TV/Movies Megathread

[The Minsky Moment]

Finishing up the first season of The Wire on HBOGo.
Easily the best police procedural themed show I've ever seen
Can't believe I missed it when it was on.

[Queequeg]

Have you seen it before, Joan?

[The Minsky Moment]

Have you seen it before, Joan?

No - starting watching on recommendation from another lawyer.

[Queequeg]

I'm actually kind of jealous.  Wish I could watch Season 4 again fresh. 

[Savonarola]

So what do you think, Sav: did the talkies ruin film or rescue it, as the facetious Hollywood tropes of the 50s (Singin' In The Rain, Sunset Boulevard) would have it?

I'm watching Abel Gance's 1919 version of J'accuse now (in installments), and it's really good; he also apparently remade it in 1938, so I'd like to compare. 

But watching a silent film again after a long hiatus got me thinking about the "motion pictures" really mean.  It's kind of taken for granted nowadays that watching film without sound dialogue is difficult, but in some ways you get an art-form that's more unique/radical than the talkies -- "moving pictures" literally, rather than just a filmed theatrical production.  Though of course the visual advances of the silent movies were incorporated into the talkies, something had to have been lost.

So what say you, esteemed and tireless watcher of silent movies? 

René Clair said something similar about talkies when they first came into fashion; that motion pictures were an inherently different art form than theater and by adding sound you'd take away what made movies unique.  Obviously that didn't happen; film and theater are still different art forms.

I think sound has been a benefit to cinema; it's given directors more to work with and allowed them to create a richer experience.  However I think there were some changes that going into the sound era entailed that were for the worse.  Film became less international and more tied to the country of origin due to the language.  Film became more expensive so, with the Depression, smaller studios were forced to shut down.

The immediate effect of the introduction of sound was problematic.  The original sound cameras were static, no one really had an idea how to make a sound film, and dialogue (or musical numbers) was severely over-emphasized.  For an example of this see the 1929 winner for Outstanding Picture, "Wings" (a silent film) versus the 1930 winner "Broadway Melody."

I would have liked to see the sound era have lasted longer; or to have had silent and sound films exist concurrently; but the Hollywood studios got together and agreed not to make silent films in order to force movie houses to install sound equipment.

[The Brain]

I would have liked to see the sound era have lasted longer;

Patience.

[The Brain]

Finishing up the first season of The Wire on HBOGo.
Easily the best police procedural themed show I've ever seen
Can't believe I missed it when it was on.

Well with some things you only miss them when they're on.

[CountDeMoney]

Robert Redford slowly dies.  It's decent.

2013
Written and directed by J.C. Chandor
With Robert Redford and Scott Witherell (Our Man)

Spoiler alert: mild, but goes to severe with more than adequate warning

Shouldn't the spoiler alert go before the spoiler?

[CountDeMoney]

Like with many a survival film, especially one as sparsely populated as this, it can be hard to get much more specific than that when discussing All Is Lost, short of simply transcribing its events.

[Ed Anger]

 

[Sheilbh]

This is a BBC documentary about Western Civilization from the Dark Ages until the 20th Century mostly focusing on the art works.  Clark argues that civilization is the expectation of a future and thus is evidenced by art works built to stand the test of time.  He gives a good deal of representation to West Germany (the documentary was made in 1969, so they couldn't film behind the Iron Curtain) but short shrift to France (the entire of French classicism and Versailles is glossed over in a few second) and no mention at all to Spain or Portugal.

It's good fun and very of its time, but I do like those personal authored documentaries - the Shock of the New from the same sort of time is also great.

Also I'd broadly agree. In my personal view of Western art I'd give a lot of time to Germany, the Low Countries and Italy (unlike Professor Clark I'd spend a lot of time in Spain too) and nowhere near so much in France 

[Queequeg]

 
Why?

[Queequeg]

I can't even imagine making a statement like that.  I don't know how you'd debate the worthiness of Low Country greats like Hugo Grotius, van Gogh, Rubens, Beethoven,  and Spinoza against Descartes and Cardinal Richelieu, Molière, and Flaubert.  It seems literally impossible to estimate. 

[Sheilbh]

You're making a BBC documentary on the topic of Western civilisation - art, architecture and thought since the Dark Ages. What do you pick and which would you emphasise?

Thinking briefly I imagine I'd spend a lot of time in the Low Countries, Germany and Italy. And it's a personal view so I could skate over neoclassicism which I don't like and spend an entire episode or two on the Baroque, which I love.

The show's worth watching though, as is Shock of the New and I remember reading that Clark's grandiose and high conservative style prompted the BBC to also commission a look at Western art from a Marxist perspective

[Queequeg]