TV/Movies Megathread

[Admiral Yi]

Buena Vista Social Club?

American made documentary, no?

[Eddie Teach]

I thought it was a band.

[Sheilbh]

Buena Vista Social Club?

American made documentary, no?

American, British, Cuban, French and German produced.

[Admiral Yi]

Well, I haven't seen it so my statement stands.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Looney Tunes episode had a node to Irving Allen.  Undersea Submarine Team and TIme Vortex.  Heh.

[CountDeMoney]

Jesse Pinkman [spoiler]is an emo shitbag[/spoiler].

[Ed Anger]

Showed the wife THX 1138.  Her review?

thanks for the depressing movie before going to sleep.

[Syt]

Elysium. Or: Johnny Mnemonic meets District 9. Good visual design. The political message ... I wasn't sure if it was supposed to bleeding heart liberal or a parody of the same. Also: make sure your psycho villain doesn't have a silly accent/ridiculously whiny voice (yes, I know it's the director, but that doesn't make it better) with no redeeming qualities. Overall: meh.

[Queequeg]

That wasn't the director. 

[Ideologue]

I'm not sure if he's talking about Sharlto Copley's (real) SAfrican accent or Jodie Foster's (hilariously fake) space/SAfrican accent.  I guess it was the director's decision for the latter actor to affect it.

[Ed Anger]

The twins wanted me to watch with them some My little Pony movie where the ponies got turned into teenage girls. The pain in my forehead became so intense, a thousand suns exploded.

I did get a 15 minute poo break. Tried to sneak off again, but those two caught me escaping.

[garbon]

I was just at CVS and stood in line in front of Mare Winningham. I only recognized her as she played Meredith's stepmother on Grey's Anatomy.

[Savonarola]

High Society (1956)

A musical version of "The Philadelphia Story" where Grace Kelley plays Katherine Hepburn, Bing Crosby plays Carry Grant, Frank Sinatra plays George Bailey and Louis Armstrong plays the Greek Chorus that wasn't part of the original film.  The film is set in Newport at the Jazz Festival rather than Philadelphia.  While Newport isn't close to Philadelphia, none of the principles are close to screwball comedy actors so it all works out.

The Cole Porter music does help make up for the lack of rapid fire wit.  Here's the crooner and the swooner singing "Well did you evah?":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksGTxGeyQ5c

Bing and Frank have more chemistry than Bing and Princess Grace; to the point that the film would have been more credible if they had hooked up at the end.  1956 was not ready for that, though.  The other high point of the film is Bing and Louis singing "Now you Has Jazz":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC3VTBG0tRc

Satch was thought of as an Uncle Tom by young black men inthe 60s and 70s; and while that is completely unfair, films like this did not make him come across as Curtis Mayfield.

In the special features of the DVD I had there was a little blurb on the gala premiere.  General Omar Bradley was in attendance, as were newlyweds Eddie Fischer and Debbie Reynolds.  I thought that was amusing as the latter two became as famous for their battles as did the former.

[Ideologue]

The Invisible Boy (1958).  An awesome movie with a metastasizing tumor of a Godawful movie inside it, which ultimately swallows the thing whole.

Scientists have created a great computer, not dissimilar to AM, Skynet, or other machines of that ilk, that has achieved sapience and naturally desires to conquer the world.  Applying the methods that Chinese and Korean educators have used with the success for decades, the computer brainwashes the son of the lead scientist with flashing lights and grants him a super-intellect by throwing disjointed facts at him at subliminally high speed.  With the son under his sort-of control, he has him break into a supply closet kept by one of the scientists and finish what that scientist could not: rebuilding a robot.  A robot named Robby.

Yes, this is the "sequel" to Forbidden Planet, and in a dreadfully unsubtle wad of exposition, we learn that one of the scientists dabbled in time travel and a disassembled Robby is what he brought back.  What took him apart is never explained, but, trust me, no one cares.  No one even cares that he's been put back together by a ten year old, a feat none of these gov't scientists had been able to perform.  I mean, literally, people see a giant hulking robot and react with less passion and surprise than they would have to the presence of a black person or woman.

The entire middle part of this crappy film has nothing to do with the Allied Mastercomputer.  Instead, it is devoted to Robby's dull adventures in babysitting for this shitheel of a kid, Timmy.  The point of reactivating Robby is to get him close enough to AM so they can plug its ethernet cable into Robby's chest, override his dumb prime directive, which as we recall fondly from Forbidden Planet, prevents him from harming rational beings, and serve as AM's arms and legs.  Unfortunately, this movie is named "The Invisible Boy," so instead of getting to that point immediately, a good half hour involves Robby helping Timmy achieve his goal of evading his mom's discipline by swallowing chemicals and becoming transparent.  Timmy's parents are slightly more surprised by the sudden adjustment to their son's refraction index than they were by the robot.  Hijinks, God help us, ensue.

Eventually AM is reintoduced into the story and the computer-conquers-the-world plot continues.  Robby is reprogrammed.  An orbital weapons platform is commandeered.  AM plans on getting on that orbital weapons platform, from which he can rain strontium bombs upon humanity.  Timmy is kidnapped and his life threatened so that AM can obtain the release code for the explosives that bind him to his moorings, a code known only to Timmy's dad.  It turns out Robby is an almost completely superfluous element to this plot, because in addition to being able to hypnotize people, AM can directly control humans; and, in fact, all the other scientists have had chips implanted in their parietal lobes that place them under its command.  (So why isn't it Timmy performing the forcible surgery on these scientists?  That'd be macabre and great.  Because it's two separate movies, probably from two separate scripts, crushed into one.)  AM would just do the same to Tim's pop, but there's a chance that he would react adversely to the implant and it could kill him.  AM is unwilling to take that risk, but is willing to do much besides.

The movie gets really dark when AM threatens to have Robby gouge out Timmy's eyes (no shit) if his father doesn't reveal the code.  But then comes a cop out such as God has never seen, when Robby, the ROBOT, the non-freewill ROBOT, develops a conscience, hesitates, and allows Timmy to open up his crankcase and root around in his robot brain, immediately fixing the problem and returning Robby to his good old helpful self.

Then AM gets smashed or whatever.  The great thing about most 50s sci-fi movies is how earnest and pure they are in their intentions, no matter how trifling or frankly stupid they are.  It is exactly that which makes them charming and worth watching sixty years later.  But this movie has the definition of a tone problem, swinging wildly from goofy, terrible comedy to killer machine overlords, and it sucks.  A lot.  D+

[Eddie Teach]

Jesse Pinkman

I don't think he's long for this world.