TV/Movies Megathread

[Ideologue]

Umberto Umberto.

[Viking]

Umberto Umberto.

Is he running for office in Afghanistan? Or merely chasing little girls?

[Eddie Teach]

I did not foresee Hannibal going in this direction. Jesus.

[Ideologue]

Good or bad?  I haven't seen it yet.

[Eddie Teach]

Mostly good.

[The Brain]

I was half-dead from my first real hookah session.  Who knows.

Wrong thread.

[Ideologue]

Started my Masaki Kobayashi and Gamera series.  Spider-Man should start sometime this weekend.  I thought Amazing Spider-Man was coming out this Wednesday for some reason.

My Son's Youth

Boys will be boys, and dads will be dads, even in post-war Japan.

B

Sincere Heart

If you're ever in the mood for a predictable but heartfelt (and superbly class conscious) Japanese melodrama about doomed love and the destructive absurdity of emotional repression, this is the weepiest thing you're likely to find that isn't actually about children starving to death in World War II.

A

Foreword for the Gamera series

Hardly essential reading, but I just felt like writing some personal reflections on what Gamera meant to me as a kid.

Gamera: The Giant Monster

A giant monster destroys Tokyo!  Stop me if you've heard this one.  But instead of standing for Japan's victimhood in the Pacific War, Gamera accidentally acknowledges responsibility for starting the war in the first place.  Well, maybe.  Anyway, just look at all the stuff they blow up!

A

[Syt]

Season 3 of TNG nearing its end. Currently watching "The Most Toys." It's a low key episode, but Saul Rubinek as Kivas Fajo just steals the show, drifting between childlike whimsy and cold psychopath.

[Ideologue]

Season 3 of TNG nearing its end.

Austrian TV is very out of date.

(That's a really great episode btw.)

[Josephus]

Rubinek was great in that episode. One of the better of the early episodes. Didn't he have a similar type role in one of the Stargate episodes?

[Norgy]

The production cost of Game of Thrones must be enormous. I read some of it is filmed in Croatia. Makes me want to go back there.

[celedhring]

Finished watched Rome. It's pretty great, and it sucks how between the 9th and 10th episode it feels like there's a whole season worth of stuff missing.

[Viking]

Finished watched Rome. It's pretty great, and it sucks how between the 9th and 10th episode it feels like there's a whole season worth of stuff missing.

It sucks how after episode 10 of season 2 it feels like there are 15 seasons of stuff missing.

[celedhring]

Hardly. I mean, I'd love to see more of Vorenus and Pullo, but since the remainder of Octavian's reign was fairly uninteresting politically-wise, there wouldn't be much devious Roman intrigue to interweave with their story. It would feel a bit anticlimactic after the events surrounding the two triumvirates.

But solving the entirety of Antony's war with Octavian in two episodes was a bit frustrating. Episode #9 finishes with Antony and Octavian going to war and #10 begins with Antony already fleeing from Actium. It's like they genuinely lost an episode in the middle. The aftermath of Antony's defeat is handled brilliantly, mind, the way they manage to give gravitas and dignity to Purefoy's libidinous Antony in his death, and those last moments of camaraderie with Vorenus, are amazing.

Given how brilliant it still is, I wish they had been given the proper amount of time to develop all those stories.

[Savonarola]

The Gold Rush (1925)

There's only a couple differences in plot between the original and the 1942 re-release.  In the scene where the tramp goes back to the wilderness, Georgia had sent a note to Jack (the tramp's rival) confessing her lover for Jack, not the tramp.  This leaves the film with a major plot hole (it wouldn't be a Chaplin feature without one); what happened to Jack?  Also the final scene of the original Charlie and George kiss for a very long time; while in the re-release they just walk up the stairs hand in hand.

The 1942 benefits from the Chaplin score, but I find Chaplin's narration distracting.  I prefer the original.

This time around I thought it was interesting that Charles Chaplin, like the tramp in this story, was a rags to riches success.  The scene in the end where the tramp picks up big Jim's discarded cigar and starts smoking it was somewhat similar to the real Chaplin.  Chaplin kept a number of his frugal habits from his poor years after becoming a successful actor; going so far as living in flea bag hotels when he was a multi-millionaire.