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Watch, Watched, Watching : Series or Stand Alone? Home or Theater?


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21 minutes ago, DMC said:

"College" is oft-cited as one of the greatest episodes, and deservedly so.  One that I think gets short shrift on such lists is "Mr. Ruggiero's Neighborhood," the season 3 premiere.  For many reasons, but without spoiling anything, always loved this mashup of Every Breath You Take and the Peter Gunn theme:

 

It's not surprising if it gets shafted - season 3 was chock full of great episodes. Probably my favorite season of The Sopranos. 

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3 hours ago, DMC said:

I never got what was the big deal with Shane.  In terms of lauded classic westerns, it's almost certainly my least favorite.

I would say it's a good, but not great film. It benefits from being an older Western, but it doesn't hold up to a lot of the other greats. I watched Unforgiven Friday night, and that is so much better.

2 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

Oh yes, the show is great. Have you seen 1x05? That's the show's first really great episode. 

Not yet. I've only seen the first three episodes, but I'll probably watch two more today after football, futbol, and a few hours of reading/studying. The Goodfellas links do make me smile.

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4 hours ago, DMC said:

I never got what was the big deal with Shane.  In terms of lauded classic westerns, it's almost certainly my least favorite.

I don’t think it’s a good movie at all, but it’s a cheesy iconic movie (well made and very well shot) because it played up the nobility and selflessness of the gunfighter so much, and fed the mythology of the American West.  It’s also simple enough for kids to follow.

The very best westerns like The Searchers, Sergio Leone’s trilogy and Unforgiven are darker, more complicated and not for kids.  These generally came well after the golden age of Westerns like Shane (but special hat tip to The Searchers coming out close to the peak of the golden age).

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18 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

It’s also simple enough for kids to follow.

It definitely strikes me as "the classic western for kids," yeah.  And Joey is indeed annoying as hell.

ETA:  I would disagree somewhat with this - 

Quote

These generally came well after the golden age of Westerns like Shane (but special hat tip to The Searchers coming out close to the peak of the golden age).

Ford's Mount Rushmore of Westerns starts with Stagecoach in 1939 and extends to My Darling Clementine in 1946, both predating Shane.

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21 minutes ago, DMC said:

It definitely strikes me as "the classic western for kids," yeah.  And Joey is indeed annoying as hell.

So annoying. And yeah, Westerns for kids is the best way to phrase it.

38 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

The very best westerns like The Searchers, Sergio Leone’s trilogy and Unforgiven are darker, more complicated and not for kids.  These generally came well after the golden age of Westerns like Shane (but special hat tip to The Searchers coming out close to the peak of the golden age).

I'm not sure if I've seen The Searchers. And Leone has two trilogies, with five of the six films taking place in the west. 

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2 minutes ago, DMC said:

I assumed IP was referring to the Dollars trilogy.

He was, but Once Upon a Time in the West shouldn't get shortchanged, and its unofficial sequel, which I watched last weekend, is wild as all get out. Certainly the most brutal of the five films.  

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2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

He was, but Once Upon a Time in the West shouldn't get shortchanged, and its unofficial sequel, which I watched last weekend, is wild as all get out.

I respect Leone, but give me Ford's classical style over his spaghetti all day.  Of course, loathing Clint Eastwood has a lot to do with it.

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6 minutes ago, DMC said:

I respect Leone, but give me Ford's classical style over his spaghetti all day.  Of course, loathing Clint Eastwood has a lot to do with it.

Which films did you have in mind?

Forgive me, but I jokingly told @Chataya de Fleury earlier that I got stung by a bee. It turns out I got stung by a yellow jacket, and it's literally making me as light-headed as if I took some shrooms. Fucker got me right on the vein by my ankle. 

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6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Which films did you have in mind?

The Dollars trilogy.  The two Once Upon A Times aren't all that impressive to me either.

6 minutes ago, Nictarion said:

Yeah, John Wayne was a real peach… :rolleyes:

Anticipated this reaction as it's a valid point that they're both wooden actors.  The difference is John Wayne is just fine to me in that role, pilgrims...

To me, Wayne is like Hulk Hogan (or I suppose the other way around) in that they both were very bad at the technical part of their job but had the look and the charisma and everything else around them made it work.  Sorry, weird comparison I know.  Anyway, Clint Eastwood, in contrast, just annoys me - on screen.  Off screen, yeah they both pretty much equally suck.

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11 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

This is an excellent drama with multiple interesting characters.

I watched the first ep a while ago -- still plan to get back to it.  Just not so much time for watching right now, plus want to be outdoors as much as possible before the nasty cold weather, but I will heroically struggle along, doing my best.  :lol:

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2 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

The Searchers coming out close to the peak of the golden age

The golden age of the Hollywood western had just peaked with Ford was reassessing the mythology of it with The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. That he arrives there at just that moment of transitioning, I at least have found continually fascinating.

The two films are very different, but The Searchers is more honest, more dark, it feels to me.  Whereas with the Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Ford himself couldn't quite evade the mythology that he had so much to do with embedding in the American -- and even the world's psyche. He has his cake and eats it too, so to speak, while preaching the man with law book was more powerful and superior to the man with the gun, but it is still the man with the gun who got 'er done.  It is the legend that printed, not the fact, and upon that lie/legend the man with the law book becomes senator because the voters believe he was the guy who shot Liberty Valance.

I'm about 2/3 through a re-watch, for the first time in years, of The Good, the Bad and The Ugly, having done the same with Fistful of Dollars and A Few Dollars more, back last spring.  So much I hadn't noticed in earlier viewings.  Though, per usual, I'm particularly struck in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly at the quality of the horses ridden by these losers.  Especially Tuco, who rides into town on an equine who is moving in Collected Walk and Passage, which is not what your average transport horse is going to do.  And also by the utter geographical bs of New Mexico territory from which the utterly trounced CSA invasion force was retreating.  :P

https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/sibleys-new-mexico-campaign.html

But this time around I began to wonder why Leone chose that event against which to tell this story of ugly, bad men who are also just childish grifters -- the second time stupid Texians thought to invade and rule New Mexico and got decidedly defeated because, well See: STUPID.

In a lot of ways this film is a romp, if one can ignore the gang-raped woman who is dumped off by a cartload of soldiers, and then beaten up by one of the featured Bad and Ugly.  Despite the film displaying a title card proclaiming Eastwood's character the Good, he is not good.

 

 

 

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I watched the new Candyman yesterday. I had pretty high hopes but ended up being really disappointed. It was mediocre movie at best and it pales in comparison to the original. There's definitely some stuff to like, it's is well acted and looks great, with great cinematography and a lot of style. And it starts out great but can not sustain that trough out the runtime. As someone who thinks like a lot of movies are way longer than they need to be nowadays, this is a movie that is on the opposite end. It really should have been at least 20 - 30 minutes longer and it feels like there must have been a lot of material that was left on the cutting room floor. They clearly knew what they wanted to do and what they wanted to say with the movie, but it feels like they just ended up skipping a lot of steps to get the story to where they wanted it to go. As a result it just feels rushed and poorly paced. Some scenes were just really random, like flashback with the father of one of the principal characters and the scene with the high school girls in the restroom. Both of them felt really out of place and like they didn't really bring much to the movie at all. 

Another problem that this movie, that it has in common with a lot of other horror movies (especially slashers), is that I just don't care about a lot of the characters. If I actually care about the characters that become the victims in a horror movie it becomes so much more effective and scary. In this movie I don't care about any of the victims because they are barely characters at all, they're just bodies for the mayhem. Meanwhile the characters I actually care about are almost never in any real danger, which isn't very scary at all.

The original Candyman has a great atmosphere, it is tense, unsettling and genuinely creepy as fuck. And it managed to balance being a movie with something to say with being a great and scary horror movie. Candyman 2021 does not manage that balance and get to caught up in trying to say what it wants to say to be an effective horror movie.

Spoiler

Plus what's the point in getting Tony Todd back if all you're gonna use him for is one line and a shitty CGI rendition. Fuck off.

 

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6 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

I'm planning to finally binge Breaking Bad before 2021 is over (I have seen the first 2 episodes, which I found just OK

While I'm shocked when I hear some of the classic stuff people haven't seen yet, this is a very good reminder for me. I too need to watch Breaking Bad through, as I've only caught bits and pieces over the years. Guilty as charged.

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Don't have much in the way of updates, but I have been enjoying Clarkson's Farm. Never understood the adulation aimed at the Top Gear trio, but this show is very endearing. Two episodes left so pretty sad to see it go.

Also watched the final two episodes of Rick and Morty's fifth season. They were average episodes. I guess this show is at a point where Archer was when it launched the Vice season. I hope I'm wrong, but if not I see myself checking out next season.

On 9/16/2021 at 4:45 PM, Annara Snow said:

I watched Clueless last year and it is really an excellent movie. I'm generally a fan of Shakespeare transposed in a modern setting (which is also truer to how Shakespeare's company itself performed their historical plays), but it was surprising to see how well Jane Austen can work transposed to a US high school.

I also think Cruel Intentions was really good.

Yeah, Cruel Intentions is really good. Although my favorite Clueless copycat is definitely 10 Things I Hate about You with Heath Ledger, Julia Styles and Joseph Gordon-Levitt and - that one actress who was seemingly everywhere in the nineties and whose name I always have to look up - Larisa Oleynik. It's based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and it's delightful.

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I watched Black Widow. I enjoyed it, although I think it'll end up being somewhere solidly in the middle of the MCU film rankings, not the best and not the weakest. I think the most enjoyable bits were Natasha interacting with her dysfunctional 'family' and I thought Florence Pugh and David Harbour were the highlights. It is perhaps lacking a strong antagonist with the main villain being off-screen for most of the film and I don't think Ray Winstone with an unconvincing attempt at a Russian accent was ever going to be one of the MCU's more memorable villains. The action scenes are fine without being anything special, they do feel a bit generic although at least they seem fairly light on obvious CGI until the final section of the film. I think the film would also have made more sense being released earlier, it's not a big problem but it's weird having this made after Endgame but being set earlier.

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1 hour ago, Veltigar said:

Although my favorite Clueless copycat is definitely 10 Things I Hate about You

I think 10 Things may even be a better movie than Clueless.  There I said it.  Plues it doesn't have the weird step-sibling romance thing going on.  Although Clueless still gets the iconic points.

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9 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

Oh yes, the show is great. Have you seen 1x05? That's the show's first really great episode. 

You're not the only one who has needed to watch some of the great dramas that are regularly mentioned as the best ever. I'm planning to finally binge Breaking Bad before 2021 is over (I have seen the first 2 episodes, which I found just OK, but everyone says season 1 is not the show's best) and, most shamefully, while I loved season 1 of The Wire, many years ago, I missed some episodes at the time and then never found the time to binge all of it, even though I've planned to for so many years. (It's even crazier I haven't done it because I loved everything David Simon and Tom Fontana have done - Homicide: LOTS, Oz, Borgia, The Plot Against America).

I thought the show sounded interesting, good to hear that it is also good. I'm putting it on my watch list (but my watch list is already very long... it has hundreds of shows and movies. So many shows, so little time).

I love Breaking Bad but I never understood people who put it up with The Sopranos, The Wire and Deadwood. It's a tier two show, in my opinion. Still really great, and definitely gets better as it goes. I think everyone involve got better at what they do as it went on and as a result Better Call Saul is the better show, though I know that's an unpopular opinion. 

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