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Watch, Watching, Watch -- Keep the change you filthy animal!


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4 hours ago, Spockydog said:

The Eternals. Jesus, what a load of shite. By some distance, the worst movie Marvel will ever make.

Its not very good but you've forgotten Ant Man and the Wasp, Thor 2, Black Widow and Iron Man 2.. to name a few.

Eternals was definitely bottom half, but it at least had some interesting ideas buried in there somewhere, just executed about as blandly as you could possibly imagine.

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I watched The Last Duel a couple of days ago. I thought it was a bit slow to get going, particularly when it starts revisiting the same events from different perspectives, but it builds up the tension between Jean and Jacques well and when we get to Margueritte's part of the story I think the film is at its most compelling. After all the build-up the titular duel itself was convincingly intense. The acting was good throughout, particularly Jodie Comer. They don't make many films like this nowadays and it's good to have a serious historical drama for a change, shame it didn't do well at the box office.

Yesterday I watched Matrix Resurrections. I'm not really convincing this film needed to be made and I'm not sure the film was convinced about this either. Despite that I still enjoyed it, I don't think anything is ever going to come close to the original Matrix but I think I liked it better than my (now quite vague) memories of the first two sequels. At least it has a bit more of a sense of fun than Revolutions did. The film is at its best when dealing with Neo and Trinity, most of the new characters don't get much time spent on them other than Jessica Henwick's character.

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Had some time off recently and watched a few movies.

Spider Man, loved it. I'm sure there are issues somewhere but I absolutely loved it.

Matrix, eh, I understand how it makes sense. I am even happier finding out the Reeves donated majority of his salary. Could have done without the movie but seeing it on big screen helps

Scream...really only saw this because I was off and bored and it was cheap. It isn't horrible but also not one I would recommend to anyone. Was nice to have the original cast in it and it takes jabs at itself along the way.

Ghostbusters Afterlife - forgot about this one. It was way better than I expected. Gets you right in the feels. It's everything that 2016 abomination wasn't

Cobra Kai. It never has been as good at it was in S1, and that may not have been good but it felt so good because of all the memories? Finished the season and hope there is only one more to go.

TV Still watching The Curse of Oak Island, still nerding out on the stuff they find. Finished The Challenge and loved it. Survivor was a bit off due to covid and a rush to finish it I guess, one dumb decision made when there was 4 left cost someone a million.

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Finished Station Eleven. Definitely a good show. A really slow burn, but it pays off strongly in the end. The acting was great throughout.

As realism in a post-apocalyptic worlds goes, I honestly thought the show did a good job, even if it might feel too optimistic. But I would very much take this over the never ending cycle of violence in The Walking Dead.

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Mourning a friend lost far too early tonight, so after cooking myself a nice meal, I settled on Young Frankenstein as a distraction / pick me up. While I'm not laughing-to-breathlessness (aside: I love that word) as I normally would, it's just such a flawless comedy that I've managed to have a great evening all told. Teri Garr was a foundational crush for me back when our VHS player had those colossal colored buttons and no remote, and she is every bit as hilarious as the other comic heavyweights in every scene. Some scenes are so absurd that I can't imagine anyone but Wilder pulling them off. Oh to be a fly on the wall while they filmed such a classic. There are some fantastic outtake and deleted scene reels out there on Youtube, if anyone needs some laughs on a gloomy Tuesday.

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42 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Finished Station Eleven. Definitely a good show. A really slow burn, but it pays off strongly in the end. The acting was great throughout.

As realism in a post-apocalyptic worlds goes, I honestly thought the show did a good job, even if it might feel too optimistic. But I would very much take this over the never ending cycle of violence in The Walking Dead.

I mean, things were still plenty fucked up. 

Spoiler

Frank was violently murdered in his own apartment, those crazy red bandanna guys were running around killing folks, the Prophet was using child suicide bombers, etc. 

 

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10 minutes ago, Nictarion said:

I mean, things were still plenty fucked up. 

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Frank was violently murdered in his own apartment, those crazy red bandanna guys were running around killing folks, the Prophet was using child suicide bombers, etc. 

 

Well yeah but there are still strong differences from other more grimm stories.

Spoiler

20 years after the pandemic things at least in that corner of the world are more calm. Through Kristen's knife skills and the Symphony's apprehension from leaving their established path there is certainly a strong indication of how chaotic and deadly the immediate years were post-pan, but things have improved. 

Frank was killed in the early months, when everyone was scrounging for resources. The red bandanas were apparently low in numbers, reduced to haunting the woods. And yes the Prophet's cult was messed up, but that was driven by personal revenge and it ended well. (And it was used to great effect to keep the tension high nearly to the end) Carl's WTF when he sees the horde of kids leaving was hilarious.

Btw, I felt sorry for the poor horses made to draw those vehicles. 20 years, they couldn't find a carpenter to make some wagons? Just take the axles of the cars and put them under wooden wagons. (maybe they took out the engines. :P)

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4 hours ago, Argonath Diver said:

Mourning a friend lost far too early tonight, so after cooking myself a nice meal, I settled on Young Frankenstein as a distraction / pick me up. While I'm not laughing-to-breathlessness (aside: I love that word) as I normally would, it's just such a flawless comedy that I've managed to have a great evening all told. Teri Garr was a foundational crush for me back when our VHS player had those colossal colored buttons and no remote, and she is every bit as hilarious as the other comic heavyweights in every scene. Some scenes are so absurd that I can't imagine anyone but Wilder pulling them off. Oh to be a fly on the wall while they filmed such a classic. There are some fantastic outtake and deleted scene reels out there on Youtube, if anyone needs some laughs on a gloomy Tuesday.

Sorry for your loss. We lost one of our cats very suddenly this week so not much laughter to be had at home.

I love YF though.  So many great comedy moments. "Taffeta, darling!"

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Also watched The Last Duel. I wish the exteriors weren't all so desaturated and grey in color, even in scenes not set in winter, but the interior photography was gorgeous in its use of natural lighting predominantly. Terrific scenery with some actual castles and a beautifully preserved French medieval village, too. The battle scenes were brutal. Costuming and hairstyling and armoring was all ... so-so in terms of authenticity, to be honest; I saw sallets a few decades before they existed, clothing styles decades out of fashion, and some distinct modernity in hairstyling (especially Marguerite, more on her later). So, a bit of fantasy in that, but I believe Ridley Scott has admitted he did no particular research on the period and didn't require it of the production, so it's a marvel that it's come out looking at least somewhat appropriate for the most part.

Strong performances across the board, although admittedly it feels like they tweaked Affleck's character to have a rather more modern vocabulary and affect whereas Driver and Damon seemed more grounded in the sense of characters from the period. Comer is, of course, amazing. However, modernity strikes her character as well, and in a more central way to the plot and themes -- from the visual aspect of her hairstyling (made to make her stand out from all her peer women in the film) to her clothing (the cleavage-baring gown was decidedly ahistorical) to the decision to make her a highly educated polyglot who has to take the reins of estate management and readily outdoes her brutish husband (really gilding the lily here).

That said, I think the point the bothered me most had to do with the way Marguerite's understanding on what they are embarking on is depicted:

Spoiler

Namely, it is incredibly unlikely that Marguerite would not have known fairly early on that the punishment for perjury in the matter was going to involve her death. Yet they make it a last-minute reveal that she blames her husband for, suggesting she would never have gone so far had she known she had put her own life at stake. This is particularly bothersome because, interestingly, Froissart refers to the fact though he had never spoken to her personally he had wished to ask her if she ever had any regrets about how far she and her husband took the matter ... strongly implying a belief on his part, informed by being a man of the same estate and from the same noble culture, writing just 4 years after the event, that the duel and its potential consequences were a mutual decision between Jean de Carrouges and his wife, rather than something she had no power or say in. 

I understand, this is fiction, and Scott is particularly unapologetic about using the material to tell a particular story and history be damned. But it does bug me that Froissart's Chronicle acknowledges her agency on this particular point, while the script chooses to take it away to... well, frankly, dumb it down a little.  But then the dumbing down also features in the choice to have "the truth" linger on the screen a few seconds when we come to Marguerite's section, which seemed to me wholly unnecessary.

Anyways, good film, a mature drama that deserved better box office than it got. 

Random trivia: Carrouges and the the Sire de Coucy, the focal figure of Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, both met their fates thanks to the Battle of Nicopolis -- Carrouges almost certainly killed on the field, Coucy of the plague while held imprisoned after being captured.  And before that, Carrouges was almost certainly present as one of the bodyguards to King Charles VI when he went mad, attacked his brother and several others, and then chased his brother on horseback until the bodyguards were able to catch and restrain him. A very eventful life, Carrouges'.

 

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We too were told of the unexpected, sudden death yesterday, of one near and dear to us, so running away from the here and now I too picked last night to watch the Last Duel.  I was very impressed with what they did do historically right concerning the last third of the 14th century.  I was so glad the Black Death and labor shortages and all the other social upheavals that caused got included, among other issues of the time.

Those battle scenes! And that the war horses were not ahistorically gigantic Clydesdale sorts, who came along later -- and the armor.  This was the great era of plate armor all right.

So much about it I liked and which kept my mind occupied, such as the year it opens, the Black Prince was still alive, this was still the Hundred Years War, and aristo families had already spent at least two generations fighting the English, and the English were still committing scorched earth chevauchée from Normandy into the south of France. That Carrouges goes essentially mercenary, as did so many, off-and-on, French and English, due to lack of funds, and so on and so forth.

It seemed to me Jodie Comer did a very good job, despite the drawbacks of not really looking like a medieval woman, but then, how could she?  The actress, Harriet Walter, who plays the mom of three of the Roy kids on Succession, seemed more convincing in her appearance and manner, as Nicole de Carrouges.

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Watched The Eternals and I actually enjoyed it.  I think I just have a super high tolerance for super hero movies to the point that even the consensus "good ones" feel about the same as the bad ones.  I turn my brain off regardless and The Eternals seemed to fit in fine with the rest.  

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