TV/Movies Megathread

[Josephus]

The Man Who Wasn't There.  A rare miss by the Cohen brothers.  Black and white noirish something or other.  Billy Bob Thornton smokes a whole lot of cigarettes.

Yeah...vaguely remember this.

[Josephus]

The Man Who Wasn't There.  A rare miss by the Cohen brothers.  Black and white noirish something or other.  Billy Bob Thornton smokes a whole lot of cigarettes.

You at least get Scarlett Johansson playing a naughty teenager. That's always a plus.

See I don't even remember that...and I'm all about Scarlett playing naughty teenagers.

[The Larch]

The Man Who Wasn't There.  A rare miss by the Cohen brothers.  Black and white noirish something or other.  Billy Bob Thornton smokes a whole lot of cigarettes.

You at least get Scarlett Johansson playing a naughty teenager. That's always a plus.

See I don't even remember that...and I'm all about Scarlett playing naughty teenagers.

[Josephus]

Just got a cramp in my right wrist.

[Ideologue]

I'm kinda bummed that the Venture Brothers season is going to be only 8 episodes.

It is? WTF

Yep.  I guess they are splitting their season over two years.

Fucking ugh.

[Ideologue]

I'm kinda bummed that the Venture Brothers season is going to be only 8 episodes.

It is? WTF

Yep.  I guess they are splitting their season over two years.

Is this the Breaking Bad practice of pissing me off? 

Double ugh.  I bought the "fifth season" on an impulse, without looking very closely at.  $40 for eight episodes?

***

Anyway, The Two Jakes (1990).  It's so rare that a sequel this distant in time captures the mood, aesthetic, and characters of the original this well, that I'm almost more impressed with The Two Jakes doing Chinatown than I am with Chinatown being Chinatown.

I really liked:

1)The scene where Jake Gittes makes the cop suck his gun and the cop pisses himself.  It's awesome.
2)A young Madeleine Stowe being told to "Put [her] ass in the air and [not to] move until I say so."
3)The part where Gittes blows himself up.  LOL.
4)OMG KATHERINE MULWRAY.
5)Did I spy Bob from Batman?  Yes!  He's my... numberoneguy.
6)The 70s look to the filmstock, etc.  Nice touch.
7)I was originally going to watch The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly again to finish off the Man With No Name trilogy (I watched For a Few Dollars More the other night--it's very good), but I wanted to send The Two Jakes back to Netflix, so I watched this instead.  Surprise!  Eli Wallach.  Not that you'd ever know if you're largely familiar with Wallach from Magnificent Seven and GBU (and if you're also illiterate, I suppose).
8)The hardboiled narration.

I did not like:

1)The incredibly shitty editing on the golf course, where it almost looks like two versions of the same exchange were filmed with different scripts, and both were left in.  To paraphrase:  Shot 1--"Let's make it $20 a hole?"  "Knock it the fuck off.  We're here to talk about your wife."  Shot 2--"My handicap's 14."  "Mine's 9."  "$20 a hole?"  "Sure."  Compounding this is the fact that I'm pretty sure Gittes said he a handicap of 6 earlier, but maybe I'm misremembering.  Christ.
2)Whatever Jack Nicholson was telling Harvey Keitel to do at the beginning.  I mean the director and the actor, but I could as easily mean Gittes and Berman.  I understand it's scripted, and obviously Berman is meditating a murder here, but that monotone was a bad in-universe decision and a bad directing decision.  I thought for a minute Roy Dotrice was reprising his role from Saturn 3.  WTF.
3)The hardboiled narration.

It's possible I'm grading this on an easier curve than Chinatown, which has the weight of being an AFI 100 film and on a lot of people's top tens, which is a burden of expectations I don't think it quite lives up to despite being extremely good and arguably great.  But I think the films are more than just comparable; I expect The Two Jakes is only considered significantly lesser by vice of being a bit of a retread, and being by a director who wasn't Polanski, and perhaps by the stigma of its production troubles--critics love a difficult failure.  It's not exactly as good as its predecessor, I suppose, but it's a more than worthy effort.  I can't imagine why it's been largely forgotten, and derided when it's remembered.  It's a very good movie.

B+

[Ideologue]

This Is the End (2013).  Fucking great, I think my fourth favorite movie of the year so far.  So very funny throughout, featuring three virtually perfect comedic scenes, namely Michael Cera's embarrassment early on, Danny McBride and James Franco's conversation regarding semen disposition, and a discussion about the possibility of gangraping Emma Watson.  Every inch an A.

[katmai]

This Is the End (2013).  Fucking great, I think my fourth favorite movie of the year so far.  So very funny throughout, featuring three virtually perfect comedic scenes, namely Michael Cera's embarrassment early on, Danny McBride and James Franco's conversation regarding semen disposition, and a discussion about the possibility of gangraping Emma Watson.  Every inch an A.

Broken Clock, etc....

[jimmy olsen]

This Is the End (2013).  Fucking great, I think my fourth favorite movie of the year so far.  So very funny throughout, featuring three virtually perfect comedic scenes, namely Michael Cera's embarrassment early on, Danny McBride and James Franco's conversation regarding semen disposition, and a discussion about the possibility of gangraping Emma Watson.  Every inch an A.

This is like your third fourth favorite movie of the year so far.

[Ideologue]

No it isn't.  I said Pain & Gain was my favorite, but was then displaced by Gatsby.  It's still number two.  My third favorite was Oblivion, which was displaced by Europa Report.  Oblivion didn't stay in fourth place.

It is the fourth movie, however, that I've given an A or higher out of the seventeen movies released in 2013 that I've seen so far.

Longer write-up:

Six words seldom heard: I want to be Michael Cera

Edit: meant Oblivion, not Man of Steel.  Maybe you're right.

[Ideologue]

Of course feel free to bring it up again when I no doubt rearrange rankings after seeing Pacific Rim Thursday.

[Razgovory]

No it isn't.  I said Pain & Gain was my favorite, but was then displaced by Gatsby.  It's still number two.  My third favorite was Oblivion, which was displaced by Europa Report.  Oblivion didn't stay in fourth place.

It is the fourth movie, however, that I've given an A or higher out of the seventeen movies released in 2013 that I've seen so far.

Longer write-up:

Six words seldom heard: I want to be Michael Cera

Edit: meant Oblivion, not Man of Steel.  Maybe you're right.

Industry: Law

[garbon]

Gang rape jokes?

Also a blog has been spawned?

[HVC]

Gang rape jokes?

it was a simple misunderstanding

[Neil]

I like Ide's blog.  Haters are faggots.