TV/Movies Megathread

[Savonarola]

Anyway, this sounds mighty cool.  This is the kind of thing I was talking about when I was asking for early utopian science fiction, you know.

It's neither utopian nor science fiction; so you can see my confusion.



The only pre-Hollywood Lubitsch film I had seen before was The Oyster Princess.  You might want to see one of Lubitsch's Hollywood films for your first Lubitsch film; Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner or Trouble in Paradise all have "The Lubitsch Touch" that everyone raved about (as do his Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald films; but I think Rouben Mamoulian's "Love me Tonight" is a superior pairing of those two.)

[Ideologue]

It has dolls for bachelors, widowers, and misogynists (and they really, really work).  Utopia.

I think I've seen a Lubitsch movie before.  I may be thinking of Billy Wilder, who either got his start with Lubitsch, or was a huge fan, or both.

[Savonarola]

It has dolls for bachelors, widowers, and misogynists (and they really, really work).  Utopia.

I think I've seen a Lubitsch movie before.  I may be thinking of Billy Wilder, who either got his start with Lubitsch, or was a huge fan, or both.

Wilder co-wrote the screenplay for the Lubitsch films "Ninotchka" and "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife."  I know you've seen "The Apartment" which is a Wilder film.

[Barrister]

I haven't forgotten my Doctor Who reviews.  Instead, it's just so hard to get a chance to sit down and seriously watch a tv show these days (as opposed to having a tv show playing while you're busy parenting toddlers).

Tonight I finally got a chance to watch Doctor Who The Unquiet Dead 2005:

Darn it, I thought this was a cracking good yarn.  The show is still trying to establish itself and show it's range - after the pilot in the present, and the second episode set in the future, now we're in the past - 1869 to be precise.  Charles Dickens shows up as the main protagonist of the episode, which sounds terrible but was surprisingly well done.

The storyline involving aliens from another dimension, trying to cross over to ours, sounds awful, but gets turned into a zombie story and it just kind of works.  The reference to the Time War certainly had my ears pick up.

But Dickens somehow makes the episode.  It's set at Christmas, so subtly echoes A Christmas Carol, yet the last comment that Dickens is soon to die gives it a poignancy that was well done.

I'm trying to avoid giving out 5 out of 5 reviews every single time, so I'll give this one:



Four cybermen out of five.

[Ideologue]

I will watch Gymkata, I mean Ninotchka.

[Syt]

Cookie Monster in: Sesame Street's Lord of the Crumbs

Legend speaks of a dessert unimaginably sweet and delicious, and when it was destroyed all that remained was the dessert's powerful recipe. It remained in the hands of a monster named Gobble for a long time, but when it disappeared, all cookies on Monster Earth disappeared along with it. It is up to Cookie Monster to use his memory and remember the recipe in order to bake the cookies in the fires of Mount Crumb.

[11B4V]

I like this one
The Hungry Games- Catching Fur
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT7nD02Im5E

[lustindarkness]

And today I see the trailer for Edge of Tomorrow. Tom Cruise sci fi groundhog day? It could work, at least it looks interesting.

[Savonarola]

I will watch Gymkata, I mean Ninotchka.

It should make for a classic Ide review.

[Syt]

It probably is a lot better than the Soviet version, though.

OMG I'd love to see that! 

The Cinema Snob has a review up:
http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/bj/tcs/41645-russian-the-hobbit

[Razgovory]

Dguller's the Hobbit.

[MadImmortalMan]

You can see why they didn't do the moon landing first. They clearly didn't have the cinematic technology.

[Ed Anger]

On the DVR:

Dungeons and Dragons: Book of Vile Darkness

Tonight, I will savor every awful direct to DVD morsel of this "film".

[Ideologue]

I'll also add Snow White and the Seven Dwarves: lady gets old, comes to hate a young woman for being hot like she once was.  Decides to change her perception by removing the possibility of a comparison.

Disney used to teach kids actual lessons about real life...

The weird thing is, I just watched a video review of Snow White?  The Evil Queen is probably significantly prettier.  She doesn't have such a fat face.  We never see them nude, however, so it's hard to really tell.

And speaking of movies where you see everybody less nude than the material demands, let us visit Canada, the land of absolutely no traffic police with Crash (1996).  I am concerned that my reaction to Crash, which I watched over the course of like three separate sittings, has a lot more to do with my currently quitting smoking than it does Crash as an actual movie.  But when you think about it, there's no reason it couldn't be both, and I'm having trouble focusing on boring, bad movies.

Crash, if you've never seen it, is the movie where David Cronenberg (I assume) made up a fake fetish for sex in, around, and involving car accidents and the accompanying vehicular mutilation.  It is, far more than equally sexual and significantly more interesting Shivers, essentially a pornographic film.  Actually, that sounds damning, but it isn't; there is nothing wrong with being a pornographic film, although there might not be a big market for one directed by Cronenberg.

The damning part is that it is a pornographic film that must pretend it is a regular old movie, and thus lacks the willing flesh (or, it seems, the make-up budget) to go hardcore.  It also lacks a script with an ordinary amount dialogue, and thus is basically a collection of disconnected sex scenes in, around, and involving car accidents, almost of which are too long and many of which are dull.

I'm also intensely annoyed by the basic structure of Crash--for such a bizarre, and let's just say "evolutionarily incorrect" sexual fetish, lead character Ballard and crew have absolutely no problem having sex constantly--everybody just goes along for the ride because, ha ha, sure.  He's fucking so often that I was surprised that Ballard is revealed to still actually have a job in the third act.  I'm always bothered by this turn in movies, where someone who needs to be shown to be into seedy sex can immediately and without difficulty or rejection just get some if the script demands it (see also, 2011's Shame, where a basically soulless man is able to fuck practically at will, and not just prostitutes).  Compare it to a great movie about an empty man with unconventional sexual desires, Eyes Wide Shut, which is the only movie I'm aware of that is willing to embrace the prospect of the pure desolation that comes from not just abandoning the nuclear family for the wilds of sexual excess, but attempting to do so and failing.  I have been there and it is a bad place to be.

I can't hate Crash too much; if it helped me finally articulate what I've always thought was so excellent about Kubrick's final and second-best film means at at least some good came out of it.

But otherwise, not much.  Crash lacks in just about everything that makes a movie interesting and entertaining--aside from lacking dialogue or plot, the softcore sex is sometimes so badly staged it seems unlikely penetration could actually be accomplished, deep into the plasma pool or otherwise, and even the car chases and crashes that excite them are a little weak.  It does have some occasionally nicely edited sequences but nothing so exciting you're likely to remember exactly what happened or why.

What Crash does not lack is a proper core idea; and its theme is your usual Cronenbergian transhumanism.  It is true that this time it remains underexposited, rather than expounded upon in proper Brundlefly fashion; but this choice works somewhat, because instead of involving science fiction and scientists, it is cast in a real-world situation that comes off as sicker and more pathetic than Cronenberg's earlier works, because in Crash it's never at all in question that indulging in this addiction will lead to the destruction and dysfunction of the body.  I actually do like it.  It's an idea cool enough to be sustain even a mediocre film; but it didn't sustain Crash.  Bummer.

I suppose this is where the Exploding Heads Period starts to turn into his Imploding Heads Period.  But before that, Dead Ringers remains.  And I hear it's pretty awesome; I am still looking forward to that.

C (reserving the right to revise this one at any time)

[Razgovory]

Finally making the last push to finish off the X-files 9th season.  Scully uses the same internet handle as Spellus, which is kind of weird.