TV/Movies Megathread

[celedhring]

Everybody hates Snake Eyes.  It's a masterpiece of thriller filmmaking, if nothing else, and it splits the difference extraordinarily well between Goofy and Serious Cage.

It's a sterile formal experiment. Works as a curiosity I guess, but if you take away the first shot, what remains (characters, plot, etc)... is extremely unengaging. The problem with De Palma is that he gets trapped by formalism and technique, and his films end up being enjoyable constructs, but devoid of any sense of reality to them. Whenever he's been able to shed that away (or was forced to by the Hollywood machine), he's made his most well-rounded films: Untouchables, M:I, Scarface...

One of my teachers used Untouchables as a model film in his screenwriting classes, by the way, it is a wonderfully well crafted classic story.

[Ideologue]

Sure, it's Star Wars.

[celedhring]

It's a Hero's Journey, but it's a bit different than the Star Wars one. It has a lot of western influences.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Re-watched Harvey. Still an awesome movie.

[viper37]

Furious 7.  At some point, too much is too much.  it is immensely fun, but so over the top sometimes  (when they're not driving/flying, I suppose it's realistic enough ).  I spent a good moment though.

[Martinus]

Just watched the last John Oliver (the one about public defenders so it could be the next to last) - he is fucking awesome. 

[celedhring]

Lions for Lambs. Undramatic, preachy and more on the nose than an itchy wart. What a waste of a cast.

[The Minsky Moment]

Snake Eyes

That's like a Marianas Trench level "sub" classic

[Ideologue]

Pauline Kael would've dug it.  (Hell, maybe she did.  She didn't kick the bucket till 2001.)

[Ideologue]

OK, for cel--because JR has no ears to hear--this is why Snake Eyes is great:

1)That 12-minute trick shot that opens the movie--actually several steadicam shots stitched together, but pretty close to flawlessly, particularly given the limitations of 1996 cinematography and editing--is somewhere in the upper echelons of the most complex visuals ever staged in a movie.  That BDP pulled it off at all is wonderful.  What makes it brilliant, though, is that it does so much work.  All at once, it establishes the character of Rick Santoro (our good friend Nic Cage) as an affable scumbag, along with nearly all of the other characters that populate the film; it creates a clear sense of geography (and claustrophobia!); and it sets up the flashback structure that will fill in the blanks that are purposely left in, due to the camera's replication of Santoro's subjectivity.
2)It is the most untroubled depiction of BDP's great obsession, the technology of surveillance.  It's surely less twisted than Body Double in this regard; and yet it's no less interesting for it.
3)It's a pretty swell story about redemption, and Nic Cage is great as Santoro (even if his Cagisms are easy to mock, they fit the character and he's tremendously entertaining to watch).  What makes him even more interesting is how clear Cage makes it that he just fucking hates discovering that he has a moral code after all.  He despises having to do the right thing, if it means betraying his friend.  That he pays dearly for his reluctant heroism fits right in with BDP's bleak worldview--the film essentially argues that no good deed goes unpunished.  It's not as good as Blow Out in this regard, but, hell, not many things are.
4)The formal elements throughout are all pretty inspired: frequent BDP collaborator Stephen Burum is one of our great cinematographers, and he knows how to light the hell out of things; I always appreciate some well-deployed splitscreen; the thriller editing is top-notch; I love the crane shot of the hotel rooms.  Meanwhile, the production design of the whole arena and casino is amazing, both gorgeous and very dense with detail.
5)I like the villain.  Gary Sinise is superb at creating his conflicted antagonist.  He maintains an aura of decency, despite his willingness to murder; and he actually has a noble, if oddly-specific, motivation to assassinate the Secretary of Defense (ensuring that a missile defense system is funded).  However, I suppose this inner conflict might have made him seem like a less-effective villain than he actually is.  (Likewise, I'll be the first to admit he says the word "AirGuard" way too much.)  I used to think the rationale beneath the assassination was the weakest part of the movie, but I've really grown to appreciate it.
6)The original ending probably would've been rad, and the one that was forced on De Palma and David Koepp is a little abrupt, but it's still perfectly fine, and staged with De Palma's usual thrillmaking hypercompetence.

But agree or disagree with that, I just don't get why Snake Eyes gets shit on so hard.  Femme Fatale, Raising Cain, Mission to Mars?  Man, I understand why people don't like those.  They're totally fucking weird, and their plots take some outrageously stupid turns.  Snake Eyes, on the other hand, is a glossy little thriller with a big budget, some very engaging themes, and a lot of theoretical populist appeal.  Yet everybody hates it like it carries cholera.

[katmai]

thank god you limit yourself to film criticism and not production.

[Barrister]

So last night an old fraternity brother of mine (who now lives in TExas and who I haven't seen for 15 years) was on Jeopardy!  I of course watched - the first time Jeopardy! has been must-see tv in my house since, well, ever.

He battled gamely, but the previous episode's champ ran up an early lead.  He got up to almost $20k by winning Final Jeopardy, but the winner also got the right question.  Ah well, it was nice to see Gord again.


Tonight is the premier of The Muppets.  Interested to see how that goes.

[Josephus]

So last night an old fraternity brother of mine (who now lives in TExas and who I haven't seen for 15 years) was on Jeopardy!  I of course watched - the first time Jeopardy! has been must-see tv in my house since, well, ever.

He battled gamely, but the previous episode's champ ran up an early lead.  He got up to almost $20k by winning Final Jeopardy, but the winner also got the right question.  Ah well, it was nice to see Gord again.


Tonight is the premier of The Muppets.  Interested to see how that goes.

Are those two thoughts connected?

[Barrister]

So last night an old fraternity brother of mine (who now lives in TExas and who I haven't seen for 15 years) was on Jeopardy!  I of course watched - the first time Jeopardy! has been must-see tv in my house since, well, ever.

He battled gamely, but the previous episode's champ ran up an early lead.  He got up to almost $20k by winning Final Jeopardy, but the winner also got the right question.  Ah well, it was nice to see Gord again.


Tonight is the premier of The Muppets.  Interested to see how that goes.

Are those two thoughts connected?

Well they're both what I'm watching on TV

[Malthus]

So last night an old fraternity brother of mine (who now lives in TExas and who I haven't seen for 15 years) was on Jeopardy!  I of course watched - the first time Jeopardy! has been must-see tv in my house since, well, ever.

He battled gamely, but the previous episode's champ ran up an early lead.  He got up to almost $20k by winning Final Jeopardy, but the winner also got the right question.  Ah well, it was nice to see Gord again.


Tonight is the premier of The Muppets.  Interested to see how that goes.

Are those two thoughts connected?

Is it really any surprise that whenever Beeb thinks of his fraternity bros, the Muppets spring to mind?