Watch, watching next

[Cas Stark]

11 hours ago, Nictarion said:

I still maintain it’s one of the better horror franchises. The only true miss (imo) is the 3rd one. 

We’re seeing it Friday night. 

I actually liked 3 a lot better than 2. Scream 4 was atrocious, 5 was better but the new cast doesn't do much for me.  It's definitely one of the better franchises.  I rewatched the first one a couple of weeks ago and it's still great.

[dbunting]

2 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

I actually liked 3 a lot better than 2. Scream 4 was atrocious, 5 was better but the new cast doesn't do much for me.  It's definitely one of the better franchises.  I rewatched the first one a couple of weeks ago and it's still great.

I loved the first one, it felt fresh and new. Since then. eh.  I even went to the last new one and was glad the popcorn was good.

[Cas Stark]

31 minutes ago, dbunting said:

I loved the first one, it felt fresh and new. Since then. eh.  I even went to the last new one and was glad the popcorn was good.

None of them lived up to the original, but there is much less drop off in quality than in Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street.  I always thought Friday 13 was total trash, even the original.  I also hated the Saw franchise so haven't seen most of those.

[Cas Stark]

In a break from my ongoing Tubi binge of 70s B movies, I watched Orson Welle's Othello.  Wow.  It's a real tragedy that he could never reign himself in enough to maintain funding because he was really a brilliant director. 

[dbunting]

1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

None of them lived up to the original, but there is much less drop off in quality than in Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street.  I always thought Friday 13 was total trash, even the original.  I also hated the Saw franchise so haven't seen most of those.

That is true, most sequels went completely off the rails. They all fall into the same line of making the killer invincible. I liked the original Saw but after that initial surprise the others didn't match it.

I think Poltergeist and Amityville Horror scared me more than any other thing. The thought that your own home (basically) is trying to kill you and no place is safe.

[Kalbear]

I found out earlier this week that Spielberg put in that tree that ate kids because he had a tree that looked like it had gnarly arms which scared him and FUCK YOU SPIELBERG

I was terrified of that for years as a kid. I saw Heavy Metal and it wasn't as scary to me. Damn man

[Cas Stark]

8 minutes ago, dbunting said:

That is true, most sequels went completely off the rails. They all fall into the same line of making the killer invincible. I liked the original Saw but after that initial surprise the others didn't match it.

I think Poltergeist and Amityville Horror scared me more than any other thing. The thought that your own home (basically) is trying to kill you and no place is safe.

Poltergeist for me isn't too rewatchable.  Amityville is a great so bad its good 70s movie.  I also thought The Ring was scary as hell, but think I'm in the minority on that.  I don't really mind if the killer is invincible, that's what made Halloween great, but so many of the sequels either were too jokey [Freddy] or simply gave up completely on any kind of coherent plot+bad direction+bad acting, etc. etc..  I also liked most of the Hellraisers, but 21st century me now finds some of that gore a bit much.

[dbunting]

1 hour ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

I found out earlier this week that Spielberg put in that tree that ate kids because he had a tree that looked like it had gnarly arms which scared him and FUCK YOU SPIELBERG

I was terrified of that for years as a kid. I saw Heavy Metal and it wasn't as scary to me. Damn man

YES! There is a movie that was out in the 70's, on tv in '76, where the trees killed you! I saw it at 5 years old and was terrified. The damn wind would blow and the branches would scrape against my window!

[Cas Stark]

For fans of James Cameron, Titanic, Hollywood in the 90s.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/titanic-oscars-oral-history-1235343150/

[IFR]

Tried watching Slow Horses. Perhaps it's due to watching the Alec Guinness George Smiley miniseries first - which are immensely engaging and impeccable in every way - but I found this series to be a pedestrian effort. Tedious, implausible, and more veering towards the absurdly sensationalist Homeland approach. Occasionally humourous, at least, but it's not enough to keep me watching. What a waste of Gary Oldman's talents.

[Ran]

Rewatched Whiplash, as it had been discussed in the Ringer's The Rewatchables podcast and it made me feel like looking at it again. What an amazing big breakthrough for Damien Chazelle, and (to a lesser degree) for J.K. Simmons who had been a character actor for decades but finally got the real attention he deserved thanks to his turn as the cruel, unrelenting Fletcher. Miles Teller, too, was set to go to the moon... and then things sort of went sideways for him, but maybe the heat from Top Gun: Maverick will give him some greater opportunities.

The podcast pointed out one detail I had never quite considered, though:

Spoiler

It makes 0 sense that the disgraced Fletcher, desperate to advance his own career, would sabotage his own performance just to shit on Andrew. At the very least, shouldn't he have opened with the stuff Andrew knew... and _then_ threw him the curveball towards the end of the set? Then people would more easily believe Andrew was a putz who was fucking up Fletcher's gig rather than Fletcher was bringing out an inexperienced drummer who didn't know what he was doing.

Amazing ending, though.

Then I watched Shiva Baby, a small 2020 indie film from first time director Emma Seligman, based on her short film of the same name. It follows Danielle, a young driftless bisexual Jewish woman who doesn't quite know what to do with her life, but has been involved in "sugar daddy" business for reasons of her own. There's a shiva for a distant relation that she has to attend, and you definitely get a lot of the comedy of Jewish families and intergenerational relationships, but everything is also very fraught with the sense that Dannielle has both a past (they kept telling her not to mess around with Maya, her best friend ... and apparently someone everyone knew she had a romantic/sexual relationship with) that everyone knows about, but also is doing stuff in the present that isn't making her or anyone else happy. And then another distant relative shows up... and it turns out she knows him. Emotionally fraught hijinks ensue.

I liked it. Some of the acting was a little over-earnest in some cast members, but Rachel Sennot in the lead role was quite good. Also heard about it from the Screen Drafts podcast awhile ago.

Oh, and Perry Mason has returned for its second season. Good, professional noir television with a good cast. Nothing really standing out so far, but they're laying the seeds of the central mystery and conflicts. Part of the story turns on a wealthy man attempting to bring a baseball team to Los Angeles, which is an interesting angle.

 

Edited March 10, 2023 by Ran

[Isis]

I have a confession to make. I watched the first three episodes of Daisy Jones and I actually want to keep watching it, mostly because I have read the books and want to see how the story goes on screen. But I must say that the music which the people in the show make is largely AWFUL so far. I forward through those bits. I guess that is kind of the point that the music they make early on isn't very good and they get better as the show goes on?

[SpaceChampion]

Seems a backlash against The Whale is brewing...   "The Whale is not a masterpiece – it’s a joyless, harmful fantasy of fat squalor.  It is a shallow and stigmatising reflection of thin people’s assumptions about fat bodies." 

Quote

However, I changed my mind about watching The Whale when another friend (a thin one, so you can take him seriously!) texted me, fresh out of a pre-release screening, that it was one of the worst, stupidest movies he’d seen in years. Well, now I was intrigued! The hype around The Whale – in particular Brendan Fraser’s Oscar-nominated performance – had been so self-serious, so high-minded, I’d assumed it was a well-made art film whose creators just happened to have chosen a subject matter they likely weren’t equipped to handle. But to find out it was simply bad? The thought of gilded Academy voters weeping over a video of Fraser in a fat suit choking on a meatball sub gave me a strange pleasure. The joke, suddenly, was on them. Delicious as a Cheeto sandwich sprayed with ranch dressing, a meal that The Whale’s protagonist eats while crying. Standing ovation! LOL. You idiots.

 

Edited March 10, 2023 by SpaceChampion

[Ran]

As a fat (indeed, obese) person, the writer's point of view is completely alien to me, it seems to come from the perspective that the film is an attack on her identity and that of other fat people, which I don't get. Depiction is not necessarily condemnation, nor is it necessarily endorsement.

It's very hyperbolic, too:

Quote

Portrayals like this steal from us in two directions: we are denied both the freedom to enjoy food and to have complicated relationships with it.

Lady, you and I and other people with our issue aren't being denied anything. It's a fictional character in a fictional story whose binge eating and subsequent obesity is emblematic of a particular trauma and set of issues and a way of dealing with it that he has. The story does not construe itself to represent all people who are fat, and I'm not even sure it construes itself to represent any particular sub-section of morbidly obese people. 

Quote

I suppose my criticism boils down to this: a fat person, even one with a life identical to Charlie’s, could never have made The Whale. It is fundamentally not of us and therefore incurably untrue.

I don't even know where to begin with this. But Tyson Bidner is one of the executive producers, and he is certainly a fat person.

Edited March 10, 2023 by Ran

[Veltigar]

Been catching up on South Park. I watched the three episodes of this season and the Streaming Wars specials that I missed last year. The specials have never really done it for me and the Streaming Wars is not much of a step up from the previous specials.

That being said, the new season of South Park has been pretty good so far. It has returned to a more episodic format and I feel like it is a return to form. I hope they keep experimenting with other formats (like a seasonal arc), but that they are also confident enough to only do this when they have a clear idea/desire to do so.

[Ran]

 

On 3/6/2023 at 12:17 AM, Zorral said:

Alas, though the site's quality of screen shots or photos or whatever they are dreadful quality.  No way at all do they convey how purely gorgeous both Patrick Swayze and Sam Elliott were that year! 

I suspect Sean's source wasn't great.

I saw the mention before of a remake of the film that you linked, but didn't read it... but now learned that it's Doug Liman working on a "reimagined" Road House, with Jake Gyllenhaal to star. That seems too crazy to be true.

Also, Sean's book just got a second edition, with a cover made to match the soundtrack LP that Barnes & Noble sells. And apparently there's a very fancy UHD 4K Blu Ray of the film is available as well. It feels like a renaissance for the film, and I'm kind of tempted to go rewatch it as it's literally been decades. Wonder if it's streaming in 4K anywhere? 

Finally, on the watching front, Vinland Saga still ticking along at a very deliberate pace. This episode was quite good, though, digging deep into Thorfinn's trauma through a series of dreams, including a pivotal one featuring a vision of his father followed by the person who might be called his spiritual father, Askeladd. Really strong imagery of a sort of hellish Valhalla (not actually Valhalla) and a tower of corpses grabbing for Thorfinn, trying to pull him down to join them.

It amazes me the great breadth and variety of the stories Japanese creators make. 

[dbunting]

3 minutes ago, Ran said:

I saw the mention before of a remake of the film that you linked, but didn't read it... but now learned that it's Doug Liman working on a "reimagined" Road House, with Jake Gyllenhaal to star. That seems too crazy to be true.

 

I saw this too. There was footage shot before last weeks UFC fight that Gyllenhall was there for, he did a mock weigh in and was ripped.  Assume the UFC part is his backstory for the movie, why Dalton is such a badass?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Did we learn nothing from the Point Break remake. These kinds of movies from that era work in part because the charm of the time and how ridiculous they are.

[Ran]

21 minutes ago, dbunting said:

I saw this too. There was footage shot before last weeks UFC fight that Gyllenhall was there for, he did a mock weigh in and was ripped.  Assume the UFC part is his backstory for the movie, why Dalton is such a badass?

Has to be. How does he compare to Hardy in Warrior? Gotta look up the clip.

[dbunting]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Has to be. How does he compare to Hardy in Warrior? Gotta look up the clip.

Bodies are different but he was ripped, like everywhere there is a muscle, it could be seen, if that makes sense, maybe lean and muscular is a better description.