What Have You Watched Recently?

[death tribble]

The Earth Dies Screaming

A short Sci-Fi film where people just fall down dead for no apparent reason. An American survived because he was doing a high altitude test in a plane. Other survivors were in bunkers or laboratories which had filtered air. Figures in spacesuits turn out to be aliens who can reanimate the dead into non-flesh eating zombies. The figures are robots so you never see who is in control or what they are after. British made.

 

Innocents in Paris

British tourists in the French capital for a weekend in the early 50s when they could only take out £5 in cash and £20 in Traveller Cheques. A group of Royal Marine bandsmen pool their money (they don't the full allowance) so that one of their number can have a good night out; a Scotsman a D-Day veteran is visiting the capital and falls for a French girl; an older woman is looking for fellow artists on the left bank and in the Louvre;  a diplomat is trying to get agreement with a Russian counterpart; a young woman finds love with an older French man; and  a swaggering Englishman spends his time in an English pub in Paris. You also get a look at the Moulin Rouge in 52.

 

Bottoms Up

Jimmy Edwards is the headmaster of a boys school which has a dismal record. A new head of governors wants an immediate turn around in the fortunes of the school both academically and sports. A newspaper article about a foreign leader's son being put into the British public school system incognito gives the headmaster a way out as he also has a problem with his bookmaker who wants his own son to be admitted in return for alleviating the headmaster's debts. Passing the bookmaker's son off as the foreign leader's son works until the real son is placed in the school as the last place anyone would look. The bookmaker's son is at war with the head of the lower third which creates further conflict. Of its time and the head of the lower third is a kid you could cheerfully strangle.

 

My Man Godfrey

A tramp becomes the butler to a wealthy family after one of them tries to use him to win a scavanger hunt. The two sisters of the family fight over the butler who is actually a rich man himself recovering from a broken heart. He helps save the family and also help the tramps who gave him a better look at life. William Powell and Carole Lombard star. Worth a look.

 

No Hiding Place (Contents Noted)

A missing episode of the 60s British police series. Trying to crack a stolen car racket leads to murder as the gang are taking the cars abroad and selling them. Of its time.

 

90 Degrees South

Documentary about Robert Falcon Scott's doomed attempt to reach the South Pole. Film shows the expedition on ship and at Antarctica. Stills show the doomed explorers who died on the return from the Pole. The film came out in the 1930s and was the result of other members of the expedition compiling it and putting it out in public.

[mattingly]

4 hours ago, DoctorImpossible said:

Oh, my god, yes! Tilda Swinton, *as* Tilda Swinton, turning out to be the secret leader of all vampires in the council of elders!? Such an amazing choice.

 

And here I thought the MCU had some amazing crossover casting!

 

[Dr. MID-Nite]

Ultra Galaxy....think Pokemon...but with Ultra kaiju.

[csyphrett]

The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard- Micheal Bryce is supposed to be on vacation while his license is being reviewed. Instead he is drawn into stopping an attack on Europe's internet infrastructure when Darius Kincaid's wife, Sonia, asks him for help.

 

Look for Morgan Freeman as Ryan Reynolds's Dad

CES  

[pinecone]

Just watched Shadow, and bone. I don't think I am the target audiance. But it was well done.

[death tribble]

Burke and Hare

Early 70s film about the notorious bodysnatchers and murderers in Edinburgh. This did more of the actions around a brothel than the two killers and the doctor they supplied the bodies to.

 

The Detective

Frank Sinatra plays a detective in New York. A man is murdered and it leads to the gay community which was still underground at this time. The film shows Sinatra's marriage collapsing and the investigation into the murder being less than straightforward. Sinatra is restrained in the role. Worth a look from a historical perspective.

 

Dixon of Dock Green in Paris

During the 60s the BBC did an episode iof Dixon of Doc Green in Paris. One of the actors did some filming in colour with no sound of the actors wandering around France and travel there. It looks good but of more interest if you know the series.

 

Deadfall

Michael Caine is a thief who wants to raid a particular rich man's house. He is approached by a husband and wife to assist in the robbery. Directed by Bryan Forbes it has his wife Nanette Newman in the cast as well as Eric Portman and Vladek Sheybal. Worth one look.

 

Bad Times at El Royale

Four guests turn up at the El Royale hotel which straddles the California and Nevada straight line. Due to a change in gambling laws there is only one person on duty. Previously a man hid something in the hotel before he was killed. The guests are a salesman, a priest, a singer and a woman. The Salesman demands the honeymoon suite. Once in the room he begins removing bugging devices but is disturbed when he finds a duplicate set. It turns out he is an FBI agent and they are removing their equipment. The woman seems to have kidnapped another woman and is keeping her in her room and the priest is actually a bank robber whose brother hid money in the hotel before being killed. The FBI agent sees the kidnapped woman, intervenes and is killed by the woman is the older sister of the woman concerned. The kidnapped woman is part of a cult and she contacts them to rescue her. The Cult turn up and there is a battle to the death which sees the hotel burn down. Overly long but worth a look for Jeff Bridges as the priest.

 

Viceroy's House

Mountbatten of Burma becomes the new and last viceroy of India before Independence which he starts trying to arrange. There is communal violence which comes to a head as partition is implemented and Pakistan is formed from India. Some of this is viewed through the eyes of the Indian servants who are Hindu and Muslim. Gillian Anderson plays Lady Mountbatten. Don't judge me.

[Spence]

On 6/23/2021 at 12:25 AM, pinecone said:

Just watched Shadow, and bone. I don't think I am the target audiance. But it was well done.

I enjoyed it too.  Enough that I have bought the series to read in kindle.

On 6/20/2021 at 3:05 PM, death tribble said:

The Earth Dies Screaming

A short Sci-Fi film where people just fall down dead for no apparent reason. An American survived because he was doing a high altitude test in a plane. Other survivors were in bunkers or laboratories which had filtered air. Figures in spacesuits turn out to be aliens who can reanimate the dead into non-flesh eating zombies. The figures are robots so you never see who is in control or what they are after. British made.

 

Hmmmm... I just watched that on Tubi.   It really wasn't bad for a 50's scifi drama. 

[Michael Hopcroft]

On 6/20/2021 at 1:48 PM, Spence said:

 

That movie is painful.  So much potential that went swirling down the drain.  Every time they did something great they had to stick in something completely crappy.  Like Emperors generals commanding the fight on a merry-go-round!?! Just a waste of money and actor talent.

 

The two SciFi Channel mini-series were actually better.

My "Faint Praise" sense is tingling!

 

 

[Grailknight]

On 6/20/2021 at 12:06 PM, Michael Hopcroft said:

I've seen part of the controversial (and, by many, despised) 1984 film of Dune.  When you give a filmmaker like David Lynch an unlimited amount of money, this is what you get -- a beautifully shot, decently-acted bit of Grand Guignol weirdness.

 

Everything in the film is grandiose and much, much larger than life. Every set is massive, every costume is ornate, all the action bigger than life. Even the Gom Jabbar scene  is big.

 

Does it work? Sort of. The novel itself is very problematic, and it's unsure just what Frank Herbert was either lauding or condemning. Paul Atriedies is an ambiguous figure, at least morally, and I don't know why such an entitled young man deserves to be a Messiah. The Spice itself is a major logic hole -- there appears to be nothing it can't do, and the battle over it reminds me of a drug war.

 

But grandiose though it is, it's lovely to look at.  Kyle MacLachlan is not at all a bad actor, although he is asked to play Paul as a nearly perfect man. I haven't read Dune in a while, so  I don't know how he decided to write  the character. Sting does not at all look, sound, or act like Sting. You just don't expect to see one the artists most dedicated to peace and compassion playing a homicidal maniac whose grasp on reality is tenuous at best. (He has since said that this shoot was one of the many things that turned him off to acting.)

 

I'm kind of surprised this is being remade for a second time, because I'm still not sure the source material demans it. Realism does not match this novel. It demands the sort of operative treatment Lunch brought it.

 

 

 

 

 

That movie was such a collection of money and talent, wasted by turning it over to writers who had only read the Cliff Notes of the book.

 

Paul isn't a messiah because he deserves it. He's part of a centuries long genetic manipulation and breeding plan.  He just comes earlier than the planners wanted.

 

It is a drug war(although the actual allegory is the Middle East oil maneuver). The spice, in low doses, increases life span. It is also a psychotropic mutagen that allows one to see possible futures. The Spacing Guild, which has a total monopoly on interstellar commerce, needs it to safely navigate hyperspace. But the spice has a hidden drawback, it is addictive and the withdrawal is fatal.

 

The Guild can't exert direct control over the spice because any and every attempt to do so leads to disaster and interstellar war in their prescience. So the Empire is used to maintain order and ensure the spice flows. The Great Houses fight over wealth from trade  and the greatest possible profit comes from ruling Arrakis.

 

So the set-up was pretty close.  the shields and other weapons and tech are spot on(with one glaring exception). But then we get to the horrible changes made.

 

The Harkonnens' get the worst of this. The Baron should be a menacing Machiavellian schemer not a blustering fat fool. Rabban is well done and Sing looks the part but his character is not given enough screen time to develop. They overused the poisons and invented the body modifications out of thin air to make them look evil when it was done mainly with just menace in the novel( cat scene not withstanding, that was in there)

 

The Arteides are well done for the most part. But the break in character for Paul's mother ay time really hurts the mood. She never shows fear, not when bound and helpless before assassins, not in the worm crossing and not in the Reverend Mother ceremony. They made her character weaker to make Paul look stronger.

 

But the biggest changes were in the nature of the actual war. The Fremen are a planetary population of fanatic proto super ninjas. All the weirding way is is getting them unified, trained in martials arts to fight opponents with and without shields and pointed at the enemy. The emperor's elite Sardukar, came from a similar background. His noble house arose from mercenaries on a harsh prison planet.

 

The Harkonnens' used brutality and oppression to rule the planet, which caused a downturn in spice production and a Guild mandated change is government. The assassination and coup was legal under the weird social vendetta rules of the Empire and they were going to be given a second chance at administration. The Baron's plan, to sacrifice Rabban and install Feyd as an enlightened successor would have worked, but Paul survives and organizes the the Fremen. This part is actually true to the books but the motivations of the character are badly mangled by mischaracterizations that it gets muddled.

 

The SyFy series stays much closer to the books. Unfortunately that means they had to use the terrible sequel and the controversial follow-up but they are still a better overall Dune experience. 

 

  

[slikmar]

6 hours ago, Grailknight said:

That movie was such a collection of money and talent, wasted by turning it over to writers who had only read the Cliff Notes of the book.

Which is still better then Eragon, where I am pretty sure the writers only talked to someone who had read the Cliff Notes.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Lynch's Dune looked amazing, that part they got really right.  The SciFi Channel miniseries did a better job with the story but didn't look right at all.  Combine them and you have a decent movie.

[mattingly]

[Spence]

27 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Lynch's Dune looked amazing, that part they got really right.  The SciFi Channel miniseries did a better job with the story but didn't look right at all.  Combine them and you have a decent movie.

 

Lynch's Dune may have looked amazing for anyone that never read the book.  But if you have read the book it was all WTF am I looking at. 

And the stupid 'weirding modules".  I could go on and on. 

 

Though I have to admit that as bad as both Dunes were, they are absolute perfection in adapting a book to the screen when compared to the horrific toxic abomination that was inflicted on the book Starship Troopers.

[Michael Hopcroft]

13 minutes ago, Spence said:

Though I have to admit that as bad as both Dunes were, they are absolute perfection in adapting a book to the screen when compared to the horrific toxic abomination that was inflicted on the book Starship Troopers.

I think Verhoeven decided to satirize wartime propaganda films, which may have been pretty much the same thing Henlien was doing in the novel (from certain readings). It was meant to be controversial.  If it ticked you off, he wanted you to think about why.

 

I don;t recall the Henlein estate (who still owned the IP) saying much good or bad about the film. But the conservators are probably not trying very hard to sell movie rights to Stranger in a Strange Land.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Other than the stillsuits with no hood and the weirding modules, everything looked and acted pretty much how I expected it to from reading the books.  Oh, and that silly scene where the slow bullet pierced the shielding.

[slikmar]

Watched Tenet the other night with my wife. Will have to watch again. Another good Nolan film, and I will say, don't be trying to do anything else while watching, you will miss stuff.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Portland is having 110-degree weather, my only refuge was to go into a multiplex, and almmost the only thing showing at the multiplex was F9.

 

It was loud. It was big. It was long. And by the time I got home I could not remember a single frame of it.

 

It was as if I had spent three hours in a darkened room just to spedn three hours in a darkened room. Which was fine, since the room was also air-conditioned when the outdoors were a blast furnace. But paying full price for a ticket?

[Michael Hopcroft]

On 6/25/2021 at 6:46 PM, slikmar said:

Which is still better then Eragon, where I am pretty sure the writers only talked to someone who had read the Cliff Notes.

I fail to see why anyone would want to do a Cliff's Notes of Eragon.

[Ternaugh]

Willy's Wonderland: Five Nights at Freddy's + Nicolas Cage. (Hulu)

 

Firestarter: Adaptation of the Stephen King novel, with a young Drew Barrymore as the lead. (Netflix DVD)

 

The Warriors: Chase movie made better by the soundtrack and Lynn Thigpen's DJ commentary. (Netflix DVD)

[archer]

I watched the first five episodes of the Dresden Files yesterday before my TV service apparently removed the entire series from free viewing (even the episodes I'd just watched).

 

I hope the series was just getting its footing because I didn't see much in those episodes to recommend it.

[Bazza]

Loki

[Bazza]

Work screen 

[Bazza]

Luca

[Starlord]

Raya and the Last Dragon on Disney Plus was good.

[Bazza]

Just started watching Raya