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Watch, Watched, Watching: The Director's Cut


RedEyedGhost

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I picked up Lost right before the 4th season started and it was the first tv show that I ever binged watched and it blew me away.The first two seasons were absolutely incredible. Meeting and getting to know all of the characters on the island and then seeing all of their pasts  come to life was just genius. It did falter towards the end but it will always be one of my favorite shows of all-time.

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10 hours ago, Astromech said:

The only other film I could possibly think of is Solaris with George Clooney and Natascha McElhone.

That's a good shout. I actually have the book in my to-read pile. I kept telling myself I would read the book before I watch the film. But I will definitely stick the film on my to watch list.

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I must be the only nerd that watched the FX "OJ" episode that came out last night? I will watch again next week when the 2nd one comes on. So far I rate it okay, Gooding Jr, Travolta and the guy playing Kardashian are doing decent imo.

Best scene may have been a foreground commotion of Kim and Courtney K playing tag or something at Nicoles funeral as (Chris Jenner) is scolding them to settle down.

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49 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I must be the only nerd that watched the FX "OJ" episode that came out last night? I will watch again next week when the 2nd one comes on. So far I rate it okay, Gooding Jr, Travolta and the guy playing Kardashian are doing decent imo.

Best scene may have been a foreground commotion of Kim and Courtney K playing tag or something at Nicoles funeral as (Chris Jenner) is scolding them to settle down.

I'm watching and it is better than I was expecting. The cast is great from Cuba as OJ to Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian, Travolta as Shapiro, Courtney B. Vance as Cochran, and Sarah Paulson as DA Prosecutor Marcia Clark. I'll definitely continue to watch.

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Glad to see all the LOST love. I feel like I can't go anywhere on the internet without seeing a swath of (usually ignorant) hate on the show.

It was one of the best character shows of all time. For as big of a cast as it had, it managed all of them really well. More important, it made you care about them, however minor they were. I usually try to rewatch it once a year at least.

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Lost's pilot is still by far the best pilot ever shown on TV. Heck, it would definitely deserve a place in the best ten episodes of anything on TV. The rest of the first season was great as well. And the second season was almost as great (Mr. Eko really was a golden character). After that though, it devolved rapidly into a crock of shit. 

1 hour ago, Jack Bauer 24 said:

"2 decades, 10 films, 1 saga" 

http://ign.com/articles/2016/02/03/vin-diesel-reveals-fast-and-the-furious-9-and-10-release-dates

Final trilogy begins April 14th, 2017.

Still haven't seen Fast Seven. Maybe I'll give it a go today.

Ugh, they want to have spin-off films as well? How many expanded universes can they try and come up with :( 

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Watched two Sergio Corbucci Westerns. Django (1966) and The Great Silence (1968). I wish I could have watched the Italian version of Django with subtitles cause the English dubbing was just awful. Other than that I liked the movie, Not as much as any of Leones Dollars trilogy (pretty close with A Fistful of Dollars actually) but I gotta say Django was more badass than the man with no name. 

The Great Silence was definitely the better of the two. Klaus Kinskis character is up there with El Indio from A Few Dollars More as my favorite western "villain". He was great. It's more comparable with Once Upon A Time in the West than the Dollars trilogy though darker in tone and not as epic in scale. Just like The Hateful Eight (Tarantino obviously was influenced heavily by both these movies) the snowy setting and Morricones tremendous score make for a wonderful atmosphere. 

The ending is what makes it stand out as one of my favorite westerns though. Fuck that shit was dark as hell. Did not expect it to go down like that at all

 

 

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I watched The Cider House Rules today. For a movie about abortion, identity and I guess free will, it really doesn't have anything meaningful to say. The movie just plods along without any real point. It's watcheable (in the let's-watch-it-once-and-then-forget-about-it tradition), but you keep waiting for something about it to scratch deeper and that obviously never happens.

Toby Maguire is maddingly creepy and onenote throughout. Michael Caine is good, although he's basically Alfred with a Medical degree, but he's very human. Charlize Theron looks like a goddess and she does a fine job, but she got stuck in a rather thankless role here. Such a waste really, if you know what she's capable off.  The film looks nice as well, but that's probably also a result of having Charlize Theron to light up the screen.

Anyway, the screenplay is rather bad. John Irving adapted it himself from his own novel. I wonder whether his novel was this shitty. Or no, shitty isn't the right word, it's more lazy than it's anything else. Ah well, I'll never know. One thing that did bother me was the fact that this movie had one major black character

And he turns out to be a daughterfucking racist, but according to the film he's not such a bad guy 

:dunno: That whole plotpoint was shit. It felt misplaced in the movie
 

So yeah, completely forgeteable film. It's not gauge-you-own-eyes-out-awful, but you probably won't remember anything about it in like a day. Unless you like Charlize Theron, perhaps some of her scenes stick with you, but that's going to be it. 

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I returned to Ebert's list and I decided to watch Being There. It's a film about a man with a mental disability, who lived a very sheltered life and who has only two interests, gardening and watching television. He loses his home and goes wandering about, eventually becoming the advisor of a billionaire powerbroker and the POTUS. 

The premise sounds bonkers and I feel like the film shouldn't work, but it mostly does imo. Peter Sellers is really committed and he creates a character with such a likeable aura that you can't help but like the film itself. It also has one of the greatest endings in film history I think, right up there with films like The Third Man and Planet of the Apes. It's an ambiguous one though, so no clear answers are in sight (or at least that's what I think). 

There seem to be several camps in regard to explaining the ending:

Spoiler

 

Camp one thinks that the ending is just a further play on Chauncey's name and the title of the film. Chauncey is an extremely lucky guy, who just so happens to walk on some submerged pier, because chance is always in his favour throughout the film. Personally, I find camp one perhaps a tad too simplistic. And I think the fact that he sticks his umbrella in the water shows that it's basically bullshit.

Camp two thinks that Chauncey is literally Jezus. Not very credible.

Camp three sees it as a joke on Chauncey's snowballing success. He starts out as a homeless gardener, becomes a billionaire confidant, guru, etc. and at the end he's even discussed as a potential presidential candidate (in fact, one of the guys discussing his candidacy calls him the only viable option). Obviously, becoming the Messiah is the next obvious step in this evolution. I quite like this explanation.

Camp four links the ending to the final line of this film. Life is a state of mind. Chauncey is an innocent. He doesn't kow that it is impossible to walk on water. He's completely oblivious to that fact, his life is in another state of mind and therefore he succeeds in walking on water. He doesn't think about it, he doesn't reflect on it. He's curious, but that's all. I think I like camp four the most, but it's hard. A real brainbuster :) 

 

The film isn't perfect though. There is one subpot that really doesn't work. I don't think it would have made it into a modern film, since our views on women have progressed since 1979.The love subplot  really doesn't work. For starters it's rather uncomfortable to see

Spoiler

Eve

come on to a man with a mental disability, who doesn't even know what sex is. Secondly, I think it does a disservice to her character, since I do feel like she was quite a bit more intelligent than that. She should have caught on to Chauncey's real nature alongside the doctor.

Another thing I didn't quite care for are the racial politics in here. On the surface, I feel like this film has some quite insightful things to say about race. Especially for its time. One of the characters basically says it, you just need to look the part (Chauncey looks very smart and WASPy) and you'll just get ahead in life. However, part of that cleverness is undone by having the actual black characters mostly be caricatures.

Spoiler

Louise makes an insightful statement about how one just has to be white to climb the social ladder, but she herself isn't painted in a very good light. She's the only character in this film who speaks harshly about Chauncey, who's such a sweetmannered guy. On top of that, she basically left him to rot after the old man died, not stepping up and pointing him the right way. The other significant scene with black people in it has one hoodlem pull a knife on Chauncey, which also is rather one note. The only other black guy is treated normally, fortunately enough.

Anyway, I did quite like it and if anyone is in the mood for a pretty strange film, this could be it.

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The Bernie - Hillary Dem debate.  She told us she got paid to go to Wall Street prior to the 2007 -08 catastrophe, warning them disaster was on its way and to cut it out. This story of hers is to illustrate that "I get things done!"

 

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On 2/3/2016 at 0:57 PM, Veltigar said:

Lost's pilot is still by far the best pilot ever shown on TV. Heck, it would definitely deserve a place in the best ten episodes of anything on TV. The rest of the first season was great as well. And the second season was almost as great (Mr. Eko really was a golden character). After that though, it devolved rapidly into a crock of shit. 

 

Again, I would have a hard time disagreeing with you more. LOST's pilot did what any pilot should do, and that is get you interested in the characters and situation. It was very good, but it wasn't even close to the best episode of that particular season though. Walkabout, The Confidence Man, Homecoming, and Exodus were all stronger in character development and better written, 

 The best episode of the entire series was in Season 3 which you have just described as a crock of shit. Through the Looking Glass was the best episode of television I have ever seen. 

 There is greatness in LOST throughout its run, and it really didn't change much throughout. The story was about characters and the conflict between faith and reason. If you were looking for something else, you might have been disappointed, but the show was incredibly consistent. 

 As for the number one gripe that I still hear about which is the show didn't give any answers, my response was that it most certainly did. 

 

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Was Through the Looking Glass the one with

Not Penny's boat & Charlie's death?

That was probably my favorite episode of the series. Also, I agree Lost pretty much remained a quality show the entire run. Not one of my favorite shows of all time, but I certainly enjoyed it.

Evangeline Lilly :wub: 

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I'm not sure I could do a Lost rewatch every year but I certainly enjoyed the only rewatch I have managed so far. And I'll always remember it as one of the few shows I've actually watched in real time, desperately wanting answers when each episode finished. They really were great at getting you to wonder what the hell was going on, then just giving you more questions instead of answers. I think that HP's point about the show actually giving you answers is something you can only see when you've finished the entire show and tale a step backwards to view it overall. Yes, once you get to the end you know what it's all about, and certainly you can look back and it all makes sense.

Last night we went to see Room and we both thought it was fantastic. Just like the book, it does an amazing job of simply laying out the facts and letting you draw your own conclusions. It isn't explained to you how you should feel about any of it. It really lived up to my expectations.

 

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7 hours ago, Nictarion said:

Was Through the Looking Glass the one with

Hidden Content

 

That was probably my favorite episode of the series. Also, I agree Lost pretty much remained a quality show the entire run. Not one of my favorite shows of all time, but I certainly enjoyed it.

Evangeline Lilly :wub: 

Yes, that is the episode I was referring to. I am not sure I would consider LOST my favorite of all time either, but it is way up there for me.  

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On ‎2‎/‎3‎/‎2016 at 9:39 AM, Tywin et al. said:

I think I saw the worst movie ever this past weekend. And yet, it was hypnotic. I couldn't turn it off.

It was called Unfriended.

This is messed up. I was going to type basically the same thing. I watched it Monday because I was bored and my daughter said it was a quick movie. It was dumb and yet I kept watching until the end! I kept wanting to click on the screen and move things around. For a while I was confused and thought the fat kid was the one they were trying to get out of the group call. 

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