TV/Movies Megathread

[Ideologue]

Hannibal (2001).  Picked it up for $5 in a combo with Silence of the Lambs.  Though I usually do, I didn't read the part about it being in 1.33:1.  Distracting.  Guess you get what you pay for.

It's a pretty good movie, as distinct from Silence of the Lambs, which is a great movie.  But then Lambs had the advantage in being about something (pervasive sexism and its many forms) and would have been pretty good even without Hannibal Lecter thrown in for fun.  But Hannibal's still a nice story about an affable monster, with some excellent if too-spare gore, and, frankly speaking, there is no other work in which you can see Ray Liotta eat his own brains.  B+

After watching Hannibal and Kingdom of Heaven so closely together, though, I've a newfound appreciation for Prometheus, which while frustratingly horrible in nearly every other way, was nonetheless directed without any of the garbage visual flourishes that Ridley Scott seemed to love to throw in from time to time, in a lot of his movies between Blade Runner and now (I've got Legend sitting on the shelf; will advise).  Aside from the patented stupid slow-mo I complained about in Kingdom, Hannibal, a movie made, presumably for adults, and in 2001, closes with an iris out.  Would that it only had been accompanied by Anthony Hopkins sputtering "TH-TH-TH-THAT'S ALL FOLKS."  That would have been fun.

(And yes, I know Blade Runner uses slow motion shots too.  There's a time and a place for that--2019 and Los Angeles, respectively.)

[Gups]

Flashman *was* adapted - once. Royal Flash was made into a movie starring Malcolm McDowell.

Sadly, it sucked.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073639/

I quite enjoyed it even though it was pretty terrible. It has (a) Oliver Reed as Bismark and (b) Henry Cooper, pretending to box, something he had plenty of experience at but still somehow fucked up.

Staying with early 1970s films, saw The Candidate with Robert Redford yesterday. Good acting, pretty crap plot. C+

[Darth Wagtaros]

2. Less obvious unless you have read the book - they radically change Sharpe's character from the novels, basically be re-writing the plots so that Sharpe never really does anything horribly rutheless. Sharpe in the books is a lot nastier. Sharpe in the TV episodes is a big softie by comparison.

I loved this show when I was younger. But this is always why I largely hope Flashman never gets adapted. I think TV/film writers couldn't help but try and heroise him a little bit. Which would ruin it for people who like the books.

Flashman *was* adapted - once. Royal Flash was made into a movie starring Malcolm McDowell.

Sadly, it sucked.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073639/

Isn't Blackadder based on Flashman?

[Viking]

2. Less obvious unless you have read the book - they radically change Sharpe's character from the novels, basically be re-writing the plots so that Sharpe never really does anything horribly rutheless. Sharpe in the books is a lot nastier. Sharpe in the TV episodes is a big softie by comparison.

I loved this show when I was younger. But this is always why I largely hope Flashman never gets adapted. I think TV/film writers couldn't help but try and heroise him a little bit. Which would ruin it for people who like the books.

Flashman *was* adapted - once. Royal Flash was made into a movie starring Malcolm McDowell.

Sadly, it sucked.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073639/

Isn't Blackadder based on Flashman?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Flashheart

Lord Flashheart is boisterous, arrogant and appears very attractive to all the women he comes in contact with. He is extremely popular among his peers, and immediately becomes the centre of attention whenever he enters a room, usually by bursting through a wall in a spectacular fashion. The two Flashhearts are stereotypes of a certain kind of hero (the Elizabethan swashbuckler and the World War I RFC flying ace, respectively), slanted to emphasise the negative qualities associated with such characters such as narcissism, sexism, homophobia, and promiscuity.[citation needed]
Rik Mayall later recalled,
I was surprised when they asked me. Very honouring that they asked me. 'Alright,' I said, 'I'll do it as long as I get more laughs than Rowan.'"[1]
His catchphrase is to shout "Woof!" or "Let's do-oo-ooooo it!" very loudly, while thrusting his pelvis suggestively. He commonly uses sexual innuendoes in ordinary conversation, for example, "Am I pleased to see you, or did I just put a canoe in my pocket?"
Flashheart is inspired in part, in name and personality, by Harry Flashman, the protagonist of George MacDonald Fraser's popular Flashman novels, also a swashbuckling womaniser with an exaggerated sense of "heroism".[citation needed]
Mayall played a Napoleonic War-era character very strongly reminiscent of Flashheart in a 2011 advert for Bombardier Bitter, although the character is referred to as "Bombardier Bedford".[2]

[CountDeMoney]

Hannibal (2001).

Just another reason why you should never, never watch the movie after reading the book. 
The script and storyline--particularly the ending--was such a butchering of the novel, Lecter himself would've devoured the screenwriter for being gauche.

And I think Gary Oldman did it simply because he was bored, or needed to buy a new boat or something.

[Malthus]

I'm hoping Cornwell's Saxon series gets the Sharpe treatment. Even without simple modern special effects to multiply troop numbers the shield wall should be a lot easier to show with only a few actors.

I'd love to see that. I actually prefer the Saxon series to Sharpe.

[Malthus]

2. Less obvious unless you have read the book - they radically change Sharpe's character from the novels, basically be re-writing the plots so that Sharpe never really does anything horribly rutheless. Sharpe in the books is a lot nastier. Sharpe in the TV episodes is a big softie by comparison.

I loved this show when I was younger. But this is always why I largely hope Flashman never gets adapted. I think TV/film writers couldn't help but try and heroise him a little bit. Which would ruin it for people who like the books.

Flashman *was* adapted - once. Royal Flash was made into a movie starring Malcolm McDowell.

Sadly, it sucked.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073639/

Isn't Blackadder based on Flashman?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Flashheart

Lord Flashheart is boisterous, arrogant and appears very attractive to all the women he comes in contact with. He is extremely popular among his peers, and immediately becomes the centre of attention whenever he enters a room, usually by bursting through a wall in a spectacular fashion. The two Flashhearts are stereotypes of a certain kind of hero (the Elizabethan swashbuckler and the World War I RFC flying ace, respectively), slanted to emphasise the negative qualities associated with such characters such as narcissism, sexism, homophobia, and promiscuity.[citation needed]
Rik Mayall later recalled,
I was surprised when they asked me. Very honouring that they asked me. 'Alright,' I said, 'I'll do it as long as I get more laughs than Rowan.'"[1]
His catchphrase is to shout "Woof!" or "Let's do-oo-ooooo it!" very loudly, while thrusting his pelvis suggestively. He commonly uses sexual innuendoes in ordinary conversation, for example, "Am I pleased to see you, or did I just put a canoe in my pocket?"
Flashheart is inspired in part, in name and personality, by Harry Flashman, the protagonist of George MacDonald Fraser's popular Flashman novels, also a swashbuckling womaniser with an exaggerated sense of "heroism".[citation needed]
Mayall played a Napoleonic War-era character very strongly reminiscent of Flashheart in a 2011 advert for Bombardier Bitter, although the character is referred to as "Bombardier Bedford".[2]

Interesting.

One problem with the Flashman movie was that they played up Flashman as a buffoon, with lots of slapstick-type humour. The Flashman in the novels is a coward, a cad and a womanizer who is adept at getting others to think he's a hero - but he is far from being a buffoon.

[Viking]

Interesting.

One problem with the Flashman movie was that they played up Flashman as a buffoon, with lots of slapstick-type humour. The Flashman in the novels is a coward, a cad and a womanizer who is adept at getting others to think he's a hero - but he is far from being a buffoon.

Agree, I think that Flashman is unfilmable. It's the narration that makes the books good.

Superficially Flashman volunteers to join the charge of the light brigade and then after the charge charges when all hope seems lost a full russian regiment on his own.

Internally he tricks Cardigan into charging to revenge himself because he thinks Cardigan cuckolded him, he then tries to get out of charging himself but fails, in part due to his horse joining the charge. After the charge he is grateful for being alive and decided that he needs to get out and runs.. unfortunately for him right into a russian regiment.

you just can't film that if the character is supposed to both appear heroic and communicate the deep underlying cowardice and lechery of the character.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Also the Ciaphus Cane Warhammer 40k books.

[Martinus]

Just watched the last episode of American Horror Story. Holy demonic spawn Batman.

I think it's extra ironic that this show is written by the creator of "Glee" who just got a baby of his own.. 

[Ideologue]

Hannibal (2001).

Just another reason why you should never, never watch the movie after reading the book. 
The script and storyline--particularly the ending--was such a butchering of the novel, Lecter himself would've devoured the screenwriter for being gauche.

And I think Gary Oldman did it simply because he was bored, or needed to buy a new boat or something.

It wasn't a butchering; some would argue it was a rescue, particularly in regards to the ending (although for what it's worth Scott filmed three different endings--not on my remaindered SDTV disc, as one might expect, but one of the three is meant to be more in line with the end of the novel, i.e. HOLY SPOILERS Clarice throwing off the shackles of bullshit to join Lecter in a goofy serial killer marriage--fifteen years later, and I still don't know what I think about how Harris ended it).

I will say there's some neat stuff in the book that's left in its pages, but--as far as I can determine and recall--other than the ending, it's rather faithful.  Am I remembering incorrectly?

And dudes with fucked up faces are cool.  That's why Oldman did it, just like Norton in Kingdom of Heaven, and Olmos in Blade Runner.

***

King Kong (2005).  There's a whole lot of noise that the Kong story is an allegory.  There's clear parallels, but can't a movie just be about what it's about?  It can, and Peter Jackson's remake is definitely about what it says it is: ambition outstripping morality and wisdom; humanity's relationship with the wider natural world; and spectacle--a Goddamned huge spectacle.

Three performances deserve note.  Naomi Watts, possibly the prettiest white woman in the world, is a magical presence as Ann Darrow.  Sadly, she can not really juggle.  But she can act, and her task--to play opposite a CGI construct in front of a green screen--is, as Star Wars has shown us, an unenviable one.  Even though her role is a little one-note--90% of the time it is "act sad"--that's the character and that is all to the good.  She shoulders it better than well.

And Andy Serkis does his usual amazing job in the golf-ball suit, as Kong.  It's not as nuanced and, well, human a performance as he'd later give as another ape, Caesar, in Rise of the Planet of the same, and ultimately it's not as good a role, but Kong is a creature worth loving.  Despite the, you know, mass murder.  (He also plays a human character, one of the ship's crew.  It's a minor role, nothing much, but it's nice to see Andy Serkis in the flesh every now and then.)

It is, however, Jack Black that steals the show.  His Carl Denham is an almost pure megalomania, yet contaminated by the last vestiges of a conscience--but it's not something he lets get in his way.  Actually acting and inhating a character--is this the last time Jack Black was really trying?  I want this guy back.  (It was also nice to see him opposite Colin Hanks again--Orange County being one of the few times where Jack Black being Jack Black was welcome.  I want that guy back too, except he didn't stop giving a shit, I think he might have actually vanished.  I thought he'd at least get to be the modern Matthew Broderick, but even that marginal position seems to have eluded poor young Hanks.)

The plot is of course well-known and is basically the same as the 1933 version, except it's filled out with more character moments and more giant animal scenes.  While Kong 2005 was accused of being both self-indulgent and over-long, I don't think any of the added material doesn't merit being on the screen.  It's all very thrilling and very entertaining, and, just maybe, further the film's ideas.

One of those ideas is how obsession turns everything to shit.  It's depicted so obviously well through Black's Denham and the results of his actions that it isn't necessary to belabor it.  The other idea is more open to interpretation.

Conventionally, Kong's interest in Darrow is seen as pseudo-romantic.  "It was beauty that killed the beast," after all.  But that's not really the dynamic, is it?  Did I really just watch a three hour movie about a monster that wants to fuck something of a different species and one hundredth its size?  That would be kind of weird, wouldn't it?  Isn't the initial between Kong and Darrow really more that of a master and his pet?  In that regard, there's a lot to see in this movie about how humans do wrong by animals (and Kong, a primate and something of a crypto-human, does wrong toward us) by treating them as objects to be outright destroyed as an annoyance, toyed with, exhibited for entertainment, exploited for labor, consumed for fuel, or imprisoned for later disposal.  What I like about this King Kong is that Kong eventually does appear to recognize Darrow as an end in herself, and not a means for his amusement or emotional well-being, and lets her go back into her "wild," while defending her as best his prodigious strength but limited mental faculties can; but conversely only Darrow, and perhaps Denham, realize that Kong could not morally be seen as an object either.

On the other hand, while our rapine should have limits, the natural world, in a sense, must be treated as an object without agency or rights of its own, because the alternative is to be eaten by tyrannosaurs, or even scarier things.  For example, that fucking centipede that chomps its fangs and puts its feelers in Ann Darrow's MOUTH in the hollowed-out log?  YOU CAN TREAT THAT AS AN OBJECT.  AN OBJECT OF NIGHTMARES. FUCK.

Anyway, I liked that aspect of the movie a lot.

If I have any serious issue with the film, it's possibly that the visual effects go too far.  Although I usually would, I don't want to blame this on CGI.  I think with stop-motion animation ala Willis O'Brien's work in the original Kong, or with its latterday equivalent (a dying art in 2005, and perhaps a dead one now), the basic problems would have been the same, and this is because Jackson valued spectacle over believability.  The problem is basically this: the consequences of physics and biology are glossed over pretty heavily and, on occasion, I did have to notice.  Listen, I know: King Kong is not a scientifically tenable proposition--from his clear descent from primates seven thousand oceanic miles away, to the falls that would have fully disassembled an animal of his or the tyrannosaurs' size, it's not exactly a highly realistic movie, and that's fine.  But a few moments still threaten to snap the cables on even a disebelief so suspended--I must accept fictional properties for giant beasts, but must I also accept fictional properties for human beings?  Ann Darrow is abused pretty badly, but not only doesn't get her arm shorn off when Kong rips her from her restraints, not only doesn't have her meninges peeled back from her brain while it's being smashed against the inside wall of her skull when Kong carries her to his promontory home--no, she gets up and does some vaudeville.  Great scene?  Yeah, but it's still annoying to have to ascribe superhuman properties to Ms. Watts.  (Besides the obvious ones. )

And one concession to science would've made the movie a lot cooler, at the end: wouldn't it have been great if Kong had exploded like a balloon full of marinara?

Oh, and since I've been pretty pitiless with Ridley Scott about this, I can't omit that, yes, Jackson's use of slow motion is sometimes really shitty too, particularly in one of the most visually and aurally offensive sequences in recent times--five letters and one word, ESS KAYY YUUU ELLL ELLL EYYYE-LAAAND.  Ugh.  But, because of the 200 minute running time, the percentage of scenes shot in this manner are much lower than one's typical Ridley Scott experience, so it gets a pass, much like a below-threshold amount of rat droppings in one's otherwise delicious burrito.  That said, Jackson more often uses slow-mo on occasion in the credited manner, for example the best shot of the movie, an "aerial" shot of Kong falling to his doom from atop the Empire State, as the planes bank silently into the frame.  Beautiful stuff.  A+

[Ideologue]

Just watched the last episode of American Horror Story. Holy demonic spawn Batman.

I think it's extra ironic that this show is written by the creator of "Glee" who just got a baby of his own.. 

I enjoyed it.  [spoilerThe logical conclusion of the existence of ghosts is, after all, Beetlejuice.[/spoiler]

[CountDeMoney]

, i.e. HOLY SPOILERS Clarice throwing off the shackles of bullshit to join Lecter in a goofy serial killer marriage--fifteen years later, and I still don't know what I think about how Harris ended it).

Not entirely willingly; while he was nursing her back to health, he broke her through weeks of psychotropic conditioning, hypnotic psychotherapy, and some massive in-your-skull stream of consciousness therapy. 

Simply put, one of the most awesome mind fucks of all time.  That's what made it so damned cool.  Hannibal wound his own Clockwork Orange, and let it go.

[Ideologue]

, i.e. HOLY SPOILERS Clarice throwing off the shackles of bullshit to join Lecter in a goofy serial killer marriage--fifteen years later, and I still don't know what I think about how Harris ended it).

Not entirely willingly; while he was nursing her back to health, he broke her through weeks of psychotropic conditioning, hypnotic psychotherapy, and some massive in-your-skull stream of consciousness therapy. 

Simply put, one of the most awesome mind fucks of all time.  That's what made it so damned cool.  Hannibal wound his own Clockwork Orange, and let it go.

That is a good point.  Like I said, it's not by necessity a bad ending--it's just so weird it's hard to form an opinion on it.  That said, Hannibal Lecter having a sex life sort of diminishes the character for me.  What cares Dr. Lecter for cornpone pussy?

I'd like to see those other two endings.  I wonder if they're on any of the more proper releases of the film.  I'm holding out for a five-film compilation; it's the only way I'm ever likely to see Hannibal Rising, but I like to be complete, which is why I own The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor* and Battle For the Planet of the Apes**--and I recall Red Dragon to be really pretty decent, which is why it shocked me when I looked it up and it turned out Brett Ratner directed it.  I assume Manhunter is great, as it was done by Michael Mann, whom it turns out I'm actually a rather big fan of without having known it (before I cared about who made movies, there was still Last of the Mohicans, Heat, and Collateral).

*But hell, I've never seen it.  It could be fantastic.
**Though it's not terrible, only far and away the weakest Ape movie.  You know, once Kim Hunter's out, the original series declines drastically in quality.

***

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997).  Still good clean fun after all these years.  The best of the series, as it successfully marries the comedy to a genuine pathos, such as found in your average Captain America comic published before they realized that he'd been unfrozen in the present three times longer than he'd lived in the past, which is to say far later than it became obvious to everyone reading it.  And Dr. Evil's always a gas.  A

[Martinus]

Just watched the last episode of American Horror Story. Holy demonic spawn Batman.

I think it's extra ironic that this show is written by the creator of "Glee" who just got a baby of his own.. 

I enjoyed it.  [spoilerThe logical conclusion of the existence of ghosts is, after all, Beetlejuice.[/spoiler]

What ghosts?