TV/Movies Megathread

[CountDeMoney]

Don't encourage him, Ide.

[Admiral Yi]

I don't get the Mars Attack! hate.  It was a decent movie.  Some good gags.

[Ideologue]

Eh, I liked the part about killing Congress.

*drone strike*

[Ideologue]

Nothing out anyone gives a shit about this weekend, so it's old stuff.  I meant to get around to 2014's Blue Ruin--as well as 55's This Island Earth and Tarantula--but ran out of time.

Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954).   Errand boys for museum directors sent to collect a fossil go upriver in search of the discovery of the century, and they find it.  Then it tries to molest the errand girl that's also come along, because--well, because it is, after all, Universal Horror, so he's got to, whether this makes sense or not.  But you don't need me to tell you that everything else Creature offers ranges from the good to the legitimately great.

Cardboard Science: The horror... the Universal Horror...  A

Revenge of the Creature (1955).   What if... King Kong were six foot even, and he had to return to the water every three minutes to breathe? Why, it would be just terrible.

Cardboard Science: A film by Gabriela Cowperthwaite  C

No Name on the Bullet (1959).  We've seen his great science fiction; we've seen his great satirical thriller; now comes, at the end of the decade of his most abundant success, Jack Arnold's great philosophical Western.

Like some kind of pale rider, I guess  A+

[Eddie Teach]

Saw the pilot of Utopia, or as it should be called, Real World: Middle of Nowhere. I might watch the next episode too. 

[frunk]

I don't get the Mars Attack! hate.  It was a decent movie.  Some good gags.

It was a one joke skit stretched to feature length.  I was entertained for the first couple times someone got ganked thinking the aliens were peaceful, after that it got boring.

[CountDeMoney]

Rod Steiger, not exactly an actor known for comedy, was wonderful in it.

And it was the only Tim Burton production that wasn't "look how clever I am", over-the-top in costume and set design; it was as pulpy as it was supposed to be.

[celedhring]

Mars Attacks has some very fun gags and inventiveness, but it overstays its welcome, in my opinion. At the end it feels more like some vignettes stitched together in order to reach feature length, some of which are not really that fun or interesting. Dark Shadows reminded me a lot of it in that regard, it's pretty messy.

It's the kind of film I start watching every time it's on the telly, but end up switching off after a while.

[The Minsky Moment]

Can any of you Western buffs give me a quick idea of Audie Murphy's reputation as an actor?  My understanding is that he was consider just basically okay, e.g. in The Red Badge of Courage, as well as in his Westerns.  I've never seen To Hell and Back, which I gather his performance as himself is pretty well-regarded--indeed, other than Red Badge (and then like twenty-four years ago) I don't think I've seen but the one Murphy picture, No Name on the Bullet.

If he's actually considered on par with Wayne, Stewart, or Eastwood, I see no talk of it on the Internet.  (And since 90% of hits are about how awesome he was at sending Germans to their maker, it's harder to just research than you'd think.)

I think your take here is accurate, both generally and in the particulars.

[celedhring]

I think he's pretty damn good in Red Badge of Courage, but that's about the only film I have seen with him in a prominent role. His career seemed confined to B-level Westerns.

[The Brain]

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[Ideologue]

Can any of you Western buffs give me a quick idea of Audie Murphy's reputation as an actor?  My understanding is that he was consider just basically okay, e.g. in The Red Badge of Courage, as well as in his Westerns.  I've never seen To Hell and Back, which I gather his performance as himself is pretty well-regarded--indeed, other than Red Badge (and then like twenty-four years ago) I don't think I've seen but the one Murphy picture, No Name on the Bullet.

If he's actually considered on par with Wayne, Stewart, or Eastwood, I see no talk of it on the Internet.  (And since 90% of hits are about how awesome he was at sending Germans to their maker, it's harder to just research than you'd think.)

I think your take here is accurate, both generally and in the particulars.

That's good, it's what I went with.   Fucker is long-fuze dynamite in No Name, though.  What a great little B-movie.

[viper37]

Defiance
I wanted this to be good.  Last year, the show picked up the pace in the last 4 episodes.  This year, I'm still seeing an horribly slow paced show.  Disapointing.


Dominion
1 episode in, so far I like.  Killer angels and humans being, well, humans.  It has good potential imho, but it may go downhill from there, Idk.

Black Sails
Three episodes in.  I kinda like it so far, but it's not as great as Spartacus was.
Executive produced by Michael Bay, but not much explosions so far.  It either means it's a more mature Michael Bay, or he's effectively just a consultant on the show
The characters are well defined and not too caricatural.  Historical characters seem close to what we know of them.  Good enough for me.

[Josephus]

The Killing final season.

Thought it was the weakest of the bunch..but tied things nicely for Molder and Scully...or um, whatever their names were.

AMC's Hell on Wheels on the other hand, I like a lot. The last episode was really good too, though I'm bit bored of the Mormon Bishop storyline

I'm enjoying The Knick, probably the best thing on right now

[Ideologue]

So, like, was this comment from one of you guys?

I don't think Gabriela Cowperthwaite (Blackfish) had anything to do with this review [of Revenge of the Creature]. Why is her name in the title of your blog post?

Because I can't tell if it's someone being silly, and hence likelier you, or some poor autist who googled "films by gabriela cowperthwaite" or something similar and when he found what he did his Drax brain kicked in.