I’m in a bit of a quandary. I watch downloaded Netflix content while I ride the bike at the gym. It helps the time pass in, what’s effectively, a sitting down staring into space kind of situation. Mind you, today, next to me, was a chap who was playing some sort of war style blast ’em game while pedalling away.
When choosing what to watch, I try and pick a foreign series which promises to be exciting. This way I have to concentrate on the subtitles (though my Spanish is getting better so this isn’t always the case) and get gripped by the action. The time just flies when I pick the correct programme.
I’ve been quite successful with the drug lords shows from Mexico and Columbia because of all the running, chasing and shooting. For this reason I thought I’d try La Reina del Sur, a Mexican drama about a drug cartel run by a woman – The Queen of the South.
It didn’t take long for me to realise this was a pretty low quality bit of TV. One memorable scene featured the shooting of two DEA agents by a cartel hit man. At the end of the scene we are shown the dead bodies and the camera pans across to the hit man’s hand as he takes a wallet and removes a business card from it. It lets us know he’s just shot a couple of DEA men.
That’s all well and good, it being a good establishment technique, except, while the card is in English (they are supposed to be American after all), the word ‘Chief’ is spelled ‘Cheef’.
Spelling apart, the acting, on the whole, is wooden, the direction is almost non-existent and the continuity dire. Surprisingly, there are two series already made while I’m wondering why I’m watching beyond the third episode.
And there lies my quandary.
It is very exciting in parts (though badly filmed and acted) which works to speed the time along on my way to 12 kilometres and yet I find it difficult to watch.
Strangely, the programme I just finished watching was a beautifully made German programme about Berlin in the 1950’s, recovering from the effects of the war and the new age of music. It was via a family who run a dance school. It was stunning, in all respects. However, excitement was only sporadic.
I think I’ve managed to convince myself to stop watching La Reina del Sur. I’ll watch something Spanish instead that’s not too lovey dovey.
While on the subject of the gym…I think I may have overdone it a bit this week. It’s not often I can manage to go every day and I was going to try five mornings this one. However, as I started walking home from Farnham I realised that my left ankle was a bit tender.
I managed to hobble home and then rested it for a bit (going upstairs was a bit of a trial) before taking the girls to the park where I didn’t walk very far before sitting and throwing the ball for Emma.
I’m really enjoying the wide-angle function on my new phone. Okay the trees look like they’re about to fall over with the distortion but I don’t care. I like the extent of the content and the ’roundness’. It almost feels like the trees are embracing the green.
It works rather well on landscape shots too. Here’s the Queen’s Bottom in wide-angle.
I like the clouds though I’m not happy with the little brown blur in the bottom right hand corner. I have no idea what it is.
More extreme in terms of distortion is this photo of my library. It’s delightfully messy.
