TV/Movies Megathread

[Eddie Teach]

I'll take BSG over Days of Thunder any day. 

[CountDeMoney]

lets all pretend BGG got cancelled after 3 years?

I certainly did.  And 3 years is stretching it.

[11B4V]

lets all pretend BGG got cancelled after 3 years?

I certainly did.  And 3 years is stretching it.

I watched it back to back. The whole thing over the course of a couple days. It's good.

[CountDeMoney]

lets all pretend BGG got cancelled after 3 years?

I certainly did.  And 3 years is stretching it.

I watched it back to back. The whole thing over the course of a couple days. It's good.

So did I, I loved it, particularly its Navy crunchiness.  But the writing began falling apart after 2.5.

[Eddie Teach]

Once you're invested in the story, bad writing is less noticeable than it is at the beginning.

[11B4V]

I'll take BSG over Days of Thunder any day. 

God yes.

[Ideologue]

lets all pretend BGG got cancelled after 3 years?

I certainly did.  And 3 years is stretching it.

I watched it back to back. The whole thing over the course of a couple days. It's good.

So did I, I loved it, particularly its Navy crunchiness.  But the writing began falling apart after 2.5.

Whenever they went to New Caprica was when it started its long slide, but Season 4.0 really reversed that for me.  I really, really, really wish they'd never come back from the end of that. Ffinding a dead Earth?  That wasn't perfect, but it would've been good enough.  And as amazing as the mutiny was, it didn't make the real ending any better.  What ass.

So, Teach, am I missing the part in Days of Thunder where instead of a sweet eighties freeze frame of Tom Cruise and Robert Duvall, the whole cast went to an alien planet because magic, destroy their cars because they've decided they can't handle technology, and fuck cave people?  Did it turn out Nicole Kidman was a fucking ghost?  I mean, did it?  That's better?  You're a blight upon our once-proud nation, Eddie.  A blight.  There is a place for zealous advocacy, but Battlestar Galactica deserves no trial.

[Eddie Teach]

I agree, this is not the place for zealous advocacy of BSG. Hence, I have not zealously advocated it.

However, it is a tv show that went on for 5 years. I'd suggest the fact you know the ending implies that you yourself thought it was a worthwhile show for most of its run.

[11B4V]

lets all pretend BGG got cancelled after 3 years?

I certainly did.  And 3 years is stretching it.

I watched it back to back. The whole thing over the course of a couple days. It's good.

So did I, I loved it, particularly its Navy crunchiness.  But the writing began falling apart after 2.5.

2.5 was when I stopped watching because my off-days changed. I will admit I liked it when I watched the whole thing over the course of a few days.

Did the same with Deadwood and BoB too. Back to Back. Much better viewing experience IMO.

GoT season 1&2 back to back made more sense too. I'm watching season 3 an episode at a time and it's kind of pissing me off.

[11B4V]

lets all pretend BGG got cancelled after 3 years?

I certainly did.  And 3 years is stretching it.

I watched it back to back. The whole thing over the course of a couple days. It's good.

So did I, I loved it, particularly its Navy crunchiness.  But the writing began falling apart after 2.5.

Whenever they went to New Caprica was when it started its long slide,

Naw, disagree good spin on the story, plus one of the best scenes in the series until the colony attack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdkCpnGMyGw

[CountDeMoney]

Did the same with Deadwood and BoB too. Back to Back. Much better viewing experience IMO.

Oh, I agree that watching shit compressed totally makes for a a complete immersive experience.  That's how I did Breaking Bad.  I did it for BSG as well, knocking out the first two seasons in less than a week.

GoT season 1&2 back to back made more sense too. I'm watching season 3 an episode at a time and it's kind of pissing me off.

LOL, yeah, Netflix is going to destroy what little attention spans we still have left.
That's why I'd actually wait 2 or 3 weeks with The Killing and let them pile up, just so I could watch them like that instead of one hour, a slow week at a time.

[Ideologue]

Anyway!

The Great Gatsby (2013).  There are volumes, and many more trash cans, that have been filled with analysis of Fitzgerald's novel and what it says about class and society and blah fucking blah.  We don't need it.  It doesn't matter, and here's why: either the people will mobilize because capitalism will eventually fail so profoundly in this country that the masses will actually starve, or the cliff that rises between us and the Buchanans of the world will continue to grow so wide and so deep that no Gatsby will ever climb it again, not even high enough to fall, but they'll carelessly drop enough crumbs that we may subsist in the now endless valley of ashes that was once America.

And thank God this movie isn't really about anything so dreadfully dull and so futilely meaningless.  Baz Luhrmann's vision of The Great Gatsby is about what his movies are always about: an epileptic audiovisual orgy.

Well, that, and true love.  On which more below, but first things are first.

Fitzgerald's book isn't great because it crucifies the rich--the rich crucify themselves and walk away from it none the worse for wear every hour of every day.  It is not great because of its plot, of which it has rather little, and its greatness is only in a small way achieved through its characters, though most iconically in the titular Jay Gatsby.  It is great because of its prose.  Luhrmann's film is not great because it suggests historical parallels between the abominable era that was 1920s America and our own (though it does).  It is not great because it ably adapts the plot of Fitzgerald's novel, or even because it features performances that may one day themselves be regarded as iconic, though it has these qualities.  It is great because of its its photography, its editing, its music, its tone and pace and color--Fitzgeralf gave us a work of beauty with the language of English; Luhrmann offers something very close to as wonderful with the language of cinema.  The Great Gatsby, like other cinematic orgies I've had the fortune to attend like the hypnotic 2001: A Space Odyssey, the inimitable Flash Gordon, and Luhrmann's own Romeo [plus sign] Juliet, is an experience best experienced with a giant screen in a big dark room.  See it in theatres.  Go see it now.

Well, go see it in a minute.  I wanted to get back to love.

There is, of course, a clear love held for Fitzgerald's text in the hearts of screenwriters, Luhrmann and frequent collaborator Craig Pearce (he also wrote Moulin Rouge, but many of us do things for which we'd like to be forgiven).  The major departure from the novel is the film's framing device, the story of the summer he had experienced written by a neurosis-stricken Nick Carraway (Toby Maguire) drying out in a sanitarium.  But Pearce and Luhrmann depart only so they can put as much of Fitzgerald's words into Maguire's mouth (and, indeed, onto the screen) as they reasonably can.  It's charming if often unnecessary; but then so much of this movie is unnecessary--and fantastically so.

Then, most obviously and famously, there is the love that Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) has held for Daisy Buchanan since she was still young debutante Daisy Fay (Carey Mulligan) and he a young army officer on his way to World War I.  The scene where they meet again is really very perfect; DiCaprio looks at Mulligan, and I believed that a man would do all that Jay Gatsby has done, and still be afraid.  He loves her in exactly the way that an idealist can love an intoxicatingly beautiful woman that he does not know very well, which is to say completely.  Gatsby is a fake man, a shell designed only to nurture a dream, but for that moment, those few shots, I could believe that the dream, the superhuman dream that was all Gatsby ever was, would become a reality, and I wanted it to, with all my heart.

Finally, there is the love, the admiration and loyalty, that Carraway has for Gatsby.  There is a scene between DiCaprio and Maguire, a moment after Carraway has agreed to the simple task of bringing Daisy over for tea, where Gatsby awkwardly tries to bribe him after the fact--and when Carraway refuses, DiCaprio does something amazing again, and I knew then that this was the first true friend Gatsby had ever had.

Luhrmann and Pearce get the relationships between the characters so right, and the actors make those relationships work so well on the screen, that even without all the pomp and pageantry Luhrmann brings as director, this would still be a very good movie.

But as I've said, it's great.  It's really, really great.  Believe for a couple of hours, won't you?

A+

P.S. God blind me, Elizabeth Debicki is the new hottest white woman alive.  I've read a dozen reviews that highlight her performance--and it's good but Jordan Baker is little more than plot device.  I think what they really mean is "Elizabeth Debicki is gorgeous."  Well, they're so right.

P.P.S.: Come at me, Wagnaard, you blackhearted monster.

[Ideologue]

I agree, this is not the place for zealous advocacy of BSG. Hence, I have not zealously advocated it.

However, it is a tv show that went on for 5 years. I'd suggest the fact you know the ending implies that you yourself thought it was a worthwhile show for most of its run.

I believed for about a hundred hours.  They asked too much, gave too little.  If DS9 didn't exist, I'd push Ronald Moore down a well.

Edit: I'm actually mainly mad because around the premiere of Season 4.5, I bought the entire series that had been released to that point, in anticipation I would, you know, still like in a couple of months.

[Ideologue]

lets all pretend BGG got cancelled after 3 years?

I certainly did.  And 3 years is stretching it.

I watched it back to back. The whole thing over the course of a couple days. It's good.

So did I, I loved it, particularly its Navy crunchiness.  But the writing began falling apart after 2.5.

Whenever they went to New Caprica was when it started its long slide,

Naw, disagree good spin on the story, plus one of the best scenes in the series until the colony attack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdkCpnGMyGw

Oh, no, that part was pretty awesome.  Worth the interminable scenes of Cylon occupation?  Eh, maybe.  LOOK EVERYBODY AN IRAQ METAPHOR WITH WHITE PEOPLE DO YOU GET IT DO YOU GET IT?

[CountDeMoney]

Fitzgeralf gave us a work of beauty with the language of English;

Ide, on the other hand, does not.