TV/Movies Megathread

[Eddie Teach]

I don't know, sometimes 'Life' can be more fun than a pile of superhero comics.

In brief bursts, perhaps, better captured by movies that are about a specific event or series of events. A bank robbery, the end of a relationship, a wild party and the day after, etc. Just saying a movie is about "Life" is often an excuse for lack of a narrative. Stringing together a bunch of potentially interesting anecdotes doesn't necessarily make for an interesting movie, see most biopics for examples.

[Capetan Mihali]

I don't get it.

I'm getting in on the high-handed movie talk by using an aggressively hyperbolic tone to tout my preferred directors and heap disdain on others' opinions.

[Capetan Mihali]

I don't know, sometimes 'Life' can be more fun than a pile of superhero comics.

In brief bursts, perhaps, better captured by movies that are about a specific event or series of events. A bank robbery, the end of a relationship, a wild party and the day after, etc. Just saying a movie is about "Life" is often an excuse for lack of a narrative. Stringing together a bunch of potentially interesting anecdotes doesn't necessarily make for an interesting movie, see most biopics for examples.

The whole point of my little rhetorical flourish was that Ray and Sirk precisely avoided trying to represent life straight-on, and only did so in a skewed way, what is captured in disproportionately huge shadows or reflections in mirrors.  Sirk also had a great quote in an interview (from after his "discovery" in the 70s) that he would have made "Imitation Of Life" for the title alone.

[mongers]

I know this will sound incredibly naive of me, but I don't ever really consider the context that a film is made in.

Take for example Ken Russell's 'The Devils' a great film, which you can approach from all sorts of angles and intellectualize to whatever degree satisfies you, but I just came across this tv interview with Oliver Reed made in 1973 within a year or so of it's making and he very explicitly talks about the reason why they made it, worth viewing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFVqMP4Babk

[Ideologue]

Sirk and Ray are on my list.  I like melodramas, so Sirk should be interesting.  I don't care overmuch about teensploitation, so while I want to see Rebel Without a Cause, it's mainly for background purposes viz. The Blob and Jack Arnold's High School Confidential!, because all Jack Arnold touches is gold--except for the bad movies where he got surly and made it plain he didn't give a shit, which scuttlebutt suggests is in fact the case for HSC!  However, I do like Ol' Fishface, so Bigger Than Life is totally in.

I'm also planning on checking out some Sam Fuller real soon.

Not really related to the 1950s, but would be considered New Hollywood: I'm dying to see The Swimmer with Burt Lancaster.  It could be awful--it's a largely allegorical art film made in 1968, about an aging symbol of a man going from swimming pool to swimming pool in a bourgeois suburb, and the prospect is an almost-guaranteed disaster--but somehow I get the strangest intuition that it's something truly special.

[Ed Anger]

Our regional channel has shown the John Adams mini and I liked quite a bit. Are there other Revolutionary War/Early Republic films or series that you would recommend me? It has whetted my appetite for the time period.

1776. Trigger warning: musical

[Ideologue]

What about Seven Years War movies?  Last of the Mohicans, Barry Lyndon, and... um...  Last of the Mohicans, Barry Lyndon.  Hey, cinematically, the Seven Years War is batting 1.000.

(There's probably a lot of biopics about George Washington that I'm not aware of.)

[Ed Anger]

There was a fair TV movie where Jeff Daniels as Warshinton brains the hessians in their sleep.

[Ideologue]

Oh, and Sleepy Hollow.  That's a Revolutionary War movie.  Sort of.

[CountDeMoney]

I like the Money Pit.

Man, I loved the Money Pit as a kid.  I remember it perfectly mapping onto the experience of my family's big move to the suburbs at the time, from an apartment to a house, and the immediate homeownership disasters that followed...

I wanted to bang Shelley Long back in the day.  Nice legs.

[Ideologue]

Hell, nice everything.  C'mon.

[Josephus]

For some reason when you said Shelly Long, Shelly Duval came to mind, and I'm, like, Whaaaat?

[CountDeMoney]

For some reason when you said Shelly Long, Shelly Duval came to mind, and I'm, like, Whaaaat?

No, she's found in the Greater Margot Kidder Co-Prosperity Sphere.  Either Ide or Fhdz, cant remember which.  Or both.

[Ideologue]

I said she had a nice body and isn't hideous.  Nice lower-mid-range woman, unthreatening, but with a small ass.  Would bang.

[CountDeMoney]

There was a fair TV movie where Jeff Daniels as Warshinton brains the hessians in their sleep.

The Crossing.  And it was better than fair, mainly because Daniels' portrayal of Washington was a brilliant turn, one against conventional wisdom: a Washington, on the eve of Trenton, that had a fuck-it-roll-the-dice-all-in-bitches fatalism about him.  A really sharp flick.

And Alexander Hamilton cutlasses a Hessian.  Suck on that, Jefferson.