TV/Movies Megathread

[Admiral Yi]

Rewatched To Sir, With Love last night.  It's cheap looking, some of the dialogue is clunky and flat, and the big transformation in the second act is totally unconvincing, but it's still moving.  Mostly because of the naturalness of the kids and Poitier's acting.  Great song.

[Syt]

Watched som of the new Frasier. Not bad, but not good. A weird nostalgic scratch for an itch I didn't realize I had.

That's a good summary imo.

[celedhring]

Also I don't know why but it's up there with Zodiac in terms of thrillers I've seen so often the're a strange sort of comfort movie

That's... something 

[Syt]

Could be worse. Could be Cannibal Holocaust, or Martyrs, or The Girl Next Door.

[Josquius]

Lupin Series 3.... aye.
It really does have heavy wiffs of "We finished the story we wanted to tell so here's a cliched and convoluted way to pull him back in!"
Maybe thats what happens in the actual Lupin books?
But still, sigh. Enjoyable nonetheless but I wonder how far they plan on pushing it.

I started Reservation Dogs. Yes. Its quite good.

[celedhring]

Going back to Fincher, I'm dying to see The Killer. I lowkey love how somebody with his absurd mastery of the craft has devoted so much of his career (with very notable exceptions) to make somewhat trashy (or fully trashy) thrillers. 

[Duque de Bragança]

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button must be really anathema to you then. Such as an impersonal movie for Fincher. 

Rewatched it recently at the Cinémathèque during the Fincher retrospective.

[Savonarola]

One of the local churches put on the 1925 "The Phantom of the Opera" with organist accompaniment.  The Phantom lives or dies by the quality of the print, and this had an awful Televista style print in 4:3 format.  They made it worse by squishing the movie further so they could show the organists hands on screens, so it was really more of an organ concert with incidental movie.

They did have an interesting organ at this church.  It's a digital organ but, after they acquired it, they were gifted a set of 1920s era pipes; so they got the original company to turn it into a hybrid organ where they can use pipes, digital sound or both at the same time.  Since pipes change in length (and therefore tone) with temperature, every morning (and between services) they have to tune the digital portion of the organ to match the pipes. I thought that was interesting; (though not interesting enough to suffer through a bad print of Phantom of the Opera  .)

I'm not a huge fan of organ music, but I did used to listen to Pipe Dreams when I was in college.  It was decent music to study to, and there wasn't a lot of choice in terms of radio programming in Michigan's Upper Peninsula; especially on Sunday nights when even the rock stations were playing things like "Rap for the King" (Christian rap.)

[Sophie Scholl]

They did a showing locally of the 1925 Phantom with a Wurlitzer accompaniment. Alas, I wasn't feeling well so I missed it. 

[viper37]

Maybe thats what happens in the actual Lupin books?

Not as far as I know.  But a lot of the books were short stories (well, it was a French author, so it was a bit longer than your typical English short stories ).  But the character was used by other authors too, I think, so maybe some stories were more convoluted.

[Sheilbh]

On franchises - absolutely not the first but I'm slightly surprised no-one's done or trying to do connected Stephen King franchise. From my understanding there's lots of connected characters and a shared universe etc so it feels like it would be perfect for it.

I imagine his rights are an absolute mess though and distributed all over so that maybe why it's never happened.

[Josquius]

On franchises - absolutely not the first but I'm slightly surprised no-one's done or trying to do connected Stephen King franchise. From my understanding there's lots of connected characters and a shared universe etc so it feels like it would be perfect for it.

I imagine his rights are an absolute mess though and distributed all over so that maybe why it's never happened.

True. Especially with the dark tower film that would have been the perfect setup

[Barrister]

On franchises - absolutely not the first but I'm slightly surprised no-one's done or trying to do connected Stephen King franchise. From my understanding there's lots of connected characters and a shared universe etc so it feels like it would be perfect for it.

I imagine his rights are an absolute mess though and distributed all over so that maybe why it's never happened.

True. Especially with the dark tower film that would have been the perfect setup

I remember going to that one in the theatres - Mrs B wanted to see it.  I didn't care for it, and seem to recall it was a pretty big flop.

[Savonarola]

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Hitchcock's penultimate British film (he'd do Jamaica Inn before coming to America) this is done in the smallest studio at Islington with a limited budget.  It didn't matter (well, some of the models at the beginning are pretty hokey), Hitchcock made the greatest film of his British period; smart, funny, satiric, sinister and with a love story that is, well, better than most Hitchcock.

It's surprising some of the lines got past the censors; especially Redgrave's "My father always taught me, never desert a lady in trouble. He even carried that as far as marrying Mother."  Other, more political lines, like: "Pacifist, eh? Won't work, old boy. Early Christians tried it and got thrown to the lions." may have run into trouble had the film been reviewed just a little later.  (It was it was released just before the Munich Agreement)

This is Michael Redgrave's first film, and what made him a movie star (although he always expressed preference for the theater.)  Margaret Lockwood became big enough to go Hollywood after this (which she hated and would return in short order.)  Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford would reprise their roles in at least one other film and go on to have a radio show.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah to be honest I wasn't thinking of the Dark Tower stuff but - and I could be totally wrong - I thought a lot of his novels and stories are all in a shared fictional corner of Maine with overlapping characters?