TV/Movies Megathread

[11B4V]

Wait.... Days of Thunder. Masterpiece.

[Ideologue]

Wait.... Days of Thunder. Masterpiece.

Oops, opened up that can of worms again.

It's certainly Tony Scott's masterpiece.  It's between that and Top Gun, and Days of Thunder hangs together better as a character study.  It's a great film, to say the very least.  They sure as hell never built a ride at Carowinds called "Risky Business."

[Eddie Teach]

I've wanted to do a feature on racing movies, Rush, Senna, Le Mans, Driven, Speed Racer, Talladega Nights, and, of course, Tony Scott's masterpiece, Days of Thunder and the one truly epic racing film, the three-hour, continent-spanning powerhouse that is Grand Prix.  Open to other suggestions on that count as well,

The Fast & The Furious 1-6. Should keep you busy this weekend.

[Ideologue]

Legitimate racing.  The sport must be recognized, at least within the universe of the film (thus permitting Speed Racer).

Plus, those movies are more like action noirs.  I might as well watch Gone in 60 Seconds (either one) or Death Proof.  I mean, a feature on chase films would be a very worthy effort, but it'd be different...

[Ideologue]

Btw, who said that "God damn" isn't capitalized?  That's not true.

[Eddie Teach]

So I guess Rebel Without a Cause is out too.

[Capetan Mihali]

Btw, who said that "God damn" isn't capitalized?  That's not true.

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3139/when-should-the-word-god-be-capitalized

Goddamn

For the first 1000 incidences of goddamn, they were divided like this:

770 goddamn
218 Goddamn
  38 God damn
  27 god damn
  18 god-damn
  17 God-damn
  12 GODDAMN
   3 God-Damn
   2 God Damn
   1 GOD DAMN

183 examples of Goddamn occurred after punctuation—only 35 occurred after a word. Lowercase goddamn is dramatically more common. For the spaced variation, capitalization was more common than not, but for the hyphenated variation, they were equally divided between capitalizing and not. For goddamn, the unspaced variation is much more common than the variants with space and hyphen.

[Ideologue]

OK, fair enough, but I think that's incorrect.  I'm referring to a specific deity.  Zeus-damned or Galactus-damned would be capitalized.

I think I also capitalize Godawful.  Maybe I'm wrong.

[Capetan Mihali]

Capitalizing the name of the Tetragrammaton strikes me as more blasphemous rather than less, so I'd advise *you* consult your Third Commandment, brother.

But mainly I just thought that given all the shit you get for the style, content, and structure of your movie reviews, you'd find it amusing to have someone harping on that completely insignificant capitalization concern.

[Ideologue]

I enjoyed it.

[CountDeMoney]

McNamara is a very smart guy and he did have a number of interesting thing to say.
I think it was intention that the movie be received in the way that Mihali describes it was received by some at the time and that is why he did the project.
But he just can't help himself.
What I don't know is whether Morris was intentionally (if subtly) trying to frame the message that McNamara didn't really learn from his mistakes.  It really doesn't matter though, because it succeeds in that sense, at least it did for me.

If people have a problem with Fog of War that McNamara was somehow victimized and manipulated by the film, they can just read his In Retrospect, where the same intellectual arrogance on display in the film is on paper, written by the man himself in his own autobiography. 

[CountDeMoney]

I ought to watch it again.  I think my recollection of the film is colored by my experience of the political atmosphere surrounding its reception, which as I remember it, was basically that McNamara was a brave pentito who should be welcomed with open arms in the argument against the Iraq War.  Morris's captioning of the "lessons" also probably confused me as to whether they were being endorsed as good ideas, silly clichés, or what exactly.

It's difficult for McNamara to learn lessons about his methodology when it works for the Cuban Missile Crisis, but not for Vietnam;  for nuclear policy against the Soviet Union, but not as an approach for driving the World Bank.

Ad yes, watch it again:
http://youtu.be/j8TOJy3eO1A

[Sheilbh]

I've watched a ton of Ken Loach films recently: The Wind That Shakes The Barley, Kes, Riff-Raff, Land and Freedom, Bread and Roses, The Navigators and The Spirit of '45.

It's exceptional how much sincerity and a deeply felt connection with the message of a film can overcome issues with plot or with style. Loach's films always have, to me at least, relatively simple and predictable plots. There's never any great stylistic feat. But my God do they work.

I don't know if you've seen any of these Ide but if you like passionate socialist polemic as much as I think you would, they're right up your street

[CountDeMoney]

Upcoming Web Redemption segment?

Monday night, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department accidentally shot and killed a production assistant for Tosh.0 after mistaking the 30-year-old for a stabbing suspect.

According to the Los Angeles Times, John Winkler went to a neighbor's apartment Monday night to try to help three people who were being held captive at knife point. Responding police shot Winkler when he ran from the apartment with one of the victims. From the Sheriff Department's statement:

As deputies continued attempts to contact the people in the apartment, the apartment door suddenly opened and a male victim came rushing out. He was covered in blood and bleeding profusely from the neck. Simultaneously, Victim Winkler ran out of the door, lunging at the back of the fleeing victim. Both ran directly at the deputies. Winkler was similar to the description of the suspect and was wearing a black shirt. Believing Winkler was the assailant and the assault was ongoing and he would attack the entry team; three deputies fired their duty weapons at him.

Winkler was shot once and died later that night at a local hospital.

One of Winkler's friends spoke to the Los Angeles Times after the shooting. "It's just a really sad story," Devin Richardson said, adding that Winkler had just moved to L.A. six months ago from Washington state to pursue a career as a producer. "He basically went to help some neighbors and ends up getting shot."

The suspect, 27-year-old, Alexander McDonald, was eventually arrested and charged with one count of murder, two counts of attempted murder, and one count of torture.

[garbon]

No good deed...