TV/Movies Megathread

[garbon]

[Ideologue]

Heh.

[Neil]

I don't get it.  Was Jena Malone imprisoned in a concentration camp or something?

[Liep]

Broen II finished stronger than ever, perhaps even the best series finale to any Danish crime show. Can't wait for Broen III. 

Grade: A+

[Ideologue]

I don't get it.  Was Jena Malone imprisoned in a concentration camp or something?

She was in Hitler: The Rise of Evil.

She was also Young Ellie in Contact.   And the cute chick in Donnie Darko who wasn't Maggie Gyllenhaal.  And one of like four actors who turned in a performance I didn't find gratingly dull or just fucking obnoxious in Catching Fire, the others being too old, too fat, and too male to make cumshot jokes about.

Sleeping Beauty (1959).  A visual feast with tons of colors--a young Brian De Palma no doubt saw the red/blue fight between the Good Fairies and said, "Hey, wouldn't it be great if, in twenty-three years, I had my wife garroted?"  It may be the most specifically aestheticized of any Disney movie I've seen this side of The Emperor's New Groove; focus on the bizarrely but gorgeously rendered backgrounds, which are painted like a storybook but take on the blocky character of a Super Mario level.  And of course Maleficent is hot.  It's just a great movie to look at.  Unfortunately, music wasn't good yet.  If you don't like things that are beautiful, the mild gags keep might not keep you amused throughout the iconic but rather featureless story; I personally thought it was rather cute.

What I found upsetting was the Good Fairies themselves.  Firstly, it's just fucking weird that they interact so frequently with the human polity that there's a protocol for their arrival.  Secondly, and disgustingly, they are clearly, like Maleficent, shapechangers; and they are explicitly immortal.  But the shape they take is that of old, fat women, stereotypically "kindly" but approaching what humans know as decrepitude and death.  These forms worn by the fair folk make a mockery of our limited span of existence and of our sharply circumscribed capacity to experience pleasure.  At least Maleficent doesn't make a joke of our brief and ugly lives.

B+

Passion (2013).  Do you think Brian De Palma knew when he was watching Sleeping Beauty that sixty years later he'd make a really shitty movie?  The first forty minutes are boring; the last hour is senseless, characterless, pointless, and terrible.  And a serious question: does Noomi Rapace even make movies where she isn't raped?  Because I'm three for three here.

Of course, for the most part it looks good, and Passion is full of corporate set design porn and a great many De Palmaisms including a totally bodacious splitscreen.  Ultimately, it is the only thing that elevates it from a straight-up failure.  Perhaps if Cliff Martinez had contributed a sweet synth score instead of the Soundbot 2000 Generic Thriller Score B-9 they actually used, it may have been almost as good as Only God Forgives.  (These are the jokes, folks.)

D+

[Kleves]

Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Jennifer Lawrence. Jena Malone.

[Darth Wagtaros]

After the last few posts I was thinking everyone had been referring to the character Jena Maloney from 30 Rock and didn't understand what was going on.

[Viking]

After the last few posts I was thinking everyone had been referring to the character Jena Maloney from 30 Rock and didn't understand what was going on.

Jenna Maroney

[Darth Wagtaros]

 

[Ideologue]

I like anyone who's named after Napoleonic battles.*  Is that so wrong?

*Shit I've Said To Women That Sounds Retarded In Retrospect and Sounded Retarded to Anyone But Me At the Time Example #1471.

[Malthus]

I like anyone who's named after Napoleonic battles.*  Is that so wrong?

*Shit I've Said To Women That Sounds Retarded In Retrospect and Sounded Retarded to Anyone But Me At the Time Example #1471.

Did it get you a date? 

[Ideologue]

Yeah, sure, why not.

[Ed Anger]

I like anyone who's named after Napoleonic battles.*  Is that so wrong?

*Shit I've Said To Women That Sounds Retarded In Retrospect and Sounded Retarded to Anyone But Me At the Time Example #1471.

Auerstedt is a lousy name. awesome battle, lousy name.

[Malthus]

Yeah, sure, why not.

You were supposed to reply "Yeah - December 2, 1805". 

[Savonarola]

The Wrath of the Gods (1914)

Sessue Hayawaka's first film is a variation on a Japanese story.  Hayawaka is a noble whose family is cursed and if his daughter (Tsuru Aoki) ever marries anyone fire will rain down destroying the village.  An American sailor (future director Frank Borzage) is shipwrecked on the coast and he convalesces in Hayawaka's abode.  While near-drowning can be cured; yellow-fever, alas, cannot be and he proposes to Aoki.  Hayawaka at first forbids it but Borzage convinces him the Jesus is stronger than Buddha, so the couple gets married at the Japanese American mission.  The villagers get word of it and, showing all the restraint of Oriental stereotypes in the silent era, they murder Hayawaka and burn down his house.  Then the volcano erupts; but Borzage and Aoki live to continue her race; proving that Jesus is stronger than a volcano.  Take that volcano.

Hayawaka is dressed up as an old man in this one (he's actually Aoki's husband).  His gestures are a little over-broad; not uncommon in the period.  He would become much better in his next films.  Borzage would go on to win Oscars for his direction of "Seventh Heaven" and "A Farewell to Arms."