Re: Recent movie/TV playlist [titles without stand-alone thread]

1501
Hello Tomorrow! - Billy Crudup created and starred in this retro-futurism...sitcom, I guess? Dramadey? sleazy sales guy selling homes on the moon that don't exist. the look of this is '50s but with far-future tech. it's pretty amusing. fun to look at, and ended up having more heart than it should have. wouldn't say it was "great" but it was worth a watch just for the novelty of it. cast is solid.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist [titles without stand-alone thread]

1502
Holy Hell - another crazy cult doc. while this leader isn't nearly as smart as Keith Reniere, his model is the same, except applied to dippy hippy types. really just awful. something that seems so innocent and good initially funnels into pure sadness and evil. and of course, people are still following the guy. that's the other difference - no consequences for this douche, who had a bit part in Rosemary's Baby.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist [titles without stand-alone thread]

1503
Ghosted - While it’s not a great (or even good) film, it knows that and is exactly what you think it will be. Some excellent stunt sequences, great killeography in the fight sequences, the most hammy you will ever see Evans, Ana de Armas being beautiful, odd Marvel co-star appearances, ridiculous Ryan Reynolds cameo, and Adrian Brody being his excellent menacing self. It’s silly, ridiculous, and over the top. I laughed quite a bit and had fun with it as a time killer, which, again - seems to be exactly what it wanted to be. Although, I could see that it seems like maybe halfway through writing/filming this, someone decided that maybe they could be True Lies and tried a little harder to lean into that, with varying degrees of success. Still fun and amusing. If you go in thinking this is going to be anything else, I don’t know what you were expecting.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist [titles without stand-alone thread]

1504
Cunk On Earth - watched this awhile ago but forgot to post something, saw someone talking about it elsewhere which reminded me. Absolute British absurdist comedy mockumentary about a fake documentary host of a history show on an unnamed fake network. What we see is the actual “show” as “broadcast”, not the making-of, ala The Office or anything. She (Diane Morgan) plays everything perfectly deadpan, never breaks, as the fully ignorant host, interviewing very real guests/experts with stupid questions, etc. I’m doing a poor job of explaining it, but episodes are short and there are only 5 of them, so you should check it out. At first it takes a while to get into the groove of what they’re trying to do with this, but by the end I was quite absorbed in it an laughing out loud frequently. If absurd British comedy is your thing, or maybe history, you’ll probably find it amusing.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist [titles without stand-alone thread]

1505
Ahockalypse - I didn’t know it existed until very recently, so i sought it out. Just watched it last night. While Chaser is only in the beginning scene and Melrose is only in the ending scene, and while it is clearly written and shot by some hockey dudes on iphones or whatever with any “effects” very obviously added in post, i did keep watching it. Something weirdly engaging about it, given how bad it is. It keeps wedging in pop culture references unnecessarily, the audio is different from scene to scene, sometimes character to character in a scene. So yes, it’s a bad film. But i couldn’t stop watching it. I did laugh several times, some of which I believe were the intended reaction. It does leave several unanswered questions (all due to poor writing/editing) so maybe there will be a sequel sometime lol. It’s very short. Really, once they get past what they clearly felt was the obligatory hockey guy stuff - conversations about dicks, chicks, trashing hotel rooms, etc. - it gets better. The female characters are very obviously written by guys - they literally forget about one of them - but I guess to balance it out, they end up doing a male strip show at one point. It’s… like I said, clearly a bad movie, but I think they may know that and just kind of went with it. Personally I think it’s worth watching at least once so you can say you saw it, as I’m sure not many have. Joe Bob was recently asked about sports horror movies and he couldn’t really come up with anything beyond Teen Wolf.

Re: Recent movie playlist

1506
TC wrote: 29/09/20, 07:33:58 Perry Mason - i heard good things about the HBO re-imagining so figured i'd give it a shot. first off, it is really good. it's a terance winter effort, so you know you can expect quality. several boardwalk empire alum in this. maybe he wanted to revisit the '30s, who knows? but that's when this is supposed to have taken place. just the collection of cars onscreen is worth the watch alone. the series plays like a film noir resto-mod. meaning, it seems like a film noir on the outside, but all the innards have been updated to modern sensibilities. a couple things are pretty over-the-top and questionable, but overall this is a really good, enjoyable series. recommended.
Season 2 took a minute to get going but ended up being great. I really dug the vibe and tone of this show. Also, no real happy ending. Very well done, enjoyable show. Hope they keep going.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist [titles without stand-alone thread]

1507
The Last Castle - this was a blind spot in my James Gandolfini filmography so checked it out. Robert Redford, Mark Ruffalo, tons of other recognizable folks in this film from 2001. after seeing it, i understand why it got middling ratings - there are some plot holes, some wooden delivery (although some of that is intended, i assume), some pacing issues, but i did enjoy it. the ending was kind of anti-climactic, and i don't think they really want you to think about the aftermath of all of that. if you do, nothing about what they did makes any sense. regardless, it was great to see james again. i miss him, gone way too young. his delivery in this is essentially tony soprano, but as a career military guy prison warden who isn't nearly as smart as he thinks he is. redford is his infallible foe, a 3-star general incarcerated for "a mistake" that doesn't really get a lot of explanation. a very young ruffalo is well-cast as a slimy POS with obvious redemption arc. anyway, it was interesting to see, kind of fun, but just misses being "good".

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist [titles without stand-alone thread]

1508
Rabbit Hole - new Keifer Sutherland vehicle. some very au courant storylines here around globalists and data privacy, although some extreme shortcuts taken to keep them so broad as to not really be defined. it does get pretty nuts, with many, many layers upon layers. great to see charles dance as keifer's father here, he does an excellent job. while overall it's just kind of "there" for me, don't see myself watching it again, it has enough fun moments and plotlines that it's watchable. better than 24 anyway. good background noise if you want a vaguely political/technological action/thriller show.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist [titles without stand-alone thread]

1509
Somm - 2012 documentary about a handful of people prepping to take the Master Sommelier test. Absolutely fascinating and anxiety-inducing. If you like wine, you should watch this.

Inside - Willem Dafoe’s one man show about an art thief that gets trapped in a luxury penthouse when a heist goes wrong. Capital "A" "R" "T", the movie. Don't expect plot, script, answers, resolution, ideas, or anything resembling forward momentum. The idea for the film appears to be, "Hey Willem, we have this apartment set for two weeks. Here are some cameras. Do that Willem thing."

"OK. Any direction?"

"Remember when your character in that other movie said, 'How long have we been on this rock? Five weeks? Two days? Help me to recollect'?"

"Yes?"

"That line, The Movie: Extended Edition."
As fun as watching Willem Dafoe slowly lose it over the course of a film sounds, I can’t recommend this. It’s interesting, but way too many things left unanswered/unexplored/without a point, and really no ending.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist [titles without stand-alone thread]

1510
Waco: The Aftermath - well-acted, ultimately infuriating miniseries. giovanni ribisi, michael shannon lead this cast. at times, quite preachy and transparent in their agenda, but then happily provides title cards at the end that tell us nothing was done or has changed for the better, no accountability, no one ultimately paid for what happened (just in case you forgot), yet they expect things to be different. sad laughing at "thoughts & prayers".

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist [titles without stand-alone thread]

1511
The Host - a blind spot in my bong joon-ho filmography, so had to fix that. present are what has come to be BJH trademarks - spots of wild, sort of slapsticky hijinx and humor in the midst of very dark context. i really enjoyed this flick. it was kind of prescient, really, as far as how governments would handle a "biological threat". if you haven't seen it, you should. no spoilers here, just enjoy the flick. pretty dark ending too.

The Big Door Prize - i started watching it because it starred chris o'dowd, whom i dig. it's a very odd show, but something in it hooked me so i kept watching. it is funny, has moments of a family-friendly feel adjacent to more adult subject matter. so i'm not really sure who this is for. but i did watch it. the ending of s1 was pretty bizarre, not really sure where they plan on going with this, but also not sure how it gets picked up for s2. i wouldn't say it was a "good" show, but something about it made me keep watching to see where it was going. very light sci-fi maguffin drives the town's inhabitants somewhat crazy, and we see where that "arrow" takes them. shrug.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist [titles without stand-alone thread]

1512
darkness wrote: 28/12/22, 04:06:32 The Fabelmans - Meh. For supposedly being the story of Spielberg's youth, not a whole lot happens for the first half an hour. The pacing is really strange. It's like there's too much early on with little story to tell, and then when there actually is something interesting it just zips through it all. The cameo at the end was great of course, and probably worth seeing the whole film for. But you might want to fast forward some of the rest of the film.
Watched this last night. I see what you’re saying, it definitely does those things. But I understand what he was trying to do - there were clearly moments in his life that he feels made him want to do what he does, or shaped his life in such a way that helped create the writer/director he is, and he tried to hit a bunch of big ones, while also trying to give enough surrounding contextual story that those moments hit us that same way. Otherwise, what is the possible excuse for spending so much time in high school? We get it. Still, I laughed in quite a few parts of the beginning, not nearly at all - until Lynch shows up - in the second half, so there’s that. Lynch obviously steals the show and somehow manages to inject his particular brand of weird into his scene, even in a Spielberg film, like taking a wildly long time to light that cigar, the frequent tongue rolls, etc. His lines and delivery are spot on, and I was kind of surprised to see SS give him such a spot of honor in the film. I mean, he closes it out and essentially welcomes SS to the studio. I didn’t realize guys like SS gave a shit about Lynch very much. Warms the heart. Ultimately, the film was fine and well-executed, and while I’m sure it was fun to use a big budget to re-create all his childhood films, I can’t help but feel like there has to be some revisionist history there - no way he was immediately a competent director who only needed better tools and more money. Everything he filmed was amazing? OK.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist [titles without stand-alone thread]

1513
TC wrote: 21/05/23, 06:29:47 His lines and delivery are spot on, and I was kind of surprised to see SS give him such a spot of honor in the film. I mean, he closes it out and essentially welcomes SS to the studio. I didn’t realize guys like SS gave a shit about Lynch very much.
Apparently it wasn't so much SS but others who thought Lynch would be perfect for the part.
Vanity Fair wrote:Nobody’s saying that Cheetos were the only reason David Lynch said yes to appearing in The Fabelmans, but they were definitely an important part of the deal.

Steven Spielberg’s dramatized memoir—which has been nominated for seven Oscars, including best picture—features a final scene (spoiler warning) in which Gabriel LaBelle’s aspiring young filmmaker meets one of his idols: the irascible Western director John Ford. Yes, this really happened to Spielberg in real life, right down to the unexplained lipstick kisses on Ford’s face and the blunt advice he offered about finding interesting horizons for his shots. “That’s word for word," Spielberg says. “He didn’t say any less, and he didn’t say any more.”

When Spielberg and his Lincoln and West Side Story screenwriter Tony Kushner were drafting the script, they knew this moment from Spielberg’s teenage years would make the perfect ending, but they struggled with who to cast as the fearsome, aging director of The Searchers and The Grapes of Wrath.

“Tony and I were discussing a number of possibilities, and then Tony’s husband, Mark Harris, said, “‘What about David Lynch?’ So I owe it all to Mark Harris,” Spielberg told Vanity Fair at a post-screening Q&A for the movie at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Harris, a veteran journalist and author of the biography Mike Nichols, also wrote extensively about Ford in his 2015 book Five Came Back, about Hollywood’s efforts during World War II.

“You just get a picture of David Lynch and you put an eye patch on him and you’re like, That is perfection,” says The Fabelmans producer Kristie Macosko Krieger. “His look is similar. And he’s also a director and he’s a director playing a director, and he’s iconic and John Ford is iconic. It was like, This makes perfect sense for so many reasons.”

Everybody loved the notion—except for David Lynch. “Getting him to say yes was another matter,” Spielberg says.

The two directors, Spielberg and Lynch, had been in each other’s orbits for decades but didn’t know each other well. Spielberg personally made two calls to Lynch, both times getting shut down. The two bonded over their shared interest in transcendental meditation, but Lynch just wasn’t interested in putting himself onscreen for a movie he wasn’t directing himself.

Team Fabelmans was not ready to give up. Spielberg has a history of putting filmmakers onscreen in his movies, with François Truffaut as Lacombe, the French UFO scientist, in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Richard Attenborough as the billionaire impresario John Hammond in Jurassic Park. Plus, Lynch as Ford did have that meta element of a legendary director playing a legendary director. There’s a thrill of recognition when he appears and the viewers realize what they’re seeing. “That’s exactly what it is,” Macosko Krieger says. “It’s just a little added Aha! A little added, Hey, audience, you can be in on this with us?”

Instead of contacting Lynch a third time, Spielberg called a mutual friend—his Jurassic Park star and a frequent Lynch collaborator on movies from Blue Velvet to Wild at Heart and Inland Empire.

Laura Dern.

How did Dern actually convince Lynch to play the part? Here’s her side of the story…

Dern agreed to be an intermediary partly because she just wanted to see it. “When they described the opportunity to me of David and Steven collaborating to pay homage to John Ford in this way, it was like, I just wanted all of us who love movies to have this,” she tells Vanity Fair.

First, Dern called Lynch, then went to visit him in person to talk through why he was hesitant. “David took it so seriously because he would never let another filmmaker down. He’s like, ‘I don’t want to say yes if I can’t do this,’” Dern recalls. (Lynch declined to be interviewed for this story.)

She helped Lynch understand why everyone else loved the idea. “We listened to an interview of John Ford that Peter Bogdanovich had done, and he was listening to other interviews of John Ford,” she says. “It was kind of gorgeous to hear him say, ‘I think the voice…’ I’m like, ‘Of course the voice is another reason!’ They both have these American colloquialisms. They have this Americana about them.”

Finally, Lynch said yes, with one condition. “He said, ‘All I want, all I’ll ask for, is I want to have my costume two weeks before I shoot because I’m going to wear it every day,” Spielberg says.

Lynch, now 77, has been very conscientious about COVID, so meeting him in person wasn’t an option until the day of shooting. “He did not want to come in to do a costume fitting,” Macosko Krieger says. “So, they sent all of his measurements, and Mark Bridges, our costume designer, put together his costume and dropped it in a paper bag on his front door.” Lynch tried it on and communicated back that the sleeves needed adjustment.

“Somebody from Mark Bridge’s office picked it up, took it back, fixed the arms, and sent it back to David Lynch, who is going to become John Ford,” Macosko Krieger says. “And then David Lynch brought his costume to set on the day we shot his scene.”

Dern says living with the costume was Lynch’s way of getting into Ford’s skin. She says he actually did wear it every day. “He worked in it. He painted in it,” she says, saying it reminded her how “meticulous” Lynch is. “Everything matters to David, like everything matters to Steven. Such different filmmakers, but they care…. David cares about every frame. He cares about the clothes being real.”

Maybe too real. “He shows up on the set, and it’s filthy. It’s filthy and it’s wrinkled!” Spielberg says with amusement. “And you can really see the wrinkles where he was sitting on chairs. He really wore it nonstop for two weeks.” A moment later, he adds, “He didn’t sleep in it, I don’t think.”

They filmed the sequence where Sammy Fabelman meets his hero at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles, which dates back to 1894 and still has offices that look appropriately authentic.

The crew was reduced to only essential workers. Even the producer kept her distance. “I never met David Lynch, even on set the day he worked because we were trying to keep the whole thing very quiet and secretive. We were trying to not let it get out,” Macosko Krieger says. “And he didn’t want to be around so many people because of COVID. I think that that was scary to him, as it was scary to all of us. Who wants to give David Lynch COVID? Not me.”

Lynch had made one other stipulation as part of his agreement to be in the movie. “He wanted Cheetos in his dressing room,” Kushner says.

This part was easy. “We were like, ‘Absolutely! He can have as many Cheetos as he wants!’ Macosko Krieger says. “And we just put that in his trailer.”

“Okay, this is why we love David Lynch,” Dern exclaims when she hears about this part of the deal. “David Lynch is the American cinema hero. By the way, I think John Ford might have been the only other filmmaker, if he lived in this moment, who might’ve asked for the Cheetos.”

Filming the scene happened in one shift, not even long enough to finish the Cheetos. “At the end of the day, when he left, there was still a lot left in the bag,” Kushner says. “And he very politely said, ‘Can I take these home with me?’”

They said yes to his request.

Lynch is known for being deliberately perplexing at times, but Dern says this represents a genuine part of his personality. “Only David would ask if he could take the rest of the bag—only him—because there’s no presumption about David,” she says. “It’s all humility. And he makes art purely to make art because he has to, because he needs to.”

And sometimes, in the process, he gets the munchies.
Just cut them up like regular chickens

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist

1515
TC wrote: 11/08/21, 13:15:54 100 Foot Wave - four episodes into an unknown quantity of this docuseries. it's absolutely fascinating. i have lightly followed the actions of garrett mcnamara over the years but this goes real deep. it's terrifying to understand the realities of what these big wave surfers do, and how there really was nothing in place to do so before this guy built it, let alone creating a surfing mecca from nothing. highly recommended.
finished season 2 last night. two very brief seasons, each clocking in at 6 episodes. wish there were more. i could watch this every day. it's fascinating. the same group of folks return for another season of surfing Nazare. actually, probably two seasons, as this follows through covid to last year. lots of personal drama along with unbelievable surfing footage. such a great show. i love it.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist [titles without stand-alone thread]

1516
The Last Thing He Told Me - Jennifer Garner and Jamie Lannister star in this series. Drama, mystery abound. It's only seven episodes, apparently based on a book. If you can get past Garner's constant partially open mouth gaping, there are some interesting beats here, but it's wildly predictable and features, unabashedly, characters making the most insane, stupid decisions witnessed on TV. The epilogue is also just plain mean. Somehow, it's performing better than fantastic shows like Slow Horses, which is sad. Anyway, can't recommend this show. It's simply annoying and has been done better countless times before.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist [titles without stand-alone thread]

1517
The Fountainhead - Finished reading the novel for the first time and was extremely curious how late ‘40s Hollywood could have possibly adapted the source material, let alone do so in under 2 hours. As an adaptation, this is horrendous. 95% of the source material is missing, resulting in decisions and actions of characters that make no sense given the lack of context or motive. The changes made in the 5% that remains belies the fact that those behind this film completely missed the point of the book. This is a silly film. The book was made for long-format storytelling. May we one day be graced with such a faithful adaptation. I heard that not too long ago, Snyder wanted to do it, and had a treatment done, but it was decided that they didn’t want to do it “in the current political climate”. Given what it says about the media, probably a good idea in the interest of self-preservation. Maybe someone will have the balls to make this properly one day, but this isn’t it.

Re: Recent movie playlist

1519
TC wrote: 28/07/20, 16:11:13
TC wrote: second season was great. holy fuck that ending. some very clever foreshadowing in that episode too. can't wait for S3. probably going to re-watch S1 now that i've seen where this goes just to see how they built the characters again. recommended show.
not surprised at all every major cast member got an emmy nom.
well, season 4 has put a bow on the series. what a powerhouse this show was. was legitimately surprised that
they killed logan in episode 3!! that was a huge shocker

after that, i think everything played out like it pretty much had to play out.
none of those kids deserved to inherit the empire. granted, neither did tom, but that was a pretty hilarious spin on things that i also didn't see coming.

if you didn't watch succession, you should. high-stakes, high-stress show with lots of very dark humor. would not be surprised to see one or more spin-offs down the road. it was just too good to drop. but hey, go out on top i guess.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist

1520
O-dot wrote: 13/06/22, 08:33:00
TC wrote: 13/06/22, 07:01:17 Barry - season 3 finally arrived, and just ended last night. another great season. seems like, with that ending, the show may be over. haven't heard if it got renewed, but if not, would be a natural if unsatisfying ending. still, great season full of laughs and action. hader rules.
S4 is on the way.
another 4-and-done show just ended. jesus that was a fucking crazy season. hader really went for it. and again, another show that pretty much had to end the way it did, wild as it was. how else could it have ended that felt true to the show? a really, really great show that accomplished high drama, high comedy, and high action in 30-ish minute episodes consistently over four seasons. fucking fantastic. well done to all involved. granted, s4 was much darker than prior seasons as it plowed to the very grim ending, but still had comedy elements in there. i will miss these characters.