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Watch Watched Watching: May The Fourth be with you!


TheLastWolf

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Caught up on a bunch of streaming shit during insomnia recently.  Watched Succession, which was hilarious, Peaky Blinders, which was decent for the most part and quite enjoyable, and finally saw the Deadwood movie, also solid.  

Damn Succession cracked me up.  After the 2nd or 3rd episode I thought the concept of doing a farce but directed as drama would get played out but boy was I wrong.  I could watch this shit all day.  I almost pissed myself laughing a few times.  Watched the entire second season in a marathon binge session last night/this morning.

eta': Also, Peter Watts wonderful novel Blindsight was mentioned in genchat yesterday, which led to me listening to part of the audiobook at work today, and then googled Watts to see what he's been up to and saw that last year there was a short film Blindsight loosely based on, you guessed it, Blindsight.  Will probably watch that tonight barring at sentience/cognition/consciousness issues on my part.

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Lately, I have been binge watching For All Mankind.  Yesterday evening, I finished the last episode of season 1.  It's a lot better than I expected.  It's more than a drama about the space race.  It got me emotionally invested in each of the characters.

The only critism that I have so far is that Aleida's storyline feels too tangential.  When she and her family are on sceen, it feels like a different tv series.  Hopefully, all of that setup will provide a big payoff during season 2.

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17 hours ago, Raja said:

what on earth is this :lol:

I'm not sure anyone can fully explain how this came to be, but one of Idris Elba's earliest roles was playing Pizza Delivery Guy in an episode of Gerry Anderson's low-budget British SF show Space Precinct. Why exactly they decided to dub over his lines in such a way we may never know.

 

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On 5/5/2021 at 9:21 PM, Ran said:

35mm film camera, to be precise! And yeah, just ... bonkers. The best story is Herzog's about the monkeys, and his posing as a veterinarian so that he could steal them away when the people he paid to collect them for the shoot were preparing to sell them to someone else for more money. Crazy stuff.

 

Did you get a chance to look at that Fitzcarraldo documentary  I mentioned? It can be found on Vimeo. There's some fairly humanizing bits in there for Kinski, like his role in patching up the DP's hand when it was slashed open during the rapids scene, and his trying to build a roasting pit. But he was clearly mentally ill. Aguirre has the argument escalating to Herzog threatening to shoot Kinski and then himself, with Kinski claiming that Herzog actually produced a gun (Herzog denies it), but don't think anything can top Fitzcarraldo and Herzog getting so fed up that he went to Kinski's home to burn it down to the ground with Kinski still in it, only for Kinski's dog to scare him off...

 

Actually, here's a clip of Herzog going on one of his meditative monologues about the jungle:

 

Blast from the past, but I finally got around to watching Burden of Dreams. I feel like Herzog's craziness makes him a good guru when difficult times are ahead. You may struggle with a lot, but at least you are not preoccupied with pulling a 30-ton steamship over a hill with a 40% incline in the middle of the rain forest in the 1980s.

Some stream-of-consciousness thoughts on the documentary itself:

Burden of Dreams is included in the criterion collection as a separate entry and I see why it's not just a throwaway extra added to the special edition of Fitzcarraldo. This is an excellent documentary in its own right, which really transports you to a world that I believe is probably not in existence anywhere. Roger Ebert even gave it a higher score than the film itself. Not sure whether I'd go that far, but it really is an impressive piece of work. They really captured the last glimpses of a relatively untouched culture and its marvelous how Les Blanks manages to highlight the parallels between Herzog and Fitzcarraldo.

It's interesting to think about those parallels in light of the other major Herzog-Kinski collaboration. While Herzog and Fitzcarraldo are cut from the same cloth, it can definitely be said that Kinski bleeds into Aguirre given what we know about Kinski's criminal endeavors. I don't know what it says about me that I prefer Aguirre, but it's a neat observation to make.

The documentary has some really unsettling scenes in there. To preserve the shock value I'll keep this between spoiler brackets but 

Spoiler

I was shocked and felt grief when they showed one of the natives killing a parrot and displaying the corpse. I'm not sure whether it affected me this much, as I'm neither a parrot owner or a vegetarian,  but something inside was hit seeing that beautiful bird propped up lifeless. Really sad.

What did surprise me is how relatively tame this documentary was. We have discussed some of the nastier IMDB trivia on Fitzcarraldo, but many of those incidents don't seem to have made it into Burden of Dreams, which is somewhat admirable.

At least I feel like I need to say that, but at the same time I'm also disappointed that I didn't get to see the full craziness (e.g. the Peruvian logger who got bit by a snake and then cut of his own leg with a chainsaw to survive).  There are also some weaker elements, which thematically fitted with the make-up of the film, but I didn't much care for regardless (some of Herzog's longer and more pretentious speeches. The man's a bad ass but there were a few moments of him crawling so deep up his own ass that he disappeared). These are minor gripes though, all in all its well worth a watch. I'm not sure whether it's worth a watch on vimeo though, what a pain in the ass that platform is. I even forgot it existed up until Ran reminded me of its existence.

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Started Snyder's Army of the Dead -- I genuinely think his Dawn of the Dead remake is his best film -- and noped out after about 10 minutes. What was charming in a small budget, scrappy B-movie is no longer so charming in a big-budget VFX extravaganza.

Palate cleanser was taking in another Kurosawa film I had not yet seen, to my shame: Red Beard (Akahige), the 16th and final collaboration between Kurosawa and the great Toshiro Mifune. Mifune played the titular character, a gruff, principled doctor running a hospice for the poor during the Tokugawa Shogunate. A young doctor named Yasumoto (played by Yūzō Kayama) is sent to the hospital quite unwillingly, having dreams of aspiring of becoming the physician to the shogun, and there's an initial test of wills. Yasumoto's views slowly begin to change as he witnesses the life of the people Red Beard cares for, and begins to admire his principles. It's more complicated than that in some ways -- it's a 3 hour long film, with a 5 minute intermission -- but also not, because the root essence of the film is Yasumoto learning about what it really means to be a doctor.

The most striking parts are the vignette-like elements as we see the stories of some of the patients, and how those inform us both of Red Beard's character and Yasumoto's development. Of particular importance are the deaths of two patients, deaths that are rooted in tragedies that feel very laden with Japanese cultural mores and historic realities, followed by the survival of two other young patients and their own tragic lives -- each of them provides a lesson of a kind. 

Of the vignettes, the one involving Sahachi (Tsutomu Yamazaki) and his particular tragedy with his wife Onaka (Miyuki Kuwano) was really moving to me. The two actors really sold their parts.

Suffice it to say, another beautiful film from Kurosawa. Kurosawa and Mifune split probably in large part because this film monopolized Mifune for months because of his character's beard, preventing him from doing other work as he had become accustomed to (he lived a very expensive lifestyle, apparently), and Kurosawa seemed completely unwilling or incapable of making any kind of amends to Mifune. Two very hard-headed men, but those collaborations... some of the great films not just of Japanese cinema, but world cinema, period.

 

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I wasn't sure if I should check out Army of the Dead, since I dislike Snyder but it seemed like a potentially enjoyable zombie romp with lots of Aliens references (one of my all time favorites).  You have convinced me I don't need to bother. 

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I enjoyed Army of the Dead , I think mainly because it was Netflix and that meant I could dip in and out of it at will. I didn’t mind too much that is absolutely ripping off other movies, and it’s cheesy and stupid.

However, the biggest problem with the movie is the lack of delivery when it comes the promising set up. A heist movie set in a zombie ravaged Las Vegas is a brilliant idea. I don’t get why they did so little with that. You’d barely know you were in Vegas outside of one or two scenes and you’d barely know it was a heist movie except for the presence of a vault!

 

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15 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I enjoyed Army of the Dead , I think mainly because it was Netflix and that meant I could dip in and out of it at will. I didn’t mind too much that is absolutely ripping off other movies, and it’s cheesy and stupid.

However, the biggest problem with the movie is the lack of delivery when it comes the promising set up. A heist movie set in a zombie ravaged Las Vegas is a brilliant idea. I don’t get why they did so little with that. You’d barely know you were in Vegas outside of one or two scenes and you’d barely know it was a heist movie except for the presence of a vault!

 

I don't always mind cheesy, or even stupid.  But this was OTT cheesy and stupid!!!  I also prefer my horror films to at least try to take themselves a little seriously.  It had some good visuals, and I'll probably finish it this weekend, but in less than 20 minutes I could clearly tell I was going to hate it...I'm sure on paper Zombies meets Oceans 11 seemed like a great idea.

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The best part of Army of the Dead is probably the start, right through the musical montage (also the best part of The Watchmen.) I stopped shortly after that and only went back out of curiosity about the things Deadlines!? had mentioned

The robo-zombies, aliens and time travel. All of which are just sorta left there presumably to set up for sequels.

It should have been more fun than it was, and there were some really odd choices. 

 

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1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

I wasn't sure if I should check out Army of the Dead, since I dislike Snyder but it seemed like a potentially enjoyable zombie romp with lots of Aliens references (one of my all time favorites).  You have convinced me I don't need to bother. 

We enjoyed it :dunno:

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I mean the movie is corny, it uses massively overdone tropes all the time, but I always got the sense it was aware of that, even if it wasn’t straight up parodying them. The movie was at its worst when it was trying to be serious or have any emotional heart, and at its best when it was just being a zombie movie 

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42 minutes ago, RumHam said:

The best part of Army of the Dead is probably the start, right through the musical montage (also the best part of The Watchmen.)

Come to think of it, his Dawn of the Dead remake also had a good montage at the beginning.

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I finished Ted Lasso last night. The premise didn't look like something I'd watch, but I heard it praised a lot and gave it a try and was surprised how much I loved it and just how good it is - both funny and full of heart and modern while unabashedly optimistic. It's basically saying F off to the idea that you need to be cynical to be clever. That's what Ted Lasso is about as a character.


I was surprised to see Anthony Head (had no idea he was in it) playing a huge a-hole you love to hate Funny that his character's name was Rupert (and apparently it was a coincidence). And I was even more shocked when I learned later that Hannah Waddingham (Rebecca) was Septa Unella on GoT. She looks completely different (and super hot).

On another note, I can't stop laughing over the fact that they named a character (grumpy and constantly angry veteran mid-fielder/team captain) "Roy Kent". Not going for subtlety there. :D 


 

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2 hours ago, GallowKnight said:

Come to think of it, his Dawn of the Dead remake also had a good montage at the beginning.

I still have no idea how Zach Snyder of all people somehow successfully remade Dawn of the Dead.  I think it worked largely because it lacked any of the subtext of the original and was just a dumb action zombie movie.  And big dumb spectacle seems to be what Snyder does best.

Probably also helped that James Gunn did the screenplay.

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The second season of the Norwegian, quirky, contemporary setting, superhero series, Ragnarock, is up on Netflix today.

As has been possibly noticed, I actively dislike superhero stuff mostly, for all the reasons the very clever Amazon series The Boys illustrates, and which I loved.   liked Ragnarock's first season quite a lot too, so have been looking forward to the second season.

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7 minutes ago, briantw said:

I still have no idea how Zach Snyder of all people somehow successfully remade Dawn of the Dead.  I think it worked largely because it lacked any of the subtext of the original and was just a dumb action zombie movie.  And big dumb spectacle seems to be what Snyder does best.

Probably also helped that James Gunn did the screenplay.

Bolded for emphasis. This is largely it. And the cast was quite good, especially thanks to Ving Rhames (Dave Bautista doesn't look real and has shown some acting chops, and also seems to be a genuinely stand-up person in an industry that has a distinct lack of them, but Rhames's screen presence is on a whole other level.)

The script and film really stuck to the fundamentals of a zombie story, didn't try to embroider it, and just had fun with it. Yeah, it lost the nuances of Romero's satire, but it crackles with energy nonetheless. 

I was bored and was making dinner so I decided to just pop Army of the Deaback on. I... can't say I really felt like that was a good use of time when I was done with it. But it did introduce me to Nora Anezeder (Lily, the "coyote") who was rather striking and made an impression with her character, so that's something. It's an incredibly stupid plot, character interactions are poorly written, and so on and so forth. As others said, the Las Vegas location barely mattered -- the Snyder of the Dawn of the Dead days would have had way more fun with it. Snyder has a curious obsession with Wagner's Götterdämmerung and Siegfried's funeral march, which I presume he got from Excalibur (admittedly, it's a pretty epic piece of music).

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