red snow Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 19 hours ago, dbunting said: Saw Blood shot Saturday, and yeah pretty much as expected. I liked a few aspects but it was all pretty much by the book. Finished S1-2 of Marvelous Mrs Maisel, now onto S3 ep2 so I am up to date. Interesting things at the movies Saturday, you pick your seat on a screen ahead of time, they blocked out every two seats, so you had two in a row, then skip two, then two available, to spread people out. Also, as soon as you touched the screen to pick your seat they wiped it off with a cleaner and all the employees were wearing gloves. As I left there was someone wiping down all the door pushes. Nice touches to see that they are letting us see what they are doing to keep germ spread down. That sounds like a cinema that knows how to roll with the punches and do their best to encourage/make people comfortable while at the cinema. My local coffee shop has had a similar approach with increased hygiene (hand gel at table, wiping down menus before giving them to you and removing once ordered, table spacing). It does feel like we are starting to live in the world from "counterpart" - show was probably cancelled a year too soon in light of this year. I watched Jojo Rabbit and really enjoyed it. I thought the balance between humour and dark subject matter was great and the performances were amazing all around - how does Sam Rockwell always manage to shine despite being surrounded by stellar actors (I think he's very good at selecting his roles). I'm really struggling with Altered Carbon Season 2 and unfortunately most of it is down to Mackie failing to capture the character which is highlighted when the original kovacs returns and feels more comfortable . Mackie has an inherent "softness" to him which makes him great as a superhero but is totally unsuitable for an antihero. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GallowKnight Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 22 hours ago, Veltigar said: Doing my best to catch up on some more film classics. It's been ages since I last went on a Criterion binge. I was finally able to watch The Sword of Doom (1966) by Kihachi Okamoto. It's a stylistically brilliant Samurai film and a must watch for anyone who loves films by Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone (and Tarantino in Kill Bill). Okamoto's adaptation of Nakazato Kaizan's popular novel (on which frustratingly little info is available in English) was clearly a huge inspiration for all these later genre directors. The film's cinematography is beautifully black and white, with a lot of depth and a superb command of movement in its visual language. The fight choreography is amazing for a film from 1966 and incredibly violent. Stylistically, this film was clearly far ahead of its time. The actors are also great. Nakadai anf Mifune are great as always, but this is clearly Nakadai's film. He's incredible as this insane swordsman. Both him and Mifune have parts were they appear as far removed from regular human beings as Brad Pitt's Achilles in the best scenes of Troy. The level of carnage and mayhem Nakadai spreads around him as the protagonist is just amazing. The film is unfortunately not perfect, mainly due to one fatal flaw. It's story is quite underdeveloped. Kaizan's novel was so popular that large parts of the plot were just skipped over, because the creative team knew that their contemporary audiences would know enough of the novel to fill in the gaps themselves. That makes the earlier parts of the film unfocused and is the biggest flaw I have been able to detect. Still, it's an amazing film and definitely worth the watch. I also watched The Sword of Doom a couple of weeks ago and I agree with pretty much everything you say about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ran Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 8 minutes ago, GallowKnight said: I also watched The Sword of Doom a couple of weeks ago and I agree with pretty much everything you say about it. While I prefer Kurosawa's chanbara films, and it's definitely just a so-so film in terms of narrative, that shot of him through the mist, the bodies littered behind him in the forest, is iconic. I see it's used on the Criterion cover, and well it should be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GallowKnight Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 2 minutes ago, Ran said: While I prefer Kurosawa's chanbara films, and it's definitely just a so-so film in terms of narrative, that shot of him through the mist, the bodies littered behind him in the forest, is iconic. I see it's used on the Criterion cover, and well it should be. Yeah that show great. I did watch Throne of Blood around the same time I watched The Sword of Doom, and I also greatly enjoyed that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WarGalley Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 I finished Amazon's Hunters. I didn't think it was nearly as bad as some of the commentary but I watched it with a lighthearted mindset. Well... about as lighthearted as you could take it given some of the Holocaust scenes. I saw some critiques that it was hard to jump from such heavy, dreadful Holocaust moments to campy, comic book scenes. It didn't bother me that much. The editing was certainly weird. In some cases there were moments when the protagonist characters were in grave danger and the scene or episode cuts to the next moment of them living normal lives. Now that was off-putting. The best part of the show were the Nazis though -- especially Greg Austin's role as the fanatical, pure-blood Aryan Nazi who is just simply insane. I'll watch season 2 just for him and his character arc. Back to Narcos: Mexico Season 1. Then maybe finish the Americans. Or Altered Carbon (which I'm dragging my feet on). Or ZeroZeroZero (most likely). Coronavirus is going to help me put a giant dent in my watch list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teng Ai Hui Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 I just started a new docu-series about cricket called The Test: A New Era for Australia's Team. The serious reaction to that cheating scandal (12-month bans, South African police escorting the perpetrators out of the country) was quite shocking compared to MLB's current reaction to the Astros' cheating scandal ("*meh* Whatevs. No use arguing about a meaningless hunk of metal."). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Isis Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 I finished watching The Affair at last. I'm really glad they did the final season. I'm going to miss some of these characters. Some incredible depth of feeling and great performances. Apart from that it's just non-stop news with the occasional episode of Masterchef thrown in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zorral Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 By the way, any amazon primers, if a fan of Black Sails, or would like to see what it is so many around here liked, the first season is up at no charge on amazon prime until March 31. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iskaral Pust Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 We watched Mandalorian S1 over the past week and enjoyed it. It’s a Western set in Star Wars. My wife usually hates Westerns, but her love of SW meant it was still a hit with her. Eight episodes of ~40 minutes each felt pretty short. I doubt we’ll keep the Disney+ subscription much longer, even if they are slowly dripping the new, final season of Clone Wars. I told my son we’ll renew the subscription when that S7 is complete. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ran Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 Finished Castlevania Season 3. That one dialed it up to 11, didn't it? Bill Nighy as St. Germain was perfect, as was Jessica Brown Findlay as Lenore. Will be very interested in seeing where they take the 4th season. Thanks to Netflix cutting a deal with Studio Ghibli, they've gotten pretty much all their back catalog. I am an admirer of the Miyazaki films I've seen (Princess Mononoke, Spirted Away, Howl's Moving Castle) but have never seen the early films -- even Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds (for many years we shared server space with the biggest Miyazaki/Ghibli fan site, Nausicaa.net). So I've started correcting that, going chronologically. That means Nausicaä first, and it was everything I had hoped it'd be. Beautiful, and with a beautiful and memorable score. Just started Laputa: Castle in the Sky, story feels a little thinner so far but the design work is gorgeous. Finished out Avenue 5's first season, and the finale was not what I had thought it could be. It had absurdity, yes, but it didn't really land in the way the last few episodes have. Better Call Saul remains the best show on TV. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Chatywin et al. Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 18 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said: We watched Mandalorian S1 over the past week and enjoyed it. It’s a Western set in Star Wars. My wife usually hates Westerns, but her love of SW meant it was still a hit with her. Eight episodes of ~40 minutes each felt pretty short. I doubt we’ll keep the Disney+ subscription much longer, even if they are slowly dripping the new, final season of Clone Wars. I told my son we’ll renew the subscription when that S7 is complete. Star Wars has always been a Western, or at least and mash up of Westerns and samurai movies set in space. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WarGalley Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 First 2 seasons of Counterpart are on Amazon Prime US. So many options... and so much free time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigFatCoward Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 Watched all of ugly delicious over last 2 days, no idea if David Chang can cook or not but he is a great presenter and very personable, some of the other talking heads are pretentious as fuck though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ran Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 7 hours ago, Triskele said: It sure did. Totally missed that it was Nighy in that role. Was Isaacs the shaved-headed monk character? He was the Judge, who ran the town. Prior Sala is an actor I'm not too familiar with, Navid Negahban. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iskaral Pust Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 12 hours ago, Tywin et al. said: Star Wars has always been a Western, or at least and mash up of Westerns and samurai movies set in space. I always thought the OT was closer to fantasy/myth in style because it follows the Hero’s Journey so closely. And the PT mess was more a whiny YA coming-of-age. But Mandalorian could only be compared to a Western, which are themselves derived from samurai movies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Chatywin et al. Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 18 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said: I always thought the OT was closer to fantasy/myth in style because it follows the Hero’s Journey so closely. And the PT mess was more a whiny YA coming-of-age. But Mandalorian could only be compared to a Western, which are themselves derived from samurai movies. But the hero's journey is at the core of samurai stories too. And Luke is the samurai while Han is the cowboy, and as the two main characters, along with the princess, we see the arc of their stories. It's what makes the OT so endearing, there are so many stories perfectly wrapped up in one narrative. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astromech Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 Kingdom s2 was just as entertaining as s1. Anxious to see where the story goes from here. I started the first episode of The Valhalla Murders. There is an obvious formula to Nordic Noir and I eat it up every time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigFatCoward Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 Whatever you are watching, if it's on Netflix in Europe we are losing picture quality to reduce burden on systems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KingintheNorth4 Posted March 20, 2020 Share Posted March 20, 2020 I'm currently watching Osmosis Jones and I'm thinking damn, we could really use and Drix to fight Covid-19 right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vaughn Posted March 20, 2020 Share Posted March 20, 2020 anyone watching 'Devs'? I love the disquieting vibe of Garland's recent stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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