TV/Movies Megathread

[Ideologue]

Certainly you can save money by not getting snacks. You can save even more by waiting until movies are available at repo houses. Or by watching movies at home.

Man, I guess so.  I just don't feel terribly ripped off that the food and drink that I don't have to buy is overpriced, or that movie tickets are $13 in major metropolitan areas that I don't live in (but they're $10 here, so in a sense you might even be paying less).

The idea that the cinema costs too much is, I think, a little overblown.

(Now, the price of home video can vary wildly between sweet deal and staggeringly indecent.  E.g., Sinister, which though one of my favorites of 2012 is unlikely to tap an audience that must have it an any price, is available for preorder at $22; and Django Unchained on BD is set to retail for $28 when it comes out.  Really?  That's two tickets and a Malthus Meal.)

[Viking]

No other good series around right now so watching the second series of Grimm.
"There once was a man who lived so strange it had to be true"
WTF? In what universe does that make sense?
As always it remains meh. Kinda watchable in the background but not must see stuff.

I reacted to the opening as well. As with any fantasy, superhero or sci fi "product" there is one or two points of suspension of disbelief of the kind vampire exist or magic is real or you can get to a different solar system within 24 hours travelling time. It does not help this suspension of disbelief is either the special effects are poor or somebody goes and points out not which obviously fantastical fact we suspend our disbelief on but rather pointing out that there is a suspension of disbelief going on.

Naturally the fact that Nick is pretty much living the least strange life of any series regular or guest star character goes without saying.

"In a world of monsters the only normal thing is to hunt and kill the ones that are not house trained is the only course open to a normal man." The new opening annoyed me, but like "Medium" I like the show because it has plausible and relatable characters.

[Ideologue]

Anywho, I watched Last of the Mohicans (1992).  This movie is pretty boss.  Hawkeye, Chingachgook, and the other guy run around through a lot of beautiful photography--this is what the mountains thirty miles from where I lived for twenty-five years apparently look like--while some really good music plays.  Occasionally action scenes break out, love is declared, that kind of thing.  The movie, always good, doesn't get great till about twenty-five minutes are left, but what a twenty-five minutes.  As far as final confrontations go, it's supremely excellent.

Special kudos to Jodhi May and Eric Schweig--it's interesting how a performance, under solid direction, great cinematrography, and most importantly gorgeous musical accompaniment, can be so moving despite the fact that the role being played is not actually a character in any meaningful sense of the word, but rather two near-extras who just happen to have been next to the people with the most of the lines and occasionally got to utter one themselves.  Extra special kudos to Wes Studi.  Magua is great war chief.  Super secret subtle kudos to Russell Means for that weird look he gives Nathaniel at the end, as if to say, "That's fine, go be a white boy with your white girl.  The Mohicans?  IT'S FINE I'VE LET IT GO WHY CAN'T YOU?"

Apparently there was once a three hour cut of this, but Fox made Michael Mann trim it down, and even the "definitive director's edition" is only a couple minutes longer than the theatrical version, and in fact clocks in under two hours.  I'd be curious to see the three hour cut (maybe there's enough deleted scenes on my BD to account for it?), but honestly wonder if it's possibly a better movie.  At two hours, it's tight.  Mohicans runs short on dialogue and plot in favor of imagery and music--and it's pretty great--but at three hours of it... well, I like Lawrence of Arabia, and there's at least a whole hour's worth of people just silently riding horses in the desert.  Maybe it'd be worthwhile after all.  A

Oh, but one question: [spoiler]OK, I understand why the Mohicans fled and left the white folks to the mercies of the Hurons--their guns were soaked and they would lose the fight and everybody would die, and they had plan, which--while very shitty--was the only one available to them.  But is there any actual reason why Cora, Major Duncan Lastname, and Ms. Not Appearing In This Film couldn't have just jumped into the waterfall too ?  Wouldn't it be better to keep running?  Instead, they surrender to the Hurons and largely experience bad outcomes as a result.  Do they not know how to swim?  Does the waterfall eat white people?  Were they tuckered?  Fuck's sakes.[/spoiler]?

[Josquius]

"In a world of monsters the only normal thing is to hunt and kill the ones that are not house trained is the only course open to a normal man." The new opening annoyed me, but like "Medium" I like the show because it has plausible and relatable characters.

hmm, I do kind of like Monroe. One of the few realistic depictions of geeks I've ever seen.
The two cops are a wee bit stereotypical though.

[Kleves]

For Ide:

Frank Darabont recently revealed some of his plans for Legendary's upcoming Godzilla reboot, which he is rewriting. But unlike some incarnations of the Japanese kaiju, Darabont hopes to bring the creature back to its former glory as an unstoppable wrecking ball of horror.

"What I found very interesting about Godzilla is that he started off definitely as a metaphor for Hiroshima and Nagasaki," Darabont explained to io9 in an interview. "And some of the atom bomb testing we were doing in the South Pacific in the subsequent years. The giant terrifying force of nature that comes and stomps the s#!t out of your city, that was Godzilla. Filtered through the very fanciful imaginations of the Japanese perception. And then he became Clifford the Big Red Dog in the subsequent films. He became the mascot of Japan, he became the protector of Japan. Another big ugly monster would show up and he would fight that monster to protect Japan. Which I never really quite understood, the shift.

"What we're trying to do with the new movie is not have it camp, not have it be campy," he continued. "We're kind of taking a cool new look at it. But with a lot of tradition in the first film. We want this to be a terrifying force of nature. And what was really cool, for me, is there was a very compelling human drama that I got to weave into it. It's not that cliched, thinly disguised romance or bromance, or whatever. It's different, it's a different set of circumstances than you're used to seeing. And that's tremendously exciting as a writer when you're asked to do something else."

When asked if he's working to connect the film to a different contemporary issue, Darabont replied, "Yes I am, but I'm not going to give it away."

[Eddie Teach]

When asked if he's working to connect the film to a different contemporary issue, Darabont replied, "Yes I am, but I'm not going to give it away."

Global warming?

[Ideologue]

For Ide:

Frank Darabont recently revealed some of his plans for Legendary's upcoming Godzilla reboot, which he is rewriting. But unlike some incarnations of the Japanese kaiju, Darabont hopes to bring the creature back to its former glory as an unstoppable wrecking ball of horror.

"What I found very interesting about Godzilla is that he started off definitely as a metaphor for Hiroshima and Nagasaki," Darabont explained to io9 in an interview. "And some of the atom bomb testing we were doing in the South Pacific in the subsequent years. The giant terrifying force of nature that comes and stomps the s#!t out of your city, that was Godzilla. Filtered through the very fanciful imaginations of the Japanese perception. And then he became Clifford the Big Red Dog in the subsequent films. He became the mascot of Japan, he became the protector of Japan. Another big ugly monster would show up and he would fight that monster to protect Japan. Which I never really quite understood, the shift.

"What we're trying to do with the new movie is not have it camp, not have it be campy," he continued. "We're kind of taking a cool new look at it. But with a lot of tradition in the first film. We want this to be a terrifying force of nature. And what was really cool, for me, is there was a very compelling human drama that I got to weave into it. It's not that cliched, thinly disguised romance or bromance, or whatever. It's different, it's a different set of circumstances than you're used to seeing. And that's tremendously exciting as a writer when you're asked to do something else."

Is this guy poorly spoken, or some kind of retard?  You can't really understand why they had Godzilla fight other giant monsters?  You really can't?

I'm truly bummed that this suggests that there will not be another monster in this film (and it indicates an American big-budget reboot of Mothra is, sadly, not right around the corner ).

Anyway, to see kaiju on kaiju violence that doesn't fully lose that GRIT and HUMAN DESPAIR that is so popular these days, there's always the heisei Gamera trilogy.  Brilliant?  More or less, yeah; probably the best monster movies ever made.

When asked if he's working to connect the film to a different contemporary issue, Darabont replied, "Yes I am, but I'm not going to give it away."

It stops being contemporary when it'll have been thirteen years gone by the time your movie comes out, dude.

[Admiral Yi]

He's saying the shift from black hat to white hat is odd.   

edit: wrong smiley. 

[Ideologue]

He's saying the shift from black hat to white hat is odd. 

So?  It's not hard to understand from a commercial viewpoint, or an artistic viewpoint.

Indeed, Godzilla can become a protector but remain a metaphor for atomic weapons, and it makes even more sense.  You're welcome, Japan!

[garbon]

Certainly you can save money by not getting snacks. You can save even more by waiting until movies are available at repo houses. Or by watching movies at home.

Man, I guess so.  I just don't feel terribly ripped off that the food and drink that I don't have to buy is overpriced, or that movie tickets are $13 in major metropolitan areas that I don't live in (but they're $10 here, so in a sense you might even be paying less).

The idea that the cinema costs too much is, I think, a little overblown.

(Now, the price of home video can vary wildly between sweet deal and staggeringly indecent.  E.g., Sinister, which though one of my favorites of 2012 is unlikely to tap an audience that must have it an any price, is available for preorder at $22; and Django Unchained on BD is set to retail for $28 when it comes out.  Really?  That's two tickets and a Malthus Meal.)

I always feel the opposite of you. When I buy a movie I can watch it virtually an unlimited amount of times whereas in a theater I'm paying for the experience just once. Have gotten much better value out of my copy of Vanity Fair over my one in-theater viewing of Watchmen, for instance. So yeah I think theater prices are expensive and feel so unless the movie really is amazing.

[garbon]

He's saying the shift from black hat to white hat is odd. 

So?  It's not hard to understand from a commercial viewpoint, or an artistic viewpoint.

Indeed, Godzilla can become a protector but remain a metaphor for atomic weapons, and it makes even more sense.  You're welcome, Japan!

You can also have the two monsters battling it not caring what damage happens to the city/nation.

[Admiral Yi]

So?  It's not hard to understand from a commercial viewpoint, or an artistic viewpoint.

Indeed, Godzilla can become a protector but remain a metaphor for atomic weapons, and it makes even more sense.  You're welcome, Japan!

From a commercial POV sure.  You can't really build a 20 movie series around a villain.

But it is strange from an artistic POV.  AFAIK there was no plotted explanation of Godzilla's epiphany, as there was, say, in the Terminator franchise.  Just one day he's stomping Tokyo, the next he's kidney punching the gigantic butterfly.

[Kleves]

I'm truly bummed that this suggests that there will not be another monster in this film (and it indicates an American big-budget reboot of Mothra is, sadly, not right around the corner ).

I agree - there should be another monster. I am pretty sure that, prior to being "rewritten," there was another monster (though probably not Gigan  ), so hopefully that bit stays in.

RE: Mothra: you just want to see tiny asian women. 

[Malthus]

Certainly you can save money by not getting snacks. You can save even more by waiting until movies are available at repo houses. Or by watching movies at home.

Man, I guess so.  I just don't feel terribly ripped off that the food and drink that I don't have to buy is overpriced, or that movie tickets are $13 in major metropolitan areas that I don't live in (but they're $10 here, so in a sense you might even be paying less).

The idea that the cinema costs too much is, I think, a little overblown.

(Now, the price of home video can vary wildly between sweet deal and staggeringly indecent.  E.g., Sinister, which though one of my favorites of 2012 is unlikely to tap an audience that must have it an any price, is available for preorder at $22; and Django Unchained on BD is set to retail for $28 when it comes out.  Really?  That's two tickets and a Malthus Meal.)

Well, movies are always very expensive when they first come out on DVD; they tend to be cheaper if you wait a bit. But there is a reason to pay more for a DVD than a movie ticket - namely, you get to watch it more than once. Also, they often come with extras not available in the theatre.

In a theatre, you are paying for two things: being able to see a new movie as it comes out, rather than waiting; and the whole theatre experience. Part of that experience, that is what makes seeing a movie in a theatre different from seeing one at home, is the great big screen: but nowadays lots of folks have great big flat screen TVs. Another part, for some at least, is having popcorn. So the cost of concession snacks factors in to the whole movie-going experience.

[garbon]

As well as watching via rental. You can spend almost nothing to do it that way - plus make your own popcorn.