TV/Movies Megathread

[Neil]

I think it was pretty clear that we didn't.  I don't see how you could watch the fight and find it anything but horrible, and it was shot in a way that emphasized how horrible it was.

[Phillip V]

Preliminary ratings for the third season premiere of "Downton Abbey" suggest that the show has done something remarkable: catapulted PBS into the same league as commercial broadcasters like ABC and NBC, at least for a night.

With 7.9 million viewers, the premiere on Sunday night "quadrupled the average PBS prime time rating and exceeded the average rating of the second season premiere of “'Downton Abbey”' by 96 percent," PBS and a member station, WGBH, said in a news release on Monday.

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/nearly-8-million-tuned-to-downton-premiere/

[garbon]

I think it was pretty clear that we didn't.  I don't see how you could watch the fight and find it anything but horrible, and it was shot in a way that emphasized how horrible it was.

Sure but then if that's the case, did it belong in something that we watch for entertainment? Of course, I could be being generous as for the most part the film wasn't challenging to watch.

[Josquius]

Taken 2- It doesn't have the driving intesity of the first but it is a fantastic film nonetheless. And hurray for the obvious sequel setup. Doubt the Turks approve of it though; seems to have been a lot of plot cut out, explaining the corrupt cops, what happens at the embassy, etc...

Dredd- Interesting take on a comic book film. It doesn't attempt to reinvent the wheel or tell a story that in the comics took years. It just tells a simple one off Dredd story. Which is nice. Its kinda decent. I do really like its vision of the future. Most sci-fi films take one of two approaches; one, they're super cheap and just have everything happening in modern cities dirtied up a bit, or two, everything is futuristic, entire cities replaced with super high buildings except for a few famous landmarks which stand amidst the future-buildings looking silly. When Dredd is outside though you see a pretty nice and believable mix of modern buildings and future buildings.
One flaw with this film- too much bullet time and long drawn out and pointless special effects shots which I guess were designed to wow an audience in 3d.

Frankenweenie- Crap. Dead dogs are not the stuff of comedy. Brought on a depressive spell in me where I thought too much on a stupid mistake I made around the time my old doggy died. For some weird reason.

Thatcher- Pretty lame as a film but it is better than I feared. I thought it may put her in a positive light but it generally doesn't, even highlights that the Falklands war was her fault. The guy announcing it on TV before hand was funny "Next is Meryl Streep in Thatcher. The following film may not be suitable for miners"

[Tamas]

Falklands was her fault? In what way? That she didn't hand it over to the Argies? I guess that's true.

Also, is she really still hated? Is a healthy economy really that insulting to Brits?

[Sophie Scholl]

Upon the suggestion of a friend, I've been watching The Murdoch Mysteries, a Canadian detective procedural... set in the late 1890's in Toronto.  A unique idea and setting, I'm almost done with the first season and quite enjoying it.  The first episode I found to be of a lesser quality than subsequent episodes, so if you give it a go, watch a few before forming a judgment.  It's on Netflix on demand and Amazon plus apparently as well.

[Martinus]

Without actually seeing Django Unchained yet, to garbon, Neil and Ide: Tarantino's genre is not that "good wins over evil". Most of his movies follow a genre, called "revenge fantasy", which is similar to "good vs. evil" but there are differences, notably:

- they are much more brutal than the typical heroic good vs. evil epics (this is because in order for a revenge fantasy to work, we need to literally hate and be angry at the villain),

- the katharsis/release at the end does not come from hero trumphing against the odds, but from the villain (whom we learned to hate and be literally angry at throughout the movie because he is so evil) getting his come-uppance (contrast this with Lord of the Rings - you do not hate Sauron at the end, you are just happy/moved/teary-eyed for Frodo to make it in the end - this is a different type of katharsis),

- the protagonist is not a special hero (i.e. someone with a jedi blood/an extraordinary hobbit/etc.) but one of the little, ordinary people (often an oppressed minority, like a woman in a mysoginistic world or a member of racial, cultural or sexual minority etc.) who becomes the hand of nemesis because of some life trauma,

- the protagonist is not necessarily good (and definitely not "lawful good") - he may be an anti-hero or someone with questionable morality (for example, "Dexter" is another classic example of a revenge fantasy story),

- the protagonist of a revenge fantasy dies more often than a hero at the end of the story - this is because he has done his purpose (and, also, this allows the author to brush aside all kinds of uncomfortable questions about the consequences of questionable/illegal actions of the protagonist), whereas the hero's purpose is to actually live on happily ever after once the evil is defeated.

Sometimes the difference can be subtle, but it is there.

[garbon]

That's be great Marti except a lot doesn't fit many Tarantino flicks particularly the protagonist being likely to die. We're told in many of his films to view the protagonist as good. Particularly in his last two where the bad guys are universal archetypes of villainy (Nazis and slave owners).

You're right in pointing out that the films are driven by revenge, however, the modifier is basically moot as we're not asked to critically assess the protagonists's actions nor do we have to worry much about them failing at their tasks.

[Josephus]

Preliminary ratings for the third season premiere of "Downton Abbey" suggest that the show has done something remarkable: catapulted PBS into the same league as commercial broadcasters like ABC and NBC, at least for a night.

With 7.9 million viewers, the premiere on Sunday night "quadrupled the average PBS prime time rating and exceeded the average rating of the second season premiere of "'Downton Abbey"' by 96 percent," PBS and a member station, WGBH, said in a news release on Monday.

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/nearly-8-million-tuned-to-downton-premiere/

And that's with the show being already available on DVD and all the download sites.

[HVC]

It's house wives who don't know how to torrent that provide those ratings.

[Neil]

I think it was pretty clear that we didn't.  I don't see how you could watch the fight and find it anything but horrible, and it was shot in a way that emphasized how horrible it was.

Sure but then if that's the case, did it belong in something that we watch for entertainment? Of course, I could be being generous as for the most part the film wasn't challenging to watch.

I don't see why it wouldn't.

[Martinus]

That's be great Marti except a lot doesn't fit many Tarantino flicks particularly the protagonist being likely to die. We're told in many of his films to view the protagonist as good. Particularly in his last two where the bad guys are universal archetypes of villainy (Nazis and slave owners).

See, your last two sentences do not follow from each other yet they are presented in a way (I don't know if it was your intention) as if they should.

Yes, the antagonists are complete villains in both movies - that's what revenge fantasy relies on - the villains must be so evil that there can be absolutely no chance for an average viewer to identify or sympathise with them (which is not always the case in a typical hero movie, as there villains are usually more nuanced or impersonal and often end up having fan following - consider Darth Vader and the Empire in general - on the other hand, the nazis in Basterds or the BDSM trio in Pulp Fiction have absolutely no redeeming qualities or anything that a viewer could identify with).

This does not mean, however, that protagonists are "lawful good" - I have not seen Tarantino's latest movie, but in the Basterds, the protagonists are quite far from being "lawful good"; in Pulp Fiction the Bruce Willis character is probably closest to being "good" (but he is not a hero-style pure) but Marcellus and the guys he employs are far from even the broadest definition of "good", yet we root for him when he goes medieval on Zed's ass (which is exactly the concept behind revenge fantasy where we are rooting for whoever ends up murdering the villain).

[garbon]

That's be great Marti except a lot doesn't fit many Tarantino flicks particularly the protagonist being likely to die. We're told in many of his films to view the protagonist as good. Particularly in his last two where the bad guys are universal archetypes of villainy (Nazis and slave owners).

See, your last two sentences do not follow from each other yet they are presented in a way (I don't know if it was your intention) as if they should.

Yes, the antagonists are complete villains in both movies - that's what revenge fantasy relies on - the villains must be so evil that there can be absolutely no chance for an average viewer to identify or sympathise with them (which is not always the case in a typical hero movie, as there villains are usually more nuanced or impersonal and often end up having fan following - consider Darth Vader and the Empire in general - on the other hand, the nazis in Basterds or the BDSM trio in Pulp Fiction have absolutely no redeeming qualities or anything that a viewer could identify with).

This does not mean, however, that protagonists are "lawful good" - I have not seen Tarantino's latest movie, but in the Basterds, the protagonists are quite far from being "lawful good"; in Pulp Fiction the Bruce Willis character is probably closest to being "good" (but he is not a hero-style pure) but Marcellus and the guys he employs are far from even the broadest definition of "good", yet we root for him when he goes medieval on Zed's ass (which is exactly the concept behind revenge fantasy where we are rooting for whoever ends up murdering the villain).

They are two separate points that are both true. Just like it is true that Tarantino plays out revenge fantasies. I don't think that undermines his often simplistic good vs. evil as despite their methods - his good guys are still fundamentally good.

Also, I question your hate dynamic as well. Apart from what the viewer brought to the movie, there wasn't actually much in Basterds to actually make the viewer hate the Nazis. [spoiler]Apart from the early scene at the farmhouse, we don't actually see the Nazis acting particularly evil and in fact Christoph Waltz plays some comic relief.  The German sniper is also mostly sympathetic until he lashes out near his death.[/spoiler]

[Martinus]

Well, I think you don't need to establish hatred of nazis that much - it's a given.

[Malthus]

Also, I question your hate dynamic as well. Apart from what the viewer brought to the movie, there wasn't actually much in Basterds to actually make the viewer hate the Nazis. [spoiler]Apart from the early scene at the farmhouse, we don't actually see the Nazis acting particularly evil and in fact Christoph Waltz plays some comic relief.  The German sniper is also mostly sympathetic until he lashes out near his death.[/spoiler]

I dunno about your last point. In both cases the actors were "playing nice" with their intended victims purely to toy with them.

The sniper seemed to me mostly a creepy "Nice Guy" - he was *acting* "nice" purely because he wanted to get laid, would not take her lack of interest as a "no", and was feeling full of self-righteous entitlement to get sex because of it (as we see at the end). Women tend to hate these "nice guys" as much as outward pigs.