Watch, Watched, Watching: Those Bloodthirsty Gods!

[kairparavel]

I started watching The Keepers on Netflix while on a flight returning from vacation in August. I picked up with episode 2 yesterday with the intention of binging it to the end this weekend but I just can't. I'm going to pause after this episode (4). It's difficult and infuriating, which I knew it would be. 

On a lighter note Big Mouth which is also a Netflix series is pretty great. 

[Nictarion]

14 hours ago, PetyrPunkinhead said:

Saw HBO's documentary on Steven Spielberg tonight and it was great. It was over an hour into it before they even mention Indiana Jones and I didn't even notice. Highly recommended for any film buff or cinephile.

This was excellent. I loved the footage of him hanging out with Scorsese, De Palma, Coppola, and Lucas from early on in their careers. What a group. 

[PetyrPunkinhead]

Just saw Colossal, which has a very interesting premise, a great cast, and one clusterfuck of a narrative. Seriously, just a rambling pile of garbage where motive and theme don't matter. If anyone else saw this, can you tell me what arc is there for any character in this film? 

I think maybe Hathaway's "aha" moment of memory recall on the couch in her house was the most telling of all--most likely the writer/director hates himself and wrote a movie about it.

7 hours ago, Nictarion said:

This was excellent. I loved the footage of him hanging out with Scorsese, De Palma, Coppola, and Lucas from early on in their careers. What a group. 

Exactly! Of course the Lucas & Spielberg friendship is the stuff of legend, but I didn't know Coppola, DePalma, & Scorsese went to school with them, too. It's amazing they all were classmates at one point and remained friends after each of them got so wildly successful.

[SpaceChampion]

3 minutes ago, PetyrPunkinhead said:

Just saw Colossal, which has a very interesting premise, a great cast, and one clusterfuck of a narrative. Seriously, just a rambling pile of garbage where motive and theme don't matter. If anyone else saw this, can you tell me what arc is there for any character in this film?

Perhaps you should read this.

[PetyrPunkinhead]

1 hour ago, SpaceChampion said:

Perhaps you should read this.

Yeah, the attempt to put rom-com tropes on its ear is easy to see, but it's not successful. There's just two terrible people at the end of this film who really didn't change at all. As for the article itself, yikes, there's just so much contradiction going on in that piece that I don't know where to even start. If it was a film worthy of debate then I might try, but it isn't, so I'll pass.

[briantw]

"Do you think black people prefer brown sugar over white sugar?"

Curb is so great.

[WarGalley]

Had an international flight so got 3 movies in quick succession.

Spiderman:Homecoming. I'm not a fan of kid/teenage Peter Parker stories but Spiderman was probably my favorite superhero growing up (edging out Batman). This movie worked out quite well and I particularly liked how they did Vulture and his storyline. The original Spiderman theme song at the beginning really hit home and I sort of knew then that Marvel wouldn't mess this up. I wasn't so warm to his technosuit which felt like Peter was a different version of Iron Man rather than the uniqueness of classical Spiderman but I got past it as the movie went on. 

Hell or High Water. I enjoyed it. Definitely the best role I've seen Chris Pine in (that's not saying much though). Ben Foster really nailed it. I've been a big fan of his for awhile and I'm surprised he doesn't star in higher profile films --- but maybe that's what makes him so good. Anyone else get the feeling that Jeff Bridges played a more modern, less alcoholic version of Rooster Cogburn from True Grit? Think it's the way he does his western drawl which always fascinates me when he speaks.

The Grand Budapest Hotel. Been a big Wes Anderson fan since Rushmore but some of his movies are hit or miss. I loved this one. It's delightful and original and reminds me of a kids cartoon and story except with an adult edge. Loved Ralph Feinnes. I've had Moonrise Kingdom on my Netflix queue for quite some time and feel almost ashamed for not having gotten to it yet (or even the Darjeeling limited) given that Anderson doesn't make big revenue blockbusters. 

[Week]

22 minutes ago, WarGalley said:

The Grand Budapest Hotel. Been a big Wes Anderson fan since Rushmore but some of his movies are hit or miss. I loved this one. It's delightful and original and reminds me of a kids cartoon and story except with an adult edge. Loved Ralph Feinnes. I've had Moonrise Kingdom on my Netflix queue for quite some time and feel almost ashamed for not having gotten to it yet (or even the Darjeeling limited) given that Anderson doesn't make big revenue blockbusters. 

I love the Grand Budapest Hotel - extremely watchable and enjoyable every time.

Moonrise Kingdom is definitely worth watching. It is below Grand Budapest though that is only because of how much I enjoyed GBH.

I haven't seen Darjeeling Limited in awhile, but my memory is that it was very forgettable. One to leave on the backburner IMO.

[briantw]

12 hours ago, WarGalley said:

Spiderman:Homecoming. I'm not a fan of kid/teenage Peter Parker stories but Spiderman was probably my favorite superhero growing up (edging out Batman). This movie worked out quite well and I particularly liked how they did Vulture and his storyline. The original Spiderman theme song at the beginning really hit home and I sort of knew then that Marvel wouldn't mess this up. I wasn't so warm to his technosuit which felt like Peter was a different version of Iron Man rather than the uniqueness of classical Spiderman but I got past it as the movie went on. 

Spoiler

I was really happy they didn't kill Vulture off.  I feel like comic book movies go way overboard killing off villains in every movie, which means they can't be brought back later.  I also liked that Vulture didn't sell out Parker at the end of the movie, although whether that's because he wants to get revenge himself or because Peter saved him when he could have just let him die is up to interpretation.  

 

[RedEyedGhost]

Started the season premier of Supernatural, and didn't recognize half of the stuff shown in the "then" section.  Looked at the episode list, and the one it showed I had watched was last season's penultimate episode.  Weird that it didn't record the finale 4.5 months ago.  At the time I thought that what ending up happening in the finale was going to be this season's story line. So, now I am watching the premier.

[Bonnot OG]

Starting the first episode of Mindhunter. Been waiting for this since I first saw the trailer months back.

[WarGalley]

2 hours ago, briantw said:

<snip>

Spoiler

My interpretation was that Toomes did it as a return favor. I also liked that Vulture didn't die in the end and a lot of the little things about him.. he scavenges and steals parts (was he ever even called "Vulture" in the movie?), his bomber jacket and facemask, he didn't have a take over the world or destroy the city plan, losing his job and livelihood to the Stark corporation etc. I think I would have rather had more screentime with Michael Keaton than with RDJ but such is the world we live in.

Edit: the one thing I thought was strange was the weird girl turning out to be MJ. That was way out in left field for me and absolutely nothing like the MJ from the comics I read as a kid.

 

[briantw]

42 minutes ago, WarGalley said:

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My interpretation was that Toomes did it as a return favor. I also liked that Vulture didn't die in the end and a lot of the little things about him.. he scavenges and steals parts (was he ever even called "Vulture" in the movie?), his bomber jacket and facemask, he didn't have a take over the world or destroy the city plan, losing his job and livelihood to the Stark corporation etc. I think I would have rather had more screentime with Michael Keaton than with RDJ but such is the world we live in.

Edit: the one thing I thought was strange was the weird girl turning out to be MJ. That was way out in left field for me and absolutely nothing like the MJ from the comics I read as a kid.

 

Spoiler

I too thought that the MJ bit was a little out of left field, but I didn't really mind.  They changed Liz a lot too, and really the entire school was different since they made it a school for the smartest students (Flash was still a bully, but he was still a nerd like everyone else, for example) rather than a normal high school.  Ned was the best character.  Kid was hilarious, and he had great chemistry with Holland.  I loved that he got to be the man in the chair at the end.  

Keaton was great in it.  I loved seeing a villain with realistic motivations.  He wasn't some horrible person murdering with glee or, as you said, trying to take over the world or destroy a city.  He was just trying to maintain the lifestyle he'd been giving his family.  I did find it a little strange, though, that Peter had been doing all these extra-curricular activities with Liz for ages and had never met her dad or even seen him.

Overall, I thought it was a fantastic Spider-Man film, easily the best one we've gotten yet.  It matched the overall quality of the first two Raimi films while staying more true to the character in general (Raimi never really got the wit of Spider-Man down).  Amazing Spider-Man did a solid job with the character but was just overall kind of underwhelming, and AS2 was just a disaster like Raimi's third film.

 

[SpaceChampion]

8 hours ago, briantw said:

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I too thought that the MJ bit was a little out of left field, but I didn't really mind.

 

Spoiler

I read somewhere that she wasn't Mary Jane Watson, just a different MJ that the producers thought it would be cutesy to invent like they were totally clueless about how fans would be confused by it.  Like she's a metaphor for MJ or something, rather than the actual MJ.  It certainly read like a stupid impulsive decision that had no longer term plan necessarily behind it.

 

[briantw]

2 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

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I read somewhere that she wasn't Mary Jane Watson, just a different MJ that the producers thought it would be cutesy to invent like they were totally clueless about how fans would be confused by it.  Like she's a metaphor for MJ or something, rather than the actual MJ.  It certainly read like a stupid impulsive decision that had no longer term plan necessarily behind it.

 

Spoiler

So an in-joke, basically?  I'd be fine with that too.

Honestly, as long as the side characters are well-written, I don't really care if they change their backstory a bit.  Hell, even the comics do that.  The MJ in Ultimate Spider-Man was different from the one in the main comic universe.  She was more of a nerd like Peter, and one of his friends, and went to high school with him, unlike the main version who I don't think was introduced until he was in college.

 

[Jace, Extat]

Been watching the 'Mythbusters: The Search' where they had like a competition thing to find the new team to take over while I get high as fuck.

It's a bit gimmicky and showy-ey. But I dig it, totally. Find the next guys by having a competition, and why not make that a show too? You figure out literally everything you need to know pretty easily. And the way they've handled it from a production angle is about as good as you could have hoped for. It's pretty obvious that all of the contestants are in a hotel across from the main warehouse and they're coming in literally every day to build shit, which is cool.

I don't need to know how they are off set like in a reality show such as Hell's Kitchen or something, we don't need to like them personally. We just need to know if they can host the show.

The trick is to find out who's the best, and though I find the host (a fan of the show who I guess came up with the idea) a bit annoying as fuck he's pretty good at his job. He does a good job mentioning that it's the rest of the show's crew and producers that are empowering his decisions while making it feel like a fan is also there to keep it all steady.

And it suffers from being framed as a 'game' to 'win' the jobs, but that's kind of the only way you can do this. There has to be a structure, a way to see how they interact with challenges and what their personalities are like. Competition does out, and the way they behave in a game like performance of their job does matter. And they do a good job showing that yes, it's a game format. But this is serious, 'winning' by building the best thing or having the best idea doesn't guarantee you anything. It's all about how you actually go about those things. Do you explain yourself well? Do you bring a personality to your work? You're not putting on a show, really, you're doing the job. And the job is to come up with wacky ideas and put them into practice in a way that is a joy to watch. So adding a competition element doesn't hurt the product, pretty nicely gives a pretext for them to act naturally. You're not acting on the camera to win a job. You're trying to build something better than the other guys to win a job, it sharpens your focus.

I'm high.

[williamjm]

I've been catching up with Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams, just watched the Commuter episode. I thought it was probably the best so far, the idyllic but mysterious village in it occasionally had echoes of the weirdness of The Prisoner and Timothy Spall was great in the lead role.

I like the variety of stories they've had so far, the first episode may have been a bit reminiscent of Blade Runner and Minority Report but the other episodes haven't really been all that like the previous big-screen adaptations of Dick's work.

[Isis]

On 10/12/2017 at 6:05 PM, Week said:

I love the Grand Budapest Hotel - extremely watchable and enjoyable every time.

Moonrise Kingdom is definitely worth watching. It is below Grand Budapest though that is only because of how much I enjoyed GBH.

Agreed. I did a rewatch a couple of weeks ago and I still love it. Fantastic soundtrack too.

Watched Mean Streets at the weekend. Cool to see some early Scorsese gangster action as a precursor to his later films. Harvey Keitel's character seems so innocent and naive. You can see from the get go that everything going to shit is the only likely outcome.

[l2 0 5 5]

Almost done with the second season of Reign. I wouldn't have thought this show would've kept my attention through near 40 episodes when we started watching, but it has a draw about it. 

Halfway through Suburra. Enjoying the hell out of that show. I'm not a big subtitle guy; just too much reading, less watching for my taste. This show is so good I don't even notice the subtitles. 

First two episodes of Curb have been great. I enjoyed the second one more. Anytime Funkhouser gets on screen it's gold. "Give it to the Big Funk."

This leads me to ask who is the best recurring Curb character? I'm gonna give it to Funk man with a slight edge over Richard Lewis. Can't go wrong with Leon and Danson, as well.

 

 

[williamjm]

I watched the film Anthropoid on Netflix, in which Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan play two WW2 Czech resistance fighters in occupied Prague on a mission to assassinate SS General Reynard Heydrich. I thought it was a very effective film, it's extremely tense throughout even if I knew what the outcome was going to be. It's got a bleak tone, at one point Murphy's character tells another to abandon any romantic notions about the heroism of resistance, I think despite that it does have moments of genuine heroism but it's also unflinching in showing the cost that has to be paid.