TV/Movies Megathread

[crazy canuck]

That was me, but unfortunately not in Canada

[Sophie Scholl]

Booo! Sorry! 

[Syt]

A 1979 TV movie performance of Macbeth, with Ian McKellan and Judy Dench as the Macbeths.

https://youtu.be/IgEshHhnLqU

Cast: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079499/

Includes Roger Rees (Robin Colcord from Cheers), Ian McDiarmid, Bob Peck (Muldoon from Jurassic Park), Griffith Jones, and others.

[Sheilbh]

I think that was part of a series - that notably also included Patrick Magee as King Lear.

What's slightly mad is that it was all commissioned by a commercial TV channel.

[mongers]

I think that was part of a series - that notably also included Patrick Magee as King Lear.

What's slightly mad is that it was all commissioned by a commercial TV channel.

Remember LWT had the South Bank show with Melvin Bragg, arguable the flagship UK tv culture programme at the time.

[viper37]

That was me, but unfortunately not in Canada

The Blu Ray box set is on Amazon for 72$.

Also on Ebay.ca for the same price from an Ontario dealer.

[grumbler]

Babylon 5 is back on Amazon Prime for free. I know folks were mentioning they wanted to know where to watch it a short time ago when it surfaced in discussions here. 

Not the movies, though (no real loss except In the Beginning) but I can't help but greet the cast of characters thinking "alive" "alive" "dead" "dead" "dead" "dead" "alive" "dead" "dead" "alive."

[grumbler]

Ran across my "Rumpole of the Bailey" DVDs recently. Was that the perfect show, or was it just the second-most-perfect show?  Between writing and acting it is peerless

[Sophie Scholl]

Not the movies, though (no real loss except In the Beginning) but I can't help but greet the cast of characters thinking "alive" "alive" "dead" "dead" "dead" "dead" "alive" "dead" "dead" "alive."

Gods, yeah. It is super sad to think about. Such a snakebit cast. 

[Syt]

Babylon 5 is back on Amazon Prime for free. I know folks were mentioning they wanted to know where to watch it a short time ago when it surfaced in discussions here. 

Not the movies, though (no real loss except In the Beginning) but I can't help but greet the cast of characters thinking "alive" "alive" "dead" "dead" "dead" "dead" "alive" "dead" "dead" "alive."

Yeah. So many gone too soon.

[Gups]

Ran across my "Rumpole of the Bailey" DVDs recently. Was that the perfect show, or was it just the second-most-perfect show?  Between writing and acting it is peerless

I need to rewatch/re-read at some point.

I live fairly near Penge by the way.

[viper37]

Old one from 2016, but I just came across it today.
The Sight of Chris Hemsworth's Body Convinced John Krasinski Not to Be Captain America 

I was putting on the suit just watching it, and like, this is so amazing. And I got about right to my waist, I was still shirtless and feeling pretty good about myself�—wasn't 13 Hours yet but felt pretty good. All of a sudden Chris Hemsworth walked by as Thor and went 'hey mate', and I went 'I'm good. This is stupid, I shouldn't—It's okay, I'm not going to be Captain America, it's fine.'

[Syt]

 

[Sheilbh]

Some film researchers have worked out the source of the photo from the Shining - I absolutely love retired academics, NYT bods, Redditers spending their time on this:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DID43LBNPDh/?hl=en&img_index=1

gettyarchive's profile picture
gettyarchive
 14h
Here's (not) Johnny! Recently located in the files of the Getty Images Hulton Archive, a significant piece of cinema history scanned from the original glass plate negative. Here, Alasdair Spark, a retired academic at the University of Winchester, details his investigation and shining discovery - swipe to see the vintage indexing material referenced, all still cared for in the files: ⁠
⁠
"At last, it has been found. Following the earlier identification by facial recognition software of the unknown man in the photograph at the end of 'The Shining' as Santos Casani, a London ballroom dancer, I can reveal that the photo was one of three taken by the Topical Press Agency at a St Valentines Day Ball, 14 February 1921, at the Empress Rooms, the Royal Palace Hotel, Kensington. ⁠

"I, Aric Toler from the NYT and others (thank you Reddit) had trawled newspaper archives trying to find matching photos of the venue or the people in it, many hours of hard brute force effort, all without success. It was starting to seem impossible, every cross-reference to Casani failed to match. Other likely places that were suggested didn't match. There were some places we could not find images for and we started to fear that meant the photo might be lost to history, and never be found. ⁠

"The photo (and others) was found following my contact with Murray Close (the official set photographer, who took the image of Jack Nicholson used in the version seen on screen), who recalled that the original had been sourced from the BBC Hulton Library. This reinforced a remark by Joan Smith, who did the retouching work – she had said in interviews that it came from the Warner Bros photo archive, which proves never to have existed. However, she also said in passing, and often unreported, that it might have come from the BBC Hulton Library. ⁠

"I asked Getty Images, now the holders of the Hulton Archive to check for anything licensed to Stanley Kubrick's company Hawk Films – Matt Butson, the VP Archives there, found one photo, dating from 1929 and bizarrely also showing Santos Casani, but it was not the photo at the end of the film. ⁠
⁠
*continued in comments*⁠

"Murray Close was insistent and said he was certain it was there because he had picked up prints of the photo several times. The absence led to several potentials – it was lost, it had been bought out and removed from the BBC Hulton, it was mis-filed (there are over 94 million images.) Matt did not let it rest and trawled the Hulton Archive several more times.

"This week, he found it, after realising that some Topical Press images had been re-indexed after the agency was acquired by the Hulton in 1958. An index card identifies the photo as licensed to Hawk Films on 10/10/78. The other interesting feature is that Santos Casani is identified in the daybook ledger under his previous name, John Golman. I had always assumed that his dancing career began with his change of name, but not so. He appears to be working with Belle Harding, a famous dance teacher herself, who is also credited at the event. A few months later, in June 1921, newspapers begin reporting on Casani, but there are no references to John Golman as a dancer (or otherwise) in the British Newspaper Archive for earlier in 1921. Joan Smith had said the photo dated from 1923. Stanley Kubrick had said 1921 and he was correct.

"The photo doesn't show any of the celebrities I had speculated on – the Trix Sisters for instance - nor the bankers, financiers or presidents others like Rob Ager have imagined there. No devil worshippers either. Nobody was composited into it except Jack Nicholson. It shows a group of ordinary London people on a Monday evening. "All the best people" as the manger of the Overlook Hotel said."

[Syt]

In ongoing consolidation, I see that Apple TV has now joined Amazon Prime over here - subscription on Prime is 9.99, same as if subscribing via Apple directly. (And not sure which site for browsing sucks more, Prime or Apple )

Paramount has been with Prime for a while. I notice mubi (European arthouse movie stream service), arthouse, crunchyroll are also there now. Plus various German channels of German TV stations, but also MGM and others. Prime seems to become the "cable box" of the internet. As long as the price is the same. I will admit that it's more convenient to sub through one site instead of managing them separately, though of course this means more market concentration under Bezos. The biggest holdouts, anyways, are Netflix, Disney, and Sky (which has all the HBO stuff over here).

Still wish it could be more like music streaming where you have a range of providers all offering more or less the same current content and back catalogs and you pick the one you like best instead of subbing to one service to watch one show, then cancel and sub to something else to watch there.