TV/Movies Megathread

[CountDeMoney]

Watched "The Crossing". It's indeed quite good, Daniels' turn as Washington is not what I expected, very intense and not your typical safe "great man" portrayal.

Good, glad somebody listened to me. 

Was the war situation as dire as depicted in the film, or is it exaggerated for dramatic purposes?

Considering the CA was forced out of New York, there had been nothing but defeats since Bunker Hill, and a sizeable majority of the Continental Army's enlistment papers were about to end on January 1, I'd say it was the most direst point of the war;  which is why Washington went balls out.

[Liep]

The Island. Semi-interesting sci-fi movie and then Michael Bay really steps into his own and it becomes a trivial chase movie.

[CountDeMoney]

and then Michael Bay really steps into his own and it becomes a trivial chase movie.

  Yeah, but Scarlett Johansson's body is oh so fine in that bodysuit they spray painted on her.

[Savonarola]

Cat and the Canary and The Man Who Laughs (again, yay ) are on the Universal Horror list, despite one being afaik murder mystery and the other definitely a melodrama with arguably fewer horror elements than Notre Dame--and despite both being directed by the so-far, so-dull Paul Leni.  I've also thought of a "Your Classic Sucks" feature, in which Leni and other Germans would no doubt feature heavily.

I've never seen the Cat and the Canary.  The Man who Laughs suffers because it wasn't directed by Tod Browning and doesn't star Lon Chaney.  Conrad Veidt was a great and versatile actor; but he should have known better than to try to play Lon Chaney. 

(Raz seems to have found it inspirational, though, as did Detective Comics.  Gwynplaine is the inspiration for the Joker.  Interestingly enough Batman takes a lot of inspiration from the 1930 film "The Bat Whispers" in which the Bat is the villain.  While Gwynplaine is the hero of "The Man who Laughs.")

[Ideologue]

The Man Who Laughs has its compensations (and Veidt, Veidt's makeup and Philbin are they).  But Waxworks is just no good, Veidt included.

[garbon]

So there's a new British miners' strike comedy that's doing quite well called Pride, which is about the Lesbian and Gay Support the Miners group during the miners strike. Mark Simpson, a LGSM member who later coined the phrase metrosexual and now spornosexual, has an interesting reflection on it:
http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2014/09/26/pride-prejudice/

He links to this rather brilliant 20 minute documentary made by the LGSM at the time, All Out! Dancing in Dulais:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHJhbwEcgrA#t=520
Edit: ALSO FEATURE JIMMY SOMMERVILLE PERFORMING AT A FUNDRAISER!

Also I had no idea that the casting vote for committing the Labour Party to supporting gay equality was cast at the next conference, in Simpson's words, by the big, butch, block vote of the National Union of Miners

Trailer for the film here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsFY0wHpR5o

The movie I posted about several times?

[CountDeMoney]

HBO has confirmed two of the four leads in the second season of True Detective. The eight-episode season will revolve around three police officers, one of whom will be played by Vince Vaughn, working with a criminal (Colin Farrell) as they untangle a conspiracy in the wake of a murder.

Vaughn will play Frank Semyon, a life-long criminal attempting to shift into honest work when the murder of a business partner threatens his newfound livelihood. Farrell, who confirmed his casting on the show over the weekend, is set to appear as Ray Velcoro, a detective caught in the middle of dealing with both corrupt police and the mob. The rest of the cast has yet to be announced.

Production will begin on the season, which creator Nic Pizzolatto wrote, later this fall in California. Justin Lin will direct the season's first two episodes.

Official word from HBO on the second season of True Detective comes after weeks of a swiftly churning rumor mill: Elisabeth Moss — fresh off her role as a small-town cop in Top of the Lake — was said to be closing in on the role of Ani Bezzerides, a tough Monterey sheriff struggling with booze and gambling; and Friday Night Lights' Taylor Kitsch was allegedly in the running to play the third detective on the case, Paul Woodrugh, a military vet.

Though most reports had stated the show only had three leads, series creator Nic Pizzolatto saw his antagonist as a fourth and wrote Semyon, a businessman with a brutish past trying to build a high-speed rail through California, with Vince Vaughn in mind. Michelle Forbes, who appeared in the first season of The Killings, was also reportedly in talks to assume the other female lead, either as Semyon's wife, or Velcoro's ex-wife, a victim of sexual assault.

While Pizzolatto is still putting the finishing touches on his scripts for the second season, this time around True Detective will reportedly center on the heinous murder of Ben Caspar, a corrupt city manager of a fictional California town. The killing comes in as the state works towards a massive transportation deal — likely Semyon's high-speed rail connecting North and South California — and the three detectives from various cities and branches are tasked with solving the case.

Though the proceedings sound potentially gruesome, Variety reported that HBO programming president Michael Lombardo told a crowd at the Guardian International Television Festival in Edinburgh that Season Two "won't be quite as dark as the first." Not that things won't get hairy, Lombardo insisted: "Nic explores the darkness in people's souls... It's not as dark, but it's not a light ride. Nic likes looking into the crevices of the soul."

Unlike the first season, though, the production schedule will not allow for one director to be behind the camera throughout Season Two. HBO was rumored to be looking at other filmmakers to handle two or three episodes apiece, including Andrew Dominik (Killing Them Softly, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford).

[Eddie Teach]

The Killing

A case study in the difficulty of getting lightning to strike twice.

Another would be American Horror Story, though some people are still eating that shit up.

[celedhring]

The Island. Semi-interesting sci-fi movie and then Michael Bay really steps into his own and it becomes a trivial chase movie.

The movie has few places to go once the jig is up, so they fill up the rest of the running time with chases and 'splosions.  In Logan's Run (The Island reminded me a lot of it), they close up shop pretty quickly after finding out the truth.

[Viking]

The Island. Semi-interesting sci-fi movie and then Michael Bay really steps into his own and it becomes a trivial chase movie.

It started out as logan's run with an epic twist.... unfortuntely it got Bay'ified. This is the movie that made me hate Bay.

[Martinus]

Ewan McGregor shows his bare ass though. That being said, he pretty much does that in every movie, except perhaps Star Wars.

[Viking]

Ewan McGregor shows his bare ass though. That being said, he pretty much does that in every movie, except perhaps Star Wars.

Obviously, McGregAss was what those movies needed.

[Eddie Teach]

Chewy showing his ass the whole movie wasn't enough?

[Eddie Teach]

Dawn of the Dead(2004). Ok if you're looking for a zombie fix.

[Ideologue]

The Island's ok.

Haven't been as productive as I was for the first half of the month.  I did finish the Jack Arnold sci-fi retrospective; the first Universal Horror series review, Phantom, is complete as well, though it was an editing slog, and is still longish.

The Space Children (1958).  Minor Jack Arnold, and take that with as much or as little irony as you require.  I'd prefer that you took it with none.  (But, yes, it does suck.)  C+

Cardboard Science: The secret history of Boomers

Monster on the Campus (1958).  Cardboard Science's salute to Jack Arnold comes to a strong finish, with this near-classic moral fable of a man's bestial transformation.  Monster on the Campus questions science's responsibility for the horrors it can sometimes unleash, and just like any good 1950s creature feature, it does so in a format that involves several really cool murders.  B+

Cardboard Science: Bitten by a fossil

Dr. Cyclops (1940).  Dr. Cyclops is one of those old, old, old sci-fi spectacles, and much of the joy it offers is inextricably bound up in its very vintage.  But even though it may be undermined at every last turn by a score that can't stay put, actors who might be reading their lines phonetically, and a distressing lack of gusto in its pursuit of its classical references, this rear-projectionfest may be more resonant today than it ever was in 1940.  B

Cardboard Science: Attack of the tiny temps!

Gamera: Super Monster (1980).   This is what studios dream of when they're dead.  F

We've been eating Gamera, part VIII: This is not a film

The Phantom of the Opera (1925/1929).  The super-classic scare that started them all.  A+

Monsters Mashed, part I: Feast your eyes, glut your soul!

Whenever I get to them, Magic in the Moonlight (2014), Cat and the Canary (1927), the Gamera Heisei and Millennium Era films (1995 and so forth), and the return of Masaki Kobayashi retrospective with The Thick-Walled Room (1955).