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What Have You Watched Recently?


Susano

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Only thing with Black Lightning, and I like the show and continue enjoying it, but be ready to be beat over the head with Black Lives Matter PR every episode, as a friend put it. Again, the show is excellent and the people in it are great and it is a message that needs to be done, but just be prepared if you dislike anviliciousness, that this show has it.

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The Last Starfighter - Another movie that I watch every once in a while, the plot's a bit light, but enjoyable, especially with Robert Preston moving his Music Man character into space. Many special effects were computer generated*, which gives the film a solid 1980s look. (Blu-ray)

 

 

 

 

*Computing power has multiplied unbelievably in the 34 years since the film was made. It took hours to crunch a few seconds of digital effects on a Cray X-MP supercomputer, which was rated at around 800 million floating-point operations a second (FLOPS), and listed for $15 million. An XBox One X from 2017 is rated at around 6 trillion FLOPS, and can handle complex graphics computations in real-time for about $400.

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On ‎12‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 8:56 PM, Ternaugh said:

The Last Starfighter - Another movie that I watch every once in a while, the plot's a bit light, but enjoyable, especially with Robert Preston moving his Music Man character into space. Many special effects were computer generated*, which gives the film a solid 1980s look. (Blu-ray)

 

 

 

 

*Computing power has multiplied unbelievably in the 34 years since the film was made. It took hours to crunch a few seconds of digital effects on a Cray X-MP supercomputer, which was rated at around 800 million floating-point operations a second (FLOPS), and listed for $15 million. An XBox One X from 2017 is rated at around 6 trillion FLOPS, and can handle complex graphics computations in real-time for about $400.

For the time, though, it was an amazing achievement that was largely ignored. And yes, Centauri is great.

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It's rare that I can find stuff to sit down and watch with Mrs Jagged. I like escapist rubbish and she likes history programmes (I know far more than I care to about the Tudors!). 

 

However she does enjoy the odd fantasy thing if it has suitably dark undertones, so we are currently working our way through the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Which is very good imo. 

 

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A Wrinkle in Time - I had never read the book as a kid (I was more into Asimov, Bradbury, and Bova), so I really can't compare it to the source material. I can compare it to other movies, which, while not having such a forced earnestness, would probably be a more enjoyable way to spend a few hours. (Netflix)

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On ‎12‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 4:16 PM, mattingly said:

Netflix just got one of my favorite comedies.

 

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It reminds me of one of my favorite late-night movies growing up, the classic French comedy/satire The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe, in which a duel for control of an espionage operation hinges of the surveillance of a randomly-chosen airline passenger. it's a perfect send-up of (and antidote to) Cold War/Watergate paranoia which struck a chord with American art-house audiences.

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I saw  Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindlewald yesterday with a couple of friends. Visually and acting wise is was beautiful. They made Paris look seductive, The art direction is , as always top notch. The acting performances were first rate, with Johnny Depp  creating a very compelling villain. The direction Kept the tone and pacing of a postwar spy thriller, but with magic.  The downsides is that the movie was VERY disjointed. The movie was long, but even so, it felt like  there were huge chunks of it edited out. Things didn't make a lot of sense. Character actions seemed a little under motivated, and it was hard to keep the large cast completely straight.  But the animals were gorgeous, what few of them there were. It's a "Don't think about it too much" sort of movie. Worth a look if you love beautiful visuals, but it's definitely not a movie for plot and story aficionados..

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5 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

It reminds me of one of my favorite late-night movies growing up, the classic French comedy/satire The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe, in which a duel for control of an espionage operation hinges of the surveillance of a randomly-chosen airline passenger. it's a perfect send-up of (and antidote to) Cold War/Watergate paranoia which struck a chord with American art-house audiences.

That was remade in America with Tom Hanks called the Man with one Red Shoe. Very funny and well done. Since I hadn't seen original, can't compare them.

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11 minutes ago, Ternaugh said:

From Russia with Love - Convoluted plot from SPECTRE to acquire a Russian encoding device involves James Bond and a Russian agent. (Hulu)

 

IIRC, SPECTRE's operation was an overly ambitious revenge plot. The coding device was the bait, 007 the quarry, and the Russian agent an unwitting pawn in the hands of a chessmaster (literally). It was surprising the extraordinary lengths they went to to kill one man.

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Be fair they wanted the coding device as well.

 

7 Days to Noon. A scientist threatens to detonate a bomb in London unless Britain pulls out of the arms race. A tense early 50s British flick. The scientist has just snapped rather than after money.

 

Forbidden Cargo. How Customs are tracking smugglers again in the 50s who are using a Dukw to bring in alcohol but the drugs side of the operation results in murder.

 

The Traitor. A group of German resistance operatives gather for a regular yearly meeting but one of them is responsible for the betrayal of their former leader who was killed in the war. An American gets involved when he crashes the dinner they are having.

 

Ring of Spies. A quasi fictional account of the Portland spy ring with Bernard Lee (M from James Bond) as one the spies. The spy ring was captured in 1961.

 

The Ghost Train. Several people are stranded at a station where a train is supposed to haunt the area after a crash nearly 60 years before. This is a 1940s film. Well known British comedian Arthur Askey is one of the stranded and is obnoxious so that several of the others want to do him a mischief.

 

 

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5 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

IIRC, SPECTRE's operation was an overly ambitious revenge plot. The coding device was the bait, 007 the quarry, and the Russian agent an unwitting pawn in the hands of a chessmaster (literally). It was surprising the extraordinary lengths they went to to kill one man.

Actually, like DT said, they wanted the device. 007's death would have been a cherry on top. The convoluted part was that they wanted the device without exposing their own agents in the kgb and with England being blamed. This is actually one of the movies that followed the plot of the couple short stories pretty well.

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