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March 29, 2024, 03:58:55 PM

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Culture consumed in quarantine

Started by Thomas, March 18, 2020, 07:15:41 PM

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Cardenio I

I have just finished bingeing my way through the entire run of Justified and fuck me - why did nobody tell me how good this is? Stands out from the big hitters of TVs golden age (Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad) by not really bothering with being a portentous moralising exploration of a central cunt. Don't get me wrong, I love those shows, but it's nice to watch something with a violent, dickish lead who's not meant to be an antihero so much as an asshole hero who it's fun to follow round. Plus just tons of amazing supporting characters with ridiculous names, bumping into each other, double crossing with some genuinely funny dialogue and then getting themselves unceremoniously shot.

I'm reckoning this to be the start of a little Elmore Leonard season. Think I'm gonna watch Out of Sight tonight.

Blue Jam

Quote from: Thomas on March 30, 2020, 01:19:16 PM
I only heard of it in an episode of Athletico Mince, but if there is a hype, the series lives up to it. It's packed full. As Better Midlands (great username) advises, no Googling. Just dive in.

Was just watching the first episode and thought  "Hmmm, this isn't living up to my expectations". Then I got to the bit about
Spoiler alert
sending your enemies snakes through the post
[close]
...

Watching episode 2 now and just learned that Dr Antle is a doctor of
Spoiler alert
"mystical science"
[close]
. Cheers Thomas, I'm hooked.

alan nagsworth

Quote from: Cardenio I on March 30, 2020, 05:49:00 PM
I have just finished bingeing my way through the entire run of Justified and fuck me - why did nobody tell me how good this is? Stands out from the big hitters of TVs golden age (Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad) by not really bothering with being a portentous moralising exploration of a central cunt. Don't get me wrong, I love those shows, but it's nice to watch something with a violent, dickish lead who's not meant to be an antihero so much as an asshole hero who it's fun to follow round. Plus just tons of amazing supporting characters with ridiculous names, bumping into each other, double crossing with some genuinely funny dialogue and then getting themselves unceremoniously shot.

I'm reckoning this to be the start of a little Elmore Leonard season. Think I'm gonna watch Out of Sight tonight.

bro look how similar our avatars are bro

Small Man Big Horse

Continuing my mission to watch every film with a talking dog in it, I've just finished the 2013 masterpiece Super Buddies.



An excellent wheeze, it's not quite as good as The Shaggy Dog (1959) but it's much more fun than The Shaggy DA (1976). Six Paws Out Of Eight.

ollyboro

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on March 30, 2020, 09:11:03 PM
Continuing my mission to watch every film with a talking dog in it, I've just finished the 2013 masterpiece Super Buddies.



An excellent wheeze, it's not quite as good as The Shaggy Dog (1959) but it's much more fun than The Shaggy DA (1976). Six Paws Out Of Eight.

Have you watched Sherlock Bones: Undercover Dog? Our hero is a dog who dresses like Sherlock Holmes and has a Scottish accent.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: ollyboro on March 30, 2020, 09:39:19 PM
Have you watched Sherlock Bones: Undercover Dog? Our hero is a dog who dresses like Sherlock Holmes and has a Scottish accent.

I haven't but it sounds amazing, it's up on youtube too so I shall definitely watch it very soon and report back.

Cardenio I

Quote from: alan nagsworth on March 30, 2020, 06:20:29 PM
bro look how similar our avatars are bro

Shit, man. I don't know what to say.

idunnosomename

theres a bunch of free opera and shit to watch but im mostly just on the verge of being sick pacing up and down with worry, curling up back in bed, having my mandated hour exercise and then just listening to death metal all evening

Captain Crunch


Doomy Dwyer

Just before the motherfuckin' lockdown boyee I loaned Chernobyl from my workplace (a library), the fact-based drama series that was broadcast last year. I thoroughly enjoyed it although 'enjoy' is almost certainly the wrong word. It's a tough watch and may not be ideal viewing for those of a sensitive disposition. Some of the late Soviet era tailoring is extremely harrowing to the western eye, for example. Lots of chipboard suits, dull beige flared slacks and synthetic tracksuits that give off an electric charge like one of those plasma globes. Despite that, it's a feast for the eyes; fantastic locations, superbly acted and unbearably heart-rending, particularly the scene where the wife/soon to be widow of a heavily contaminated fireman tries to bluff her way into a hospital to visit her heavily radiated husband for one last embrace. She's wearing a blouse that looks like it's made from a hopelessly naïve rayon/bri-nylon mix. I swear you can feel the static. Powerful television.

The cast is uniformly magnificent, the main 'hero' guy is played by one of the blokes from Mad Men. I hope he kept a couple of suits back from that because - whatever the benefits of communism, and I accept that there may be some - not one of those cocksuckers can sew worth a damn. The 'villain' of the piece is the topless dad from the situation comedy Friday Night Dinner and he's an absolute revelation in this as an unquestioning, emotionally dead functionary who happens to run the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It'd be nice if they could do a cross over episode between Chernobyl and FND where he goes home contaminates his entire annoying unfunny family with massive doses of radiation and is a complete bastard to that cunt from the Inbetweeners and his cunt brother and they all fucking die. But I don't suppose they ever will.

It's a defiant, bravura display of the televisual form that left me breathless.


Blue Jam

Been watching old snooker matches on Eurosport. Now watching archery.

God I'm bored.

Thomas

Right, we're a few weeks into it now. Can any soap viewers let me know if coronavirus has been incorporated into the storylines?

Watched interesting Spanish horror The Platform (2019) yesterday. There's a thread. A horror film with ideas is difficult to find on Netflix, amid the many tedious jump-scare 'n' guts compilations masquerading as 'movies'.

Also read a short story by Angela Carter. Stunningly charismatic prose. I shook my head at points, in admiration. I'd source more but the book shops have died.

Anti-monarchy group Republic have produced The Man Who Shouldn't be King, a 45-minute doc about Prince Charles and why he ought eff off. I'm sure most of the jaded leftists on here are already well aware of what the fuck 'the Duchy of Cornwall' is and how it extracts wealth for Charlie, but I wasn't, and it enlightened me. 

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Thomas on April 03, 2020, 01:24:46 PM
Also read a short story by Angela Carter. Stunningly charismatic prose. I shook my head at points, in admiration. I'd source more but the book shops have died.

I love Angela Carter a ridiculous amount (and partly wrote my dissertation on The Bloody Chamber as it's so much fun), pretty much everything she wrote is a delight but I'd especially recommend Wise Children, Nights at the Circus and The Passion Of New Eve. Could you not break in to your local book shop and steal them order some from Amazon / Ebay?

flotemysost

I've just finished reading Skint Estate by Cash Carraway, a memoir by a self-described 'working class single mum living below the poverty line', god it's compelling and I'm never going to feel sorry for myself again. Shocking and upsetting and genuinely hilarious, totally nails how utterly fucked up the UK class system is, without an ounce of self-pity.

There's a bit where she mentions watching Paedogeddon in hospital with her friend who's got cancer and dies horrifically the next day, I'm not describing it well but it's full of utterly grim but somehow droll scenes like that.

flotemysost

Also gonna try and stream some more online theatre - watched Wild on the Hampstead Theatre website last night, it was OK.

I've heard people going on about the National's One Man, Two Guvnors, so I may brave exposure to CORDEN-19 and see what the fuss is about.

Blue Jam

James Corden is actually bloody good as a straight actor. Try watching The Wrong Mans or Cruise Of The Gods and then wondering why he didn't make a proper go of it instead of being a chatshow host. Yes, I know the reason is "money", but it's still a shame.

Head Gardener


greencalx

We had One Man... on yesterday afternoon. Alas I had some things to do so couldn't watch it all, but Corden was very good in it. Perhaps he's better suited to the stage than the screen.

buttgammon

If anyone is looking for online theatre, I think the NT's production of Cyprus Avenue is on there somewhere. I saw it in Dublin a few years ago, and Stephen Rea's performance was one of the single best things I've ever seen in a theatre - funny, scary and very intense.

Thomas

#170
Bumping my own thread. Nepotism. Big 2020 shout-out to the following flicks and fillums:

'The Mystery of the Leaping Fish' (1916) - I was moved to watch this by a post in the 'Earliest Movies About Taboo Subjects' thread:

Quote from: Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse on April 03, 2020, 10:04:37 PM
The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (1916) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8-LPlN4kcU

A movie I can scarcely believe exists. It details the adventures of the world famous scientific detective, Coke Ennyday, a man so dependent on cocaine that he shoots up three times in as many minutes and keeps a enormous tin of powdered coke on his desk. It was made before the introduction of the Hayes Code. It's not really about drug abuse, but it illustrates that cocaine use was A Thing well known enough in 1916 that Douglas Fairbanks starred in a slapstick Sherlock Holmes piss-take where the main joke is "lol he's a cokehead".

I can only agree, and add no more.

M (1931). Or, to give it's full title, Fritz Lang's M, to let everyone know you're a proper film buff like. Magnificent and interestingly thoughtful, surpassing many murder mysteries of its own time and of the decades to follow. An interesting postscript to any German film from the 1930s is to check Wikipedia, and find out which members of the cast and crew fled the country and which stuck around to work for Goebbels. Just for the paycheck, you understand.

Rango (2011), lizard-led animated western, ostensibly for kids but kitted out with enough adult jokes that I'm not sure. Essentially copies and pastes Rocky's character development from Chicken Run for the titular reptile, but a surprisingly great and grotesque CGI adventure.

Manhunter (1986), synthy precursor to The Silence of the Lambs. I'd like to be a purist, but I still prefer the latter. Also haven't read the book(s).

'In Nacht und Eis' (1912). Another shorty, one of the earliest dramatisations of the Titanic. Not really worth it unless you care about the Titanic and its cultural depictions over the years - in which case it is a historical must-see. I'm running out of old Titanic films to watch.

Also been watching loads of The Great Brexit Brex Off. Love it, somehow. My favourite series has been any series with a Ruby in it. Stars the shark from Finding Nemo as 'Paul Hollywood'.

Spiteface

Disappointment with Mashin Sentai Kiramager (even with fucking Pikotaro as the team's mentor) has made me want to take another dive into older Super Sentai shows, so I've started watching 1987's Hikari Sentai Maskman. These older shows pretty much follow a formula: Earth is under attack from monsters (either aliens or ancient race), and a group of five individuals who have been trained for such an eventuality, tasked with stopping them. They just look cooler than the modern stuff though:


Sharp. Compared to these:

Far from the ugliest Sentai suits, these just don't appeal to me much. The show's a bit shit, too.

Also continued my reconnection with anime, and finally caved in and watched the first 4 episodes of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure on Netflix. I've seen people say that you kinda have to "get through" the first season to get to the really good stuff, but having to "get through" a chunk of anything is hardly a ringing endorsement. What I've seen is alright. Might stick with this.

Zetetic

Want something that exacerbates the prevailing the atmosphere.

Watched Only Lovers Left Alive just before the lockdown, and that's not a bad start. Fragility of humans and humanity, empty heat, not being able to go inside museums.

All at night though. Sunny dreadful emptiness if what I'm after, I guess. Insomnia (1997), maybe?


Norton Canes

Three episodes (plus the 3-hour movie/miniseries) into the Battlestar Galactica reboot. Good, but not quite up to the levels of hype I've seen. Three episodes is further than I get into most box set series though.

chveik

Quote from: Zetetic on April 15, 2020, 05:45:43 PM
Sunny dreadful emptiness

The Passenger (1975) or those Rossellini films with Ingrid Bergman (Stromboli etc.) might fit the bill. or Morvern Callar

Head Gardener


Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: chveik on April 15, 2020, 08:18:50 PM
The Passenger (1975) or those Rossellini films with Ingrid Bergman (Stromboli etc.) might fit the bill. or Morvern Callar

Rivers of Grass is on prime video.

Ferris

Been rewatching The Wire for the last few weeks. It is still an unparalleled work of televisual genius.

Up to season 4 now, enjoyed every single episode.

hummingofevil

I've signed up to the BFI player  (14 day trial - then £5 a month after for subscription tier and movies to rent too) as fancied watching movies.

Today was What We Do In The Shadows from Flight OF Concords guys. After 20 mins I was hating it but by the end the charm of it realy won me over.

I've also been trying to find a Hong Kong movie to watch every day but struggling as there is no official streaming serviice. Which suprises me. Watched a few things on YouTube but a lot of the stuff on there is dubbed into Mandarin so you got the weird experience or reading a film in one language being performed in another and dubbed into a third. It's like watching Aguirre all over again. :) Anyway, John Woo's A Better Tomorrow is best so far.

Also been trying to listen to full albums of stuff that was before my time that I love bits and pieces of. Listened to a couple of Robert Palmer ones, The Beat, The Specials and the new Tyler The Creator today. All excellent. Love me some late 70s Robert Palmer.

bgmnts

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on April 16, 2020, 02:25:00 AM
Been rewatching The Wire for the last few weeks. It is still an unparalleled work of televisual genius.

Up to season 4 now, enjoyed every single episode.

The Sopranos > The Wire.