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Watch, Watched, Watching: Strange Times


Ramsay B.

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11 minutes ago, RumHam said:

There's another scene at some point in season two where Greg and Tom talk about a last minute slogan change that is also up there. I love that show. 

"We're listening."

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22 minutes ago, Triskele said:

If you want to make a Tomelette you have to crack a few Gregs.

I feel like this show asks the question, "What if Arrested Development were an hour long drama on HBO?"

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Have your read the novels by Caleb Carr? I only read the first, The Alienist, and loved it.

The setting is also a big draw for me. I picked up Rick Zacks's Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York to learn more about New York at this time. Highly recommended.

@Astromech I did read the first book after watching the first season and enjoyed it.  I will hold off on reading the second one until this season is over because I find I can better enjoy both if I see the show first and then read the book.

I have not read the Roosevelt book but that does sound interesting.  I've read a lot of history, architecture, urban planning, and biographies of this time and place.  Most of my ancestors were in lower Manhattan at this time and so I have always been very interested in everything late 19th century New York.  This show has done a great job bringing it all to life.  I mean its a bit hard to imagine Prague working for NYC but it really does.

Anyway I continue to really enjoy this second season of the Alienist.  I jut a bit sad that this is probably the end though.  I wish there were more books so they could make more seasons with these same characters.  This might be the one instance where I wish they would just leave the books behind and make up their own stories.

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1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

The U.S. Top 10 on Netflix, wow.

Seventh is The Kissing Booth.

First is The Kissing Booth 2!!!

But fifth is something called Animal Crackers.

Have you not learned your lesson about not judging movies until you've watched them? 

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8 hours ago, DMC said:

Munich is probably my favorite Spielberg flick.  I can't find it, but I love when the dude says to Bana (paraphrasing):  "That's it!  There's not a medal or anything!"

Jaws will always be my favorite Spielberg film, but Munich is definitely up there. I took a look at his movie list and realized I still haven’t seen Minority Report. I have to get on that.

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20 minutes ago, Ramsay B. said:

Jaws will always be my favorite Spielberg film, but Munich is definitely up there. I took a look at his movie list and realized I still haven’t seen Minority Report. I have to get on that.

Minority Report is pretty fun, definitely up there on my Spielberg list.

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On Spielberg: I think Lincoln is a very strong film, with a generally very subdued tone, and of course, great performances. Munich I also really like.  There's also a lot of his excellent classics: Jaws, E.T, Close Encounters, Raiders, Color Purple etc. Minority Report is very good, from memory.  I remember liking Catch Me If You Can as well. 

His earliest films - Duel and Sugarland Express - are also solid. Duel in particular works well for a film that's mainly about a poor guy being chased around by an evil truck driver. 

For fun, here's the short film he made in 1968 that got him attention from TV studios: 

 

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I had the pleasure of watching Green Room last night. I should have seen this film much sooner, mea culpa :) I understand why this could be someones favorite movie of the past five years. Saulnier really is a master of understatement. Everything from the way the violence is portrayed, to the characters' behavior in crucial /life-threatening scenes and the overall humor exudes a certain sense of (clinical) detachment while not losing track of the humanity of the characters which I wish a lot more films would place front and center. 

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Hell, the film even made me feel about the bad guys in the end. When the dog goes to sit next to his nazi boss to die. Man, it just floored me. It's a bit cheating to wrangle emotions out of viewers with animals, but damn it, this film earned its moment.

Saulnier brings us stories about people who are not just on the brink, but who are actually already way passed it. The characters in Blue Ruin and Green Room have to struggle constantly to keep moving and that makes them feel exceptionally human. It also gives the violence in Blue Ruin and Green Room a decisively un-Hollywood feel. Almost as if this is a reenactment of a (series of) crimes that really happened.

Green Room also benefits from a wonderful cast (and this includes the dogs). Macon Blair is yet again wonderful, playing a similar type of character as in Blue Ruin. I wish he had more high-level gigs. Joe Cole, Mark Webber, Alia Shawkat, Callum Turner and many others put in great work in their supporting roles. I wouldn't be surprised if we look back on the supporting actors in this movie in a decade or two and recognize a lot of staple character actors in this film. A bit like the supporting cast in Alien who all went on to become household names as character actors.

Patrick Stewart is of course wonderful. I think the film did a great job at having him play a character, instead of just trading on his star power. It's quite surprising of easy he sunk into this crooked club owner, shedding all that X-men and Star Trek baggage quite easily.

Anton Yelchin was also wonderful. It took me a while to warm on his performance (not a big fan of awkward personas on screen), but he really grows on you. I love how the film sells the nightmarish "everyday man in hell" tale with little details like

Spoiler

his sleeve getting caught on the wing mirror of the car while he's pointing his gun at the young skinhead near the end. His performance during and right after the horrible slashing attack on his arm was also great. He really sold the situation quite well. I believed he was horribly injured but was feeling too much adrenaline to feel it. This also worked wonderfully as a bate and switch later on, as I didn't think he'd be the final guy standing after that. 

Anton Yelchin definitely could have gone on to do great things. Really sad to learn how he passed away (knew he was dead, but damn that was a sad way to go), but good to know that at least he's present in a film like Green Room which will hopefully be watched for years to come.

My favorite cast member was Imogen Poots however. Her character started out as fearful and lost as the others and then the further the film moved she just started to ooze grit and survival instinct. In a film completely devoted to real people, she was the closest thing to an action hero or perhaps more accurate, she came as close to being an action hero as a real person could. Loved how she was adamant about not wasting time on trivial maters (e.g. desert island band), came up with the majority of plans and didn't hesitate to cap anyone who stood in her way. It's also refreshing to see that she matched her physical endurance with mental strength. She clearly made some poor life-choices to end up in this situation, but she just shuts any criticism of that down to focus on the task at hand. I'd honestly love to see more female characters like this in future feature films.

I always take notice when I see Imogen Poots in a film, but she has a little bit of a Guy Pearce thing going on. She's reliably great in everything I see her in, but she hardly ever gets to act in projects that do her justice. Not counting V for Vendetta (where she played a bit role), this might be the first time I see her in a film that deserves her. Hope she gets to do more projects like this in the future.  

Another small thing I like to call out are the excellent effects 

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Particularly Yelchin's slashed arm and the gunshot wound with blood squirting out of Stewart's head at the end. Really sick.

The only grievances I have are plot related

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In real life, no one would be stupid enough to give up that gun.

but it's aa really minor gripe to have with such a nice little film like this.
 

   

12 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

 

Man, that's good :o Especially the first less-arogant animated one.

7 hours ago, Triskele said:

Anyone who does not love Munich is contemptible.  Show yourselves.

Haven't seen it yet, but apart from Indiana Jones I'm generally not on Team Spielberg, so it would be a good experiment :p 

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Has anyone watched Brave New World?.... it's been so long since I read the book that I really can;t make comparisons, at least not responsibly ... certainly thee are changes as it applies to the story's reference point, --the book came out in 1932-- and I couldn;t say if the show does the book justice... however if watched with no expectations from the source material,  the show was entertaining as hell 

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59 minutes ago, Martini Sigil said:

Has anyone watched Brave New World?

I have not but I must admit I'm interested.  Solely because I loved the book.  It really was the first modern dystopian work.  What I don't get is that the story does not lend itself to a TV series.  They're either gonna have to play it out reeeeeeeeeal slow, or add a lot of things that have nothing to do with the source material.  Is it on the free part of Peacock?

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1 hour ago, Martini Sigil said:

Has anyone watched Brave New World?.... it's been so long since I read the book that I really can;t make comparisons, at least not responsibly ... certainly thee are changes as it applies to the story's reference point, --the book came out in 1932-- and I couldn;t say if the show does the book justice... however if watched with no expectations from the source material,  the show was entertaining as hell 

I've seen about 5-6 episodes. It's pretty terrible but entertaining enough.

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8 hours ago, Ramsay B. said:

Jaws will always be my favorite Spielberg film, but Munich is definitely up there. I took a look at his movie list and realized I still haven’t seen Minority Report. I have to get on that.

Jaws is my #1 Spielberg as well. Doesn’t get much better. I liked Munich a lot, but he’s done stuff like Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park, which have been some of my absolute favorite movies since I was a kid. 

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12 hours ago, lady narcissa said:

@Astromech I did read the first book after watching the first season and enjoyed it.  I will hold off on reading the second one until this season is over because I find I can better enjoy both if I see the show first and then read the book.

I have not read the Roosevelt book but that does sound interesting.  I've read a lot of history, architecture, urban planning, and biographies of this time and place.  Most of my ancestors were in lower Manhattan at this time and so I have always been very interested in everything late 19th century New York.  This show has done a great job bringing it all to life.  I mean its a bit hard to imagine Prague working for NYC but it really does.

Anyway I continue to really enjoy this second season of the Alienist.  I jut a bit sad that this is probably the end though.  I wish there were more books so they could make more seasons with these same characters.  This might be the one instance where I wish they would just leave the books behind and make up their own stories.

I forgot how much I enjoyed that first novel while watching s1. The mood was perfectly captured in the series. I'm enjoying this second season so far. I'll have to bump Angel of Darkness up on my TBR list. 

I finished s3 of Norsemen, and while still funny, it was a light step down from seasons 1 and 2.  I am still laughing thinking about Jarl Varg, though. How he became the man he is now. :) 

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4 hours ago, Nictarion said:

Jaws is my #1 Spielberg as well. Doesn’t get much better. I liked Munich a lot, but he’s done stuff like Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park, which have been some of my absolute favorite movies since I was a kid. 

Jaws is probably his best movie.  Jurassic Park is definitely my favorite, though.

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1 hour ago, briantw said:

Jaws is probably his best movie.  Jurassic Park is definitely my favorite, though.

Hmm looking back on the list, it's a hard pick in hindsight. I last saw ET about 10 years ago but I remember it holding up very well even in adulthood. Completely forgot about Raiders but I like Last Crusade more. And we haven't mentioned Saving Private Ryan yet either which I find to be a very solid film. 

Won't do a comprehensive list but of the major films he's done, I haven't seen:

AI

Schindler's list 

Amistad

Adventures of Tin Tin (is this actually a major film?)

Empire of the Sun

Catch me if you can (pretty much watched it all on TNT but never entirely in one sitting)

Warhorse

Lincoln

Bridge of Spies

Ready Player One

ETA: Woah.. Christian Bale is the protagonist in Empire of the Sun at 12 years old?? I never heard of him before Batman Begins.

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