TV/Movies Megathread

[Martinus]

I'm a fan of Downton Abbey, but admittedly it's mainly because of Dame Maggie Smith.

[11B4V]

Catching The Lost Boys on Sundance.

[Eddie Teach]

The Defiant Ones. Pretty good.

[Ideologue]

So Disney's letting Netflix stream some of their less popular fare. I've seen Fantasia again, great as always. Also, Treasure Planet, which was uninspired and kind of weird.

Indeed.  Clements and Musker's only real failure.  (Even The Princess and the Frog has its moments.)  The crazy thing is this was their passion project: Disney kept saying no for something like a solid decade, but after they achieved hit after hit--The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, i.e. the three best movies of the Disney Renaissance--the suits gave them the resources to pursue their dream.  Somehow, the result of the dream of the two most talented directors in the company's history resulted in one of its most lackluster products.

[Ideologue]

Locke. Hilarious. Guy tries to manage the biggest pour of concrete in Europe while his life is collapsing around him (such a subtle metaphor). Tom Hardy manages to sell the material, but I really don't get the reviews the film's got. I kid you not, 50% of the film's dialogue is about concrete, and not in an ironic Tarantino way.

One of my favorites of the year.

The bizarreness of the conceit (and the fact it's less than 85 minutes long) makes it a decent enough novelty to watch, but I really didn't think it was that great. That said, Tom Hardy manages to elevate the material. The conversations with his phantom daddy as a way to lay out the pathos of the film are a pretty terrible device, for example, but he manages to sell them.

Yeah, those are the weakest moments of the picture.

Anyway, my main criticism of the movie is that by minute 30 you know all the circumstances surrounding the main character, and nothing of note happens afterwards that involves him making decisions or having doubts over what he's doing. It's all pretty flat.

True, which is why I started my review, way back in August or whatever, with that epic exchange from Adaptation:

"What if a writer is attempting to create a story where nothing much happens?  Where people don't change, they don't have any epiphanies, they struggle, and are frustrated—more a reflection of the real world?"

"The real world... the real fucking world?  Nothing happens in the world?  Are you out of your fucking mind?... Every fucking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every fucking day, someone, somewhere takes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it... If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life! And why the fuck are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie?"

Except Locke is only 85 minutes long.   I thought the ending was just perfect, and Ivan Locke is one of the single best (and least subversive) depictions of masculinity ever accomplished on film, which should be kind of boring, but isn't.

[mongers]

My wife makes me watch Downton Abbey.

I even Had a dream about Downton Abbey the other night -

I was reading up on ants the night before, and in particular, on a behaviour known as "slave-raiding" or "pirating" whereby one ant nest will raid the nest of a different species, and steal their eggs and pupae, and raise them as a worker caste. I was struck by a passage in which the author claimed that some ant species are so specialized for 'slave-raiding' that, without these 'slaves', they can't even feed themselves - their mandibles are the wrong shape (too specialized, oversized). Apparently, some scientists took ahold of a colony, removed the 'slaves', and the 'masters' all died of starvation. Also, the 'slaves' do all the rearing of the ant's young.

Anyway, in the deam, I saw the aristocrats from 'Downton Abby' sitting around a fancy table, with all of the fancy siverware, looking quite sad - there was no food on the china plates. All of the servants were gone. The aristocrats were wearing the height of 1920s fashion, but above the collar, they had grossly oversized mandibles ... 

You took the wrong sort of drugs back in the day. 

[jimmy olsen]

Indeed.  Clements and Musker's only real failure.  (Even The Princess and the Frog has its moments.)  The crazy thing is this was their passion project: Disney kept saying no for something like a solid decade, but after they achieved hit after hit--The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, i.e. the three best movies of the Disney Renaissance--the suits gave them the resources to pursue their dream.  Somehow, the result of the dream of the two most talented directors in the company's history resulted in one of its most lackluster products.

WRONG!

[Ideologue]

I know it's not a consensus pick, but I like Hercules a lot.  Is it minor Clusker?  I would argue not.  Anyway, it has more merit than Pocahantas and fewer flaws than Hunchback.  Now, I know you love Lion King as well as Beauty and the Gross DS Fantasy, but I find one merely ok and you'll have to trust me that the latter actively insidious, the favorite film of childhood sexual assault victims everywhere.

[Ideologue]

Rewatched Michael Mann's Collateral yet again, to focus my mind upon the good and beautiful, as opposed to Blackhat.  God, what a great movie.  Just started Last of the Mohicans, damned close to just as good.

I keep meaning to block out some time to rewatch Heat, but, you know, three hours.

[celedhring]

So Disney's letting Netflix stream some of their less popular fare. I've seen Fantasia again, great as always. Also, Treasure Planet, which was uninspired and kind of weird.

Indeed.  Clements and Musker's only real failure.  (Even The Princess and the Frog has its moments.)  The crazy thing is this was their passion project: Disney kept saying no for something like a solid decade, but after they achieved hit after hit--The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, i.e. the three best movies of the Disney Renaissance--the suits gave them the resources to pursue their dream.  Somehow, the result of the dream of the two most talented directors in the company's history resulted in one of its most lackluster products.

I don't think it's a "bad" film. It's just pretty damn listless and predictable, which is strange given the conceit is pretty original and it was their passion project. I suspect the long development project hurt it and killed the freshness it might have had, in order to make Disney more secure about what they were releasing.

It was a pity though, since I'm a huge fan of sci-fi and Treasure Island was one of my favorite tales when I was a kid (actually the Disney version was one of my favorite films)

[Eddie Teach]

Fantasia 2000. A worthy successor. I especially liked the Rhapsody in Blue sketch.

[CountDeMoney]

I keep meaning to block out some time to rewatch Heat, but, you know, three hours.

Because your DayRunner is nothing but wall to wall appointments of shit to do these days.

[Eddie Teach]

5000 word essays don't write themselves, you know.

[Ideologue]

I haven't written a review over 2k words since Forbidden Planet.

But, sure, I suppose I'm a bit busier than CDM.

[CountDeMoney]

Power naps don't nap themselves, you shitty little bitchfuck.