TV/Movies Megathread

[Ideologue]

I make more money than katmai, after meals.

[katmai]

I make more money than katmai, after meals.

Highly unlikely.

[Ideologue]

For those with a hard-on for 60s/70s SF, there's a $17 BD triple-feature of Omega Man, Logan's Run, and Soylent Green out Nov. 26.  Now that's more like value.

(Saturn 3 is also getting a BD release, but at $25, no thanks.)

[CountDeMoney]

Logan's Run.  Life ends at 30.  Ain't that the fucking truth.

[Ideologue]

Yes.  Unless you're Jacob, then it just keeps rolling until you convert to pure energy.

[PRC]

Looks like Walt just [spoiler]added Gray Matter Technologies to the final tab list.  Good.

Although, I don't understand why he gave away his location to the DEA, unless he just wanted to let them think he wasn't going back to New Mexico.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Walt is going to go after Gray Matter for their money.  Flynn won't accept a box of Meth dollars (Skyler probably would have) but if he forces Gray Matter to give him share options or whatever / transfer them to the family... that's not Meth money, it's palatable and his family is taken care of.[/spoiler]

[Duque de Bragança]

Logan's Run.  Life ends at 30.  Ain't that the fucking truth.

[spoiler] Not according to the book 21[/spoiler]
Anyways, great movie to watch before getting to 30, then a good one to offer to people reaching 30.

[CountDeMoney]

Looks like Walt just [spoiler]added Gray Matter Technologies to the final tab list.  Good.

Although, I don't understand why he gave away his location to the DEA, unless he just wanted to let them think he wasn't going back to New Mexico.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Walt is going to go after Gray Matter for their money.  Flynn won't accept a box of Meth dollars (Skyler probably would have) but if he forces Gray Matter to give him share options or whatever / transfer them to the family... that's not Meth money, it's palatable and his family is taken care of.[/spoiler]

That's just silly.

[Ed Anger]

Why in the fuck does Ide want to pay full retail for his movies? Full retail is for suckers and chumps.

[Ideologue]

Now You See Me (2013).  A curiously undisciplined heist movie about the most disciplined thing in the world, magic.  For some reason, I thought I'd been spoiled for this movie, and that the twist was that it had the same premise as the Hugh Jackman thread from The Prestige, that is, the trick is real, and they were actually teleporting money out of bank vaults and such.  Well, I guess I heard wrong.  I do feel the movie cheats a bit with its actual twist, though it's an okay one.

Further, sometimes they go way too far with the CGI "magic."  Magic's really fucking cool, and using magic to steal things is even cooler.  As a result, Now You See Me cried out for more practical, or at least believably practical, effects.  Most of the things they do seem physically plausible (if very unlikely), but in a few scenes they really needed to tone it down.

Nonetheless, possessed of good chemistry with its all-star cast and a good pace, it's some of the easiest fun of 2013.  B

Flight (2012).  [spoilers, but the movie's kinda old now]

Zemeckis doesn't get the respect he deserves, and the last five minutes of Flight are why.

The previous two hours and five minutes are the best drug comedy ever made, at least about an alcoholic, coked-up scumbag who through superhuman piloting skills saved practically everybody on a airplane which, through no fault of his own, went nose down and dropped altitude at 4800 feet per minute.  The last five minutes, however, are his tearful, TV movie confessions, confessions which are so out of character it was like the Hays Code rose from the grave, and in a compromise they added his public self-incrimination and subsequent imprisonment instead of deleting the parts where Denzel Washington has sex with white women.

If you removed every frame that comes after the NTSB investigator asks him at the hearing about who emptied the vodka minibottles they found in the wreckage, this movie's a solid A (and the reminder one needs, after watching the slow, lazy shit that was 2 Guns earlier this year, that Washington is one of our finest actors).  No special editing would be required here: literally just chop it off as soon as she asks the question, and go to credits.  It's possible and even probable that some would have found the ambiguity frustrating, but at least it wouldn't be laughable in all the wrong ways.

And sure, even before this, Flight occasionally gets a little too on the nose throughout its running time--because it's a Zemeckis film and "a little on the nose" is often his style, e.g. the bits about religion and science in Contact, every minute of the hyperreality that was Forrest Gump, etc., and that's fine, as only one scene here comes off as genuinely unnatural.

That one scene is more than made up for by the many good parts.  Chiefly, there's the interesting idea that Captain Whip Whittaker (yes, really) being drunk and high didn't factor into the crash in any way, so what's the BFD?; it's even faintly implied it may have helped by keeping him calm.

There's also his hilariously sad and sickening inability to not drink any potentially ethanol-containing fluid he sees (you cannot tell me that the way Zemeckis framed his decision to go on a last bender on the eve of the hearing was not intentionally humorous--it's shot in slow-mo, but not sad slow-mo, but more like a scene right before the action where the hero picks up a gun to fight the bad guy).

Even some of his moments of semi-clarity are more than worthwhile watching.  "I don't need you to tell me how to lie about my drinking" he tells his union rep, in that inimitable Denzel Washington fashion, right before the hearing.  And, of course, the scene where his lawyer, his union rep and his helpful drug dealer intentionally coke him up so his fucked-up ass can function at the hearing is comic gold.

But then: Message!  Yep, drinking and flying and lying and addiction are bad, Bob.  They sure are.

B+

[CountDeMoney]

Zemeckis doesn't get the respect he deserves,

Really?  I guess that Academy Award for Best Director he got for Forrest Gump was just found in an alley somewhere.

[Ideologue]

Why in the fuck does Ide want to pay full retail for his movies? Full retail is for suckers and chumps.

Huh?  I added 'em up the other day, and I think the average price was like $8, which is what you'd pay if you dug them out of the Wal-Mart bargain bin.

As a general rule, the only ones that are expensive are movies that I buy day of release, because I wanted to throw money at them as a signal of support--especially if they were small productions (like Europa Report) or if they were big productions but not particularly big box office successes (like Oblivion).  If I'm paying ~$20 it's almost invariably because I love the shit out of a movie, though.

[Ideologue]

Zemeckis doesn't get the respect he deserves,

Really?  I guess that Academy Award for Best Director he got for Forrest Gump was just found in an alley somewhere.

Probably next to the same dumpster they pulled the one for Shakespeare In Love from.  Oscars don't matter that much.

1)Forrest Gump was in like 1994.  I was twelve.

2)Zemeckis has never really been part of the "great directors" conversation, or, if he is, I feel like he's treated as a footnote.  Cast Away is rather forgotten, despite being excellent.  There has been at least a bit of reaction against Forrest Gump in the intervening time (again, almost two decades).  People rarely remember Death Becomes Her at all.  Contact was almost immediately written off as a joke despite being a career best in a long and productive career.  I concede that people still like Back to the Future.  But Zemeckis himself is "that guy that really likes creepy CGI."  It's all very much a shame, because he's one of our best.

[CountDeMoney]

You only think Zemeckis has been treated as a footnote and has never really been part of the "great directors" conversation because you were 12 in 1994.

I think Alfred Hitchcock has never really been part of the "great directors" conversation because he died when I was 10.  So there.

[garbon]

Oh look, Seedy being petulant.