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TV/Movies Megathread

Started by Eddie Teach, March 06, 2011, 09:29:27 AM

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The Larch

Quote from: Josephus on March 17, 2023, 08:59:14 AM
Quote from: The Larch on March 17, 2023, 06:11:22 AMIf anything a "diverse" Grease will bring out to light how terribly whitewashed the original movie was. As grumbler said, minorities were very relevant in the youth cultures portrayed on it.

I don't know. Would there have been many racially diverse people at Rydell High? My impression of 1950s USA was that it was very segragated, even in California--even not legally than de facto.

It's a movie, and a quite unrealistic one at it, so who cares how diverse a fictional high school is? It can be as diverse as the movie director wants it to be.

I mean, Rydell High does not exist in reality. The movie was shot around LA, so it has an LA backdrop, but the original musical was actually based around Chicago, so it had a completely different backdrop (in fact many characters in the musical had Eastern European surnames that were changed to anglo ones for the movie, for instance Sandy in the musical is called Dombrowski while in the movie she's called Olson).

Quote from: Sheilbh on March 17, 2023, 10:21:35 AMAs I say I think it's fine if it's light and operates on the level of fantasy - which Grease does. It's a 1970s fantasy of the 50s. And a 2020s fantasy of the 50s will certainly be diverse.

Oh, completely agree with that, the movie is a fantasy and a reimagination of a somehow idylic past, and for the movie part of that fantasy is the whiteness of the characters it features.

QuoteBut if you're setting something in most of 50s America that acknowledges race but is racially diverse, isn't the problem that in most settings (there will be exceptions) it's not true in a way that erases an evil? It's like a racially diverse film about the British empire where everyone just gets along.

I think if you want to keep it as in the original it'd be better to set it somewhere completely fictional and non-descript rather than give it a precise localization. But I don't know how such a decision would be accepted nowadays. I think it might be more artistically interesting for a new Grease film to actually be closer to the original musical (which was apparently much more vulgar and risque than the film, but got toned down significantly over time in order to better fit the popularity and success of the film).

Savonarola

Quote from: The Larch on March 13, 2023, 06:16:47 AMI suppose that the biggest upset was Michelle Yeoh taking the Best Actress award from Cate Blanchett.

Even though I'm a fan of her work; I was surprised that Yeoh won an Oscar.  While I'm sure she can take a lot more kicks to the face than Meryl Streep, stars of Wuxia films tend not to do well during award season.   :(

 ;)
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

Savonarola

I think they're going to have to make bigger changes to Grease than just having a diverse cast.  The line in "Summer Nights" - "Did she put up a fight?" is going to have to go (or it's singer is going to have to be shamed.)  Sandy won't completely change herself (shallow and superficial as those changes may have been) in order to get Danny.  No one will smoke.

I'm not that big a fan of Grease, so I probably won't see this anyway, but I don't think it will work.  When Grease was released there was a 50's revival; there's nothing like that today (and anyone who went to High School in the 1950s would be over 80 today).  Furthermore I doubt anyone can match the chemistry between Olivia Newton John and her leather pants John Travolta.
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

The Larch

 :(

QuoteSam Neill: Jurassic Park actor reveals he is being treated for stage-three blood cancer
Exclusive: Neill underwent chemotherapy after being diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma

celedhring

And to add to the bad news, Lance Reddick has died.  :(

Loved him as an actor since The Wire. Always a welcome presence in anything he was in.

Josquius

Everything everywhere all at once - been meaning to see it for a while and finally got round to it. Really really good.
Been a while since I've seen a film with good fight scenes. Leaning into the cartooniness and merging it with down to earth Jackie chan style fighting works well.
Very rick and morty. Not just the multiverse thing. It's entire comedic slant.
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viper37

Quote from: Savonarola on March 17, 2023, 01:10:24 PMI think they're going to have to make bigger changes to Grease than just having a diverse cast. 
I could see it set in the modern day.
A diverse cast. The love story between a gay Arabic, preferably Muslim boy, from a very liberal family, albeit somewhat religious, and and non binary Hispanic person from a very conservative family that does not accept their lifestyle and their use of pronouns.  They find comfort - and love- through music and dance.

Would work. Guaranteed Oscar.
I don't do meditation.  I drink alcohol to relax, like normal people.

If Microsoft Excel decided to stop working overnight, the world would practically end.

viper37

Quote from: celedhring on March 17, 2023, 03:29:25 PMAnd to add to the bad news, Lance Reddick has died.  :(

Loved him as an actor since The Wire. Always a welcome presence in anything he was in.
It was Fringe for me.  And Horizon Zero Dawn.
RIP.
I don't do meditation.  I drink alcohol to relax, like normal people.

If Microsoft Excel decided to stop working overnight, the world would practically end.

grumbler

Quote from: celedhring on March 17, 2023, 03:29:25 PMAnd to add to the bad news, Lance Reddick has died.  :(

Loved him as an actor since The Wire. Always a welcome presence in anything he was in.

Agree, and "presence" is an excellent word to describe his appearance.  The man had presence in spades.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!

viper37

Sam Neill has stage 3 blood cancer

In the mood for more bad news? :(

QuoteSam Neill: Jurassic Park actor reveals he is being treated for stage-three blood cancer

The actor Sam Neill has revealed that he is being treated for stage-three blood cancer in a candid memoir to be released on Tuesday.
In an interview with the Guardian about his book, Did I Ever Tell You This?, the 75-year-old Jurassic Park star discusses his career in film and television, the nature of celebrity, life on his New Zealand farm, and mortality, having opened his book with a shock.

"The thing is, I'm crook. Possibly dying," he writes in chapter one, "I may have to speed this up."

Neill started writing vignettes from his life as a way to keep busy – and as a salve – while undergoing treatment last year.

"I found myself with nothing to do," Neill said in the interview. "And I'm used to working. I love working. I love going to work. I love being with people every day and enjoying human company and friendship and all these things. And suddenly I was deprived of that. And I thought, 'what am I going to do?'

"I never had any intention to write a book. But as I went on and kept writing, I realised it was actually sort of giving me a reason to live and I would go to bed thinking, 'I'll write about that tomorrow ... that will entertain me.' And so it was a lifesaver really, because I couldn't have gone through that with nothing to do, you know."

In Did I Ever Tell You This? – with its cover line endorsements from the likes of Meryl Streep, Laura Dern and Stephen Fry – Neill reveals himself to be an enormously good raconteur with a collection of stories that take the reader from his first seven years in Ireland to growing up in New Zealand and the eccentricities of his family life, through funny coming of age stories and amusing anecdotes from film sets over the years (co-stars behaving badly, take note).

He said his book is not a cancer memoir, that rather his illness forms a "spiral thread" throughout the narrative.

Neill first experienced swollen glands during publicity for Jurassic World Dominion in March last year and was soon diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma. He received chemotherapy, but when that started to fail, he embarked on a new chemotherapy drug which he will continue to receive monthly for the rest of his life, although he is now cancer-free.

"I can't pretend that the last year hasn't had its dark moments," he said. "But those dark moments throw the light into sharp relief, you know, and have made me grateful for every day and immensely grateful for all my friends. Just pleased to be alive."

Neill, whose acting career began in the 1970s and is comprised of over 150 roles from My Brilliant Career to The Piano to Jurassic Park to Peaky Blinders, is currently in preparation to start filming on the television adaptation of Liane Moriarty's bestselling novel Apples Never Fall, being filmed in Australia and co-starring Annette Bening.
I don't do meditation.  I drink alcohol to relax, like normal people.

If Microsoft Excel decided to stop working overnight, the world would practically end.

Sheilbh

Yeah RIP :(

Loved him in The Wire.
Let's bomb Russia!

Syt

Good start to S3 of Ted Lasso. :)

It's planned to be the final season, and in interviews they said to think of S2 of "The Empire Strikes Back" in the story arcs ... so I guess it's fitting that Rupert's office at West Ham looks like a hybrid of the Emperor's throne room and the chancellor's art deco-ish office. :lol:








(Surprised West Ham agreed to play the "villains" - unless they've been promised a redemption arc. With Rupert cast as Emperor, I suppose that makes Nate Vader who will be redeemed by the end. :P )
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

Proud owner of 42 Zoupa Points.

The Brain

Freud, S1. Young Dr Freud encounters weirdness and learns about the human mind. I liked it. NB I do like late 19th century Austria-Hungary as a setting. The chick was also in Tokyo Vice.
Women want me. Men want to be with me.

Sheilbh

Quote from: The Brain on March 20, 2023, 03:02:41 PMFreud, S1. Young Dr Freud encounters weirdness and learns about the human mind. I liked it. NB I do like late 19th century Austria-Hungary as a setting. The chick was also in Tokyo Vice.
On Austria-Hungary as a setting - I really recommend the Vienna Blood adaptations if you get a chance to see them.

Also quite like the books.
Let's bomb Russia!

Syt

Quote from: The Brain on March 20, 2023, 03:02:41 PMFreud, S1. Young Dr Freud encounters weirdness and learns about the human mind. I liked it. NB I do like late 19th century Austria-Hungary as a setting. The chick was also in Tokyo Vice.

Fun fact: the series was shot entirely in Prague. :)
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

Proud owner of 42 Zoupa Points.