TV/Movies Megathread

[Savonarola]

Is that the Derek Jarman one?

If it's what I think it is, then I don't think it was necessarily all going to be British or connected to Britain. This was back when Channel 4 were commissioning radical content. So for that one they got Terry Eagleton (the Marxist literary theorist) and Derek Jarman (radical queer film-maker) to do Wittgenstein - I think the producer for the series was Tariq Ali, activist and very prominent in the New Left (and writing for New Left Review).

I just checked and it looks like they actually got to commissioning 4 scripts. There was Socrates by Howard Brenton, Locke by David Edgar (both prominent playwrights at the time) and then Ali wrote a script for Spinoza. But it looks like the only ones that got filmed were Wittgenstein and Spinoza - probably not the easiest two to convince commissioners to do the other 10

I'm a huge Derek Jarman fan and I think this was his last "proper" narrative film. By this point he was going blind because of AIDS. He was only able to see in shades of blue. So he was at this point writing Chroma (his book on colour) and making his last film, Blue, which is a narration of his essay on blue over a blue screen. It's great

Yes, that's the one.  Spinoza and Wittgenstein, oh my, in the United States we thought Alistair Cooke was high-brow television.

[Sheilbh]

Yes, that's the one.  Spinoza and Wittgenstein, oh my, in the United States we thought Alistair Cooke was high-brow television.

It is never not baffling to me that one of Thatcher's enduring cultural legacies was setting up a state owned, but advertising funded TV network with an explicit mission to commission radical content, content that was particularly relevant for minorities, youth and other under-represented groups. You would have things (unheard of in 80s or 90s Britain) like a black produced, directed and hosted news show explicitly aimed at black British audiences. Or, as you say, getting a bunch of Marxist radicals and a queer film-maker to do a film on a challenging philosopher

The only rule was they were banned from making anything themselves or building up an IP library like the BBC or ITV - so the theory was they'd spark a huge free market revolution in TV and film studios. And it worked. So she got what she wanted, but what a very unexpected way of going about it.

[Duque de Bragança]

Is that the Derek Jarman one?

Of Sebastiane fame, the first movie shot in Vulgar Latin!  With required English subtitles.
And yes, it is a queer/homosexual retelling of Saint Sebastian's story.   

[viper37]

More B5 news

I figured that timing was curious with Warner's renewed interest in all things B5.

[Syt]

Well, I guess this is an endorsement, then?

[Duque de Bragança]

Another take. 

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jul/22/barbie-oppenheimer-double-feature?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook&fbclid=IwAR2d38559ABTD1Gvp3XnY0lC_akW-O8dKd3Fp6_K4wqBRXnCaPrBRTk1tiU

I survived the Barbie-Oppenheimer double-bill and I don't recommend it

Stuart Heritage

The internet has become transfixed with the idea of watching Greta Gerwig's bubblegum comedy next to Christopher Nolan's dark drama but it proved to be a nightmarish combo
'Unadulterated joy': Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie brings out the crowds
Sat 22 Jul 2023 10.30 BST

Few things have caught the public imagination in recent years quite like the concept of Barbenheimer. When Warner Bros scheduled the release of Barbie to run in direct opposition to that of Oppenheimer, directed by embittered former employee Christopher Nolan, the natural response was to pick a side. Both films were so diametrically opposed, after all, that the competition took on a slightly tribal air. Just who do you stand for? Drama or comedy? Joy or fear? Female empowerment or the death of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians?

Margot Robbie in Barbie and Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer
Before Barbenheimer: when major movies are released on the same day
Read more
But then something bizarre happened. Instead of picking just one film, people started latching onto the idea of seeing Barbie and Oppenheimer together, on the same day, as part of a wildly incongruous double bill. Tom Cruise said he was going to do it. Greta Gerwig posed with tickets to both. Despite spending the last few weeks looking palpably baffled by having to play 400 tinpot YouTube parlour games just to promote his movie, Christopher Nolan also seemed fairly into the idea as well. A rising tide lifts all boats, after all.

But is it a good idea to smoosh two violently different films onto a single five-hour marathon? Both Barbie and Oppenheimer came out this week, and I spent an afternoon doing exactly that. The question is, will Barbenheimer save all of cinema as we know it?

In a word: no. In slightly more words: Jesus Christ no, absolutely not, what a terrible, terrible idea this is. Reader, do not attempt Barbenheimer. Or at least, if you do decide to do Barbenheimer, please don't do it in the order I went to see it. If you take anything from this, it's that you should really go and see Barbie first. Because otherwise, and I'm talking from very recent first-hand experience, the effect is a little like having your mother's funeral invaded by a flashmob of parking circus clowns. Which, you know, isn't exactly ideal.


Because here's what I just learned. Oppenheimer is a three-hour onslaught in which – and this has been reported in the press, but nevertheless might still qualify as a minor spoiler – the film's director literally hired his own daughter to have the skin flayed off her face as a graphic demonstration of the immediate effects of a nuclear detonation. What I'm trying to say is that it is a lot.

It's the sort of film that requires processing. After watching it, you'll want to discuss it with the people you saw it with. Or you'll want to read up on J Robert Oppenheimer in greater depth, to better understand the man's motivations. Or – as I did – maybe you just felt taking three or four hours to blankly stare into the middle distance, silently rocking backwards and forwards in a state of numb despair at the destructive idiocy of mankind. In other words, it takes a minute.

Margot Robbie in Barbie, a film with an absurd, at times strenuously winking tone.
Toying with itself: the Barbie movie hits the limit of self-awareness
Read more
But oh no, instead you'll have just enough time to empty your bladder, turn around and subject yourself to the fluorescent full-beam positivity of Barbie. It's such a tonal handbrake turn that you'll end up with whiplash, even when Barbie reveals its slightly darker true intentions after about 20 minutes.

And by the way, don't expect to encounter a lot of fellow Barbenheimers either. On the basis of my visit, people are still firmly intent on seeing either one or the other. Oppenheimer had an older, silently reverent crowd. Barbie, on the other hand, was populated by dozens of children whose parents didn't get the memo that the film was a self-aware commentary on the nature of feminism and not a fun movie about a toy, and who had to keep asking them what a gynaecologist was.

The cinema, too, felt tribal in a weirdly one-sided way, too. All the staff at my local multiplex were wearing pink. The guy standing next to me at the cinema urinal was wearing a Barbie T-shirt. Oppenheimer, however, was less well represented. Nobody was wearing a mid-century suit, or came dressed as someone who had been physically and spiritually hollowed out by constant nightmarish visions of mass death, which seemed like a missed opportunity.

There certainly wasn't a lot of crossover, in that I couldn't see anyone else quivering with blank incomprehension at the indiscriminate violence of nuclear warfare as the curtain went up on Barbie. Or maybe they had all decided to see Oppenheimer second. I don't know.

That said, would that choice have been much better? After all, who would want to follow up a feel-good comedy about the messy complexity of human life with a bleak meditation on genocide? Probably nobody.

So here's my advice. Go and see Barbie. Go and see Oppenheimer. But for the love of all that is holy, please do the sensible thing and see them on different days. Honestly, your nervous system will thank you.

[Savonarola]

Strategic Air Command (1955)

Jimmy Stewart plays a star baseball player who is called into active service in the Air Force.  (Stewart was 46 at the time, and not really believable as a baseball player at the peak of his career.)  He goes on a series of flying missions including a cold weather test in Greenland and a long distance flight from Florida to Japan, but will his wife (June Allyson) understand his commitment to the Air Force?

There's not a lot of surprises in this one.  Some of the aerial photography is spectacular, especially for the 50s.  If you're a vintage airplane buff this would be a film for you since it features the B-36 and B-47 prominently.  While the plot does seem to be inspired by Ted Williams, Stewart's character is based on Clifford Schoeffler; who crashed while testing aircraft in Greenland and survived.

[Darth Wagtaros]

I just came back from seeing Barbie. It really was a long rage against the patriarchy kinda thing.  Too preachy. Although I hate to be lumped in with the, "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAITSWOKE!" crowd.

[garbon]

I just came back from seeing Barbie. It really was a long rage against the patriarchy kinda thing.  Too preachy. Although I hate to be lumped in with the, "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAITSWOKE!" crowd.

As you should be embarrassed.

It was great. The comedy was self-aware and the film happy to laugh at itself.

[Sheilbh]

The Sixth Commandment on the BBC is very good.

I remember the story when it came out and it's really grim. Timothy Spall and Anne Reid are terrific, but the whole cast is very good. And in its way a far wider comment on how we care (or don't) for the elderly, even in our own families, and loneliness.

[celedhring]

I loved Sunak posting about the family voting to go to see Barbie. Yeah, sure, the kids would have loved Oppenheimer (are they even allowed to see it in the UK?)

It's one of those wonky "top politicians pretending to be normal people" twitter posts that I absolutely love. 

[Syt]

Well, Elon Musk and the CEO of OpenAI seem disappointed by Oppenheimer



I've not watched Social Network, was it an inspiring biopic?

[celedhring]

Well, Elon Musk and the CEO of OpenAI seem disappointed by Oppenheimer



I've not watched Social Network, was it an inspiring biopic?

It is not. It's one of those "Born in the USA"-kinda phenoms were people absolutely miss the point of the work and embrace it at as a celebration of the subject matter when it's actually a cautionary tale.

[Syt]

Like Wolf of Wall Street?

[celedhring]

Like Wolf of Wall Street?

Well, a bit more subtle.

Social Network is about how ambition and power will destroy any meaningful relationship you have. Zuckerberg creates an empire on the promise of facilitating connection among people, while at the end of the film he himself has relinquished - by choice or by circumstance - any kind of real connection and tries to replace them with the illusion provided by his social media (the last scene is the best of the film).

Of course, I can see the startup bros watching it and thinking "yes, this is what i want".