TV/Movies Megathread

[Eddie Teach]

They made her into a boy? 

[Josquius]

Valerian - wow. I had thought maybe it was an unfairly judged flop...but no. It's awful on every level.

[The Larch]

Not sure what's sadder: that there's apparently a vocal group of (middle-aged?) men whose ideal woman is a children's cartoon character from the 80s

If I can't wank with saturday morning cartoons, what's the point of living?

[Tonitrus]

If I recall my childhood correctly, He-Man/She-Ra were either weekday morning/after-school cartoons...not on Saturday morning.

Saturday morning was the Smurfs. 

[Eddie Teach]

I feel like I remember watching the Smurfs after school.

[Savonarola]

Gimme Shelter (1970)



Just three months after Woodstock (and promoted by Michael Lang, among others) this wasn't exactly peace, love and music.  The first half of the film covers the Rolling Stones 1969 American Tour.  This was their first tour with Mick Taylor and without Brian Jones (who had died in July of 1969.)  The high point of this part of the film is watching Tina Turner give a hand job to her microphone.  (Ike and Tina were the opening act for part of their tour.  BB King also opened for them, but he's not in the film.) 

Even in the early parts of the film the Rolling Stones have problems with people getting up on stage; but it's handled professionally in the venues.  The filmmakers (Albert and David Maysles) wanted to do a fly on the wall type documentary as they had done for Salesman and would do for Grey Gardens; but they couldn't get that close to the Stones.  Instead the film is mostly photo ops, interviews and concerts.

Then we come to Altamont.  The performances are constantly cut short by the audience getting up on stage; and, as the day progresses, more violent as the crowd interacts with the Hell's Angels.  The Flying Burrito Brothers have people rush the stage.  Then Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane gets punched in the face.  Then the Rolling Stones get on and the mood turns even uglier ending with the infamous stabbing.

High point of the second half of the film is either watching Paul Kantner confronting the Angel's (Hey, man, I'd like to mention that the Hell's Angels just smashed Marty Balin in the face and knocked him out for a bit. I'd like to thank you for that.); or watching Jerry Garcia react to the news that Balin got smashed in the face (Oh bummer  .)

The entire film is framed around watching the Rolling Stones watching the film being edited.  Interspersed throughout the film are negotiations to put the concert on.  After Mick Jagger, the filmmakers seem to focus on Charlie Watts most; probably because Keith and Bill aren't all that photogenic and Mick Taylor was mostly unknown at the time.

Even without the Hell's Angels there, I don't think this would have turned out very well.  One thing that struck me is that, at Woodstock they had the bad trip tents and made announcements about bad acid.  In "Gimme Shelter" the organizers are given similar news about bad acid and their reaction is "Tough shit."

[viper37]

I've been watching Bad Blood.  Actually, I've binged watched the thing, it's only 6 episodes.

It's a Canadian tv show.  At some point, really, Canadians on both sides on the Ottawa river will need to watch a little more american tv, just to understand the process by which a story is written.

It's not bad, it's not just great, despite having excellent material to work with.  I like the subject, so I'll watch nearly everything, fictional or not concerning the mafia.

the french dubbing is absolutely awful.  I've never seen such an awful dubbing outside of b or z-series movies.

So, it's the story of Vito Rizzuto, starting in the late 90s, up to his fall and death.
Names and places were all changed.  From what I'm reading of season 2, they also merged some characters from the underworld.

Vito Rizzuto was Montreal's Godfather, the teflon Don.  Nominally, he was reporting to the Bonnano family of New York, but technically he was pretty much independant and controlled most of Quebec and Ontario outside of Toronto.

the story begins as Vito meets with the Hell's Angels, the Haitians, and other assorted criminal groups.  He makes a bold proposal: peace for everyone, cooperation instead of competition.  They shall be organized as a corporation, with each equal shares in each other's trade.  Vito will be the CEO, gathering the largest share, insuring political and judicial protection.

It's an interesting story, based on a book Business or Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto's Last War

Actors are decent.  Maxim Roy is fantastic, for her small part.  Kim Coates is excellent. Anthony LaPaglia... you never feel like he's the boss.  I feel like he's a rich, naive old man, collecting mistresses and money all around town.  He could be a crooked businessman, a legit businessman, any kind of nonpublic richman.  Others are mostly forgetable.

As much as storytelling goes, it ranges from awful to decent.  Some events are discheveled in their presentation, totally disconnected, like something is missing in between.  Some characters are presented but you have no idea of their backstory, only through knowledge of these events&people in the real world would you be able to understand what is going on.  Maxim Roy's character is totally underused.  We're miles behind the Sopranos, wich itself was a couple of kilometers above the Omerta series.

Given some of the changes from reality, it's sometimes hard to distinguish where's the fiction and where's the work of research from the author.

Nonetheless, I would recommend it to any canuck interested in the subject.  If mafia stories bore you, this one won't help you like the genre.  It's much less entertaining than, say, Goodfellas, or The Sopranos.  If you like the genre, it makes for entertaining television.

[celedhring]

If I recall my childhood correctly, He-Man/She-Ra were either weekday morning/after-school cartoons...not on Saturday morning.

Saturday morning was the Smurfs. 

Over here it was a Sat morning cartoon.

[Josephus]

Handmaid's Tale. Finally finsihed it. Got better as it went along, despite its flaws.
The last thing that annoyed me is the Drowning in the Swimming Pool, which I'm sure is not in Leviticus anywhere. "All those that violate my marriage laws will be drowned in a basin of chlorine."
But it wasn't just the method of execution that got me. It was the fact that they would execute a young, and assumingly fertile woman, in a world where they are so rare. Wouldn't her punishment be, like all the other women who transgress the law, becoming a hand maiden?
I think the one thing that Season Two got away from is stressing the importance of these women

[Malthus]

Apparently the latest outrage over a reboot is She-Ra where some yokels say she's not feminine and sexy enough anymore.

https://www.vox.com/2018/7/18/17585950/she-ra-redesign-controversy-netflix

[...]

The latest subject of such outrage is She-Ra, the princess of power, twin sister to He-Man, and fixture of 1980s Saturday morning cartoons. And what's the reason for this newfound and previously undiscovered pot of anger? In short, She-Ra is being reinvented and rebooted for a younger audience — and in the process, a certain contingent of fans have grown very angry that she is now, in their eyes, less sexy than she used to be.

It's yet another example of a vocal fandom seething with seemingly irrational demands and the latest chapter in an ongoing debate about how female superheroes look.

[...]

Not sure what's sadder: that there's apparently a vocal group of (middle-aged?) men whose ideal woman is a children's cartoon character from the 80s, or that instead of, you know, not watching a show they don't like they feel the need to lash out like this.

I learned from the debate, though, that J.M. Straczynski was one of the co-writers for the original She-Ra.

I suspect, more accurately, that there is a vocal group of middle aged people who resent the rebooting of their childhood nostalgia fuel. Which has been turned, as nearly everything appears to be these days, into some drama about gender etc.

Though that wouldn't make for nearly as entertaining a blog entry ...

I'm not one of them - I never watched either He-Man or She-Ra, as I thought at the time they were first aired they were cruddy cartoons designed purely to sell toys - but maybe I misjudged them. 

[Valmy]

They had a certain charm but they were also cartoons designed to sell toys.

The hilarity of He-Man and She-Ra's secret identities when they almost 100% looked like their alter-egos was great. Along with She-Ra's male friend's amazing porn 'stache.

Anyway they were a definitively 80s thing and I don't think would translate well at all today. I mean those little shorts go against the primary aesthetic of the show, where everybody wore speedo looking loin cloths. But I don't think anybody wants to see that today

[Eddie Teach]

Malthus, you're over 50 right? Way past the target demographic.

[The Larch]

Wasn't the He-Man cartoon originally commissioned by Mattel to sell leftover toys from a failed Conan-themed line of products? For sure the toys were there before the show.

[Valmy]

Wasn't the He-Man cartoon originally commissioned by Mattel to sell leftover toys from a failed Conan-themed line of products? For sure the toys were there before the show.

I don't know. I wasn't paying that close attention during that episode of 'The Toys That Made Us'

[The Larch]

Wasn't the He-Man cartoon originally commissioned by Mattel to sell leftover toys from a failed Conan-themed line of products? For sure the toys were there before the show.

I don't know. I wasn't paying that close attention during that episode of 'The Toys That Made Us'

It's not from there that I got it. I seem to remember reading somewhere that Mattel had a merchandising arrangement with the Conan the Barbarian movie, but when they saw that it was much more violent that they expected they cancelled the contract and then repurposed the figures they had designed to become the He-Man characters, and commissioned the cartoon show to promote them.