TV/Movies Megathread

[The Brain]

I'd never do that.

[Kleves]

Marvel: doubling down on mediocre TV shows?

Marvel is going big on the TV show front. Really big. The company has signed a deal with Netflix to produce four separate new live-action TV series – Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Jessica Jones. The four shows will then lead into a team-up miniseries, The Defenders.

Daredevil will come first in 2015, followed by Jessica Jones, Iron Fist and Luke Cage. Netflix notes "the epic will unfold over multiple years of original programming," and that it will "take Netflix members deep into the gritty world of heroes and villains of Hell's Kitchen, New York," indicating the shows will be very interconnected (Hell's Kitchen is of course the traditional home to Daredevil in the comics). Each series has a minimum commitment of 13 episodes each. The Defenders is described as "a dream team of self-sacrificing, heroic characters."

Marvel Television in association with ABC Television Studios will produce the series.

"This deal is unparalleled in its scope and size, and reinforces our commitment to deliver Marvel's brand, content and characters across all platforms of storytelling. Netflix offers an incredible platform for the kind of rich storytelling that is Marvel's specialty," said Alan Fine, President of Marvel Entertainment. "This serialized epic expands the narrative possibilities of on-demand television and gives fans the flexibility to immerse themselves how and when they want in what's sure to be a thrilling and engaging adventure."

"Marvel's movies, such as Iron Man and Marvel's The Avengers, are huge favorites on our service around the world. Like Disney, Marvel is a known and loved brand that travels," said Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos. "With House of Cards and our other original series, we have pioneered new approaches to storytelling and to global distribution and we're thrilled to be working with Disney and Marvel to take our brand of television to new levels with a creative project of this magnitude."

Talk about Marvel seeking such a deal, for four series and a miniseries, surfaced last month. Among the characters being used, Daredevil is notable as the second live-action interpretation of the character, after the 2003 movie starring Ben Affleck. Marvel got the film and TV rights back to the character in 2012, after 20th Century Fox was unable to begin production on a new movie in time to stop the rights from lapsing. Marvel previously had developed a never-filmed Jessica Jones project for ABC, written by Melissa Rosenberg (Dexter, Twilight). No writers or producers have been announced as yet for the new Marvel TV shows.

On the heels of the launch of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, there has also been talk of a possible Agent Carter TV show for ABC, starring Hayley Atwell as her Captain America character.

[Barrister]

I've missed SHEILD the last few weeks, but did watch it this week.

Not much going on still it seems.

[CountDeMoney]

SORRY HERB.

[crazy canuck]

Blacklist

[spoiler]So she is his daughter and now the mystery is what happened in that house that separated him from her and caused him such angst that he wanted to destroy it the house.[/spoiler]

[garbon]

Blacklist

[spoiler]So she is his daughter and now the mystery is what happened in that house that separated him from her and caused him such angst that he wanted to destroy it the house.[/spoiler]

[Ideologue]

Beauty and the Beast (1991).  Ultimately, it is immaterial whether Class Traitor Belle figured out on her own that she could reverse the enchantment--unaware only of the time limit--and not only get a hot aristocratic husband who owes her bigtime, but full entree into the upper class, all for the price of being pleasant to a hairy, self-pitying jerk.  Her selfish liberal arts fantasy of sitting in a room reading while automatic serfs attend to her every wish and whim--and, crucially, she never works--was already a fait accompli.

I don't like the songs in Beauty and the Beast.  They (mostly) function as diagetic musical music, but they're an enormous step down from the inherently great songs in The Little Mermaid.

However, the movie is basically okay; being well-animated and not terribly long nor taxing is an asset, and certainly the last forty-five minutes of the movie are substantially better than the first.  The following things do not feature in the latter half: 1)presentment of the acts of reading and being lazy as, in combination, an ideal representation of female empowerment; 2)false imprisonment and barely restrained sexual violence on the part of our protagonist, that is understandably but distractingly never really acknowledged; nor 3)any highly discomfiting scene where a grown man drinks out of the inside of a little boy who complains that "his mustache tickles."

B

P.S. So the Beast was cursed ten years ago, the curse becomes permanent on his 21st birthday, and all surviving portraiture of him features him as a grown man?  Wow, that is so fucking sloppy.
P.P.S.: It just struck me that Lumiere and the feather-duster's trysts, carried out without procreative organs and in memoriam to the pleasures their bodies once could offer them, must be the saddest untold story in history, and when you consider it fully it is a picture of superhuman restraint that he never burnt down the castle with every soul inside.  They should have considered that when still cranking out Disney sequels.  It's for the kids.

[Ed Anger]

The movie: vomit

[Queequeg]

Is it just me or is this the coolest promotional image ever?

[katmai]

Just you, ya freak.

[Ed Anger]

Tells me nothing about the subject matter.

[Ideologue]

I like it, but concur with MB.  I can't even google something without a word, bro.

[Savonarola]

'49-'17 (1917)

A judge who longs for his days during the gold rush 1849; so he sends his lackey out to recreate the town of Nugget Notch from the old days.  The lackey ends up in San Diego, where he meets up with a down and out Wild West Show.  They all go to the now abandoned Nugget Notch and recreate the wild west.  The judge comes and greets them all by throwing his hat in the air and shooting it a number of times.  At first the play wild west seems idyllic, but the troupe has a number of dark secrets.  These are all resolved through an incredible set of coincidences and true love wins in the end. 


This is another early film directed by a woman, Ruth Ann Baldwin.  Unlike Alice Guy, Baldwin didn't direct many films and was better known as a writer.

The high point of this film is seeing Balboa Park as it looked in 1917.

[garbon]

Just you, ya freak.

[garbon]

I like it, but concur with MB.  I can't even google something without a word, bro.

Sad. Here in the modern world there is google image search. In fact in chrome you can just right click and search in google image search.

That said, I agree if I saw this on a billboard or in print with no other accompanying text.