Time for a new ‘watching’ thread!
What Are You Watching? New Season!
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I remember you saying you enjoyed it. They’re both lovely, gentle films. Very soothing.
I love both of them and all that is true but they also have a wonderful bit of political subtext about the value of immigrants.
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I remember you saying you enjoyed it. They’re both lovely, gentle films. Very soothing.
I love both of them and all that is true but they also have a wonderful bit of political subtext about the value of immigrants.
Yes and wonderfully done. Also the value of not being afraid to try tasting something different like marmalade sandwiches.
One little bear can make a difference to so many by staying sweet and kind despite all adversity and animosity. But sometimes too the Paddington hard stare is a valid righteous response.
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Briliant casting too. Hugh Bonneville is perfect as any pompous ass character, Sally Hawkins cannot be disliked, Capaldi ideal for the noxious Mr Brown and they fell on a great accident when Colin Firth pulled out and they had Ben Wishaw came in as he has that innocent sounding voice nailed down.
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Agreed. Wonderful cast.
Ben Wishaw’s innocent voice leaves you instantly wanting to protect Paddington, but it leaves him vulnerable too.
The set designs are brilliant too. I found this example:
Whimsical without being twee. Lots of subtle details like pompous Bonneville’s conservative nature reflected in the blue of his office, but he and his surroundings gradually appear warmer. There’s a lovely little detail in the clip I posted where the lighting alters in the Lost and Found sign when Paddington gains his new found family.
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I got around to watching Brass Eye today, as per Lorcans recommendation. I’ve never before understood the terminology some of ye throw around when dealing with these important and nuanced topics. But, as far as the drugs episode goes, now I do.
I sure could go for some cake now though. Anyone know anyone in the Prag area?
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I sure could go for some cake now though
If looking for a dealer it’s better to use its street name – Joss Ackland’s Spunky Backpack
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That resident school addict thing happened at our school. I doubt they paid him for it though. Perhaps he was volunteering.
I want the kind of brain that reads any message printed on paper as I speak the words into a video camera without so much as even trying to understand what it says.
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You know what’s an actual disgrace? Those webp-images not being supported every which way and where.
They’re useless. Full with maliciously bisturbile code. This one guy’s computer ejected its own BIOS through the ethernet cable. THAT’S a fucking disgrace!
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That resident school addict thing happened at our school
Are you sure it was a real school and not a paedophile in disguise?
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@tmasters post from the last thread:
Snowpiercer. Episode 10 – season finale
Look, for a while this was just a fairly casual watch on a Monday night while I cooked dinner because otherwise I would have to watch the news (and fuck the news gets depressing).
Turns out, towards the “Tail” end of the season (see what I did there? I’m so clever) the show gets pretty compelling. I’d say you can pretty comfortably snooze the first half of the season which is just world-building and watch the last half.
Jennifer Connelly and Daveed Diggs are wonderful.
Yeah, the only way to do a TV series off a movie was to expand the beginning and they did a good job.
They also got to explain things more, and better.
Then to the events of the movie, and I thought they did a good job of not quite the same thing (which they had to, if you want to go on for multiple seasons still on the train).The thing is, I kept watching. At any point I could’ve dropped, but figured 10 episodes and I’ll finish.
It’s got a certain quality like I want to be there when it really takes off, but at the same time at any moment it can go off the rails
http://thecarrier.net/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_wink.gif
(edit: board won’t let me do a wink, so my turn to say “See what I did there?”)Then I read that Sean Bean is signed on for Season 2
So a pretty damn good cast got better for the second season, and looking like it was their plan all along.
They are set up to tell the story they want to tell, and I hope they know what they are doing.
It does get me excited (just don’t want to admit it). -
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the first season of Sense8… I frickin’ loved it…
forgot to mention that I finished the second season.
Loved that too.
The only possible critique is you can tell plans changed but I’m glad they got the chance to wrap it up (and really they did a spectacular job when you look at it that way).
So much more to tap. After season 2 they would need to be told ‘only two more seasons’ and we could almost get the story we deserve, as I felt they put themselves into season 5 territory quite easily.Don’t know if I can be mad at Netflix as I’m willing to bet it had a huge price tag.
But I do think they should have given more.That was a huge show for the LGBTQ community.
I have to admit I don’t know what I would have said 10 years ago, and probably not given the chance 20 years ago.
(Sorry if I fumble the point, but I’m trying…)
I never consider myself a hater, yet words I said as a child, young adult were just wrong.
Even when you stop that bullshit but still remain silent when you know it’s going on is wrong.
I’m hung up on (daddy bullshit and some legitimate grievances) but it doesn’t compare to the abuse others went through.
Wish I wasn’t this old to finally type that.Here, you had a show that showed many different characters and showed them as real people, no bullshit sterotypes.
I believe it made huge strides, and Netflix should’ve held on on a human level.Oh, and without all that, what a fucking show!
The concept, the execution, the characters.
The cast was great (who’s that guy?… oh yeah, from Stargate Universe… plus lots more)
On a message board like this, we should all have seen.
And if there’s a lull in TV land then do a re-watch1 user thanked author for this post.
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I’m actually rewatching Sense8 at the moment…
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Peacock’s Brave New World… it’s actually good. That streaming service name is still dumb as shit, but whatever, it was a quality series which is what counts I guess… I don’t really remember the book (or if I even finished it) but I reckon this is a slightly different take, but the basic premise is there I suppose.
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Sense8 was a Damme fine show.
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Peacock’s Brave New World… it’s actually good. That streaming service name is still dumb as shit, but whatever, it was a quality series which is what counts I guess… I don’t really remember the book (or if I even finished it) but I reckon this is a slightly different take, but the basic premise is there I suppose.
That’s the one that Grant Morrison was involved in writing isn’t it?
Not sure when it will be aired in the UK, where it’s on Sky One apparently.
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Oh, I watched The Old Guard, too. Pretty much what everybody else said. I also liked that they kept the door open for a sequel (haven’t read the books, but I expected her to show up earlier, honestly), hope they get to do one.
Favourite moment was the “He’s not my boyfriend” monologue.
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The Real Message of Netflix’s 10 Most Popular Movies List: Filmmakers, Proceed With Caution (Column)
This is a slightly bizarre article. All it seems to be saying is that the most popular movies on Netflix reflect the most mainstream tastes. Well, no shit. If you’ve paid attention to the most popular movies of modern era this list should come as no surprise.
I guess I just don’t see how it can be used as a stick to beat them with. Surely the whole point is that they’re using this popular stuff to also fund the more niche projects, when they could be doing nothing but focusing squarely on the mainstream.
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Yeah, I mean…
The real news emerges from all the films that aren’t on the list. Where is “Roma”? Where is “Marriage Story”? Where is “Da 5 Bloods”? Where is “The Two Popes”? Where is “Dolemite Is My Name”? Where’s all that quality that Netflix has been selling?
So blockbuster entertainment is more popular than arthouse cinema? Well, now I’ve seen everything!!!
It would speak more clearly to his point to see if these movies got more viewers than they would have if they’d (only) been released in the cinemas, and later on general DVD/streaming, as opposed to being released on Netflix. This has certainly been the case for some projects, like Unorthodox, which would probably have been watched by very small audiences in Germany and the US normally and has become an internationally successful show in no time at all thanks to Netflix exposure.
And, also to the point of the article, yeah, there is some stuff where I can only shake my head that it’s apparently no.1 most-watched in Germany – very recently, no.1 was “365 Days”, a Polish Fifty-Shades-of-Grey kind of movie. So while I don’t know about the good stuff, it certainly seems like some of the bad stuff finds a far bigger audience than it otherwise would. I think this possibly also goes for some of the action fare like “6 Underground” and the like – average or sub-average movies that get huge Netflix audiences that they normally wouldn’t. But then again, maybe that’s also an indicator for the audiences the truly good movies get?
In essence, people’s tastes have always been a bit shit, and Netflix seems to be doing a good job at satisfying the needs of a diverse audience, including making really good stuff. And it seems like at the moment, for low and mid-tier projects, you are certain to get a bigger audience at Netflix than outside of it.
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Watched the first episode of Cursed on Netflix ast night. It’s ok. It feels like quite generic fantasy TV and there’s nothing particularly original about it, like it could have been made at any time in the last twenty years.
The actors are all ok but not particularly outstanding, with the exception of Peter Mullan who’s always great. And it alternates between feeling like it’s had quite a lot of money spent on it and not very much at all.
I’ll keep watching for now at least.
I’m watching the first episode of Cursed now. I was willing it on to be good because there have been some scathing reviews. One said Peter Mullan’s only in it because he must’ve wanted out of the house.
Ummm.. The scenery is pretty with all the mountains and ancient forest settings.
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Uncut Gems was a big hit with my parents when I watched it with them last night. (Massachusetts, and New England as a whole, is doing well with Covid so we’ve been seeing my parents and sister and the in-laws, while still abstaining from seeing friends and going out to eat, etc.)
Uncut Gems is just as thrilling on second watch as it was on the first, which isn’t something you can say about a lot of thrillers, even great ones. The Safdie brothers are a force of nature.
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Ummm.. The scenery is pretty with all the mountains and ancient forest settings.
I watched it too and agree with that. I want it to be good as well because a.) i want all comic based projects to do well (this is from Frank Miller) and b.) I like takes on Arthurian Myth and this has Lady of the Lake, Arthur, and Merlin. They are quite different from the traditional stories but i am willing to give it some leeway.
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The new season of The Alienist debuted on the TNT network last night, with most of the cast intact from season one. This one is adapting Angel of Darkness, author Caleb Carr’s sequel to the novel on which the first season was based. As I recall the sequel novel was not as strong as the original; and I have the feeling from one episode that this season is going to go off the rails quickly. There was an exciting relationship between the three main characters the first time around that is not there this time, and a lot of the blame in last night’s episode falls on Daniel Bruhl and Dakota Fanning, who seem to be vying with each other for the title of most morose character. At least Luke Evans’ character has charm, humor, and isn’t constantly despairing.
The real star of this show, though, is the city of Budapest which is standing in for turn-of-the-century New York City.
I’ll give it another episode or two to see if it picks up. Stay tuned.
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Miller’s the showrunner too. It’s all a bit clunky so far. I’ll stick with it and see how it goes.
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Favourite moment was the “He’s not my boyfriend” monologue.
Interesting that that scene is word for word from the comic and was apparently a sticking point from Rucka that it be left in unchanged.
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In essence, people’s tastes have always been a bit shit, and Netflix seems to be doing a good job at satisfying the needs of a diverse audience, including making really good stuff. And it seems like at the moment, for low and mid-tier projects, you are certain to get a bigger audience at Netflix than outside of it.
Yup and the diverse audience is key. Subscription television has been with us a while now but article after article seems to fail to get to grips with the fact that ratings aren’t as important as they are with advertising led models.
The easiest analogy to look at is sports channels. In Europe by far the most popular sport is football, if you looked at the top 10 most watched events they’d probably all be football. You sign up all the football and you get 10m subscribers but you’ve reached a large audience with a limit. Adding more football won’t make any difference, the football guys are onboard 100%. By adding less popular sports like motorsports, rugby, cricket, basketball, cycling, athletics you can build that audience up to 15m or 20m.
Netflix is trying to make its product essential to as many people as possible. In my family I may watch the arty ones, my wife will watch Korean soaps, the kids will watch the cartoons. If I cancelled it there’d be howls of protest but that’s without any of us really watching much in that Top 10 list. I’ve never even heard of ‘The Wrong Missy’ it’s algorithms probably telling it I’d have no interest. That’s fine of others loved it as long as they carry on showing stuff I do want to see.
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The cinemas have been open here since July 1st but with no new films. I was tempted to take the kids to Trolls World Tour which is showing but then saw in the fine print that under 12s are not allowed into the cinema under the restrictions. As I’ve said for a while distribution under digital projection now costs almost nothing so they won’t be losing money but I struggle to think how many people are watching a film like that when kids aren’t allowed in.
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The cinemas have been open here since July 1st but with no new films. I was tempted to take the kids to Trolls World Tour which is showing but then saw in the fine print that under 12s are not allowed into the cinema under the restrictions. As I’ve said for a while distribution under digital projection now costs almost nothing so they won’t be losing money but I struggle to think how many people are watching a film like that when kids aren’t allowed in.
They’re going to be making bank off all those hipster 13 year olds.
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Argo. Still mostly good, but that third act, with all the forced “will they be caught?” stuff at the airport goes on forever, and it’s very obviously largely made up for the film.
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Made a start on Netflix The Witcher. It looks like what if Game of Thrones but with 10% of the budget. It’s too damned quiet and we’ve had to put on the subtitles. A side effect of this is we spend a lot of the time laughing at how much sighing is in the show as <<sighs>> appears on screen in what feels like every scene. Still, enjoyable enough i guess.
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I watched Event Horizon last night. Yeah….
Well, it was fun watching it with my sister and cracking jokes the whole time. And the set design is fantastic. The design people were the only guys involved in this movie who gave it their all. (Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill did what they could but when all the dialogue is wooden even great actors can’t add much life to their roles.)
It’s quite a lazy movie. Even the character names show a lack of effort: Miller, Smith, Cooper, Peters, Stark, D.J., another Smith… Like the screenwriter forgot to go back in and switch out the placeholder names. And the distorted, scream-filled radio transmission from the Event Horizon that sets the plot in motion is laughably slapdash. Like it was using canned screams from a carnival haunted house.
Still, the central idea is a good one. I wouldn’t mind seeing this remade by competent filmmakers. They could even cast Fishburne and Neill again.
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Made a start on Netflix The Witcher. It looks like what if Game of Thrones but with 10% of the budget. It’s too damned quiet and we’ve had to put on the subtitles. A side effect of this is we spend a lot of the time laughing at how much sighing is in the show as <<sighs>> appears on screen in what feels like every scene. Still, enjoyable enough i guess.
I hope “Henry Cavill grunts” has its own dedicated subtitle font.
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I watched Event Horizon last night. Yeah….
Well, it was fun watching it with my sister and cracking jokes the whole time. And the set design is fantastic. The design people were the only guys involved in this movie who gave it their all. (Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill did what they could but when all the dialogue is wooden even great actors can’t add much life to their roles.)
It’s quite a lazy movie. Even the character names show a lack of effort: Miller, Smith, Cooper, Peters, Stark, D.J., another Smith… Like the screenwriter forgot to go back in and switch out the placeholder names. And the distorted, scream-filled radio transmission from the Event Horizon that sets the plot in motion is laughably slapdash. Like it was using canned screams from a carnival haunted house.
Still, the central idea is a good one. I wouldn’t mind seeing this remade by competent filmmakers. They could even cast Fishburne and Neill again.
This is one of those movies that I never want to watch again, because I remember it being great and I don’t want to realise that it wasn’t.
Apparently the hellish visions were toned down for the final movie – there’s a legendary unreleased uncut version out there with a lot more gore and nudity.
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It’s completely made up from what I read, in reality they just walked on the plane and left.
From what I recall from when it came out, some of the interrogation stuff did happen, but it was before they got to the airport.
There’s a new podcast called Truth vs. Hollywood that goes through movies like this and looks at what was real, what was made up, etc. The first half of their Argo ep came out today, but I haven’t listened yet: https://audioboom.com/posts/7637920-argo-part-1
They’ve done episodes on Goodfellas, The Social Network, and Zodiac, all of which have been pretty good.
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V for Vendetta: Still holds up rather well… great cast and performances and the FX still holds up well enough. The story is obviously still relevant. It could use a longer runtime, tbh, but it’s probably still within the top tier of CB movies, easily.
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I’m rewatching the Muppet movies. The first one is still great, but I found The Great Muppet Caper fairly disappointing. None of the songs are memorable, and outside of Grodin and Rigg, the human cast isn’t great. It’s also oddly plot-y in a way that doesn’t work that well for it.
The Muppets Take Manhattan is fantastic though, with a bunch of excellent songs, a simple, enjoyable story, and likable human characters. The amnesia stuff is probably unnecessary, but it doesn’t go on too long.
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Equalizer 2.
Much like the first one, I really enjoyed it. I’m not always a fan of Fuqua’s movies (I thought Training Day was overrated) and my Equalizer will always be Robert Woodward, but I have to say these movies really work. Denzel Washington is a great Robert McCall; he brings a weary gravitas to the role that works really well. And the violence has a weight to it that I really like.
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I’m still working my way through the latest season of What We Do In The Shadows and watched the Mark Hamill episode last night. Brilliant.
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Christel and I watched a special on Animal Planet called Surviving Joe Exotic.
It focused on lions that had been rescued from him back in 2018. It had some footage of Joe Exotic from a episode of an AP where a rescue group was getting 26 wolves from him that someone had dropped off to him. One of the guys saw two lions in bad shape and managed to get them to so they could be properly taken care of. They also looked at to other big cats that had been rescued from him. They had to have eye surgery and are doing better now. They talked to Saff and some others that worked for Joe. His place was a true shitshow. It’s a good special to watch as it focuses on the animals.
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I’m still working my way through the latest season of What We Do In The Shadows and watched the Mark Hamill episode last night. Brilliant.
I’d just spotted the whole second season is up on the iPlayer. That’ll be next on our list after we are done with The Witcher.
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Right, so I watched Dispatches from Elsewhere, the latest Jason Segel series: AVOID!!!! Seriously, do not waste your time, because that’s what you’ll feel like.
The first 9 episodes are great, great writing, cute idea, amazing cast and characters… but then you get to episode 10 and it all goes to shit. This might be the worst ending of a TV show ever made. I got the intention behind it sure, I mean, it’s not like it was subtle, and at first I was intrigued, but no… just no. It doesn’t work and it ends up shredding to pieces the rest of the show. It’s really a shame.
I know people will be curious, but trust me, don’t. You were warned.
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Right, so I watched Dispatches from Elsewhere, the latest Jason Segel series: AVOID!!!! Seriously, do not waste your time, because that’s what you’ll feel like.
The first 9 episodes are great, great writing, cute idea, amazing cast and characters… but then you get to episode 10 and it all goes to shit. This might be the worst ending of a TV show ever made. I got the intention behind it sure, I mean, it’s not like it was subtle, and at first I was intrigued, but no… just no. It doesn’t work and it ends up shredding to pieces the rest of the show. It’s really a shame.
I know people will be curious, but trust me, don’t. You were warned.
See, I liked the ending because of what they did. Within the context of the show and it’s message, it worked.
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I watched the two hour premiere of The Alienist: Angel of Darkness. It was good but between it and Perry Mason on HBO, I really don’t need any more dead babies on a TV show.
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Took the three and a half hours to watch The Irishman yesterday. It was pretty much what I expected. Watching a Scorcese mafia period movie feels too comfortable at this point, really, but it did draw you into its little world of characters. Great performances all around, obviously, and especially great to have Joe Pesci back one last time.
I don’t know about the de-aging on De Niro. It works okay-ish for the face, but his body language still feels like that of a much older man. I suppose even the very best acting can’t just turn a body in his mid-seventies into one in his mid-thirties. But then again, it’s hard to say whether the alternative of having a role played by two actors is any better. It’ll be interesting to see which of the options will become the standard. It probably won’t change much from the current normal practice, given that using another actor is just the cheaper option, I suppose.
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I don’t know about the de-aging on De Niro. It works okay-ish for the face, but his body language still feels like that of a much older man. I suppose even the very best acting can’t just turn a body in his mid-seventies into one in his mid-thirties. But then again, it’s hard to say whether the alternative of having a role played by two actors is any better. It’ll be interesting to see which of the options will become the standard. It probably won’t change much from the current normal practice, given that using another actor is just the cheaper option, I suppose.
Presumably there’s also a halfway-house option of using a younger actor as a body double to shoot any of the scenes that require anything physical, and then mapping a young-Deniro (or whoever) face onto that body?
Seems like a lot of hassle though, when most viewers will suspend disbelief and accept two actors playing the same character at different ages.
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Seems like a lot of hassle though, when most viewers will suspend disbelief and accept two actors playing the same character at different ages.
Yeah, exactly. And two good actors should also be able to work out a performance that’ll let you recognise it’s the same person (though I can’t come up with a perfect example for that off the top of my head).
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Seems like a lot of hassle though, when most viewers will suspend disbelief and accept two actors playing the same character at different ages.
Yeah, exactly. And two good actors should also be able to work out a performance that’ll let you recognise it’s the same person (though I can’t come up with a perfect example for that off the top of my head).
Josh Brolin as a young Tommy Lee Jones in Men In Black 3 is pretty great.
You’ve also got Deniro himself doing young Brando in The Godfather.
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I’m trying to spot the difference between your old and new posts. Remarkable resemblance.
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My Muppets rewatch has moved on to Muppets Tonight episodes on Youtube, which I haven’t seen since they first aired almost 25 years ago, when it was my favourite show.
I think it mostly holds up well. It’s obviously hit-and-miss, but not any more so than most other sketch shows, or a lot of the original series.
The main thing I like about it, compared to almost every Muppet project since, is that it’s about 70% new characters, rather than just the old ones who’ve been around since the 70s or before. A handful of the characters from the show have stuck around (mostly just Pepe, Carl, and Bobo), but almost all attempts to create new Muppets in the last twenty years have been failures, and they seem to have just stopped trying.
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The AV Club gave the new Disney Plus show a good review, and it has a couple of new characters so hopefully they’ll sick around.
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Simon loves The Muppets. Fozzie Bear. I miss Simon.
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Simon loves The Muppets. Fozzie Bear. I miss Simon.
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Hasbro’s uploaded more Season 1 episodes of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. Still avoiding all five parts of “Arise Serpentor Arise”.
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Watched Uncut Gems. Man, watching that guy was stressful. Towards the end, I did root for him a little bit, but was still glad when he got finally shot in the head.
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Oh! Why? It’s awesome.
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Oh! Why? It’s awesome.
I just prefer how Serpentor was depicted in the comics to how he was depicted in the cartoon. Also, no one in Cobra was still loyal to Cobra Commander? No one?
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Watched some great Olivier Assayas movies recently:
Irma Vep – Everything about this movie is cool. Maggie Cheung in a black latex catsuit robbing people in her hotel? Cool. Songs by Sonic Youth and a great Serge Gainsbourg cover by Luna on the soundtrack? Cool. An unflinching behind-the-scenes look at the chaotic French film scene of the 1990s? Cool. The defaced and distorted black-and-white film footage that closes out the movie? Cool–and a challenge to other filmmakers to do new things with the medium that has rarely been met.
Unfortunately the version I watched didn’t have subtitles for the English parts, which is annoying since aside from Cheung all the people in the movie have thick, at times indecipherable, French accents. But the movie is more about the style of its filmmaking than its story. Which isn’t to say it has no substance–the style is the substance, and is part of that challenge to other filmmakers to make new, exciting kinds of films I was talking about.
Carlos – A 3-part, 5 1/2 hour biopic about international terrorist Carlos the Jackal. As it’s broken into episodes I watched it over two days.
It pulls off a stunning trick–telling a story about a pretty unambiguously monstrous terrorist fighting for Palestinian freedom without feeling like a condemnation of Palestine, the Arab world, or the idea of freedom-fighting. Carlos’s methods are thoroughly condemned and de-romanticized–he and his subordinates are shown tossing bombs into crowded drugstores and train cars, and they often bungle operations–but the movie smartly focuses more on the machinations of the state forces (Syria, Iraq, East Germany, Hungary, the USSR, Sudan) that facilitate Carlos’s violence. In that way the movie feels like countless other depictions of the actions of Western agencies like the CIA. Terrorism and coups and the like are an integral part of statecraft, and all of us are implicated.
Despite the length I was never bored. Edgar Ramirez is fantastic as Carlos, swaggering around like a real-world Tony Montana, and the story moves at a lightning pace. Think of a cross between Jason Bourne and Homeland and you won’t be far off (though it’s better than both). The movie’s centerpiece is the pulse-pounding OPEC hostage-taking, which moves from Austria to Algeria to Libya and then back to Algeria, where finally Carlos is forced to release his hostages for a ransom his bosses don’t want or care about.
Clouds of Sils Maria – This is the best of the bunch. For some reason I especially like movies about two or more women whose identities start to blend together. Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, Persona, and 3 Women are all favorites. I can now add Sils Maria to the list.
Sils Maria isn’t as surreal as the other movies I mentioned; the women’s identities don’t blend together in a true sense but it’s clear that the three female characters (played by Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, & Chloe Grace Moretz) are metaphorically different sides of the same person.
Binoche plays Maria, a middle-aged actress cast in a revival of the play that made her famous: the fictional Maloja Snake, about a young woman who seduces her older female boss and drives her to suicide. Only now Binoche is cast as Helena, the older, weaker woman, not Sigrid, the young seductress. Stewart is her personal assistant, Val, who runs lines with her and tries to get her to see the humanity in Helena, whom Maria looks down on and despises–and fears, as she’s a representation of her own aging and fading spotlight. Moretz is Jo-Ann, the controversial, paparazzi-hounded young American who is now playing Sigrid.
Structurally, there are two additional versions of Maloja Snake occurring: the relationship between Maria and Jo-Ann, which closely mirrors the play, and the relationship between Maria and Val, which is something very different. Jo-Ann wins Maria’s approval with flattery before turning on her once the play is about to premier. But Val is not like Sigrid at all; in some ways, Maria is trying to reclaim her role as Sigrid in her relationship with Val. There is a sexual attraction between the two women, but Maria is the more forceful about it, whereas it’s never clear whether Val has any interest in acting on it. Both Jo-Ann and Val are representations of reality knocking on Maria’s door, but in the end it’s the crueler one she gives into. She’s been a part of the world of fame so long that she feels obligated on an unconscious level to go along with the motions and be swallowed up by Jo-Ann’s rising stardom.
It’s a complex, layered movie that never goes where you expect it to. One of the best movies I’ve seen in quite a while.
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Had a double bill of mid-80s comedies last night.
The Flamingo Kid
Matt Dillon is some “cool” teenager in the early 60s who’s really good at gin (really, gin?) and after getting invited to his rich friend’s member’s only beach resort, he gets a job there, is mentored by a rich member who’s also good at gin and it’s all pretty dreary really. There’s no jokes, there’s nothing novel about the characters or story. This film really could have been made at any point between when it’s set and now and it wouldn’t be any different other than the fact that it probably wouldn’t have been centred around gin most times. Most notable thing is that Marisa Tomei has her first credited screen role in it, briefly near the end.Clockwise
This was one of the first films I “discovered” when I joined LoveFilm way back when and I’ve not seen it since. It was fun to revisit it, again on a rental by post (blu-ray this time). It’s largely a very funny film. Headmaster is a perfect choice of role for Cleese, as it plays to all his strengths, especially bellowing at people out of nowhere (as he does to Nadia Sawalha in the train station). The rest of the cast is great too, especially Penelope Wilton as his ex-girlfriend and Geoffrey Palmer as an abnormally affable member of the Headmaster’s Conference. Stephen Moore is great as a shambling music teacher who can’t finish a sentence. Oh and there’s a great minor role of a not entirely helpful farmer with a tractor.Sharon Maiden’s also good as the Laura, the student roped into taking Stimpson (Cleese) to Norwich, although the special features mentioned that all her dialogue was replaced in post-production because some of the financial backers wanted her to have a different accent, one that would be more palatable to American audiences (which would prove to be moot, given the film’s microscopic release in the States). Hearing that nailed down something that had been subconsciously bugging me, which is that a lot of her dialogue feels a bit disconnected and disjointed from things around it. I thought that was maybe her performance (which sounds a touch wooden at times, perhaps), but if all her lines have been ADRed in, that’s probably the reason. It would be fascinating to see the original version.
There are other minor problems with the film. The end is a bit limp, it doesn’t really know how to satisfyingly pay-off the build up of tension and drama. The bit with the guy with the Porsche also doesn’t really work. Throughout the film, it dances on the line of Laura’s sexuality. She’s 18 (maybe 17?) but still in school. She’s having an affair with an older man, but the film never even tries to tease something between her and Mr Stimpson (though of course plays off the misapprehension of others as to their relationship). It certainly doesn’t sexualise her visually beyond a mid-riff belt over her shirt. But then you’ve got the middle-aged guy in the Porsche, who stops to pick her up hitch-hiking, then is convinced to go off into the woods “for a walk” with her. She’s still in a school uniform here, and the film doesn’t really seem to have a problem with the idea of a guy in his 40s sloping off into the woods to shag a schoolgirl (nor really that she’s sleeping with a teacher, that sort of gets lost in the shuffle). Maybe that role would have been better with a younger guy, more obviously horny and desperate to show off his (borrowed) car and wealth.
The other particularly nice thing about Clockwise is that it’s just a nice snapshot of ordinary, middle England in the mid-80s. It doesn’t play to exportable cliches with easily recognisable locations, it just goes for average places; a normal, authentic secondary school too.
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Transformers: War For Cybertron: Siege
OK, I bingewatched this over the morning, but in my defence I woke up early, have a few days off work, and it’s only 6 episodes. And against all odds… it’s actually good?
I’ll admit I had basically zero hopes for the show, the showrunner and two of the three writers worked on the Prime Wars cartoons, and they’re fucking terrible. And while Polygon were doing the animation it doesn’t matter how pretty or how close to the toy designs the characters are if the writing’s shit. So good thing they actually did a good job this time.
The plot is really a grab-bag of bits from various other Transformers incarnations – the war has been raging for some time, the Decepticons are slowly winning, and the Autobots are scavenging for Energon to keep going when Megatron gets the idea to find the Allspark and use it to forcibly reformat all non-Decepticons into Decepticons in order to bring the war to a swift, decisive end. Optimus Prime gets wind of the plan and begins to react, intending to find the Allspark first and try and get it off-world before it’s too late. The plot moves organically from this, adding in a few sidelines that feed back in, and move in a direction that I certainly didn’t expect from how the trailer made me think it was going to go. It kinda ends up being like the backplot to Cyberverse (have I ever talked about Cyberverse? It’s really good! People should check it out!), but with a darker and grittier veneer, but does some good, interesting bits along the way.
All that said, characterisation takes a bit of a backseat to plot, where a few people get development or a change of state as the story progresses, but everyone else just sorts of hangs around and grimaces. And in a lot of cases it’s taking a character from point A to point B like they have in the past – just not always in the same way. For example Jetfire starts the story as a Decepticon, commanding the Seekers. But instead of a naive scientist or an idealist, here he’s a committed soldier, but one who’s sense of honour buts up against Megatron and other Decepticons’ increasingly brutal and cruel tactics and strategies until he breaks ranks. It works pretty well for the characters who get that attention lavished on them – of course, at six half-hour episodes there’s only a limited amount of time to delve into motivations and ideals.
The big thing that drags the show down in my estimation is the voice acting, which is limited in its emotional range. I have heard that the production went non-union on the cast to keep costs down, and between various actors doing their best to do impressions of the G1 cast, heavy digital filtering to make them sound robotic, and a less experienced cast, it means that some moments where they characters are trying to emote fall flat, especially any time Optimus Prime get agitated.
Overall, this is a recommend. Fans of Transformers will get a lot of enjoyment out of the deep continuity cuts and nods (it’s a nice touch that Wheeljack and Bumblebee are first characters seen in the show, while scavenging for energon only to run afoul of a group of Seekers, just like the first episode of the original cartoon), but there’s a lot here for casual fans of the franchise or people who are looking for some animated SF action.
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Clockwise
I remember enjoying this but don’t think I’ve seen it since it was first shown on TV in the UK, so probably late 80s/early 90s. It’s quite a Basil role from memory, so Cleese obviously does well with it. Although I can’t really remember anything about it other than the “right, left” joke in the car, Cleese enjoying a bath, and the scene where he arrives towards the end in an utter mess.
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Transformers: War For Cybertron: Siege
What sort of age range is this geared towards? Suitable for a seven year old, or too mature?
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Clockwise
I remember enjoying this but don’t think I’ve seen it since it was first shown on TV in the UK, so probably late 80s/early 90s. It’s quite a Basil role from memory, so Cleese obviously does well with it. Although I can’t really remember anything about it other than the “right, left” joke in the car, Cleese enjoying a bath, and the scene where he arrives towards the end in an utter mess.
This old man saw it in the cinema. I remember fancying Laura in her school uniform but that was perfectly acceptable as she was older than me and I was probably in school uniform too.
(I Wiki’d her and in typical movie style she was born in 1961 so was 25 when it came out, I was 13.)
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Was wondering if you have already finished it. Just watched the first episode, it was okay, and in comparison with Prime Wars… well, it is leagues above it.
It felt familiar (after all, we are still in the same plot wheel as before), but decent. Nice seeing Jetfire too.
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Transformers: War For Cybertron: Siege
OK, I bingewatched this over the morning, but in my defence I woke up early, have a few days off work, and it’s only 6 episodes. And against all odds… it’s actually good?
I’ll admit I had basically zero hopes for the show, the showrunner and two of the three writers worked on the Prime Wars cartoons, and they’re fucking terrible. And while Polygon were doing the animation it doesn’t matter how pretty or how close to the toy designs the characters are if the writing’s shit. So good thing they actually did a good job this time.
The plot is really a grab-bag of bits from various other Transformers incarnations – the war has been raging for some time, the Decepticons are slowly winning, and the Autobots are scavenging for Energon to keep going when Megatron gets the idea to find the Allspark and use it to forcibly reformat all non-Decepticons into Decepticons in order to bring the war to a swift, decisive end. Optimus Prime gets wind of the plan and begins to react, intending to find the Allspark first and try and get it off-world before it’s too late. The plot moves organically from this, adding in a few sidelines that feed back in, and move in a direction that I certainly didn’t expect from how the trailer made me think it was going to go. It kinda ends up being like the backplot to Cyberverse (have I ever talked about Cyberverse? It’s really good! People should check it out!), but with a darker and grittier veneer, but does some good, interesting bits along the way.
All that said, characterisation takes a bit of a backseat to plot, where a few people get development or a change of state as the story progresses, but everyone else just sorts of hangs around and grimaces. And in a lot of cases it’s taking a character from point A to point B like they have in the past – just not always in the same way. For example Jetfire starts the story as a Decepticon, commanding the Seekers. But instead of a naive scientist or an idealist, here he’s a committed soldier, but one who’s sense of honour buts up against Megatron and other Decepticons’ increasingly brutal and cruel tactics and strategies until he breaks ranks. It works pretty well for the characters who get that attention lavished on them – of course, at six half-hour episodes there’s only a limited amount of time to delve into motivations and ideals.
The big thing that drags the show down in my estimation is the voice acting, which is limited in its emotional range. I have heard that the production went non-union on the cast to keep costs down, and between various actors doing their best to do impressions of the G1 cast, heavy digital filtering to make them sound robotic, and a less experienced cast, it means that some moments where they characters are trying to emote fall flat, especially any time Optimus Prime get agitated.
Overall, this is a recommend. Fans of Transformers will get a lot of enjoyment out of the deep continuity cuts and nods (it’s a nice touch that Wheeljack and Bumblebee are first characters seen in the show, while scavenging for energon only to run afoul of a group of Seekers, just like the first episode of the original cartoon), but there’s a lot here for casual fans of the franchise or people who are looking for some animated SF action.
Evenings sorted then. Thanks L!
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Transformers: War For Cybertron: Siege
What sort of age range is this geared towards? Suitable for a seven year old, or too mature?
I would have thought Dave was older than me, at the very least older than seven.
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Transformers: War For Cybertron: Siege
What sort of age range is this geared towards? Suitable for a seven year old, or too mature?
It’s probably skewing a tad older, I would say it’s a judgement call. Content to watch out for:
Swearing: Someone says “pain in the ass” at one point, the term “bullscrap” is used as an obvious substitution for “bullshit”
Violence: Named characters die. A couple of characters get holes blasted right through them. One character has a limb pulled off (it sorta pops off rather than anything more visceral), one character is found dismembered and dies shortly thereafter, there are a few shots of bots being cut up and falling apart, but for the most part it’s your standard anime fast move, then fall apart/explode type deal.
General Nastiness: There are zombie robots at one point. There is some torture of the character is strung up and electrocuted variety. One character’s corpse is displayed prominently across multiple episodes.
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Thanks, that’s really helpful.
If anything I think those aspects will be a draw.
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Thanks, that’s really helpful.
If anything I think those aspects will be a draw.
I’m basically that box on the back of a DVD detailing the content of the show now, aren’t I?
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Contains Mild Peril
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Contains Mild Peril
That was in my wedding vows.
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Contains Mild Peril
That was in my wedding vows.
Are you sure it was the word “mild” that was used?
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4 users thanked author for this post.
