TV/Movies Megathread

[celedhring]

Contagion. I wouldn't have thought that the death of millions could bore me so much. It's a movie where bad stuff happens and characters don't accomplish much except being incompetent or dying in not particularly compelling circumstances.

[Ideologue]

I've got a lot of holea in my Soderbergh education.

The Girlfriend Experience sucks.

[celedhring]

Nothing dramatic happens in Contagion. It's like they made a fictionalized report of "what would happen if a deadly plague hit the world", and then made up some characters to pretend it's a narrative movie.

[The Minsky Moment]

Does anyone else get enraged by the Netflix gnomes? The recommendations never change

'You've recently watched: The Hunt, The Great Beauty, Sorry, Wrong Number and Hobbit 2. We still think you'd enjoy: House.'

I'm not enraged, but they do tell me I'd like Metropolis a lot. Lol not so much.

You can't expect any AI to comprehend the depth of your aesthetic irrationalities.

[frunk]

Which ones did you think were weaker (among my friends there's disagreements )?

Interestingly the show is hugely popular in China - for a Western drama.

Edit: Also Black Mirror's Christmas special is great.

I thought [spoiler]the first and last (series 1, ep. 1,  series 2, ep. 3)[/spoiler] were the weakest.

[Sheilbh]

I thought [spoiler]the first and last (series 1, ep. 1,  series 2, ep. 3)[/spoiler] were the weakest.

Interesting. [spoiler]For me it's the same with both series, I really like episode 1, I love episode 2 and I think episode 3 is the weakest.[/spoiler]

I've just discovered this piece on Blade Runners' sets by one of my favourite TV hosts. For Ide:

Future retrospection: Blade Runner's sets
by Jonathan Meades

It is a truism that representations of the future (and, indeed, of the past) are more indicative of the era they are made than the era they are made about. Characteristically they lift a couple of aspects of the familiar (present) world and stretch or heighten them, or distil them into caricature. Ridley Scott insouciantly adheres to this procedure just as Verne, Wells (whom Oscar Wilde called 'a scientific Jules Verne') and Huxley did before him. His cinematic precursors obviously include Fritz Lang, whose Metropolis was all Sant 'Elia and New York and arch expressionism; William Cameron Menzies, whose Things to Come was Art Deco laid on with a trowel; and Charlie Chaplin, whose Modern Times was a technological cartoon.

Thus Scott's idea of Los Angeles 40 years hence in Blade Runner is a salad of past styles, by which I mean pre 1982 styles. This is cute, clever and predictable: his future, like every other ever posited, is the present only more so, a reflection in a distorting mirror, a reflection which, alas, is presented with such thorough humourlessness that you must assume that it is meant to be taken seriously. The quasi-cultural fragment of the early 1980s that Scott has chosen to exploit is the craze for exhuming the (fairly recent) past. He evidently reckons that in 2019 in LA this 'copyist' urge will be even stronger than it is today.

Scott, who (all too clearly) began his career as a designer for television, rummages with promiscuous (or 'post modern') abandon through the store of the world's architectural gestures. He does not oblige himself to achieve what have hitherto been the predominant characteristics of utopian and dystopian cities homogeneity and consistency. Of course a consistency is imposed on the film by the manner in which it is shot: the constant rain, the range of tiresomely ingenious devices that disorientate the spectator, the facetiously world-weary narration that the protagonist delivers and, most of all, another echo of 1940s private eye movies, the 'atmospheric' lighting. Light is always indirect beamed or diffused or reflected which makes it 'atmospheric'. So, on to the stylistic salad that is given this hefty dressing, as colourful and crude as something out of a Kraft bottle.

The first man to be hauled on for a thunderous round of applause is the late John Martin. Martin died 128 years ago last 17 February on the Isle of Man, having given a lifetime to devising exuberantly fantastical (and unrealized) architectural improvements, and to composing equally fantastical apocalyptic canvases that earned him a place in the British pantheon and the sobriquet 'Mad'. Scott is living testimony to the truth of T. S. Eliot's maxim that 'great poets don't borrow, they steal'. Scott, in the nicest possible way of course, exhibits the influence of Martin. He is not the first film maker to do so; D. W. Griffith and Coppola in Apocalypse Now trod before him, but they were mere pickpockets beside Scott's sledgehammer and stocking mask blagger. However, he is the first to capture photographically the grandiose blowsiness that Martin did so well in paint. This is no puny achievement: Martin's Michelin Man buildings, with their swollen columns and rustication like folds of fat, look splendidly tawdry in the film.

The next to collect laurels must be American 'Borax' designers, Bel Geddes, Loewy, people like that. Scott gives the OK to streamlining, and why not. There is a fair bit of unrestructured moderne to be glimpsed in the shadows. And what else? There is classicism of the Edwin Cooper sort; a soupçon of the Milan railway station manner; some purposeful chunks of Archigram stuff; and a wondrous interior peopled by brightly clothed tumbling dwarfs who look as though they are the pets of an ideal madman in Naples, 1800.

There is also a lot of Hong Kong (neon and noodles, not Norman Foster) since for some reason Los Angeles is full of Chinese: I suspect some point about inner cities was being made but the script is not wildly lucid. Finally, there is a very large building that recalls the insaner sort of public housing schemes in outer Paris. I note that Arthur Drexler described such a scheme as having the look of a 'twenties set for a German film'. And what happens in this extravagant illusion? Actors decorate it: the Word is not something in which Scott is much interested. The titular hero has to track down and kill robots that are supposedly indistinguishable from humans. The film is so bereft of emotional resonance, so wanting a moral dimension that the humans seem no less robotic than the real robots. Scott is the veteran (and victim) of 3000 advertising films. Here he has nothing to sell and all the time in the world to sell it. The art is in his props; it's all wrapping and no gift.

Since long before the advent of cinema there has been an exchange between architecture as building and architecture as imagined ideal. This exchange has not been entirely felicitous. Approximations to the paradisiac landscapes of the seventeenth century are one thing, doltish attempts (not peculiar to Paris) to emulate the nightmare city of Metropolis are quite another. When the exchange is in the opposite direction the imaginary drawing on and synthesizing strands of the real the results, even if they are disappointing, are unlikely to be harmful. Imagined architecture is like its twin in every aspect save two rather vital ones: it is not public art and it is not functional. Imagined architecture is never quite in earnest; it is chimeric, fun, sublime. Do not copy.

1982

[frunk]

Interesting. [spoiler]For me it's the same with both series, I really like episode 1, I love episode 2 and I think episode 3 is the weakest.[/spoiler]

I agree with you on which two are the best.  [spoiler]S1 E3 was at least an interesting premise.  They should have done something more than a questioned fidelity thing with it, but I enjoyed the story anyway.[/spoiler]  [spoiler]S1 E1 didn't even have an interesting premise.  It was a standard hostage situation.  Everything that happened could have been done only slightly differently 20 or 30 years ago.[/spoiler]

[Viking]

Korra, the finale felt like a damp squib. It felt like a hurried ending desperately trying to tie up all the loose ends with a last minute deux ex machina expositionary explanation of the main villain right amid all the other teased sub plots are being paid off.

Avatar ended with lots and lots of open questions, one story ended but all the other plots were half finished, I suppose that made that ending a bit better, they got to focus on the main story. Here they sort out all their ships during an attack by a 15 story tall mecha-suit. It was a mess.

The only open question is "[spoiler]is Korra bi?[/spoiler]" and, ffs, that's not the kind of note I hoped it would end on.

Right now I'm not sure which I prefer, that somebody with a more adult audience base hires the creators to do something more mature with the universe and characters or if I hope the creators can flex their creative muscles and do something new and interesting.

Korra was always dealing with the problem that it was a show for adults down to 15 years old rather than kids up to 15 years old like the rest of the content on Nickleodeon. On the whole Korra has been a let down, but then again I have been hoping it meets ATLA levels of quality. I get the feeling the whole thing from season one onwards just tried to fit in too much plot for us to get to know and like the characters. 

[Sophie Scholl]

I actually got into Arrow by watching Flash. So at least that didn't escape me.

Me and AmScip (iirc) have been saying for three years now that Arrow is the best thing on television that doesn't have Peter Dinklage in it, how come you don't listen to us?

And, season one is the weakest of the show so far.

Hey now!  I've been a big supporter and vocal backer of Arrow since like episode 4.

[katmai]

Been watching since day 1 bitches.

[Sophie Scholl]

Been watching since day 1 bitches.

Ha.  True.  I was going to mention that I started watching after you confirmed the quality of the show.  The only issue was finding a quality and reliable download location since the CW channel is low def at my place.

[CountDeMoney]

I kinda liked Flash when it first came out, how he was learning his powers with varied results. 

[11B4V]

I kinda liked Flash when it first came out, how he was learning his powers with varied results. 

Never saw Flash. Arrow has been OK for something light I suppose.

[Ideologue]

Neat piece, Sheilbh, although the rags on Blade Runner's human merits are little hard to stomach.

[Martinus]

Edit: Also Black Mirror's Christmas special is great.

I love the concept of British tv series Christmas specials.

There was this article on Clickhole (The Onion's off-shoot) recently that lampooned British television and I found it particularly spot on:

6 American Television Shows That Started In England
Posted Dec. 11, 2014

From 'The Office' to 'House Of Cards,' some of the most popular shows on American television have been based on shows that originally aired in the United Kingdom. Here are some of our favorites!

1. Seinfeld


Via NBC
Based on the British sitcom Just A Moment Dear, I'll Buzz You In.

Before bringing the acclaimed sitcom to American audiences, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David were famously inspired by the British sitcom Just A Moment Dear, I'll Buzz You In, a show about a British accountant named Jerry Christianson who would get into a series of comical adventures with his best friend, George Church, his ex-girlfriend, Elaine McCarthy, and his zany neighbor, Sergeant Cosmo Kramer, a veteran of World War II. The show aired from 1977 to 1983 on the BBC.

The series ran for two seasons, each six episodes long, plus an hour-long Christmas special titled "A Very Just A Moment Dear, I'll Buzz You In Christmas." In this episode, Jerry and the gang must explain what Christmas is to Margaret Thatcher (portrayed by British comedy legend Paul Whitehouse) after she falls off a ladder and suffers a head injury that causes her to forget everything she knows about Christmas.

2. Breaking Bad


Via AMC
Based on the British drama The Marvelous Mr. Pemberton.

Vince Gilligan's iconic AMC drama is based on The Marvelous Mr. Pemberton, a masterpiece of British television about the headmaster of a boarding school in the English countryside who turns to synthesizing and selling ecstasy in the early '90s.

The show ran for two seasons, each consisting of three 90-minute episodes, plus a two-hour-long Christmas special in which the Marvelous Mr. Pemberton is finally captured by Santa Claus and sentenced to five years in prison for his crimes.

3. Girls


Via HBO
Based on the British show Pots And Pans.

Lena Dunham based her hit HBO series on the popular British drama Pots And Pans, which focused on a close-knit group of young female twentysomethings struggling to find jobs and husbands in the horrifying years following the First World War.

The series ran for one season consisting of two 20-minute episodes, and was capped off with an hour-long Christmas special in which the women of Pots And Pans must help a time-traveling Charles Dickens return to the Victorian era.

4. Cheers


Via NBC
Based on the British sitcom If It's Not Custard, It's Mustard.

The popular American sitcom was an adaptation of the British show If It's Not Custard, It's Mustard, which takes place entirely in a run-down London pub and is set during World War I and World War II at the same time. The name of the show is a popular British proverb that essentially means, "If it's not one thing, then it's a different thing that rhymes with the first thing."

If It's Not Custard, It's Mustard ran for three seasons. The first season consisted of one 15-minute episode, the second season consisted of no episodes at all, and the third season consisted of two five-minute episodes that aired 15 years apart. Fans of the show also got to enjoy an hour-long Christmas special in which Santa Claus sits silently in the pub and gets drunk alone.

5. Cosmos: A Personal Voyage


Via wineandbowties.com
Based on the British science documentary Laurence Olivier Presents: The Heavens: A Journey Into The Mind Of Outer Space.

The beloved American space documentary narrated by Carl Sagan was adapted from the BBC program Laurence Olivier Presents: The Heavens: A Journey Into The Mind Of Outer Space, which was written, directed, and narrated by the unparalleled actor Laurence Olivier. Though Olivier was criticized for taking considerable creative liberties with scientific fact, his performance was universally praised.

The series ran for one season consisting of three five-hour-long episodes, "Mercury," "Meteors: Part I," and "Meteors: Part II." There was also an hour-long Christmas special titled "A Yuletide Comet Comes To Town," in which Olivier must help Santa Claus learn how to ride on a comet after his flying sleigh gets shot down by a power-mad American CIA agent.

6. Modern Family


Via ABC
Based on the British sitcom And Jeffrey Makes Eleven.

The Emmy-winning American sitcom can trace its origins back to the hallowed British comedy And Jeffrey Makes Eleven, a show about an unconventional family consisting of eight parents and three children. Every member of the family was 45 years old. The show ran for one episode, which was 23 seconds long. It is generally considered one of the greatest programs in the history of British television.

The show returned briefly for an hour-long Christmas special titled "And Eight More Jeffries Make Nineteen," in which the eight parents all become pregnant via Immaculate Conception and give virgin births at the same time to eight grown men named Jeffrey. They are all 45 years old.