TV/Movies Megathread

[celedhring]

It's really stretching the definition Celery Ring, but have you seen Black Robe?  Can't remember the French title.

Yeah, I did. It actually made quite an impression to me at the time. Haven't seen it in ages though.

[lustindarkness]

Now that life is back to normal and I had time to watch a movie, we watched Guardians of the Galaxy, good fun (and funny) movie. Very well done.

[Maladict]

Winter Sleep looks promising, anyone seen it?

[viper37]

but have you seen Black Robe?  Can't remember the French title.

Robe Noire

It's set during the Beaver Wars, though, not the 7 Years war or the American Revolution.

[Sheilbh]

The Great Beauty/La grande bellezza was far-and-away the best/my favorite from last season.   German commercial film-crewman  told me I really need to see Il divo now for contrast in directing and acting.

My favourite current director/actor team.

Il Divo's magnificent. The central performance is incredible.

I also recommend The Consequences of Love which is lower key but similarly striking.

[viper37]

It's really stretching the definition Celery Ring, but have you seen Black Robe?  Can't remember the French title.

Yeah, I did. It actually made quite an impression to me at the time. Haven't seen it in ages though.

Forgot one.

The Sovereign Servant, it's about the Great Norther War.  Available in Russian, English and French, IIRC.  Region 2 (Europe) only Blu-ray, as I have learned the hard way...

[Liep]

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Another very good/fun Wes Anderson movie. It's also the best Willem Dafoe performance I've seen bar Platoon and maybe that one scene in Boondock Saints.

[garbon]

Madame Secretary

This looks like it could be a fun show but I'm not sure how I feel about the whole conspiracy plot that will certainly play as a backdrop to the entire season.

[Razgovory]

The Black Pirate (1926).  Douglas Fairbanks is on a ship that is attacked by pirates, and he and his father are briefly marooned on an uncharted isle.  His father dies; he swears revenge.  The selfsame pirates arrive on the island to bury their treasure, and Fairbanks (un)cannily infiltrates their crew, by killing their leader in single combat and being so awesome at piracy that they elect him their new leader within 24 hours.  You suspect this might be a pretty awesome, even cerebral thriller, where Fairbanks uses his brains as well as his brawn to guide his enemies into death, while he is tempted by the dark joys of the pirate life.  Instead, it's a pretty schematic romantic adventure, where he has to struggle against the dead leader's second-in-command as well as prove to a captured Princess that he is, in fact, Douglas Fairbanks, and therefore hot, and all of this involves a great deal of underexplained motivations for the secondary characters who serves as Fairbanks' sidekicks.

Even adjusting--I think--for a faded print, The Black Pirate is a real miscalculation as an early attempt at color spectacle, with a palette derived principally from a main character who wears black, sets that are uniformly brown, and a cast that ranges from lily white to pallid.  As for the film itself, Douglas Fairbanks climbing on shit is enough for any given scene, but unfortunately he does is often just standing around.  The best action scenes in The Black Pirate are in the first twenty minutes, and feature the most climbing on shit Fairbanks does in the film; the climactic action sequence is mishandled by killing the already-lackluster villain too early, and seems entirely arbitrary due to the appearance of an army of shirtless, swimming men who have no obvious provenance.  The film has a decidedly uneven tone, swinging (sometimes literally, but not often enough) between pretty great swashbuckling adventure and disturbing sequences of cruelly realistic pirate behavior.  The main driver of the plot is not Douglas Fairbanks' revenge so much as it is the omnipresent threat of rape for the leading lady.

I did enjoy the final twist, but just a little bit too little, definitely too late.  Edit: I also thought that one tracking shot was absolutely beautiful.  Not by any means terrible, and in some parts kind of great, but nothing to strongly recommend.

Very low B

Masculinity was different then.

[Savonarola]

Masculinity was different then.

Douglas Fairbanks Sr.'s wife:



Things were different in the 20s.

[Ideologue]

Masculinity was different then.

Clearly, you have never seen this man climb on shit.  I can pretty much guarantee you that Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., would be rolling in pussy in any era.

[Ideologue]

And Mary Pickford was pretty hot.  She was no Anna Mae Wong or Louise Brooks or latterly a Paulette Goddard or Miriam Hopkins, but she's hot.

[CountDeMoney]

Agreed.  I would've flappered and jazzed the shit out of that.

[Razgovory]

Agreed.  I would've flappered and jazzed the shit out of that.

Which one, Pickford or Fairbanks?

[Ideologue]

It also pays to remember that 5 foot 9 hadn't yet been deemed unfuckable in 1926.