TV/Movies Megathread

[katmai]

All The President's Men is on.

Desktop typewriters, old Blackwing pencils, rotary phones, dime pay phones, ashtrays, card catalogs, massive American cars and shitty little imports made of cheap Japanese steel...now those were the days. 

Yeah watched it this afternoon

[CountDeMoney]

Hadn't watched "Breaking Bad", so I fired up Netflix and have made a Memorial Day marathon of it.

Good man, catching up.  Now you can join in the discussion.  fhdz thinks Walter's a weenie.

[Tonitrus]

Hadn't watched "Breaking Bad", so I fired up Netflix and have made a Memorial Day marathon of it.

Good man, catching up.  Now you can join in the discussion.  fhdz thinks Walter's a weenie.

He's right.  Walter is a weenie who desperately doesn't want to be.  And the flashes of insanity help that along at times.

[Barrister]

All The President's Men is on.

Desktop typewriters, old Blackwing pencils, rotary phones, dime pay phones, ashtrays, card catalogs, massive American cars and shitty little imports made of cheap Japanese steel...now those were the days. 

And some days I think I want to live in the past...

[Ideologue]

Hadn't watched "Breaking Bad", so I fired up Netflix and have made a Memorial Day marathon of it.

Very solid through season 3.  Definitely dragging as season 4 starts.

It picks up.  Oh yes.

[CountDeMoney]

He's right.  Walter is a weenie who desperately doesn't want to be.  And the flashes of insanity help that along at times.

Bullshit.  He's just a decent man forced to do indecent things to survive.

[Ideologue]

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003).  Current-quasi-nobody but then-up-and-comer Jonathan Mostow's much-maligned follow-up to James Cameron's second and final entry into the franchise, it's not half as bad as people made it out to be at the time, and infinitely better than Joseph McGinty "McG" Nichol's abominable fourth Terminator film.  I'm still waiting for its full rehabilitation in the public mind.  And sure, T3 suffers from more than a few problems: some dated CGI; the absence of Linda Hamilton; a villain in Christianna Loken's T-X that, while adequate, unavoidably fails to equal the cool menace or the uncanny spectacle of Robert Patrick's T-1000; a few plot muddles (how did three armed people walk merrily into an Air Force base?); continuity snarls (I'm pretty sure explosive fuel cells were not part of the T-102's design when it got crushed by a compactor or got melted in a steel mill).

However, it provides solid if not greatly inspired action, with the exception of its first major set-piece, which is no doubt one of the best chase sequences ever put to film--if they could have kept that level of quality up, I don't think anyone would need to defend Rise of the Machines.

More than that, though, it has an interesting flavor: this is probably the most jovial of Terminator movies, with copious amounts of goofy but, depending on your taste, amusing humor--this third Arnold-faced T-101 to be sent back has clearly been reprogrammed by people who thought the parts where Eddie Furlong was teaching his pet Terminator slang were the best parts of that movie.  So, in tone, as well as in the visual aesthetic (the principal action takes place almost exclusively outdoors or near windows, on the nicest day you could expect to find, rather than at night), and in our overfamiliarity with how the Terminator story has worked out thus far, the proceedings lack totally the sense of apocalyptic doom that permeated the original Terminator and the larger part of its sequel.

Ultimately, T2 broke the Novikov loop that made the first movie so elegant, but permitted the possibility of a happy ending within the Terminator franchise.  Sure, these murderous robots are from the holocaustal machine-war future that continually hovers just a few decades ahead of us, but the future is, after all, what we make.  Judgment Day has been postponed before, and for those watching it for the first time I imagine there is little doubt that it will be postponed again (and, we naively imagine, for T'4 through T∞, however many times people will pay to see it).

It is likely granting too much credit, but whether by design or accident, all that comes before John Connor and Kate Brewster's flight to the Crystal Peak facility at the film's climax lulls you into a sense of security that could not be more false.  Because the title is not a lie--the machines do rise.  I enjoy the idea that Skynet is not the result of overly specific initial conditions; it is the end result of the combination of human ingenuity and human foolishness, and is therefore not easily avoided, if it is avoidable at all.  And I enjoy the world I believed safe falling apart, as we watch the human species reduced by half by its existential enemy, and see John Connor, who has always believed in Judgment Day but never believed in his own destiny, finally take command.  Though deprived of Cameron's magic touch, and a lesser film than either of its antecedents and far less significant than T2, what we got was a more than fitting end to the Terminator series proper, and not to forget a great send-off for Arnold Schwarzenneger.  God bless this mess. B+

Yeah, yeah, Saturn 3 forthcoming.

Edit: grammar and spelling bits.

[The Brain]

There is only The Terminator. T2 and onwards are garbage.

[CountDeMoney]

And some days I think I want to live in the past...

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

[CountDeMoney]

Nothing like a brisk, sunny Sunday morning to whip up some Ghetto McMuffins with the cat, and sit down for a couple of old favorites of Star Trek: TOS on Netflix;  The Doomsday Machine, where an unshaven, slobby Ed Anger takes control of the Enterprise to blow up an intergalactic shareholder value increaser, and Mirror, Mirror, where I would've stayed behind on purpose, if only to nom nom nom all those exposed female midriffs.

[CountDeMoney]

a villain in Christianna Loken's T-X that, while adequate, unavoidably fails to equal the cool menace or the uncanny spectacle of Robert Patrick's T-1000;

How so?  Explain.

with the exception of its first major set-piece, which is no doubt one of the best chase sequences ever put to film

How so?  Explain.

the proceedings lack totally the sense of apocalyptic doom that permeated the original Terminator and the larger part of its sequel.

How so?  Explain.

Ultimately, T2 broke the Novikov loop that made the first movie so elegant,

How so? Explain.

but the future is, after all, what we make.

How so? Explain.

[Eddie Teach]

Yes, clearly Ide doesn't put enough detail in his reviews. 

[Josephus]

He's right.  Walter is a weenie who desperately doesn't want to be.  And the flashes of insanity help that along at times.

Bullshit.  He's just a decent man forced to do indecent things to survive.

He was. For about three seasons.

[CountDeMoney]

He's right.  Walter is a weenie who desperately doesn't want to be.  And the flashes of insanity help that along at times.

Bullshit.  He's just a decent man forced to do indecent things to survive.

He was. For about three seasons.

And he continued to do so, in order to remain indispensable in a business with individuals that saw him as dispensable.

[Ed Anger]

Nothing like a brisk, sunny Sunday morning to whip up some Ghetto McMuffins with the cat, and sit down for a couple of old favorites of Star Trek: TOS on Netflix;  The Doomsday Machine, where an unshaven, slobby Ed Anger takes control of the Enterprise to blow up an intergalactic shareholder value increaser, and Mirror, Mirror, where I would've stayed behind on purpose, if only to nom nom nom all those exposed female midriffs.

I used Decker as my Facebook avatar.