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Watch Watched Watching: The Rambunctious Cinema of Terrence Malick


polishgenius

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Titled in honour of the fact I just noticed Thin Red Line is on Disney+ and will therefore rewatch soon, but also because of Deadlines' sceptical reaction of my description of Nuri Bilge Ceylan. I've only watched two of his films - well, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and most of A Small Town - but he makes understatedness into an art, both in the visual and audio presentation and in how unobvious it can be what the actual plot is as the film goes on. I recommend both films though. 


 

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Wow. That must be very odd, having seen the re-make before the original. I usually try to do an annual rewatch every May. It is also screamingly funny in places. It's a very special film.

Oh, and you hadn't seen An American Werewolf in London before either? Those two are probably my favourite horror films of all time. Hands down the best werewolf transformation on film. Nazi pigs/nightmare within a nightmare doesn't get any less horrifying with time either.

@Isis probably not as weird as it could be as I can barely remember anything from the Cage version. The bees and him punching someone dressed as a bear is about as far as it goes. 

I think I might have seen the sequel set in Paris many years back, but also barely anything I can remember about it :) I didn't find those scenes very scary, but I think I'm just jaded when it comes to horror. It was very well done though, amazing that the transformation was done practically.

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

Titled in honour of the fact I just noticed Thin Red Line is on Disney+ and will therefore rewatch soon, but also because of Deadlines' sceptical reaction of my description of Nuri Bilge Ceylan. I've only watched two of his films - well, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and most of A Small Town - but he makes understatedness into an art, both in the visual and audio presentation and in how unobvious it can be what the actual plot is as the film goes on. I recommend both films though. 
 

That is definitely a Disney film XD

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1 hour ago, Veltigar said:

... did they not visit the neighborhood ...

Of course they did -- it was once a Miranda hang.  Thus dramatic illustration of canceling out what doesn't look like you, as Miranda has apologized for many times ever since, and Hollywood has been doing forever, and nothing ever changes.  Miranda is a light-skinned Puerto Rican, as you probably know?

What is weird to me though, is all the reality check criticism he's gotten for In The Heights, but all the same sort of errors were blatantly present in Hamilton too -- not to mention the many history errors . . . .

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1 hour ago, Veltigar said:

That is definitely a Disney film XD

 

 

Yeah it is pretty funny that they haven't bothered making a separate branding for their Fox content- heck, to begin with they did have a separate 'Star' section for the more grown-up stuff when it came in but it seems to have been abandoned very quickly. 

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2 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Of course they did -- it was once a Miranda hang.  Thus dramatic illustration of canceling out what doesn't look like you, as Miranda has apologized for many times ever since, and Hollywood has been doing forever, and nothing ever changes.  Miranda is a light-skinned Puerto Rican, as you probably know?

No, I wasn't aware. I guessed he was Hispanic but I think we already established on this board that I find it weird that all those light-skinned Hispanic people are seen as a category separate from white in the US. We'd just call them whites over here I guess. That shows yet again how arbitrary racial boundaries are of course.

5 minutes ago, Zorral said:

What is weird to me though, is all the reality check criticism he's gotten for In The Heights, but all the same sort of errors were blatantly present in Hamilton too -- not to mention the many history errors . . . .

This I don't get? Could you explain further what you mean here. Historical errors for sure as Hamilton is a truncated work of fiction and even the Chernow biography that was the source of the musical isn't entirely flawless, but isn't it kind of difficult to blame Hamilton for not casting white dudes as casting PoC was part of its artistic vision? Or is that not what you mean?

12 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

 

 

Yeah it is pretty funny that they haven't bothered making a separate branding for their Fox content- heck, to begin with they did have a separate 'Star' section for the more grown-up stuff when it came in but it seems to have been abandoned very quickly. 

I think they still do the star thing internationally though? Just to jack up the price? :)

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12 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

 

I think they still do the star thing internationally though? Just to jack up the price? :)

 

I'm in Germany so I don't think so? Not everywhere at least. It was just a subchannel on Disney+ anyway, but now it's all lumped in.

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1 hour ago, Veltigar said:

Historical errors for sure as Hamilton is a truncated work of fiction and even the Chernow biography that was the source of the musical isn't entirely flawless, but isn't it kind of difficult to blame Hamilton for not casting white dudes as casting PoC was part of its artistic vision? Or is that not what you mean?

I don't mean the bolded.

It's the character of Hamilton himself as written and those of other of the historical figures that are riddled with, shall we be kind, and call them inaccuracies. To go into these matters on a forum/format like this is just impossible, particularly if the readers aren't fairly versed in the history of the Early Republic and the figures who dominated it politically and financially -- and particularly that of NY in that era.  Even Chernow acknowledged the errors (which were NOT in his book, but like B&B, Miranda and Co. chose to make the errors because it made creative sense to us.  Chernow admitted he chose to $hrug, $aying the reward$ for $parking intere$t in U$ hi$tory were worth it. But as we all know, once history is turned into lie, it never is corrected in the minds of the masses, no matter how much evidence is brought to bear.

I am deeply familiar with Chernow's bio of Hamilton, having read it first when it was first published, long before Hamilton. The early part of the book is more than admirable, which brought almost all of us new material about Hamilton's life, not before known, or at least, not considered.

Then there is all that foney baloney stuff of about the show being so edgy because oooooo hip hop.  I cannot tell you how many middle-aged pearl wearing white women were breathless they were displaying such edginess themselves going somewhere where they would hear hiphop.  Oooo golly gee look at me, donning my fur coat and going to Broadway where I'll see BLACK people singing nd dancing.  I. am. not. making. up. this. shyte.

  Olly jesús, gimme a gddemed break.  How many frackin' years since the stuff emerged in the late 1970's up in da Bronx where the people are fresh?  How many frackin' years had I and friends and associates been going to hiphop, rap, gangsta shows, even having our music biz office-mate's offices shot up by one of the guys on his label coz of big beef, while those of us in the Afro Cuban music offices cowered under our desks ... well and like that. 

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Yeah Thin Red Line definitely wins "title you'd least expect to be on Disney+."  Something about that just kinda irks me.  Incidentally, the ads on the left are now schilling Tree of Life for $14.99.

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Further adding to the amusement about the rich white self-congratulatory reactions to Hamilton  (the price of tickets matched the unavailability of tickets -- picture to yourselves people were literally paying thousands of dollars for tickets to ticket scalpers so they could boast as the golf club they'd seen it) -- because they were participating in a pretend-dangerous something or other.  Well, now, up there on Broadway and Times Square, shootings happen commonly.  Often the victims are tourists. 

But it's not just in NYC.

Over this weekend alone we had over 400 shootings across the country, and 129 deaths.  What does this mean?  It doesn't mean Hamilton is a dangerous show (it's US history as told by Disney), it means that the US has ceded any control over the presence of guns anywhere carried by anyone.  It's been out of control for a long time in a lot of the country, but until tRump and the pandemic Times Square was more than safe enough.

 

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7 hours ago, Veltigar said:

@Isis probably not as weird as it could be as I can barely remember anything from the Cage version. The bees and him punching someone dressed as a bear is about as far as it goes. 

I think I might have seen the sequel set in Paris many years back, but also barely anything I can remember about it :) I didn't find those scenes very scary, but I think I'm just jaded when it comes to horror. It was very well done though, amazing that the transformation was done practically.

I think comparing An American Werewolf in Paris to An American Werewolf in London is a bit like comparing the Nicholas Cage Wicker Man to the Edward Woodward one.

6 hours ago, polishgenius said:

I'm in Germany so I don't think so? Not everywhere at least. It was just a subchannel on Disney+ anyway, but now it's all lumped in.

It's the same in the UK, all the "Star" stuff is included along in the regular Disney+

1 hour ago, DMC said:

Yeah Thin Red Line definitely wins "title you'd least expect to be on Disney+."  Something about that just kinda irks me.  Incidentally, the ads on the left are now schilling Tree of Life for $14.99.

I watched The French Connection on Disney+ a few weeks ago, which is also very un-Disney-like.

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17 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I watched The French Connection on Disney+ a few weeks ago

Huh, didn't know that.  And quickly checking the front page that would be hard to find.  Definitely count me in on them adding a subchannel for their adult titles like they have for marvel/star wars/pixar.  I mean, if national geographic can get one...

ETA:  Actually, just doing a direct search, neither Thin Red Line nor The French Connection is available in the US.  But Red Tails is!

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Clearly the Walt Disney corporation has one or more drug takin' hippies over in the Disney+ department that must be rooted out immediately. For America.

@Veltigar

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I haven't seen the film yet, but all the promotional material for it (the trailers, but even the posters) look so aggressively mediocre. In theater this would have bombed I believe.

The last Jurassic World film made $1.3 billion. Chris Pratt in a creature feature seems to be a recipe for box office gold, regardless of the execution.

Since I don't care about having Tomorrow War spoiled for me, I've seen a few clips online. "Aggressively Mediocre" sounds about right.

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42 minutes ago, DMC said:

Huh, didn't know that.  And quickly checking the front page that would be hard to find.  Definitely count me in on them adding a subchannel for their adult titles like they have for marvel/star wars/pixar.  I mean, if national geographic can get one...

ETA:  Actually, just doing a direct search, neither Thin Red Line nor The French Connection is available in the US.  But Red Tails is!

Right now it's  on one or the other of Netflix, HBO, or Amazon Prime., though I don't recall which of them. I considered a re-watch just last night, at least of that astonishing train chase sequence.

 

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3 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Right now it's  on one or the other of Netflix, HBO, or Amazon Prime.

Yeah it's on Prime and Hulu.  It appears Starz has dibs on TRL right now.

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7 hours ago, Veltigar said:

I think we already established on this board that I find it weird that all those light-skinned Hispanic people are seen as a category separate from white in the US.

It's not just in the US.  It's in Europe too, at least in the UK and Spain, as well as throughout the Spanish heritage Caribbean, Central and Latin America, and even in some of the French parts as in Martinque, and well, whatever Trinidad  and Guyana are, with their previously enslaved populations of Africans, Indians and Chinese.

Light skinned within the Caribbean, etc., means Spanish, i.e. white -- except when we chose not to see it as white, as with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.And.  Dark skinned means not white, and as there were more enslaved than white slaveowners, well, most people in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico are not light-skinned.  And thus less worthy of respect and decency.  Check out the history of the Dominican Republic -- Trujillo was 'white,' and he felt that justified genocide in the DR of Haitians brought in to work in the cane fields.

But what's even weirder is that Puerto Ricans are US citizens but most 'white' people either don't know that or deny it.  This stuff goes on everywhere in racist cultures like the US and the UK.

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1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Further adding to the amusement about the rich white self-congratulatory reactions to Hamilton  (the price of tickets matched the unavailability of tickets -- picture to yourselves people were literally paying thousands of dollars for tickets to ticket scalpers so they could boast as the golf club they'd seen it) -- because they were participating in a pretend-dangerous something or other.  Well, now, up there on Broadway and Times Square, shootings happen commonly.  Often the victims are tourists. 

But it's not just in NYC.

Over this weekend alone we had over 400 shootings across the country, and 129 deaths.  What does this mean?  It doesn't mean Hamilton is a dangerous show (it's US history as told by Disney), it means that the US has ceded any control over the presence of guns anywhere carried by anyone.  It's been out of control for a long time in a lot of the country, but until tRump and the pandemic Times Square was more than safe enough.

Or you know, Hamilton was an incredibly good, highly entertaining piece of art. requiring a level of genius to actually tell a story with that kind of depth, over a 3 hour run time, with that many moving parts, on a subject matter that's unique and with music that's impossible to get out of your head.  That deserves to be celebrated regardless of whether it's a work of fiction or not.

For the record, along with expensively scalped tickets and market rate tickets, they also had a daily lottery for those who couldn't afford it as well as creating a video and putting it on Disney+ for the masses. No surprise the cost was expensive to see the show; every show was sold out for 2+ years straight. I certainly didn't believe it was sold out because it was "dangerous" for rich, white people. As someone who lives in NY, is white and solidly middle class, never once heard that from anyone I know, work with or associate with when it came to Hamilton :dunno:

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Fear Street: 1994 seriously impressed me as an example of how truly abysmal a movie can be. I liked the idea of a series of horror movies portraying a town over multiple time periods, but Netflix did a fantastic job of squandering that opportunity.

It's all subjective though. If you like B movies where the characters operate on a policy of staggering stupidity, the plot is almost incomprehensible due to innumerable plot holes (chasms), and everyone is so annoying you actively cheer for their deaths, then this is a movie tailor made for you.

Netflix continues its status as the god-emperor of mediocrity. Out of the billions of dollars it spends each year, what has it managed to produce that is actually good? Dark? The Queen's Gambit? Mindhunter was decent, too.

Anyway, that was a little rant I had to get out of my system. I really liked the idea of a series of horror movies over different time periods, and so it stings that the movies have been given the Netflix treatment.

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1 hour ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Finally saw Tenet.

I am not embarrassed at all to admit I will need to completely view this at least one more time before I'm sure what I just watched.:D

I think it's a testament to Nolan's amazing talents that his weakest film (which I feel Tenet is) still is entertaining and has a breadth of ambition that most other films do not match. 

I wish he put more thought into the film, though. Interstellar took many liberties with the science, but still stuck pretty close to being hard science, and also had the excellent companion book The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne. Tenet, despite it's pretensions to hard science with its frequent use of jargon,is about as hard science as Star Wars. The bulk of the movie is spent in exposition, and much of this exposition is just going on about fantasy science. And much of the plot was needlessly convoluted.

There were still plenty of interesting ideas, and the novel approach to time did make for exciting story moments and action scenes.

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