TV/Movies Megathread

[The Brain]

Margot Robbie skinny? Is this some American joke that I'm too European to understand?

[Josquius]

Yeah, thin sure, but very much on the normal person side of things. Not notably celebrity skinny.

[Admiral Yi]

In the US skinny sometimes means not fat.  I think that's where Valmy is coming from.

[The Brain]

Fear Street Part 1: 1994. High school kids face masked killer stock ingredients. Fine for what it is. Posters of a certain age will enjoy the songdropping. [spoiler]There's lesbian sex.[/spoiler]

[viper37]

In the US skinny sometimes means not fat.  I think that's where Valmy is coming from.

So, it's an American thing that we're too foreign to understand

[Sheilbh]

Fear Street Part 1: 1994. High school kids face masked killer stock ingredients. Fine for what it is. Posters of a certain age will enjoy the songdropping. [spoiler]There's lesbian sex.[/spoiler]

I really enjoyed it

I sent a message on this - that it was trash, but precisely the sort of trash I quite enjoy

[grumbler]

In the US skinny sometimes means not fat.  I think that's where Valmy is coming from.

So, it's an American thing that we're too foreign to understand

I think that it's a Valmy thing that even Americans are too foreign to understand. 

[crazy canuck]

In the US skinny sometimes means not fat.  I think that's where Valmy is coming from.

So, it's an American thing that we're too foreign to understand

I think that it's a Valmy thing that even Americans are too foreign to understand. 

Yep, a lot of Americans are neither skinny nor overweight.

[celedhring]

So, I accidentally got my mother addicted to Empire 

[Malthus]

Had an amusing tv watching epiphany today ... I was watching Midsomer Murders with my wife for a bit, then switched to watching the old Dirty Harry movie with my son.

It amused me to see the two cops depicted are pretty well polar opposites in every respect. 

Dirty Harry is a misanthrope who lacks human attachments; Tom Barbary is a very married man with a loving family (whose harmless domestic antics forms the B plot).

Dirty Harry hunts down psychopaths with an enormous hand cannon, often shooting people and even torturing them on occasion. Tom Barnaby basically never lays a finger on anyone and doesn't ever carry a weapon. If a criminal needs to be physically restrained, his Sargent sidekick does that.

Dirty Harry is at home in the mean streets of 70s/80s San Fransisco, which despite being a beautiful city is depicted as an urban hellscape. Tom Barnaby does his work in small village England, which is depicted as being impossibly idyllic, quaint and scenic (aside from having an astonishing number of murderers running about).

Both are caricatures of their respective nations.

[Sheilbh]

I've mentioned it before but there is a really good Chris Orr piece in the Atlantic on British procedurals.

Midsomer Murders doesn't really fit into that because it's more cozy Sunday evening TV. It is also an astonishingly successful export - possibly because it's a caricature.

But his piece was basically around what the lack of guns does to the police procedural and it does make a huge difference. The flipside is that actually even the most rural UK procedural (Hinterland, Shetland) will have them looking at CCTV because it's everywhere in a way that is very alien for American audiences.

I also think British writers have deliberately shied away from the slightly misanthropic cop with an alcohol problem and disastrous personal life. It still exists but I think they've tried to avoid that trope. And with a UK procedural I'd suggest the default cop is probably a middle-aged woman who will have a difficult private life, but it'll be difficult in a normal way rather than a reflection of their work.

[Malthus]

I've mentioned it before but there is a really good Chris Orr piece in the Atlantic on British procedurals.

Midsomer Murders doesn't really fit into that because it's more cozy Sunday evening TV. It is also an astonishingly successful export - possibly because it's a caricature.

But his piece was basically around what the lack of guns does to the police procedural and it does make a huge difference. The flipside is that actually even the most rural UK procedural (Hinterland, Shetland) will have them looking at CCTV because it's everywhere in a way that is very alien for American audiences.

I also think British writers have deliberately shied away from the slightly misanthropic cop with an alcohol problem and disastrous personal life. It still exists but I think they've tried to avoid that trope. And with a UK procedural I'd suggest the default cop is probably a middle-aged woman who will have a difficult private life, but it'll be difficult in a normal way rather than a reflection of their work.

Sounds interesting! I'll have to hunt it down.

Edit: https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/616479/

[Sheilbh]

Also - I push it on literally everyone I meet/know - but on cop shows I really recommend Giri/Haji which is a London/Tokyo crime story and wonderful.

I think it's on Netflix - but make sure to watch the recaps because they are beautifully little animated summaries of the last episode that shouldn't be missed (rather than just a load of clips).

[Josquius]

Yeah it was good. Shambles there's to be no series 2.
Agreed on the recaps. Like something from a video game.

I've finished watching The Serpent. Also quite good. Though bizzare Jenna Coleman casting- my gf observed at least when she spoke to her mother on the phone she had the same accent.

[Savonarola]

Louder than Love: The Grande Ballroom Story (2012)

This is a documentary about Detroit's Grande Ballroom.  The Grande Ballroom was build in the 20s as a dance hall (one favored by the Purple Gang) with one of the largest wooden floors in the country.  This documentary covers the period between 1967-1972 when the Grande Ballroom was Detroit's premier rock club.  The title is based around a number of puns; the club opened in 1967, the "Summer of Love" in San Francisco; the club consciously imitated the Filmore in San Francisco; and the local acts that played at the Grande (the Stooges, the MC5, Alice Cooper, The Amboy Dukes) were much louder than the acts that came out of Haight-Ashbury.

The documentary focused mostly on the louder bands; not only from Detroit, but also the British bands from the era (The Who first performed "Tommy" live at the Grande); but everyone played there.  BB King was interviewed in the documentary, Big Brother recorded a couple songs off of "Cheap Thrills" there (and some of the members of the MC5 recall that they kept shouting "Kick out the jams" at Janis.)  The MC5 were one of the house bands ("Kick out the Jams" was recorded live at the Grande) as were the Stooges.  The proprietor, Russ Gibb, said that he didn't get The Stooges at all, the first time he met them Iggy Pop had miked the toilet and was just fascinated by the rush of noise he got when he flushed it; but the kids loved them.

The music industry changed in the early 70s towards larger venues and, even before the riots, the Grande was in a rough neighborhood.  So today, like much of Detroit, the building is abandoned and falling apart.

The Grande is a few miles from where my mom grew up.  I had an uncle who used to go there regularly; he said that the music was fantastic, but you were just as likely as not to find someone ODing in the bathroom when you walked in.  The documentary did mention the drug use, but only the fun psychedelic drugs, not the hard ones.