TV/Movies Megathread

[Berkut]

I think it's different in books and get this is very broad but with genre adaptations, I think they're quite plotty. There's a lot of x needs to go to y for z to happen. I think that's a constraint.

I also think source material and fandoms can be a challenge. On the one hand I think you have to like the source material - I think you need to get why people care. But you also need to be able to diverge (often radically) if it makes it work better as an adaptation/film.

Also there is good fantasy fiction out there but I think the general quality is lower than other genre fiction like sci-fi, spy novels, crime etc. That's a particular risk if you then have a fear about jumping off and making changes to make it work as TV.

I don't think any of that explains why The Wheel of Time was so damn entirely blah.

[Duque de Bragança]

Not to mention I suspect the Castilian dubs for Re-Animator did not help. I remember laughing at Romero's Day of the Dead given its ineptness and that's after being exposed to not particularly good dubs in France.
Or it could be you are not into Stuart Gordon, as you said.

PS: actually, the problem may be Brian Yuzna's direction for the inferior sequels. :hmm

I don't think I ever watched the Spanish dub of Re-Animator, tbf. I'm a film major, I'll get my degree rescinded if I watch Spanish dubs.

But yeah, I've never got into Yuzna/Gordon, although I've watched tons of their films because they were hugely popular among Spanish college students in the 1990s - there's a reason they both moved to Spain to make films in their late careers. Heck, I even worked in the promotion of "Faust".
 

But not Catalan dubs? 
As for Spanish dubs, unavoidable before you graduated, not just the '90s and probably some time after possibly till the early 2010s (the advent of DVD earlier also helped unlike overpriced Laserdiscs) but Spanish TV has improved a lot by offering most of the times the original version, except for cheap sports channels and the odd channel, even on free terrestrial TV, as in France.

Germany seems to regress unlike in the past, where they offered Zweikanalton from the '70s.  Even Arte Germany would not always offer French original versions for French movies.

I get Spanish TV in Portugal and seldom watched it these last 15 years.

[celedhring]

Not to mention I suspect the Castilian dubs for Re-Animator did not help. I remember laughing at Romero's Day of the Dead given its ineptness and that's after being exposed to not particularly good dubs in France.
Or it could be you are not into Stuart Gordon, as you said.

PS: actually, the problem may be Brian Yuzna's direction for the inferior sequels. :hmm

I don't think I ever watched the Spanish dub of Re-Animator, tbf. I'm a film major, I'll get my degree rescinded if I watch Spanish dubs.

But yeah, I've never got into Yuzna/Gordon, although I've watched tons of their films because they were hugely popular among Spanish college students in the 1990s - there's a reason they both moved to Spain to make films in their late careers. Heck, I even worked in the promotion of "Faust".
 

But not Catalan dubs? 
As for Spanish dubs, unavoidable before you graduated, not just the '90s and probably some time after possibly till the early 2010s (the advent of DVD earlier also helped unlike overpriced Laserdiscs) but Spanish TV has improved a lot by offering most of the times the original version, except for cheap sports channels and the odd channel, even on free terrestrial TV, as in France.

Germany seems to regress unlike in the past, where they offered Zweikanalton from the '70s.  Even Arte Germany would not always offer French original versions for French movies.

I get Spanish TV in Portugal and seldom watched it these last 15 years.

My college had a huge film library, all of it on original language. A lot of them were taped from TV  Many laserdiscs too. A lot of their B/Obscure genre stuff were UK editions.

[Duque de Bragança]

This new Netflix version of All Quiet on the Western Front is really, really bad.

Really? Was kinda looking forward to it. 

I am not sure when is it worse: if you have read the novel or not.

For example a lot of the book is explaining trench life in particular during some prolonged Entente artillery strike they endure for days, with some people eventually breaking under the strain etc.

This is how that "introduce viewer to trench war" bit goes: main characters, movie skip from being enlisted to riding trucks toward the front.

Truck is needed by doctor behind the lines so they march the last stretch.

When the ly arrive to the trench it is raining heavily, they are made to shovel water out with helmets. Nerd with glasses already breaks down in crying.

Enemy artillery barrage begins they run into bunker. The panic scene that happened in the book after 4 days of bombardment here happens after around 15 seconds. Bunker collapses on main guy but survives.

And that's it.

From there we fast forward to 7th November 1918,and the movie switches between scenes of cardboard cutout evil proto nazi general and the politician trying to make peace with the French, and the main cast going through different adventures, most of which took inspiration from the book but piled on each other with little to no cohesion, like a fever dream, but that bit isn't intentional.

Then they kill the main guy by having proto nazi general order an attack on some random French Town nearby ("it WILL be part of Germany!") to the troops on the yard of his HQ, and the guy surviving a vicious combat scene so he can be back to a trench to have the death scene from the book minus the drawing.

I can't understand how Germans could butcher and shit on such a great novel of theirs.

Oh my, bloody awful if true. Holds no candle obviously to the 1930 film or even the 1979 TV movie.
I read the book during my collège not college years in high school but re-read it a few times after.

[Duque de Bragança]

[
My college had a huge film library, all of it on original language. A lot of them were taped from TV  Many laserdiscs too. A lot of their B/Obscure genre stuff were UK editions.

Satellite TV or Portuguese TV screenings who knows. 
Laserdiscs and British (and Belgian) PAL imports were popular among enthusiasts in Paris back then, not just for B/obscure genre stuff (cinéma bis in French) as well. 1000 FF (150 € without inflation ) for a Japanese
import was way too much for me however. It still is. 
So your experience is very untypical of the Spanish dub-only of yesteryear. Good for you.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

I don't think any of that explains why The Wheel of Time was so damn entirely blah.

Maybe this does in part: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F2ngB-zjVmM

It's opinionated, so mileage may vary.

[celedhring]

[
My college had a huge film library, all of it on original language. A lot of them were taped from TV  Many laserdiscs too. A lot of their B/Obscure genre stuff were UK editions.

Satellite TV or Portuguese TV screenings who knows. 

A bit of everything. Also, Spanish TV wasn't actually that bad. At the time the second public channel was essentially Film Buff TV, and everything was shown with subtitles. Most of the movies they had were taped from it. Some of the copies were really shitty, you could tell they had been copied from some other tape. I remember their copy of The Magnificent Ambersons cut off before the end, and it took me many years before I was finally able to watch it in full (well, the surviving cut at least).

[grumbler]

I don't think any of that explains why The Wheel of Time was so damn entirely blah.

Maybe this does in part: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F2ngB-zjVmM

It's opinionated, so mileage may vary.

I didn't last a minute of that screed.  47 seconds of strawmanning was plenty to last me for the rest of the day.

[celedhring]

Ah, the Critical Drinker. I don't need to watch it, then.

[Josquius]

I think it's different in books and get this is very broad but with genre adaptations, I think they're quite plotty. There's a lot of x needs to go to y for z to happen. I think that's a constraint.

I also think source material and fandoms can be a challenge. On the one hand I think you have to like the source material - I think you need to get why people care. But you also need to be able to diverge (often radically) if it makes it work better as an adaptation/film.

Also there is good fantasy fiction out there but I think the general quality is lower than other genre fiction like sci-fi, spy novels, crime etc. That's a particular risk if you then have a fear about jumping off and making changes to make it work as TV.

I don't think any of that explains why The Wheel of Time was so damn entirely blah.

I liked Wheel of Time.
Not without its flaws (stupidly diverse casting of one set of characters that shouldn't have been diverse) but these were mostly minor flaws I could look past.
I understand the books have a large fan base and they feel aggrieved the show is more Xena than GOT but.. Hey. I like Xena.
Not every show can be a major tent pole piece of event tv. There's room for cheap and cheerful stuff too.
Another good show from the same category is shadow and bone.

[Zoupa]

Can we drop the diverse casting BS please? That ship has sailed. Just put on your big boy pants and deal with it. Jesus fucking Christ who the fuck cares?

[Josquius]

Can we drop the diverse casting BS please? That ship has sailed. Just put on your big boy pants and deal with it. Jesus fucking Christ who the fuck cares?

It's not BS.
You should know I'm not racist and there's no hidden agenda or false concerns here.

Noting the weird high diversity in a group of characters that are meant to be from a small inbred hick town, where one of their number looking different is meant to be a key plot point, is a perfectly valid nit pick.
Especially in a fantasy setting where making a world feel real is a central goal.

[Tamas]

Can we drop the diverse casting BS please? That ship has sailed. Just put on your big boy pants and deal with it. Jesus fucking Christ who the fuck cares?

It's not BS.
You should know I'm not racist and there's no hidden agenda or false concerns here.

Noting the weird high diversity in a group of characters that are meant to be from a small inbred hick town, where one of their number looking different is meant to be a key plot point, is a perfectly valid nit pick.
Especially in a fantasy setting where making a world feel real is a central goal.

Is this wheel of time? I found this criticism absolutely didn't stand there, the infamous "woke village" that ticked off racists didn't mix snow white nordics with a couple of ebony sub-saharans, it was a spectrum of skin colours and features, an approach that should have eased the worries of those sensitive to the laws of genetics in their high fantasy settings.

But the casting efforts were clearly in vain, as it turns out fantasy villages must be straight off a 1940s German school book or they don't work.

[Berkut]

I think it's different in books and get this is very broad but with genre adaptations, I think they're quite plotty. There's a lot of x needs to go to y for z to happen. I think that's a constraint.

I also think source material and fandoms can be a challenge. On the one hand I think you have to like the source material - I think you need to get why people care. But you also need to be able to diverge (often radically) if it makes it work better as an adaptation/film.

Also there is good fantasy fiction out there but I think the general quality is lower than other genre fiction like sci-fi, spy novels, crime etc. That's a particular risk if you then have a fear about jumping off and making changes to make it work as TV.

I don't think any of that explains why The Wheel of Time was so damn entirely blah.

I liked Wheel of Time.
Not without its flaws (stupidly diverse casting of one set of characters that shouldn't have been diverse) but these were mostly minor flaws I could look past.
I understand the books have a large fan base and they feel aggrieved the show is more Xena than GOT but.. Hey. I like Xena.
Not every show can be a major tent pole piece of event tv. There's room for cheap and cheerful stuff too.
Another good show from the same category is shadow and bone.

But it wasn't trying to be Xena, it was trying to be GoT.

[Berkut]

Can we drop the diverse casting BS please? That ship has sailed. Just put on your big boy pants and deal with it. Jesus fucking Christ who the fuck cares?

It's not BS.
You should know I'm not racist and there's no hidden agenda or false concerns here.

Noting the weird high diversity in a group of characters that are meant to be from a small inbred hick town, where one of their number looking different is meant to be a key plot point, is a perfectly valid nit pick.
Especially in a fantasy setting where making a world feel real is a central goal.

The Wheel of Time was blah, and the diversity of the cast had nothing to do with it.

The shitty job casting might have - I had trouble caring about ANY of those people, with maybe the exceptions of maybe Lan?

All the primary characters were just mediocre at best.