and just like that, we have a perfectly good reason for a july thread

[gimmick]

And one of Death's spinoff ep's from the comic was adapted as the bonus ep of s2 of the show.

https://www.thepopverse.com/tv-sandm...-bonus-episode

No idea when all this was filmed and/or greenlighted, but to me the amount screentime and focus that was given to these characters does come off as testing the waters and/or a setup for a spinoff show.

[sonatine]

with squid games over, i wonder if a 'if not sandman spinoffs then what' convo theme is happening over there. non zero chance they just turn into a shitty incubator/aggregator for mr beast style gameshows...

[gimmick]

I quickly glanced at Netflix originals and maybe 1/4 shows are renewed and rest is pending. There was a handful of new shows premiering. Fairly sure every streaming service is scaling down.

On a positive note s3 of Alice in Borderland is starting Sep 25th and I think they are releasing a full 8 ep season on that day.

[sonatine]

BCB shouted it out over here https://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sh...ntion-sonatine and to be honest it looks REALLY GOOD

[gimmick]

Globally it seems streaming services are filling their catalogue with more K-dramas and Anime. There was a sizable random survey where in the west 1/3 viewers watch anime weekly and the most popular sources were Netflix, Prime, Disney+ and Hulu.

In euroland there's also more Spanish, Italian and German shows. UK shows are still pretty common and there was a brief test period of Indian and Turkish shows, but I don't know if they got any traction.

There's still occasional attempts at Live action remakes of Anime shows. So far only the western One Piece has been successful. For unknown reasons there was a 4th or 5th adaptation of Kakegurui. Manga to Light novel to Anime to J Live Action and at the end of the line a western adaptation called Bet. Bet was really bad, but I guess it was cheap enough and/or a nepo baby incubator, because it was renewed for s2. Kakegurui itself was a pretty good gambling related school thingie that's batshit crazy in a very Japanese way.

Are there more South American stuff in US and are any of them worth looking up?

[sonatine]

2025 update:

Foundation season 3

July 3

OH MY GOD THANK YOU FOR LEE PACE

[sonatine]

3 days until sandman finale, thats nice.


off topic i feel like a lot could be said about the absolute insane quality drop of every single (literally) disney series excluding obviously andor.


but like mandalorian, ahsoka, their first seasons were off the fucking cuff. i dont understand how anyone finds an economic justification for allowing them collapse so quickly and so completely.

[sonatine]

SPOILER
so that was a ride.

thoughts in no order....


the first couple of eps of the final 5 were extremely good. the photography was top fucking top.


it felt heroin coded at times tho, and seeing dream toss a couple of opium poppies on the table and call them 'herbs' felt a bit on the nose.


the biggest fault, for me, was that dream's death was never properly justified. it felt like he was a victim of circumstance. and you can tell the showrunners were like uhhh we really oversold desire being responsible for this because they literally devoted screen time to absolving her of responsibility, which is reallllly bad form considering they went out of their way to not just have her issue a curse but then continue to point subtle fingers at her as the protagonist behind the scenes.


so i dont like certain core dynamics of it. i dont buy dream being like 'im fucking tired, fuck it, kill me'. and i might have if defter hands had set up the moment.


the show could have used another 12 episodes to sell me on his descent into ennui before the third and final act.


what else... grey worm was a very pleasant surprise, im glad hes getting work. also he looks so much like basquiat that before i recognized he was the same actor from GoT i checked to see if he was born before basquiat died; basquiat actually did have an 'unrecognized' son who disappeared not so long ago, so it wasnt too far fetched. whatever tho, jacob anderson (daniel hall) was born 2 years after his death so moving on until he admits he faked his birth records to escape his fathers infamy.



as one does.



what else.... lucifer was notably absent which is bullshit and 100% could have saved the show. gwen was born to do exactly that sort of heavy lifting, she could have driven this thing home. they probably couldnt afford to get more of her tho. mores the pity.


or more likely theres cutting room floor footage of them wrapping a most excellent bow on all this and they chose not to include it because it pulled focus away from daniel? that i could see as well.


in any case its the end of an era i suppose. not happy with how it ended but how could i be; i didnt want it to end.

[sonatine]

by the by theres a post credits scene at the end of the last ep that resonates in a somewhat unfortunate way.

[sonatine]

oh also terry gilliam should have directed the last season there i said it.

[sonatine]

oh also one of my favorite things about season 1 was the eternals were all very weird, very broken, and very inhuman. and all that shit went out the window and within a single ep of s02 everyone was super coherent and relatable.

[gimmick]

I might rewatch s2 at some point. There's still 1 ep left that's coming at the end of the month. I didn't watch the last 5 episodes with too much thought. There's just so much wasted potential.

Basically season 1 was based on 16 issues of the comic and the bonus ep was based on 2 issues. The entire run was 75 issues. Later there was a 6 issue prelude that was the first time Time and Night were introduced and s2 bonus episode is based on a 4 issue miniseries. So they had access to 85 issues and they decided to squeeze 67 issues to s2. That itself is kinda retarded so it's perfectly rational that they also added more than an episodes worth of filler BS that wasn't based on anything.

Most of the filler stuff is around ep 8-9. In the source material Constantine doesn't make an appearance, because there's no need for him. Loki and Puck don't play house for 20 minutes (they still steal the kid and about 5 mins is justified). Morpheus doesn't wake up Burgess. Morpheus doesn't leave his realm to go see Lyta Hall. And few other things. The end result is that the pacing gets fucked by heavy handed cuts and adding pointless filler.

Short description of Sandman would be "a story about stories". It doesn't work if you cut out the stories. The framework wasn't that good to begin with and it only worked because it wasn't anything more than a framework. The Endless remain mysterious because they're rarely the focus.

[gimmick]

Right...

https://www.polygon.com/tv/615889/sa...ine-corinthian

...so I'm guessing the "was always going to be 2 seasons" bit meant, that after s1 numbers came out it was chopped to 2 seasons, but they still had hopes for a spinoff when Gaiman's name was still marketable.

Oh and there's at least 4 GoT cast members. Tywin, Joffrey, Grey Worm and Brienne.

[gimmick]

oh also one of my favorite things about season 1 was the eternals were all very weird, very broken, and very inhuman. and all that shit went out the window and within a single ep of s02 everyone was super coherent and relatable.

In the comic Despair was repulsive and Delirium was insane with rare lucid moments. In the show Despair is mildly obese and Delirium is quirky. None of the Endless are all that nice with the exception of Death. They also look and act like they're related in the comic. They're all dead white with Caucasian features and magical elements. In the show I guess they're supposed to be biracial, but no one bothered to cast them as such. Apparently we're not that progressive or that would have required minimal effort.

[sonatine]

Short description of Sandman would be "a story about stories". It doesn't work if you cut out the stories.

this is absolutely perfect.

and it really underscores how a 'bridge' season between 1 and 2 was needed, because the thematic differences between the two stretches are impossible to reconcile at face value.

and their attempt to deal with that was, as you pointed out, creating a melange of distractions / queer drama that are basically nothing but tinsel hanging off a freaky soap opera.

so the july 31 final ep is apparently just them testing audience interest in a spinoff for death, which i kinda hope they dont find because honestly i just dont give a shit about her character or anything its done.

[sonatine]

i went all day without thinking about this show and then i stumbled across a link in my history where i was looking up some random inconsequential character and my pulse shot up like 40%.