What You Are Watching, Have Watched, And Will Watch: Now More Obvious

[HyacinthGirl]

Started watching Battlestar Galactica after one of my very drunk friends really sold it to me at a NYE party. I'm four episodes into season 2 and I'm digging it. It's not great television, but it is remarkably watchable and entertaining, like a soap opera crossed with Rome set in space.

The BSG watching led me to comment that I had never seen Stand and Deliver, so that was rectified Tuesday night.

I'm also just watching BSG for the first time :) reached S3. Someone told me it started to go downhill at S2, but they were completely wrong, S2 is easily as good as S1.

Did you watch the miniseries?

[WarGalley]

Whatever was up w/ my cable has reverted, so I've got all of Dexter back. Just finished S4 last night. :stunned:

Definitely one of the better season finales in television imo. That season as a whole was great and largely due to John Lithgow's Arthur Mitchell.. the character, the acting, his history and how it shaped him .. fantastic.

[Pinkie Baelish]

Watching:

Breaking Bad(best show on TV, imo)

Homeland

Community

Parks and Recreation(occasionaly)

Game of Thrones

Watched:

Arrested Development

Lost(most of it except for the last season or 2)

Will Watch(when I have more time:)

Mad Men

Dexter

The Wire

Louie

The Sopranos

The Shield

Deadwood

[Isis]

This week I've been to see Zero Dark Thirty and What Richard Did. The former, which I talked about in the dedicated thread, I found myself feeling pretty ambivalent about. It was a great documentary. The latter, was actually much more discussion-inspiring than the former. How much blame can one person have laid on them for an incident involving a group of people? Do we feel less or more sympathy for a privileged person who has led a seemingly harmless, blameless life to date? Questions, questions - for me, if I'm asking questions that I can't fully answer after coming out of the cinema then I've seen a good film.

I just watched Shallow Grave for the first time. My goodness, I wasn't sure if I was going to manage to watch it at all as Ewan McGregor's character's every utterance was like nails down a blackboard to me. Jfc, what a horrendously annoying twat! But once it got going that aspect was diluted out. Yes, it's a decent British thriller, which I can finally tick off my the list.

Now just sitting down to watch Paddy Considine's Dead Man's Shoes. I've seen Tyrannosaur. it can't be as bleak as that, right? :)

[Shryke]

I think there's a certain extent to which people let their dislike of Tarantino the person (and yeah, he's an arsehole) get tangled up in their assessment of Tarantino the filmmaker. Yes, all the criticisms raised about structural issues are fair, but every director has their flaws (seriously, you're talking about badly structured films and your counter-example is Christopher Nolan)? I don't think they're near enough to make him a bad director or, in my opinion, a less than great one.

Nolan has many flaws too, but they are different ones then Tarantinos.

If there's one thing Nolan can do, it's structure a tight, gripping and cohesive narrative. Something like The Dark Knight is a almost a gold-standard for this kind of thing

[Roose Seal]

Nolan has many flaws too, but they are different ones then Tarantinos.

If there's one thing Nolan can do, it's structure a tight, gripping and cohesive narrative. Something like The Dark Knight is a almost a gold-standard for this kind of thing

You're thinking of David Fincher :P

[Pinkie Baelish]

I love Nolan's work, but the Dark Knight is anything but tight. There are often gaping plot holes in his films.

[Shryke]

I love Nolan's work, but the Dark Knight is anything but tight. There are often gaping plot holes in his films.

You are completely mistaken about what tight means.

The Dark Knight is gripping and maintains it's sense of tension as it moves from set piece to set piece to finale.

That in retrospect you might look back and go "Hey, that seems kinda convenient/contrived" is utterly irrelevant to how tight the script is. And really, just altogether irrelevant.

[One of Three]

I think there's a certain extent to which people let their dislike of Tarantino the person (and yeah, he's an arsehole) get tangled up in their assessment of Tarantino the filmmaker. Yes, all the criticisms raised about structural issues are fair, but every director has their flaws (seriously, you're talking about badly structured films and your counter-example is Christopher Nolan)? I don't think they're near enough to make him a bad director or, in my opinion, a less than great one.

OK if you want a better example than Christopher Nolan - Stanley Kubrick then, who was a massive perfectionist and did everything on his films yet, although there were some rememable scenes in all his films, his films were had well a thought out coherent structure and narrative. Now he WAS a film maker. Tarantino is a great director, not a great film maker and for me, there's a great difference between the two. I cannot comment on how he is as a person because I've not met him, although he sometimes does not come off well in interviews. As I say I do like some of films. They are enjoyable and I always look forward to the next one, but I believe he can do better, then he's done over last decade.

The whole thing about soundtracks and composers is a particularly strange one- whatever his reasons are for doing it, you can't say that's a reason he's bad, because whatever else there is to say about his films, when one comes out, it's invariably a contender for soundtrack of the year.

I'm not saying he's bad for doing and not saying his films are bad because of it, I'm using it to illustrate a point of how much Tarantino is so self indulgent that he believes something is a problem when it's not.

Anyway, I think I've said enough on this.

[Isis]

Now just sitting down to watch Paddy Considine's Dead Man's Shoes. I've seen Tyrannosaur. it can't be as bleak as that, right? :)

Ok, I was wrong about that. It's just as bleak.

[polishgenius]

If there's one thing Nolan can do, it's structure a tight, gripping and cohesive narrative. Something like The Dark Knight is a almost a gold-standard for this kind of thing

The Dark Knight is very, very good in that respect, but the boat scene is both too long and redundant, which blots its copybook a tiny bit - it's no Matrix (or Kick-Ass :P). Memento is basically perfection as pacing and structure goes, though.

Inception, on the other hand, is lumbered with a bloated and unwieldy finale, which comes on the end of an otherwise lean film for added obviousness, and one of the many, many things wrong with TDKR is that the momentum has to stop in the middle after a good buildup. Which was on purpose and would have been fine if the story that was trying to serve had been good (pacing isn't everything, but since it wasn't, it's very notable.

I haven't seen Tyrannosaur. Dead Man's Shoes is awesome though, I really should watch some more Shane Meadows films.

[Arya Stalka]

Dexter. Love that show. S1 will always be the best season. Love Masuka, Batista, Harry, Deb and Doakes was hilarious.

John Lithgo was awesome as the Trinity killer. I'm sad there's only one season left.

[andrew_]

Just woke up and read the reaction to my comments on Django and Tarantino himself and the fact remains that he makes some of the most entertaining films of this generation (no matter the opinion of some pretentious film students who think they might know everything there is to know about cinema). Django ranks up there with Inglorious Basterds as equal second behind Pulp Fiction as his best. I love the fact that he brings the best out of his actors as well, I mean Christoph Waltz as Colonel Hans Lander in Inglorious Basterds is probably my favorite villain of the past decade, he was mesmerizing.

[WillWork4NinjaPowers]

Watched: Luther, Hell on Wheels, Line of Duty (Hulu)

Watching: Downton Abbey, Spy (Hulu), Beauty and the Beast, Arrow, Vampire Diaries, Mindy Project, Ben & Kate, New Girl, Being Human

Will: The Americans

[Guest]

Dexter. Love that show. S1 will always be the best season. Love Masuka, Batista, Harry, Deb and Doakes was hilarious.

John Lithgo was awesome as the Trinity killer. I'm sad there's only one season left.

OK, so I just finished S4 for the first time. Have they announced that S8 will be the final?

[Arya Stalka]

OK, so I just finished S4 for the first time. Have they announced that S8 will be the final?

Yes, I'm pretty sure. My sis just started watching and was bummed. It's an awesome show. I believe Micheal C Hall wants to work on films/big screen stuff.

[Melonica Stormborn]

Watched The Impossible last night. What a traumatic and depressing tear-jerker in a good way, I guess? I am not sure if it's due to the filmmaking or the subject of human annihilation, it had a high emotional impact.

Cons: Ewan McGregor's acting is not doing it for me and the style used in the dream sequence during Naomi Watts' surgery is out of place, especially the Gatorade-like commercial.

[Durckad]

Django, for me, was pretty damn entertaining but still disappointing and way too damn long. Also, most of the scenes and characters seemed a bit like pale shadows from previous Tarantino movies.

[RedEyedGhost]

Yes, I'm pretty sure. My sis just started watching and was bummed. It's an awesome show. I believe Micheal C Hall wants to work on films/big screen stuff.

Wait till you get to season 6 and the last part of seven. You'll be begging for it to end.

[Dr Adder]

just finished watching the last episode of The Bridge, fricken blew me away. Now going on an anime kick.