TV/Movies Megathread

[Josquius]

What's the costumes problem?

Well, the District 1 costumes are garish.  But that's appropriate, and they're interesting.  The District 12 or 13 or whatever Catniss is from, they're late 19th century potato sack dresses, and the result of absolutely zero imagination.  It's like two separate teams designed them, and perhaps they did.

I can't say I'm a fan of the costumes, I didn't notice them one way or the other (though a gay friend absolutely adores the district 1 stuff), but...wasn't that sort of the point?

[CountDeMoney]

god, fuck malick*

*though i've only seen tree of life

So you're a member of the Ideologue school.

70% of someone's work, and the best-regarded 70% at that, is enough to evaluate them on.

That said, evaluating Malick based solely on Tree of Life is probably a mistake.

I do feel comfortable evaluating Tarkovsky solely on the first forty-five minutes of Solaris, but I'd be willing to judge a stranger for punching me in the nose for no reason without seeing the rest of his oeuvre, too

I wasn't talking to you.

[katmai]

If I wasn't already dismissive of Ide's judgement, the review of Snake Eyes would correct me of that.

[Ideologue]

Gene Siskel liked it.

[katmai]

He was only one and he had brain tumor by then.

[CountDeMoney]

Gene and the brain tumor: two thumbs up.

[The Brain]

Snake Eyes (1998).  It's some bitchin' technology.  Might be better still if a real rain had come and washed all the scum off the streets, as Brian De Palma and David Koepp originally intended, but an absolutely great story of a corrupt man who suddenly reaches his lifetime limit of shittiness all the same.  Nic Cage's is perfectly cast, and one is reminded with bittersweet tears that the pictures evidently just got too small for Gary Sinise.  A+

Jesus.

[CountDeMoney]

I bet Ide's got a brain tumor.  It would explain a lot of his ratings.

[Scipio]

So 'eff you fuckin' plebes. You probably hate Justified, too.

What a bizarre pairing.

Orthodoxy is for God, not for art.

[garbon]

I saw Divergent. I guess it was okay though probably less interesting than Hunger Games. Pretty slow build up with the male lead being unsympathetic for like the first half of the movie.

[Ideologue]

Zodiac (2007).  A really, really good episode of Law & Order at only three times the length.  Sure, my tumor wants to give it an A, but I think the "masterpiece" appellations that accrued to Fincher's work here are, if only by a little, still misplaced.

An extremely high B+

[CountDeMoney]

Lulz, the tumor wants its own web page.

[FunkMonk]

The Grand Budapest Hotel. The most Wes Anderson of Wes Anderson movies. It was real funny, too.

Grade: Type A Positive

[Savonarola]

Down to the Sea in Ships (1922)

Produced by the Whaling Film Corporation and shot in New Bedford this is the epic story of the sea, American enterprise and Quakers.  Captain William Morgan owns a line of Whaling vessels, but his son has drown and has only his daughter Patience and granddaughter Clara Bow (who was 16 when the film was made, but looks much younger, so young that Charlie Chaplin to hit on her); without a son or grandson Captain Morgan  cannot properly serve his country. 

Patience is stuck on the boy next door, a college grad who runs the mill; but as he is neither a Quaker nor a whaler Captain Morgan  refuses to allow them to wed.  Meanwhile cad Jake Finner makes plans to steal one of Captain Morgan's ships and take it to the gold fields; but without an accountant such a plan would be suicide.  So he has white looking Chinese accountant pretend to be a Quaker and a whaler in order to get an accounting job at the whaling firm.  The accountant leaps at the chance when he finds out that Captain Morgan has a daughter, in 1920s films no chinaman could resist a white woman.

The boy next door is shanghaied in order to get him out of the way.  Meanwhile Clara Bow stows away on the same ship.  Hilarity ensues as first mate Jake Finner kills the captain and directs the ship to the gold fields.  There are storms, whale hunts and thrilling chases.  Just as the Chinese accountant is about to marry the white girl in the Quaker Friendship Hall the boy bursts through the window and beats the crap out of him.  Take that Quakers!  Where is thy pacifist God now?

The film is high on verisimilitude in the whaling scenes; in fact the crew actually did hunt down and slaughter whales.  The acting is often overdone and hammy.  Clara Bow steals every scene she's in; even in this film you could tell she would become a star.

[Eddie Teach]

Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Wererabbit. Aside from being vegetarian agitprop, it was pretty amusing.