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Watch, Watched, Watching: The cancellations continue


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5 hours ago, Mark Antony said:

Not saying you’re gonna love the Irishman (I did) but no one is “passed their prime” performance wise. Everyone puts in a proper performance (especially Pesci and Pacino) .

This. De Niro was definitely the weakest overall, but even he gives an amazing performance in the final act. 

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So I finally watched Contagion. Eerie how well this movie predicted some of the stuff going on now. I felt sicker by the minute watching some of the scenes. A lot of the stuff they showed felt realistic, which unfortunately contrasted with the climax that was more Hollywood wishful thinking.

I was also briefly taken out of the movie every time Dimitri Martin was on screen. I didn't realize he did drama. :laugh:

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Good folks of the board, I'm on a roll. Sunday The Departed and today I had the pleasure to enjoy one of the strongest contenders for best film ever made... Namely the Kevin Bacon extravaganza that is Footloose (yes, fight me :P). I love this film in all its cheesy greatness and it's a damn shame that we don't show it more love. The Bacon is a beacon folks, and this film is like a crown for the true believer!

I have no idea what it is about the Eighties as a decade. It gave us horrible fashion, Reagan and fucking no good neoliberal yuppies, but the popular films of this decade are too damn good. This, and for example Risky Business and Top Gun are just wonderful. I might try and knock a few other eighties dance classics from the list of (re)watches in the next couple of days (I'm thinking Flashdance and Fame). They are the perfect antidote against all this depressive lockdown shit we're all finding ourselves into. These movies did joy really well back in the day. Remember when we had joyful films kids? Back before Batman Begins there was a time when not everything had to be gritty and dour. Member that?

Anyways, back to Footloose. I forgot how much heart this film had. John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest as the pastor and the pastor's wife respectively really imbue this whole film with a lot of emotion. Their emotional journey together centers the film and offers the perfect antidote to the "silly teenager hi jinks" on display. Also great performances from the other cast members, wonderful dance routines and of course great music. I warmly recommend this to everyone looking to have some fun over the coming months.

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2 hours ago, Veltigar said:

Good folks of the board, I'm on a roll. Sunday The Departed and today I had the pleasure to enjoy one of the strongest contenders for best film ever made... Namely the Kevin Bacon extravaganza that is Footloose (yes, fight me :P). I love this film in all its cheesy greatness and it's a damn shame that we don't show it more love. The Bacon is a beacon folks, and this film is like a crown for the true believer!

I have no idea what it is about the Eighties as a decade. It gave us horrible fashion, Reagan and fucking no good neoliberal yuppies, but the popular films of this decade are too damn good. This, and for example Risky Business and Top Gun are just wonderful. I might try and knock a few other eighties dance classics from the list of (re)watches in the next couple of days (I'm thinking Flashdance and Fame). They are the perfect antidote against all this depressive lockdown shit we're all finding ourselves into. These movies did joy really well back in the day. Remember when we had joyful films kids? Back before Batman Begins there was a time when not everything had to be gritty and dour. Member that?

Anyways, back to Footloose. I forgot how much heart this film had. John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest as the pastor and the pastor's wife respectively really imbue this whole film with a lot of emotion. Their emotional journey together centers the film and offers the perfect antidote to the "silly teenager hi jinks" on display. Also great performances from the other cast members, wonderful dance routines and of course great music. I warmly recommend this to everyone looking to have some fun over the coming months.

I think that the 80's movies just had a fun feel to them, not sure how else to describe it. I got the same feel from Stranger Things S1. Also it's funny you mention Footloose because people were chatting it up on my facebook feed today.

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Been watching Love Life on HBOMax.  It's alright, but doesn't feel very original.

 

23 hours ago, Mark Antony said:

Perry Mason HBO fills the boardwalk empire hole with a dash of Chinatown. What a cast. The show is just gorgeous as well. Tim Van Patten is the goat

Perry Mason is why I'm rewatching Boardwalk.  They just really have such a similar atmosphere.

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On 11/16/2020 at 10:41 AM, dbunting said:

Watched The Hurt Locker, saw it a long time ago also. I'm not sure how I feel about the movie. I want to like it but just can't think of it as more than just ok.

Started Justified, two episodes in. Seems like a typical cop show so far. Good enough to get me to watch more.

Massively depressing film. Worth watching. I have known some people who were very single-minded in a self-destructive way. It has a horrible inevitability to it that makes me feel angry, futile and suffocated. So yeah, none too jolly but it obviously says something to me. 

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On 11/16/2020 at 1:28 PM, Mark Antony said:

Justified starts off as the typical cop show but turns into something much more and much better. If you are already liking it you are gonna be very pleased with how it develops. 

Yeah, Justified gets REALLY good in its second season, and it carries on for most of the show. 

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6 minutes ago, Relic said:

Yeah, Justified gets REALLY good in its second season, and it carries on for most of the show. 

Eh, the last two season are pretty weak. Though still very watchable if only because Olyphant and Goggins are having so much fun. 

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5 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Eh, the last two season are pretty weak. Though still very watchable if only because Olyphant and Goggins are having so much fun. 

last season is fine. But yeah 2,3,4 are the best ones. 

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Finished Netflix's The Liberator. It was a lot thinner than I had hoped it would be, and didn't really use the animation technique to do anything especially interesting. A bit of a failed experiment, but they should give it another go with better material.

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1 hour ago, RumHam said:

Eh, the last two season are pretty weak. Though still very watchable if only because Olyphant and Goggins are having so much fun. 

I feel like this discussion on Justified has come up more often than the RLJ threads lately.

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On 11/17/2020 at 1:24 AM, RedEyedGhost said:

Been watching Love Life on HBOMax.  It's alright, but doesn't feel very original.

 

Perry Mason is why I'm rewatching Boardwalk.  They just really have such a similar atmosphere.

Glad to see others liked the Perry Mason production too.

 

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I am in S2 of Justified and loved a scene.

Spoiler

Its the bank robbery episode where the old guy on oxygen is heading for a plane and the old Chief deputy with bad knees tells him he'll just shoot him if he runs because his knees won't hold up. And of course he doesn't and we get an old man chasing an older man.

I found it funny as hell myself.

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34 minutes ago, dbunting said:

I am in S2 of Justified and loved a scene.

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Its the bank robbery episode where the old guy on oxygen is heading for a plane and the old Chief deputy with bad knees tells him he'll just shoot him if he runs because his knees won't hold up. And of course he doesn't and we get an old man chasing an older man.

I found it funny as hell myself.

Yeah I love how Art brings the oxygen tank along as he's "chasing" him.

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I've been watching a few shows recently.

1. The Mandalorian: I just finished season 1 and watched the first episode of season 2). It's been fun and Baby Yoda is cute, but I really don't get the hype. It's very much Video Game RPG: The Show, with paper thin characters and not much interesting going on plotwise, though some episodes effectively recycle western tropes.

2. Hannibal: halfway through season 1. I like it (the aesthetics are amazing), but some of the procedural elements rub me the wrong way. Still, I'm looking forward to watching the rest of this.

3. The Leftovers: I've basically watched two seasons and a half in two weeks; only four more episodes to go. I've absolutely loved this show and have found it incredibly moving and thought-provoking. The first season has some shaky points, but season 2 was the best season of a show I've seen in a long time and season 3 has been fantastic so far (one episode aside). I highly recommend (though warning: it is very depressing, especially season 1).

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On 11/16/2020 at 12:04 PM, Heartofice said:

Finished The Queens Gambit, thought it was a fantastic little mini series, exactly the right length to tell the story it was trying to tell. Well acted, well paced and smartly written, it almost makes you want to go and play chess!

Having said that:
 

  Reveal hidden contents

The last episode was an absolute cheese fest, the way it was set up in the final match, and the feel good final scenes etc. I would have rolled my eyes at it, except I simply assumed it was based on a real story. 

So I couldn't wait to google the real Beth Harmon.. oh except she doesn't exist. There was no female chess player with a similar story, and that more than likely she is based on Bobby Fischer.. who was a man. That kind of puts a dampener on the whole thing and I'm glad I didn't know that going in. 

 

Well, I think the ending scene is not so cheesy:

Quote
Spoiler

You have to look at it in conjunction with the CIA guy who repeatedly asks/implies wether the Russian champion might want to defect to the US and never considers the reverse, i.e. that someone like Beth who so loves the game might be attracted to living in a country that values chess much more than the US. It left me thinking, what if she actually prefers Moscow over Kentucky?

 

In the wider context: The original novella was written in 1983 and so you can read it as a literary rebuttal of Fischer's (in)famous quotes about female chess players, which kind of reverses their stories of mental health and chess development so giving her this "cheesy" ending could be read as putting the spotlight on Fischers descent after '72. Of course today the chess world has moved on and even Kasparov backed down from some of his more preposterous claims about women and chess and so that message probably doesn't have the same force after the rise of Judit Polgár.

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3 hours ago, Caligula_K3 said:

 

2. Hannibal: halfway through season 1. I like it (the aesthetics are amazing), but some of the procedural elements rub me the wrong way. Still, I'm looking forward to watching the rest of this.

 

The procedural elements fall away as the show goes on. We still do new killers and whatnot, but they turn into multi-episode arcs or get spaced out a little more if I recall correctly. Hannibal is like the best network TV show I've ever seen that wasn't a comedy. Enjoy.

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I really enjoyed Hannibal to begin with -- visually fantastic, great performances, amazing atmosphere. But at a certain point it started to feel like it had fallen into a kind of navel-gazing trap and started just feeling unpleasant for the sake of being unpleasant.

Finished Blood of Zeus, Netflix's new Castlevania-ish animated adventure, this time using Greek mythology as its base. It was fun enough, but the writers sort of lost track of some of their characters as the show progressed -- one character who is very prominent in the first episodes gets what seems like all of one line and a couple of action beats in the final episode, whereas a couple of minor characters introduced half way through somehow end up doing and saying more of consequence. Very strange. Still, it leaves off on a kind of cliffhanger, and the showrunners (2nd generation Greek-American brothers) have indicated that they have a rough five season plan, with a 20 page outline for season 2. All depends on how it does. In the interim, apparently they, too, are addicted to playing Supergiant's Hades. Hah.

(Added bonus for B5 fans: Claudia Christian voices the goddess Hera, who plays a prominent role in the series.)

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