Watch, Watched, Watching: It's Award Season

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

8 hours ago, dbunting said:

I also watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith recently. I liked the movie more but the series grew on me. I will be waiting for season 2.

Watched Dune part 1.  I never saw the original so this was all new to me. I guess I liked it, but I don't like it when I know it's just a set up for the next movie. 

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I don't understand how one group could be in charge of the planet for years/decades and not know that there are 100x more indigenous people there than they estimated. The group appears to be vastly more advanced in technology but the other group who gets put in charge finds this out almost immediately?

 

Regarding Dune -1) The Fremen are very good at concealing their strength and were basically biding their time till the arrival of their messiah 2) Inherent racism on part of the  Harkonnens in underestimating them(consider them to be savages ) 

Edited February 8 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[TheLastWolf]

20 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Inherent racism on part of the  Harkonnens in underestimating them(consider them to be savages ) 

The EIC and The Crown sure didn't make that mistake with us didn't they...

If only it hadn't happened the other way, petty feuding elitist pricks playing at the game way out of their depth

[Veltigar]

I watched Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest. If you are going to watch it, you already know what it is about, but to safeguard the rare chance that someone walks into this without knowing what it's about, I'll not go into details on the subject matter.

In general, I would say that I found it a very unsettling and thought-provoking film. Definitely not something I'll pop in for a casual view, but the way it approached its subject matter so frank and matter-of-factly was illuminating. The way this was shot, with a bunch of stationary camera's all rolling, as if it was a nature documentary really added to the naturalism of the picture. 

A lot has been said about the sound design, and reading some of the trivia on IMDB, it really was very eery. I think this film will probably be used a lot in history or ethics classes. Definitely worth watching.

[Argonath Diver]

On 2/6/2024 at 3:10 AM, Derfel Cadarn said:

*Stares at the bold*

Dang, until you quoted it, I thought he was saying Swearington reminded him of far older TV. 

*Stares off into the dark*

[Ramsay B.]

1 hour ago, Veltigar said:

I watched Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest. If you are going to watch it, you already know what it is about, but to safeguard the rare chance that someone walks into this without knowing what it's about, I'll not go into details on the subject matter.

In general, I would say that I found it a very unsettling and thought-provoking film. Definitely not something I'll pop in for a casual view, but the way it approached its subject matter so frank and matter-of-factly was illuminating. The way this was shot, with a bunch of stationary camera's all rolling, as if it was a nature documentary really added to the naturalism of the picture. 

A lot has been said about the sound design, and reading some of the trivia on IMDB, it really was very eery. I think this film will probably be used a lot in history or ethics classes. Definitely worth watching.

I saw this yesterday. It was an interesting take on the events of that time. Mild spoilers I guess-

Spoiler

I liked Glazer’s decision to not to show any of the true horrors that went on as it was shot from the main character’s safe POV beyond the wall.  The family is obviously still impacted from the smells and sounds but just carry on their callous ways. He captures it beautifully. What a truly insane time.
 

Wish I knew what the mother wrote before leaving, and the apple girl sequences were well done.

Glazer is 3-3 with me. I’ve never seen Birth, but he’s also directed a bunch of good music videos too looking at his IMDB page now.

[TheLastWolf]

1 hour ago, Argonath Diver said:

Dang, until you quoted it, I thought he was saying Swearington reminded him of far older TV. 

*Stares off into the dark*

If it's any consolation to you senior citizens. I'd vouch ya'll are young at heart 

Or maybe its just I've too much of a boomer in me to fit in with my generation whatever they call themselves now

Edited February 8 by TheLastWolf

[Veltigar]

47 minutes ago, Ramsay B. said:

Glazer is 3-3 with me. I’ve never seen Birth, but he’s also directed a bunch of good music videos too looking at his IMDB page now.

I loved Under the Skin and this film was also well worth my time, so I think I will indeed do my best to watch Sexy Beast and Birth in the near future.

Didn't know he did music videos before, but I see on IMDB he's done the Into My Arms video for Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. That's very cool.

50 minutes ago, Ramsay B. said:

 

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I liked Glazer’s decision to not to show any of the true horrors that went on as it was shot from the main character’s safe POV beyond the wall.  The family is obviously still impacted from the smells and sounds but just carry on their callous ways. He captures it beautifully. What a truly insane time.
 

Wish I knew what the mother wrote before leaving, and the apple girl sequences were well done.

 

Spoiler

I have no way of knowing what Heidi's mother wrote, but to me this subplot further emphasized the moral depravity of the nuclear Höss family. When Heidi's mother arrives, she's quickly revealed to be a grasping, callous antisemite. For the rest we only hear that she was poor when Heide was young and is now deeply proud of her daughter's idyllic home.

And then the next time we see her, some time has passed and she's coughing like crazy. Then she looks at the smoke stack of Auschwitz in terror, after which she disappears like a thief in the night. For me that clearly shows that even amongst the actual Nazi's, the Höss family had become uniquely malignant, growing more cruel and desensitized over the years like a human embodiment of cancer. Always trying to grow the camp, always trying to further the perverted genocidal aims of Nazism.

About the Apple girl, she was based on a real person (they even used that person's dress and bike in the film, as Glazer was able to meet her before her death). IMDB reveals that those sequences were shot with an infrared camera. We're literally seeing heat rendered on screen, which is fitting since the girl is the only real source of human 'warmth' in the film.

What I also like however, and which further adds to the complexity of the film and its condemnation of Höss, is the fact that the apples she left didn't always have positive consequences. At one point, you hear in the background that some prisoners are fighting over an apple and Höss has the offender drowned in the river.

This is of course not something you can blame the girl for, her heart is pure and her food will have helped a great deal, but it does show that even here the metastasized Höss can intervene to pervert even a small act of human kindness.

 

[Ramsay B.]

Sexy Beast is a must watch. It actually has a series now on Showtime, or something, which I randomly came upon the other day. It’s not getting the best of reviews though, and the few minutes I did watch were meh. They used a quote from the movie that was so forced and came off cringey as hell. But anyways, the movie is great.

[Ran]

Sexy Beast is indeed fantastic. Ben Kingsley is incredible in it. The Zone of Interest premieres here tomorrow, think I will try to watch it next week.

[Zorral]

7 hours ago, Veltigar said:

Definitely not something I'll pop in for a casual view, but the way it approached its subject matter so frank and matter-of-factly was illuminating. The way this was shot, with a bunch of stationary camera's all rolling, as if it was a nature documentary really added to the naturalism of the picture. 

In the NYT review, the writer quotes Hannah Arendt:

Spoiler

Quote

... Glazer emphasizes just how commonplace this world is, a mundanity that evokes what Hannah Arendt, in writing about the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the organizers of the Holocaust, famously called the “banality of evil.”  ...

IOW, this is how so many have lived and continue to do right now -- next door to evil, not noticing, not affected, until suddenly -- !!!!!!!!!  And then, deny any of this was going on, and anyway, "I didn't see it so I have no responsibility and should not be blamed or suffer consequences."

 

[BigFatCoward]

Moana 2 coming out in November. Hope my daughter wants to go see it so I don't look like a nonce. 

[Ran]

Tokyo Vice returns for its second (and very probably last, reading the tea leaves) season, opening with the first two episodes. Maybe in the US HBO Max had a recapper of some sort, but here in Sweden they did not, so I had to quickly refresh myself with random wikis and articles and a few skips around last season's episodes to get caught up (particularly on what happened to Sato at the end of the first season). So far, pretty solid, but still doesn't really rise to the promise of that first, Michael Mann-directed episode.

Also rewatched Jackie Brown, easily my second favorite Tarantino film. That soundtrack, the world-weariness of RObert Forster and Pam Grier... perfection.

Most of the way through a rewatch of The Favourite, after recently seeing Poor Things. Totally forgot that he did the first extended loopy dance sequence in this film, that he then makes a real centerpiece of the latest film. And thinking about the dancing in The Great, I'm guessing this is more a McNamara thing that Lanthimos likes to indulge.

[horangi]

I finally wrapped up Three Body (the Chinese version) and was generally impressed.  They stuck very close to the book from what I can remember, but reordered some of the flashbacks to really focus on the crime detective story before the big reveal.  This worked well for the first half of the series but had the impact of dragging down a few episodes about 3/4 into it when it went back and filled in some of the parts of the book that would have interrupted the detective story at that time:

Spoiler

After the revelation of alien interference, they spend a couple dull episodes recounting Professor Ye's hard childhood and the murder of her husband.  You are being invaded by aliens and the global military command decides to put that aside for a while to solve a murder from 30 years ago? I used the 10 second skip a lot for those couple of episodes to get past the boring interpersonal drama, which works well since that's about the length of time a set of subtitles are up on screen. 

The special effects were competent enough given the needs of the story and I liked the main cast.  They also toned down the pretty blatant misogyny that is rife through the written series.

I am curious just how much will be cut from the Netflix version.  This one is 30 episodes of about 45 minutes each.  While they could have cut it down by getting rid of the musical montages and the reoccurring scenes were people spend a couple minutes espousing their fears and sadness over booze, the book does have a lot of ground to cover if Netflix is going to try and do it in 8 episodes.  My guess is the Cultural Revolution stuff will get the axe due to the lack of historical connection to the average westerner. 

[Nictarion]

Watched the Japanese horror/comedy One Cut of the Dead. What an absolute gem of a little film. It’s impossible to describe why it’s so good without spoiling it, but I can’t recommend it enough. 

Spoiler

The final scene where the director shows his daughter that they recreated the picture of her on his shoulders hit me right in the feels. Such a wholesome ending. This turned out to be so much more fun than I expected. 

 

[DMC]

Just caught the last half of Rudy.  Didn't realize til now the antagonistic head coach is Connie Hilton in Mad Men (played by Chelcie Ross).

[Zorral]

The First True Detective’s Legacy Lives On in Monsieur Spade
The detective prestige drama you should be watching now instead of True Detective: Night Country.

https://slate.com/culture/2024/02/true-detective-season-1-4-night-country-monsieur-spade-amc.html

The conclusion says what I've been wondering all along concerning Monsieur Spade, which I'm liking so much.

Quote

.... In a just universe, maybe Clive Owen’s Monsieur Spade, a rich, flawlessly crafted show, would have the plum Sunday night slot on HBO, with all the benefits of HBO budgets and the HBO promotional machine. (Instead, I had to learn about the show two days before it premiered, from a random post on X asking why there hadn’t been any advertising for the show.) But life, let alone showbiz, isn’t fair, which is why the best Sunday night prestige show is stuck on AMC+, the streaming equivalent of Siberia, while its chillier hard-boiled cousin limps along in the spotlight.

Though ... I'm watching Monsieur Spade on Acorn TV, not on AMC, which subscription to I canceled last year because I never have and never will watch Walking Dead or most of anything that AMC puts up.  The stuff that I would like to watch comes so rarely -- and is very good generally -- and now they've made this deal with Acorn so I didn't miss this.

I'm getting very close to dropping MAX/HBO too.  The vast majority of what they offer as 'new' is sports, cooking, home and garden, etc. which I never ever watch either.  The content I do like is getting  rare.  And the latest gambit is removing from the TMC offerings anything made after 1933. And Amazon is pushing an enormous amount of xtian crap.

Edited February 10 by Zorral

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

Just caught the last half of Rudy.  Didn't realize til now the antagonistic head coach is Connie Hilton in Mad Men (played by Chelcie Ross).

I just crack up at Montana shitting on the movie. 

[DMC]

9 minutes ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

I just crack up at Montana shitting on the movie. 

I don't really remember Montana playing on the Niners.  I do remember him playing on the Chiefs, which is why I've always liked the Chiefs.  He was my dad's favorite growing up so I took my queue from him.  But, generally, he's always seemed like kind of a dick.  Give me the scion of one of the founders of the LDS!

[williamjm]

On 2/9/2024 at 1:09 AM, horangi said:

I finally wrapped up Three Body (the Chinese version) and was generally impressed.  They stuck very close to the book from what I can remember, but reordered some of the flashbacks to really focus on the crime detective story before the big reveal.  This worked well for the first half of the series but had the impact of dragging down a few episodes about 3/4 into it when it went back and filled in some of the parts of the book that would have interrupted the detective story at that time:

  Reveal hidden contents

After the revelation of alien interference, they spend a couple dull episodes recounting Professor Ye's hard childhood and the murder of her husband.  You are being invaded by aliens and the global military command decides to put that aside for a while to solve a murder from 30 years ago? I used the 10 second skip a lot for those couple of episodes to get past the boring interpersonal drama, which works well since that's about the length of time a set of subtitles are up on screen. 

The special effects were competent enough given the needs of the story and I liked the main cast.  They also toned down the pretty blatant misogyny that is rife through the written series.

I am curious just how much will be cut from the Netflix version.  This one is 30 episodes of about 45 minutes each.  While they could have cut it down by getting rid of the musical montages and the reoccurring scenes were people spend a couple minutes espousing their fears and sadness over booze, the book does have a lot of ground to cover if Netflix is going to try and do it in 8 episodes.  My guess is the Cultural Revolution stuff will get the axe due to the lack of historical connection to the average westerner. 

I think it would be a shame if they lost the Cultural Revolution plotline, since I thought that was one of the more interesting parts of the story and something that did make it feel different from English-language SF.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

I don't really remember Montana playing on the Niners.  I do remember him playing on the Chiefs, which is why I've always liked the Chiefs.  He was my dad's favorite growing up so I took my queue from him.  But, generally, he's always seemed like kind of a dick.  Give me the scion of one of the founders of the LDS!

I don't remember him at all. I barely remember Young. But Montana was the QB on that ND team and has said before that a lot of the movie is pure fiction. Also IIRC the real life Rudy wasn't the greatest guy. 

Anyways, I never cared for the movie. Football movies typically aren't good much like basketball movies and file it along with Hoosiers as being incredibly overrated. Baseball movies tend to be the best of the three IMO.