Media things
A couple of days ago, I watched the first episode of Knight Rider on Netflix for nostalgia value/cheesy entertainment, after noticing that it was streaming. If you grew up in the US (or US-adjacent) in the 80s, you almost can't not know about this show, in which David Hasselhoff is consistently upstaged by a talking car; I was head over heels for it when I was about 8.
It is definitely everything I expected based on my hazy childhood memories - "awesome" is not one of these things, but "ridiculous" and "hilarious, although not necessarily in the intended ways" certainly apply.
One thing that has become much funnier with the passage of time and the development of David Hasselhoff into a cornball pop icon is the reactions of everyone in the show to David Hasselhoff's face. So basically, he's played by a different actor at the very beginning, then gets shot in the face and experimental plastic surgery turns him into David Hasselhoff. As it does. This means that you get a "IS THIS ... MY FACE???" scene which is everything you would expect of a BUT MY FACE!!!!! scene played by David Hasselhoff. (I have to say that if experimental plastic surgery turned me into David Hasselhoff, I would also be upset about it.)
The mood whiplash between a guy losing everything and everyone he cares about, getting his face shot off, being presumed dead, and having PTSD about it vs. wacky hijinks with a talking car is certainly a thing. Also, a car that talks and drives itself was highly futuristic in the 80s and is much less so now. However, I was sufficiently entertained that I may watch more of it. I seem to remember a) the first episode is probably as close as the show gets to competently written, and b) there is later h/c with the car and also an episode in which David Hasselhoff plays his evil twin with a mustache.
In further mood whiplash, I continued my intermittent "watch all the Daniel Brühl things" based on the extremely scientific method of observing which movies he appears to be hottest and/or most adorable in, based on Tumblr gifsets, and then watching those. Woman in Gold (2015) appears to score quite highly on the Daniel Brühl Hotness Scale (exhibit A) and he is indeed very hot in this movie, and also very adorable, as his character is extremely sweet, although sadly not in it very much. The actual plot - based on real events - concerns the deeply odd team-up of Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds as, respectively, an elderly Jewish woman trying to reclaim art that was stolen by Nazis in WWII, and a family friend who is a lawyer and is helping her. The core friendship between the two of them is very sweet, although it's very weird seeing Ryan Reynolds in a dramatic role, made even weirder because every now and then he slips into campy Ryan Reynolds mode, which is extremely tonally jarring in a movie about the Holocaust. Tatiana Maslany plays a surprisingly convincing young Helen Mirren. It feels Very American in some ways (e.g. everyone speaking English in most of the Austria scenes, though they do have subtitled flashbacks), but I liked it. This entry is also posted at https://sholio.dreamwidth.org/1422730.html with
comments.
It is definitely everything I expected based on my hazy childhood memories - "awesome" is not one of these things, but "ridiculous" and "hilarious, although not necessarily in the intended ways" certainly apply.
One thing that has become much funnier with the passage of time and the development of David Hasselhoff into a cornball pop icon is the reactions of everyone in the show to David Hasselhoff's face. So basically, he's played by a different actor at the very beginning, then gets shot in the face and experimental plastic surgery turns him into David Hasselhoff. As it does. This means that you get a "IS THIS ... MY FACE???" scene which is everything you would expect of a BUT MY FACE!!!!! scene played by David Hasselhoff. (I have to say that if experimental plastic surgery turned me into David Hasselhoff, I would also be upset about it.)
The mood whiplash between a guy losing everything and everyone he cares about, getting his face shot off, being presumed dead, and having PTSD about it vs. wacky hijinks with a talking car is certainly a thing. Also, a car that talks and drives itself was highly futuristic in the 80s and is much less so now. However, I was sufficiently entertained that I may watch more of it. I seem to remember a) the first episode is probably as close as the show gets to competently written, and b) there is later h/c with the car and also an episode in which David Hasselhoff plays his evil twin with a mustache.
In further mood whiplash, I continued my intermittent "watch all the Daniel Brühl things" based on the extremely scientific method of observing which movies he appears to be hottest and/or most adorable in, based on Tumblr gifsets, and then watching those. Woman in Gold (2015) appears to score quite highly on the Daniel Brühl Hotness Scale (exhibit A) and he is indeed very hot in this movie, and also very adorable, as his character is extremely sweet, although sadly not in it very much. The actual plot - based on real events - concerns the deeply odd team-up of Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds as, respectively, an elderly Jewish woman trying to reclaim art that was stolen by Nazis in WWII, and a family friend who is a lawyer and is helping her. The core friendship between the two of them is very sweet, although it's very weird seeing Ryan Reynolds in a dramatic role, made even weirder because every now and then he slips into campy Ryan Reynolds mode, which is extremely tonally jarring in a movie about the Holocaust. Tatiana Maslany plays a surprisingly convincing young Helen Mirren. It feels Very American in some ways (e.g. everyone speaking English in most of the Austria scenes, though they do have subtitled flashbacks), but I liked it. This entry is also posted at https://sholio.dreamwidth.org/1422730.html with
comments.