Watch, Watched, Watching: Hunting Minds

[Heartofice]

2 minutes ago, Nictarion said:

I just watched Chris Stuckmann’s Hilariocity review for this. It looks beyond ridiculous. Not surprised considering the director is Fred Durst...

I liked his point that almost every creative decision made in the movie was like their first most obvious one. I’m going to remember that thought when watching everything else now.

[Isis]

11 hours ago, dbunting said:

I hate subtitles. I watched a couple of movies like that and I get too distracted. When I watch a show or a movie, especially in the theater I spend a lot of time looking around the screen at the back ground items (little weird I guess), so reading subtitles keeps me from doing it.

I find the opposite to be true. When watching something with subtitles I HAVE to give it my full attention all the way, instead of getting distracted and looking at other things. I find it really focuses my attention.

Also, the Derry Girls subtitles thing - have you seen the little C4 video where they have actors/presenters reading out complaints? The Derry Girls one was the best and I don't even watch the show.

[Bonnot OG]

10 hours ago, Nictarion said:

I just watched Chris Stuckmann’s Hilariocity review for this. It looks beyond ridiculous. Not surprised considering the director is Fred Durst...

It’s very ridiculous lol. It’s actually pretty grotesque in its depiction of someone with autism as well. Some gigantic plot holes. The worst one being that body of someone that was killed that some how no one sees in the yard or smells decomposing lol.

[Ramsay B.]

13 hours ago, Isis said:

I find the opposite to be true. When watching something with subtitles I HAVE to give it my full attention all the way, instead of getting distracted and looking at other things. I find it really focuses my attention.

I agree. Whenever watching a foreign show/movie with subtitles I feel like I don’t miss anything because I’m so locked in. Especially on my Ipad. Although it can be difficult if I have too much stuff on my mind. Then I’ll end up spacing out and having to go back full scenes.

The PB/Boardwalk Empire debate has pushed me to finally start Peaky Blinders. I think it might be the most recommended show from people irl when they find out about the stuff I usually like. 

[Nictarion]

Bill Burr’s newest special: Paper Tiger. Hilarious. 

[Quijote Light]

I just finished watching the first episode. Fair warning, this is very difficult to watch. So far it’s very well acted. I first became aware of the story this is based on because someone posted a link on this website. https://www.propublica.org/article/false-rape-accusations-an-unbelievable-story

I want to say again that this is difficult to watch and that the story is difficult to read. But I think both the story, and so far the show, are worth the time. 

[Zorral]

A UK Guardian "Long Read" -- is an interesting read for people who like to watch tv, one would think. It initially begins with history and discussion talk about my favorite Magnificent Century. Later in the piece Ertugrul: The Resurrection comes into it.

 Currently Turkish television has the largest audience globally except for the US, which it is very close to in number of viewers.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/sep/13/turkish-tv-magnificent-century-dizi-taking-over-world

Quote

 

....The international success of such dizi is just one sign of the way new forms of mass culture from the east – from Bollywood to K-pop – are challenging the dominance of American pop culture in the 21st century. Ergenç feels that the runaway success of the dizi is partly due to the fact that American TV is entertaining, but not moving. “They don’t touch the feelings that make us human,” he tells me, nursing a cold cup of coffee, when we meet in Istanbul. Turkey’s gaze was once keenly turned to the west, studying its films and television for clues about how to behave in a modern, fast-paced world, but today, American shows offer little guidance....
... Previously, agents of change and the heroes of dizi stories were always men, but “Fatmagül didn’t accept women’s place as being subjugated, almost invisible”.

It was such a persuasive vehicle for soft power that in 2012, Eset was hired by a “Republican American thinktank” to write a dizi telling the “good American story” of a woman in the Middle East out to enact positive change, “a woman who softens America’s image”. Eset declines to say which thinktank commissioned him, except to hint that a former Bush administration undersecretary was involved with the institute. “I wrote it,” Eset shrugs as he rolls a cigarette. “But they weren’t able to sell it....”

....After more than 100 hours of watching dizi, Söz was the first one in which I saw a woman wearing a hijab. The father of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal, later renamed Atatürk, famously declared that he wished “all religions [were] at the bottom of the sea”. He removed Islam as the state religion from the constitution and banned the fez, which he described as emblematic of “hatred of progress and civilization”. The veil – which Atatürk lambasted as a “spectacle that makes the nation an object of ridicule” – did not fare much better. By the 1980s, women in all public institutions, including universities, were banned from covering their heads.

Five minutes on the streets of Istanbul presents multiple encounters with women in headscarves, yet they are nowhere to be seen on screen. “They tried it,” Eset says, “but even the conservative folks don’t like to see conservative women on TV. You can’t get them to kiss, to stand up to their fathers, to run away, to do very much at all that would be considered drama.” Women in hijabs are almost never shown in television adverts, the journalist and novelist Ece Temelkuran tells me. Her diagnosis was clear: “This country is torn between these two pieces of cloth – flag and headscarf....”

 

The above is only a bit from this entry in the UK Guardian's "Long Read" series.  It concludes with Saudi, which with all the other Arabic speaking countries, were great consumers of Turkish television, dubbing or subtitling the Turkish into Arabic.  The current Saudi ruler has banned these series from the networks he controls.  So here again, popular culture is also political.

 

[Mexal]

1 hour ago, Quijote Light said:

I just finished watching the first episode. Fair warning, this is very difficult to watch. So far it’s very well acted. I first became aware of the story this is based on because someone posted a link on this website. https://www.propublica.org/article/false-rape-accusations-an-unbelievable-story

I want to say again that this is difficult to watch and that the story is difficult to read. But I think both the story, and so far the show, are worth the time. 

I haven't watched it yet but I did read some reviews and it takes a turn in the 2nd episode to make it a bit more palpable. The first episode is very hard but the next few are more investigative in nature.

[Quijote Light]

1 minute ago, Mexal said:

I haven't watched it yet but I did read some reviews and it takes a turn in the 2nd episode to make it a bit more palpable. The first episode is very hard but the next few are more investigative in nature.

I’m very glad to hear that, thank you. The first episode was one of the only times I’ve ever felt the need to pause something and walk away for a while. And it happened multiple times. Kaitlyn Dever is absolutely amazing. 

[red snow]

"i-land" manages to be even worse than the lost rip off than the trailers suggested. I don't think I'll bother beyond the two episodes Although it was bordering on hilariously bad

[dbunting]

Watched IT Chapter 2 last night and I am still not sure what to think of it. There are some changes of course. I think I like it better than the original as far as content, but they still rely too much on the jerky motions of Pennywise.

Spoiler

It has been a long long time since I saw the original, but were there personal notes to the "losers" from Stanley about why he killed himself? I think that really added something to this version but it should have been edited in before they went after IT, IMO.

I am not a Steven King reader, only a few. Is there a running thing about people loving his books but not the endings of them? It's a joke in this and I am wondering if he asked them to throw it in as a big F you to critics?

[HexMachina]

19 minutes ago, dbunting said:

Watched IT Chapter 2 last night and I am still not sure what to think of it. There are some changes of course. I think I like it better than the original as far as content, but they still rely too much on the jerky motions of Pennywise.

  Hide contents

It has been a long long time since I saw the original, but were there personal notes to the "losers" from Stanley about why he killed himself? I think that really added something to this version but it should have been edited in before they went after IT, IMO.

I am not a Steven King reader, only a few. Is there a running thing about people loving his books but not the endings of them? It's a joke in this and I am wondering if he asked them to throw it in as a big F you to critics?

Im not a King reader either but my understanding is yeah, he is fairly notorious for his endings not being great

[dbunting]

Just now, HelenaExMachina said:

Im not a King reader either but my understanding is yeah, he is fairly notorious for his endings not being great

Ok I figured that's what it had to be, he even does a cameo where he says that line. Makes it that much funnier.

[DireWolfSpirit]

On 9/10/2019 at 4:12 PM, Zorral said:

disagree entirely!  That this stringy guy with his background got to where he was, and was able to stay there -- that was far more interesting than a guy who was bully and abuser.

Agreed, also Margaret was fascinating for me. 

 

[red snow]

8 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Im not a King reader either but my understanding is yeah, he is fairly notorious for his endings not being great

It's been a long running joke/theory/fact for quite a while. I haven't read any of his recent books but I've heard he's improved in that regard.

The scene with him in the shop was weird. I noticed everytime they cut back to him that the book on his table turned 90 degrees so sometimes you could see the book's title and others you couldn't. The title escapes me but it remained the same. Not sure it was sloppy editing or deliberate. Given it alternated cut by cut I'm thinking it must be deliberate but I have no idea what it meant.

[Nictarion]

To touch on the subtitles discussion a couple pages back, I rewatched The VVitch tonight using them, and it made a huge difference. I had previously only seen it once at the theater, and I had a hard time understanding a lot of the dialogue. Especially the father character. Subtitles helped immensely though.  I liked it much more this time around. The pacing also seemed better on a second watch. It’s been a while since I’ve done a 180 on a film as much as this, but I’m glad I gave it another try. 

[Astromech]

S2 of Mr. Inbetween premiered the other day. 

[Zorral]

10 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Agreed, also Margaret was fascinating for me. 

 

Margaret's character (this is when I first became of aware of  Kelly Macdonald, the actor who played Margaret, and her other excellent work) was one of the many really inspired ones on BW.  By and large, the range and variety of interesting, female characters on Boardwalk Empire has few if any rivals.

[briantw]

7 hours ago, red snow said:

It's been a long running joke/theory/fact for quite a while. I haven't read any of his recent books but I've heard he's improved in that regard.

The scene with him in the shop was weird. I noticed everytime they cut back to him that the book on his table turned 90 degrees so sometimes you could see the book's title and others you couldn't. The title escapes me but it remained the same. Not sure it was sloppy editing or deliberate. Given it alternated cut by cut I'm thinking it must be deliberate but I have no idea what it meant.

Isn't King's writing style to just write without much of a plan and see where it takes him?  If so, that probably explains why his endings suck, since he hasn't meticulously planned them from the get-go and then built to them step by step in a coherent manner.

[red snow]

2 minutes ago, briantw said:

Isn't King's writing style to just write without much of a plan and see where it takes him?  If so, that probably explains why his endings suck, since he hasn't meticulously planned them from the get-go and then built to them step by step in a coherent manner.

He admits as much himself. He also says he ends when the story wants irrespective of whether it's a good ending. I suspect his shorter works benefit in this respect as there's more chance he has the whole story.