ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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Burned through Community now. Stuck for something else I can watch in any mood. I have some heavy films and TV episodes sitting around waiting to be watched, but at the moment I'm mostly just wanting comedy or something vaguely light-hearted at least. Too much grimdark in all the other forms of entertainment I enjoy.

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I watched the awful Hall Pass in the cinema today, so I had to wash it down with the splendid Taken.

This is a such a good movie. At its heart it's just a thrilleresque action film, but Liam Neeson gives it such gravitas and sincerity that it sparkles from beginning to end.

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Once again my taste is proven bad. I was very positive Taken was stupid.

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Not bad. It is stupid, with large glaring plot holes iirc. Good action movie though - I let myself get involved with it with vicarious thrill (is there any other kind in movies?) and found myself cheering inside when he fucked those guys up. Perhaps that is a little worrying. Anyway - From Paris With Love, for example, also had massive plot holes (and shit editing), but even as an action movie it was crap. In this skintube's opinion, of course :)

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Oh, Taken was surely a ridiculous movie where all the French were either incompetent or corrupt, American youth got kidnapped as soon as they touched European ground and obviously society is full of Eyes Wide Shut-esque secret sex cults. And if it had featured Jason Statham as the predictable action hero, it would've been tolerable at best. But Liam Neeson elevates the thing to incredible heights just by being there.

The composed fury with which I travels through the film and delivers his dialogue is chilling in the best way.

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Burned through Community now. Stuck for something else I can watch in any mood. I have some heavy films and TV episodes sitting around waiting to be watched, but at the moment I'm mostly just wanting comedy or something vaguely light-hearted at least. Too much grimdark in all the other forms of entertainment I enjoy.

I'm currently watching and loving Sports Night.

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Watched Tron: Legacy yesterday. The soundtrack was excellent and visuals were great at least on technical level. Otherwise the movie felt like an enormous wasted opportunity and I can't help but feel that it could have used a decent director, or writer or whoever.

Oooh.. they are evil alright.

Tron, while charging into the bad guy:

Really? You do?

The one part Zen-Buddhist, one part God, one part the Dude and one part hollow Kevin Flynn was so poorly written that his every "Man, ..." made me cringe.

So yeah, audio-visual treat and nothing else. I'm not sure why I even expected something more.

I didn't like the visual much. They moved away from 1s and 0s; to anything between 0 and 1. The new world felts way to organic.

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I'm currently watching and loving Sports Night.

Oh I used to see that on occasionally and enjoy it, I don't know why I didn't think of that. It's actually pretty similar to Studio 60, if I remember correctly, which I loved.

Also I watched the (long) pilot episode of Eureka. I think this could work, but I'll have to watch some more to see if it's worth continuing.

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This is very cool.

Blinky

Definitely. That's very cool...

But it annoyed me because it was so close to brilliance, but it ended up being really obvious. I would have preferred an ending with the kid and the robot being alive. They could have gone on the run, or maybe made a new "family", with the robot being a surrogate parent. Nothing was done with the relationship between the kid and his parents, too. Still, powerfully done, on a technical sense. They only reason I mention its flaws is because it was so close to brilliance. Instead it was just very, very good -- and disturbing :)

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On Sports Night: loving it just like I used to when I caught an episode or two. Something I didn't remember is that the first season has a laugh track! It was positively sickening in the Pilot, but luckily it is getting quieter and less frequent as the season progresses. Apparently season two does not have one at all.

Which brings me to the other thing that sucks; there are only two seasons. Why does Aaron Sorkin keep doing TV shows I really enjoy that are then cancelled after one or two seasons?

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On Sports Night: loving it just like I used to when I caught an episode or two. Something I didn't remember is that the first season has a laugh track! It was positively sickening in the Pilot, but luckily it is getting quieter and less frequent as the season progresses. Apparently season two does not have one at all.

Which brings me to the other thing that sucks; there are only two seasons. Why does Aaron Sorkin keep doing TV shows I really enjoy that are then cancelled after one or two seasons?

Hehe. Sounds like you're having the same experience as me. For some reason I've managed to live with the laugh track (as much as I despise them in general). The pilot hurt so much because of it, but it's definitely gotten better, thankfully.

My next episode is Season 1 Episode 13. Sounds like you're blasting through them.

As for Sorkin, there's always The West Wing, right? This is my first Sorkin TV show, but I can see myself moving on to the West Wing afterwards.

Note: How many episodes can one man write? The guy is a machine! For a 22 episode season you don't expect the showrunner to write many episodes. In fact, I've never seen a show where that's been the case. Sorkin has written the vast majority so far, and co-written all the rest. Wow.

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I sometimes find myself idly wondering if (er, when) robots become ubiquitous in the home, they will be instilled with the 3 laws, or some derivation of such. Seems to be an elegant solution.

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My next episode is Season 1 Episode 13. Sounds like you're blasting through them.

As for Sorkin, there's always The West Wing, right? This is my first Sorkin TV show, but I can see myself moving on to the West Wing afterwards.

I'm actually only at episode 5 myself, but I looked up the laugh track thing out of fear. It supposedly tapers off over the season and then doesn't appear at all in the second season.

I definitely recommend Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip if you enjoy Sports Night, the more I see of Sports Night the more it seems like Studio 60 was Aaron Sorkin's attempt at a spiritual successor to it. However, there is one glaring issue and that is that it only has one season. So you have to prepare yourself for that disappointment from the get go.

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Am I stupid in thinking that Doctor Who's Weeping Angels are infinitely scarier than say, SAW, or Paranormal Activity? They fuck with me on a deep psychological level, do Weeping Angels. Where as for the aforementioned movies, I have to stop from breaking out in howling laughter.

Crazy? Y/N.

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So, Borgias...

From what I can tell from my limited history, not really sticking to what we think actually happened at all, but I found it pretty entertaining.

:tmeh: Jeremy Irons' Alexander was sufficiently ruthless but didn't seem as clever as I would have liked.

for example, paraphrased & compressed conversation with his son:

Pope Daddy: They would dare try to assassinate a pope? I'm not some commoner, they can't do that.

Son Cesare: They totes tried to do that, pops.

PD: Well, we'll need to have our revenge. But we draw the line at murder.

SC: They didn't have any qualms about crossing that line.

PD: Oh, right. (forgot about that? really?) Guess that's on the table. Off you go, with your murdery murderiousness then.

:tup: Sean Harris as Micheletto is badass.

:tdown:

Derek Jacobi dies so soon

Edited by juv3nal

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"I will also be in front of the camera, and I'm looking at many different scripts," he said. "We have somewhat held off with that because we really wanted to pay full attention to The Governator."

...and, um, being governor an' that.

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ZnlG96pZPc8



He's not the Governor of California any more either

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Just came back from Sucker Punch in the cinema and hooo boy, is it awful. Yesterday I happened to see the excellent Harry Brown on the small screen and the contrast couldn't be more telling.

Where Sucker Punch is a mess of a movie that in the end is about nothing and riddled with flashy, vapid action/video gamey scenes that fail spectacularly to either entertain or enthrall, Harry Brown is muted and quiet, slowly building up tension and interest using little more than the landscape of Michael Caine's face. Any scene in Harry Brown involving two people menacing each other with words or knives is unendingly more exciting than Sucker Punch's unfulfilling use of CG Bullshit. That's in capitals because CG Bullshit has become a hallmark of bad movies. Zack Snyder seemed to know how to handle this stuff with 300, but in Sucker Punch he makes amateur mistake after mistake.

Edited by Rodi

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