 year absence? How does Daniel and his family deal with his return to the home town where people still think he is a murderer?
Click here to view Rectify via SBS on Demand. See Rectify on IMDB here.
Room 101
Starting this Saturday night, you can spend some time with the awesome Paul Mcdermott via this new SBS show, Room 101. I know nothing at all about this show, but if Paul McDermott is involved, I am totally THERE for it. The synopsis says –
Laugh out loud as Paul McDermott finds out what winds up your favourite Aussie celebrities, as they try to persuade Paul to banish their pet hates into the Room 101 vault.
I’m sure this will end up @ SBS on demand as well. You might want to just browse it and see if there is anything you want to watch there.
24 Hours In Emergency
This show currently airs on SBS at 8:30pm on Wednesday nights. It is worth tuning in to see it, and there are a couple of episodes presently available via On Demand. Each show in this series covers 24 hours in the emergency department of Kings College Hospital in the UK.
Hospital emergency departments can be fascinating places to visit. The show allows us to take a deeper look, get to know some of the staff and see the things they have to deal with on a daily basis, meet the patients and hear some of their stories and views on life.. this is a deeply touching documentary which will put a smile on your face and sometimes cause salt water to fall from your eyebulbs. BYO tissues.
Do yourself a favour and watch the episode titled “Boys Don’t Cry” – the nurses truly shine in this episode. Click here to view 24 Hours In Emergency via SBS on Demand
7/7: One day in London
Today marks 10 years since the 7/7 terror attacks in London. This documentary is utterly heart breaking. There are some quite graphic descriptions of what happened to some of the people. At one point there is the story of a handbag of one of the survivors – that was the most upsetting story to me, especially when it turned out the family did not know what had happened to their loved one for a full 7 days.
I would not usually suggest a show to you which I found deeply upsetting but I feel like it is important to remember those who lost their lives and to hear the stories of the people who survived, the stories of the people who did not, and the stories of those who went in to help. I can guarantee you will need tissues for this one.
Click Here to view 7/7: One day in London on ABC iview.
Over to you –
If you do watch any of these shows or documentaries, drop back and let me know what you think. Also let me know what you are watching lately in the comments. :)
This week, I’ve completed the posts for episodes 507 and 508 over at Rewatch Breaking Bad, though the posts will not publish until mid-July.
These episodes were the last ones my very excellent work friend got to see. Cancer stole her from us in early 2013, just a few months before season 5b, as they called it, began to air.
Oh, how she loved this show. I think she loved it even more than I did, which is saying a LOT. Sometimes, in the wee hours of the night when we were working together, we would speculate, posit theories, imagine the most insane and crazy storylines, and consider the vastness of the Breaking Bad universe.
We would talk about the show that existed, moments that happened, what our favourite scenes and lines were. The two of us could speak many of the lines out loud from memory. I knew exactly which lines to say to her which would leave her giggling, and she knew which lines to say for me.
I remember one time when the phones were quiet, we spoke for an uninterrupted by phone calls hour, just about the clouds in some scenes, and the weather in Albuquerque, and how it always seemed to put on a show, for the show. We talked about how Albuquerque had become a character of the show and how it gave the show such a unique look.
I also remember we talked about Mark Margolis and how amazing his acting was, because his character Uncle Tio was unable to speak but you saw everything you needed to know in his eyes, and he had this bell that he would ring.
We both loved the character of Mike, especially the scene that began with him shorting out electricity with helium balloons. We talked about a spin off show that could involve him. There had already been some talk about a spin off on the podcasts – which we had both listened to.
We both loved Jesse as a character. We loved where season four had taken his character. We loved his involvement in the major capers of season 5a. We also loved his outfits.
The final eight episodes were so perfect, she would have loved every single minute of them. She would have loved to discuss each episode with me. How much I would have loved to discuss them with her!
How deeply thrilled she would have been to see Better Call Saul, the spin off show that appeared after Breaking Bad ended. She would have particularly loved the Mike Centric episode – Five-O – which will hopefully land Jonathan Banks a nomination for best supporting actor when the Emmy nominations are announced on July 16th, and hopefully he will win his first Emmy award at the 67th Emmy Awards due to be held in September this year.
My friend is greatly missed, by me, and by many others who adored her.
It seems from my internet readings that many people were left a bit disappointed by the Mad Men finale. Sure, not to the same extent that people were disappointed by the Dexter finale, but disappointed all the same. Sometimes people can’t find the words to express why, but I think I worked out what the problem might be..
Warning, there may be spoilers ahead, so I’m putting in a continue reading for those who have not seen the show – you’ll have to click through to see the rest of this post. Continue reading →
It has been an eventful couple of weeks here in Snoskredland. So what is happening around here? I’m going to do a quick rundown of a few things we’ve been up to..
Eating: Loads of vegies. The Other Half said to me that if I steamed Brussels Sprouts for him, along with some carrots and cauliflower, he would eat them. So we’ve been having a huge bowl of vegies alongside some of our meals these past two weeks. I’ve discovered that I love Brussels sprouts myself. We went through 1kg of them in the last two weeks. I also get to put in some of my faves, like broccoli and mushrooms which he will not eat..
Loving: Having our wall art back up again. It has been freaking me out a little, which is odd coming from someone who sits with a full size skeleton in her lounge room. But it has been so long since we’ve had these things on our walls that it is taking some getting used to. I’ll put some of our wall art pics through this post.
Hating: “It’s a Mitsi” – no, teevee ad people, saying one line over and over does not create a catch phrase. Plus, way to go on the research front. Apparently there were ecstasy tablets named Mitsi a few years ago.
Watching: The final season of Mad Men. Season 6 of The Good Wife. Veep – I LOVE Veep! The new season of Deadliest Catch. Australia’s Next Top Model – I am a huge fan of Brittany.
Preparing: 8kg of chicken, cut up, foodsaved, and frozen in the space of an hour on Monday afternoon. It was $5.99 a kg, which is over half the price we normally pay. I have 3 bags for chicken and bacon pasta, 8 bags of chicken pieces for stir fries or Honey and Mustard chicken, plus several bags of chicken steaks for pepper chicken or chicken and sweetcorn soup.
Snacking: on carrots, and many apples I have in the fridge. Dawn is right with what she said in this post – be prepared – I find that if I have snacks and other items already prepped, I’m much less likely to eat things I shouldn’t.
Planning: Menus on a fortnightly basis.
Mourning: the loss of photos and other data – A bad thing happened to our server box.. :( It is way too technical to explain how we have it set up but I will give you a quick and basic overview. The Other Half uses a RAID array which is essentially 5 hard drives set up to work together, storing all our movies, TV shows, and photos.
We do have a lot of DVDs and blu-rays, in particular a lot of tv shows. Rather than store them on the DVDs like many people do, we took to keeping them digitally because we have setups that allow us to watch them on our tv screens without having to handle the DVDs at all. Better for the DVDs, longterm, and better for us to binge watch.
It has been fantastic to have it as a virtual library where you can flick through and pick what you feel like at the time. The backup to the virtual library is, of course, the DVDs. Except the photos, which we usually back up to a DVD every so often.. and it had been a while. Since 2008. :(
So of course the universe would choose this moment to have not one, not two, but THREE of the hard drives fail. When they fail, they try to backup all the information to the other disks, and they managed to do that with the tv shows, the movies, but not the photos.
We’ve lost quite a lot of images, and The Other Half has been kicking himself for not having backups, etc. I don’t see the point in doing that – it is done, they are lost, we have to build a bridge and get over it. Most importantly, we need to make a new plan for storing photos going forward.
A new show is starting in the US this weekend and for once in our lives, we Aussies have seen this show before! It is a new version of a show that aired in Australia on Channel 10 in early 2014. The US version has Ryan Phillippe and Juliette Lewis.
I’m a bit of a secret Ryan Phillippe fan, he is one of the Men I Love To Watch. He was brilliant in Cruel Intentions and he was also fabulous in The Lincoln Lawyer.
You can see the US show on IMDB here, and the home page at ABC is here. The show airs in the US this coming Sunday March 1 at 9|8c – I am not sure if we will see the US version here in Australia on a tv channel at all, but those who have the means know where to look.
Here is the US trailer –
Here is the Australian trailer –
For the record, I quite liked the Australian version of the show until the final episode when they revealed who the killer was. I was not a fan of who the killer ended up being. I do hope the US version of the show changes who the murderer is, firstly to keep it fresh, and secondly because I feel like it should have been someone else.
I’m not going to say who the murderer was just in case the US show follows the Australian version exactly, but if you want to know – bearing in mind that info may or may not end up being a spoiler for the US show – you can read more here. You can also see the Australian cast on IMDB here.
I do not truck with these real housewives shows. Not into this kind of teevee at all..
That was, until Gina Liano arrived on the scene.
I find her eye makeup mesmerizing.
I have no idea what is going on half the time, or who the other people are, but if I flick past and catch Gina on screen, I am stuck like mud. I have to watch to see more of that eye make up.
The photos do it no justice. Even the youtube videos are nowhere near as good as on my tv screen. I think what it is, the thing that sucks me in, is that shade of green she uses. Seriously, watch the clip below, you can see her applying the eye makeup, plus, at the end the final shot gives you a bit of an idea of the intensity of this green eyeliner she is using.
The beyotching I have sat through, just to see more of this eye makeup. I truly cannot understand how she gets so much of that shade of green there. I’ve never even seen anything to compare to it, not even on a drag queen. And her outfits are pretty extraordinary as well.
Arena have been advertising the upcoming season pretty intensely with an ad set to one of my favourite songs, here is a short version of it –
which you can view in full here. Yes, the waving randoms on the escalator are deeply annoying, and so are the flight attendants, but all of this is richly rewarded with the synchronised walking in heels section – especially the new blonde clown on the end whose name, it appears, is GAMBLE. SRSLY! Plus, the other new chick is named Pettifleur.
The Real Housewives of Melbourne season 2 starts airing this coming Sunday at 8:30 on Arena.
Rather than be a snob about it, I’m just going to be honest with myself and admit that I like watching the eye makeup of Gina and the outfits and tune in.
Could Gina soon be Judge Gina? A pilot has been shot. And I have to tell you I would enjoy that kind of show a lot more that Real Housewives.
