What movies and TV shows are you watching?
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One of us! One of us! One of us!
Mrs Lowry & Son
Hmm, a film about an artist’s early life? Can’t be that heavy, right? Wrong. This is an emotionally brutal film, it’s not an easy watch, but is it a necessary? There might be something to that.
It might be said in her defence that Lowry’s mother had no option but to route all her ambitions through the men in her life, becoming bitter and frustrated when neither of them performed as she wanted. Does that in turn justify the manipulation and emotional abuse she wrought on her son? No, it doesn’t.
The film meanders along, sketching out its portraits of domestic horror and then concludes abruptly. It also plays with the audience perception, setting up the view of the Lowry’s neighbours as one way, only to entirely flip that later. It does so by the lens of gender, see a dysfunctional marriage and the audience assumption is it’ll be the husband at fault. Later, it becomes very apparent why Lowry’s mother so likes his new neighbour, in her she sees a mirror image of herself. Rendering both female characters as the abusers in their households is a daring move. But, by the time it makes that move, it has laid an excellent foundation for it, to the extent that that conclusion is the logical one.
Even so, technically accomplished it may be, Spall and Redgrave’s performances are excellent too, I can’t say it’s one I’ll be rewatching any time soon.
I was just really struck by how pleasant and kind Penn and Teller are to all of the performers. Although part of it is also that they don’t deliberately feature any bad or incompetent magicians – all of them can pull off their tricks well enough to entertain an audience – so they aren’t setting out for that kind of schadenfreude entertainment to begin with.
Yeah definitely, they’ve ensured they only get good acts on and the intention is they entertain rather than go for any ‘gotcha’ moment.
Pre-selection is a huge part of all these kinds of things. If you look at the tens of thousands that turn up to “…Got Talent” auditions and the 60 or 70 or so they actually show they don’t have to show any bad acts at all. There’d be enough decent turns to do that.
I rewatched The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day this afternoon.
For me, The Terminator is simply the best of them all. It really is a high speed horror movie. The movie moves at a steady clip and really doesn’t stop. After the title card, the action begins and keeps on going. There is no fluff in the script. Reese’s flashbacks serve the purpose of showing you what is truly at stake. It’s a great movie and deserves its accolades.
T2 is a really different movie. The first was more of a horror movie in a sci fi skin while T2 is a sci fi blockbuster. It has the big explosions and the emotional “heart” moments. It’s basically the same blockbuster model that we see today. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very well done. It’s just has a different feel to it. Some of the CGI hasn’t aged well but it’s still a great looking film.
After watching both films, you realize how limited the concept is. Terminator comes back in time to kill someone. Someone (or something) else comes back to stop Terminator and protect the target. T1 had a human protecting the target from a Terminator. T2 was two Terminators fighting over a different target. The other movies have been pretty much a variation on the same predictable theme. I understand a studio wanting to make money after something similar makes money. But honestly, the concept just doesn’t legs.
I don’t know if I agree. You can point to loads of film franchises with ‘legs’ that are built around similarly simple premises (James Bond, Fast and Furious), and I think the fact that Disney are making a billion dollars a time with virtual shot-for-shot remakes of movies their audiences have already seen is a good argument against the idea that a movie has to offer a new story or fresh concept for people to be interested.
I think the boring truth about the Terminator franchise is that they ran it into the ground with a succession of mediocre sequels that didn’t meet the high bar set by the first two, and people lost interest as a result. Combine that with the leading man ageing out of the role (necessitating convoluted story gymnastics to keep him in the mix) and the lack of involvement of the person who made the first two movies great, Cameron, and it’s easy to see why it hit the skids.
I do think Dark Fate was the strongest of all the follow-ups to T2 (and story-wise it stuck closest to the original template out of all the sequels), but that’s maybe damning it with faint praise. And as shown by the dismal box office, the truth is that by that point audiences weren’t interested enough to turn up and see for themselves whether it was any good. After Salvation and Genisys I don’t really blame them.
Terminator should return to TV, but as a multi-part epic on Amazon or Netflix.
I agree, the first Terminator is by far my favourite and the concept is indeed rather limited. It is also hindered by T2 being very much an Arnold movie, if not The Arnold Movie. The movie franchise has never been able to move past him. James Bond movies can change the leading man to varying degrees of success but none of them have ever killed off the franchise. There can be Fast & Furious movies without Vin Diesel. RDJ was instrumental to sparking interest in the MCU but even that franchise was not totally reliant on him. Arnold simply IS the Terminator and they’ve never tried anything different enough to challenge that. Even Salvation couldn’t totally get away from his shadow. Further to that, the Sarah/John Connor stories have been done, done and then done again. It was a clever, simple little story but what else is there to say about them? And what else is there to the franchise beyond Arnold and the Connor family? A bunch of people fighting evil robots in the future? I mean, sure, there’s something that could be done with that but it would need lightning to strike twice to build upon that and make a new version of the franchise.
But enough with the time travel. Unless they take a cue from one of the few time travel movies to have figured out the sequel problem, Bill and Ted. I’d be down with an old Arnold slaughtering hell and blasting his way out of heaven to come back to life to kill someone and/or win the battle of the bands.
I think the Terminator is a bit like Back to the Future in regards to being limited in how you can expand it. Really, you can either keep throwing more things back into various points of the past, which would get tiresome quick (and presumably has, given the reception to a lot of the sequels – I’ve not watched past T2), or just do the actual war with the machines, which I don’t think would ever actually live up to expectations. Anything beyond that, it just becomes a generic humanity vs machines science-fiction story.
Same with BttF, which isn’t as open-ended for time travel adventures as you might assume. Once you’ve done Marty with his parents and his kids, there’s not much else. His first ancestor to live in the US was tenuous enough, though BttF 3 worked well enough. The adventure games did grandparents with limited success. And if you move beyond that concept of seeing your own family through time travel, it stops being BttF and just generic wacky time travel adventure.
Nebula 75, the first new Supermarionation show in decades, and it’s awesome!
Welll….. let’s qualify that . You need to know the context.
Director Stephen La Rivière, who has been doing a lot of work with the old Century 21 material recently, was thinking about how Corona has brought the film and TV industry to a stop, and realized that there’s a certain group of actors who had no fear of catching a virus.
To continue the story in his own words:
It has been created and produced by a small group of filmmakers during the British lockdown on 2020. Although team members from around the world contributed remotely to pre and post production, the entirety of the filming for NEBULA-75 was undertaken by a crew of three who happened to already live together in a small flat in London. Their living room was transformed into a makeshift movie studio – with bookshelves, cardboard boxes and other household objects becoming the interior of the show’s hero spacecraft. This flat was also fortunately home to many of the puppets, props, and costumes that have been accumulated over the course of different productions.
Well, it is what it is. Ignore the production values and marvel at the ingenuity. Also, make sure you stick around for the making of “documentary” at the end:
The Sarah Connor Chronicles showed their are lots of possible directions in which you can expand the Terminator franchise if you wanted to do that. You can argue over how well it managed that, but it got two seasons of stories out of it and the plots were interesting enough.
Regardless though I think the central premise of a pared-down taut chase involving a seemingly unstoppable enemy is enough to sustain it without having to branch of into those kinds of extraneous stories.
This reminds me a bit of all the complicated post-mortem theories over exactly why the DC movies failed. The answer that’s a lot simpler and more straightforward is “they made a run of movies that were a bit shit.” And I can recognise that despite being a big Terminator fan.
By the time a fairly decent one came around in the form of Dark Fate nobody cared any more.
Pre-selection is a huge part of all these kinds of things. If you look at the tens of thousands that turn up to “…Got Talent” auditions and the 60 or 70 or so they actually show they don’t have to show any bad acts at all. There’d be enough decent turns to do that.
That’s what annoys me (ok, one of the many things that annoy me ) about that kind of show. Despite the name, they aren’t actually concerned about talent, otherwise they wouldn’t deliberately show (and then unfairly ridicule) bad performers.
I know somebody who auditioned for X-Factor. I don’t mean, sang in front of Simon Cowell on TV. What you don’t realise from watching the show is that before you even see the judges you’re pre-screened by the production team. So this bloke has been a professional singer for 20 years, plays like 2-300 gigs in pub and clubs every year, has a professional quality voice. They rejected him in favour of somebody who couldn’t hold a tune, because that way they could get a bigger laugh out of Cowell’s reaction on screen.
Honestly, these shows are a blight on our culture. If coronavirus lockdown means they have to cancel them all this year, I will dance in celebration.
If anything then they would need to find ways to do that sort of a chase in different, inventive ways rather than getting bogged down by the time travel gimmicks or attempts at setting up a more convoluted mythology. More Fury Road than Genisys. Don’t be so beholden to what worked in 1984 or 1991.
If anything then they would need to find ways to do that sort of a chase in different, inventive ways rather than getting bogged down by the time travel gimmicks or attempts at setting up a more convoluted mythology. More Fury Road than Genisys. Don’t be so beholden to what worked in 1984 or 1991.
Yeah and in fairness Salvation tried that, it just wasn’t a great film. It’s a bit of a shame as it seemed to blow the shot of the full future-war movie that a lot of people still seem to want.
David,
I am screening Auditions for “So you think you can Dance” and we want YOU to be a part of them!
I’ll do it for me Mum. We ain’t got nuffink to eat but she still managed to find the money to send me to that one-legged ballerina for lessons every week. I loved me Mum. This is for her.
I think the Terminator is a bit like Back to the Future in regards to being limited in how you can expand it. Really, you can either keep throwing more things back into various points of the past, which would get tiresome quick (and presumably has, given the reception to a lot of the sequels – I’ve not watched past T2), or just do the actual war with the machines, which I don’t think would ever actually live up to expectations. Anything beyond that, it just becomes a generic humanity vs machines science-fiction story.
And when you show the Future War, do you show a battle (like Salvation) or the end of the war? Each option is problematic.
If you show a battle, which one? The battle to get Reese and/or the good Terminator(s) (depending on if you want to count multiple sequels)? Some generic battle that ties to some minor plot point in the first two movies? Do you show a battle in another part of the world that somehow ties into the greater mythology?
Or do you show the final battle where the humans stop Skynet? Doing that pretty much ends the franchise. Sure, you could include a “Get Out of Jail Free” card but that ultimately undercuts the whole point of the movie.
You could set more movies in the present but that becomes a rehash of what has been done before.
Unlike James Bond and the Fast & Furious franchise where each movie can stand on its own, the Terminator really needs an endpoint. T2 is a good bookend to T1 and the franchise.
Dark Fate was supposed to be the first movie in a trilogy. From the Wikipedia page:
“In October 2019, Cameron said that sequels to Terminator: Dark Fate would further explore the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence, while stating that a resolution between the two feuding sides would be the ultimate outcome.”
SNIP
Following the film’s underwhelming performance at the box office, sources close to Skydance told The Hollywood Reporter that there are no plans for further films.
I think people simply thought this would be another rehash of the earlier films and just skipped it.
Unlike James Bond and the Fast & Furious franchise where each movie can stand on its own, the Terminator really needs an endpoint. T2 is a good bookend to T1 and the franchise.
That’s fan stuff. I don’t think a general audience actually minds if things go on and on, as long as they’re enjoying them.
Sure, you can build (hype) a film as “the final chapter”, but how many of those turned out to be actually final?
MASH was on TV for 11 years. The Korean War only lasted 3 years.
A film or TV series about a fictional future war with killer robots can run for as long as there’s an interested audience.
I think the Terminator is a bit like Back to the Future in regards to being limited in how you can expand it.
I tend to agree really. I think the thing with something like Bond or Fast and Furious (could be wrong on the latter as I’ve never seen them and almost certainly never will) is the concept is so incredibly broad. Bond is basically ‘the secret agent film’, you can and they have interpreted that in as many ways as possible, from angsty mental breakdowns to broad comedy. The F&F concept I assume is just basically car stunts.
Things like Terminator are a lot more specific. Which doesn’t mean I don’t think it can’t be done but it’s a lot harder. You face the dilemma of either keeping to the same basic storyline or diverting too far from it, which a few of the sequels have done to varying degrees.
It is always about the execution but some things are harder to execute than others.
Dark Fate was supposed to be the first movie in a trilogy.
So was Salvation. So was Genisys. That’s been the standard line for all attempts to resurrect the franchise since T3.
If any of them had been successful, maybe they would have been.
Or do you show the final battle where the humans stop Skynet? Doing that pretty much ends the franchise. Sure, you could include a “Get Out of Jail Free” card but that ultimately undercuts the whole point of the movie.
The humans have already stopped Skynet. That’s the premise of the very first movie. Sending them back in time to kill Sarah (and then John) is just the last ditch attempt of the machines to change things.
One of most fun takes I’ve read is in the Robocop v Terminator comic by Frank Miller and Walt Simonson, where Skynet’s actions in the past keep altering the future and they then have to keep sending more Terminators back to fix things. It gets pretty bonkers by the end.
It is always about the execution but some things are harder to execute than others.
John Connor, for one.
No-one will ever hire me to write a Terminator story, but if they did, I’d stop with the time travel, I’d wave goodbye to the existing cast and I’d ignore everything except the first two films.
John Connor (recast), gathers the resistance, fights against the ever more powerful machines and finally destroys Skynet in the finale.
I know that we know that ending, I don’t care and I don’t believe most viewers do either. We know who won WW2 as well, but WW2 movies still work just fine.
Put it on Netflix with a massive budget. Go for the spectacle.
I’ve mentioned a couple of times that I’ve been joining video calls with some of the guys behind Red Dwarf over the last five Sundays as they’ve been doing live commentaries and Q&As on old episodes.
They’ve finished Series I now, and so they’re going to do something a bit different before starting up with Series II:
Lockdown Theatre is a specially designed initiative to serve up original entertainment in these troubled times.
Every writer has a treasured script that never got made – the one that got away. We’re giving those scripts the opportunity to see the light of day.
The opening show is by Oscar®-winning screenwriter James Hendrie, and it’s a 30 minute sci-fi mystery, rippled through with delicious dark comedy.
We’ve assembled an amazingly stellar cast including Chris Barrie, Hattie Hayridge, Robert Lindsay, Martin Kemp, Felicity Montagu, Lee Cornes, Frances Barber and Ruby Wax, to bring it to life at a live table reading, broadcast at 2pm on Zoom on Sunday.
It’s directed by Ed Bye, produced by Paul Jackson, and Rob Grant will be serving the interval Häagen-Dazs. There’ll also be a Q&A afterwards.
It’s a new kind of theatre for the lockdown era. Don’t miss it.
Looking forward to it.
How is the Dave Dwarf? I loved the initial run of I-VI. VII and VIII were really weak but with a couple of good episodes in there. I didn’t care for the Coronation Street Dwarf at all and never got back into it after that.
Back To Earth (the Coronation Street one) was a low point. It probably wasn’t quite as bad as VIII for me though (I’m more mixed on VII but it still isn’t great).
Thankfully, Dave-era Red Dwarf has got better since Back To Earth. Series X has some fun episodes and feels like proper Red Dwarf again for the first time since series VI, and then XI and XII (shot as a block of 12 episodes so pretty interchangeable in terms of the look and feel) are again a bit more confident and have a pretty decent hit-rate (although there’s at least one total stinker of an episode called Timewave – avoid).
It’s never going to feel quite like the show in its prime – not only are the cast older now but they’ve also gone noticeably broader in their performances, almost pantomime-y in places – but there’s still a decent mix of fun sci-fi ideas mixed with an irreverent tone and silly gags.
Then the recent 90-minute special, The Promised Land, might be the best of the whole Dave era in that it seemed to reconnect with the characters more sincerely and mix some moments of effective pathos in with the gags and action.
Mrs Lowry & Son
Hmm, a film about an artist’s early life? Can’t be that heavy, right? Wrong. This is an emotionally brutal film, it’s not an easy watch, but is it a necessary? There might be something to that.
It might be said in her defence that Lowry’s mother had no option but to route all her ambitions through the men in her life, becoming bitter and frustrated when neither of them performed as she wanted. Does that in turn justify the manipulation and emotional abuse she wrought on her son? No, it doesn’t.
The film meanders along, sketching out its portraits of domestic horror and then concludes abruptly. It also plays with the audience perception, setting up the view of the Lowry’s neighbours as one way, only to entirely flip that later. It does so by the lens of gender, see a dysfunctional marriage and the audience assumption is it’ll be the husband at fault. Later, it becomes very apparent why Lowry’s mother so likes his new neighbour, in her she sees a mirror image of herself. Rendering both female characters as the abusers in their households is a daring move. But, by the time it makes that move, it has laid an excellent foundation for it, to the extent that that conclusion is the logical one.
Even so, technically accomplished it may be, Spall and Redgrave’s performances are excellent too, I can’t say it’s one I’ll be rewatching any time soon.
fucking hell was that ever harrowing yet ultimately hopeful-ish
I’m now going to watch something more cheerful…
Synder-Bat Snyder-Bat. Something..bashes. Wears a hat?
MASH was on TV for 11 years. The Korean War only lasted 3 years.
There were 256 episodes of M*A*S*H; divided by three, that equals 85.3 episodes per each year of the Korean conflict. Assuming, on average, that each episode transpires over 4 days, 85.3 episodes cover about 341 days out of 365 per year. So it makes perfect sense.
Yeah, I have too much time on my hands.
they’ve never tried anything different enough to challenge that
They did try that one with Bale and uncharismatic actor #34 (the guy who was in Avatar), but it didn’t stick. All I remember from that movie is “awesome sound design”.
MASH was on TV for 11 years. The Korean War only lasted 3 years.
There were 256 episodes of M*A*S*H; divided by three, that equals 85.3 episodes per each year of the Korean conflict. Assuming, on average, that each episode transpires over 4 days, 85.3 episodes cover about 341 days out of 365 per year. So it makes perfect sense.
Yeah, I have too much time on my hands.
There are a couple of episodes of M*A*S*H that take place over the course of months, though. it’s possible that other episodes take place between the scenes of those longer episodes, of course, but it’s hard to place.
It actually stood for Massively Anachronistic Sitcom History.
I thought it was Moderately Amusing Self Harm as a description of what watching it was actually like.
If only Bale had put some of that energy into his performance instead. Sure, going with Petulant Diva John Connor would have been an odd decision but literally anything else would have improved upon his Paint Drying John Connor.
And even in Salvation they still had to throw in an Arnie cameo, of sorts. Just can’t escape it.
If only Bale had put some of that energy into his performance instead. Sure, going with Petulant Diva John Connor would have been an odd decision but literally anything else would have improved upon his Paint Drying John Connor.
It really is one of the few Bale movies where Bale’s performance is completely forgettable.
Surely, you also remember this:
What’s much better is Adam Buxton putting it to music as one of his podcast jingles.
As well as his classic drum and bass remix of Ben Kingsley in Dirty Beast.
Molly’s Game.
It’s not Sorkins best but it’s definitely watchable
The Martian appeared on Netflix this past weekend so I watched it again, with a friend (remotely).
Having read the book a couple of times I do now miss a lot of the material that was cut out, some of which was very dramatic, but I admire how the plot was streamlined and some of the rough edges of the novel were smoothed away.
It doesn’t feel like two and a half hours either, which is more than you can say for a lot of films.
Yeah, it was a shame to lose a lot of good bits from the book, but I really enjoyed the film version in its own right too. A great adaptation.
Did he know how to chit spuds in the book?
At least they kept the Aquaman bit for one of the promo pieces that went out before the movie.
Also, I went to see the movie with Mark and Aoife, and she overheard someone sitting behind her saying “is this based on a true story?”
Session 9 from 2001 is a near-flawless horror movie. Damn, I forgot how much I loved this movie. Peter Mullan is so good in it.
It’s also the rare movie that understands you can set a movie in Massachusetts without every single goddamn person having a Boston accent. I think just one guy has one in Session 9. What makes it even better is he’s a presumably upper middle class government official and all the other characters are working class.
Yesterday/Last Night/Today I watched the immortan classic Mad Max: Fury Road.
What a ride this movie is. Tom Hardy excels, with only a few lines and some pretty intense stares he out-acts almost anyone. The color palette of the movie, production design, music and sound effects, all very odd choices for a post-apoc but they fit together perfectly. Really wish they could get a sequel out.
I’m watching the Teen Titans Go! episode that’s all about Thundercats Roar and the backlash against it and I’m almost crying with laughter. It’s one of the funniest takedowns of fan entitlement I’ve ever seen.
the Teen Titans Go! episode that’s all about Thundercats Roar and the backlash against it
Episode number?
Just looked it up and it’s season 5 episode 52, or 261 overall.
Just looked it up and it’s season 5 episode 52, or 261 overall.
Big thanks, will check it out right now!
Watched Bloodshot last night and thought it was a solid little film. Some well done action scenes, good CGI and a clever plot that makes fun use of action movie tropes. And I appreciated that it didn’t try and set up any dangling mysteries for sequels, and is pretty much stand alone.
I also attempted to watch the David Lynch Dune movie. I found it to be a bit impenetrable. Visually it’s quite impressive, but the use of narration, hearing characters thoughts and constantly throwing out weird names for people/things, just made it a slog to try and follow the story.
Watched Bloodshot last night and thought it was a solid little film. Some well done action scenes, good CGI and a clever plot that makes fun use of action movie tropes. And I appreciated that it didn’t try and set up any dangling mysteries for sequels, and is pretty much stand alone.
Alright, I’ll give it a go!
I was watching some of Star Trek the original series and
it was hit or miss. Some episodes were awful: The Nazis,
the hippies, Spock’s brain, Roman empire, Frank Gorshin,
… I won’t go on.
Have to reminisce the bad with the good.
It was the ’60s, Al…
I’m watching X-Men:Apocalypse. I haven’t seen it since the cinema.
Have any of the Brits here seen the Glasgow-set Red Road directed by Andrea Arnold? Imo it’s one of the best movies out of your neck of the woods this century. Kate Dickie of Game of Thrones and The Witch plays a CCTV surveillance operator who begins stalking the man responsible for the death of her husband and daughter after he’s released early from prison. It works great on one level as a psychological thriller, and even better as a human drama. I was in tears by the end. Brilliant, brilliant movie.
I’m watching X-Men:Apocalypse. I haven’t seen it since the cinema.
It is a better movie to watch at home as it is considerably easier to give up part-way in and watch something not terrible instead.
Finally caught up on some more Claire Denis movies, after loving last year’s High Life. Before that I’d only ever seen her horror movie, Trouble Every Day (a very good movie but probably the weakest of the five I’ve watched).
35 Shots of Rum – This was my favorite of the three I watched this week, and my second favorite overall after High Life. More than maybe any other movie I’ve seen, 35 Shots captures the feeling of a phase of one’s life coming to an end. A widower (Alex Descas) nearing retirement age lives with his grad student daughter in Paris. They have a tender, supportive relationship but the time for the daughter to leave the nest is rapidly approaching, even though neither of them is eager to admit it
Not only is the daughter (a stunning and understated Mati Diop, whose excellent ghost story/directorial debut Atlantics is on Netflix) worried about leaving her aging father alone, she’s genuinely afraid to strike out on her own, or to take a chance on her mutual crush who lives in the apartment above. The father’s love life is just as complicated, as his closest friend is in love with him even though he’s unwilling or unable to begin another serious romance.
A scene in a restaurant where the four dance to the song “Nightlife” by Commodores covers a range of emotions–tenderness, love, melancholy, defeat, and finally bitterness as the two couples splinter apart–and moved me in a way that’s hard to descibe. (The scene may even beat out “Putting Out Fire” in Inglourious Basterds and the one-two punch of “Sixteen Reasons”/”I’ve Told Every Little Star” in Mulholland Drive as my favorite use of pop music on film.)
White Material – Denis grew up in various French African colonies, so when she sets her sights on laying bare the white colonialist mindset she does so with enough insight and disgust to completely eviscerate it. Isabelle Huppert plays the head of a coffee plantation who refuses to flee in the midst of a bloody rebellion. She puts herself and her family in danger, not to mention the workers she hires to replace ones who fled.
But she’s no monster; at least not on the surface. She tries to be kind and thoughtful, but no matter the closeness she has with some of the locals, she still fundamentally views their land, and thus, by extension, their lives, as a stage for her own dramas, such as her desire to stand on her own two feet, free of her ex-husband and his father, the actual owners of the plantation. Nothing else, maybe not even the life of her son, matters to her more than that goal. Unfolding at the breakneck pace of a thriller over the span of a couple days, White Material is as intelligent as it is fearless.
Bastards – As dark as neo-noirs get. A solitary ship captain (Vincent Lindon) gives up his life’s work to return home to Paris in the wake of his best friend and brother-in-law’s suicide. His sister blames the businessman her husband was indebted to for his suicide, as well as the recent brutal rape of her teenage daughter. The ship captain takes an apartment in the businessman’s building and seduces his wife (Chiara Mastroianni) to get closer to his secrets, but the revenge plot takes a back seat for a while when the captain and his new mistress genuinely fall in love. This is a noir, though, so that love’s not gonna last forever. A smart, stylish, genuinely shocking movie that deconstructs the tropes of noir, especially the ones relating to female victims and femme fatales, better than most other films in the genre.
Some episodes were awful […] Frank Gorshin
Don’t besmirch the names of beloved Batman villains!
So… Titus finally uploaded his first special, which is still probably his best special (since it inspired the TV show)… honestly, as far as I’m concerned, this is an ABSOLUTE MUST comedy special for about anyone who enjoys comedy specials…
So you can watch this tonight or something… let me know if you liked it:
I also attempted to watch the David Lynch Dune movie. I found it to be a bit impenetrable. Visually it’s quite impressive, but the use of narration, hearing characters thoughts and constantly throwing out weird names for people/things, just made it a slog to try and follow the story.
It’s a good example of how not to do an adaptation. I get why they did it that way – in the novel, the way every character is second-guessing everybody else and figuring out what is going on to different degrees, all the manipulation and everything going on beneath the surface – this is always in the characters’ thoughts, and it’s something that defines the novel in many ways and it’s something you’re going to lose in turning it into a movie. But trying to put it in in this way just doesn’t work.
This week’s What We Do In The Shadows was hilarious. I laughed out loud a few times.
I love the direction they’ve taken with Guillermo. It’s great.
And I do keep Tide pens in my desk at work.
“I Am Mother”
It was alright. The idea was well-enough executed; it was just… I suppose it unfolded pretty much the way you would have expected it to; no great surprises along the way. But it was a well-made movie, and the concept of a machine intelligence raising a child certainly held my attention.
Hanna Season 1
Went and finished this over the last few days:
So, there’s some major potholes in the road on this one. That it’s a story populated with super-assassins but characters survive time and again because of plot armour does undercut the story its trying to tell. The finale developments do also undermine the story when you start thinking about it.
Still, it does also have Noah Taylor turn up at the end. Hitler running a training programme for drugged, kiddie super-assassins does work. That, combined with the successful conclusion, makes it work just about well enough.
“Crazy Rich Asians”
It was okay. A nice romantic comedy, and I get that it was an important moment for Asian Americans. But honestly, while the characters work well enough and the actors are all doing fine, the plot doesn’t have an ounce of originality in it and the dialogue doesn’t exactly sparkle; there just aren’t very many truly funny moments. Just goes to show how hard what Richard Curtis does really is. And I know that a Cinderalla story can’t really work any other way, but it just is such a celebration of luxury and wealth. Even while portraying the world of these ultra-rich as bizarre, it is also endlessly fascinated by it and expects the audience to be overwhelmed with longing to be a part of it.
I’ve been watching Middleditch & Schwarz on Netflix.
It’s improv sketch comedy but it’s actually quite funny.
Yes, I said but. Yes that means improv sketch comedy is not usually funny. It is not.
I’ve been following Schwartz’ career ever since he was the funniest part* of Parks and Recreation, so I have this on my watch list.
(Well, him, Councillor Jamm, and Perd.)
I just finished re-watching I, Claudius (which is still mostly excellent), and am now watching the 75-minute retrospective from the 2002 DVD.
Lots of great bits, especially from Brian Blessed and Herbert Wise, but for some reason they include Christopher Biggins, who’s only in one episode, along with all the main players like Jacobi, Hurt, Phillips, etc.
“The Half of It”
It’s a bit strange that Netflix is releasing another teen movie based on the Cyrano de Bergerac motif already after last year’s Sierra Burgess Is a Loser. But it’s a good thing, because this one works differently enough with its own twist on the core concept. It’s a good little movie, very much its own creature. If you like coming-of-age movies and the Cyrano thing, it’s worth checking out.
I also watched a bit of Walking Dead Season 9. I’m probably the only person left in the world who is still watching this, but it’s actually still a good show. It’s fun being with these people and their zombie problems again for a bit.
I watched the SNL At Home episode earlier (well, the second one, it turns out. I don’t know if Sky Comedy didn’t show it or if the series link didn’t pick it up, but that was MIA). I think it worked pretty well for the most part, except for Weekend Update, which is pretty terrible with Jost and Che anyway, but somehow even worse when done remotely. Interesting to see which cast members have family/room-mates to record them and which live alone and are limited to self-records (Kate McKinnon, seemingly)
I’ve been watching Upload, the new Amazon Prime series about the digital afterlife.
It’s by Greg Daniels, who was EP for the Office and Parks and Rec.
It’s more narrative driven then those shows though. It’s definitely got some funny lines and moments, and there’s boatloads of social commentary, but there’s also a B-plot mystery which is something that would be more at home in a political or corporate thriller. Anyway, it works.
Enjoying it so far.
I watched Seven Samurai last night for the first time in ages. I was 6 or 7 when I last watched it and mostly what I remember of it is my dad being annoyed with me for getting antsy (his fault, though, as it’s a 3 1/2 hour movie with little action until the last hour). It’s a great movie, obviously, one of the best examples of what the medium can do. The sets and costume design are incredible, everything looks so authentic and gritty that it feels like you’re watching a documentary. Same goes for the fight choreography.
It’s hard to think of an actor with as much range as Toshiro Mifune. I’ve watched a bunch of his collaborations with Kurosawa over the last month and he’s played the rowdy wildman of Seven Samurai, the disillusioned man of honor of Yojimbo/Sanjuro, an unhinged rapist in Rashomon, a straight-laced businessman hellbent on revenge in The Bad Sleep Well, and a self-absorbed industrialist who finds his way again in High and Low. All vastly different roles and performances, tied together by his committed, impassioned, and economical approach to acting.
“Crazy Rich Asians”
It was okay. A nice romantic comedy, and I get that it was an important moment for Asian Americans. But honestly, while the characters work well enough and the actors are all doing fine, the plot doesn’t have an ounce of originality in it and the dialogue doesn’t exactly sparkle; there just aren’t very many truly funny moments. Just goes to show how hard what Richard Curtis does really is. And I know that a Cinderalla story can’t really work any other way, but it just is such a celebration of luxury and wealth. Even while portraying the world of these ultra-rich as bizarre, it is also endlessly fascinated by it and expects the audience to be overwhelmed with longing to be a part of it.
I agree it’s just a pretty good romcom and not much else. The attention was because of the success of a movie with an Asian cast (and actually not is much Asian-American, Golding and Yeoh are Malaysian, Gemma Chan is British born ). Audrey was very keen to see it and laughed at some bits that probably went over our heads. I recognised stuff in there I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been here so long, the older ‘aunties’ and their intrusive questions are a staple of my life.
The flaunting of the wealth thing is interesting. It is actually a part of the ethnic Chinese culture they are representing in east Asia. Blessings revolve around wealth and prosperity over health and happiness. There is not much of the western hangup around celebrating it and showing it off. The central message is of course ‘love conquers all’ but for me I don’t know how you realistically make that movie without a degree of ‘luxury porn’. Even middle class weddings here are lavish on a scale I’ve never seen back home.
I’ve mentioned a couple of times that I’ve been joining video calls with some of the guys behind Red Dwarf over the last five Sundays as they’ve been doing live commentaries and Q&As on old episodes.
They’ve finished Series I now, and so they’re going to do something a bit different before starting up with Series II:
Lockdown Theatre is a specially designed initiative to serve up original entertainment in these troubled times.
Every writer has a treasured script that never got made – the one that got away. We’re giving those scripts the opportunity to see the light of day.
The opening show is by Oscar®-winning screenwriter James Hendrie, and it’s a 30 minute sci-fi mystery, rippled through with delicious dark comedy.
We’ve assembled an amazingly stellar cast including Chris Barrie, Hattie Hayridge, Robert Lindsay, Martin Kemp, Felicity Montagu, Lee Cornes, Frances Barber and Ruby Wax, to bring it to life at a live table reading, broadcast at 2pm on Zoom on Sunday.
It’s directed by Ed Bye, produced by Paul Jackson, and Rob Grant will be serving the interval Häagen-Dazs. There’ll also be a Q&A afterwards.
It’s a new kind of theatre for the lockdown era. Don’t miss it.
Looking forward to it.
I watched this today and thought it was fantastic. A great little character-oriented sci-fi comedy with a great concept and a killer twist, and the cast were all fantastic, particularly Robert Lindsay’s narration, Iwan Rheon’s lead and Frances Barber’s character.
I watched the SNL At Home episode earlier (well, the second one, it turns out. I don’t know if Sky Comedy didn’t show it or if the series link didn’t pick it up, but that was MIA). I think it worked pretty well for the most part, except for Weekend Update, which is pretty terrible with Jost and Che anyway, but somehow even worse when done remotely. Interesting to see which cast members have family/room-mates to record them and which live alone and are limited to self-records (Kate McKinnon, seemingly)
The second one was definitely better, as they got the cast proper greenscreens, mics, camera stands, etc. The first one was almost entirely solo sketches recorded on their laptops.
The second one wasn’t very SNL, but it felt like a pretty good series of Youtube sketches.
The second one wasn’t very SNL,
I don’t know, they did a TV news parody, some parody TV shows, a bit of political satire, Update, some weird stuff at the end of the show – all it was really missing was a quiz show sketch.
“Crazy Rich Asians”
It was okay. A nice romantic comedy, and I get that it was an important moment for Asian Americans. But honestly, while the characters work well enough and the actors are all doing fine, the plot doesn’t have an ounce of originality in it and the dialogue doesn’t exactly sparkle; there just aren’t very many truly funny moments. Just goes to show how hard what Richard Curtis does really is. And I know that a Cinderalla story can’t really work any other way, but it just is such a celebration of luxury and wealth. Even while portraying the world of these ultra-rich as bizarre, it is also endlessly fascinated by it and expects the audience to be overwhelmed with longing to be a part of it.
I preferred Always Be My Maybe on Netflix. I thought it was funnier and smarter.
Extraction, on Netflix.
I was better than I expected.
It’s a familiar plot and set of characters, and even uses the warm orange “third world” colour-grade seen in movies when they’re set in places like Mexico, the Middle East, South America or (in this case) Bangladesh.
It’s also a little loose on its moral compass. It wants to address the many shades of grey in the life of a professional mercenary, but beyond our anti-hero’s personal journey we’re also meant to give a damn about his coworkers, because they’re the honest and fair-dealing sort of hired killers, not the double-crossing, underhand sort.
The villains and his crew could use a bit more depth as well. They get just enough screentime to make you wish they were either only 2D-bad guys, or had been pushed into becoming fully developed people.
The bits that do work are fine though, some very good performances and the sort of well-choreographed action scenes that movies should have, given the time and money they have in a film like this.
It’s not going to become a classic, but I had a good time.
I sneakily saw the Parks and Recreation reunion lockdown special. The show was always driven by the positive energy if the cast and characters so it was pretty much the perfect pick me up for right now. The cast all slipped right back into their roles as if the show was still on the air. No big laughs other than one tremendous reveal but a real treat to watch nonetheless. Plus, Aubrey Plaza’s house appears to be decorated in maximum Aubrey Plaza style.
Saw 3/4ths of Unorthodox last night. It’s a fascinating look at what life as a hassidic orthodox is like, but the story of how she finds connections and a calling in Berlin is at the same time unrealistic and a bit cliché. But it’s all well-made, and the Shira Haas is amazing.
Just watched Onward. Great movie. The kids loved it too. Lovely story that resists the urge to show too much, and is all the better for it.
We watched the Money Pit, which I think was the only Tom Hanks zany 80s comedy I hadn’t seen before. Other than the unexpected tension of wondering when Karl from Die Hard was going to snap out of it and lay waste to everyone it was… not good.
We watched the Money Pit, which I think was the only Tom Hanks zany 80s comedy I hadn’t seen before. Other than the unexpected tension of wondering when Karl from Die Hard was going to snap out of it and lay waste to everyone it was… not good.
You wash your brain out.
Money Pit
I’m laughing out loud just thinking about the scene where Hanks, standing on a rug, slowly sinks through a hole in the floor and gets stuck there. Classic.
Saw 3/4ths of Unorthodox last night. It’s a fascinating look at what life as a hassidic orthodox is like, but the story of how she finds connections and a calling in Berlin is at the same time unrealistic and a bit cliché. But it’s all well-made, and the Shira Haas is amazing.
Just as a general thought (and I haven’t watched the series at all), if the Berlin elements are unrealistic, do you still have confidence that the depiction of life as an Orthodox Jew are realistic?
In general, I often wonder this about drama that’s supposed to be a “realistic” portrayal of something. If we don’t know anything about the subject, we have to take the realism on faith. But I’m sure we’ve all seen enough things that we personally do know about in a drama where the portrayal of them is a joke. Enough so that I usually assume anything I don’t know about that appears to be realistic probably isn’t.
Yeah, exactly, like Tim said – most of the New York part of it is actually biographical, while they deliberately wanted to veer away from how things developed from a certain point onward. I get what they were trying to do, too. It’s about framing the conflicts and contrasts more clearly, as well as consciously moving away from the biographic persona of Deborah Feldmann. It’s a good call, it’s just that the way she slips into Berlin and the people there is… very convenient.
When it comes to the depiction of the Satmar community in New York, I expect there is more complexity there, as well, and more shades of grey… but yeah, the overall depiction seems to be very accurate. In the making of, they talked about how they tried to achieve a degree of accuracy, and it seems pretty clear that it was quite important to everybody involved.
I also like that the major characters are also quite complex; nobody is simply a villain, not even Moishe (who comes close). I am guessing that Yanki (her husband) as he is shown her is entirely fictional, but he is also quite likeable. As much as he can be, in the world and with the role that he is given.
I watched c. too many minutes of what purports to be a sublime adaptation of a much-loved, highly acclaimed recent novel.
I’m now giving Schitt’s Creek a go.
I watched c. too many minutes of what purports to be a sublime adaptation of a much-loved, highly acclaimed recent novel.
I’m now giving Schitt’s Creek a go.
2 conclusions (Terrence Howard may dispute):
I now know how not to write a novel.
Schitt’s Creek is funny.
King Shark is a Shark?
Someone somewhere will insist King Shark is a rubber duckie.
I watched the new Seinfeld special on Netflix.
It’s only 60 minutes long so it’s hard not to recommend it. There’s a lot more physical comedy than I’m used to from him, but I did laugh out loud a few times, so mission accomplished. He’s one of the all time greats, and although this isn’t some of his best material, I’m glad he’s still out there.
I’d been looking forward to this ever since he signed the Netflix deal which was three years ago.
Bruce… so it was happening according to you!
Fair play Al – comment of the week.
Stuff happened and I watched the stuff happening and when the stuff stopped happening
My God!! That’s exactly what happened in Gone With the Wind. And Pulp Fiction. And The Deer Hunter!! Are other people aware of this connection?!
Spoilers, Jerry!
So, Poe makes a new velvet jacket from curtain stuff to console himself after losing his watch (you won’t believe who Poe’s evil father is) in a tense game of Sabaac roulette on Canto Bight which he then rescues from mutant Endor Deerstalkers?
No point in me watching it now.
Geostorm
On Netflix. it’s bad, of course, but its central problem is that it doesn’t know what it is?
Family drama? Conspiracy theory? Disaster movie? Action film?
It’s all of those, but therefore none of them.
As dark as ‘2012’ was, it was self-aware, and ‘Day After Tomorrow’ had it’s spectacle and politics clear in its mind.
This is a mess.
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