davidh777

I remember Wings! Oddly the series is not on Vudu, but it is on Paramount+, and I bet I still have DVDs around somewhere. I should spin a couple episodes for nostalgia.

coyoteblue

Burned through Lockwood & Co., on Netflix yesterday. Finally a good YA adaption. There's enough material left for one, maybe two more seasons, but given that it's on Netflix I might as well give the 'ol Magic 8-Ball a shake to see if we'll get any more tasty morsels. At least this first series has a satisfactory conclusion even with an open ending, if it ends with just the eight episodes.

The Legend of Vox Machina is also humming along nicely.

Travis McClain

Yesterday, I decided to finally sit down with Gone with the Wind for the first time since watching it with an ex in 2002. I have the movie-only Blu-ray release, but I also have it in my Movies Anywhere library, where its bonus content includes several TV pieces, so I went ahead and watched those. They included: The Making of a Legend: Gone with the Wind (a 2-hour comprehensive making-of produced for TCM in 1988 narrated by Christopher Plummer; Gable: The King Remembered (originally presented as part of ABC's Wide World of Entertainment in 1975); and The Scarlett O'Hara War, the third part of a TV mini-series adaptation of the historical fiction novel Moviola, dramatizing the famed casting search. If you have the film on disc, it should also include another TNT doc, Vivien Leigh: Scarlett and Beyond and the 6-hour, 3-part TCM mini-series doc, MGM: When the Lion Roars hosted by Patrick Stewart. (The latter is also available with some disc editions of The Wizard of Oz.)

The Movies Anywhere version doesn't include the Leigh doc or When the Lion Roars, but it does include three TCM pieces produced since the last disc reissue: an intro by film scholar Jacqueline Stewart; a film-specific segment of "A Conversation About Slavery in Film" with Ben Mankiewicz interviewing historian Donald Bogle, and an hour-long panel about GWTW moderated by Bogle featuring Stewart as well as film producer Stephanie Allain and historian Molly Haskell. These were also all added as extras to the film on HBO Max, and can be found on YouTube.

There's a good deal of redundancy among all the bonus features, including some additional pieces produced specifically for the disc, but because most of them were produced independently of one another, it felt more like corroboration than repetition to hear certain factoids or anecdotes come up multiple times. For instance, I recognized in The Scarlett O'Hara War some of the dialogue was taken verbatim from memos shared in The Making of a Legend. I know most people have strong feelings about the film one way or another, but I'm not one of them. I enjoyed diving into all these supplements. I think there's something intriguing about the fact that, unlike most movies where bonus features are all produced just for their disc releases, this one has dominated pop culture so much that it was easier to just comb through the archives to find things already produced for TV audiences. That's an entirely different starting point, with different budgets and ambitions than routine DVD featurettes. The net effect is that it affirms the argument that GWTW has penetrated our social consciousness on a scale few other films can claim.

davidh777

^Meant for the other challenge thread?

Apparently I’m in an HBO mood because I just burned through the second seasons of The White Lotus and The Flight Attendant. I then checked to see if Westworld had been pulled, and it had. I watched most of the first season a while back, then restarted it, but it never grabbed me enough to get me to finish it. Maybe someday. We thought life in the streaming era was complicated even before services started pulling their own content rather than licensed stuff.

I admit my watch decisions often come down to whether something has to be watched now or might fit into an upcoming challenge.

BobO'Link

^I'd say no as the bonus content Travis watched is mostly (all?) made-for-TV stuff. The main movie, yes, but not the bonus stuff. Looks like he's getting double credit for a few things.

Trevor

We’ll have a period of triple Challenge credit possibilities in a few days!

davidh777

Ah, you’re right. I saw GWTW and jumped to conclusions.

And it’s not even Leap Year!

Trevor

I had a momentary panic the other day that this was a leap year and I was late on starting work on that Challenge.

But I guess Quadruple Challenge Compliance is a future possibility?

Trevor

Coincidentally, I just saw today’s Facebook memories, and I watched GWtW for the first time 14 years ago today, and loved it. That was the extent of my insightful commentary, although I did get some comments like “was there a bonus disc?” and “you’ll double dip soon”.

davidh777

I’ve watched a number of time travel-related shows and movies recently and made mental notes for the next Leap Year challenge.

Confession: I don’t remember what any of them were, unless I time travel back to when I watched them.

coyoteblue

The new Lupin the 3rd movie, Lupin III vs Cat's Eye (2023) has been released. It's a Prime exclusive so it counts for the Challenge!

Travis McClain

Correct. I was highlighting how much TV content was tucked into the GWTW bonus features. I didn't get double credit for anything, though. It's more accurate to say I got credit for most of that day's viewing in one challenge or the other. That was what swayed me to dive into that film and its supplements. I suppose the max value would be to watch that stuff on the 31st, with the TV content in the daytime and then the movie after dusk so it counts for Romusical as well as Oscars. But the 31st wasn't a Sunday this year and I didn't feel like committing that much time to it on a Tuesday.

Anyway, this is the last day of this year's challenge. I think my biggest thing was diving into some later Hitchcock, incorporating his films in release order into a viewing of the first two seasons of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. It gave me some insights into why The Man Who Knew Too Much and The Wrong Man were both made the way they were, the former bending over backwards to take advantage of being a film, with long, sweeping pans of elaborately decorated sets in full Technicolor; the latter appealing directly to TV viewers with Hitch appearing onscreen to introduce the black & white film himself. I've seen more than half of his illustrious filmography, but I don't necessarily think of myself as a true fan. I feel confident I benefited from watching the films mixed in with the TV show this way.

Other than Hitchcock, my challenge was dominated by going through 118 of the 120 episodes of The Muppet Show (Disney+ lacks two episodes). That was fun overall, though it did make me wince and shake my head more often than I anticipated going into it. I also binged the third season of Jack Ryan (thought it was alright, though I will absolutely forget everything about it by the end of February) and checked out the first few episodes of Night Court, Poker Face, and Shrinking. Also finished Andor S1 and started Star Wars: The Bad Batch S2. I hope a whole lot of current shows study Andor as a model for structure and pacing. I don't need another show to be Andor, but I would greatly appreciate a show being patient and trusting me as a viewer the way Andor did. Not springing plot twists like it was jumping out of a closet to startle me, but introducing new developments organically. And not having to pay off an idea within six minutes of introducing it was also nice.

Qrusher14242

Been rewatching Knots Landing and almost watched 2 seasons. Love that show, forgot how much music was in it. Probably why it will most likely never see more DVD releases. Also finally finished Season 3 of The Virginian. It's one of my favorite shows, but its an hour and a half per episode so it takes a while to watch. The last episode "We've Lost a Train", was a backdoor pilot to Laredo.

I also watched a lot of Alaskan Bush People, Sister Wives, and a few episodes of the new season of 1000-lb Sisters. They are fun fodder and can be kind of addicting.

I also rewatched a little over a season of Gunsmoke. Still probably my favorite Western, the early B/W 30 min episodes are great. It was good in that sometimes things didn't turn for the best, like real life.

Other than those, i watched some of Andy Griffith Show, WKRP in Cincinnati, and will probably finish most of the last day watching Little House on the Praiire. Maybe the most wholesome show i've seen, i can never get tired of watching it. My mom used to watch it all the time and it reminds of that.
It seems like this will end up being the 2nd most i've ever watched in a Challenge, which is something i guess. I'm gonna try and do some of the Academy Award Challenge, but it started before this ended so i haven't got a chance to do it yet.

It's been fun doing this, like every year. Will probably take a break from TV show watching for a bit afterward lol

mrcellophane

I started watching Poker Face, the new Columbo-esque series starring Natasha Lyonne, and it's really good. I wasn't sold on the first episode, but the second and third episodes fully got me on board.