Movie/TV recommendations

[brkl]

It sure looks like CGI. I really liked the movie but hated that shot.

[syntheticgerbil]

I just watched Jalla! Jalla! since I am like the only one in the world who played Brothers A Tale of Two Kitties and then is taking his time to import all of Josef Fares movies. It was pretty straight forward but very cute and well acted. Pretty great for the guy's first directed movie on an obviously low budget. Not as good as Zozo but that's fine.

[BusbyBerkeley]

Rewatched Only Lovers Left Alive this weekend and it's still great. The central premise of vampires being immortal and therefor having infinite free time to study/create art is just so delightful to me. It help that Tilda Swinton is a fucking goddess and kills lines like "I'm a survivor baby' like no one's business. Such a great soundtrack too. Really a great hangout movie, the characters are wonderful.

 

I need to check out more Jarmusch probably, huh?

[Erkki]

I need to check out more Jarmusch probably, huh?

Dead Man is my favorite movie ever! Became a big Jarmusch fan after seeing that. His earlier stuff is awesome: Down by Law, Stranger than Paradise, Mystery Train.

[Gwardinen]

It sure looks like CGI. I really liked the movie but hated that shot.

Yeah, if they went to crazy lengths to shoot that in a different way, they really shouldn't have bothered. It looks like shit. As I believe I mentioned earlier in this thread, it really killed the emotional impact of that moment for me.

[BigJKO]

Yeah, I totally agree. It looked way out of place and I definitely assumed it was just a 3D model on top of what was otherwise a fantastically realistic tumble. It was just weird to learn that it wasn't and a weird choice in a film where the CGI is mostly seamlessly integrated into the film. I had no idea, for example, that most of the canyon stuff had added CGI canyons on them. They did some really good work on that, so the steering wheel is such a weird choice from Miller..

[Ben X]

I think the issue with that shot is that it's so authored (and cheesy). Whether it's a composited live-action element with super-imposed HD photographical elements, or pure CGI, it's still a steering wheel flying directly and face-on into camera. Personally I didn't mind him using that as a full-stop to the sequence, but it certainly stuck out and I can see why a lot of people didn't like it. It's kind of like how Peter Jackson always has his CG creatures run right at camera until the camera is in their mouth in a way that films using real animals can't - it steps over the line into cartoonish for me.

[Merus]

Honestly I thought that the guitar two seconds later was more obnoxious.

[Erkki]

I didn't like that shot either, nor the guitar.

[Bjorn]

Did you guys see this in 2D or 3D?  I'm curious because this thing with the wheel flying at the camera didn't even register with me, at all.  I saw it in 2D.  I went googling to try and figure out where this scene even is, and found several people talking about how distracting/bad it was in 3D. 

[Twig]

I also saw it in 2D and don't remember this thing at all. I imagine, though, it's one of those things that if you see it, it bothers the hell out of you, but if you don't, it's like, "what are you talking about". Shrug!

[jennegatron]

I saw it in 2D, and remember that scene and distinctly remember thinking "I'm really glad I'm not seeing this in 3D as that would have just been blurry as hell for me. Also it would have seemed even cheesier than it already is." (Whenever something comes toward the audience in a 3D movie/game it just gets real blurry for me. I think it's my astigmatism.)

[BigJKO]

I saw it in 2D, and it definitely registered as one of those "In 3-D!" scenes, or like Ben says with Peter Jackson's mouth cam. But yeah, I don't think it's so obnoxious that it's something you definitely would notice (especially since the whole film is very much over the top)

I don't remember an obnoxious guitar shot? Is that in the same shot?

[Ben X]

I saw it in 2D.

 

I think I remember the guitar shot - it kind of bungees towards camera, in the midst of an explosion or something? I didn't find that obnoxious or incongruous or anything.

[Roderick]

I saw it in 3D because I had no choice. Given the choice I'll always pick 2D because I don't like how the glasses shade the film. Especially with visual spectacles it's a goddamn sin to just cut all the vibrancy and color out of the shot.

 

Anyway, I wrote a bit about Fury Road on Filmadeus! I shines a light on the pretttty over and amazing feminist themes in the film. It was really good!

[Bjorn]

I love a lot of the thematic undercurrents. I'm not going to pretend like it's always nuanced in how it approaches things, though it is surprisingly so, and it's layers of additional texture where there didn't have to be. It's also supremely refreshing to see a strong female presence in a huge blockbuster, but there's other things i don't see people talking much about, like Immortant Joe, People Eater, and the Bullet Farmer all being obvious parodies and critiques of blind religion, corrupt business, and unrestrained military. ("Who killed the world?" indeed.)

 

I was going back through this thread, seeing if anyone had talked about Fury Road's themes more in-depth (because seriously, the shit going on in that movie is way more interesting than whether or not a steering wheel flying at the screen looks real or not).  The more I've ruminated on Fury Road over the last couple of days, the more and more impressed with it I am. 

 

Obviously everyone keeps calling it a feminist film, but I went looking for anyone who had explicitely written something about how the entire plot of the movie is about how the Patriarchy and Rape Culture are hunting down women who don't want to be raped anymore.  This is one of the only things I could find that really got into that. 

 

Liss: Uh-huh lol. Speaking of the patriarchy! I loved how the three groups converging on them were essentially: The oligarchic politician, the fuel magnate, and the war machine. The three prongs of the military-industrial-corporate patriarchy. Amazing.

 

And then there's the whole subext of consent, bodily autonomy, and (something I didn't recognize) the rhetoric of the pro-choice movement:

 

Ana: Also, can we talk about the themes of bodily rights? I have seen so many movies where Apocalypse = Rape Land, and I was so thrilled to see that idea expanded on that trope while at the same time fixing a lot of the problems with it. Because, first of all, this isn't Rape Land; Furiosa is a woman who drives a rig and she's respected by her community (and by the men who ride with her). But for the women who are being denied agency, it's so much more nuanced than the trope usually is. There are "breeders," yes. There are also the women who are exploited for milk. And then that was expanded, beautifully, into Max being exploited for blood.

I love that. It's a "the patriarchy hurts you men, too!" message with such a great punch-up. Because Max is the iconic manly loner protagonist of these things and here the movie is saying that even he is not strong enough or fast enough or awesome enough to escape exploitation. He's being used for his body, just like all the other marginalized members of society are being used. To me, he essentially is a male version of the "breeders," and Furiosa is carrying them all to safety (even as all six of her passengers help her and themselves along the way). It's a tremendous look at the ownership of own bodies and labor.

And then? At the end? He saves his tubing. He uses it to save her life. I was stunned to see he saved his tubing—didn't he never want to give blood again after all that?—and then it hit me right there in the theaters that ohmigosh it's a consent metaphor because of course it is. What was done to him wasn't wrong because people shouldn't give blood, but rather it was wrong because people shouldn't take blood. It was subtle and powerful and amazing.

Liss: Maude, yes, the autonomy commentary was brilliant. I kept thinking about how one of the arguments pro-choice advocates always make is that we don't compel anyone else to use their bodies to support the life of another human being, AND THAT WAS THE EXACT SCENARIO IN WHICH OUR HERO FOUND HIMSELF AT THE HANDS OF THE PATRIARCHY. It was a literal translation of that ubiquitous pro-choice hypothetical. Fucking amazing.

How the hell did that end up in a Mad Max movie, for fuck's sake?!

I really want to go back and watch it again, now that I've witnessed the spectacle to watch it more closely. 

[syntheticgerbil]

I also saw it in 2D and don't remember this thing at all. I imagine, though, it's one of those things that if you see it, it bothers the hell out of you, but if you don't, it's like, "what are you talking about". Shrug!

I didn't miss it at all. It stuck out to me and I thought the wheel was a goofy and fun moment. Just a little bit of indulgence for a bit of humor, so that's good. To each their own I suppose.

[Mawd]

I still haven't seen it. Waiting two slow weeks for my B-Day.

I have t kept myself from finding details about it. Can't wait to see mega badass Furiosa. Or the guitar guy haha.

[JonCole]

I've started to rewatch Lost. The pilot episodes are still some of the best TV I've ever seen, really eager to watch the whole series with what I know now.

[agorman]

I've started to rewatch Lost. The pilot episodes are still some of the best TV I've ever seen, really eager to watch the whole series with what I know now.

I've only seen that show once, it ended when I was a sophomore in high school and I haven't seen it since. I loved it at the time but I'm not sure I could revisit it now. (Not a jab, more that I enjoy the distanced youthful lens and memory of it and I think seeing it now I'd start to reevaluate it a lot..though agreed the pilot is a great piece of television)

[Mangela Lansbury]

I still break out the Constant and watch it when I'm feeling down. Lost was terrible sometimes, but it could be some of the best TV around when it hit the mark.

[agorman]

I still break out the Constant and watch it when I'm feeling down. Lost was terrible sometimes, but it could be some of the best TV around when it hit the mark.

Oh yeah I do the same. It's highs are pretty great imo.

Edit: I thought I hadn't watched any Lost since it ended. But I totally have. My memory is horrible

[JonCole]

I was fully in the zeitgeist of that show while it was coming out, I swear that I listened to 3 or 4 concurrently running weekly podcasts discussing the show and its lore. I actually am hoping to view it now with a more critical eye. I'm thinking that I'll come out appreciating it more, there was a ton of backlash around the end of the series but I suspect that there is more connective tissue throughout the series to suggest the ending than is commonly believed. Also, so many of the characters were just so shitty in the end that I really would like to remember some of them being way cooler in earlier seasons.

[Erkki]

I also loved it while it was showing, especially in the beginning. I would totally buy a Blu-Ray with the pilot and then the rest of the series condensed (if that's possible) into 5 or so episodes.

[BobbyBesar]

I also loved it while it was showing, especially in the beginning. I would totally buy a Blu-Ray with the pilot and then the rest of the series condensed (if that's possible) into 5 or so episodes.

Oh man, has anybody actually been crazy enough to do fan-edits of long running TV shows that drop out terrible characters and storylines that don't go anywhere, or condense filler episodes?