What are we watching now?

[State of Epicicity]

Just watched the old, 1967 movie, In The Heat of the Night. I'd seen it before, but never paid it close enough attention to follow along with the whodunit aspect.

Anyway, I still looked it up online, and I'm always intrigued to see the interweaving between various musicians and such.

Quincy Jones wrote, arranged, & conducted the film score.
Glen Campbell sang on one track.
And Billy Preston played organ on the title track.

Quincy worked with many artists, including Michael Jackson, and I wanna say had some doings with EVH.
Preston played on songs from Let It Be, and was even given a credit on Get Back.
Glen was all over the place back then, but for me the coolest thing was he and Alice Cooper were good friends and golfing buddies.

I just dig learning about these connections!

Those were the only names I recognized.

I love that film so much. Sidney Poitier is my hero for the way he expresses righteous rage with such focused intensity. God, I love that man. And Rod Steiger is one of the most interesting actors in Hollywood's history, to me. His range of roles is really interesting. Just compare this to The Pawnbroker or The Harder They Fall. Finally, you have an early performance from Scott Wilson, a great actor who should've had a more prominent career. You can see his true greatness in The Ninth Configuration and of course In Cold Blood. Man, just talking about this makes me want to watch it again.

There's a sequel called They Call Me Mister Tibbs!, and it was a waste of time.

Sidney Poitier is one of my favorite actors, no matter what movie he's in. His level of righteous rage is like listening to a great metal album, and just as fucking cathartic.

 

[laxu]

Went to see The Substance last night at the theater. I highly recommend this one!

I think they could have cut out maybe 20 minutes from the end because it had several "natural" ending points before that would go along with the themes of the movie, but otherwise it's good stuff. Easily the best practical effects I've seen in years.

Not one for people afraid of needles tho!

 

[State of Epicicity]

We tried to watch The Gate from 1987 and made it halfway through. God, I just got bored.

 

[DrewJD82]

I’ve had Homeschoolin’ on nonstop the last few days. I could listen to Bukovac play all day long.

 

[TSJMajesty]

Went to see The Substance last night at the theater. I highly recommend this one!

I don't. The first half is interesting but then it gets stupid. Different strokes. I don't like gore.

I think they could have cut out maybe 20 minutes from the end

That's an understatement. I had to keep looking at the time bar to see how much longer it would last. Maybe it had a good ending, but I couldn't wade through all nonsense to finish it.

It got good reviews though, so what do I know.

Also, I didn't know Ray Liotta died!

 

[State of Epicicity]

We just watched The Corpse Bride. To me that movie is completely forgettable. I love The Nightmare Before Christmas, but this just felt like there was not enough characterization to make me really care about the characters. And I don't understand casting Johnny Depp as a voice actor to play a British dude, when there are hundreds of great British actors who could pull of that role in a much more interesting way. He was just kind of meek and, again, forgettable, throughout. The other actors were doing a good enough job, like Albert Finney and Christopher Lee, but I just couldn't make myself give a damn. It felt like the writing just didn't have heart. And I had to turn on captions any time they started singing, which I thought was lame.

 

[JiveTurkey]

Finally watched Alien Romulus. This LOOKED fantastic. Awesome visuals and atmosphere. Mild quibble could be it could have been a bit darker/creepier but that's really nitpicking. I could definitely see Fede hopping to a different genre after this as this really felt more action and less horror. Until the big baby showed up Dude has a great command of atmosphere and overall scope. I am not sure what the budget was on this but it looked EXPENSIVE in the best of ways. Interested to see if they revisit the story down the road.

 

[laxu]

Finally watched Alien Romulus. This LOOKED fantastic. Awesome visuals and atmosphere. Mild quibble could be it could have been a bit darker/creepier but that's really nitpicking. I could definitely see Fede hopping to a different genre after this as this really felt more action and less horror. Until the big baby showed up Dude has a great command of atmosphere and overall scope. I am not sure what the budget was on this but it looked EXPENSIVE in the best of ways. Interested to see if they revisit the story down the road.

Yeah it's a great looking movie, with xenomorph sized plot holes. I really can't understand how they went with that script because it has a lot of things that just don't make any sense, and characters that can be boiled down to one character trait defining the entire character.

One character can be literally summed as "pregnant woman" who has zero relevance until the last few minutes of the movie.

I had high hopes for this but really shouldn't have. They could have done so much more with what they had, without turning it into a homage-a-thon to all the previous films.

 

[JiveTurkey]

Yeah it's a great looking movie, with xenomorph sized plot holes. I really can't understand how they went with that script because it has a lot of things that just don't make any sense, and characters that can be boiled down to one character trait defining the entire character.

One character can be literally summed as "pregnant woman" who has zero relevance until the last few minutes of the movie.

I had high hopes for this but really shouldn't have. They could have done so much more with what they had, without turning it into a homage-a-thon to all the previous films.

Saw this yesterday and meant to respond.

I don't look for depth in movies like this. The last two Alien films were wayyyyyyyyy too "Ridley Scott goes deep!" and I am 0% here for it I don't necessarily want AVP levels of dumb though. So it's a bit of a balancing act. I was excited to watch this and there were certainly plot holes. The main one being "if they are so beholden to this mining company; how are they leaving the planet in a spaceship?"

Maybe I was won over solely by the sleek package of it all but I thought while it had some issues; it was great overall.

 

[laxu]

Saw this yesterday and meant to respond.

I don't look for depth in movies like this. The last two Alien films were wayyyyyyyyy too "Ridley Scott goes deep!" and I am 0% here for it I don't necessarily want AVP levels of dumb though. So it's a bit of a balancing act. I was excited to watch this and there were certainly plot holes. The main one being "if they are so beholden to this mining company; how are they leaving the planet in a spaceship?"

Maybe I was won over solely by the sleek package of it all but I thought while it had some issues; it was great overall.

Spoiler: Alien Romulus plot spoilers

Yeah the "leaving in a spaceship" thing is exactly the kind of plot hole I was talking about. They try to play it off as "ah, but you can't do long distance travel with it" but it still ignores "oh, so nobody else noticed that there's this derelict space station just floating around, up for grabs?". It was a good chance to do e.g "another group of scavengers boards the ship" type tension but they never took it.

Then it accelerates everything from "we have a few days to loot this place" to "we have to get off this thing in a few hours" for no good reason.

Romulus even goes against physics when aliens grow up in seemingly minutes, retconning the lifecycle that seems to take a few days at least in the past films. Aliens is about the same length and manages to have a sensible measure of time pass in the movie.

The "last boss" creature exist only to be a homage to Alien Resurrection. The black goo is there to be a homage to Prometheus. Both could have been easily left out entirely without any harm. I don't know why they insist on tying these movies together when they can simply be their own Alien movie.

There' so many easy ways that they could have made it better while still telling most of the same story. While I'm not exactly looking for realism in scifi movies, I want at least a little bit believable scenarios. The plot holes and the paper-thin characters took me out of it.

Which is a real shame because they 100% nailed the visuals. It's an excellent looking film that does justice to the retro-futuristic aesthetic from the first two films.

 

[norminal]

 

[State of Epicicity]

We watched Jaws last night, third time I've ever seen it, but it had been a long while. I think the directing is fucking great, the framing of the shots, the direction of the cast, it really is a great movie. I love the three main actors too; to me their performances are all earnest and perfectly pitched to the tension of the moments. Even Dreyfuss gagging as he performs an impromptu shark autopsy is so well done. I was surprised at how much I loved it.

 

[norminal]

Severance.

This shit is deep asf.

 

[State of Epicicity]

We just watched Sinister. That was sick. I mean truly, just sick and twisted. I thought it was well acted and directed, but I felt it really was missing the side of good horror where there's a mystery element that's more intellectual. This felt too reliant on jump scares and absolute evil and deranged concepts.

To me good film feels like you've just read a good book. This felt more like the most fucked up and repulsive person you've ever met at a bar told you a ghost story, but did it masterfully.

I compared it to 7even, which deals with truly sick and twisted concepts also, but that film tells the story from the point of view of someone outside of it, in a crucial way, in Morgan Freeman's character, where you as the audience get taken along on a bizarre and horrific mystery involving detective work and intellect, but in Sinister, you're just watching the worst things you could ever imagine directly, just walking through it all like it's a museum of The criminally insane.

So my biggest gripe is with the writing, but it's so self contained in the voyeurism of fucked up and terrible murder that it sucks out parts of horror that make the genre compelling at its best. To mea great horror film is just a great film that happens to deal with dark subject matter. This was bordering on the style of horror I don't ever want to see, stuff like Saw and Hostel, which are just too much for me. When it gets to that level, I don't see a way to write yourself into a great work of fiction. Then it just becomes something unsubtle and obscene. Sinister wasn't quite there, but it was walking that line, and that element was too forward for me to appreciate the film the way it may have been intended.

 

[likitlikeyoulikeit]

Latest episode of The Old Man.....so brilliant, I guess I have reached annoyance level of appreciation for this show. So well thought out, and directed. Stellar experience, especially for television.

 

[JiveTurkey]

We just watched Sinister. That was sick. I mean truly, just sick and twisted. I thought it was well acted and directed, but I felt it really was missing the side of good horror where there's a mystery element that's more intellectual. This felt too reliant on jump scares and absolute evil and deranged concepts.

To me good film feels like you've just read a good book. This felt more like the most fucked up and repulsive person you've ever met at a bar told you a ghost story, but did it masterfully.

I compared it to 7even, which deals with truly sick and twisted concepts also, but that film tells the story from the point of view of someone outside of it, in a crucial way, in Morgan Freeman's character, where you as the audience get taken along on a bizarre and horrific mystery involving detective work and intellect, but in Sinister, you're just watching the worst things you could ever imagine directly, just walking through it all like it's a museum of The criminally insane.

So my biggest gripe is with the writing, but it's so self contained in the voyeurism of fucked up and terrible murder that it sucks out parts of horror that make the genre compelling at its best. To mea great horror film is just a great film that happens to deal with dark subject matter. This was bordering on the style of horror I don't ever want to see, stuff like Saw and Hostel, which are just too much for me. When it gets to that level, I don't see a way to write yourself into a great work of fiction. Then it just becomes something unsubtle and obscene. Sinister wasn't quite there, but it was walking that line, and that element was too forward for me to appreciate the film the way it may have been intended.

I thought Sinister was GREAT. Popcorn horror for sure but creepy af while definitely meant to bring in a big audience. And before it became super obvious that Ethan Hawke is addicted to plastic surgery

 

[la szum]

We're thinking of watching Sopranos for the first time here... so...

I haven't watched The Wire, Game Of Thrones, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office,
Arrested Development, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and damn
near every other lauded TV show/series from the last 20 years.

Apparently, because I was too busy memorizing every line from every episode
of The Big Bang Theory.

 

[norminal]

I’m a few episodes in with Severance. I had no idea what to expect from this show. Given that Adam Scott is the lead actor, I honestly expected it to be more comical, and less Sci-fi and/or thriller.

I ended my tolerance break last night, smoking a bowl before watching Episode 4, and that shit hit me hard. Just the whole feel of the show, down to the color pallet, is very uncomfortable and though provoking.

Definitely worth a watch!

 

[la szum]

Old Man and Severance in the queue now. Sorry, Penny.

Why is queue such a fucked up word? Is there a more fucked up word in the English
language than queue?

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

I haven't watched The Wire, Game Of Thrones, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office,
Arrested Development, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and damn
near every other lauded TV show/series from the last 20 years.

Apparently, because I was too busy memorizing every line from every episode
of The Big Bang Theory.

That or just checking out Kaley's Cuocos.