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Thought I'd start a thread about movies and tv BMs are watching and recommend. I'll start off with a hard-science fiction series I just finished watching. It's an Amazon Prime original. The Expanse (IMDb 8.5) "A police detective in the asteroid belt, the first officer of an interplanetary ice freighter, and an earth-bound United Nations executive slowly discover a vast conspiracy that threatens the Earth's rebellious colony on the asteroid belt." There are four seasons, and it is available on EZTV. I haven't tried to download any episodes as I have a Prime membership. I found it very enjoyable. The special effects are fantastic. The plot is interesting though a bit heavy on the action.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/movies/who-gets-to-play-the-transgender-part-in-hollywood.html

The missus and I were relaxing in bed, watching TV. She, of course, had control of the remote, and ceased channel surfing at the beginning of a movie. Said movie turned out to be hilariously awful: terrible acting, cheesy dialogue, SFX that most have cost literally 10s of $s (and it's all there, up on the screen), hackneyed directing - well, you get the picture. I recognised Ming Na Wen (ER, Marvels Agents of SHIELD) and Nicholas Turturro (NYPD Blue) sleepacting their way through this mind-bogglingly awful turd of an excuse for a farrago of a sham of a travesty of a movie. At one point, Turturro's character is supposedly on an oi rig which has drilled into an undersea volcano and is filing up with molten lava, his uncle has sustained a life-threatening injury, two friends have just been killed, and there is a super-storm directly above threatening the rig. Turturro reacts to this with less emotion than someone complaining about a dirty spoon in a restaurant. So, I simply had to look on IMDb to find out more. The horror was revealed to be Super Cyclone (2012), and is now officially the worst movie I've ever had the pleasure of viewing (and I've seen several Michael Bay films, Star Trek Into Darkness, and the last batman film, which was so bad I seem to have erased its name from my memory - so it's up against some pretty stiff competition). All of this led me to wonder what is the worst movie YOU have ever seen, worst TV show, and worst book you've ever read? For me, the TV show has to be the 1990 adaptation of Jeffrey Archer's Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less. Apart from the SFX, I could pretty much copy and paste the comments re acting, writing, and directing from those about Super Cyclone. My buddies and I watch this rubbish with a mixture of horror and fascination, topped off with bouts of uncontrollable laughter. I can highly recommend this show as an antidote for depression. As for books, Ghost House (Clare McNally, 1979) is eye-wateringly, ludicrously funny. not that it's meant to be. My girlfriend of the time (a GG - I know, I know) were on holiday in the north of Italy, and were housebound due to a combination of bad weather and illness. We raced through all the seemingly half-decent literature that previous tenants had left behind. And then I picked up Ghost House. Seemingly standard awful late-seventies Amityville rip-off fare (clear by the end of the first paragraph), it wasn't until the last line of the prologue that it made me sit up and laugh, as it hit me then that this book was not just bad, but had the potential to be truly, interestingly awful. The GF and I spent the rest of the afternoon reading alternate chapters aloud to each other, as we could barely get through a single chapter without collapsing into fits of giggles. So, those are my choices. Over to you, dear BMs...

Here's a news video of a Thai ladyboy who may be on her way to becoming a star in China.

Anyone else been to see this yet? What were your impressions? I went yesterday (opening day - Friday July 20) at a true Imax theater (more on that in a moment). I was actually a bit apprehensive, as The Dark Knight is one of my favorite films of all time. Heath Ledgers performance as The Joker was unprecedented, and the scope, score, and intimacy of such a large production was truly amazing. I think The Dark Knight managed to catch lightning in a bottle and we all know it's virtually impossible to duplicate that. So my expectations were a bit muted to see The Dark Knight Rises, which was probably a good thing. At 2 hours 40 minutes and with nearly an hour of footage shot in native Imax, it was very long and beautifully shot. But the story was unremittingly grim. Gritty, some might say. Surprising for a super hero movie, and hard to believe that I would be saying that a movie with Batman at it's center would be so dark and disturbing, but when I left the theater I felt this movie, and the effects lasted the rest of the afternoon and evening. It's not a movie that I could shake off lightly. Ann Hathaway as Selena Kyle (she's never called Catwoman) was surprisingly effective, and the rest of the cast was great, in particular Joseph Gordon-Levitt who played an idealistic cop. All I can really say for certain is that the end of the film surpassed my expectations and made the first 2 hours + worth the wait. I actually got a bit emotional, and my immediate reaction upon leaving the theater was to want to hop in line to see the next showing (again). I don't know long-term how the film will hold up for me. The Dark Knight is a film that I can watch and rewatch over and over again. Although I want to see this film at least one more time in an Imax theater, I have no idea whether it will hold up to the repeat viewings that The Dark Knight has. A final word about the Imax theater - be aware that the Imax brand name has been rolled out to multiplex theaters that use a bastardized form of Imax presentation. Although it's still better than a conventional 35mm presentation, the "digital Imax" that is shown in the retrofitted multiplex cinemas doesn't have the resolution nor the screen size of the purpose built Imax theaters.