Film and Episodic Content Discussion Thread

Discussion in 'Random Thoughts' started by purr1n, Jan 8, 2020.

  1. Philimon

    Philimon Friend

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    Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
    - rating: Difficult to say, I'd guess 3/4 if I watched this in 1948. For today it's more of novelty and nostalgia though Costello is still amusing.

    I've not seen a lot of old black and white films, but ime Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein (ABMF) has that era's common camera perspective as if the movie was a stage play. I don't remember Citizen Kane (1941) well enough to compare cinematography but I do remember well enough Rashoman (1951), and in that context ABMF looks like a B-movie in comparison which is fine because I think that's all ABMF aspired to as a comedy. Don't know if ABMF was meant at all to be scary.

    Costello is like a deeply closeted Nathan Lane. Im guessing Costello was hugely influential on many people.
    Bela Lugosi and Lenore Aubert seem like good actors.
    [​IMG]

    IMDB page with trailer. The Internet Archive movie stream is actually good quality for ipad viewing and remastered for better picture.
     
    Last edited: Feb 14, 2023
  2. Biodegraded

    Biodegraded Friend

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    Riffing off @Philimon 's love of the classics and acknowledging the passing of Raquel Welch, we remember this ground-breaker from 1966 - special effects and dialogue as never before:



    Maybe it's insensitive to mention, but I can't help wondering if any consequent resurgence of interest in this film might also lead to the renewed popularity of non-vegan swimwear...

    [​IMG]
     
  3. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

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    Never saw this film...or many other of her films.

    Yesterday I found myself wondering what it must have been like to be Raquel Welch back in her day: famous as all hell, but also roundly dismissed as a piece of ass, mere set dressing for films, someone who could barely act, but it didn't matter as long as some skin was showing. It must not have been very pleasant.
     
  4. caute

    caute Lana Del Gayer than you

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    if any of you guys are into foreign miniseries that are like long movies (Dekalog, Fanny and Alexander), Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) is best-in-class—along with the other two. Based on the novel of the same name by Alfred Döblin, and directed by the frenetic, über prolific and ultimately tragic German auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder (no relation to the actor Michael Fassbender).

    It follows one naively good-natured, yet capable of explosive violence everyman Franz Biberkopf ("Beaver Head" in German), in 1920s Berlin—just before the rise of National Socialism—as he is released from prison for the murder of his prostitute-cum-girlfriend-cum-sugar momma (apologies) and his path toward uncertain redemption, while the criminal underbelly of the wild city which he is trying to stay away from beckons with a painful siren call, putting his recidivism in peril at the crux of every tough decision he's forced to make in this excellent 14-part miniseries.

    Germans at the time didn't know what to make of this now underrated classic of BRD (Federal Republic of Germany in its native acronym, or colloquially, just "West Germany") cinema at the time, with its sepia-brown toned 16mm cinematography, long run time, fluid moral ambiguity, and what one reviewer called a shining example of Fassbinder's "misanthropic humanism".

    Old trailers really suck, especially Euro ones, but you can catch a short scene of it on the Criterion website for it.

    Paging @ColtMrFire and @zottel, if they have seen and can give their thumbs up, too.
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2023
  5. zottel

    zottel Friend

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    I’ve heard high praise about it among friends, but I’m not much of a movie watcher myself and haven’t seen it.
     
  6. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

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    Never saw BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ. In the early '80s foreign TV content like this was pretty much unavailable in the U.S. unless someone arranged to screen it in theaters.

    I did see 3 of Fassbinder's 970s films: THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT; ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL; and THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN. I liked them all..These weren't exactly casual entertainments. Fassinder was a dead-serious writer and director..He and Werner Herzog pretty much owned West German cinema at the time, though it wasn't as vibrant overall as in some other European countries.

    I never could quite pin down Fassbinder's style. He favored warm-toned, nearly brown color schemes. His themes were all over the place, focusing mostly on tormented relationships, Germany's sociopolitical history and mistreatment (or isolation) of minority groups of all kinds. There was anger in some of his films, but also great mercy for troubled people.

    In retrospect I find parallels between Fassbinder and Spanish director, Pedro Almodovar: both were gay & worked within a system that didn't exactly welcome them (not at first); both began in the theater; both were students of the great melodramatic films of Douglas Sirk; and both consistently displayed deep affinity for the lives & inner lives of women, often focusing on women in starring roles.
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2023
  7. caute

    caute Lana Del Gayer than you

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    NEVER had once made that connection, but it's so obvious it can't be unseen now! You are absolutely right, they share more than elective affinities, but a more essential similarity that certainly shows up on screen.

    Oh and btw, you should finish the BRD Trilogy, which starts with Maria, then goes Lola and Veronika Voss (talk about the inner lives of women, this one will kill you, as will The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant). They together represent a high water mark in West German cinema. His other tv series, Eight Hours Don't Make A Day is also really good.

    I think Richard Linklater, who's a huge fan, said in an interview once he either prefers early Fassbinder or middle Fassbinder, not the megastar of Ali and Alexanderplatz fame, but the scrappy young filmmaker who made a film which only be reliably translated as "Cat Porker" about a Greek immigrant and the troubles he faces integrating in German society (Katzelmacher is also used as a jab against Mediterranean workers at the time) and the forgotten Fassbinder years, the one in which he made Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven.
     
  8. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

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    I absolutely should finish the trilogy.

    It must be said about Fassbinder that no one else in central europe was making films about brown-skinned immigrants. Much like the inner lives of women, that was something most people pretended doesn't exist. The fact that he featured these topics showed his dissident nature and penchant for social commentary.
     
  9. caute

    caute Lana Del Gayer than you

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    He was also a radical at heart, I think that's where his politics came from wrt to his films, and wears it on his sleeve in the semi-fictional, semi-documentarian omnibus film in which he plays himself, Deutschland im Herbst, wherein he shows sympathy for the RAF or as they're more commonly known in the West, the Baader-Meinhof Group.
     
  10. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

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    You know a shitload about this man's films!

    By any chance does "The Deep South" = Bavaria?
     
  11. caute

    caute Lana Del Gayer than you

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    Haha thank you, just a film lover, and no, I don't actually even live in the Deep South (US), more like the Southwest, but I always liked the sound of the "Deep South" (Confederate senses of this term be damned to hell), reminds me of the old, great Delta blues players and the saudade of what-could-have-been of post-war Radical Reconstruction.

    I'm a native of the South, and keep finding myself back here, but I identify as an East Coaster lol. I lived in Brooklyn for a time in my mid-20s, Philly is next on my list of places to dream of living.
     
  12. Old Groucho

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    Started watching the South Korean series, Stranger which you highly recommended. Watched the first two episodes last night. It is indeed excellent. A lot of plot twists in the first two episodes alone. I also like how the viewer discovers little things eventually like when you read a good fiction book. Sometimes the reader doesn’t fully understand what he just read or what it meant until further down the story. Same with this series. For example, we learn why the camera in the parked taxi caught the TV repairman on video & why the taxi/ car is always parked there. The taxi driver had his licence suspended for drunk driving but he was also set up so that the car and the camera in the car would be there to record the main and more important set up. I won’t say anymore in case someone who wants to watch the series is reading this. The acting is first class also. Great recommendation on your part Pharmaboy, much appreciated.
     
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    Last edited: Feb 18, 2023
  13. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

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    This gets an "epic" rating because you're the first person who actually watched STRANGER after I recommended it. Glad you're trying it & like it.

    Here's a bizarre factoid: both lead actors, Cho Seung-Woo (prosecutor) and Bae Doona (policewoman) are better known for their juvenile/"fun" performances than for serious adult dramas like this. He often played a teenager or 20-something fun seeker, usually with a charming smile on his face (I think he smiles 3 times in 3 seasons here); and she was an acclaimed fashion model known for ingenue TV and film roles. I was surprised to learn this, since each actor is lights-out in this show's life & death law enforcement roles.

    For months after finishing the first season of this show, I kept trying this or that S. Korean show, hoping lighting would strike twice, but it never did. STRANGER is a one-off. I've never seen anything else of its quality from Korean TV, though doubtless that says more about my limited access than anything else...
     
  14. roughroad

    roughroad formerly mephisto56

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    Thank you also, @Pharmaboy for recommending STRANGER. I'm 12 episodes into season 1 and it is indeed excellent. I watch 2 episodes per night (the episodes are LONG!). After I get through both seasons of STRANGER, I have my eye on FAUDA.
     
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  15. caute

    caute Lana Del Gayer than you

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    Don't know if anyone's posted about this or not yet, but I am currently watching The Chosen season 3! My partner promiscuously watched ahead of me, and spilled the beans that, uh, [SPOILER] the full story isn't quite finished by the end of the season in S03E08, so hopefully season 4 gets fully crowd-funded! (The first three seasons were entirely funded by small donations, and they are currently taking donations.) The show can be seen via the free app, Angel Studios, and casted to your tv, or downloadable via Apple TV, Fire TV and others, or you can even watch it directly from the app on your laptop.

    It's a tremendous show, even if you're not into all that, it's truly great television graded on secular criteria alone. It's very hard to make Christian-themed TV and movies that aren't objectively awful—The Chosen turns the schlocky, heavy-handed, just generally bad Christian media trope entirely on its head.

    Instead of focusing on the most gruesome aspects of Jesus' life, like the bloodsporty The Passion of the Christ, or reading political subtext into scripture and using the stylization of the day (Italian neorealism) like in Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew (yes, that Pasolini, the atheist, Marxist, openly gay iconoclast who also directed Salò), The Chosen instead focuses on the life of Jesus as seen through the eyes of the twelve apostles.

    [SPOILER] His first appearance in the show in season 1 is when when he begins his ministry as an adult, there is no nativity scene, no origin story: Jesus just shows up seemingly out of nowhere—which is a refreshing change of pace, and the perspective shift is a radical break with traditional Christian storytelling. Here we have Christ who laughs, dances, cracks jokes, even bounces ideas off disciples for the imagery order the Sermon on the Mount, one that is radically human, as well as categorically divine.

    I'm sure this show of an imagining of a certain type of Christ alone has changed at least a few people's minds on who Jesus really was, even though we can never know for sure, it adds some imagined (and for some people, myself included) much needed context to the tone of his words, the emotional valence of his personality, and the way in which he moved through the his world, how he not only performed miracles, yes, but also how he treated everyday ordinary people around him and the tenderness in his voice, his wry smile when under pressure from the authorities who meant to kill him or trap him in his words, and finally his radicality in action and not just in quotes.

    Caution: if you are a Christian and you haven't yet seen this series, note that this is just one person's—director Dallas Jenkins's—vision of a very particular kind of Christ, one of many, many visions, ideals and beliefs, a story that is embellished with details not found in scripture, as well as has a single line that was worded in a way in season 3 that some Catholics had problems with.

    So, as with the rest of my recs and impressions, grains of salt, grains of salt—this is just entertainment after all, it's not meant to be spiritual edification. Jenkins said he simply wanted to make a show about Jesus that was as bingeable as Game of Thrones, and in that regard, I wholeheartedly believe The Chosen is a smashing success.

    If you don't believe me, RT pegs the series at 100/98. It's a good show, Brent.
     
    Last edited: Feb 19, 2023
  16. Pharmaboy

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    Wow...glad to find another fan of STRANGER. I wish I could wipe my memory of that entire series, just so I could see it all over again.

    Not sure I could explain why, but I couldn't get into FAUDA. Regardless, Lior Raz is a fascinating actor. I watched all episodes of his most recent series, HIT & RUN. Not perfect but enjoyable mainly because of him. That's one of the solid shows Netflix declined to renew, which really irks me (the worst example of it is ARCHIVE81...insane not to renew that one).
     
  17. ColtMrFire

    ColtMrFire Writes better fan fics than you

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    Started watching Hulu's "The First" about the first manned mission to Mars, starring Sean Penn and I really enjoyed the first few episodes. It was a show more about the procedural aspects of how you get to Mars, the problems the crew faces in both political and social aspects.

    But very soon the show devolved into a pointless character drama about characters and situations I didn't give a shit about. Mostly devoted to Penn's annoying, junkie recovering daughter and his dead troubled wife. And there is the usual crybaby victimhood narrative about the gay, black female mission commander who feels racism and homophobia is stopping her from getting respect, yada yada, like it's still 1956. I rolled my eyes but kept watching because the acting was very good and the drama behind the mission was still interesting.

    I felt the show got too bogged down in the drama and didn't show enough mission building and technical detail... I mean in a show about going to Mars, you'd think they'd actually show them trying to get to Mars, but it's mostly pointless side narratives about people and their problems outside of work. And when there are technical scenes, you have no idea what they're actually taking about and why it's important. Star Trek always did a good job of being extremely technical while still getting across exactly what the problem was and why it needed to be corrected... this show failed to provide that balance. There is even a scene where the head of the agency or whatever gets an idea of how to fix something, but I had no idea what it was that needed fixing and why. Technical jargon without the stakes.

    I'd say it was 10% trying to get to Mars and 90% soap opera.

    I stopped at episode 5, an ENTIRE EPISODE devoted to a pointless flashback about the daughter and mother, giving us information we already knew, which is a big storytelling no-no and still getting me no closer to understanding specifics about the actual mission at hand. They devoted almost an entire hour to this bullshit in a show about GOING TO MARS.

    As you can tell, none of this had anything to do with going to Mars, and it's no wonder it failed to capture viewers and was cancelled after one season. Shame, because I felt they started on the right track but bad storytelling got them bogged down into pointless nonsense.
     
  18. rott

    rott Secretly hates other millenials - Friend

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    Shame about Mindhunter not getting a third season (reportedly too expensive). One of the better Netflix productions.
     
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  19. Pharmaboy

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    A heads-up to Prime subscribers: an adaptation of Benchley Little's THE CONSULTANT will start streaming on 2/24th, this Friday. It stars Christopher Waitz, who seems incapable of doing bad acting in any role. I see him as representing our latter day James Mason, in spirit and tone if not appearance.

    If you're not familiar with Benchley Little, he's a talented writer of subtle horror fiction rooted in everyday life things we pretty much stop seeing or thinking about because they're ubiquitous (ie, a superstore; an insurance salesman; a consultant). In most of his books, things get mighty dark and bloody fairly soon. I regard his writing as a step down from Stephen King (but then most horror writers are).

    I'll be watching this one & hoping it's not a streaming pooch (too many new productions are, unfortunately).
     
    Last edited: Feb 22, 2023
  20. Jinxy245

    Jinxy245 Vegan Puss

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    Guessing you mean Christoph Waltz, but this does look good....
     

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