Movie/TV recommendations

[Gormongous]

I seem to remember he also said something about how he was qualified to judge the aesthetic value of words because he's a writer. No Joss, you wrote a few cancelled sci-fi miniseries and Alien Resurrection, not the fucking Tempest.

 

Yeah! Not to mention his aesthetic argument is that "feminism" sounds too harsh and Germanic to be popular or effective, despite the fact that "feminism" comes from the French féminisme and not the German Frauenbewegung. You're right, it's a shockingly bad speech on so many levels and gives more ammunition to detractors of feminism than to feminists themselves. Now, whenever a MRA troll says he's a humanist rather than a feminist, he can point to good ole Joss.

[TychoCelchuuu]

I seem to remember he also said something about how he was qualified to judge the aesthetic value of words because he's a writer. No Joss, you wrote a few cancelled sci-fi miniseries and Alien Resurrection, not the fucking Tempest.

He wrote Much Ado About Nothing though, right?

[tegan]

He did co-write Toy Story, so he can't be all bad.

[Stuart]

He also co-wrote Cabin in the Woods, which was fan-fucking tastic. Shit that he's done on his own, though, I really don't care about.

[Codicier]

Just watched Man of Steel and enjoyed it more than i was expecting to considering all the bad press it's got, think the key is to just think of it as a silly alien invasion film like Independence Day rather than expect anything too closely resembling character development.

[clyde]

The new Frontline about solitary confinement is some pretty intense shit. I don't even feel comfortable linking it.

[Frenetic Pony]

I just watched the digital remaster of Sorcerer.

 

And man, that's still a damned good movie. And (for the most part) damned better for having been cleaned up. Occasionally they go a tad overboard, but nothing like that super creepy Predator one. For those that don't know, it's a kind of depressing, and totally real world setting, "adventure" film by William Friedkin, Aka The French Connection and The Exorcist. So no, I've no clue why it was named Sorcerer. It's a really sparse film, there's little explanation, dialogue, or exposition. But you get everything you need to know about the characters and story, and it lets the absolutely crazy stunts and action speak for themselves. It's also really beautifully filmed, the bridge scene... oh man.

 

Highly recommended, you may not have heard of it because it came out in between blockbuster Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, as well as friggen Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars. Kind of hard to compete with that no matter how good your movie is.

[Bjorn]

I haven't seen that in probably 20 years, but remember really enjoying it.  I'd be curious to watch it again, particularly remastered.

 

I just watched The Station Agent last night, which was Peter Dinklage's breakout role.  Fantastic movie, and similar to something like Sorcerer, it shows how much a movie can do with sparse dialogue.  Great introspective character study.  And an interesting contrast to something like American Hustle, which I watched this weekend.  Both movies are essentially examining a pair of deeply flawed, even damaged, people.  The Station Agent is engaging and charming from start to finish, even with extended scenes of no dialogue.  Whereas American Hustle was full of some astoundingly good individual performances, but is ultimately a rather boring and average movie that fails to deliver either a good con or a good character study.

[namman siggins]

I just watched the digital remaster of Sorcerer.

 

And man, that's still a damned good movie. And (for the most part) damned better for having been cleaned up. Occasionally they go a tad overboard, but nothing like that super creepy Predator one. For those that don't know, it's a kind of depressing, and totally real world setting, "adventure" film by William Friedkin, Aka The French Connection and The Exorcist. So no, I've no clue why it was named Sorcerer. It's a really sparse film, there's little explanation, dialogue, or exposition. But you get everything you need to know about the characters and story, and it lets the absolutely crazy stunts and action speak for themselves. It's also really beautifully filmed, the bridge scene... oh man.

 

Highly recommended, you may not have heard of it because it came out in between blockbuster Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, as well as friggen Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars. Kind of hard to compete with that no matter how good your movie is.

great fucking movie.

I love how little we know about the characters but enough to give us a picture.

The soundtrack matched with the cinematography, oh! Beautiful!

[TheLastBaron]

So Duncan Jones is doing the Warcraft movie?  I'm actually interested now. 

 

http://cdn1-www.superherohype.com/assets/uploads/2014/04/warcraftset1.jpg

[Erkki]

I saw the new Joss Whedon movie, but it was the most boring thing I've seen in years. It didn't even deal with any really interesting questions about what would happen if the premise were real. And the whole movie was just telling the story without using any visual language, the camerawork was awful.

[BigJKO]

Yeah, it was pretty dull and unremarkable.. The only thing it had going for it was some ok chemistry between the leads.

[Stuart]

The last two posts = Joss Whedon in a nutshell.

 

So I watched the third season of Sherlock and HOOOLY CRAP, it was so bad. Or at least, 2/3 bad. The last episode was pretty good and a return to form of the series, but the first two episodes, specially the first one, were absolutely terrible. Obnoxious camera work and editing, horrendous attempts at humor nearly ever second, fanservicey bullshit for those Cumberbatch obsessives, and unbelievable character development in the first episode. I just hated it all so much, that it the last episode became a surprise. But yeah, disappointing season, hope they don't fuck up on the next one. 

[Brannigan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tCmriZSxxk

[miffy495]

Weird. I suppose it makes sense that, in the six years since I stopped watching The Daily Show regularly, John Oliver looks a lot older. On the other hand, listening to The Bugle every week and hearing his voice remain the same kinda made me imagine that he never changed. He looks like he could be a dad now. I don't know how I feel about this. Damn passage of time.

[Bjorn]

Fuck.  RIP Mr. Hoskins. 

 

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is the easy one for our generation to love, but I'd like to point out how fucking good his Iago was.  He pretty much ended up defining that character for me.

 

I do have a deep love of Roger Rabbit though. I may have rewatched it more than any other movie. For years, it was just something I would put on in the background when I was doing other things.

[brkl]

Oh, jesus! I've seen that Iago, that Who Framed Roger Rabbit and that Mario.. While obviously Iago is the easiest to appreciate, that doesn't discount the rest.

[Ucantalas]

RIP Mr.Hoskins.

I only remember him from Roger Rabbit and the Mario Bros movie, but its still a sad day.

[SecretAsianMan]

Don't forget Mr. Smee

 

[Ucantalas]

Wait that was him?

Wow. Okay, so I guess I remember him from Hook as well.

[syntheticgerbil]

His small part in Brazil is fucking amazing. I'll miss him.

[Bjorn]

His small part in Brazil is fucking amazing. I'll miss him.

 

I just watched Brazil a few weeks ago.  Him and De Niro have such fabulously bizarre roles in it. 

[Erkki]

Saw the Grand Budapest Hotel and noticed for the first time how much Wes Anderson uses right camera angles. In this the camera was always at a right angle (with possible up/down tilt) and could only turn 90 degrees in place or pan left/right/forward/backward in a straight line, wih only a couple of exceptions I think. In retrospect, his previous films (I haven't seen all) also used that a lot but not exclusively as here. The hotel was almost a dollhouse and the whole world felt like a projection of the real world with half a dimension lost.

[Bjorn]

Hence the scare quotes. In the Fargo series, Lester Nygaard exhibits most of the same characteristics as Walter White, except that he's not inexplicably hyper-competent, so the antihero thing falls apart almost immediately, like it ought to do, rather than only at the end of several seasons, like it did in Breaking Bad.

 

I never thought of White as being hyper-competent, except in chemistry.  Everything else just seems like he's hoping, guessing and reacting by the seat of his pants and he only gets away with a bunch of it because of how incredibly impossible it is for anyone to imagine that he's as deep into crime as he is.

[Gormongous]

I never thought of White as being hyper-competent, except in chemistry.  Everything else just seems like he's hoping, guessing and reacting by the seat of his pants and he only gets away with a bunch of it because of how incredibly impossible it is for anyone to imagine that he's as deep into crime as he is.

 

I think I disagree pretty strongly, to be honest.

 

Considering the number of people he murders without getting caught, the multiple times he intimidates hardened criminals into working with him, the ways he repeatedly manipulates Skyler and Jessie among others, and his assassination of a man who even the cartels couldn't touch, I think the definition of "lucky" is being stretched here. I know that all TV has a certain hyperreality to it, but Walt is repeatedly shown to be a genius and not just in chemistry. At the very least, his emotional intelligence is off the charts and that says "hyper-competency" to me.

 

Also, if he's not meant to be read as extremely competent in many respects, I think that it undermines many of the show's themes, especially the one that, given the right push, people will descend into evil as far as they are able.