ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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Pacific Rim 2 is happening! I re-watched the first one and it's still ace. If only they'd cut out the

scientist-goes-to-Hong-Kong-to-meet-Ron-Perlman thread - just have the JJ Abrams scientist connect with the kaiju brain right at the end and get the pertinent info immediately -

it would have felt a lot tighter and the sub-Top Gun stuff elsewhere would have gone down smoother.

I sort of agree, but then you wouldn't have gotten to see Ron Perlman.

 

Also I've been watching a bunch of Columbo. It's pretty hokey and sometimes lulls into boredom (like most things from the 70s), but boy do I love seeing Peter Falk stumble around and hold his hand to his head.

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I'm interested in getting into David Lynch more. So far I've seen Twin Peaks and The Elephant Man, which are apparently his most accessible works. Anyone have any favorite Lynch films?

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Also I've been watching a bunch of Columbo. It's pretty hokey and sometimes lulls into boredom (like most things from the 70s), but boy do I love seeing Peter Falk stumble around and hold his hand to his head.

 

I feel like Columbo probably deserves a reboot more than most mystery shows: its central premise is of a very blue collar policeman, when most mystery shows these days tend to star highly intelligent and skilled investigators who are difficult to work with. Making a show about the guys who exist in all those other shows solely to make the protagonist look clever is appealing, but then I've always wanted an Ace Attorney-style show from the point of view of the defence lawyers in Law and Order.

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I'm interested in getting into David Lynch more. So far I've seen Twin Peaks and The Elephant Man, which are apparently his most accessible works. Anyone have any favorite Lynch films?

 

If you want to continue in the order of most accessible, Blue Velvet is the next. Traditional noirish thriller that slides into nightmare territory before you even realize it. Eraserhead has a reputation for being insane and experimental but it's actually incredibly straight-forward, thematically. That's a great one. 

 

A lot of people really like Wild at Heart but I find it incredibly dumb and irritating. Again, not hard to follow with a traditional narrative, but I find it impossible to care about any of the characters. Your mileage may vary.

 

Lost Highway is a bit harder to follow. Great moments but again, I find it very hit or miss. 

 

Mulholland Drive is great but it is essentially a puzzle. If you aren't opposed to having something explained to you, Film Crit Hulk wrote a very good article about his interpretation.

 

And I'll throw this in here because it's actually one of my favorite David Lynch movies, despite being a minute long and silent. It was shot on the same camera the Lumière brothers used. It is briefly not save for work.

 

 

EDIT: And the brief moment it is NSFW is the thumbnail. Ok, I'll just make it a link.

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I've been watching a lot of Columbo the last few months and I love it. I just got to the episode with William Shatner a few nights ago and I think it's my new favorite.

I would hate to see a reboot as I just can't see the show without Peter Falk, but I guess that probably just makes me close-minded.

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I feel like Columbo probably deserves a reboot more than most mystery shows: its central premise is of a very blue collar policeman, when most mystery shows these days tend to star highly intelligent and skilled investigators who are difficult to work with. Making a show about the guys who exist in all those other shows solely to make the protagonist look clever is appealing, but then I've always wanted an Ace Attorney-style show from the point of view of the defence lawyers in Law and Order.

That sounds great really. I don't know if there's an actor that could top Peter Falk, but I would maybe like a version with less hokey murders and leave all the hokey parts solely to Columbo getting distracted and asking about the suspect's fireplace or something. I didn't realize the classism until the second season when I noticed all of the episodes so far involved rich criminals and luxury type locations. Not sure if that formula is broken ever, but it's a different choice than what I would have expected.

 

If they rebooted it, they'd just need someone who is just as nice and welcoming, no Dr. House.

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I think, if you were to do a Columbo reboot, you'd have to manage the legacy of the character. Peter Falk owned that character, and you don't want to be running a show where the lead actor's being judged on their ability to mimic Peter Falk. Columbo's mannerisms don't matter so much as how they make him look like an incompetent cop who's clearly having trouble dealing with the tangled web of lies the villain has woven. I'd almost say that you call it a Columbo remake in the promotional material and then name it something completely different with a different protagonist with the same basic hook, but 'Columbo' is a great name (I wouldn't be surprised if it was a portmanteau of 'Columbia' and 'dumbo'. Maybe 'Justamble'? Little on the nose).

 

 

If they rebooted it, they'd just need someone who is just as nice and welcoming, no Dr. House.

 

Well, House is very openly a medical Holmes, so if that's what they do then they've fucked up and probably should have just adapted Holmes again. Or Poirot; there's lots to mine in Poirot.

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Is anyone watching Halt and Catch Fire?

 

Watching the intro, I will now. That's some stellar stuff.

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I sort of agree, but then you wouldn't have gotten to see Ron Perlman.

 

I love Perlman, but his character in that was all wardrobe and props.

 

RE. Lynch, wouldn't The Straight Story be one of his most accessible films?

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Oh yeah, I guess that's true. I always forget it because I don't like it very much. But that's very accessible.

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I watched Bernie last night, Richard Linklater's "true crime" examination of a mortician who murdered a widow he had befriended.  Went looking for info to see how accurate the movie was, and found out that the case has gotten even weirder in the 2 years since the movie was released.  There was a new appeal and new evidence was introduced because people became interested in the story after the film.  His sentence ended up reduced to time served, and Bernie was released on bond pending an approval of the new sentence in May of this year.  He's moved in with Linklater as he gets settled back into life as a free man. 

 

It's an interesting movie.  I think the editing and structure could have been improved to make it more entertaining, but the movie is split between interviews with actual people from the town and "re-enactments" with Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey and Shirley McClain.  I can see why Linklater wanted to include all the footage of the actual residents of town even if it drags at times.  Some of those people are absolute treats, the kind of real characters I remember from growing up in a small town. 

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I watched Bernie sometime last year, as I recall it was a fairly enjoyable film. I liked it, but it definitely felt like it dragged on. I think what really kept me interested was that it was based on real events.

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Holy shit. I just saw a tv spot for the new planet of the apes and it shocked me, wow. Never has such a short snippet of a film had such an effect on me. I'll try and find it

Here it is

Ah, the end wasn't cut like that on tv which made it way more effective, and obviously that stupid thumbnail is a massive give away. But yeah. I'm in! I've actually got some free cinemas tickets from a Facebook competition that my local cinema runs every week and not to be all mr boasty big bollocks but I think I could quite easily win tickets every week, shame there's fuck all on

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Wow I actually really liked that. Man.

 

I've never seen a Planet of the Apes movie. Not a one.

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Started watching The Leftovers on hbo.  They've got two episodes so far.  Feels more like a 1-hour mystery/drama on network television rather than an HBO SHOW.  The setup is pretty interesting, but has so-so execution.  Happy to see Paterson Joseph (Alan Johnson on Peep Show) getting a role that suits his craziness (though I'm not terribly jazzed about that particular storyline).  Considering how disappointing Lost was moment-to-moment, I'm giving this show two more episodes to get me to care about anything more than the over-arching mystery otherwise it's a goner!

 

Birthday Boys on Netflix (IFC originally) is pretty fantastic.  They tend to favor "joke dump" sketches, which I have no problem with.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbxWxmidfQ4&feature=kp

 

I can count now at least 3 recent sketch/sketch-ish shows whose voice seems focused entirely on spoofing old and new television shows.  BDay Boys, Comedy Bang Bang, and Kroll Show all kind of do the same thing.  I don't mind the voice, it's just weird that they're all from the same LA comedy scene, doing a similar goofs, and that they're all guesting on each others shows!

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I've seen the prequel. Dawn of the Planet of the Babes: Pigs in the City

What's happening?

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Huh, I'd say Lost was at its best on a moment-to-moment basis and sucked at the grand scale.

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What a shitty attitude for a guy who makes a load of money on films made by these people he "doesn't care at all" about.. Ugh..

 

 

EDIT: Yeah, I agree with Twig, though I didn't think it sucked at a grand scale, but it was definitely great on a moment-to-moment basis.

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He doesn't say he doesn't care about them at all, he just says he doesn't care who did those jobs. He's just doing a grumpy old man rant about how long movie credits are these days.

 

Plus, I don't know if this applies to all those movies, but apparently he doesn't really make anything from them:

 

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/05/15/how-much-did-stan-lee-make-on-the-avengers

 

I also agree with Twig that Lost was great on a moment to moment basis (while disagreeing about the other thing)!

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"Print is so hard to read." Such old man.

 

See, unlike Ubisoft game credits, movies tend to credit people who actually worked on the damn thing. Ubisoft gets away with nearly half hour long credits because everyone at all the 20 companies gets a credit every time.

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Yeah okay "sucked" is a strong word, but it definitely had issues. the first two and a half (or was it three and a half? I can never remember) seasons were almost nothing BUT moment-to-moment as the survivors struggled to survive and lived in constant fear, knowing nothing about anything, and that's when it was at its best. After it introduced all the island mythology and the other factions... Well, that's when it got less good. It didn't suck, sure, but it did significantly drop in quality, and that will always sour my overall opinion of things.

 

Also the old man's right. Credits suck to watch. Anyone who cares about the credits can and probably will find them elsewhere, and read them in their own time. Actually I wouldn't care about the length of credits if these idiots didn't insist on putting largely pointless scenes after the credits that the people I'm watching with always force me to stay and see.

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I think everyone who contributed to a movie should be given credit, but I've always thought that post movie credits did very little for that since most people only take note of the famous actors, director and then maybe the head person of one of the other disciplines, but I've never gotten the sense that the credits really do much to highlight the contributions of low level employees.

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I've heard stories about how if you go to movies in the right part of Los Angeles, you'll hear cheers from members of the audience during the small print credits. It matters to someone.

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