Watched, Watched, Watching: It's not the plane, it's the pilot

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Misery is an incredible film. Caan and Bates were both extraordinary. I don't think I'd change a single thing about the movie. Easily a top 5 King adaptation. 

This morning I watched Starship Troopers while working out. Perfect movie to have on. The comedy is sneaky good and the general lambasting of Nazis is chef's kiss. 

I need to order both books. And now I'm throwing on Jaws, the best 4th of July movie ever and a book nobody needs to read. 

[BigFatCoward]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Misery is an incredible film. Caan and Bates were both extraordinary. I don't think I'd change a single thing about the movie. Easily a top 5 King adaptation. 

 

Fewest supernatural elements makes a good Steven king adaption may be the strongest correlation on earth. 

[Veltigar]

@Ran The Guardian released an interesting interview with the creators of the original Tron today on how they made the first film: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jul/05/tron-steven-lisberger-interview 

It's origin history is quite cool I must admit. I'm still not warmed to it from an entertainment PoV but reading things like this does make me appreciate it more.

[ithanos]

7 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

And now I'm throwing on Jaws, the best 4th of July movie ever and a book nobody needs to read. 

Benchley's book was a good read from what I remember.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Fewest supernatural elements makes a good Steven king adaption may be the strongest correlation on earth. 

I will again mention Hearts in Atlantis as a counter to this. Great book, shit movie.

2 hours ago, ithanos said:

Benchley's book was a good read from what I remember.

Don't think I need to worry about spoiling a 50 year old book. Hooper and Mrs. Brody have an affair and it's really poorly written. Super cringy. 

[Zuzu Bolin]

 

I'm 5 seasons deep into the French cop drama Spiral (Engrenages). It's very dark and from an entertainment standpoint only The Shield imo rivals it from that genre. It does vex me that the main characters are pretty incompetent at their job and I can't work out if that is deliberate from the show runner (probably to justify 12 episode a season) or bad scripting.

 

 

[RhaenysBee]

Season 5 just keeps ripping out my heart and eating it for breakfast. I don’t know if it’s just my mood or the first class writing, but it keeps hitting home with a sucker-punch. I generally cry easily, but the amount of times I’ve broken down over Buffy counts as a surprise even for me. That said, the Dawn insertion was weird. 

[Ran]

5 minutes ago, RhaenysBee said:

Season 5 just keeps ripping out my heart and eating it for breakfast. I don’t know if it’s just my mood or the first class writing, but it keeps hitting home with a sucker-punch. I generally cry easily, but the amount of times I’ve broken down over Buffy counts as a surprise even for me. That said, the Dawn insertion was weird. 

How far are you into the season?

[RhaenysBee]

21 minutes ago, Ran said:

How far are you into the season?

Not far, I just finished episode 7. 

[Jaxom 1974]

11 hours ago, Veltigar said:

@Ran The Guardian released an interesting interview with the creators of the original Tron today on how they made the first film: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jul/05/tron-steven-lisberger-interview 

It's origin history is quite cool I must admit. I'm still not warmed to it from an entertainment PoV but reading things like this does make me appreciate it more.

Tron is a gods damned masterpiece and should be treated like the masterpiece it is.  The untapped potential of the sequel and the shakiness of the Uprising animated show not withstanding, the Tron universe is an unrealized gold mine of story telling potential.  (Also, it's one of my personal favorite films and I delighted in forcing my son to watch it when he wasn't sure he should...and I'll make him watch it again and again if I get the chance...)

 

7 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Don't think I need to worry about spoiling a 50 year old book. Hooper and Mrs. Brody have an affair and it's really poorly written. Super cringy. 

Oh I don't know...I think Spielberg left a few moments of tension hanging there in that dinner scene...you know, if you want to read deep into it and assume things that aren't maybe there... 

 

I did watch Them! last week when I stumbled upon it while home with the Covid...there's just something about the sci-fi of the 50s and 60s that is sometimes just so much better than some other things...

[Zorral]

Maybe Ridding the World of Superheroes Isn’t Such a Bad Idea
Though Thor’s muscles are resplendent in Marvel’s latest film, his heart isn’t in it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/07/thor-love-and-thunder-movie-review/661491/

Quote

... corpulent Zeus ... whom Crowe plays with the energy of a particularly horny Greek diner owner, is the most extreme example of indifference, presiding over a meeting of deities with an agenda that mostly focuses on who’s coming to the next orgy. But at the start of Love and Thunder, Thor appears similarly adrift, fighting nonurgent alien crime with Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) and the other Guardians of the Galaxy, whom he linked up with in the last Avengers film. Though his muscles are resplendent, his heart isn’t in it. He’s even less interested in running things in New Asgard, the Nordic fishing village that now functions as the home of fellow gods such as Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson). ....

 

[williamjm]

3 hours ago, RhaenysBee said:

Season 5 just keeps ripping out my heart and eating it for breakfast. I don’t know if it’s just my mood or the first class writing, but it keeps hitting home with a sucker-punch. I generally cry easily, but the amount of times I’ve broken down over Buffy counts as a surprise even for me. That said, the Dawn insertion was weird. 

There is an episode coming in the second half of the season which will eclipse any emotional reaction you've been having so far. It's superbly written but it's about as far from the light-hearted monster hunting of the earliest episodes as it's possible to be.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Oh I don't know...I think Spielberg left a few moments of tension hanging there in that dinner scene...you know, if you want to read deep into it and assume things that aren't maybe there... 

Lol, I actually would be fine if there was an affair included in the movie. Would make the time on the boat more tense as Brody is aware of it. 

[felice]

5 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Tron is a gods damned masterpiece and should be treated like the masterpiece it is.  The untapped potential of the sequel and the shakiness of the Uprising animated show not withstanding, the Tron universe is an unrealized gold mine of story telling potential.

It was a great pity that the sequel didn't understand that the original was an anthropomorphic metaphor for how a computer system works, and replaced it with a VR simulation of reality populated by AIs. And retains the idea of physical travel between the computer and the macro world, which was the silliest aspect of the original (just transferring the contents of the brain would make far more sense).

[RumHam]

The only problem I have with Jaws is Hooper's miraculous survival. Didn't bother me as a kid but now I think it's dumb.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

54 minutes ago, RumHam said:

The only problem I have with Jaws is Hooper's miraculous survival. Didn't bother me as a kid but now I think it's dumb.

He’s shark food in the book.

[dog-days]

Went to the local arts centre last night to catch Benediction by Terence Davies. It’s the first Terence Davies film I’ve seen, and I was attracted to it by its subject – the war poet Siegfried Sassoon – and because Peter Capaldi plays him in his older incarnation.

As I suspect might be usual with a Davies production, it was a rather strange experience. There was a plenitude of rather stagey, mannered scenes containing numerous wealthy, attractive young gay men (plus Simon Russell Beale as Oliver Wilde’s ex Robbie Ross, a not-quite-so-young gay man) exchanging cold witticisms and demonstrating the kind of emotionally inaccessible Englishness that I associate most strongly with the products of the nation’s glorious public schools. The overall effect was alienating, without Davies even having to resort to Brechtian signage, and I suppose that can be read as how the post-war world was being processed by Siegfried, who, played as a youngish man by Jack Lowden, wanders through cocktail parties and bars in an almost passive daze.

Nothing is set in the trenches — the war is present through clips from black-and-white film reels, only at all bearable to watch because of their degraded quality and juddery flow of frames, and also through the poetry. A little Owen (‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ and in the final moments ‘Disabled’) is read in voice-over, and more of Sassoon’s own work, though generally it’s his meditative, nostalgic pieces that feature, not the biting satires. The closest we get otherwise is a very short flashback to a hospital ward. A blackly humorous segue from the war years to the late fifties is reached through a sepia No Man's Land as "Ghost Riders in the Sky" fills the soundscape. 

I spotted a couple of deviations from the historical record. First, Siegfried’s military cross is shown falling into water. Although it was thought for many decades that he threw it into the Mersey in 1917, the medal was rediscovered in an attic in 2007. It may just have been the ribbon that he chucked. 

Second, the film shows Wilfred Owen leaving Sassoon at Craiglockhart Hospital in order to return to the front. In fact, it was Siegfried who went back first. Owen followed the example of his hero, despite his hero telling him not to at all costs, and of course was killed in the last week of the war.

Benediction isn’t a film much given to looking on the bright side. We don’t hear about Sassoon’s important work as a writer and editor after the war, or about his letter-writing or avid cricket-playing into his seventies. We don't even hear much about his extraordinary suicidal bravery on the western front. In so far as it’s about anything, it could be about a man who is made and destroyed by war. He finds his adult identity in it, he finds a cause, he starts to acknowledge his sexuality in it, and then it’s gone, along with his brother and Owen and many more. Afterwards, he’s always looking to be saved, and always looking in the wrong places. Eventually we see his Capaldi-era self convert to Roman Catholicism. Maybe that gave him some peace, but the gaunt, grim emaciation of his expression suggests not, amongst much else.

Kudos to Ben Daniels who plays Rivers the psychologist with immense warmth and charisma; he only has a couple of scenes, but he really shines in them.

Worth watching, though definitely not a curry night film. 

[dbunting]

Had 5 days off in a row so I caught up on some stuff.

The Boys, still loving this batshit crazy show

Watched the last two episodes of Stranger Things

Spoiler

Didn't like that Max isn't officially dead, that felt cheap.

Overall one of my favorite seasons and loved Metallica!

 

Watched a show on Prime, The Terminal List.  Still have mixed thoughts about it. I think I really liked it, but it missed a few beats. Definitely worth a watch. They keep you guessing a little in the first couple episodes about what reality is but then it straightens out a bit.

Spoiler

Pretty clear from the start that his buddy was going to be in on the thing with the bad guys. Had a couple episodes where I doubted myself but in the end I was right.

 

[Spockydog]

Unlike the mini-renaissance of Kate Bush, I'm finding it hard to get excited for anyone in Metallica over their own reflected ST glory. This, despite once being a big fan of theirs.

Guess I should never have watched Some Kind Of Monster. What a bunch of snowflakes and bellends. Great documentary though.

Oh, yeah. And Napster.

 

 

[Corvinus85]

7 hours ago, dbunting said:

Watched a show on Prime, The Terminal List.  Still have mixed thoughts about it. I think I really liked it, but it missed a few beats. Definitely worth a watch. They keep you guessing a little in the first couple episodes about what reality is but then it straightens out a bit.

  Reveal hidden contents

Pretty clear from the start that his buddy was going to be in on the thing with the bad guys. Had a couple episodes where I doubted myself but in the end I was right.

 

4 episodes in and yeah I wish they had kept the unreliable narrator going longer.