What.
That’s a move I would have made up as a joke. Godspeed to them.
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The recent death of Yokozuna Akebono got me thinking about sumo again and how much I missed watching it.
A friend of mine told me about a somewhat recent Japanese drama on Netflix called Sanctuary, about a young sumo wrestler and about the world of sumo in general:
Having finished watching season 1 this weekend, I absolutely LOVED Sanctuary. Everything about it was amazing, and I thought it did a great job at portraying the world of sumo. No word yet on whether it will get a season 2, but as much as I’d like that, season 1 ended in a great place on its own.
I can’t recommend this show enough. If you like sumo, definitely watch it. Even if you’re not a fan of sumo, this is just a great TV show.
I love the Sanctuary manga, but I don’t think you could adapt it today without making major changes to the characters. Mr. Tokai in particular would never fly today with his casual violence and sexual assault on women.
As much as I love Sanctuary, and it’s probably one of my favorite manga ever, it’s definitely a product of its time, which has probably passed on. This is probably also why it’s never been reprinted, even though I would love some larger “library editions” or omnibuses.
That being said, I now want to reread it since it’s probably been at least 10 years.
It doesn’t need to be the full Kazuo Koike. The only thing that really needs to be preserved is the core concept. Two people want to fix society. One of them goes into the criminal underworld, and the other goes into politics.
Sanctuary is ideal for a remake/adaptation. You can take big liberties but stay true to its spirit.
I just discovered that the NHK YouTube channel has a veritable treasure trove of cool shows available for free.
I discovered it because watching the Netflix drama Sanctuary (see above post) got me interested in Sumo again and I found that NHK takes all the highlights of each day of the Bashos and packages them into a neat little 27 minute video each day:
Then I started digging around a bit and exploring and found that there’s a “behind-the-scenes” manga show hosted by Naoki Urasawa:
Exploring a bit more, I found a 4-part documentary series about Hayao Miyazaki:
A 50-minute show about Hideo Kojima:
And tons of other really interesting shows.
Definitely give it a look if you’re interested about Japanese culture and soceity.
I’ll second Game Genome.
The first two episodes of Kite Man: Hell Yeah! are now up on Max.
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Time Bandits (TV series) 2024
So it’s not a substitute for the original film, but it is still pretty good. I mean, who else would you trust to adapt such a classic/beloved comedic film such as Time Bandaits, besides Taika Waititi and Jermaine Clement. Those names were pretty much the only reason I even gave this show a chance, and so far I have not been too dissapointed. It seems a bit more family friendly than the origianl too, but that’s not too surprising.
I’m only 3 episodes in so far and I say I’ve not been too dissapointed only becasue the writing and comedic stylings of Waititi and Clement may be a little too evident. Which would not usually be a bad thing but, in this case, it really made me miss the comedy of Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin. Lisa Kudrow’s charachter is a bit annoying but that’s expected and will likely change as the story progresses. Giving her the benifit of the doubt as she’s a seasoned actor. The rest of the cast is pretty much exactly the people you woud expect in a Waititi production.
Kinda wish they had stuck with a primary cast of little people instead of tall folk though.
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There is now a completed season of Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont Spelling Bee produced for australia which is excellent, and a second season of the New Zealand version of the show is currently airing and at least the first two episodes are great as well.
Does YouTube count as “TV” if the video in question very directly is immitating a television format?
Anyway, I started watching GameChanger, a game show with comedians from Dropout (fka CollegeHumor). And this video does have 10 million views. But it is new to me and it is really funny.
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I’ve seen a lot of this show, but it’s all clips in shorts. Never watched the whole thing.
I recommend if you want to binge the series and the spinoff from this episode (Make some noise) Droupout membership is worth it.
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Slow Horses
British cop shows are just plain better than American cop shows. True Detective being one of the only good outliers on the US side.
I just started season 4 of Slow Horses and was reminded of one of the reasons I enjoy this show so much; the stereotypically wry British humor on display for every episode has me rolling laughing as they hunt for baddies or whatever.
Gary Oldman is just perfect in his roll as station chief, the loveable asshole boss. Him and Kristin Scott Thomas pretty much cary the show in my opinion. Also love how Mi5 is just as often portrayed as the problem, as they are the solution to the problem with which the team is dealing.
Good shite, this.
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I came here specifically to talk about Dropout a bit. We’ve had a subscription for about a year now - initially because Nuri wanted to watch Dimension 20 - and it’s now become my favorite streaming service.
If you’ve watched clips of GameChanger and you find it funny, I would earnestly encourage you to give a Dropout subscription a try. It’s cheap, it’s not owned by some faceless mega-corp (Sam Reich is the CEO, so it’s literally a creator-owned company), and it’s got genuinely excellent content.
They do a lot of different kinds of comedy content, so not everything will be any one person’s cup of tea - but you’re likely to find something that resonates with you.
Also, if you like GameChanger specifically, they spun one of the episodes out into a separate show called Make Some Noise, which is a direct homage to Whose Line. They even had actual Wayne Brady on for a musical episode. So, that gives you an idea of what they’re angling for.
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Yeah, I got myself a YouTube membership to their channel shortly after I posted that video to watch Game Changer and have since also gone to watch “Um, Actually”, “Some More Noise” and “Breaking News”. Definitely worth it so far and might actually get the full streaming service though I am not quite sure if that is different content or just a different revenue system that cuts out YouTube.
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I know folks who have both, and it seems that it’s all the same stuff, but the big difference is that if you watch primarily on a smart tv, youtube membership is better, if primarily on a PC(or you can easily stream to your TV), then the direct one is the better choice. Or at least, as they put it, I don’t have either, so can’t really say myself.
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I enjoy that content greatly, but I don’t enjoy it to the extent where I will spend hours upon hours watching it. The small free tidbits I see on YouTube shorts are exactly the right amount.