"Stranger Things" on Netflix

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by davidshirt, Jul 15, 2016.

  1. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US
    "FB friends" There's one answer.

    Here's your other answer: Pokemon Go is cultural touchstone of the millennium so far.
     
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  2. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

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    Hollywood, USA
    86% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and 76% on Metacritic. I would consider this higher than the vast majority of most crap on television. I think you're coming up with a straw man argument.
     
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  3. Aggie87

    Aggie87 Gig 'Em!

    Location:
    Carefree, AZ
    I view it as a continuation of Pet Rocks, Pop Rocks, Rubik's Cubes, Cabbage Patch Kids, Beanie Babies, Tetris, Angry Birds, etc. In other words, nothing's changed.
     
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  4. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US
    Dude, I was thinking hula-hoop, yo-yo, and skateboards (with clay wheels).
     
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  5. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US
    Well, I don't accept Rotten Tomatoes as an accurate barometer, but I trust Metacritic which gives it a 76% or a "C+" in my book. And that's what I would give it, a "C+." It's really kinda hokey. Almost campy bad at times, like some of Stephen King's weaker stuff, like trucks attacking restaurants. Maybe that was the point. I mean, everyone thought his Kennedy assassination book 11.22.63 was so good, maybe, but I thought it was classic Steve King bad on film. And a lot of it's not his fault. He always seems to get crappy productions. Cheap TV productions.

    Steven King is a wonderful writer, but translated into films, instead of suggested on the page, a lot of his works just come off as silly horror, or bad horror, like the EC comics he loves. What he does incredibly well is get into his character's heads and write a believable stream of consciousness from their perspective. He's great at that. But I think when you chop up his stories into cinematic set pieces, many translate with this gorefest-at-the-drive-in cheesiness. Now his best stories like The Green Mile don't suffer from this, nor Dolores Clairbornem But "IT," "Salem's Lot," "Sleepwalkers" "Night Shift," "Pete Cemetery," "The Langoliers," Carrie," (DiPalma beats Kubrick for me in adaptations) just never made it to the screen successfully. And "Stranger Things" captures too well for me that feeling of a Bad Steven King Adaptation. Maybe that's my problem with it: 35 years of bad Steven King Adaptation Syndrome.

    Or maybe I'm missing the joke. That's all I can think.

    I watche
     
    Last edited: Sep 12, 2016
  6. Bender Rodriguez

    Bender Rodriguez RIP Exene, best dog ever. 2005-2016

    We get it. You don't like it.
     
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  7. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I don't think it's that bad, but I'd agree it's not the best television ever made. The surprise to me was that it was as good as it was. I'd still say Stranger Things was the best new television series I've seen all year, and that still holds.

    You can blast Rotten Tomatoes all you want, but they have more credentials than you do. (Or me, for that matter -- though I did study journalism and film criticism in college, and I did write quite a few published reviews for Video magazine in the 1980s.) I always try to distinguish between fact and opinion in what I write, and in a subjective case like this, I'll trot out reviews just to reinforce my opinion. My appreciation is close to what Maureen Ryan said in Variety over the summer:

    TV Review: ‘Stranger Things’ »

    Hollywood Reporter's review is similar (though shorter), and I think both parallel my own feelings, particularly since they look at both shows from the often jaded & cynical Hollywood insider point of view, conscious of ratings and money and also how they fit in with everything else with which they compete.

    As a summer show, I think at least Stranger Things is lightyears better than Under the Dome or Extant or a dozen other goofy series that come and go. I also think doing a period series is a lot harder than most people can appreciate, particularly one set 33 years ago. That alone probably added another $250K to the budget of each episode, and I don't envy what the producers had to contend with in terms of props, signs, cars, costumes, hairstyles, and the myriad of other details to get this kind of thing right on a TV budget. Pick it apart all you want, but I can name 10 recent genre network series that were much, much, much worse -- and I think the things Stranger Things did well, like having a reasonable sense of logic and structure and also having a lot of heart, count for a lot.

    Note that Sleepwalkers was not an adaptation: it was an original screenplay done only for film, never released as a novel. I thought it was silly and bad -- and I worked on it for a month with director Mick Garris -- but Mick told me it was basically a "drive-in movie" with that kind of sensibility, not to be taken too seriously. Surprisingly, King himself has said he felt Sleepwalkers was one of the best films of his own work ever made... and I'm assuming he says that because it wound up as he imagined it.

    I think the first TV version of Salem's Lot was really terrifying, possibly the scariest TV show ever done (at least in the 1970s through the 1990s). Stand by Me was good, Carrie was excellent, Shawshank Redemption was very good (though did not initially make money), and I'd give points to Dead Zone and Misery, both of which were very close to the books and really well done. I don't like the changes done to The Shining, and I was not a fan of most of the other Stephen King films out there.
     
  8. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    BTW, don't ever get Eleven mad.

    [​IMG]
     
  9. Dreadnought

    Dreadnought I'm a live wire. Look at me burn.

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Did the binge watch thing and I thought this was terrific. I'd pick out specific actors as being especially good but every one of them were great. I guess this is a benefit of hiring actors rather than models. 8/10
     
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  10. phish

    phish Jack Your Body

    Location:
    Biloxi, MS, USA
  11. Scott222C

    Scott222C Loner, Rebel & Family Man

    Location:
    here

    The best new television I've seen all year was The Path. And Outcast and Preacher were up there too.
     
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  12. NickCarraway

    NickCarraway Forum Resident

    Location:
    Gastonia, NC
    No, the police chief is CIA weasel Gregg Beam from the James Bond film Quantum of Solace.

    [​IMG]
     
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  13. NickCarraway

    NickCarraway Forum Resident

    Location:
    Gastonia, NC
    And with Hazy Shade Of Winter and Nocturnal Me (yeah, neither is diagetic but HSOW definitely took me out of the moment).

    The song playing in Jonathan's car as he drives to Lonnie's, Reagan Youth's (You're A) Go Nowhere, is from '84.

    The music video playing when Jonathan pushes Cynthia out of the way at Lonnie's is I'm Taking Off (Shield Your Eyes) by Space Knife, which was released earlier this year!
     
  14. Jason W

    Jason W Forum Resident

    Location:
    Mill Valley, CA
    i watched the series this week and thought it was fantastic. one of the best 'contemporary' things i've seen in quite a while. spooky, but not mean. loved the whole period setting and D&D context.
     
  15. driverdrummer

    driverdrummer Forum Resident

    Location:
    Irmo, SC
    I would like a new series to watch. The last tv show I invested time into watching was Mad Men. Will Stranger Things be available on blu-ray?
     
  16. NickCarraway

    NickCarraway Forum Resident

    Location:
    Gastonia, NC
    If it is I hope the discs look like Eggos.
     
  17. driverdrummer

    driverdrummer Forum Resident

    Location:
    Irmo, SC
    It would be nice if it had the "VHS Big Box" artwork seen previously.
     
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  18. deadcoldfish

    deadcoldfish Senior Member

    Location:
    Santa Rosa, CA
    No, only on VHS then LaserDisc.
     
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  19. medium Rob

    medium Rob Forum Resident

    Location:
    East Virginia
    I'd go out on a limb and say that Easy (Netflix, 2016) is a better series, though it's kind of apples and oranges. Easy is no unabashed retread (or "love letter"), it's definitely more original and it explores modern cultural phenomena in an engaging way. I'm not here to bash Stranger Things, though it definitely takes the concept of homage to the extreme.

    Regarding credentials, come on dude, this is an internet discussion board. You can trot out all the reviews you'd like, it's still a matter of opinion. More people saying the same thing doesn't always mean that it's correct.
     
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  20. Malina

    Malina Forum Resident

    Location:
    NYC
    My tastes align very well with the Rotten Tomatoes critics number so I rely on it heavily to choose what I'm going to watch, love RT! I enjoyed Stranger Things and I normally avoid shows featuring children as the main characters, thank you Rotten Tomatoes.
     
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  21. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Vice-versa, too.
     
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  22. Bryan

    Bryan Starman Jr.

    Location:
    Berkeley, CA
    Probably. Netflix puts out their "bigger" series on blu-ray, like Orange Is the New Black and House of Cards.
     
  23. Robert C

    Robert C Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
  24. phish

    phish Jack Your Body

    Location:
    Biloxi, MS, USA
  25. Pastafarian

    Pastafarian Forum Resident

    Loved the pure pastiche of King and Spielberg, it's pure entertainment, just turn off any urge to be a critic and enjoy. This is just amazing, got to love it, if only after this:
     

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