Well, their stocks went down by 30% and they were under criminal investigation, so that denial at the end is more like a feeble attempt at damage control than an actual rewrite of history. The movie ends on a pretty optimistic note in that regard.
Muz- I really haven't been following any corporate behavior, and if they really do act this silly in real life then I guess that pretty much resolves most of my nitpicks
I think I initially watched The Battle of Algiers because of its soundtrack, or something like that. Turned out the movie itself was great, too.
I remember watching Caché and not understanding it at all, yet enjoying it quite tremendously. I love Haneké and the movie is shot so beautifully. I can't enough of long shots and that movie has one that truly truly makes an impact (you know which one if you've seen it). He reminds me of Tarkovsky in a way.
I need to rewatch the movie really.
Watched Wonder Boys at the weekend, very funny movie with a bunch of rounded performances by some excellent actors.
So I'm reading a thread on another forum which I frequent where people are saying that MacGruber, a spin-off film of a fucking unfunny Saturday Night Live skit, is superior to the Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant coming of age drama, Cemetery Junction. :Picard: Reading such posts makes me really depressed.
I love that one, not least because it's got Michael Douglas in an entirely atypical role. Gotta love the image of him standing on the front porch in his fuzzy pink dressing gown.Originally Posted by Scots Taffer
Speaking of Michael Douglas I watched Solitary Man the other night. It's more of your typical Douglas character, the slick lothario who's really lost, but he's very good in it, even if the film itself is a little conventional and too on-the-nose with some of the dialogue.
I wouldn't call it High Art, and I doubt it enriches me in any meaningful way, but I've always loved Malcolm in the Middle. I proclaim that love without any shame whatsoever. So while the rest of you are doing things worthwhile, I'm laughing my ass off at some of the finest dumb comedy to be found this side of the 50's. A show that somehow manages to be so sweet and funny, and yet simultaneously so mean spirited is a rare thing indeed.
And since it's been roughly 5 years since I've watched the show beyond the occasionally caught rerun, I figured it's about time I gave it another run. I have to say, after spending the last month going through a Breaking Bad recap, it's surreal watching Hal.
Oh, and here's a link to the greatest clip of all time
Mr. Plinkett recommended the new Star Trek to me, but it was, eh. Good for one time I guess.
I've only watched crap recently, so you don't want to know. I'm considering buying the first seasons of Breaking Bad, though. Heard it's good, but I'm easily disappointed.
Breaking Bad is FUCKING great
It's in my Netflix queue.
Just watched Never Cry Wolf (1983). Gorgeous to watch. Simple but powerful story. No heavy drama or yelling. Does anyone make movies like this anymore?
A movie called Lovely Bones was on last night.
It's a story about molested young girls all murdered by the same guy comforting each other in purgatory, with the protagonist ghost-girl trying to make a connection to her father, Marky Mark Wahlberg, to not give up looking for her murderer by stoking his suspicions about the weirdo across the street with ghostly flutters & reflections.
Most of the tone of the movie has this weird combination of "sweet" against the gruesome backdrop of the murder ... the girl's spirit can be in a field of flowers and making this special connection with her father in one scene while her body is being chopped up into little pieces and thrown into a safe at the same time.
So I didn't really get into it. It was sort of hard not to see it basically pandering to the prurient vicarious thrill of seeing all the grisly details play out, with a limp "sweet" story tacked on to give it the semblance of being a respectable movie... Maybe every "real crime" movie has that element ... But movies like Silence of the Lambs, Kiss the Girls, & Se7en managed to still have a good thriller story to go with it, and this movie didn't. Or I guess: "thriller + disturbing real crime" can work but "sweet + disturbing real crime", not so much, not for me at least.
An Idiot Abroad
I've listened to Ricky Gervais, Steve Merchant and Karl Pilkington since their earliest XFM days, so this is just priceless. A whole television show dedicated to Karl. I've so far watched the one where he visits China and he's not impressed by the place at all, especially the cuisine. I'm made up. There should be some clips on youtube "if you can't get Sky 1." The visit to the Shaolin kung-fu school is impressive on its own merits, nevermind Karl's presence
ok here I found the preview show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUTH1coLIWE
Last edited by Vernon; 29th Sep 2010 at 06:50.
I've started re-watching season 6 of Lost - it's the first viewing for my girlfriend.
Knowing what the sideways universe is about, I find myself pretty annoyed with the series and its writers. My big problem with the sideways storyline is that it's basically unconnected to the island storyline - you could tell that same story with any group of people in any series. Essentially, the sideways universe doesn't tell us anything about the island or the characters' experiences over the last five years.
And watching the S1-5 summary, I am doubly annoyed by the writers' insistence that "it's all about the characters." More than almost any other series I've watched over the last few years, Lost was driven by plot questions: What are the numbers? What is the hatch? Who are the Others? Who is Jacob? Who's this dude in black? What does it mean that Jacob's been killed? Etc. etc. Yes, the characters matter, but they didn't drive the series. They didn't get people discussing the last episode over the water cooler half as much as the latest mystery did.
Nearing the end of s2 of Northern Exposure, I still can't believe that a show at that stage of its infancy had the balls to smash the fourth wall as thoroughly as it did in the "Cold War" episode with Nikolai. Hilarious.
Also nearing end of s1 of Mad Men, a show I'm struggling with to be honest. Yes, it's smooth and kitschy in its "hey it's the 60s, there's sexism, booze and smoking at work, rampant cheating and poetry loving beatniks who hate THE MAN" which provides a certain level of entertainment value, but that is fairly static and doesn't change much (at least throughout the 10 eps I've seen). Also, there's Don, who at first seems like a walking cliché until they give him a "mysterious past" (lol, not clichéd at all!) when really the women are the more interesting side, Peggy is hard to read but her arc seems obvious at this stage to be the most striking and will provide much of social commentary regarding the changing role of women from a sexual and professional standpoint. I'm not so taken with Betty's character, though the tremors and disquiet are a nice metaphor for a similar change in female attitudes. Just when I think I love this show and it hits a high note, it rests on its laurels again with breezy (empty) episodes that are nothing but 60s charm. Ridiculously well produced 60s charm, but charm alone nonetheless. (I want Don's tailor... and his chiselled features)
On the plane to and from Singapore I watched:
- The A-Team: utterly stupid but reasonable way to pass 2 hours in a confined space.
- Greenberg: Baumbach brings the same naturalistic tendencies from Squid and Whale to this story of a neuroses laden asshole, unfortunately it just isn't as good a story, the performances (other than Stillers) are kind of crap and I often wondered when anything worthwhile was going to happen.
And another that I'll start a thread about.
Agreed.
It's so annoying when angsty bore-feasts, such as this one, and ridiculous pieces of shit, like the A-Team, manage to be made when masterful filmmakers like Gilliam can't even scrape together enough money to make a film that people are actually anxious to see.
And I'm not sure how I feel about a 3D version of Time Bandits.
Last edited by Queue; 29th Sep 2010 at 09:48.
Well this clip made BBC news. An announcer on a "top model" show announced the wrong winner then retracted, all on live TV. Sort of reinforces the farcical nature of this kind of entertainment
THANKS TO FOXTEL AND ALL THE OTHER PEOPLE I'VE BEEN TOLD TO THANKS.
OMFG
anyway it's lovely cringeworthy stuff. enjoy
And next you're gonna tell me American Idol is fixed.
Watching Breaking Bad with my wife (her first time). Still just as compelling as the first time and Aaron Paul is a fucking genius.
I just finished watching Twin Peaks a few days ago. The first season and first half of the second one are awesome(and not as crazy as I expected), but as soon as they solve the main mystery the show pretty much turns to shit. It only picks up at the final episode, which was good and probably MORE crazy than I expected
I just finished watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine again. It's striking how close it is to Babylon 5, especially with its multi-season story arc. It is the only Star Trek series to have an ongoing story, and that keeps it from going stale over the course of the show. I have to say it's probably my favorite of the Trek shows, simply because the writers could do much more than with the other everything-is-normal-at-the-end-of-the-episode Treks.
It's also much darker, again like Babylon 5. One character loses a leg and has to deal with PTSD, another gets killed off, human fascism runs rampant, and the heroes have to be manipulative bastards to win the war. Pretty different.
Been trying to finish off X-Files S5/Millennium S2. All told I have about 3-4 episodes each before I can call it a year.
X-Files S5 hasn't really been impressing me that much, unfortunately. A few good episodes but nothing really awesome. I wasn't sure what to make of Millennium S2 at first, but it's been pretty much gravy since 'The Curse of Frank Black.' The late-season two-parter was pretty solid, too, and I'm eager to see how all this turns out.
YES
I've been watching this for the past few months, I'm at Season 5 now, and apart from a handful of mediocre episodes (amazingly few), and a bit of 90s-syndrome, the writing is unbelievably, consistently great. If television ever aspired to literature, I don't think it got much closer than this.
And what I love is that even though the show has no reservations about making blatant references to authors or artists or philosophers or obscure music, the value of its stories exists independently of those references. What I mean is, it's easy to mistake Chris' speeches as the show's writers flaunting their reading lists (maybe that wouldn't be exactly inaccurate), but when the quality of Northern Exposure's writing rivals much of what it references, who can point fingers?
Last edited by Aja; 30th Sep 2010 at 04:19.
I'm not a big fan of Millennium - it often felt to me like it was trying too hard to be bleak and to say something relevant about the ills of modern society through the lens of Eeeeevil. Having said that, though, I very much appreciated the streak of morbid humour it developed especially during its second season.
I've easily watched three or four seasons worth of episodes of Northern Exposure scattered through the years, but this is the first time I've sat down and watched them consecutively, and had the whole series to boot. I'm taking a break after s2 as the kitschy tone is plenty of fun, but I don't want to get fatigued on it. Plus the later series are quite inflated in comparison to s1/s2's brevity.
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