TV/Movies Megathread

[garbon]

Downfall. Don't be a Jodl.

Watch, numbnuts winds up picking "Roman Holiday."

I'm watching 'Downfall' at this very moment. :gasp:

Hitler [spoiler]dies[/spoiler] at the end.

An aunt of mine was dismayed that Hitler didn't die as a result of the plot when we saw Valkyrie as a family.

[mongers]

Downfall. Don't be a Jodl.

Watch, numbnuts winds up picking "Roman Holiday."

I'm watching 'Downfall' at this very moment. :gasp:

Hitler [spoiler]dies[/spoiler] at the end.

Glad I didn't see this until after I'd watched it, otherwise you'd haver ruined it for me.

[Ideologue]

I've been watching Life on Mars. After getting over my disappointment that it wasn't the long dreamed of Quantum Leap reboot, I've realised it's a decent show.

I'm about to watch Invaders From Mars.  It's not exactly the same thing I guess.

But William Cameron Menzies does 50s sci-fi?  And it's on Youtube?  How can one go wrong?

I would watch it now but I unwisely started watching Paul Leni's The Wax Figurine Cabinet, or Waxworks to those with a functional language, and now I have to finish it.  Which is terrible.  This is Sav's fucking job.

An aunt of mine was dismayed that Hitler didn't die as a result of the plot when we saw Valkyrie as a family.

[Ideologue]

Ugh, finally.

Waxworks (1922).  If I didn't know better, I'd say that people in 1922 were simply so excited to see pictures that moved that this might have passed, but of course cinema had existed for years by this point.  Yet somehow this was still made.

Our hero, or whatever, is a writer who comes into the employ of a wax museum.  His job is to draft stories about the whole three exhibits they apparently have: Haroun al-Raschid, Ivan the Terrible, and Jack the Ripper (one of these things is not like the other).  Naturally, he falls in love instantly with the daughter of the proprietor, and thus he sets himself to work.

Instead of these villains coming to life to menace this budding romance, which is the obvious/only reason you would ever set any story in a wax museum, we are treated instead to the cinematic enactments of his historically ignorant and narratively stilted stories.  I don't know if they called this sort of thing an anthology film back then, but that's what it is.

All of the stories he writes involve him and his paramour being separated by the venal machinations of his subjects.  The first two, at thirty minutes apiece and each fifteen minutes two long, are abysmally paced and tremendously boring, and the last is an idiotic five-minute dream sequence with Jack the Ripper dressed in 1920s German clothing, which is awful on every level that I've implied it is and more.  "Look!" Paul Leni says, "I can use dissolves!"  Good for you, Paul Leni.  Good for you!

The only value to be extracted from the picture are some of the cool Expressionist sets.  By "some" I mean "maybe three."  Two of them are in the Baghdad sequence: an Escheresque ant hive and a domed roof respectively, both of which are used during a chase through the palace of the caliph.  The background: our writer's Mary Sue is trying to steal the Caliph's "wishing ring" for his wife, whom he has based on the real-world object of his desires, which makes it all the odder that her character in this sequence is that of such an emasculating shrew.  In any event, these few minutes actually find some momentum and interest and are easily the best in the film.

There is one more cool set to be seen in the Moscow sequence, but it draws interest solely through the way the light catches the bars on a torture chamber door.  The actual story here, which seems to involve Ivan being targeted by the plotting of his poison-maker, is dreadfully dull and unfocused.  The ending where Ivan is tricked into madness by the poison-maker, however, would be an interesting end to an interesting story.  Pity this isn't one of those.

Overall, it's like a glacier of garbage, not even representative of the quality of silent German cinema or Paul Leni, which is not in my experience very high in the first place, and I want my hour and a half back.

D

[jimmy olsen]

How can a movie with a review like that not get an F?

[Ideologue]

You know, I should've hit it with a D.

It's not worthy of an F--too short and not quite stillborn enough.

[Liep]

Archer Vice ends on a great episode, of course America has a word for being one eight black.

[The Larch]

Archer Vice ends on a great episode, of course America has a word for being one eight black.

Quadroon? :p

[jimmy olsen]

Archer Vice ends on a great episode, of course America has a word for being one eight black.

Quadroon? :p

That's 1/4th. Ocataroon is 1/8th. Those are all archaic though, did they even make it out of the 19th century?

[celedhring]

Spanish has a word for 1/4 mulato, don't think it goes further though.

[The Larch]

Spanish has a word for 1/4 mulato, don't think it goes further though.

I'm looking for that Spanish colonial chart of all possible combinations between whites, blacks and natives, that was amazing anal retentiveness atention to detail.

Edit: Here it is:

[Queequeg]

Yeah.  1493 talked a lot about the weird different combinations, like "wolf with left paw raised" or something that was for 1/4th Indian, 1/2 black, 1/4th Chinese. 

[celedhring]

Wasn't aware of that table Larchie 

Did know a few of the words, but not that they considered so many combinations.

Interesting that they considered a 1/4 Indian to be still Spanish but a 1/4 or even 1/8 Moor wasn't.

[The Larch]

Wasn't aware of that table Larchie 

Did know a few of the words, but not that they considered so many combinations.

Interesting that they considered a 1/4 Indian to be still Spanish but a 1/4 or even 1/8 Moor wasn't.

The sheer sonority of some of the words is also commendable. Salta atrás! Albarazado! Tente en el aire! It's as if they put Captain Haddock in charge of picking the names.

[Capetan Mihali]

What's the Mora/Negra distinction in the chart?  Since the Mora illustration hardly looks like an Arab woman...