TV/Movies Megathread

[Ideologue]

Hey, now, don't cut that shit.  Mendes' and Deakins' vision for the fight in Shanghai and the casino in Macau are just fucking amazing.  I wavered for months after seeing Skyfall over whether it was a good or a bad movie just on the strength of those two scenes (and the introductory scene of Silva, to be fair to Javier Bardem, who does a great job with what he's given).

But the movie itself?  Besides Silva's completely retarded plot--I mean, it falls apart while you're watching it, which is really bad--there's also the "thematic" Bond film that was written and the utter disinterest amounting to contempt Mendes apparently had for it.  Try to count how many times Bond is referred to as old, worn-out, etc. in this movie (I dare you).  Then see if there is any evidence for it in the film, other than him tiring from doing an unknown number of chin-ups and missing a difficult shot and thus failing to save Severine.  For Bonus Contempt--this time for the audience--note the scene when Bond has arrived at Skyfall, and has suddenly become a crack shot again.  Note, particularly, that this scene is about twelve to twenty-four hours later and as far as I can tell, it's literally the next time Bond has used a firearm since the execution of Severine.  (For Super Mega Extra Bonus Contempt: "...Exploding pens?  We don't really go in for that sort of thing any more."  I wanted to strangle that fay mutant Matt Smith clone in his cradle.)

Also, and Money made fun of me for it the last time I mentioned it, probably because I used the term "time loop," but it still bothers me: I really, really, really hate the appearance of the Aston Martin with machine guns, as if he's owned the fucking thing for, oh, going on fifty years now.

Stupid movie.  Great fight scene with pretty colors.

[Syt]

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-movies-that-sent-opposite-their-intended-message/

The Dark Knight Rises: Anarchy Is Not That Bad

The Message:

Like Christopher Nolan's previous Batman movies, The Dark Knight Rises is awash with political commentary. A terrorist leader, Bane, seizes power in Gotham and starts giving speeches that read like a Wikipedia article about Marxism: The people of Gotham should rise up, throw off their chains made of rich people, and take over. The city's authorities are lured underground and trapped, and Batman is forced to watch from his distant prison as anti-capitalist anarchy destroys the city. The message here doesn't have to be spelled out in Mitt Romney bumper stickers: This is what happens when the 99 percent seize power, and it stinks more than the Porta-Potties in the second month of an Occupy Wall Street camp.


Why It Falls Flat:

Because Bane's anarchy-plagued Gotham works better than a lot of American cities.

Oh sure, we get a little montage of wealthy people getting dragged out into the street, and yes, there are some unfair trials going on. But for the average Joe Gothamite on the street? Life seems to be going pretty well. For example, look at these shots we see of Gotham's streets, months after it was taken over by Bane and his band of revolutionary thugs:

[clean streets]

Now let's compare those to what a normal city street looks like after 11 days of a garbage strike:

[garbage piling in the streets]

Clearly, someone is collecting Gotham's trash, so we can only assume that there was a deleted scene in which Bane took a break from fist-based murder and held a meeting that detailed an orderly garbage-collecting roster using PowerPoint slides:

"When the polyethylene terephthalate bottles have been separated from the miscellaneous polystyrene, then you have my permission to recycle."

The streets are also apparently getting plowed, which is more than Gotham's real-life counterpart can manage when it's not being occupied by evil mercenaries. Sewerage and water are presumably still running, judging by how clean everyone looks and how much typhoid they don't have. The cops trapped underground are being fed, which means that the occupation has a functioning welfare system that extends even to its political enemies. Electricity is common enough for people to talk about watching TV. And all this without anyone paying any taxes. Nolan's depiction of a socialist nightmare actually looks pretty sweet. Maybe Venezuela can learn from the masked sociopath, and prevent all those toilet paper shortages it keeps having.

Yes, Bane did have a bomb that was going to blow up the city. But that just means that Nolan's message ended up being "violent socialist revolutions are alright, provided that no one stumbles on any experimental nuclear weapons."

[Ideologue]

In fairness, Gotham was being given generous subsidies by the rest of the US because Bane was holding eight million people hostage.

[katmai]

Silver Linings Playbook
Finally caught this. In ide's ranking system it gets a B

[Ideologue]

If it's as frivolous and unfocused as American Hustle, it doesn't.

[Eddie Teach]

It was neither frivolous nor unfocused.

[katmai]

If it's as frivolous and unfocused as American Hustle, it doesn't.

I don't want to hear a motherfucking word from someone who give a Tyler Perry production a B.

[Ideologue]

I did not do that.  I said it was terrible in a really fun way.  It's kind of like The Happening, except the stupid, unintentionally hilarious parts are practically the whole thing rather than parsimoniously doled out the way Oliver Twist was suffered to have gruel.

The other nine on my bottom ten (still evolving, in comparison to my top ten, which I'm pretty sure is now set*, but almost complete) are atrocious in extremely non-fun ways.

*Looks like I'm counting Blue Is The Warmest Color and The Past as 2014 pictures.  If they don't appear in the Real America by January, that's 2014.

[celedhring]

Happy to see I'm not alone in thinking that Skyfall was terrible. The villain plot didn't make any sense [spoiler](allow himself to be captured in an ellaborate estratagem so he can take the subway to kill M? Really? REALLY?)[/spoiler], and it was way too low key for a bond villain. [spoiler]Even the "confront your past" approach of Bond going back to his home, etc... fell kinda flat since there seems to be nothing of interest in his past[/spoiler]. The only thing that was enjoyable was all the references to the old Bond films and some nifty action sequences.

One thing I noticed is that there's a trend in all 3 Craig Bond movies[spoiler] where one of the Bond girls ends up dead because they have helped him (and annoyingly it's usually the hottest in the film). I suppose it's intentional ("you're a danger for those around you Bond").[/spoiler]

[Admiral Yi]

I caught an error during my 25th viewing of Full Metal Jacket. 

In the scene where Joker and Rafterman are riding a helicopter from Da Nang to Hue, the first shot is one from the helicopter looking down at the helicopter's shadow on the ground.  But it's the shadow of a Kiowa type scout helicopter, then in the next shot from the ground to the helicopter, it's a Jolly Green Giant.

[FunkMonk]

Silver Linings Playbook was excellent and warmed my heart. A Check Positive Plus

[Liep]

Happy to see I'm not alone in thinking that Skyfall was terrible.

When I called Skyfall a terrible movie some time back I faced the wrath of Languish and ended up on CdM's list of bad movie reviewers. Or maybe that last one was because of the Dark Knight Rises, which also was not a good movie.

[Viking]

Happy to see I'm not alone in thinking that Skyfall was terrible.

When I called Skyfall a terrible movie some time back I faced the wrath of Languish and ended up on CdM's list of bad movie reviewers. Or maybe that last one was because of the Dark Knight Rises, which also was not a good movie.

The dark knight rises, wasn't a good movie. Though, I didn't realize this until I watched it a second or third time. Skyfall, isn't a very good movie either. Basically, the first half is a bond movie in layout, plot and execution. A great bond movie in the making. The fight scene with the glass walls in the tower against the sniper (iirc) was awesome. The second half of skyfall is a not-bond movie, as opposed to a non-bond movie. It's trying to turn the whole bond genre on it's head. Rather than bond trying to infiltrate the villains base you have the villain trying to infiltrate bond's base. The villain doesn't have a colorful henchman, bond does. etc.etc. M is a terrible bond girl, how can we admire the hero when the leading lady is contemptuous of him.

With TDKR the movie felt awesome when I watched it but the more I thought about it the more and more it started making less and less sense. The villain plot doesn't make sense, the villain motivation doesn't make sense, batman repeated makes choices completely and totally at odds with the character as he has developed over time. Like all Nolan movies, each scene is cool, but the thread connecting them is idiotic. Memento and Inception managed to get away with this since they don't need a clear connecting thread between the scenes.

Skyfall, stars off as a Bond movie, with all it's genre tropes and conventions. Half way through it veers off an tries to be a Bourne movie and tries to destroy the tropes and conventions. TDKR got away with it in theater since I did keep the same emotional tone throughout the movie, Skyfall didn't.

I didn't like Skyfall either.

[celedhring]

The Dark Knight Rises has way, way too many plot holes and a nonsensical villain plan to boot (and not good nonsensical as in The Joker). And somehow, manages to do a pretty poor job of developing the supporting characters despite being almost 3 hours long.[spoiler] My favorite moment to describe this is how Wayne meets Talia Al'Gul under the rain, cut to them both fucking: we have to assume and believe he's deeply in love with her for the remaining of the film. Same with Catwoman, she betrays and unbetrays Wayne without having a compelling reason for all these changes of opinion besides some half arsed speech[/spoiler]

I enjoyed it, mind, but after the greatness of Dark Knight I think Nolan tried to be too ambitious and let the moral pathos he designed for the movies take over the reality of the world and the people that inhabit them, turning characters into robots to fit that vision, belieavility be damned.

[Josephus]

Ep.3 of True Detective. Keeps getting better. And we see woody's wife's boobs

Also saw Prometheus a second time. Not sure why.