What-cha-what-cha-what-cha Watched?

[speculative]

I watched "Fortysomething" on PBS last night. It's Hugh Laurie in a British comedy playing a doctor that is almost the exact opposite of Dr. House. (This character is wimpy and neurotic, whereas House is egotistic and aggressive.) The oddest show I've grown to love. Sure, only 6 episodes made it looks like - figures!

Netflix Online Movie Rentals - Rent DVDs, Classic Films to DVD New Releases

If you find it funny when people are embarrassed/do embarrassing things & get themselves into embarrassing situations because of their behavior, then this one might be for you.

Welcome to hughlaurie.net

For example, the running gag is that at the end of each episode, the husband and wife are in bed, and the husband says something about not remembering the last time they had sex, and then either the husband or wife ends up falling asleep before they can get to it.

Adapted from a novel of the same name. It looks like it may have been designed to only be 6 hours from the start...

Amazon.com: Fortysomething: Hugh Laurie, Anna Chancellor, Stephen Fry: Movies & TV

This is just one of the reasons I'm starting to turn to PBS more frequently. It helped me also find Ghostland Observatory last year, so it has been a good neighbor to me lately, along with the interesting documentaries it airs now and then...

 

[The Ü™]

So this week has been a week of driving and being driven. First, I get my temporary license, and today, I went to see Fast & Furious. While it was refreshing to see the familiar faces of Vin Diesel and Paul Walker (the former only a footnote in the previous installment), the film reeked of the laughable seriousness of Rob Cohen's 2001 film when it should've just gone with the more lighthearted tone of John Singleton's 2003 follow-up.

Still, it was an entertaining spring blockbuster, though far away from its low-budget roots. And it also made foot worshipers look bad. The film also had a curiously high body count; in retrospect, I don't think the other three movies had much more than one or two deaths or something like that.

The theater was packed, so if that's any indication, then I anticipate a fifth installment on the horizon.

I'd like to see them make one with Walker, Diesel, and Tyrese.

 

[Paisley]

Finished Damages season 2, called it, and loved it! Patty and Ellen are awesome, glad they brought back Ray Fiske for the finale and glad there were only 13 episodes, I would've gone mad with how tedious the show was at times.

 

[mysterio]

Diary of the Dead

If you’ve seen George A. Romero’s previous living dead films, you’ve seen it all before, only not from this angle. Diary of the Dead is a good horror movie, easily worth 100 “Saw” sequels, with intense, convincing performances all around that make it frighteningly easy to suspend disbelief for 90 minutes.

When the shit hits the fan, a group of college students and their film professor are camping in the woods, ironically shooting a bad horror movie that’s coming apart when they learn that civilization, too, is unraveling. That the dead have literally come back to life and are eating the living doesn’t quite penetrate right away, but obviously something big is going down and the director decides it’s his mission to keep the camera rolling as events unfold. The grainy, jittery film we see is of course actually shot by Romero & crew, who do well in creating the illusion of an amateur film student doing the shooting. It has the unsettling effect of making the scenes more authentic and intimate, eliminating our usual sense of security that the omnipotent director has everything under control in a make believe world we can walk away from after the movie.

The film contains choice observations about the information age and the shared voyeurism of filmmakers and viewers (as the editor-narrator notes, “we don’t stop to help, we stop to look.”). And of course it’s easy to see Romero’s flesh-eating zombies as grotesque paradies of the living—creatures of mindless and insatiable appetite—in a sensate culture.

The group sets out for the Pennsylvania hometown of one of the characters who’s frantic to reach her family. They scan the Internet periodically whenever they get the chance, but too much information gives them a fuzzy rather than clear picture of what’s really happening. They don’t know how to separate the truth from the bullshit. Sound familiar? One character later remarks that “in the end, it’s all just noise.”

What follows is their nightmare RV Odyssey through the land of the living dead. The film’s gore and violence are vital because we’re meant to see how rapidly people adapt to living in a war zone and their capacity for violence lurking just beneath the fragile veneer of civilization, waiting for an opportunity to emerge. There are people who believe that a collapse of modern civilization will lead to some kind of New Age of enlightenment, but like Romero, I seriously doubt that.

At the end we’re shown grisly online footage of a few hometown good ole boys getting their jollies using zombies tied to trees for target practice. They hang a woman from a tree branch by a rope tied to her hair, then one of them blows the lower part of her head and body off with a shotgun, so that the top half of her head with her still-moving eyes is left dangling on the rope like a trophy. The editor’s final voiceover question to the audience is, “are we worth saving?”

It’s a good question.

 

[BlackCat]

This is an excellent part of Fantasia.

[YOUTUBE="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8Ca_edg6RE"]Fantasia- Night on Bald Mountain[/YOUTUBE]

 

[MrME]

Lone Star
8/10

Sheriff Sam Deeds (played by the always-terrific Chris Cooper), of Rio County, Texas uncovers the skull of Sheriff Charlie Wade (Kris Krisofferson), who disappeared 40 years ago. As Sam investigates, more and more evidence points to his dead father, Sheriff Buddy Deeds (Matthew McConaughey), as the killer. Meanwhile, the people he questions have nothing but good things to say about Buddy, he was a regular town hero. Sam realizes that he may not have known his father as well as he thought he did.

Through a series of flashbacks we learn Rio County's history of racism and how it all tied back to the lawmen. We also meet a large cast of characters, generations of fathers and sons who have grown apart, and people who have drifted away for their own heritages.

Excellent flick, strongly recommended.

 

[MrME]

If you’ve seen George A. Romero’s previous living dead films, you’ve seen it all before, only not from this angle. Diary of the Dead is a good horror movie, easily worth 100 “Saw” sequels, with intense, convincing performances all around that make it frighteningly easy to suspend disbelief for 90 minutes.

Well, that's good news. I'm still wary about seeing it, all of my horror-geek friends were really mixed in their opinions of it. I hate to tarnish my memories of Mr. Romero, who was like a god to me while I was growing up.

 

[Sniffles]

Well on TCM they're playing King of Kings starring Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus. This is probably one of my favorite films, and I've enjoyed it since I was a little kid.

It's depiction of the Sermon on the Mount has been honoured as one of the greatest scenes in all film history, which has helped enshrined it as a masterpiece. Then of course there's the amazing score done by Miklós Rózsa.

Here's the opening credits and the opening scenes:
[youtube="ws5ftq4UrVM"]King of Kings[/youtube]

And yes that's the voice of Orson Wells doing the narration.

 

[ladypinkington]

I have just discovered Kings recently and Better Off Ted and have fallen in love with those shows.

 

[The Ü™]

I watched The Spirit.

Samuel L. Jackson's best movie, hands down.

 

[MrME]

I watched The Spirit.

Samuel L. Jackson's best movie, hands down.

I can not endorse this review. I couldn't even finish The Spirit.

 

[The Ü™]

And now I watched Bedtime Stories.

Along with Happy Gilmore, it was Adam Sandler's best movie by a long shot.

(Although I would've preferred a spaceship themed hotel.)

 

[Pseudonym_Alpha]

V For Vendetta - seriously, one of my favourite films.
Stargate sg-1 season 10 (woot woot, great episodes to watch in there, namely 'company of thieves')
WWE Raw - wrestling fan from age 12 (plus I'm aussie, so the concept is different to me)
and watching my brothers Australian Rules football game tomorrow!

 

[Mole]

"The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas"

I've just come out of, "The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas".

It's a shocking film. I won't tell you the ending 'cause that would spoil it for you.

In fact it is so shocking, I don't know what to feel or think about it.

I think it is the juxtaposition of horror and normality that is shocking.

But I don't know what else to say.

 

[ajblaise]

The Exterminating Angel

This movie was very interesting, it's concept is that a group of upper-class aristocrats attend a dinner party, and before it begins, the staff start to leave and don't know why, the guests end up never leaving and fall asleep one-by-one in a totally casual way in the same room they've been in, which most of the movie takes place in. They awake and are confused as to why they are still there yet don't know what they should do about it. Eventually they become distressed and delusional. Very surrealist. It's in Spanish with subtitles and made in the 1960s.

For some people this is there favorite movie of all time, I can see how that could be.

 

[MrME]

Yes Man -- 5/10
Somewhat formulaic Jim Carrey film cut from the same cloth as Liar, Liar, but missing the spark that film had. There were a few bright and funny moments, like Carrey's character being tweaked out on Red Bull. The back-alley fight was also rather funny. But, overall it was kind of flat, there seemed to be no real emotional push behind the story. Also, Carrey and his love interest, played by the always-adorable Zooey Deschanel, have no on-screen chemistry, so I just didn't buy into their relationship. The 20-year age difference didn't bother me, they just didn't seem like people who were truly interested in each other; they were simply going through the motions as dictated by the script.

 

[Qre:us]

Love the "Planet Earth" series by BBC and Discovery
Planet Earth: The Complete Series [HD DVD]: Amazon.ca: DVD

And, there's another: "The Blue Planet: Seas of Life"

 

[Mole]

"Iron Maiden 666".

I have just come out of the movie, "Iron Maiden 666". And as I write I am listening to Iron Maiden play, "Fear of the Dark".

Iron Maiden are gods and we are the tribe.

They descend from the clouds like the Führer.

Just as the Führer descended to the adoring crowds in the propaganda movie, "The Triumph of the Will".

And like the Führer they brook no criticism whatsoever - dissent is verboten.

So we are caught up in the orgiastic emotion of the crowd.

Our only option is to adore Iron Maiden and so we chant -

- Blood and Iron! Blood and Iron! Blood and Iron! -

 

[Mole]

"Be Careful Who You Let In".

I saw the movie, "Be Careful Who You Let In", the other day.

It is a delightful vampire movie set in snowy Sweden.

But as I watched it I couldn't help thinking that vampires are a metaphor for our sexual desires.

Just as the vampire, the "vamp", has an overwhelming desire for blood, we have an overwhelming desire for "vamps", that is we have an overwhelming desire for our objects of desire.

Yes, just as vampires turn people into objects of desire for blood, we turn ordinary people into objects of our desire for sex.

In both cases we turn from ordinary kind people into ravening beasts intent on our desires - I mean they don't call it the beast with two backs for nothing.

And it is the first menstrual blood that signals our desire to turn into beasts, just as it is the scent of blood that turns vampires beastly.

So our desires are magic - they can turn an ordinary person into a beast - and when our desires are satisfied, back into an ordinary human being.

We are amazed, sometimes horrified, even transfixed by the transformation brought about by our sexual desires.

We feed on each other and we feed one another.

"Homo homini lupus est" - man is a wolf unto man.

In Holy Communion we take the Body of our Saviour, and as we commune together we take the bodies of one another.

And the question vampire movies address is whether we can be beasts without being beastly.

Not a bad question.

 

[disregard]

Independent Lens: "Crips and Bloods: Made in America"