What show are you watching now?

Just started watching The Dark Crystal on Netflix tonight. Midway through ep. 2, so no impressions yet.

Also the latest season of Sneaky Pete on Prime. That show is awesome, the writing well done, and Giovanni Ribisi was well cast.

Noted that Carnival Row is released on Prime (fantasy live-action with Orlando Bloom); we'll probably get to that later this upcoming week.

 

The Dark Crystal was one of the few 80s movies that disturbed me as a kid. I caught some of the first netflix episode and it was a bit hard at first to slip back into the puppetry of a bygone era, but I can see the shared DNA with the film.

Netflix's She's Gotta Have It is pretty good so far. Been a long time since I've seen Lee's original, and the switch from black and white to color is interesting. I almost wish he'd stuck with the original monochrome palette, which would've been refreshing in this day and age. But people hate black and white, so whatever.

 

I love black & white. Absolutely love it. In the hands of a good cinematographer, B&W makes visual elegance & magic. Every time an old black & white film comes on my plasma screen, my eyes are instantly soothed and drawn in. Go back and watch anything Val Lewton produced (CAT PEOPLE: I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE) and see this for yourself.

Years ago I did a lot of black & white photography, also plenty of color. When I shot in color, I tried for a heightened, POV version of reality (we see in color). But when I shot in black & white, I was free to imagine a smoother, shadowed, mysterious version of the world...

 

Has anyone caught Jordan Peele's new take on the Twilight Zone?
It's unfortunately paywalled behind a CBS app, but I sat through a few of of these this weekend and they are worthwhile. I'm not directly familiar with the original outside of its importance as a cultural artifact, but what I saw effectively balanced dread against an almost tongue-in-cheek approach to horror or absurdity, reminiscent of the better X-Files episodes I've seen. I don't have anything particularly insightful to say about the vignettes themselves, but for someone who couldn't handle the relentless bleakness of Black Mirror or The Handmade's Tale this was a refreshing way to explore some disturbing content without feeling like I needed to take a shower.

 

I've only seen the first episode because it was free on youtube. I'm not paying for yet another f'ing subscription service. Anyway I liked it. Seemed to captured the essence of the Serling originals, which I was skeptical about intially. There is a specific tone and visual style the original nailed that is hard to replicate.

 

i just watched episode 1 of Dark Crystal yesterday. i loove the designs and the worldbuilding so far.

 

Just finished Mindhunter Season 2.

First season great. Second season also good, but not on the same level. My opinion at least.

 

I feel S2 was more sophisticated. They took an extra year because they wanted to get the scripts just right. It really showed.

 

It was more refined. I think that’s part of why I preferred the first season. I felt it was a little more visceral. We’re all really discovering the world along with characters. It grabbed me a little less once it settled into the second season.

That said. Phenomenal show all round. Definitely firing on all cylinders.

 

A couple weeks ago a friend sat me down & persuaded me me to watch Episode 1 of "Santa Clara Diet" (a show I'd been avoiding for various reasons). Surprise: it was very funny, not at all what I expected.

Kind of thrilling to watch 2 real professionals, Timothy Olyphant & Drew Barrymore, commit to this unlikely material so wholeheartedly. They don't care how silly they might look or how much fans of their previous films will go for this odd story--they just go for it. It's the old truism: comedy happens when participants react to deranged events seriously.

I laughed out loud repeatedly.

No idea if the rest of the episodes will equal the 1st, but I'm going to find out soon...

 

Slowly working my way through MINDHUNTER Season-1. It's really growing on me. I see why everybody recommends it. The acting is really superb: more like a series of 1 hr films than anything else. And the writing is top-shelf.

The scenes in prison with Ed Kemper have a cumulative creepiness that's unforgettable--a testament to depth of writing & vision of where this story is going.

There are so many shows about law enforcement characters; I think TRUE DETECTIVE (1st season) & MINDHUNTER occupy a category-of-one.

I know others would add THE WIRE, but I never really saw that one. I'm also tempted to add JUSTIFIED, but that show had a larger focus--the perversity of mankind & the folly of criminality, courtesy of the great Elmore Leonard.

 

I think The Wire was superlative for its scope and its realism. If you get in a time machine to when the show premiered there had never been anything like it. I grew in Washington DC through more or less the same time period the show covers and it is just SPOT ON.

I think some of the film making style and quality feel a bit dated now, especially compared to how glossy TV is now. I cant really think of any other shows that approach the level of realism that The Wire does. People just weren't telling stories like that. It was, and still is, ground breaking.

But im also a massive fan boy!

 

Anyone into The Boys? Damn, that one was entertaining and fresh!

 

"The Office" US version, "Malcolm In The Middle" is on loop. Both keep me sane and give me laugh to survive tough day.
In between I watched Chernobyl, True detective S03 and Mindhunter ,both season in last few weeks.

 

Still curious about Too Old To Die Young which looks gorgeous. But I'm not the biggest Nicholas Winding Refn fan. I love his visuals, but he often loses the plot. Literally.

 

Damn, I'd love to try this one, but don't have Prime. The only one of his previous works I saw was DRIVE. That movie really had something: subliminal tension, very little dialogue, persistent quasi dream imagery. It reminded me just a bit of David Lynch, and I mean that as a compliment.

Not all narrative is linear or even understandable in the conventional sense. What we know as "plot" is just one plane of reality experienced by fictional characters (and us, as viewers). I really like it when writers & directors try to go deeper, hinting at the unknowable psyches involved.

 

Was recently captivated by this. An excellent, compact adaptation of the Hilary Mantel novels Wolf Hall and Bringing Up the Bodies, beautifully acted and sumptuously shot.

Damien Lewis and Mark Rylance are masters, and their chemistry makes for convincing drama. Can't recommend this enough.

 

Believe me, I don't mind ambiguous narratives and digressions. Some of my favorite films do this. But it's a tightrope act and doing it doesn't necessarily mean it will work. Other filmmakers try and do what Lynch and Malick pull off effortlessly, and they fail miserably... because it's not just about being vague and oblique, it's about having a very solid foundation for the world you are building. Refn usually comes across as too pretentious to me. His world building doesn't feel genuine or solid to me like Lynch and Malick. And he seems too preoccupied with impressing people with "stunning imagery" and "deep meaning" rather than letting these things organically emerge from some kind of genuine inner life. I ran into a few David Lynch imitators in film school and they had the same problem. Trying to be "weird" without having the vibrant inner life to make that interesting.

 

You went to film school? Where?

I'd have to rewatch DRIVE to see to what degree I agree with your well-articulated comments about this director. Actually, I'd have to see more of his work than just DRIVE to suss that out...

Yeah, trying for "weird" or "surreal" in surface ways is folly. There's a huge difference between "facile" and genuine "facility" in cinema. With directors like Lynch, "weird" begins with a fully mapped out scenario for the all action & dialogue in the plot; then encompasses strategic disruptions to reality caused by breakthroughs of the psyche--of certain characters, of Lynch himself, or all the above.

Lynch is not singular in this regard. I remember a wonderful film by Peter Weir, THE LAST WAVE, where the shared psychic landscape of aboriginal people literally emerges (in the form of terrifying visions of apolocalypse) amidst the linear & deeply myopic consciousness of post-colonial white Australians.

Anyone who's seen films by Jean Cocteau (BEAUTY AND THE BEAST; ORPHEUS) and Ingmar Bergman (especially HOUR OF THE WOLF & PERSONNA) knows the shocking & disruptive emergence of the subconscious in these plots. Indeed, those moments become pivot points, predestining the "reality" characters will move through in these films.

I haven't seen many of Malick's films, but the ones I did see hinted at a somewhat different method: ravishingly beautiful, mesmerizing cinematography, deliberate action, and spare dialogue, all hinting at submerged feelings & thoughts. A different flavor of visual poetry.

 

Drive is Refn's most conventional film by far so isn't a great example of what I'm talking about. Only God Forgives takes that prize by a wide wargin.

Malick and Lynch are similar in that they use visual allegory to propel the narrative, which is less about plot and more about feeling. Texture. Cinematic protoplasm.