ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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I'm watching Dr. Katz for the first time ever and holy shit this show is amazing. I think I saw a few episodes of it back when it was originally on and being put off because of the animation, but now I look at it and it reminds me of a super shitty 90's adventure game in all the right ways. 

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On 10/23/2016 at 10:37 AM, Erkki said:

Don't forget The Big Sleep & The Big Lebowski

 

No, those are part of the "The Big" series, the most recent entry in which is The Big Short.

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@TheLastBaron - oh man!  I was so into Dr Katz in the 90s...  I love that the format of a comedian telling jokes to someone who (mostly) stays in character as a therapist is the ultimate absence of a laugh track.

 

Also the relationship between Dr Katz and Ben has some real depth after they've been making the show for a while.

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Just saw Holy Motors. I think it's probably a movie not everyone is going to love or even like, but man, I was totally taken by it. I didn't even get all the references, some of which I had explained by a YouTube video after watching, but it seems like it could be one of the best films about cinema (I've yet to see a lot of those).

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Coincidence! A few days ago I saw Holy Motors for the first time as well! I'm probably one of the people who wasn't quite smitten by it. It felt like a piece that was structurally like La Grande Bellezza or even Synecdoche New York, a character-driven film that uses surrealism to put forth some thesis. In contrast to those movies however, I felt Holy Motors was a bit too much all over the place to drive home either its meaning or a defining feeling. Something La Grande Bellezza did so very, very well.

 

After watching I was tempted to look up some analysis online, because you can just about feel there's so much under the hood (ha!). I didn't have the time for it, though.

 

 

There were times I was really intruiged while watching. Around the middle part I started suspecting that this was a highly symbolic visualization of how (working) people stitch their lives together with lies and acting and how they're different people in different situations. But the range of scenarios Mr. Oscar is in is just so wild and baffling, that I could never discover the red line. At the end I was bewildered and amused, rather than enlightened. I was hoping Oscar would return to his 'real' family at the end, tying up the start of his journey and his apparent meeting with his daughter, but then the family he ends up with are gorillas.

I'm sure all of this means something, but I feel the movie is just one layer of abstraction too far into itself to speak to me. I got lost.

 

I would be remiss not to mention the fantastic interlude accordeon scene though!

 

 

Trois! Douze! Merde!

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Did Synecdoche, like, sink Charlie Kaufman? He hasn't done anything after it.

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9 hours ago, Roderick said:

... a character-driven film that uses surrealism to put forth some thesis. In contrast to those movies however, I felt Holy Motors was a bit too much all over the place to drive home either its meaning or a defining feeling. Something La Grande Bellezza did so very, very well.

 

Yeah, after sleeping over it (reduced rating to 4.5/5 when I woke up this morning), I see your point. It does seem a bit shallow after some sinking in -- (partially by jumping all over the place instead of focusing on something specific --, but the initial impression was still WOW and I still think it's a really impressive movie! And maybe some of that jumping all over the place was even justified to show how much out of control the main character was.

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Today saw Beauty and the Beast (1946), Summer Interlude and The Warped Ones. One of the best movie days lately, Beauty and the Beast is a real gem. I wonder if it's worth watching again with the alternative, opera soundtrack.

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Just saw Doctor Strange. I liked it. It is, however, a very stereotypical comic/super-hero story. All boxes have been checked. Visually it was quite appealing, loved all the over the top special effects. Except for the crappy 3D conversion stuff. The computer generated effects were all in 3D, but all the live action stuff, like people, looked like cardboard cutouts (as usual with these 3D conversions).

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Finally watched Ocean's 12, a decade or something late. Wow, this movie is a garbage fire. I don't watch that many movies, but it was clear to me within maybe the first 10 minutes that this movie was going to suck. The re-introduction to the cast didn't have a single good moment in it and went on foreeeever. The script is awful and everything feels phoned in. I mean, forget the uninspired directing, that all the comedy (which there is too much of) falls flat, the lame villain and so on, from a pure storytelling perspective the movie is a disaster. I mean, it's ostensibly a heist movie, but the main heist is a catastrophe and isn't enjoyable to watch at all. The payoff at the end is for a character we barely get to know other than as a love interest. What the hell is this movie?! The scene with the lasers was so bad too, I mean everything is bad but that was really bad. I hate this movie.

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I love that laser parkour scene.  It's hilariously dumb.  It's not a good movie at all but I admit there are (very few) parts I genuinely like.  I think I remember reading somewhere that the script was originally going to be its own movie but someone decided to turn it into an Ocean's sequel and butchered it to make it fit.

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Anyone trying out FilmStruck (new streaming service from Turner and Criterion)?  I started a trial and then found out that there aren't any apps for Roku or Apple TV and the Android app doesn't have the ability to cast to a smart device so the only way for me to get the movies on my tv is hdmi out from my PC.  As a result I haven't watched anything yet and I'm going to cancel as soon as the trial ends, but the selection is alright I guess?  It's kind of like a slightly worse Hulu Criterion selection with the added TCM stuff which has a fair amount of movies too.  It doesn't have a lot of the Criterion movies I'd want to watch, but neither did Hulu either.  If the selection rotates frequently though I could see using it once they have Roku/Google Cast support.

 

Edit: Oh also the bi-annual Criterion sale is going on at Barnes & Noble.

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My understanding so far was that it will have the whole criterion collection eventually... maybe I misunderstood. I currently can't watch any movies on it without VPN (which I don't use).

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Actually I remembered that Opera has a free VPN built in and I gave that a try to fake my location. I don't know if it's the speed of the free VPN which is affecting the bitrate and resolution of the stream FilmStruck is sending me, but I must say I am EXTREMELY disappointed by the quality they seem to be offering... I played a few seconds of Andrei Rublev and Jeanne Dielman and both seemed to be SD quality. Can someone actually in the USA verify (for those particular movies or others) that HD quality is also offered?

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Playing Stalker in the background while working (this is supposed to be the best Stalker currently available anywhere)... It seems the stream actually did switch to higher quality at one point, definitely the colors and levels are great compared to previous ones I've seen if resolution is not the best. However a bigger glaring problem is that the controls bar is always visible, totally killing the movie watching mood. I wonder if this is only with Opera or with all browsers...

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Ok, there are maybe no serious image quality issues after all - after the initial SD content, the stream consistently stayed ad HD quality, and I must say this Stalker is definitely the best version of Stalker that is out there - it almost gave me a hard-on! It's better than the YouTube Mosfilm version (well, pretty much the same, but less compression artifacts it seems). However, it didn't play the whole movie for me, stopped after the first hour or so and wouldn't resume. Again, I'm assuming this could be an issue with me being in a different country or a general problem they have setting things up that will be solved soon.

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I haven't tried it in a few weeks but when I tried out FilmStruck in the beta, the image quality was perfect, but it would pause/get choppy/drop frames every once in a while, even though my connection is totally fine. I'll try it again at some point I htink but it made the movie unwatchable.

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I saw Return to Oz yesterday and I loved it. It has taken the place of 'children's movie that is actually the scariest fucking thing ever'. I thought The NeverEnding Story was a frightening sit for a kid, but imagine a ten-year-old seeing this:

 

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The Emerald City in ruins, everyone turned to stone or beheaded

 

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Occupied by freaky, long-armed wheelpeople one step removed from featuring in a Silent Hill game

 

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The Gnome King, playing games and wearing the ruby slippers, also eating some of Dorothy's companions

 

I haven't mentioned that the film opens with Dorothy's aunt and uncle thinking she's lost her mind and sending her to a mental institute for electroshock therapy. It's the darkest thing ever. The whole world feels like it's dying. I remember seeing parts of this when I was younger, but I think I switched it off because I was freaked out when the wheelers appeared. I wonder if this might have traumatized a generation of children. So glad I watched this.

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Just another voice saying Moonlight is very beautiful. I was mostly struck by how literary and low-key it is. The main character is the classic quiet, reserved introspective protagonist who, in a novel, would be given a running interior monologue throughout the book. But luckily there's no distracting voice-over here and yet you still never feel like you leave Chiron's head. It's really a remarkable feat and even makes me reconsider the kinds of stories I always assumed were "uncinematic".

 

Quiet observers make for great book protagonists but often dull film protagonists, but because Moonlight is so much more of a character study and the camerawork is so intensely subjective, you always feel like you can get a good idea of what he's thinking.

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My second projector exploded... pretty much the same way that the first one, after 1 and a half years. I'm no longer recommending W1070 to anyone.

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Oh wow, if you'd asked me before now, I would've sworn I'd never seen Return to Oz, but I have distinct memories of those wheelers giving me fucking nightmares for real. SHUDDER!!!

 

Guess I need to watch the movie now. EESH!!!

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