TV/Movies Megathread

[Eddie Teach]

A thoroughly despicable character

Spoken like somebody who doesn't like The Godfather. 

Walt is pretty sympathetic at first, but he does test the depths pretty extensively. I don't think he's ever completely rotten though.

[Admiral Yi]

Chunk of The Deerhunter.  Rare example of the affections and poses of the 70s which Ide Log has rightfully decried coming together and meshing.  A two hour intro on Russian American dudes hanging out in Rustbeltistan just to establish context for the shared Vietnam experience.

[Tonitrus]

A thoroughly despicable character

Spoken like somebody who doesn't like The Godfather. 

Walt is pretty sympathetic at first, but he does test the depths pretty extensively. I don't think he's ever completely rotten though.

It is an interesting case study...and makes me think about the philosophical question from "Trading Places".  If Walter had stayed with Grey Matter, and been a multimillionaire, he might have been somewhat of a megalomaniacal boss...but he would probably would not have become the semi-psychopath that he did.

Of course it's dramatic fiction, so such ponderings are mostly hooey. 

[Tonitrus]

"The Apartment"

Young Shirley MacClaine is terribly cute. 

[11B4V]

How's Black Sails?

[celedhring]

Finished watching The Fall's second season. Loved it, even if it isn't as strong as the first season. However I'm a bit puzzled that they are making a third. There doesn't seem to be much more to tell.

[11B4V]

Finished watching The Fall's second season. Loved it, even if it isn't as strong as the first season. However I'm a bit puzzled that they are making a third. There doesn't seem to be much more to tell.

A very good series and Anderson is still smoking hot. A show with its content is not hard to come up with good storylines.

[Admiral Yi]

How's Black Sails?

From the few bits and pieces I've caught while surfing it looks like a supermarket boddice ripper on the screen.

[Ideologue]

"Ninotchka"

Greta Garbo does a grand job playing Ide's dream woman...the perfect communist fembot. 

I reviewed that a while back, and more recently made my commie girlfriend watch it.  She enjoyed it also.  9/10.

"The Apartment"

Hey, Toni's on a Billy Wilder week (though he only helped write Ninotchka.

I really liked was Breaking Bad cinematography, too. The desert shots were often breathtaking.

I could've done with less of the "attaching cameras to shit" conceit, but overall, it was a well-shot TV program, as far as these things go.  (Indeed, the desert is famously easy not to fuck up.)

I'll tell you a show that had some absolutely amazing cinematography, though: The X-Files.  I'm watching the show in order starting with the first season (i.e., it's something that my Indiana Jones-hating, Star Wars-deriding girlfriend and I could agree to watch together).  It's straight-up gorgeous, using basically every play from the Dean Cundey playbook to create an atmosphere of horror-noir; it's kind of shocking to find that the X-Files' DP John Bartley never went to have an A-list film career, because he's really that good.

Oh, and incidentally, the first episode of the new season is hilarious, and I'm not clear whether they were going for self-parody, or not, but it was a lot fun.  (And then the second pulls an old X-Files trick and just remakes/remixes a 1980s sci-fi film in an hour-long format.  Good times.)

[garbon]

A thoroughly despicable character

Spoken like somebody who doesn't like The Godfather. 

Walt is pretty sympathetic at first, but he does test the depths pretty extensively. I don't think he's ever completely rotten though.

I like The Godfather but could never get into Breaking Bad. I didn't find Walt sympathetic at all.

[11B4V]

I could take or leave the xfiles. The new ones were....meh.

[The Brain]

A thoroughly despicable character

Spoken like somebody who doesn't like The Godfather. 

Walt is pretty sympathetic at first, but he does test the depths pretty extensively. I don't think he's ever completely rotten though.

I like The Godfather but could never get into Breaking Bad. I didn't find Walt sympathetic at all.

Did you like Downfall?

[Ideologue]

Chunk of The Deerhunter.  Rare example of the affections and poses of the 70s which Ide Log has rightfully decried coming together and meshing.  A two hour intro on Russian American dudes hanging out in Rustbeltistan just to establish context for the shared Vietnam experience.

It's not that the 70s are that bad, it's just that the things people celebrate about it are such overrated sacred cows, like the bullshit naturalism and the "smart movies for adults" dodge that functions primarily as an excuse for movies to be nothing but endlessly interiored character studies about boring and/or stupid people, e.g. The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde, and even to an extent Cool Hand Luke, which I like, but can basically be boiled down to "blah blah blah authority bad."  Quotable though.

(Sure, I know those are all from 1967, New Hollywood's Year Zero.  I assume when people are talking movies and say "the 70s" they mean 1967-1977, which is to say "between Bonnie and Clyde and Star Wars.")

The New Hollywood Era has a lot of great stuff, too: the Irwin Allen spectacles, De Palma finding his footing, Cronenberg bringing the sexual body horror for the first time, Lumet keeping on keeping on (Dog Day is my go-to example of New Hollywood tropes done right), Frankenheimer starting recovering from his alcoholism, and Spielberg knocking out some masterful thrillers to begin his career.  (Internationally, it was when Hong Kong cinema came into its own, too.)  It's not a bad decade at all, people just have a tendency to blithely accept a consensus established by folks who are mostly dead, rather than engage afresh with what the era has to offer beyond a clutch of prestigious generational dramas which found themselves lionized almost solely because they broke some Old Hollywood rules.

[11B4V]

A thoroughly despicable character

Spoken like somebody who doesn't like The Godfather. 

Walt is pretty sympathetic at first, but he does test the depths pretty extensively. I don't think he's ever completely rotten though.

I like The Godfather but could never get into Breaking Bad. I didn't find Walt sympathetic at all.

It's a pretty deep show so some won't get it.

I never really felt sorry for him. Walt deserved what he got. Jesse was a different story and I found the character incredibly interesting. The dynamic between Jesse and Walt was superb. Especially the culmination of the final episode. It does develops Walt's transformation very well from doing it for his family to manipulating self serving  ego maniac and finally in the end  helping the only family he had left, Jesse.

[Ideologue]

What I liked the most about the last episode was that [spoiler]Walt finally took Jesse's advice and built a robot[/spoiler].