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Post by Rey Kahuka on Aug 17, 2020 14:36:23 GMT
Rewatched Last of the Mohicans the other night. Couldn't find it streaming, had to bust out the DVD! I'd forgotten how quickly that film moves along. Hadn't seen it in years, it's still in my top 15 after this latest rewatch.
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Post by klawrencio79 on Aug 17, 2020 15:01:26 GMT
Rewatched Last of the Mohicans the other night. Couldn't find it streaming, had to bust out the DVD! I'd forgotten how quickly that film moves along. Hadn't seen it in years, it's still in my top 15 after this latest rewatch. I only saw this once when it first came out but they just did it on the Rewatchables podcast so maybe I'll revisit it. Speaking of how quickly a film moves along, I recently rewatched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and while that one is still the weakest of the original trilogy, it's basically just action set piece after set piece, with two exposition dumps at the 20 and 40 minute mark and then the last hour is just nonstop. It's still problematic (it's a bit racist, Kate Capshaw is AWFUL and an awful character) but the action is thrilling, and the movie is more fucked up than I remember. Sure, it has the famous heart scene and the bug room, but there are a half a dozen other things that are rather heavy for its PG rating (Indy killing a guy by hanging him from a ceiling fan, a shrine made up of human fingers, the dinner scene, child slavery, the dude going through the rock crusher, soul-devouring blood juice, the bad guys falling off a cliff and getting eaten by alligators). Parental guidance....suggested!
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Post by Rey Kahuka on Aug 17, 2020 18:22:52 GMT
Caught up on season 2 of The Alienist last week. I can't believe a show this good is on TNT, it belongs on a premium cable network. The cast, the writing, the period production are all spectacular, and it makes great use of its musical score. It's based on a book series I was unfamiliar with, and apparently the author is currently writing the next volume; so as of now there isn't any material for a third season. If you enjoy late 19th century fictional crime dramas featuring minor roles by historical figures of the age such as Theodore Roosevelt and William Randolph Hearst (who doesn't?), I highly recommend this show.
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Post by screamingtreefrogs on Aug 18, 2020 20:59:07 GMT
Flyers kicking the crap out of Montreal
Soon to be followed the Phillies slapping around the Red Sox
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Post by Midi-Chlorian_Count on Aug 19, 2020 8:48:29 GMT
Anyone here watched Dark?
* No spoilers please! *
Just coming towards the conclusion of the first season. Fantastic stuff! Up there with the first season of Fargo as the best show I've watched this year.
Has anyone watched the lot? If so - without giving anything away - are the other seasons as good? (I certainly hope so)
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Post by klawrencio79 on Aug 19, 2020 13:34:25 GMT
Anyone here watched Dark? * No spoilers please! * Just coming towards the conclusion of the first season. Fantastic stuff! Up there with the first season of Fargo as the best show I've watched this year. Has anyone watched the lot? If so - without giving anything away - are the other seasons as good? (I certainly hope so) I'm halfway through Season 3. I really liked Season 1, and overall I enjoy the show, but honestly there are times (plural) where I have no idea what the hell is going on or who the characters onscreen are. Moreso as Season 2 went along and during Season 3. I feel like a re-watch would be very worthwhile.
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Post by Midi-Chlorian_Count on Aug 19, 2020 15:22:17 GMT
... but honestly there are times (plural) where I have no idea what the hell is going on or who the characters onscreen are. Ha ha - I know exactly what you mean! I've had my phone with the Google cast picture page up beside me the whole time and keep pausing so I can work out who's who in each timeline and see what their surnames are to try and work out the family trees 😂 It's a really great show though nonetheless. Trying to avoid reading anything online about it to avoid spoilers but I hope it turns out properly constructed and not one of those shows they just keep expanding out without a clear goal of where they're going, e.g. Fringe and Walking Dead come to mind as great shows which lost their way.
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Post by klawrencio79 on Aug 19, 2020 15:29:33 GMT
... but honestly there are times (plural) where I have no idea what the hell is going on or who the characters onscreen are. Ha ha - I know exactly what you mean! I've had my phone with the Google cast picture page up beside me the whole time and keep pausing so I can work out who's who in each timeline and see what their surnames are to try and work out the family trees 😂 It's a really great show though nonetheless. Trying to avoid reading anything online about it to avoid spoilers but I hope it turns out properly constructed and not one of those shows they just keep expanding out without a clear goal of where they're going, e.g. Fringe and Walking Dead come to mind as great shows which lost their way. Yeah, I enjoy it, although I don't rank it up there with the best shows I've ever seen. Certainly above-average and has some really mind-blowing situations.
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Post by Carl LaFong on Aug 19, 2020 23:18:13 GMT
Intolerance (1916) - DW Griffith epic using four stories from different times in history to depict man's inhumanity to man. The stories are interleaved and the editing is amazing .. particularly as the climaxes of the separate stories approach.
Some of the scenes from the Babylonian story are incredible. Must have cost a fortune to build those sets and pay all those extras.
Constance Talmadge is terrific; guileless and charming.
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Post by screamingtreefrogs on Aug 20, 2020 9:16:19 GMT
Dateline - Lost in Sin City
'A woman from a small town moves to the big city of Las Vegas, where she finds a new career and a new love, then she vanishes, and her body is found....'
I'm thinking her new love offed her.
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Post by Jep Gambardella on Aug 20, 2020 11:36:01 GMT
Intolerance (1916) - DW Griffith epic using four stories from different times in history to depict man's inhumanity to man. The stories are interleaved and the editing is amazing .. particularly as the climaxes of the separate stories approach. Some of the scenes from the Babylonian story are incredible. Must have cost a fortune to build those sets and pay all those extras. Constance Talmadge is terrific; guileless and charming. I missed it when it came out but I saw it on the big screen at the film festival here probably about twenty years ago, and I thought it was pretty impressive.
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Post by Carl LaFong on Aug 20, 2020 12:31:42 GMT
Intolerance (1916) - DW Griffith epic using four stories from different times in history to depict man's inhumanity to man. The stories are interleaved and the editing is amazing .. particularly as the climaxes of the separate stories approach. Some of the scenes from the Babylonian story are incredible. Must have cost a fortune to build those sets and pay all those extras. Constance Talmadge is terrific; guileless and charming. I missed it when it came out but I saw it on the big screen at the film festival here probably about twenty years ago, and I thought it was pretty impressive. Yeah, one of those films that would look amazing on a big screen.
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Post by Jep Gambardella on Aug 20, 2020 14:07:59 GMT
With “Tenet” (apparently) coming out soon, I decided to finally re-watch “Inception”, which is something I have been meaning to do for quite some time. Knowing the premise beforehand, I liked it even better this second time. Great movie. Looking forward to “Tenet” even more now. And tonight the Fantasia Film Festival starts. Every year this is where I get my fill of Japanese and Korean movies (and from other countries as well). This year, because of Covid, the festival will be on a streaming platform only. You buy the tickets and then at a certain time you start the streaming on your own TV or computer at home. I have tickets for two movies tonight: “The Reckoning” from the UK, something to do with witches during the times of the plague, and “Special Actors” from Japan, a comedy about “actors” hired for social occasions. The Japanese movie is by the same director who made One Cut of the Dead, which I watched at Fantasia two or three years ago. It’s a one-take movie about a film crew making a one-take zombie movie which gets interrupted by a real zombie attack. Very meta and hilarious. I am hoping the new one is as good.
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Post by screamingtreefrogs on Aug 23, 2020 19:41:21 GMT
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Post by Jep Gambardella on Aug 24, 2020 14:36:41 GMT
And tonight the Fantasia Film Festival starts. Every year this is where I get my fill of Japanese and Korean movies (and from other countries as well). This year, because of Covid, the festival will be on a streaming platform only. You buy the tickets and then at a certain time you start the streaming on your own TV or computer at home.
A few movies I saw at the (online) Fantasia Film Festival over the weekend:
iWeirDo – a sort of romantic comedy from Taiwan about a guy and a girl with serious OCD who against all odds find each other and start a relationship. The Columnist – a Dutch black comedy of sorts about a female newspaper columnist who gets fed up with the constant personal attacks she is subjected to on social media and decides to strike back – and let’s just say that she doesn’t seem to be a believer in the “The pen is mightier than the sword” axiom.
Crazy Samurai Musashi – Japanese (obviously) samurai (equally obviously) movie about one master swordsman who faces the forces of an entire enemy clan all by himself. The centerpiece of the movie is a 77-minute long take during which he kills hundreds of opponents. One can’t help but admire the hard work that must have gone into planning and shooting that single take, but I didn’t find the end result all that satisfying. It gets a bit repetitive pretty early on – and really, how many times can you watch five or more samurai running one after the other right at Musashi with their swords held high above their heads and their entire bodies completely exposed, only to be easily cut down by him?
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Post by klawrencio79 on Aug 24, 2020 16:23:52 GMT
OK, so the other night I watched Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013). I really don't know why I watched it, but I did, so I'm duty bound so report as much on this thread. This movie is atrocious. A paltry excuse to show some grisly kills on screen with the dumbest story I've ever seen. The good - Alexandra Daddario is so insanely hot. She spends the first half of the movie in a tight tank top showing off her midriff, all while hopping around from room to room. It's delightful. In the second half, a gentleman cop gives her a new shirt, a button down, and she proceeds to button one single button directly over her chest, so her stomach is still clearly visible the rest of the movie. You have to admire a movie that doesn't attempt to hide how gratuitous it is. OK, now the bad. So this whole movie is an idiotic attempt to recontextualize Leatherface as some sort of anti-hero. Yeah, he butchered a bunch of people, but the bible-weilding townfolks surrounded the house, burned it down and murdered the entire Sawyer family, unwittingly leaving Leatherface in the basement to.....somehow thrive. Fast forward to the present day, and now Leatherface is somehow the victim? What??
Also, Daddario's character was a Sawyer baby that was kidnapped by the townfolks and raised as their own. She then inherits Leatherface's house, even though she didn't even know she was a part of that family or anything about what happened. She just thinks she inherited a huge house. Immediately upon entering, her friends and boyfriend are slaughtered and she narrowly escapes. Here is where it gets REALLY stupid. She reads some newspaper clippings about the townsfolk burning the house down and she instantly turns into a psycho. She hates the other people, she rescues Leatherface, she threatens some idiot with a knife and resigns herself to live in the house with a maniac? It's literally like flipping a switch. She doesn't even really care that her best friend and boyfriend have just been brutally murderered. She and Leatherface even team up at the end! What in the actual fuck? That was probably more than anybody has ever written about this movie. It sucks. If you need to watch it for archival purposes, go for it, but don't expect anything.
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Post by Carl LaFong on Aug 24, 2020 16:55:53 GMT
Intolerance (1916) - DW Griffith epic using four stories from different times in history to depict man's inhumanity to man. The stories are interleaved and the editing is amazing .. particularly as the climaxes of the separate stories approach. Some of the scenes from the Babylonian story are incredible. Must have cost a fortune to build those sets and pay all those extras. Constance Talmadge is terrific; guileless and charming. Intolerance is a brilliant film, but for sheer entertainment value I preferred Birth Of A Nation, which I find watching in the Trump era most illuminating. Haven't see that one yet. Thanks for the rec.
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Post by Jep Gambardella on Aug 24, 2020 17:50:28 GMT
Intolerance (1916) - DW Griffith epic using four stories from different times in history to depict man's inhumanity to man. The stories are interleaved and the editing is amazing .. particularly as the climaxes of the separate stories approach. Some of the scenes from the Babylonian story are incredible. Must have cost a fortune to build those sets and pay all those extras. Constance Talmadge is terrific; guileless and charming. Intolerance is a brilliant film, but for sheer entertainment value I preferred Birth Of A Nation, which I find watching in the Trump era most illuminating.
I watched Birth of a Nation during a film course I took back in the 90s. I didn't know anything about it beforehand, and I couldn't believe how openly racist it was. I remember mentioning it to my girlfriend at the time, who was the consummate SJW long before the expression existed, and being shocked when she urged me to report the teacher for showing it.
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Post by tristramshandy on Aug 24, 2020 17:58:43 GMT
OK, so the other night I watched Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013). I really don't know why I watched it, but I did, so I'm duty bound so report as much on this thread. This movie is atrocious. A paltry excuse to show some grisly kills on screen with the dumbest story I've ever seen. The good - Alexandra Daddario is so insanely hot. She spends the first half of the movie in a tight tank top showing off her midriff, all while hopping around from room to room. It's delightful. In the second half, a gentleman cop gives her a new shirt, a button down, and she proceeds to button one single button directly over her chest, so her stomach is still clearly visible the rest of the movie. You have to admire a movie that doesn't attempt to hide how gratuitous it is. OK, now the bad. So this whole movie is an idiotic attempt to recontextualize Leatherface as some sort of anti-hero. Yeah, he butchered a bunch of people, but the bible-weilding townfolks surrounded the house, burned it down and murdered the entire Sawyer family, unwittingly leaving Leatherface in the basement to.....somehow thrive. Fast forward to the present day, and now Leatherface is somehow the victim? What??
Also, Daddario's character was a Sawyer baby that was kidnapped by the townfolks and raised as their own. She then inherits Leatherface's house, even though she didn't even know she was a part of that family or anything about what happened. She just thinks she inherited a huge house. Immediately upon entering, her friends and boyfriend are slaughtered and she narrowly escapes. Here is where it gets REALLY stupid. She reads some newspaper clippings about the townsfolk burning the house down and she instantly turns into a psycho. She hates the other people, she rescues Leatherface, she threatens some idiot with a knife and resigns herself to live in the house with a maniac? It's literally like flipping a switch. She doesn't even really care that her best friend and boyfriend have just been brutally murderered. She and Leatherface even team up at the end! What in the actual fuck? That was probably more than anybody has ever written about this movie. It sucks. If you need to watch it for archival purposes, go for it, but don't expect anything. I've watched nothing but this clip for the last twenty minutes now.
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Post by tristramshandy on Aug 24, 2020 18:02:46 GMT
Watched Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade (2018) on Saturday. The praise that it got seemed a bit much, but then I connected more with the protagonist's dad than the 8th grade girl herself.
This is piece of evidence #872 why I think sending my daughter to boarding school from 7th grade through 9th grade is a very good idea.
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