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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Tuesday, April 30, 2019 - 12:41 am:   

Avengers Endgame. I mention it because it begins so well, with such an evocation of a sad, quiet world it gave me pause for thought. I've never seen a film about a depleted population done so well. No monsters, quiet, a sense of pointlessness. It felt nice to me, like here, but the sadness was tangible. It is here, too, because in many ways this place IS pretty mournful even while celebrating what can be good about life. It's just it is making us feel the past is better.
The rest of the movie is a blur. Everyone has superpowers, but to quote an Incredibles character, when everyone has powers, no-one has, and it stops being amazing. The acting is great, the ideas are great, even the ending is moving, but it's familiar, and it's a downer that feels.like a key coffin nail for superhero movies.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.233.132.181
Posted on Tuesday, April 30, 2019 - 03:45 pm:   

I haven't seen the last few Marvel films, so I can't comment. But I do hope it's the end of them. Not that I hate superhero films, just their current ubiquity.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Tuesday, April 30, 2019 - 04:15 pm:   

I can't see them going anywhere after this. I think they did many admirable things, but yes, they took over -and it even harmed them.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Wednesday, May 01, 2019 - 01:01 pm:   

I watched The Invitation! I thought it was OK. A bit netflixy. I could see what was coming. I think I preferred a similar film, The Gift, with Nigel Slater.
Christian Slater. Oh, him off Teenwolf 2.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.205
Posted on Wednesday, May 01, 2019 - 04:54 pm:   

Yes, a little Netflixy. It illustrates Jung's idea that all psychosis is a refusal to face legitimate pain. And that ending, and the political implications...
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Wednesday, May 01, 2019 - 05:06 pm:   

Yes! I call it The Smoke Alarm. You live with it or deal with it. I told my psychiatrist this and he was so impressed he asked if he could use it. I was well chuffed.
My visits didn't help me, though. :-(
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.153.254.41
Posted on Thursday, May 02, 2019 - 06:00 pm:   

I really dug The Invitation, but they did kind of drag out the tension perhaps a bit too long. So The Gift is similar, but better? Well, then, I must see it!

So I take it, Tony, you felt the same about Endgame, as I felt after watching Cabin in the Woods? I initially thought... well, that's it for horror films! Where do you go from there? But I was quite wrong, as the years since prove (and Cabin doesn't wear well, in my memory).

Superheroes are today's Westerns. The popularity of Westerns in film beggars the level of today's superhero obsession... and look at how utterly that genre faded away in time. The same is coming. What's coming, is the great loathing, the resistance to the "Tyranny of the Screens." It will be accompanied by a whole new avenue of technological innovation - we have been so (deliberately, maliciously) controlled by the Screen Tyrants - cell phone manufacturers/providers, social media companies, media conglomerates in general, etc. All those entities that want us riveted to our screens as slaves, so they can keep their filthy lucre coming. It's turned toxic, long since. But the great loathing is coming... hmm, all of this somehow seems metaphorical, re: Invitation... kinda?...
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Thursday, May 02, 2019 - 08:20 pm:   

Yes, Spielberg said that. But you know, there were some GREAT westerns, and the oeuvre was incredibly broad. In fact, many recent ones are still excellent. Have you seen the recent Cohen brothers one? It's frankly sublime. But...these things are cyclical. And this feels like time for a breather.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.97
Posted on Friday, May 03, 2019 - 01:32 am:   

I'm stuck with loving the cinema, it's part of me. I hope we can still enjoy it without utterly rejecting it.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Friday, May 03, 2019 - 07:08 am:   

I sometimes think I eat films, that I love in the restaurant. I have to watch a film a day. But sometimes I do think I need a break, to find them new again.
A sad thing; I bought a huge tv at Christmas. It was a thing of wonder. But...it's small again, ordinary aized, and the wonder has vanished.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Friday, May 03, 2019 - 10:17 am:   

LIVE in the restaurant. God, we never used to have these problems before...
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.137.109.102
Posted on Friday, May 03, 2019 - 10:18 am:   

Sized. :/
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.139.164.79
Posted on Friday, March 13, 2020 - 01:13 am:   

This is so short I'm adding to it. I've just started watching Scooby Doo Incorporated, the newish series, and am LOVING it. Funky art that really grows on you, a creepy mood at times, witty, even sexy... it is odd seeing cartoonish characters given a bit of shading, but it actually brings them to life - they have shitty parents and are each one of them hugely insecure and unfulfilled. It never says it out loud that they're trying to solve mysteries as a replacement for fixing their own problems, but we know it, and you want to follow them in their journeys because you actually really care for them.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.139.164.79
Posted on Friday, March 13, 2020 - 01:17 am:   

Our conversations are like lovely sofas, this place a huge empty furniture floor of a department store, you can hop about sitting in old favourites. I f*cling love it.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.41
Posted on Friday, March 13, 2020 - 08:45 am:   

I love vast unpopulated furniture warehouses. Feels like a surreal living room. I don't recall such a thing being used in horror before.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 172.112.29.83
Posted on Sunday, March 15, 2020 - 06:14 am:   

I want that vast unpopulated furniture warehouse to have a muzak soundtrack - Tony will be familiar with this one - it's a good one, one of my favorites - it's got the echoey scratchy remoteness, the warble and off-balanced decay, that promotes maximum unease and fear:

https://youtu.be/afhZ_IEI1yo
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.43.49.147
Posted on Friday, May 01, 2020 - 11:06 am:   

I can't be assed to start a new thread.
Am watching Devs, the new Alex Garland series on bbc2. It is very good indeed, adult sf, thoughtful, forward-looking about people let alone their inventions. You feel that with advancement comes coldness, perhaps, that wisdom.in action IS kind of cold. I think an alternative title could have been Gallifrey, Year One, though it's not remotely child friendly, or yes, Childhood's End. The future we work towards might not be good for our soul.

Also, on Shudder, the new Creepshow, which is about forty percent great, not as cartoonish as it tries to be, but also falling flat when it succeeds, curiously. When it's naturalistic or experimental it's fantastic. I think I like it because the stories resemble parables, something we don't see much of now, offering lessons more than scares, though I guess those things have always fitted together. Fave episodes - House of the Head and Man in a Suitcase, the former for the fact it has a dolls house (which I always love) and the second because, partly, it made me realise my sons were good people.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.77.153
Posted on Friday, May 01, 2020 - 12:18 pm:   

"wisdom in action IS kind of cold."

The lack of wisdom is my problem with everything Alex Garland has worked on - I find his work cold and that it employs heartlessness and cynicism posing as intelligence. Immature, in a word. But I seem to be in a minority.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.77.153
Posted on Friday, May 01, 2020 - 12:22 pm:   

I just got Netflix (I'm always a late adopter - being 5 years behind on any technology has huge advantages). It's fun, but not something that values film education and film history.

I put on the blu ray of DEEP RED and was instantly mesmerised. There's something about the focus and ceremony of putting on physical media that is special, as well as the picture quality still being much better and more reliable than streaming.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.43.49.147
Posted on Sunday, May 03, 2020 - 09:27 pm:   

Garland is kind of bleak. He seems to stamp out hope in his work.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.43.49.147
Posted on Monday, May 04, 2020 - 09:45 am:   

Netflix isn't great, has some good things. Mindhunters was definitely one of the best. David Fincher show. I raced through it.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 172.112.29.83
Posted on Thursday, May 07, 2020 - 05:00 pm:   

I'm just a sad sack playing the same old saw. The sticky-pad-paper that is screen-based entertainment, has worn itself out, in me, and won't adhere to anything. I can't watch anything to watch it, I feel, I can only watch things for reasons other purely than to watch it - do I make sense? I'll watch things from past times, because they are not today's entertainments - the experience is remote from what it is to "be into" a current show. Watching "Kojak," is wholly unlike "being into" a current Netflix series. I'm in no way claiming elitism or snobbery - it's simply the fact that, sadly, the part of my mind now that can "be into" current fare, isn't functioning. It's been like that for a while. It may never come back, I fear....
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.43.49.147
Posted on Sunday, May 10, 2020 - 05:53 pm:   

I bit the bullet this week and watched all the Disney Star Wars movies. Force Awakens has become wonderful to me, but Last Jedi, the one I had bona fide all out hated, i LOVED. It is bold, funny, daring, intelligent, feels like it has something to tell you, but Rise of Skywalker, trying to "put right" the previous film, is incredibly banal and contorts itself till it breaks trying to rectify things. And yet, just watch the Rey and Ren story and you will be moved, and the ending itself is so wonderful, and you realise that despite all the problems you have come to love these characters.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.79.250
Posted on Sunday, May 10, 2020 - 06:49 pm:   

I just finished MINDHUNTER, and it's the best show I've seen in years. Nuanced.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.43.49.147
Posted on Sunday, May 10, 2020 - 11:11 pm:   

The whole thing? I binged on it, too. Would watch three in a row. It gave me unexpected soft spots for Kemper and Manson.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.73.189
Posted on Thursday, May 14, 2020 - 06:21 pm:   

Yeah, finished the whole thing. So mature. There's such power in not over-stating things, the audience leans in more, the piece earns the audience's trust, and then every word the piece says has meaning.

It's difficult to watch too much of it, though, it can really distort one's view of the world, as probably happens with the investigators.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.43.49.147
Posted on Thursday, May 14, 2020 - 07:29 pm:   

I heard a radio interview recently in which a man went on not only to forgive his daughter's killer/rapist but become his good friend. Crazy. But listening to the interview I totally understood it. I sometimes think people closest to such things can be the most egalitarian about them.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.43.49.147
Posted on Thursday, May 14, 2020 - 07:30 pm:   

If that's the right word
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.72.76
Posted on Thursday, May 14, 2020 - 08:11 pm:   

It's all very complicated, something that MINDHUNTER not only accepts but embraces. It's to its credit that it wasn't until I finished it that I realised it was all just people talking in rooms. It's a world away from SEVEN, which I thought was filled with schadenfreude.

Bill Tench is my favourite character. Such is the lack of maturity and empathy today that most other media would have portrayed him as just a haircut. But the past is full of decent people with integrity, intelligence and nuance.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.65.102
Posted on Monday, June 08, 2020 - 11:23 am:   

Yes! I loved him, and the show. I loved Edmund Lemper. Proper loved. Did you know he read audio books for the blind for years? Did you think the stuff about the creepy son was a little TOO dramatic? I still loved every minute of the series though. It feels lost on netflix, underappreciated.
I've just started watching a show on Amazon, Homecoming, with Juila Robert's. Wow...talk about cinematic. It has that Mindhunter sense of intimacy but it quite different - it's really mysterious, feels and looks like a thriller even though nothing is happening much. The action takes places in two different times, each filmed in a different aspect ratio and picture quality. It really really works. And god, the music...it samples soundtracks from other films, which is really fascinating in a way I can't describe. But my favourite thing is the closing credits; they follow the characters walking around, doing nothing, nothing happening, no music, while the credits roll for several minutes, no dialogue. It is the most gripping thing.

By the way, you might be shocked at how much CGI is used in Mindhunters to augment the locations. It blew my mind when I saw.

Oh, there's a good horror movie; Color Out of Space. It gets shrill a little fast but for the most part is one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.65.102
Posted on Monday, June 22, 2020 - 09:26 am:   

See this if you can, as soon as possible.
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-vast-of-night-movie-review-2020
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.190.65.102
Posted on Monday, June 22, 2020 - 11:01 am:   

See this if you can, as soon as possible.
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-vast-of-night-movie-review-2020
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.79.3
Posted on Wednesday, June 24, 2020 - 01:06 pm:   

Yes, the troubled son never worked for me at all. It just seemed crow-barred in there.

Colour out of Space could be interesting, they certainly gave it to an interesting director.

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