Movie/TV recommendations

[Nappi]

Significantly better, in my opinion. The show really finds its direction during the second season. Hang in there, it is brilliant.

[osmosisch]

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.

Yes, by a mile. I've told most people to just skip S1. They're still finding their feet trying to get out of the shadow of the Office.

[Erkki]

Oh yeah, already digging the first two episodes of S2 more than any in S1.

[tberton]

The very first scene of Parks & Rec Season 2 is funnier than the entirety of Season 1 put together.

[jennegatron]

My favorite episode of the entire show is in season 3 (Soulmates) and I just want to share that joy with everyone.

[Coods]

Parks got so much better when it starts to care less about the mockumentary pretense and decided to make Pawnee the goofiest place on the planet. And even then, there were moments in P&R that out-cringed The Office by a long shot.

[Woodfella]

Going to a mystery screening of a film yet to be released on the UK on Monday. It's cool because the tickets are cheap (£5) and it's nice going on to the screening knowing nothing. They're promising it's something different, stunning and surprising this time. I'm hoping it isn't Anomalisa as I've seen it. They release clues before hand, the first is

"Along the same lines as his china-shop turn"

[BigJKO]

Yessss. I'm all in. Love it. So much slime and color and good ghosts. Sold.

 

[Twig]

Oh my god yes.

[dium]

I just want to say that I think the Kate McKinnon character is one of the coolest looking genre-movie (or genre-anything) characters that I've seen in a while. It's like she took the trope of the kooky gadget genius and said "this is mine now, this is now my archetype" and I was cool with it.

 

Granted this is based on nothing but wardrobe and a bit of emoting in the trailer, so we'll see how long the feeling lasts.

[Ozzie]

this looks good, surprisingly good. i actually want to see this!

[YoThatLimp]

Parks got so much better when it starts to care less about the mockumentary pretense and decided to make Pawnee the goofiest place on the planet. And even then, there were moments in P&R that out-cringed The Office by a long shot.

I have a soft spot for lil' Sebastian

[Patrick R]

I think plinking piano Ghostbusters theme might be the absolute nadir of Hollywood nostalgia surfing. The rest of the trailer is whatever, those are mostly funny people (or all? I don't know Kate McKinnon at all) so I'm sure there are actual funny parts they decided to leave out of the trailer.

BUT THAT GODDAMN PIANO PLINKING HAS TO GO. YOU CANNOT PLINK OUT THE THEME SONG TO SOME MOVIE FROM PEOPLE'S CHILDHOODS AND EXPECT IT TO GIVE IT SOME SORT OF GRAVITAS. 

Wow! This thing I love must be just as important to the studio as it is to me! Because they plunked around the theme on a piano! This is going to be everything I ever dreamed it could be!

 

This and the "

" tropes HAVE TO GO. NO MORE.

[Gormongous]

Wow! This thing I love must be just as important to the studio as it is to me! Because they plunked around the theme on a piano! This is going to be everything I ever dreamed it could be!

 

Yeah, in the case of the Jurassic World version of that, it actually thinned out the heady cocktail of emotions in Williams' original score into just one of them, a sort of watery wistfulness that ironically felt less like Jurassic Park, to me.

[Twig]

what

[Ben X]

Unfunny, irritating characters, and Eddie Murphy's Haunted Mansion looking ghosts. Not promising.

[Mawd]

This and the "

" tropes HAVE TO GO. NO MORE.

 

Holy shades of awful.

[Coods]

do you think they will do another blowjob joke?

[brkl]

Unfunny, irritating characters, and Eddie Murphy's Haunted Mansion looking ghosts. Not promising.

Agreed! I like the actor's, but nothing in that trailer made me smile.

[Cordeos]

I watched the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon sequel that Netflix made last night. It was not very good. The writing was bad, the action scenes were far too busy, the story was predictable, the soundtrack was overbearing. It was also in English which bothered me more than it should. If you are a fan of the first one, just watch the first one again or Hero or pretty much anything else.

[Spenny]

I think plinking piano Ghostbusters theme might be the absolute nadir of Hollywood nostalgia surfing. The rest of the trailer is whatever, those are mostly funny people (or all? I don't know Kate McKinnon at all) so I'm sure there are actual funny parts they decided to leave out of the trailer.

BUT THAT GODDAMN PIANO PLINKING HAS TO GO. YOU CANNOT PLINK OUT THE THEME SONG TO SOME MOVIE FROM PEOPLE'S CHILDHOODS AND EXPECT IT TO GIVE IT SOME SORT OF GRAVITAS. 

Wow! This thing I love must be just as important to the studio as it is to me! Because they plunked around the theme on a piano! This is going to be everything I ever dreamed it could be!

 

This and the "

" tropes HAVE TO GO. NO MORE.

 

I think given that the plink plunk is paired with some stupidly dramatic text which is then followed up by a scene that ends with Kristen Wiig getting slimed, the editor of the trailer is using the plink plink in a way that is intended to be overbearing. You get an intentionally bad nostalgia play, followed up by the actual nostalgia play of a funny person getting covered in goop.

[marblize]

I finally saw Possession and I want to marry it.

 

I haven't read up on it much yet but to me a lot of it felt like characters' ids were on full display, but the times at which each was on display did not sync up with the others, so you'd have one character being totally deadpan and reasonable and one being absolutely wild, and it could be anyone at any moment. And of course, a character being deadpan at a particular time could seem more insane than the character going wild, as going wild might be more appropriate in a given situation.

 

Just, so damn good.

 

And that floating camera was like a more spastic version of Tarkovsky's in The Mirror.

 

I loved the quiet close-up scene punctuation marks. after a highly mobile and choreographed domestic fight, often it would end with a stark, stationary closeup and a single, resonant line.

 

I'm in love.

 

RIP.

[SecretAsianMan]

I watched the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon sequel that Netflix made last night. It was not very good. The writing was bad, the action scenes were far too busy, the story was predictable, the soundtrack was overbearing. It was also in English which bothered me more than it should. If you are a fan of the first one, just watch the first one again or Hero or pretty much anything else.

 

I started it but haven't finished so I don't have an opinion yet but you can change the audio track.  There are multiple languages, including Chinese for both the spoken dialog and the subtitles.

[Patrick R]

I finally saw Possession and I want to marry it.

 

I haven't read up on it much yet but to me a lot of it felt like characters' ids were on full display, but the times at which each was on display did not sync up with the others, so you'd have one character being totally deadpan and reasonable and one being absolutely wild, and it could be anyone at any moment. And of course, a character being deadpan at a particular time could seem more insane than the character going wild, as going wild might be more appropriate in a given situation.

 

Just, so damn good.

 

And that floating camera was like a more spastic version of Tarkovsky's in The Mirror.

 

I loved the quiet close-up scene punctuation marks. after a highly mobile and choreographed domestic fight, often it would end with a stark, stationary closeup and a single, resonant line.

 

I'm in love.

 

RIP.

 

First time I saw Possession was a film print at 3 in the morning as part of a 24 hour horror film festival. I kept fading in and out of consciousness and had a completely screwed up understanding of the structure of the film (I thought it was just this nightmare loop of the first 20 minutes of the film) and didn't know what was real and what I'd imagined.

 

That tunnel scene woke me up though. Holy shit.

[marblize]

That sounds wonderfully nightmarish.

 

Fidelity is streaming on Mubi! I doubt it's as batshit but I'm gonna give it a go soon.