TV/Movies Megathread

[celedhring]

I only recognize The Stig.

[Eddie Teach]

I only recognize The Stig.

You've never seen Friends?

[celedhring]

I only recognize The Stig.

You've never seen Friends?

Probably 2-3 episodes in all my life. I know, it's weird.

I recognize him as the cocky guy from "Lost in Space", though.

[frunk]

Sabine Schmitz has been on Top Gear before, she schooled Clarkson at the Nürburgring.

[Josquius]

I eagerly await the "that's not Chris Evans !!!!" Cries of the ignorant youth and furriners.

I expected Sabine to be included (there goes the rumours of her being the stig?) Though surprised they have such a big team.
Trying to make it less of just an imitation of the old 3 guy formula?

[Eddie Teach]

So I gather the Stig is the one in the Daft Punk outfit.

[Neil]

Star Trek I-IV is great as a film series - even if the films may be uneven themselves (I do like Star Trek I a lot, though). But the entire narrative thread that ties them together is very well done, engrossing, and something really missing from the Trek films that followed.

I love The Motion Picture.  I wouldn't put it with II-IV though.  They're really different beasts (action-oriented, versus cerebral, 2001-esque quasi-nonsense)--indeed, one of the reasons I like TMP so much is that it's so unique, at least as far as the Trek films go.  It's the only one that has a serious name-brand director in Robert Wise, it's the only one that comes close to capturing Roddenberry's late-life idiosyncrasies, and while it is not the only one where they meet a space god, it's the only one that isn't on-its-face stupid about it.  It probably helps that I've read Alan Dean Foster's novelization, which takes into account a lot of Roddenberry's post-TOS weirdnesses: essentially, Starfleet is a band of societal outcasts and cultural throwbacks, deemed fit for space exploration because they're not the lazy, happy hippies that populate the rest of the Federation, and (naturally) there's some weird sex stuff.  Of course, this really only comes through in TMP's costume design (the unthreatening pastels and the tightness around the dick) and in the half-abortive creation of Ilia, the sexy Deltan super-slut who has to have a vow of chastity on record before she can come aboard a starship.  But it is there, and I dig it, and it makes me regret, a little, that Star Trek Phase II (upon which TMP was based) never came to fruition in its intended form, since it's just a wonderfully fascinating and bizarre vision of the future as seen from the past, after being filtered through the lens of a slightly insane person's eyes.

Then again, we do have seasons 1 and 2 of The Next Generation, which also embody that same kind of High Roddenberryism, and since it's not necessarily the prettiest sight, maybe it's for the best that Phase II never got off the ground.

While not directly a part of the II-IV trilogy, all the TOS Star Trek movies are unified by the theme of Kirk dealing with his aging and the fact that his legendary Starfleet career has forced him to make certain sacrifices.  How Kirk reacted to Decker tied directly into his midlife crisis in II and III, which resulted in him building a closer relationship with his subordinates in III, IV and V, and finally admitting that his time was passed in VI and Generations.

[viper37]

And, yeah, when I talk about the final season of DS9 being a mess, I'm almost entirely talking Dukat.

What did you not like?  He seems the classic case of someone going into deep depression.

(The Breen are messy, too, I guess--it is anybody's guess why they join the losing side of the war, other than the prospect of some Cardassian territories that they could have seized more easily through military force,

At this point, using military force meant fighting the Dominion.  The Dominion was far from the losing side, the problem was the wormhole cutting access to reinforcements from the gamma quadrant, but that could have been solved by finding a way to kill the Prophets, or simply rebuilding their forces in the Alpha Quadrant, which they were trying to do, but they just needed a little bit more time, something the Breen got them.  For the Breen, looking at the prospect right now, their technology combined with the Dominion resources allowed them to make territorial gains they could not have had otherwise, due to a lack of industrial power.

by joining the winners--but they're just too cool not to enjoy.  And I suppose it helps the drama when the Dominion gets some new allies, and isn't quite so obviously Germany in late '44 in terms of ability to win the war or even fight the Allies to a standstill.)

It's more Germany in 1917.  Without the US intervention, it is not unlikely the Germans could have fought to a favorable standstill or make some minor gains in France.

But the disconnect between the pagh-wraiths/Dukat/Emissary stuff and the Dominion War is crazy, especially given that the Prophets, the pagh-wraiths' mortal enemies, are also the only thing keeping the Dominion from swooping in with reinforcements that would dwarf the Alpha Quadrant powers and end the war in weeks.  It almost seems impossible that those two threads weren't tied together.  It's a real problem in the finale, which is thus obligated to climax twice, to provide an ending to two completely separate (and somewhat tonally dissonant) storylines.

There, I agree with you.  However, the plans of the Paghs-wraiths was:
Later that year, Sisko tried to stop the Pah-wraiths. However, they resurrected Dukat with near-omnipotent power. Dukat revealed the Pah-wraiths' plans to Sisko: to spread from Bajor in all directions, burning the universe in their wake
so, the Dominion would not be a problem.
of course, that isn't rational from Dukat, but by this point, he's totally disconnected from reality.

[celedhring]

While not directly a part of the II-IV trilogy, all the TOS Star Trek movies are unified by the theme of Kirk dealing with his aging and the fact that his legendary Starfleet career has forced him to make certain sacrifices.  How Kirk reacted to Decker tied directly into his midlife crisis in II and III, which resulted in him building a closer relationship with his subordinates in III, IV and V, and finally admitting that his time was passed in VI and Generations.

Yeah, that was kinda what I meant. A bunch of the themes that flourish in II-IV are planted in TMP. When Kirk is demoted to captain at the end of IV and it's actually a reward, it comes full circle.

[Neil]

Voyage Home's ending is a great triumphal end to the II-IV trilogy, no doubt about it.

And, yeah, when I talk about the final season of DS9 being a mess, I'm almost entirely talking Dukat.  (The Breen are messy, too, I guess--it is anybody's guess why they join the losing side of the war, other than the prospect of some Cardassian territories that they could have seized more easily through military force, by joining the winners--but they're just too cool not to enjoy.  And I suppose it helps the drama when the Dominion gets some new allies, and isn't quite so obviously Germany in late '44 in terms of ability to win the war or even fight the Allies to a standstill.)

But the disconnect between the pagh-wraiths/Dukat/Emissary stuff and the Dominion War is crazy, especially given that the Prophets, the pagh-wraiths' mortal enemies, are also the only thing keeping the Dominion from swooping in with reinforcements that would dwarf the Alpha Quadrant powers and end the war in weeks.  It almost seems impossible that those two threads weren't tied together.  It's a real problem in the finale, which is thus obligated to climax twice, to provide an ending to two completely separate (and somewhat tonally dissonant) storylines.

You know, for some reason I thought the Breen came in a bit earlier in the war, but then I actually looked and it was three quarters of the way through the last season.  I guess it was a way to create a little more tension in the war. 

Yeah, I think it would have been better if they'd ended the Dominion War 2 episodes before the finale, and then run the pah wraith bit afterwards.  It just seemed too overloaded, like in the Phantom Menace when you were switching from the droid battle to the lightsabre duel to Anakin in space to Padme fighting in the corridors.  And the dual climaxes in the same episode was a bit jarring.  Also, I'm not 100% sure that I really liked Dukat as the instrument of the pah wraiths.  The problem is that everyone was just so in love with his performance and the character, but his arc essentially ended in Waltz, where he's trapped on the planet with Sisko.  I think I would have liked it better for Dukat to die there, and Kai Winn to take his role with the wraiths.

[Josquius]

The Breen were brought in because they thought the war needed some extra drama and they already had these cool only used once, for about 5 minutes, Breen costumes lying about.

[celedhring]

Lord of War on the telly. Love that film, Goodfellas with gun runners and Cage hamming it up.

[dps]

It's more Germany in 1917.  Without the US intervention, it is not unlikely the Germans could have fought to a favorable standstill or make some minor gains in France.

Probably not, unless French morale completely collapsed.  As long as the war was still going on into the later part of 1918, Germany loses, because it couldn't feed itself, and the Allied blockade was literally starving the nation.

[viper37]

It's more Germany in 1917.  Without the US intervention, it is not unlikely the Germans could have fought to a favorable standstill or make some minor gains in France.

Probably not, unless French morale completely collapsed.  As long as the war was still going on into the later part of 1918, Germany loses, because it couldn't feed itself, and the Allied blockade was literally starving the nation.

Germany was moving troops from Russian front, French morale was better than mid-war, but seeing German reinforcements on the front might have led France and England to make some concessions to exit the war, or at the very least, offer favorable peace terms to Germany.

[garbon]

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/feb/11/meryl-streep-berlin-film-festival-diversity-were-all-africans-really

Meryl Streep has claimed that we are all Africans, when asked about the representation of minorities in the film industry.

The actor was speaking at a press conference to promote her position as the jury president of the Berlin film festival, where she sits alongside Clive Owen and German actor Lars Eidinger.

"I've played a lot of different people from a lot of different cultures," she said, when asked about diversity. "There is a core of humanity that travels right through every culture, and after all we're all from Africa originally. Berliners, we're all Africans really."