TV/Movies Megathread

[Beenherebefore]

I missed the first few seasons of "The League", but have been catching up on Netflix. That is one funny show. Bobbum Man and fear boners, Rafi and Dirty Randy.

[Savonarola]

Through the Backdoor (1921)

This comes from the very brief period in US popular culture when Belgium was cool.  Mary Pickford plays a young girl pawned off on her Belgian nurse by her wealthy mother.  Mary grows up on a Belgian farm where she engages in stereotypical Belgian behavior like...   like... actually she just clowns around.  Not even Hollywood of the 1920s could come up with a Belgian stereotype.

Mary's mother comes back to claim her five years later, but the nurse lies to the mother telling that Mary has drown.  The Germans invade and Mary is sent back to America with a sworn statement from her nurse that she's the real Mary.  She picks up two little Belgian orphans, a duck and a cat and smuggles them all into America.  When they arrive at her mother's opulent home she assumes they're beggars and pawns them off on the cook.  Mary works as a servant in her mother's house.  There's a weekend party among the idle rich, which turns out to be more successful Bolshevik propaganda than anything Eisenstein ever made; secrets are revealed and everything turns out happily. 

The film (like many of the era) comes from a more innocent time.  There's a wealthy boy who is smitten by Mary when she's a maid.  At the end of the film they meet again and she's introduced as a daughter come back from school in Belgium.  They walk off for a tête-à-tête.  As they do one of the adults asks (in title card) "Has Jack ever been in Belgium?"  And I thought, "He's working on it; give him time."

Mary's brother, Jack Pickford, is listed as co-director.  Most likely his sister just gave him a job so he'd have something to do as he was badly broken up about the death of his wife, Olive Thomas.

[Josquius]

Belgian stereotype?
They..um...they....solve crimes?

[Scipio]

Belgian stereotype?
They..um...they....solve crimes?

Slaughter Congolese.
Surrender to Germans.
Brew great beer.

[Beenherebefore]

And maybe make some dark chocolate and serve mayonaisse on stuff that doesn't need it.

[Eddie Teach]

Random smattering of stereotypes of French and/or Dutch.

[Syt]

Belgian stereotype?
They..um...they....solve crimes?

Slaughter Congolese.
Surrender to Germans.
Brew great beer.

Don't forget the FRENCH fries!

Also, WW1 Belgium didn't surrender, IIRC.

[The Larch]

Belgian stereotype?
They..um...they....solve crimes?

Slaughter Congolese.
Surrender to Germans.
Brew great beer.

Beer, eurobureaucracy, mussels and pedophiles.

[Valmy]

Don't forget the FRENCH fries!

Also, WW1 Belgium didn't surrender, IIRC.

Indeed they also had the good fortune of not being used in the actual fighting much because preserving the remains of their army was so politically important.  On the downside their country was occupied and starving under the British blockade except for one tiny corner.

[celedhring]

They make you wear pants like the Hiterites they are.

Thanks, Sav.

The last one I went to seemed like it was about eight hours, but it was also students at university, so it's probably fairer to blame the musicians than the music. But in any event, it's hard to recall its actual duration.

The show featured in Grand Piano isn't a symphony, though, but a piano concert where he plays several shorter pieces. Those concerts last about an hour, plus intermission. Still longer than the film makes it to be, but less preposterous.

Ah, I see.  I was thinking it might be like a Rope situation, where what is clearly meant to be about six hours is handled in real time yet somehow only takes eighty minutes.  It's one of the neat subtle aspects of the Hitchcock film, and helps establish this bizarre, awesome hyperreal world, alongide the gorgeously gaudy Technicolor and all that exquisitely "movie" dialogue.  I guess GP is more like the ordinary playfulness with time such as can be found in virtually any movie--not enough of a cheat to be worth mentioning.

Now, the ticket prices on the other hand...

Cel, do you know if that was a real concert hall or a set?  (I know the "Antoine Michelle Hall" is a fictional location, but I mean the interiors; I tried to google first, honest. )  I'm leaning toward set, but if so, what an opulent one, especially for what I was made to understand was a pretty low-budget affair that even then must've spent most of its cash on Wood and Cusack.  I'm wondering, I guess, if Javier Alvarino is a genius, or got lucky...

It's a mixture of a real theatre in Chicago and a studio set in Barcelona. There's lots of SFX trickery, to make it look larger and mix the studio-built stage with the real location. They wanted to shoot entirely on location, but it was impossible to make all those elaborate shots and sweeping camera movements inside a real theatre, so they had to build a set.

[Ideologue]

Very cool.  Thanks.

Didn't notice any effects work at all--well, other than the bullet hole.  Well-integrated stuff.

[Barrister]

Belgian stereotype?
They..um...they....solve crimes?

[celedhring]

Very cool.  Thanks.

Didn't notice any effects work at all--well, other than the bullet hole.  Well-integrated stuff.

Yeah the guy that did it - the one that owes me money - is one of the best doing SFX integration.

There's little SFX-created stuff, it's mostly creating a fictional space through shots of real ones.

[Ideologue]

 

[Queequeg]

I wouldn't call what the Serbs, Poles, Ukrainians or Belorussians did "surrendering."