TV/Movies Megathread

[Josephus]

Anyone still watching The Americans?
It used to be great...but I just can't get into it now.

Yeah...too much focus on the daughter...she's not even that cute... less on actual spying. But we'll see where it goes.

[Savonarola]

La Belle et la Bête (1946)

In part a product of its time and place; the immediate post-war France.  The film was planned during the occupation, when apolitical films like fairy tales were much more likely to get through the censorship office and Aryan actors like Jean Marais and Josette Day were desired.  At the time of filming they could get sumptuous haute courture; but had difficulty getting sheets without patches.  Production had to be stopped when the drapes off of Belle's bed were stolen.  They couldn't find a deer carcass for sale, so they had to substitute a dog with antlers (like the Grinch did later.)   Jean Cocteau was never the critics favorite and he had recently been savaged by Jean Paul Sartre for being insufficiently political, so he had to include the handwritten defense of his film in the beginning.  (It didn't help, the film was still savaged by critics.)

In part its a result of Cocteau's quirky vision.  He wanted the special effects to be the same as those used by Georges Méliès half a century earlier.  He went way out of his way to make Jean Marais (his then lover) to look as gorgeous as possible on film, usually bathing him in a halo.  He demanded the cinematographer shoot the film in a documentary style, as though it were a documentary of an enchanted castle.

Somehow this all works together and made for a classic film.  The Criterion version has the Philip Glass opera as one of the soundtracks.  I had never seen that before.  It started out a little like Dark Side of the Rainbow; but once the film gets going it works, though I prefer the original soundtrack.

[Savonarola]

And another film for children of a certain age:

The Peanuts Movie (2015)

A nice little bit of nostalgia; they kept the phones with cords, beanbag chairs and typewriters in.  The story might be a little overly sweet (especially as compared to the 60s era golden age of the Peanuts) and padded out (half the movie seems to be Snoopy chasing The Red Baron.)  Still its worthwhile; not as good as "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown," but much better than "Flashbeagle."

[jimmy olsen]

Burn

http://heroichollywood.com/reactions-critics-screening-captain-america-civil-war/

Civil War and BvS tackle some of the same themes and have similar beats, yet Cap works because we know and care about these characters.

[Duque de Bragança]

Thanks, it was robably due to Louis de Funès more than a directorial choice then.  I could understand some of what the other actors were saying; but whenever he was around it was well beyond my ability.

Consider yourself happy of not having to watch it in German.  With German having way longer sentences than French, themselves longer than in English, German dubbing, already grating to the ears, is hysterical in this case, in a bad way for such a gifted comedian as de Funès.

It was strange to hear characters playing brother and sister vousvoyer one another; but (almost) exclusive use of the formal second person happened in 17th century English as well.  We just never got out of the habit.   

Formal second person between parents and children was in use till the 20th century (till the '60s) in bourgeois circles in France. 
In Portugal, with the infamous tratamento formal, it's even worse, courtesy forms were de rigueur from children to parents till my parents' generation.

[celedhring]

My dad still used second person plural to address his parents. My mother didn't, though (but she's 12 years younger than my dad).

[Admiral Yi]

How do you say cradle robber in Spanish?

[celedhring]

How do you say cradle robber in Spanish?

Asaltacunas.

Yeah, she was outside of the Dirty Old Man rule when they got married.

[Martinus]

Such age difference was quite common in Europe until the late 20th century. My parents have 10 years between them, but again no "craddle robber" rule broken, as father was 40 and mother 30 when they met.

[celedhring]

It's weird because my mom was pretty hot too. I remember spotting my friend's fathers ogling her when she would come to pick me at school, since she was the youngest parent there.

My dad, such a hero. 

[celedhring]

Can't claim that the results are too surprising.

Incidentally, Jason Statham has been in a bunch of good films, the fact that those accrue for only 18% of his filmography drives home how much crap he's done. At one point he seemed to be in like half a dozen crappy cheap action films every year.

[Eddie Teach]

Got one for the best films?

[celedhring]

Got one for the best films?

Yes.





I can't believe that DeNiro figure; he's been in tons of shit in the past 10 years.

[garbon]

Weird how on the actress ones they didn't always choose the photos for the 'top' 3.

[Eddie Teach]

John C Reilly at no three? Even after Stepbrothers?