TV/Movies Megathread

[katmai]

I now extend my offer for donkey punching Spellus to all takers.

[Ed Anger]

20k is my fee to drive to Chicago.

[Ideologue]

The film is a terrible waste of Lon's talents.  Throughout the film I was expecting him to become mutilated, or to mutilate someone, but that didn't happen.

Psellus: Oh.

[Admiral Yi]

I've never punched a donkey and wouldn't know how to start.

[Berkut]

If all reboots were at the level of 1992's Last of the Mohicans, there would be nothing to bitch about.

Everything but the last 8 mints of Last of the Mohicans: boring
Last 8 minutes of Last of the Mohicans: one of the best scenes ever

You have just completely destroyed any possible credibility you might ever have on any subject in the entire universe forever and for all time until the heat death of the universe, and quite possibly for some time afterwards as well.

[Ed Anger]

I'm gonna watch the Sand Pebbles tonight. Time for some chink killin'!

[CountDeMoney]

I'm gonna watch the Sand Pebbles tonight. Time for some chink killin'!

More whacked in 55 Days In Peking, and with a happier ending.

[Ed Anger]

Steve McQueen with a BAR. Badass.

[Eddie Teach]

It's funny how people are out-Spellusing Spellus re: Last of the Mohicans.

[derspiess]

20k is my fee to drive to Chicago.

I'll do it for 15k and expenses.

[Ed Anger]

20k is my fee to drive to Chicago.

I'll do it for 15k and expenses.

You can have the job. I hate Chicago.

[Caliga]

I like it ok here.  Certainly beats Boston.

[Queequeg]

It was an overstatement, but I don't know how anyone could watch the movie and not think that the last 8 minutes were not substantially superior to the rest.  It's not Mann's best. 

[Ideologue]

Well, that's a little bit more rational, isn't it, Mike?

Unless you say Mann's best was Public Enemies or something.

***

The Spy Who Loved Me (19757).  You may remember that I bought the James Bond 50th anniversary set over a year ago.  You may also remember that, other than catching up with the Craig Bonds for Skyfall, I was watching them in chronological order.

The more Bond-savvy viewer will know that this is the incorrect method.  The correct method is to not watch several of them at all, under any circumstances.  Specifically, there is no reason to watch Live and Let Die, which is good for one thing only--its title song--nor is there any reason I know of to watch The Man With the Golden Gun, which is good for just about nothing in the half of it I actually sat through, before Cletus McLouisiana showed up again and I decided life was, all things considered, already too terrible and too short to suffer this kind of voluntary pain.

Fearing the worst, I did not watch a Bond movie for a year.  It turns out this was a tremendous mistake, for The Spy Who Loved Me is essentially the perfect Bond film.  Consider it.  It features a Bond girl that isn't basically human garbage, the debut of Richard Kiel, and a car that turns into a submarine!  It sets Bond against a villain, not his best villain but in that league, who wants not only to wipe out human life, but to live under the sea!  It even has, if you look closely, actual nudity!  And, by God, The Spy Who Loved Me sees the return of Ken Adam as production designer, and gives us the retardedly enormous sets for which he is loved!

And it features, also, none of the many things that are so hateful about the old Bond movies.  There's not a moment of the casual racism (You Only Live Twice) or advocacy of genocide (Live and Let Die), nor the rape-rape (Thunderball) and sex murder (Diamonds Are Forever)--those staples of the Connery years alongside those great big sets.  More importantly, it also fails to have any sort of completely boring middle part, which Bond movies before and after would fall into without even realizing it (Moonraker particularly, basically every James Bond I've seen movie though).  Further, if this had been On Her Majesty's Secret Service, I would have just about bought the romance, which that picture despite its Lazenbean charms completely failed to sell me upon.

There is only one real flaw, other than Roger Moore being an old, old man--but what are you gonna do?--and that is that I found it difficult to believe that Stromberg's henchmen aboard the stolen submarines would accept a change of orders at all, let alone a change of target that they surely would have known was in the middle of the ocean.  Oh well.  LOOK AT THAT GODDAMN SET!

Yep.  It's my new favorite James Bond movie.

It did make me curious, though.  To anyone who knows Boomer procedure, but what is the protocol (if any) if the boat falls into enemy or pirate hands?  I assume there are safeguards to render the missiles and the submarine useless.

A

[Ideologue]

I like it ok here.  Certainly beats Boston.

I think both did some good songs, but Boston probably wins.