TV/Movies Megathread

[Josquius]

I continue to watch TNG s2. Some episodes I must have seen before despite not remembering them as I knew just how the plot was going to work out...
Picard is a dick. Loose quote from one episode- we're heading to x, hopefully it will give me a chance to evaluate our new medical officer. Really Picard? You want people to be injured?
The way they had another doctor for this one series is curious.....
And she sucks. Way too much of a female Bones.

[dps]

The way they had another doctor for this one series is curious.....
And she sucks. Way too much of a female Bones.

It's not just that she's a female knock-off of Bones, she has all his occasional abrasiveness without the underlying humor or humanity.

[Tonitrus]

Doctor Selar (for even just the one episode in season two) was better....and very much HOTTer.

[Sheilbh]

Witchfinder General and The Masque of the Red Death are awesome.

Definitely. I love Vincent Price.

Also Theatre of Blood. Price as a ham actor whose Shakespeare was savaged by the critics so he takes revenge on them through grizzly Shakespearean deaths while performing a monologue. It's wonderful.

[Syt]

Theatre of Blood is a glorious movie.

[Savonarola]

The Oliver Hardy Collection

Prior to teaming up with Stan Laurel  , Oliver Hardy was usually the villain in a number of comic shorts (because in Hollywood there's nothing more villainous than a fat man.)  This is a collection of several of those shorts.  In these films he's usually billed as "Babe" Hardy, (with quotation marks around "Babe.")  The stars of these films were big names in their day, like Larry Semon or Clyde Cook; but they've all been forgotten.  The films survive because of their antagonist. 

[MadImmortalMan]

An episode of Kitchen Nightmares. Ramsey told the dude his business was about to take a swim down the Hudson.


We find out later that the owner had been banging the waitresses in the show on the side, and after it finally failed they found his body after he'd jumped from Hudson Bridge.

Train wreck.

[garbon]

Off to see No Man's Land with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen.

[11B4V]

Watched the first two episodes of Sherlock. B+ so far.

Overall 1st season B+

Binged watched the 2nd season A

1st episode of 3rd season C+

[Ideologue]

Strangers On a Train (1951).  Lotta tennis in this picture.  A lot.

A

Raze (2014).

Perhaps not quite the platonic ideal of the movie about women enslaved and forced to fight to the death you were looking for, but close enough.  (Extra points for being essentially the same as a movie about men being enslaved and forced to fight to the death, which you might not expect, but it is, in the 21st century, what you should want, so there you go.)

The operation was a resounding success, Ms. Bell, and your voice should return by early 2014

B

All Is Lost (2013).

Robert Redford slowly dies.  It's decent.

The ocean is a desert with its life underground

B

[Queequeg]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tVFwhoeQVM

Legitimately one of my favorite scenes ever.

[Capetan Mihali]

I did laugh when I came across people online complaining about how they called a character "portly" and made fun of someone with a lazy eye.

Has the internet met gay people?

I didn't know I was skinny-fat until my Russian boyfriend told me so. Actually, I didn't even know that was a thing until he told me so. 

I did, however, suspect something was wrong with my body the first night I stayed over his house.

I went to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, and ran into his roommate, Julio. I don't remember what he said, but I remember where he looked. He seemed to direct his entire conversation--and disgust--at my exposed midsection.

Also known as my love handles.

http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/08/the-tyranny-of-buffness/278698/

[Savonarola]

Strangers On a Train (1951).  Lotta tennis in this picture.  A lot.

A

It's one of my favorite Hitchcock movies; though I think that even by Hitchcock standards Farley Granger and Ruth Roman are not a believable romantic couple.  Of course the real romance is between Robert Walker and Farley Granger.  They have a great deal of on screen chemistry; which is one of the reasons why the film is so great.

[Savonarola]

Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark

This is a BBC documentary about Western Civilization from the Dark Ages until the 20th Century mostly focusing on the art works.  Clark argues that civilization is the expectation of a future and thus is evidenced by art works built to stand the test of time.  He gives a good deal of representation to West Germany (the documentary was made in 1969, so they couldn't film behind the Iron Curtain) but short shrift to France (the entire of French classicism and Versailles is glossed over in a few second) and no mention at all to Spain or Portugal.

It is frightfully British, right down to the comical misspelling of "Civilization" and Lord Clark's bad teeth.  After watching this one would be led to believe that every major art movement in Western Europe either originated in or was greatly improved upon in the British Isles.  Hurrah for Blighty! 

[Capetan Mihali]

So what do you think, Sav: did the talkies ruin film or rescue it, as the facetious Hollywood tropes of the 50s (Singin' In The Rain, Sunset Boulevard) would have it?

I'm watching Abel Gance's 1919 version of J'accuse now (in installments), and it's really good; he also apparently remade it in 1938, so I'd like to compare. 

But watching a silent film again after a long hiatus got me thinking about the "motion pictures" really mean.  It's kind of taken for granted nowadays that watching film without sound dialogue is difficult, but in some ways you get an art-form that's more unique/radical than the talkies -- "moving pictures" literally, rather than just a filmed theatrical production.  Though of course the visual advances of the silent movies were incorporated into the talkies, something had to have been lost.

So what say you, esteemed and tireless watcher of silent movies?