benaven

We've just finished watching this series (S1) on blu ray & I was slightly disappointed by it. The acting is almost exclusively excellent, the whole thing looks absolutely beautiful (Rome & the Vatican are almost characters themselves they look so stunning), production values are very high, some of the writing is beautiful & Jude Law is a great central lead. So, whats wrong with it?

I found it a little slow, from Episode 2 onwards. Sure, some things need to be slow (I adore The Straight Story & even love The Turin Horse, so I'm not averse to a bit of slow) but there were just too many scenes where it was all a bit slow, a bit ponderous & a bit inward-looking.

At time of writing it gets 8.4 on IMDb so I'm in the minority; that's fine. You may well love it, just don't expect to chew many fingernails down.

We've watched all of Pixar's films, in release order, over the last 10 nights or so, with just Coco & Incredibles 2 to come tonight. It's been a great journey, seeing some old favourites again & seeing some for the first time.

Last night was my first viewing of Cars 3 & I'm pleased to say it's quite a lot better than Cars 2 which for me is the runt of the Pixar litter. I'd say that generally the Cars films are the weakest of the films, despite some obvious strengths (the voice cast is generally good, the animation is of course stunning etc).

One of my biggest issues with all of the Cars films are the racing scenes; a real weakness where the main character is a racing car. I'm a keen motorsport fan so I speak with some experience here but it's obvious that the cars are never actually racing. In proper racing, the competitors are all going as fast as they possibly can, within the restrictions of tyres, weather etc. If a bike or car needs to suddenly tighten his line because of external factors, that will overload his tyres & cause him to crash or at least run wide. In the Cars films, our hero McQueen will suddenly add 20mph to his speed and fly past a rival & into the distance. If he had that sort of speed available to him, why wasn't he using it earlier? I know we need to suspend disbelief & I'm sure it's more exciting for the youngsters etc etc but for me the racing scenes, which should be utterly thrilling, never have the tension of actual racing.

So, Cars 3 is a perfectly good film but it certainly isn't a Great film & personally I hope they don't make any more. I'd rather see the Pixar dollar spent on new projects but I've heard rumours that Cars 4 may well get the green light.

Groan.