TV/Movies Megathread

[Habbaku]

I don't think Parasite was as good as the Academy thinks it was, but I also don't think it was unworthy of Best Picture. Most of the nominees this year were great films and deserving.

[FunkMonk]

Yeah, it seemed like a really good year for films in general. Tough competition.

[Savonarola]

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

Judy Garland's highest grossing motion picture, one that contains two of her best known songs "The Trolley Song" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," and the one where she fell in love with Vincente Minnelli.  She didn't want the role originally because her character is a high school student and Garland was trying to transition into more adult roles.  She also had problems with the role; she couldn't identify with the problems a high school girl would face.  Minnelli told her to treat every problem her character faced as a serious crisis; and if there was one thing Judy Garland knew it was crisis.

Vincente Minnelli's attention to detail pays off; the film really does look like it's 1904 (except all the women have 1940s style hair-dos.)  The story is nothing remarkable; a family experiences the highs and lows of living in St. Louis on the eve of the World's Fair; but that's not really the point.  The film is a nostalgic look at a simpler time (it was made when the world was at war), as well as a song and dance extravaganza.  The then seven year old Margaret O'Brien steals every scene that she's in.  (She was given the best role, as a young girl whose dolls are susceptible to fatal diseases; sort of a chipper Wednesday Addams.)

[Duque de Bragança]

King Lear (1987)

Possibly the worst movie of Godard, certainly Cannon/Menahem Golan's worst movie as a producer. Quite a feat!
Blocked during 10 years, after a huge flop, this may very well be the case where the producer was right.

So Godard was given some money by Menahem Golan to direct a Shakespeare adaptation. If this is not textbook example of a vanity project gone awfully bad, I don't know what it is.
Woody Allen, as Mr Alien (sic) shows up to have some lines but he is supposed to edit the film in the film.
Peter Sellars, Norman Mailer, Juliette Delpy, Burgess Meredith and Godard himself, as a [spoiler]rastafarian witch doctor[/spoiler] also show up.

Since I missed the Sunday screening, I got the so-called Swiss (rare) version: a VHS-quality screening on the big screen of the Cinémathèque complete with a French voice-over English narration by Godard which does not make any sense. It's somewhat famous for Godard recording a Menahem Golan call inquiring about the advancement of the project, following a contract signed on a cafe napkin. Not to mention a press conference in Cannes ending with Golan threatening to sue Godard.

With the pretentious declamations about the relationship between images and reality plus the "experimental" style, deconstructing Shakespeare and other concepts, there is no need for a plot.
I suppose some may see as somewhat post-apocalyptic with references to [spoiler]Chernobyl[/spoiler]. The Shakespearean adaptation is to be seen according to a possibly interesting mafia angle but then gets lost.

[spoiler]In this one, King Lear has not three daughters, but there are three Kings Lear[/spoiler]. 
I guess Godard diverted money for other uses and/or wanted to play a joke on Golan as alluded in Electric Boogaloo, the documentary about the Cannon group.

This is not a movie to watch during digestion, if so short naps will happen.

[Savonarola]

I Lost My Body (2019)

Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy loses hand, hand finds boy, nothing is really resolved.

About half the film is a hands journey to find its missing body; that's a fantastic journey a little like "The Red Balloon."  The other half is the story or the former owner and how he came to lose his hand.  That's not really all that good- though the animation focusing on hands is interesting.

[viper37]

So, out with a cold I've binged the Witcher. Wonderful series, in my mind superior to GoT, mostly because I could never get into GoT, knowing from the beginning that the end would suck.

Reading up on the thing I found this little gem about the author, from Wikipedia.

In an interview Sapkowski explained that he wanted the language to be reasonably legible to a reader, to avoid footnotes. As he said: "In my book, I do not want for an orc telling to another orc 'Burbatuluk grabataluk!' to be supplied with a footnote: 'Shut the door, don't let the flies in!'"

Yeah, attack Tolkien on language, that's the best way to critique him. And apparently Sapkowski has an elven language in his books.

I don't see it as an attack per se.  He defends his writing style, that is all.

IIRC, yes there's an Elven language, but it's much less present in the books than in the series&game.  Mostly place names, I think, or older songs/poems.

[Threviel]

It just seems to me that fantasy writers on par with Eddings, Jordan and Brooks shouldn't insult their betters.

Especially when they so obviously stands on the shoulders of their betters.

[Threviel]

I've been watching a lot of things lately, out with a hellish cold.

The Mandalorian - Now this is good Star Wars, the best since episode V. The thing that bothers is that this is set some 30ish years (IIRC) after the fall of the Jedi order. Why does no-one remember the force?

Midway - An old style war movie in the vein of Tora, Tora, Tora. Some more time could have been spent explaining why the dive bombers weren't shredded by Zero's in the first attack.

Ford v Ferrari - The wife proclaimed that we are not ever going to buy a Ford after watching.

The Cruel Sea - Depressing movie, but not half as depressing as the book.

Grand Designs - Nice houses, but damn, why spend insane amounts of money to live in a special snow flake house? The ones that build on a tight budget are the best episodes.

[Malthus]

I've been watching a lot of things lately, out with a hellish cold.

The Mandalorian - Now this is good Star Wars, the best since episode V. The thing that bothers is that this is set some 30ish years (IIRC) after the fall of the Jedi order. Why does no-one remember the force?

Midway - An old style war movie in the vein of Tora, Tora, Tora. Some more time could have been spent explaining why the dive bombers weren't shredded by Zero's in the first attack.

Ford v Ferrari - The wife proclaimed that we are not ever going to buy a Ford after watching.

The Cruel Sea - Depressing movie, but not half as depressing as the book.

Grand Designs - Nice houses, but damn, why spend insane amounts of money to live in a special snow flake house? The ones that build on a tight budget are the best episodes.

Recently read The Cruel Sea. Do not want to go on convoy duty in the Atlantic circa WW2.

Three scenes of horror really stand out:

- trying to do first aid on a sailor suffering horrendous third-degree burns all over his body ... with a small tube of burn ointment, and no medical knowledge.

- watching a group of swimmers attempt to outswim the spread of burning fuel oil from their torpedoed tanker - and failing, one by one.

- finding a set of skeletons roped together and still held floating by their life jackets, realizing they had slowly died that way.

[Savonarola]

Birds of Prey (2020)

Someone finally made the movie all the incels and edge lords feared that "Captain Marvel" or the new "Star Wars" movies would be: a female empowerment movie which mostly consists of women kicking men in the balls.  Of course there's more to the movie than that, women also punch men in the balls and hit them in the balls with sledgehammers, baseball bats and a bowling ball.  THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT!

Even if you ignore all the ball hitting (you won't be able to) this is a really violent films.  This being a DC film the combat scenes are long, LOUD, and done with such quick cuts that it's hard to see what's going on.  A lot of the battles don't make sense.  Why do all the goons attack one at a time instead of ganging up on the (anti-)heroines?  Why is no one in the police station or jail armed, except Rosie Perez?  How can Margot Robbie kick the asses of 30 assailants (some armed with automatic weapons) and then lose a fist fight to the 55 year old Rosie Perez?

Robbie, as always, is a delight (even if her Joisy accent comes and goes.)  Perez is great too, but I think at some point the writers realized they had written her as a total cop movie cliche (she's a loose canon who plays by her own rules) and had to make fun of that.  (I don't think that was a good idea; trying to prove that you're too cool for your own trite chixploitation movie just emphasizes that it is a trite chixploitation movie.)  The other birds could have used more character development; but that would have taken time away from all the ball kicking they director had to get in.

[crazy canuck]

A judge I clerked for had served doing convoy duty.  Another judge told me that he had survived his ship being sunk.  When I asked him about his experiences he looked at me with kind eyes for a long moment and said he would rather talk about something else.

[Threviel]

Life as a sailor in the Atlantic, be it on trade ships, escorts or subs seems to have been horrible and awful in almost every way. The sheer boredom mixed withe the constant total terror. Just horrible.

Some more things that stands out from the book:
[spoiler]
The survivors killed by depth charges because there could have been a submarine below.

The sounds from the "sound pipe" coming from the poor sods trapped when Compass Rose goes down.

The uboat commander presented as an ardent nazi. I've mostly seen Das Boot style anti-nazis only doing their duty.

The merry and happy girls dying must have seemed even more horrible at the time than in our more gender equal times. [/spoiler]

[Syt]

Convoys were bad, but the Arctic Convoys were arguably the worst of it.

[Threviel]

My grandfather served on uboats, a lucky heart condition got him transfered to a torpedo boat instead. In the end he ended up on the eastern front. Still better than the uboats.

[Josephus]

I've been watching a lot of things lately, out with a hellish cold.

The Mandalorian - Now this is good Star Wars, the best since episode V. The thing that bothers is that this is set some 30ish years (IIRC) after the fall of the Jedi order. Why does no-one remember the force?

Midway - An old style war movie in the vein of Tora, Tora, Tora. Some more time could have been spent explaining why the dive bombers weren't shredded by Zero's in the first attack.

Ford v Ferrari - The wife proclaimed that we are not ever going to buy a Ford after watching.

The Cruel Sea - Depressing movie, but not half as depressing as the book.

Grand Designs - Nice houses, but damn, why spend insane amounts of money to live in a special snow flake house? The ones that build on a tight budget are the best episodes.

Recently read The Cruel Sea. Do not want to go on convoy duty in the Atlantic circa WW2.

Three scenes of horror really stand out:

- trying to do first aid on a sailor suffering horrendous third-degree burns all over his body ... with a small tube of burn ointment, and no medical knowledge.

- watching a group of swimmers attempt to outswim the spread of burning fuel oil from their torpedoed tanker - and failing, one by one.

- finding a set of skeletons roped together and still held floating by their life jackets, realizing they had slowly died that way.

Loved that book.