TV/Movies Megathread

[Ideologue]

Hannibal picks up then? I gave the first episode a shot and didn't do anything for me.

It very much does, though that dumb CGI pendulum is back after being (I thought) retired with the start of the second season.

Also current in Hannibal Lecktor Lecter, I finally watched Manhunter (1986).  This story of Will Graham and the serial killer he pursues is grody and elegaic thanks to Michael Mann's often lonely and grieving widescreen compositions, and especially to the throbbing electronic score.  That is, those parts that are not off-brand 80s cheese-rock (or Steppenwolf--but that's diagetic).

It is also stylish at turns thanks to the excellent if low-key production design deployed for Dolarhyde's lair, but even more importantly the whitest fucking prison you ever saw, to which Lecter, in his white coveralls that almost hide him against the white walls, has been remanded.  But what stood out the most in Manhunter was its crazy 80s editing--especially the coked-up jump-cutting taking place within individual shots in the climactic scene.  It's great, and I wish more films would experiment like that.

And yet Manhunter, regrettably, is an amateurish production.  If a few reads by the easy-worst of the three Will Grahams to appear on our screeens suggest that extra takes and quality control weren't much in the offing, the sequence where Tom Noonan clearly swallows, almost a minute after his Dolarhyde has been shot to death, confirms it utterly.

If it pales in comparison to the novel, and the more faithful, higher-budgeted, and Hopkins-featuring Red Dragon, it does so because Ratner used the text, along with Ralph Fiennes and Emily Watson, to truly invest Francis Dolarhyde with pathos.  Dolarhyde's story, regrettably, is to be found only in summary here.  In Manhunter, our favorite interloping journalist Freddy Lounds is dutifully strapped into a wheelchair, set aflame, and launched down a hill for our immense delectation.  And, yes, it looks great; and, for my grousing about errors, the prop people coordinated it perfectly.  But, tell me, in Manhunter, why does Dolarhyde have a wheelchair again..?

Better appreciated as a companion piece to the novel rather than an adaptation thereof, it's nonetheless quite fun, and its strengths outweigh the weaknesses.

B+

[Ideologue]

her - best movie i've seen in a long time

[Ideologue]

Actually, I take back "easy-worst Will Graham."  He's worse than Hugh Dancy, but honestly I don't recall Norton much at all.  I imagine he was probably better, but cannot say for certain--William Petersen has some bad reads, but does a nice dead-soulled thing with his eyes.

[Eddie Teach]

Gave The Big Lebowski a second viewing, definitely liked it better this time.

[Ideologue]

Hannibal (2001).  I think I gave it a B+ last time, but this time I didn't watch it on a shitty fullscreen $2.50 DVD.  I enjoyed more than ever the short film nestled inside the middle of this feature, regarding Pazzi's surrender to temptation and his ultimate punishment; it is arguably the best-made part of the film, with its high-tension thriller sequences, and a Firenze that looks for all the world like Los Angeles 2019 with more classical statuary.  Likewise, I took more happiness than I ever had from Hopkins' high camp performance as Lecter.  Even with Mikkelsen's excellent and more prolific, but also more stoic, work, Hopkins' genial supervillain remains the index.  Of course, as always, I was delighted by the grand guignol of Mason Verger and his henchmen being eaten to death by their own hogs.  I even finally came to terms with that magical realist touch as the beasts refused to recognize their fellow carnivore, the ultimate predator, as anything resembling their prey.

But now, for the first time, I can't help but be a little disappointed that Lecter and Starling didn't eat a bit more of Ray Liotta's brains.  There's an entire conversation during this sequence, that could have been done in one, but Scott chose not to, instead using a rather boring close-up of Lecter, intriguing for Hopkins' stylings, but lacking any other point of interest; perhaps he did this for technical reasons, as I cannot imagine the appliance on Liotta's head was easy to use.  In any event, though Krendler chowing down upon his own gray matter is the gross-out to beat them all, and ending the film on Lecter feeding a little boy a piece of leftover cortex is a truly wonderful and macabre touch (complete with that iris-out wink, to let you know how silly everyone knows it really is), it still feels like it's missing something.  And that something is a bit more visual dynamism.

For what it's worth, too, if Scott had used that awesome Mann jump-cut editing to represent Starling's drugged-out stupor, rather than those less-than-pleasant superimpositions, it would have been far superior.  But to each auteur his own I suppose.  This isn't the deep fabulism of Silence of the Lambs; Hannibal repackages its predecessors' sweeping, formally-engrained feminism as mere narrative device.  Thus, it's naturally not a movie really about anything profound.

What it is about are the adventures of a cannibal, and it is played with playful gusto by its leads, supplemented by profoundly good special effects, resulting in all the gore your black heart could desire.  And writer Steve Zaillian (of Dragon Tattoo fame) has the good sense not to snap our suspension of disbelief entirely by recapitulating the novel's bizarre fan-fiction ending.  Though by more than a few steps the lesser picture, I think I may have actually rewatched Hannibal more than Silence.  The verdict: it's a true Ridley Scott classic super-classic.  I have thus upgraded it to the status it deserves.

A

Oh, and Oldman!  His turn as the pedophilic, defaced millionaire Verger--well, it is just spectacular.  Though never as powerful as Ted Levine, surely we can all agree he's more fun than Buffalo Bill.

A+?  But a very light one.

[Ideologue]

Gave The Big Lebowski a second viewing, definitely liked it better this time.

Talk about your super-classics.

[Eddie Teach]

Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

[Ideologue]

I think you'll find that I'm on the right side of history on this one.

[Eddie Teach]

Solid movie, sure. Cult classic even. "Super-classic" no.

[Ideologue]

Well, it's my favorite Coen Bros. anyway.

With the standard, CdM-pleasing caveat that I haven't seen like five of their movies etc. etc.

[Iormlund]

Started watching House of Cards today. Loving it.

[Ed Anger]

her - best movie i've seen in a long time

If I ran the world, both of you would be sent to a penal battalion.

[Ideologue]

If I ran the world, I'd destroy you all with water.  (I'm about to go see Noah.  Should be pretty cool.)

[Viking]

If I ran the world, I'd destroy you all with water.  (I'm about to go see Noah.  Should be pretty cool.)

that happened in 1996, in the same place they filmed noah too

[CountDeMoney]

If I ran the world, I'd destroy you all with water.  (I'm about to go see Noah.  Should be pretty cool.)

We'll wait here for the inevitable B+.