Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler So what are you watching tonight?

Pushing Daisies

I just watched the first episode. I liked it enough to keep watching. I'm kind of curious how much they can contort the premise.

The opening scene fades in with to junior high girls eating lunch:

“Mitsue-chan…”
“Hmm?”
“I became a god.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t know, it only happened last night”
“Have an offering” [puts a piece of parsley on her plate]
“I don’t need it.”
“Well, gods can’t be picky.”

Ok you have to hear the voice acting but it’s actually a great scene setting up the premise of “Kamichu!” short for The Goddess is a Junior High School Student. This series is only 16 episodes on 4 disks each disk lasting about an hour and a half if you just watch the stories.

Actually the first thing I noticed about this series was the detailed background animation. Before the characters start talking in the opening scene you can see out the window next to them into a richly detailed background. The animation in the rest of the series is also top notch. Characters are distinctly and realistically animated. No fan service as might be typical of a school anime unless you consider the three main characters in one pieces suits at the beach revealing (in fact they even look pair shaped).

The voice acting is great but nothing special about the audio otherwise.

I really wish I could recommend this series and had I only watched the first disk I would gladly rate it a 4/5 or B+ but in the end it only gets a 2.5/5 or a C. The first three episodes are great in setting up the story. The fourth episodes goes off on a tangent. From then on it settles into a slice of life story about a little girl coping with becoming a god. Problem is there’s nothing much in the way of a plot holding the stories together. The obvious story about her figuring out what type of god she is gets abandoned. You could watch the first and last disks and not even realize you missed anything in between.

One funny part of the story are all the random Shinto gods hanging out around town. There’s a god for about everything including tin cans. One early scene has the gods of laser disk and VCD discussing the fickle nature of technology. Based on it’s start this story has so much potential and very likable characters but in the end fails to inspire as it aimlessly wanders.

The first disk is worth watching but I’d skip the rest. Even the ending doesn’t mean much since there’s really no story to end.

Joyce and I used to watch it (and liked it) until we found out it was being canceled.

Yeah, sounds like a good idea. Being around loud coworkers would definitely detract from the experience. Walt has this almost palpable intensity that really is best appreciated in a quiet environment.

I'm glad you liked it, but I don't need to hear about you pushing anybody's Daisy.

Just watched Jeff Beck's Performing This Week: Live at Ronnie Scott's off the TiVo from Palladia.

Awesome.

I should add that I always appreciate virtuoso musicians who remain humble and enjoy what they're doing... and all these guys seem to be having a lot of fun!

Pushing Daisies just made me laugh out loud. Or the disc did, anyway, not the show. After the last episode on the first disc is the most impressive stream of copyright warnings I've ever seen. It's in every language under the sun. I've never seen even close to that many languages represented in copyright warning form. Hilarious.

Just watched a BR on the 58" Panny, I am very happy now. Pics to follow.......

Any one want to try to guess which movie? It is not a block buster nor audio laden as I have no sound system set up, just TV speakers.

Add guesses to my thread in the HT forum........

First please pardon the fact that many of the movies I’ve been watching and commenting on here have been out for awhile but I made a choice not to watch a lot of them until I got the house and set up a projector and screen. I’m glad it I waited!

I just watched the Blu-ray version of “Enchanted.” Wow! Fantastic movie in all respects.

The video quality of this movie is tops. When it came out Blu-ray.com said it was “one of the finest Blu-ray images yet” and that it was “definitely reference material.” I’ve watched only about 30 Blu-rays so far but this beats all of them except “Baraka.” The picture does pretty much everything right from black levels and shadow detail to skin tones with a uniformly grain-less image throughout.

Guess what? The audio quality is just as good. Voices are clear, distinct and sibilance free. All the speakers including the subwoofer come into play at some time but nothing ever detracts from the screen action. Some very cool scenes like when an elevated train goes buy and it really sounds like there is one up there (using either the heights or the wides). Similarly when it starts raining it sounds like a downpour right in the room.

With all that then the movie had to suck. Nope, it’s great. It’s about 1/4 cartoon, 1/4 movie and about 1/2 live action cartoon. Disney does a great job bringing the cartoon world into the real world complete with musical numbers and helpful animals. Neat thing is that that the way “cartoon” world elements are worked into the real world actually makes them seem natural. And not only is it a great story the movie also pokes fun at itself and other Disney movies it takes shots at a few other classics. There are also quite a few funny lines like when the princess sighs that she doesn’t know where to find a fairy god mother and the little girl says that she has something better than a fairy god mother and pulls out daddy’s credit card.

Unless you hate Disney cartoons (musical numbers and all) then this is a must see.

Just watched watched the Blu-ray of “Mission Impossible meets Dr. Dolittle meets Transformers” AKA “G-Force.” Not an academy award winning and nothing to original (are any parodies) never-the-less entertaining.

The video is not “film like” but has an appeal anyway. Colours are way over saturated, very high contrast and often digitally enhanced scenes making the whole thing appear like eye candy. Purists won’t like it but I thought it had a nice look.

Audio quality is a little above average nothing to special nor to offensive. Gotta give credit though for working “Oh Fortuna” into a guinea pig action movie.

The movie itself is formulaic but for me there was never a dull moment. I found it a much more entertaining movie than any of the “Mission Impossible” movies and way less tedious than the last “Transformer” movie. Action scenes didn’t drag out and it had one of the few car chases I’ve enjoyed in awhile.

As a parody it took a lot of swipes at various movies. Not sure if it was a swipe at something but in once set of scenes there’s a hamster in a log cabin with a Canadian flag above the door. Something we should know about Canadian hamsters? It’s also IMO one of Nicholas Cage’s least offensive performances.

Worth watching if you like light entertainment or parodies of movies that take themselves to seriously.