Stranger Things

Grim... · **Posted:** Tue Oct 24, 2017 20:31

Stranger Things was great. Go watch S01 if you haven't already so you can be all set for the next series on Friday.

MaliA · **Posted:** Tue Oct 24, 2017 20:38

Yes. Do this! Netflix!

DavPaz · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 38659

Actually looking forward to this. Nice self contained story

Satsuma · **Joined:** 20th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14416

My name is Sat and I approve of this message.

Mimi · **Joined:** 27th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 26095

Oooh! Looking forwards to this. Are they going to release the whole series at once or drip feed it an episode at a time line in the olden days?

DavPaz · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 38659

All at once

Mimi · **Joined:** 27th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 26095

Yay!!

Zardoz · **Posted:** Wed Oct 25, 2017 9:35

I'm away on hols that very day, so I'll binge when I get back.

Morte · **Posted:** Fri Oct 27, 2017 14:52

The cost of the music rights for the new series must be astronomical based on the first two episodes.

Dr Zoidberg · **Joined:** 15th Oct, 2010 **Posts:** 5403

Just downloading them now, but I've booked theatre tickets for tonight so it'll have to wait.

asfish · **Joined:** 5th Dec, 2010 **Posts:** 3353

Morte wrote:

The cost of the music rights for the new series must be astronomical based on the first two episodes.

Is that still the case these days? I know music rights arguments stopped the Wonder Years coming out on DVD, but with all the legit streaming services do they still charge a fortune for TV music rights?

Morte · **Posted:** Fri Oct 27, 2017 19:58

From my extensive research (e.g. typing into google "how much does it cost to license a song") I came up with this summary:

-Low-end TV usage (e.g. -- music is playing from a jukebox in a scene, but no one in the scene is paying any attention to the music) -- free (for exposure) to $2,000 for a 5-year license. In a film, the fee would be $10,000 in perpetuity.
-A more popular song is worth more, perhaps $3,000 for TV and $25,000 for film.
-A song used as the theme song for a film might get $50,000 to $75,000.
-Commercials fetch even more money: "a song can command anywhere from $25,000 to $500,000 plus per year. The typical range for a well-known song is $75,000 to $200,000 for a one year national usage in the United States, on television and radio."

It seems though it is very dependent on the song and the context it is played (for example over end credits) and the type of license used. I do know that Ian McNabb from The Icicle Works was very pleased that "From a Whisper to a Scream" is going to be in the series as it would get another soundtrack airing and would result in a nice cheque.

MrChris · **Joined:** 1st Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 30498

Yay! Silly flavour crisps, wine and 80s horror kitsch. Happy fucking days.

MrChris · **Joined:** 1st Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 30498

Is the doctor feller at the institute thing Burke from Aliens?

BikNorton · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 10173

Philistine.

Satsuma · **Joined:** 20th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14416

MrChris wrote:

Is the doctor feller at the institute thing Burke from Aliens?

Yup. Probably there just for this episode:

ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!

The Aliens call backs at the end of ep6 are great.

myp · **Posted:** Sun Oct 29, 2017 23:44

Finished! So good. Loved it.

TheVision · **Posted:** Mon Oct 30, 2017 12:05

4 episodes in so far. Absolutely loving it!

flis · **Joined:** 26th May, 2008 **Posts:** 3333

Steve Harrington is an actual hero. My favourite bits are almost every time Dustin is on screen. Sonovabitch. Real middle school talk, they get a cool curse word and use it all the time. Everything felt pretty much authentic.

Bob the Brain.... Good casting. Such an annoying dork in the beginning but safe and soft.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13386

I watched the first episode last night and thought it was very good even though not that much happened, and OLD FAT BURKE was good as well.

I liked the music and the arcades and stuff.

Is Winona Ryder still on THE LIST or not? I am unsure. You'd have to keep an eye on your stuff likes. I don't know if she smokes in real life or not or if it is just ACTING but I am not a fan of that.

Will do 1-2 episodes per night until I have finished it.

MrChris · **Joined:** 1st Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 30498

Loving this. Not rushing it as I want something to spend my evenings on. Dustin is beyond superb.

MrChris · **Joined:** 1st Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 30498

Also Hopper, Mad Max and Steve. Great, great TV.

Cavey · **Posted:** Thu Nov 02, 2017 7:13

...... Nah.

I quite enjoyed S2 but no way did it live up to hype or expectations for me. S1 was truly gripping, awesome and genuinely disturbing in parts, whereas this felt far more sentimental, corny, predictable and cheesy - and above all, (relatively) humdrum and mainstream. A lot of the magic, the quirky and interesting intangibles that made this such a cult smash hit out of nowhere, were just muted or absent this time around; for my money they bottled it a bit here.

I loved the look of the S2 trailer when I saw it and could not wait to get stuck into the inevitable binge-fest, but the actual thing, although reasonably enjoyable (albeit very slow to get off the ground, the first few episodes were pedestrian-paced), was ultimately a bit disappointing. Difficult second album syndrome, I guess.

Perfectly OK/quite good but certainly no classic for me, then.

Spoiler alert:

ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!

The storyline just wasn't coherent or gripping enough, not by a long chalk. They could've made so much more of '8' for instance, properly integrating her into the storyline and injecting much-needed antidote to all the kiddy stuff, but failed to do so , despite very promising introduction to her early on. Also wtf was that final schmaltzy ep about, most of it was given over to cheesy character development stuff and a school disco...? The trailered big monster didn't even come into it, and 11's gate-closing scene of about 2 mins was totally lame and inadequate. Like, was that it?

myp · **Posted:** Thu Nov 02, 2017 9:19

You heartless Tory monster

Cavey · **Posted:** Thu Nov 02, 2017 9:26

Meh. I need more bite. A lot more.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13386

Cavey wrote:

Meh. I need more bite. A lot more.

Try 'A Serbian Film', that's got plenty of bite.

I watched S02E02 of Stranger Things last night and really enjoyed it. The slow pace is fine and I like that they're taking the time to explore the consequences of what happened last season, rather than just barrel straight into THE LATEST ADVENTURES. To my mind that's using the TV series format smartly, unlike say, The Walking Dead, that has all the time in the world but manages to do fuck all with it.

Love the music and the 'feel' of the show too, the licensed music is great but the 80s synth stuff is fab as well.

A programme to appreciate an episode at a time, and not hurry things, and MrChris said above.

Cavey · **Posted:** Thu Nov 02, 2017 10:09

Hearthly wrote:

Cavey wrote:

Meh. I need more bite. A lot more.

Try 'A Serbian Film', that's got plenty of bite.

I watched S02E02 of Stranger Things last night and really enjoyed it. The slow pace is fine and I like that they're taking the time to explore the consequences of what happened last season, rather than just barrel straight into THE LATEST ADVENTURES. To my mind that's using the TV series format smartly, unlike say, The Walking Dead, that has all the time in the world but manages to do fuck all with it.

Love the music and the 'feel' of the show too, the licensed music is great but the 80s synth stuff is fab as well.

A programme to appreciate an episode at a time, and not hurry things, and MrChris said above.

Er, by 'more bite' I *obviously* don't mean gore - I mean a far more compelling, much stronger story line, with substance over style or sentimentality... do try not to interpret everything absolutely literally? For me, S1 felt like it genuinely had something to say and a story to tell, whereas S2 far less so, and thus more reliant on peripheral character development (and ironically under-developed and unresolved, ultimately superfluous peripheral characters).

*Of course* the music and feel were cool - that's surely a given. (If they'd messed that up, I would've been panning it, rather than saying, for me, it was merely 'quite good')

As for rushing it, well, I've spent the best part of a week to watch it, which just goes to show that I wasn't hooked. I could watch entire seasons of Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad or GOT in single sittings... now *that's* great TV (imo), with an actual story to tell, which genuinely develops and evolves through each Season. In the end, Stranger Things S2 just didn't.

I give it 692 out of 1000

MrChris · **Joined:** 1st Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 30498

Episode 8.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Also this is awesome

Dr Zoidberg · **Joined:** 15th Oct, 2010 **Posts:** 5403

Just doing 5. It’s good, but is missing the spark that made the first series so special IMO.

MrChris · **Joined:** 1st Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 30498

Fat Samwise Gamgee says boo.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13386

One episode to go in Season 2, it's been magnificent except for:

ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!

The fuck is Episode 7 about? First off it committed the cardinal sin of breaking up the cliffhanger ending from Episode 6 so we had to wait until Episode 8 for that, and on top of that it was a pants episode anyway.

They could have simply jettisoned the entire episode and the season would have been better for it IMO.

Crappy characters, badly written, subject matter vaguely related to the main story. Is it supposed to be demonstrating that Eleven isn't a murderer like the other subjects or something, or she's better than them, or that her friends are more important to her?

I didn't get the point of it at all.

Looking forward to Episode 9 tonight though, assuming it's not set in an ice cream parlour and is all about which flavour ice creams are nicest with Flakes in them.

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49244

We covered all that in the US TV thread

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13386

Anything posted in that thread about Stranger Things is fake news and I refuse to acknowledge it.

Goddess Jasmine · **Posted:** Wed Nov 08, 2017 18:16

Was hoping to finish this off tonight, but Joan's has got football.

Goddess Jasmine · **Posted:** Thu Nov 09, 2017 19:21

We watched episode eight last night. It started off a bit like a Resident Evil film, then when the big bad brother was preening himself, he looked like the killer out of Silence of the Lambs!

Just waiting for Joan's to get home now..

Dr Zoidberg · **Joined:** 15th Oct, 2010 **Posts:** 5403

Finished it last night. It's definitely not as good as S1, but still better than most TV shows and the ending sequence was just superb.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13386

I finished it last night too, however I felt S2 was just as good as S1 (apart from the dreadful misstep detailed above).

Yes it didn't have quite the element of freshness that the original season brought to the table but I felt it conveyed the sense of a bigger threat very well, gave the characters room to grow and develop, and had some real emotional resonance.

It didn't perhaps have the straight-up baddy of Dr Brenner from S1 but in the long run I found Sam Owens an equally interesting character (arguably more so, in fact). The character of Bob Newby was great too, written and acted very well as an unlikely hero.

The soundtrack was fantastic, it made me laugh several times with some really good lines, ratcheted up the tension and scares to genuinely uncomfortable levels on multiple occasions, and did enough gore (without being gratuitous) to convey an imposing sense of risk and horror, as required by the story.

Ultimately it's a very human tale despite the fantastical sci-fi/throwback/horror/etc stylings.

I'd peg both seasons at a solid 905/1000.

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49244

I mostly agree with Hearthly

Cavey · **Posted:** Thu Nov 09, 2017 20:57

I've already forgotten most of S2, frankly. Wasn't there a school disco and stuff?

Vanity Fair nails it for me:

Quote:

I won’t spoil any more of the mystery of Season 2, but I will say that much of it plays like a lukewarm rehash, with a bit more red meat thrown in to cover up the mustiness. It’s a classic sequel form, really. There are some welcome inventions—particularly in casting Paul Reiser as a kindly government scientist, a witty counterbalance to Matthew Modine’s villain from last season. But mostly the show just regurgitates itself, making Stranger Things Season 1 another of its reference points, joining the likes of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Aliens, and Jurassic Park, all alluded to this season.

The trouble is, Stranger Things hasn’t yet earned canonization the way those hallowed properties have—so the second season’s self-regard lands badly; it’s premature. Having the great David Harbour and Winona Ryder do the same desperate shtick from the first season and hoping we’ll affectionately say, "Oh, right, remember?" doesn’t really work when the thing only aired last year, and when the series has been ubiquitously joked about and parodied since. This is a common peril, but it’s especially concentrated here, this feeling that the show exhausted itself with its own success. It’s why everyone at HBO interested in a second season of the perfectly ended Big Little Lies should watch Stranger Things 2—a meandering, intermittently entertaining follow-up that dims our memory of the original fun, of that excitement and sense of occasion. I still ate it up in one big gulp. But I was hungry again an hour later. Only, not for more of the same.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/20 ... n-2-review

Goddess Jasmine · **Posted:** Thu Nov 09, 2017 21:23

Finally watched it!

Dusty is lovely. Also enjoyed the characters of Bob and Steve this series.

Grim... · **Posted:** Mon Feb 26, 2018 20:05

So after championing this right up there in the first post, I've only just got around to watching it.

Grim... approves. It is the Aliens to S01's Alien.

Be Excellent To Each Other

Stranger Things
S02 on Friday!

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Be Excellent To Each Other

Stranger Things S02 on Friday!

Who is online

Stranger Things
S02 on Friday!