ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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Can anyone give me a ballpark figure for when Saturday Night Live went to shit?

Because I just saw a clip from this season and dear god.

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Can anyone give me a ballpark figure for when Saturday Night Live went to shit?

Because I just saw a clip from this season and dear god.

1980 is generally considered the point when it went to shit, although obviously it returned to form at various times over the years.

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Lonely Island is the only stuff in recent SNL memory that strikes any kind of funny with me. Which is unfortunate.

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I also showed Psycho to a couple of friends who are normally averse to black and white films. These two friends are also the perfect audience, gasping in all the right places and going "Ah" and "Oh" when the movie wants them to. They didn't see

the shower scene coming

and freaked-out at

the bit where the private investigator enters the house, looking for mother

. It was loads of fun all around.

I sometimes wonder how many people manage to first see Psycho these days without having some sort of awareness of most of the key scenes; that is, how many people are able to experience the same surprises that the original audiences did. It's an almost paradoxical element to it being such a classic.

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They're showing Three Days of the Condor on FX right now which is just... what? I love that film, but I never expected to see it on TV. I guess shouldn't be too surprised, Robert Redford is pretty great.

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Stuff I watched recently:

- The new girl. A comedy with zooey deschanel. Pretty entertaining story about Zooey living with 3 dudes in a fancy apartment. :tup: out of 2 boobs.

Have to disagree, that show is pretty dire. I am a fan of Zooey Deschanel and it is painful to see that she has producer credits on this show and then lets herself be written into those scenarios. There are some pretty weird subtexts in there too. For example every character when protrayed as a child is portrayed as a fat kid. Also it just isn't funny.

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I sometimes wonder how many people manage to first see Psycho these days without having some sort of awareness of most of the key scenes; that is, how many people are able to experience the same surprises that the original audiences did. It's an almost paradoxical element to it being such a classic.

It's funny how sheltered people here are in some respects. I watched Casablanca with one of those dudes a while back and he thought it was glorious - he had, however, never heard of it before. The result is that I can genuinely see how well certain things work minus the hype plus the dated film techniques. It can be loads of fun.

Alas, another one of my friends decided we'd watch Mean Girls the next time we did something similar, and she's taken the initiative of inviting no less than five other girls to help make sure this happens. Oh well. I saw clips of it on Youtube, and it looks kinda funny. I'm more worried about playing host to ~10 people. :fart:

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Mean Girls is actually very funny. Written by Tina Fey of 30 Rock fame too, so you know it's good.

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I just saw Never let me go. Man that movie is depressing ;( Still very good though.

Yeah, very bleak but also lovely. I like that it's basically science fiction set in the past. It seemed like they really underplayed

the scene where their former teachers reveal that they too now think of them as animals

.

In other news, George Lucas has revealed that Greedo ALWAYS shot first... it just wasn't clear because of the editing or somesuch.

http://gizmodo.com/5884061/george-lucas-now-says-that-han-never-shot-first-as-he-shoves-star-wars-3d-down-your-throat

Stupid mad old bastard.

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For example every character when protrayed as a child is portrayed as a fat kid. Also it just isn't funny.

Huh? Who else besides Schmidt has been portrayed as a child? Did I miss some episodes? Anyways, the show seems to be getting better.

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On a random impulse I picked up a copy of Ip Man on DVD about 2 months ago and loved it. Since then I've started a small collection Hong Kong cinema.

Basically I've learnt 3 things so far:

Donnie Yen is awesome.

Sammo Hung is awesome.

Jackie Chan is awesome.

The :tup: List (in no particular order)

Ip Man

Ip Man 2(Bonus feature: hilarious English accents!)

Flash Point

Kill Zone (nothing to do with the game)

Project A

Dragons Forever

Rumble in the Bronx

Little Big Soldier

Jackie Chan's First Strike

The :tdown: List

The Founding of a Republic

I have no idea why I've never really paid any attention to Honk Kong cinema before but I've suddenly realised I've got an awful lot of catching up to do.

If anyone has any recommendations please let me know

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I thought that Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter trailer was a joke until they threw in Tim Burton's name. Is that an actual film, then? Fucking bizarre.

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I thought that Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter trailer was a joke until they threw in Tim Burton's name. Is that an actual film, then? Fucking bizarre.

I feel like we should be worried about that somehow. Like Tim Burton gets a pass for crazy bullshit that no-one else would because he's Tim Burton. His last few things haven't exactly been Nightmare 2.0 or anything.

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On a random impulse I picked up a copy of Ip Man on DVD about 2 months ago and loved it. Since then I've started a small collection Hong Kong cinema.

Basically I've learnt 3 things so far:

Donnie Yen is awesome.

Sammo Hung is awesome.

Jackie Chan is awesome.

The :tup: List (in no particular order)

Ip Man

Ip Man 2(Bonus feature: hilarious English accents!)

Flash Point

Kill Zone (nothing to do with the game)

Project A

Dragons Forever

Rumble in the Bronx

Little Big Soldier

Jackie Chan's First Strike

The :tdown: List

The Founding of a Republic

I have no idea why I've never really paid any attention to Honk Kong cinema before but I've suddenly realised I've got an awful lot of catching up to do.

If anyone has any recommendations please let me know

Armour of God 1+2

Police Story 1 to 4

Drunker Master

And if you're into giddy action/comedy, the lucky stars movies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Stars

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I recently saw a pretty nice Chinese detective story (obv with kung fu): Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame. You could look into it.

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I feel like we should be worried about that somehow. Like Tim Burton gets a pass for crazy bullshit that no-one else would because he's Tim Burton. His last few things haven't exactly been Nightmare 2.0 or anything.

That's not actually what I meant, though it might be an attitude others have. I just meant that his name made me think it might not simply be a hoax trailer as I had originally assumed.

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That's not actually what I meant, though it might be an attitude others have. I just meant that his name made me think it might not simply be a hoax trailer as I had originally assumed.

Ah, my bad! Though I too would imagine there are actually people who feel that way. (Hollywood, for instance.)

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I recently saw a pretty nice Chinese detective story (obv with kung fu): Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame. You could look into it.

Yea, I saw that a few weeks ago. I thought it was rather entertaining. I agree that you could look into it.

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I just came back from The Phantom Menace 3D and I'm ready to claw my eyes out.

In the post-Plinkett review world, one cannot take these movies seriously anymore. Furthermore, it's been about 5-6 years since I last saw this film and for the first time I looked at it with a critic's eye. Holy shit it's bad. It's so unapologetically badly written, disastrously acted and filled with terrible, halfbaked ideas, it's ludicrous. You could've asked practically any aspiring scriptwriter to give a go at this movie and have them come up with a better version instantly. It's so poor, it's laughable. Plotholes aside (and boy are there a lot), nothing makes sense and it's awful.

Then it struck me how exasperatingly stupid the final fighting scene with Darth Maul was. This wasn't in any review - this is all my own insight, just for clarification. Since practicing kendo for a year (I quit some time ago), I have some idea of how a swordfight goes and George Lucas pretty much doesn't.

When two master swordsmen (as Jedi and Sith are supposed to be) meet in combat, the end result is this:

1. They look each other up for a while to figure out their move.

2. They do their move.

3. One of them dies.

It's over in two seconds, literally. Look at this instructive kendo match between two 8th dan fighters:

. It is nothing like the brainless bashing and blocking of the Jedi and Sith. And you know what? It's not even entertaining to watch. It's just stupid and messy.

Oh and the added 3D? Barely noticeable. You rerelease a colorful film and then force people to watch it wearing sunglasses, adding nothing. Great thinking.

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