ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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The Starship Troopers test is my go-to IMDB metric - if a movie ties or surpasses the IMDB score for Starship Troopers (at last check a 7.1), and you're interested in it, it's worth taking a chance on.

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I really have a problem with watching movies and series that feature lots of potentially awkward and embarrassing character interactions. When I feel those coming up I cringe, turn away or close my eyes. Now I'm watching two shows, Looking and Transparent, that are of this kind. I constantly take breaks from them in the middle of an episode. :/

 

That is me with Jane the Virgin and Crazy ex-girlfriend at the moment, also the old HBO show Enlightened . Alot of stopping the episode to do something else for 5 minutes. On the other hand the moments when things go right are a joy.

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Fuck me, it's been a while since I've been deeply affected by a movie. I came out of that movie shell shocked.

 

One thing that really grabbed me was the sound design. The film is shot completely in close-up, which gives it a very distorting feel and you get lost easily. You're moving around the camp seeing its different components, but you only see bits and pieces of it and the rest is hidden or distorted, that's when the sound design comes in. It fills the hidden and distorted. I felt like I could envision what the camp looked like through the sounds and what was going on within the camp. Not a lot of films can pull this off, but a film that restricts your vision needs that extra help hand to show you its environment.

 

Another thing that really grabbed me was how lived in the world and its characters felt. Everything had its place, its schedule, its way of life and we are jumping in a time where that routine is going to be broken or changed; its all distorting and it's up to us to fill in what's going on and get into the groove of the lives of the Sonderkommandos. There are random prayers, conversations, dinners and the like that has no bearing on the plot or the characters but are there to make the world alive and breathing. Is this making sense? I'm having a hard time trying to articulate this idea.

 

Son of Saul is a modern masterpiece and if its playing near you, go watch it.

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I've been trying to decide whether I want to watch Son of Saul for a while now. I've heard such positive things about it (from an execution standpoint, rather than "enjoyment") and I think it could be a film that's really worth watching, but I have such an up and down history with the Holocaust that I'm not sure I can handle it at the moment. Between learning about it in history class, watching Band of Brothers for the first time, finally visiting the concentration camp at Dachau near my family's home, etc. it always seems to pop up at times in my life when I'm trying to figure out whether I still consider myself German, what that means, whether things like the rise of Naziism (?) and the Holocaust have any bearing on my identity, and so on.

 

Anyway, without going into too much detail about my specific psychology, Son of Saul is definitely the poster film at the moment for the phenomenon of a work that seems like it almost carries a moral imperative to be experienced, but at the same time you just know is not going to make for a fun evening.

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Just binged through all of Bojack Horseman. I enjoyed it a lot. It pushes a lot of the buttons that Duckman and Archer did for me, but explores enough newish ground that it felt really with watching.

Also my favourite intro sequence since that serial killer killing serial killers thing, the name escapes me.

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Dexter? It had a real good intro. And I like Bojack's too. Bojack is a good show. I wasn't into it at the start but I enjoyed it more when I wasn't thinking of it as a comedy, just a show that has some jokes.

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Dexter? It had a real good intro. And I like Bojack's too. Bojack is a good show. I wasn't into it at the start but I enjoyed it more when I wasn't thinking of it as a comedy, just a show that has some jokes.

Dexter! That's the one, thanks. HArd to remember because the Cartoon Network show has occupied that title in my mind.

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I just saw Krull in 70mm. Krull! There is no film I have ever seen that more resembles a D&D campaign than Krull, in that it is leisurely paced and arbitrarily about fetching things and there's a battle with a giant spider and a childish sense of humor.

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I saw Wings of Desire just now and The Turin Horse earlier this week. Both are masterpieces but a bit heavy (especially The Turin Horse -- I can still feel it's weight on me), and now I have a feeling I should watch something lighter for a change.

 

Also now having seen these and all the Tarkovsky movies I feel like my favourites in letterboxd is getting outdated, but I'm also finding it increasingly difficult to select just 4 favourites.

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Last night I watched Coppola's 'One from the Heart', from 1981. Am I alone in thinking this is an absolutely incredible piece of work? As a piece of drama, it's a bit dull, with a pervasive sense of deliberate superficiality; but gosh, as a work of pure cinema, it looks glorious.

 

The whole thing was shot on giant sound stages in a hyper-gaudy, excessively detailed replica of Las Vegas. It went horribly over-budget, and boy, you can tell. It's full of beautifully crafted and entirely gratuitous in-camera special effects: rear projection, dissolving walls, Pepper's Ghost, forced perspective, and probably more miniature buildings than Blade RunnerNobody is ever going to make a film that looks like that again. It might be worth watching for that reason alone.

 

And that's not even counting the soundtrack by Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle, which has some of his loveliest straight blues songs before he went all Captain Beefheart.

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You, the Living is an excellent comedy! I don't know how to easily view it, though. There's an Artificial Eye Blu-Ray set of the trilogy which it is part of (including Pigeon Sat ...), but reading some forum comments it appears to be a really crappy quality transfer.

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I love Bojack's intro. I've even bought the song digitally, it's great.

 

That opening is fantastic as is the ending.

 

Bojack part of an interseting trend with   'comedy' shows in recent years - a focus on characters with mental health issues that is decently done, often part of  shows about L.A is a terrible place and shows that are 'cynically sincere' .

 

Started watching the original x-files using this article that rank all the episodes. I plan to stick to the top 75 supplemented by the av re-watch reviews. I listened/read Vince Gilligan talking about his time on the show and one of the things he mentioned really influencing him is the shows focus on direction that was uncommon at the time and it is really obvious when watching this alongside Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 the former which is very statically shot with all the focus on the writing.

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I don't care about the Oscars but what the fuck? Mark Rylance!? Jesus.

 

you fucking guys why do you do this

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Does Parks & Recreation get better after the first season? I watched through Season 1 and it's not bad, but I feel like my time would be better spent watching something else, like Archer for example.

 

[edit]The Rotten Tomatoes rating goes way up between S1 and S2 so that's a good sign.

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