TV/Movies Megathread

[Savonarola]

The Lost Zeppelin  (1929)

One from the early days of talkies.  The premise sounds fun enough; brave naval aviators explore the south pole in their zeppelin, this could be the sequel to Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship.  The problem is that the screenwriter threw in a love triangle between the captain (Conway Terle, a stage actor and later the prince in the 1936 Romeo and Julliet); his wife (Virginia Valli, a name that seems to come out of DC comics) and the first mate (Ricardo Cortez (actually born Jacob Krantz, Hollywood changed him into a Latin Lover when that was all the rage.))  So there's dialogue, and dialogue, and more dialogue.  Sound is so primitive at this point that the camera can't move, everything has to be shot on a sound stage, and the actors can't move when they're speaking.  The, char-ac-ters, all, speak, slow-ly, with, clear, and, dis-tinct, el-o-cution.  When we're all just about to die of boredom the zeppelin takes off and there are bad storms along the way.  These thrilling scenes are interrupted frequently so that the wife can listen to announcements concerning the flight on the radio.  The zeppelin crashes and only Terle and Cortez survive.  An aviator finds them, but there's room for only one in his airplane.  Which one will go back?  [spoiler]The one that necessitates more dialogue, of course.[/spoiler]

[celedhring]

The Green Hornet. Rogen's version. Couldn't get past the first 30 minutes, truly awful. I guess he saw it as a chance at big studio filmmaking but beggar's belief how Gondry could have made a film so utterly generic.

[Admiral Yi]

I honestly don't understand how Rogen gets any work at all.

[Grey Fox]

He's Ceech for a new generation.

[Admiral Yi]

Cheech Marin, like Cheech and Chong?

[Grey Fox]

Yes.

[celedhring]

Steve Jobs (2015), or Aaron Sorkin really hates geeks. The film is Sorkin overkill; if you like his talkie style (I do) you'll love this. If don't, you'll find it immensely aggravating. Absolutely everything - and I mean *everything* is given through rapid-fire dialogue. Exposition, character backgrounds, feelings, doubts. It's easy to switch off in the middle of the whirlwind of words, though, and often the film cries for a bit of breathing space. Sorkin seems to have created a true word opera. I can see why the film wasn't successful. If it wasn't for the fact that Boyle's direction is actually pretty good here (subdued, but energetic and dynamic) this could be a play.

The film pretty much follows on the "brilliant techie guy who's a total cunt in real life" theme from The Social Network - and it's pretty on the nose -, but I find this film to be better than that one. For starters, Jobs is a more interesting character, Fassbender a much better lead, and Boyle's simple but energetic direction style fits Sorkin's word onslaught much better than Fincher's theatricality.

I don't know enough about Jobs' real life to know whether all the stuff that's on the movie is an exaggerated or reasonably based on facts, but he comes across pretty badly as a person.

[CountDeMoney]

"brilliant techie guy who's a total cunt in real life" theme from The Social Network - and it's pretty on the nose -,

that's because it's not too far from the truth with that crowd.

I don't know enough about Jobs' real life to know whether all the stuff that's on the movie is an exaggerated or reasonably based on facts, but he comes across pretty badly as a person.

Between the interviews, the tell-alls, the biographies, etc., since his death, that seems to be a consistent theme throughout.

[Admiral Yi]

Silicon Valley season premier at 10:52 Central.

[Eddie Teach]

Silicon Valley season premier at 10:52 Central.

I think it premiered last Sunday.

[Admiral Yi]

K

[Eddie Teach]

The Hateful Eight. I think Tarantino's lost his mojo.

[Martinus]

This seems like a good week - Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley and Veep premiered last Sunday and today it's Penny Dreadful.

Incidentally, is Silicon Valley good? I kinda watched the pilot 2 years ago and it did not draw me in but people are saying it is hillarious. Worth catching up?

[lustindarkness]

The Jungle Book, very good, well done, does justice to original story too.

[Eddie Teach]

Incidentally, is Silicon Valley good? I kinda watched the pilot 2 years ago and it did not draw me in but people are saying it is hillarious. Worth catching up?

I think it's hilarious, but I quit watching Veep after 7 minutes of painfully forced jokes in the pilot. YMMV, obviously.