Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Books Movies Television

Slashdot Asks: What Are Some Books, Movies, Documentaries and Shows From This Year That You Liked and Recommend To Others? 91

Posted by msmash from the let's-get-going dept.
As we prepare to end the year, several readers have suggested we asked one another about the things we liked. We encourage everyone to participate.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Slashdot Asks: What Are Some Books, Movies, Documentaries and Shows From This Year That You Liked and Recommend To Others? More

Slashdot Asks: What Are Some Books, Movies, Documentaries and Shows From This Year That You Liked and Recommend To Others?

Comments Filter:

  • ... try me again next year.

    • Was that this year or last?

      Otherwise, I got nothing.

    • Lots, actually ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thomst ( 1640045 ) on Monday December 25, 2017 @02:33PM (#55805129) Homepage

      CaptainDork snorted:

      ... try me again next year.

      Movies: Colossal, Dave Made a Maze, Atomic Blonde (despite the critics' naysaying), and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, just for starters. All excellent in their very different ways.

      TV: Legion, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (season 2 - or "series 2" in Brit-speak - was even crazier than season 1), Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell, Ken Burns' The Vietnam War, Marvel's The Defenders, The Orville (uneven, and it suffers from some pretty lame scriptwriting, but I expect it to improve in future seasons, as Seth Macfarlane shows always do), and BBC's The Alternativity (I've only seen the doc, not the performance that goes with it), off the top of my head. I'm sure I could think of more, if I tried.

      Neal Stephenson's The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., and his three-volume masterpiece The Baroque Cycle (not new for 2017, but the best thing he's ever written, IMnsHO). I could go on here, too, but I'm being called away for Xmas brunch.

      Cynicism and snarkiness are not nearly as hip - or as entertaining - as you might believe ...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kohath ( 38547 )

        Agreed. Legion is amazing. I forgot that was this year. Also The Defenders is good.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Star Trek Discovery was good too. Took a few episodes to really look like Trek. I agree about The Orville, some episodes were very well worn plots that were not particularly well written. It was a bit "in your face" at times but mostly enjoyable.

        Gotham isn't bad either.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by thomst ( 1640045 )

          AmiMoJo noted:

          Gotham isn't bad either.

          I forgot about Gotham. Yes, it veers from canon - but it's a very well-written, well-cast, well-imagined series that does real justice to its huge (and growing) cast of characters.

          Thanks for reminding me ...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kohath ( 38547 )

      Worst trend of 2017: people being jerks, having nothing but negativity to offer, but still taking up eveyon's attention with their useless noise. Especially in regard to political bullshit.

      New Years Resolution suggestion: shut up with your political shit and the rest of the negative nonsense. Have an answer that actually helps someone, even if it's only a vain reassurance of some sort. Or just be quiet sometimes. We're tired of the constant self-involved bitching.

  • Sexual assault. [youtube.com]

    Trump Lewd Conversation about Women

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      And a hundred liberals lost their positions.

  • Not a stellar year imo (Score:3)

    by OffTheLip ( 636691 ) on Monday December 25, 2017 @12:17PM (#55804529)
    Books: Black Widow and House of Spies by Daniel Silva Film: John Wick Chapter 2 TV: haha, none

    • Books: Black Widow and House of Spies by Daniel Silva
      Film: John Wick Chapter 2
      TV: haha, none

      Netflix: Godless

      • Netflix: Godless

        This. I've got one episode to go, and it's a good, nasty Western. My wife votes for Red Oaks and Mozart in the Jungle. Both of us also liked Errol Morris' Wormwood.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The Punisher on Netflix was good too. Stranger Things as well.

  • Clean Code by Robert C. Martin (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25, 2017 @12:18PM (#55804541)

    I read this after over a decade of software development. Despite already following a number of good practices and writing functional code sans a bug here and there, my code has markedly changed and has become easier to read and test.

    • 'The Rust Programming Language' (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I read The Rust Programming Language [rust-lang.org]. It's one of the best programming books ever written, I think. It is very clear and it has lots of practical examples. I already knew that Rust was going to be the language of the future, but this book really shows just how powerful Rust is. In the 1990s we talked about how great the K&R book was. Well in the 2020s I think we'll be talking about how great The Rust Programming Language book is, and how it has changed computing forever.

  • "Homo Deus" by Yuval Harari (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25, 2017 @12:30PM (#55804581)

    Homo Deus is a powerfully insightful book that brings down the curtain on modern man and contemplates the species that will replace us, some sort of artificially-evolved, highly-augmented, post-human organism. When our descendants are indistinguishable from Gods, their motivation becomes a matter of great importance.Harari asks the profound question: "What do we want to want?" This is a dazzlingly brilliant book.

  • Hypernormalisation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WML MUNSON ( 895262 ) on Monday December 25, 2017 @12:46PM (#55804651)
    Brilliant documentary by Adam Curtis. Long, but worth it: https://vimeo.com/191817381 [vimeo.com]
  • The Spark by David Drake
    The Gathering Edge by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
    Challenges of the Deeps by Ryk E. Spoor

    Tim S.
  • Both Forgotten Weapons and The Slow-Mo Guys have put out interesting stuff this year.

  • The Undoing Project by Michael lewis -- made me rethink everything I thought about how human make decisions,
    The Pigeon Tunnel by John le Carre -- his amazing life, wonderfully told by the author.
    So, Anyway , by John Cleese -- his funny autobiography
    Ghost of the Tsunami, by Richard Lloyd Parry -- the saddest story ever, of school children lost in the Tsunami.
    The Island at the Center of the World, by Russell Shorto -- Dutch New York was way different than whatever you think it was.
    And The Weak Suffer What The

  • Orphan Black (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jmccue ( 834797 ) on Monday December 25, 2017 @12:58PM (#55804709) Homepage

    BBC America's Orphan Black. The series ended this year, if you never heard of it, best you watch the first few episodes of Season 1 before you look to see what is is about. All I will say it is a SIFI type series that what goes on in it is either possible now or will be in the near future.

  • The Genius (South Korea) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25, 2017 @01:13PM (#55804793)

    The Genius (South Korea) is probably the smartest television show I've ever seen. They did four seasons from 2013 to 2015. Each season, 13 players (many minor celebrities/presenters, some non-celebrities) are brought in to play social/intellectual games (no physical challenges or stunts. It's all about how smart you are and how social you are.) Each week, they play one Main Match, where there are one or more winners and one or more losers (and everyone else, who are neither winners nor losers that week.) Out of the losers, one is chosen as the Elimination Candidate, who picks one of the non-winners to compete against in the Death Match, a 1v1 game that sends the loser out of the competition.

    A very nice lady who goes by the nickname Bumdidlyumptious subtitled all four seasons. Most of her episodes recently got taken down from DailyMotion but you can easily find download links for episodes on Reddit. Here's her YouTube Season 1 playlist (her stuff is still up on YouTube):

    https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9suu7e7YWZ0rw06g9_cOi_cnzpeXeUCc

    Season 1, Episode 7 (Open Pass Game) probably has the greatest 3 minutes of television I've ever seen.

    Zero chance they ever make anything like it here in the US because we are idiots who cannot have nice things.

    • If you like Asian reality TV, then Terrace House is really good to being to understand Japanese culture.
  • I haven't watched a lot of them in 2017 but my top picks are "Shot Caller" and "Wind River".

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday December 25, 2017 @02:35PM (#55805137)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • It was in theaters, but really it's something of a documentary. (I'm sure they dramatized a bit of course - this is still Hollywood.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )
      It also started a new genre for many historians. i.e. the space program where focus is either astronauts or top leaders, there are many many others in the background to make it all happen. I've seen other documentaries that speak of "hidden figures" on various subjects. I always think these are the people who had to pull a lot of all-nighters, they had this drive to make it happen (or forced to do it like those working Amazon?) but never recognized.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by plopez ( 54068 )

      But they got the part about using Euler's method to solve it wrong. Euler's method could only approximate it.

      It sort of ruined the movie for me.

  • Ajin, Castlevania season 1, Horizon Zero Dawn, Persona 5, Stranger Things, Qorvo's 5G RF for dummies.

    No documentaries because they're mostly insufferable. Hey documentary makers: if your topic really is so interesting then you can stop hitting the audience over the head with how fucking interesting it is every fucking 30 seconds. And if you have stunning visuals of nature, have the narrator shut the fuck up for a few seconds and just let us appreciate what we're seeing.

  • http://www.imdb.com/title/tt22... [imdb.com]

    I'm as suprised as anyone.

    Best of the year? No. Fun? You betcha.

  • Podcasts: "The Magnus Archives" is a collection of short horror stories, each narrated by the Head Archivists of the eponymous Magnus Institute. Each of the stories works as a stand-alone, but the writers have been slowing tying threads together into larger story arcs. Season Two finished in August and Season Three just started up last month. I also recommend "King Falls AM", which about a pair of late-night AM radio talk show hosts and the weirdness in their town. It's similar to "Welcome To Nightvale" but

  • The documentary Icarus about the decades of Russian cheating.

  • Another stellar David Attenborough documentary.

    For a movie, "Arrival". Not dumbed-down science fiction.

  • Persepolis Rising — book 7 in the The Expanse series, by James S.A. Corey.
  • huge music nerd here. 2017 was an exceptional year.

    peaking lights - the fifth state of consciousness [youtube.com]
    jan st. werner - spectric acid
    teresa winter - untitled death
    jim o'rourke - steamroom 32
    biosphere - the petrified forest [youtube.com]
    laurel halo - dust [youtube.com]
    richard youngs - this is not a lament
    colleen - a flame my love, a frequency [youtube.com]
    kaitlyn aurelia smith - the kid [youtube.com]
    kassel jaeger & jim o'rourke - wakes on cerulean [youtube.com]
    golden retriever - rotations [youtube.com]
    ellen allien - nost
    jim o'rourke - steamroom 35
    visible cloaks - lex
  • The Young Pope is my favorite in this years television series, this shows is imbued with the delirious journey into the divinity of a young Pope, elected by chance or an accident and without a consensus but as a surrogate. However ''Lenny" has a lot of questions and plans in his mind, this show takes you on a journey for love and search for god. I give it a 5/5.

  • I gave as gifts books from Seneca and Epikur (Epicurous in English?). Epiktet would be one I'd recommend aswell.

    Better than any holy scripture, way smarter and more effective at leading to a good and useful life. With way less guilt. I.e. none.

    These days I would pretty much call myself a stoics or Epicurean much more than anything else.

  • What Are Some Books, Movies, Documentaries and Shows From This Year That You Liked and Recommend To Others?

    My list, mind you some of them I've read them before, but I took up to re-read them again in 2017, some are just brand new. Some of them I hear on audible first and cross reference and annotate the books for the passages that I find most interesting or pertinent (I keep an notebook indexing specific topics and headlines, plus footnotes on my kindle.)

    I have a busy work/parenting life, and audio books are the only way I can get through books. When I'm working out or driving, that's what I do.

    Re-visited in

  • I hoping to see some discussion about Halt and Catch Fire: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt25... [imdb.com]

    I've watched a couple seasons of it via Amazon Prime video.

    On one hand, it prioritizes drama and style over reality and technology. I have not watched Mad Men but I assume it is a Mad Men wannabe. One of the characters once says, "all hat and no cattle." And many scenes in HCF are indeed all hat and no cattle.

    On the other hand, many of the depictions of the technology of its day are detailed and on point and very few

Slashdot Top Deals

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

Close