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Watch, Watched, Watching: Looking for the Light


Ramsay B.

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1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Why? It's a great death scene.

If I remember correctly, Jackson said they had to cut it for timing reasons, although I think many people might find other scenes they would rather cut. I think he said that in retrospect he felt he should have put the scene towards the end of The Two Towers instead.

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On 2/7/2023 at 6:12 PM, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

I plan on seeing it. 

My understanding is that events in the film are actually based on the 1933 business plot

Read Gangsters of Capitalism:  Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire (2022) by Jonathan Katz.  Very, very good. Shows that even total CSA types can change.  Also a fascinatiog portrait of US history that a lot of us are shaky on, so to speak -- speaking for myself, at least.  I think I wrote about, or at least mentioned it in the History in Books thread of the Literature forum.

https://www.historynet.com/gangsters-of-capitalism-review-was-smedley-butler-the-embodiment-of-american-imperialism/

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/28/opinion/smedley-butler-wars.html

 

 

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5 hours ago, Zorral said:

Read Gangsters of Capitalism:  Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire (2022) by Jonathan Katz.  Very, very good. Shows that even total CSA types can change.  Also a fascinatiog portrait of US history that a lot of us are shaky on, so to speak -- speaking for myself, at least.  I think I wrote about, or at least mentioned it in the History in Books thread of the Literature forum.

https://www.historynet.com/gangsters-of-capitalism-review-was-smedley-butler-the-embodiment-of-american-imperialism/

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/28/opinion/smedley-butler-wars.html

War is a Racket is conveniently short. There are librivox recordings and you can listen to it in about an hour. 

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12 hours ago, williamjm said:

If I remember correctly, Jackson said they had to cut it for timing reasons, although I think many people might find other scenes they would rather cut. I think he said that in retrospect he felt he should have put the scene towards the end of The Two Towers instead.

ROTK is definitely the one with the biggest gap in quality between the cinematic and extended versions IMO. Saruman's death, Gandalf vs the Witch King and the Mouth of Sauron all really should have been in the cinematic version.

The reaction from Gandalf when Mouth of Sauron brandishes Frodo's mithril coat gets me every time.

Also the Witch King saying "the world of men shall fall" followed by the horns of Rohan. Chills.

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Barry Lyndon.  I saw it years ago ago and have no recollection of what I thought about it at the time.  Rewatched it.  Hmmm.  Yes it is beautiful, beautifully composed painterly shots that must have been magnificent on the big screen.  The rest of it, thin.  I guess I could say that Kubrick made good use of Ryan O'Neil's limitations reflecting the character's similar limitations, but it was on the dull side and didn't seem to be saying anything either.

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1 hour ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

What did you think of the Jasmine arc? 

I appreciated the theme, not so much the execution. It had the most amount of plot holes in the entire buffyverse. Which is only expected when you do this kind of massive retcon. As I said, it felt most like a temper tantrum the show runner needed to get out of his system to wipe the slate clean. But hey, we got rid of Connor so it was all worth it. 

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1 hour ago, RhaenysBee said:

I appreciated the theme, not so much the execution. It had the most amount of plot holes in the entire buffyverse. Which is only expected when you do this kind of massive retcon. As I said, it felt most like a temper tantrum the show runner needed to get out of his system to wipe the slate clean. But hey, we got rid of Connor so it was all worth it. 

Season 4 was kind of absurdly snakebit. One of the two showrunners either quit or was fired after the second episode and they had, like, absolutely no plan. They also had to deal with Charisma Carpenter's pregnancy, which Whedon was famously pissed at her about; the original idea was to have her be the actual Big Bad, IIRC. 

I thought the payoffs were pretty good, and I thought it was interesting who actually ended up saving the day against Jasmine. It also resulted in one of my favorite sequences ever - the part where people are just talking about how much they love Jasmine in various ways. 

It also had that brilliant Angelus arc which fucking rocked.

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37 minutes ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

One of the two showrunners either quit or was fired after the second episode

David Simkins was definitely fired. He was not a part of the regular team and was brought in at the studio's suggestion because Minear and Whedon were so busy with Firefly, and basically didn't mesh with how things were done. From what I recall of the oral history, he had pitched an idea for the third episode but David Fury got assigned to write it, and then for some reason he decided to be very critical of Fury's script -- the first new script that had come in in his tenure as showrunner -- and that apparently got to Whedon who canned him. IIRC, Whedon apologized and said hiring him had been a mistake because they just didn't have time to properly show him how they had built their writing staff and how things functioned.

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Watched a few TV shows lately.

Lockwood. Very classic YA show, but still entertaining and pleasant. Basically something like a darker Harry Potter. Not without flaws (including the acting), but has the potential to become much better as the plot develops and the actors improve.

Slow horses, season 2. As good as season 1 if not better thanks to Gary Oldman. The plot was a bit convoluted but it holds imho. The obvious flaw here is that Oldman tends to carry the entire show with his performance.

A spy among friends. Rather slow, but well-acted and intriguing. Alwas nice to have a British spy show that keeps you guessing. Damian Lewis does a great job and Guy Pearce is pretty good as well. Buuut... the ending ruined it for me.

Spoiler

So we're to believe that Elliott saw through Philby and kinda destroyed him. Except the information given in the end pretty much says the opposite. For instance Philby didn't end up killing himseld but lived to a ripe age in the Soviet Union. And he did successfully cast suspicion on sir Roger Hollis irl. That makes the whole show a debatable "spin" on events.

It's a pity because the show sets up the SIS as a bunch of upper-class gentlemen who think way too much of themselves and get played because of it... Only to conclude on the SIS redeeming itself. Takes away the entire classist criticism which was the main plus of the show.

 

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9 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

Season 4 was kind of absurdly snakebit. One of the two showrunners either quit or was fired after the second episode and they had, like, absolutely no plan. They also had to deal with Charisma Carpenter's pregnancy, which Whedon was famously pissed at her about; the original idea was to have her be the actual Big Bad, IIRC. 

I thought the payoffs were pretty good, and I thought it was interesting who actually ended up saving the day against Jasmine. It also resulted in one of my favorite sequences ever - the part where people are just talking about how much they love Jasmine in various ways. 

It also had that brilliant Angelus arc which fucking rocked.

The Angelus arc was brilliant indeed. Especially with the red herring episode that made it seem like they wouldn’t even need to bring Angelus back.

The Cordelia storyline was a trainwreck but I can why with having to deal with all cast And crew issues and the production changes. either way, you can kinda feel a sort of passive aggressive air in the writing as if it had been a Connor (rather than a Karen) writing it. Or it’s hind sight bias. 

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On 2/9/2023 at 11:24 PM, Rippounet said:

Watched a few TV shows lately.

Lockwood. Very classic YA show, but still entertaining and pleasant. Basically something like a darker Harry Potter. Not without flaws (including the acting), but has the potential to become much better as the plot develops and the actors improve.

  Reveal hidden contents

could not get rid of this box...but no spoilers here lol

 

We are a couple of eps into this. It does have promise and it has a few genuinely funny moments. But it has that problem, which I think of as "EMOTING", where I don't actually feel very much in the way of emotion while I am watching a scene which is intended to carry some emotional weight. They (actors, writers, directors) clearly think they are giving us emotional scenes but it feels so heavy handed.

I mean, I don't necessarily wish to pick on this series in particular as I do see it fairly often in shows. You know how when a film or show gets it right and you can't feel the effort that's gone into it and you almost forget that you're watching something that's being 'acted' and it genuinely moves you? Well, I get that less and less often these days and life is short and I often give up on shows because I get tired of actors really hamming it up and staring at each other's faces with these long pauses in between dialogue. Christ, it's painful sometimes. It just turns me right off. Like, can they not tell how wooden it looks?

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Put Disney’s Strange World on for the kids, they didn’t much like it, I thought it was a bit dull and uninspired.

But fucking hell, it might be the wokest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s not that there is a young gay relationship in it, that’s good, no problem with that.

The whole movie is like some enormous box ticking exercise, even the fucking dog has three legs in case it gets accused of being ‘ableist’

I’m sure the movie thinks the characters are diverse but in reality they are all just a vision of reality if you work in a west coast coffee shop or start up, everyone with half shaved heads and dungarees. It’s not diverse at all, that’s what’s so funny about it.  
 

Then all the women are masculine, the men are feminine and the one who isn’t is obviously a total moron, some depiction of ‘toxic masculinity’ or something. 
 

It’s hardly like this movie is any sort of outlier in the Disney collection either. 

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I went to see The Banshees of Inisherin yesterday. It's a marvellous film and I hope it does well at the awards. At first it was written and directed by the same director who did Calvary, but apparently it is that director's (more famous) brother. Between them, the brothers have made Calvary, The Banshees of Inisherin, In Bruges, The Guard and Seven Psychopaths. These are some talented people evidently.

As to The Banshees of Inisherin itself, I find it hard to write anything about it without spoiling the film. I was engrossed throughout and was always kept on my toes as to what would happen next. The actors were amazing, the script was bleak yet funny and I thought the evocation of its time period was marvellously done. It really felt like a window into life on a small Irish island in the 1920's.

Particular praise should be reserved for the costuming. I especially liked everything Kerry Condon's character was wearing. It felt authentic, yet oddly glamorous. A perfect fit for the character she was playing and I think there will be a lot of women curious whether they could lay their hands on one of her outfits. 

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