TV/Movies Megathread

[Maladict]

Saw a QI episode with Brian Blessed. I had never seen him "as himself" before and I didn't know he was always on. Jesus Christ.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xsihzt_hignfy-s35e03-brian-blessed-alan-duncan-marcus-brigstocke_fun

[Syt]

Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa5L8YjsiSk

[Josquius]

Walking Dead - meh. It tried too hard. I get it. Killing the pigs like that is symbolic of Rick realising the dream of the peaceful life is impossible, yadda yadda.... but logically- wtf. What a stupid waste. All it would take would be a few people dancing around behind the walkers to draw them off whilst the others quickly fix the fence- everyone goes back in side and return to stabbing. Walkers against the fence shouldnlt be the problem it is being

[Berkut]

The walkers in general should not be the problem they are presented as being in that show.

They are slow, stupid, and easily disabled. A concerted effort could clean out thousands of them without much trouble.

[Eddie Teach]

Being able to outrun the ones behind you doesn't make much difference if there's more in front of you and to the sides. And there's the problems of keeping enough ammo, gunshots drawing more, and melee combat being inherently dangerous.

For all that, it doesn't seem to be all that big a problem on the show. The survivors have turned it into a routine and slipups mainly happen when something out of the ordinary occurs.

[Liep]

Broen II is really fucking good. And scary.

[Sheilbh]

Cannot wait

Weirdly despite the original being very popular in the UK there's been a remake 'the Tunnel'. Which is fine, except it apparently barely ever deviates from the Swedey/Danish version which makes it sort of pointless

[Ideologue]

Been Savving it up this past week.  All black and white, all the time.  I find it comforting for some reason, though I can't explain why.  It can't be nostalgia.  The world was in color when I was a kid.  Perhaps it's just continuity with the human race through culture; though everyone involved in these movies is dead as the proverbial MRF, they live on for me through their works.

Metropolis (~150 minute version with lost Argentine Nazi footage) (1927).  A technical marvel, I guess, that also serves as a quaint artifact of a time when people had jobs in the first place.  I'm deeply annoyed by the insistence upon the idea that poor people will drown their own children if a transparent agent provacateur tells them to do so.  I am edified by the eternal truth that bitches, no matter how much they talk about social justice, like rich boys.

Seriously, the plot, such as it is, annoys me, and Freder Fredersen (huh) just assumes that he's Jesus, I mean the mediator, and so does everyone else, even though he does almost nothing to qualify himself for it, other than 1)take a whimsical interest in the plight of the working class because he wants to fuck a poor girl; 2)work ten hours at a job which his Rich Person powers permit him to perform adequately, in the sense nothing explodes, despite no training or experience (it probably helps that no job that simple has ever existed in the history of man); and 3)be pretty (and rich) enough that the poor girl, the active protagonist, also wants to fuck him.  Finally, while pretty, sure, her image is not so enticing that the events that transpire around Brigitte Helm's characters seem believable--although maybe they're not supposed to be.  Regardless, everyone is stupid or insane or full of entitlement in this movie and its admittedly awesome visual effects and set design and costuming and choreography and performances and slogans don't make it a good movie, although it may be important.

Tell me why I should like Metropolis more.  I've watched it like three times (in varying cuts, and this one does make the most sense of any, though it's also the least well-paced), once at 17, once at 23, and now again at 31.  And I have never really enjoyed it.

Don't read this, Psellus!  [spoiler]C+[/spoiler]

She (1935).  A 1950s B-picture well ahead of its time, and clearly lavished with more money than its later counterparts, this cool movie tells the story of a latterday Hyperborean fantasy, as some white people go into the Arctic in search of the source of eternal life, and find an authoritarian immortal who is delusionally obsessed with her long-dead love, whom our hero, a relative, happens to resemble in most every detail.  Some really insultingly stupid things are said about how great death is, but they meant well.  A better psychological portrait of an immortal can be found in many other stories, but this is fun, and I guess it must be the origin of the title "she who must be obeyed."  The remake might be better (it has Vincent Price!) but somehow I doubt it, and this is quite fine.  The non-immortal love interest is really pretty, too.  B

The Tunnel (aka The Transatlantic Tunnel) (1935).  "Down here, far below the Atlantic bed, strewn with the wrecks of centuries, men are working day and night.  From both sides of the Altantic  they are driving their shafts, growing nearer and nearer to one another, and one day, far below the raging storms of the ocean, they'll meet."

Money would love this movie, because it's about how shareholder value destroys people.  I love this movie because it's about how STEM is God and trumps petty concerns like "love" or "common humanity."  It's probably Niall Ferguson's favorite movie, because it's the only one I'm aware of that features a "Union of the English-Speaking Peoples"--somehow this tunnel will lead to world peace, although it's never adequately explained quite why.

It's an interesting SF film in that despite the super-scientific high concept, it could have been about any tunnel or really any serious feat of engineering; it's really more concerned with its underwater, horizontal Tower of Babel's architects and owners, how they clash over dreams and money, how ordinary men are chewed up by progress, and the paradox of how attractive the passion for an idea can be, yet how that same passion will ultimately ruin any human relationship.  In other words, it's like a version of Metropolis that isn't so fucking insistent and banally obvious and features actual people.  It's also substantially more palatable in its conclusions.

And yet, in some regards, its message may well be just as confused.  Toward the end, McAllan, the protagonist engineer, loses his son, a workman on the tunnel crew, to a volcanic eruption.  He's briefly fazed, and seems sad.  However, immediately he returns to the tunnel to finish the job, hopping into his radium-powered super-drill on what I assumed would be a death ride into the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.  But this is not the case.

I find The Tunnel's ending to be perhaps the most interesting aspect of the film.  Unlike in most Babel stories, spitting into the face of God is successful: the tunnel is completed.  Even more bizarrely, there is no epilogue to speak of, certainly no great breakdown of a man who has been holding his grief within him till the work was done.  Nope, he makes it through, meets his counterparts from across the pond, shakes hands with them, and the tunnel is subsequently opened for transit.  Hooray!  THE END.  So The Tunnel is boldly (or sloppily?) true to this man's monomaniacal, nearly autistic obsession all the way until the end.  Beyond that, it has the courage to say: engineering works.  (Which is, for what it's worth, one of the few story points I appreciate in Metropolis.)

It also features a coded but really obviously gay sidekick, which I found a progressive touch for 1935.  It does, unfortunately, have a really awful performance from McAllan's estranged wife, especially after she goes blind from tunnel gas, although this pays off in a somewhat powerfully melodramatic showdown with the other woman who loves him (although because he is wedded to an altogether different hole, he does not notice her either).  B+

Brain From Planet Arous (1957).  Still a largely unacknowledged classic.  John Agar as a possessed man with dreams of world domination and atomic telekinesis cannot be missed.  A or A+ or whatever I gave it last time.  I love that rape brain.

The Lady Vanishes (1938).  Watched half last night before I went to bed.  Is this movie a comedy about two guys banging their heads of things, and people being flustered by the libertinism of interwar Germans? Well, nonetheless, so far it's pretty good.  I

[The Brain]

I can give you some STEM cells if you want.

[Ideologue]

I can give you some STEM cells if you want.

If only it were that easy.

[Savonarola]

The Lady Vanishes (1938).  Watched half last night before I went to bed.  Is this movie a comedy about two guys banging their heads of things, and people being flustered by the libertinism of interwar Germans? Well, nonetheless, so far it's pretty good.  I

It's probably as close to a screwball comedy as Hitchcock directed.  The two British character actors who play the cricket enthusiasts (Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne) work wonderfully as clowns.  Michael Redgrave also gets in some great witticisms as well.  The love story isn't really believable (it wouldn't have been Hitchcock if it was) but he has intrigue and suspense to make up for the lack of romantic misunderstanding.

[Ideologue]

It is funny.  I liked it when the flute player terrorizes the young woman, making suggestions that may amount to straight-up sexual assault, then told her that if she tried to call for help, he'd tell everybody she invited him to her room.

Since I was dragooned into working a super-long week, to cheer myself up and waste my extra money I bought the Hitchcock BD set.  So soon the biggest blindspot in my study of film history should be closed.

[Malthus]

She (1935).  A 1950s B-picture well ahead of its time, and clearly lavished with more money than its later counterparts, this cool movie tells the story of a latterday Hyperborean fantasy, as some white people go into the Arctic in search of the source of eternal life, and find an authoritarian immortal who is delusionally obsessed with her long-dead love, whom our hero, a relative, happens to resemble in most every detail.  Some really insultingly stupid things are said about how great death is, but they meant well.  A better psychological portrait of an immortal can be found in many other stories, but this is fun, and I guess it must be the origin of the title "she who must be obeyed."  The remake might be better (it has Vincent Price!) but somehow I doubt it, and this is quite fine.  The non-immortal love interest is really pretty, too.  B

It's a movie version of a Victorian adventure written by a guy named H. Rider Haggard.

[frunk]

The Lady Vanishes (1938).  Watched half last night before I went to bed.  Is this movie a comedy about two guys banging their heads of things, and people being flustered by the libertinism of interwar Germans? Well, nonetheless, so far it's pretty good.  I

It's probably as close to a screwball comedy as Hitchcock directed.  The two British character actors who play the cricket enthusiasts (Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne) work wonderfully as clowns.  Michael Redgrave also gets in some great witticisms as well.  The love story isn't really believable (it wouldn't have been Hitchcock if it was) but he has intrigue and suspense to make up for the lack of romantic misunderstanding.

What about The Trouble with Harry?  I remember that as being quite funny, although it's been years since I've seen it.

[The Brain]

H. Rider Haggard.