ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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A villain who wants to take over the world is far too cartoonish to be taken seriously.  However everyone can get behind the idea of wanting revenge against someone who was once an asshole to you.  Saving the world is just a bonus.

 

Yeah, but the current trend really tends more towards "someone who tries to get revenge against you by becoming a world-conquering villain." The cartoonishly over-the-top character is still there, only now they're driven to such heights by a (typically hidden) relationship with the protagonist rather than something. It's remarkably effective in some movies, particularly the original Star Wars trilogy (even though there's an argument to be made that the revelation about Vader hamstrings the character in Return of the Jedi), but it doesn't work in others.

 

If I had to hazard another guess, which I'm doing a lot in this thread, I'd say that the reveal of a personal connection between a movie's protagonist and the color-coded embodiment of villany is effective for how it subverts the audience's expectations about the relationship between good and evil, whereas the reveal of a personal connection between two murderous sociopaths, one of which happens to work for a national government and the other of which is a sometime terrorist, is ineffective because it subverts... nothing. It merely confirms the movie's premise about the cruelties of fate in an unsurprising way. It's usually an interesting complication when major characters have relationships beyond the basic action of the plot, but those can't always be a tentpole, yet modern screenwriting seems totally caught up in its efforts to shock and enthrall audiences by making everyone their "father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate." Shrug.

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I watched a few episodes of the new Aziz Ansari show Master of None on Netflix. Good so far, it's a similar sort of thing as Louie but not quite as 'out there'. If you like his stand up stuff then check it out, it has a lot of the same themes but in a light dramatised story format.

 

Watched the first 3 episodes. The first was a bit of a downer, but the second had us laughing so much we knew it was a hit for us.

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Just watched John Wick and wasn't bowled over as everyone else seemed to be. A few cool action moves aside, I felt like I'd seen everything in this film many times before, plus it had a fair few plot-holes. Not as good as, say, Universal Soldier: Regeneration.

 

EDIT:

I also liked the gold coins and the safehouse hotel, although the concept of the latter seemed to fall apart pretty much instantly.

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Does anyone have any recommendations for "quiet" movies that would be good to watch while in this low-energy state?

 

Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy. Maybe Old Joy too. Maybe Zach Braff's Garden State, Taika Waititi's Boy, Eagle vs. Shark.

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The internet seems fixated on the second season of The Leftovers as this remarkable refutation of sophomore slumps, but I feel a little removed from that. Sure, the second season's trimmed away most of the stuff that didn't work — namely the Guilty Remnant, which raised the stakes of the first season's small-town interactions without ever giving a payoff —  and I'm enjoying that a lot, but the show's also had to betray the characters quite a bit to fit into its new setting and tone. The mystery of Miracle, TX is only interesting as long as it remains a mystery, same for the disappearances there that launched this season, and for once it seems that Lindeloff and company are aware of that, but they've accounted for this character- rather than event-centric nature of the show by giving all of their characters a ridiculous laundry list of hidden traumas that are plausible motivations for all kinds of illogical behavior. This latest one, focusing on the hitherto-excellent Nora Durst, is a case in point: the first season saw Durst wrestling with unbelievable trauma that held her constantly at the brink of instability, but the pleasure of her character was seeing how that dysfunction didn't necessarily impede her competency. This season, Durst is still sad and angry, but the first season's finale resolved her reasons for being that way, so she's just sad and angry because that's just her character now, the one who's sad and angry. It makes her so remarkably ineffectual, smashing windows and snapping at people without a hope of getting some resolution, and it's boring to watch. The second season of The Leftovers have a bunch of characters like that, bitter and broken people who aren't really functioning and can't accomplish anything. It lets their actors give some truly powerful performances, but it means that the plot's a bit of a non-starter. I imagine the season will end how it's been progressing so far: characters get into fights with each other where they're forced to reveal the nominal source of their trauma, and then everyone will agree that the big problem's unsolvable when they can't solve each other. Blah.

 

On the other hand, I've just started the second season of The Knick and that's how you move a show forward into a different set of themes and tones. The premiere established where everyone is, whether they're facing their issues or running from them, and planted the seeds of conflicts that will clearly intersect with these characters' issues and force a reckoning. I barely noticed the forty-five minutes go by. It's still a bit too fashionable and sexy for its own good, but it's definitely a show to watch.

 

Is anyone up on the new season of Fargo?

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Oo, new Knick and Fargo? Good to know.

Doctor Who has been so tired, I'm having difficulty motivating myself to watch.

Is anyone watching The Last Kingdom? I'm really liking it, although Danelaw era England is an easy sell.

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Been watching W/ Bob And David on Netflix, and man, it's kinda surprising to me how good this is.  Even if it's also depressing that it's also a bunch of old dudes and also Paul F. Tompkins and Jay Johnston.

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Saw Tangerine yesterday, and it was awesome! At first it seemed like it might not be that great, but it kept getting better towards the end. Also, I've only been to a limited number of places in the US (the bay area), but the streets portrayed there looked much more like the america I've seen than what is mostly shown in movies. Maybe it's also because of it's filmed with iPhones -- the cameras were closer to what the human eye would see compared to normal film cameras.

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Been watching W/ Bob And David on Netflix, and man, it's kinda surprising to me how good this is. Even if it's also depressing that it's also a bunch of old dudes and also Paul F. Tompkins and Jay Johnston.

They're all old! Just some have aged more gracefully.

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Doctor Who has been so tired, I'm having difficulty motivating myself to watch.

Is anyone watching The Last Kingdom? I'm really liking it, although Danelaw era England is an easy sell.

 

Doctor who has had a horrible run this series, perhaps one ,maybe two episodes that really were any good where there was any sense of the situation, characters, or the antagonist being interesting. The rest has either been filler just there to justify bloated two part episodes or like tonight's episodes trying to hard to be clever and falling flat on its face because it doesn't get the basics right.

It certainly feels like the worst series since the modern run started.

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I just saw Heart of a Dog. The single greatest cinematic depiction of memory and the act of remembering that I have ever encountered. Really really powerful and movie documentary/visual essay from Laurie Anderson.

 

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Where are my fellow Mr. Show fans? Netflix dropped With Bob and David on Friday and it is great, though sadly only four episodes.

And a 5th behind the scenes episode! Really enjoyed it, hope they do more

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I started watching Bob and David, and, uh, it seemed super bad? What am I missing?

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I started watching Bob and David, and, uh, it seemed super bad? What am I missing?

 

Probably a sense of humour that is in tune with theirs. Comedy is way more subjective than drama, and it ain't no thing if it ain't your thing.

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It took me about half an episode to warm back up to them. I loved Mr. Show.

 

Part of what appeals to me about their comedy is the way they make 5-6 complete non-sequitur sketches fold together so amazingly. I don't know what makes you laugh, but comedy is hard and doesn't click for everyone.

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Yeah, W/ Bob & David didn't click for me, and I'm totally comfortable with that. I like both of those guys in different contexts and think Brian Posehn & Tom Kenny & Paul F. Tompkins are hilarious in other contexts, but this show is for a different audience than me.

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It's the Black Nights Film Festival and I've managed to schedule 11 movie viewings for this week. Today I had to walk out of one of those, but so far two movies have stood out: one is Tangerine and the other is Anna

 

Also saw a Karel Zeman movie and a documentary about him. Quite interesting to see how he did special effects and how he has influenced Terry Gilliam and others.

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Yesterday was a crappy PÖFF day for me, but today I saw two movies that I really liked.

 

Staying Alive

A comedy about a woman getting divorced from a cheating husband

 

Paradise Suite

For some reason I went in with low expectations, but this was a hell of a movie. It touches the stories of 6 people, dealing with human trafficking, forced prostitution, exploitation of illegal immigrants etc.

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Probably a sense of humour that is in tune with theirs. Comedy is way more subjective than drama, and it ain't no thing if it ain't your thing.

 

The latest thing I learned today is that people actually thought The Soup was a funny show. I watched it a few times and thought all of its humor was corny and super desperate. It was so uncomfortable to watch that I just thought it was some niche show that only managed to stay on the air because kids found it funny or something.

 

But then today, just like with Letterman, I find out that apparently everyone on Earth thought it was the best show ever and the whole internet is in mourning due to the show being canceled. Turns out I'm the idiot and comedy is super fucking weird and subjective.

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I found Mr. Show super hit or miss but enjoyed it's looseness. Bob and David is striking the same chord for me, except I actually laughed out loud a lot more I think.

 

The best Show sketch, I think:

 

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Having a slight movie overdose -- saw 5 movies in the cinema and 3 or so at home during the weekend. One was Fellini's 8 1/2, which I had never seen before. That was pure awesome!

 

In the cine (still PÖFF) the ones I liked most were

 

Guaraní, a road(river) movie about a girl and her granddad making a way to her mother, from somewhere in Paraguay to Buenos Aires.

Stranger, a Kazahstan movie about the soviet collectivization, and mainly about a boy who decides to go live in a cave near his village when his father dies.

Desde Allá was also good.

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