What are you lookin' at?! Right now...

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Same goes for Shakespeare in the original Klingon.

[Space Tycoon]

Once again raiding my DVD collection. Thought I'd rewatch The International. The espionage genre is not really what I would call my speciality. However, Ialways thought it was a better-than-average thriller. Great locations, casting, timely story, then and now.

[Space Tycoon]

Just watching The Theory of Everything tonight. It's a gorgeously made movie, but from what I have read, heavily altered from reality. I have decided to view it as a work of fiction which just happens to be inspired by real events and persons.

Which is obviously how one should view any biopic, no matter no such one would like to do otherwise.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

I keep meaning to watch that. I have a vague memory of people being mad about it glossing over his infidelity.

Ulic asked me for help, the other day, in figuring out the name of a UK miniseries that aired on PBS in the late seventies or early eighties. From his description, I suspected he was talking about ITV's Children of the Stones, which I hadn't thought about in years and years. I sought it out on YouTube. I've watched the first two-fifths of it. It's as creepy as I remembered. They do this thing that I mostly only associate with British programming and US soaps where they do the exterior shots on film and the interior shots on video. It gives me some kind of weird nostalgia.

I watched the first episode of Doom Patrol, which I've been waiting for with some mix of zeal and apprehension, since it's one of my all-time favorite comics. I liked it. It was goofy and bizarre (it ends with a donkey farting words into the night sky), which is what I wanted from it, and it gave me the Brendan Fraser fix I've been missing. It felt a little disjointed--almost like it was a ninety-minute episode edited down to an hour--and it had some head-scratchy plot contrivances, but I still dug it, and I look forward to seeing more.

I've been remembering a lot of things out of the blue, lately, which is possibly the result of lengthy recent writings about childhood. This has spurred a rewatch of Twin Dragon Encounter and Dragon Hunt, the only two-film film series I know of starring identical Irish-Canadian twins promoting their own unique Kung Fu/Kickboxing hybrid. Boy, are those movies bad. They both premiered at Cannes, which I think is pretty fantastic. I want to know what it was like for jury members to have to watch them. (I did a running commentary on the first one via chat with Felt Pelt. He didn't ask for it, but I felt like I had to talk to somebody about it.)

Another thing remembered out of the blue: The Ketchup Vampires, a two-part, Elvira-hosted Just for Kids Video cartoon with Magic School Bus-level animation that, to the best of my memory, was just plain weird. It turns out it was originally a twenty-six-episode German-Czech co-production. It aired in the early nineties in Germany, so there's some chance Mal saw some of it. My guess is that some of the weirdness I remembered resulted from Just for Kids Video cramming 624 minutes' worth of material into two ninety-minute tapes. (I can't remember how much of a presence Elvira had. If it was significant, then maybe there was even more cramming.) I haven't rewatched the English yet, but I plan to. I also plan to follow it up with the German.

[Mal Shot First]

Ooh, I 'member Ketchup Vampires! (Me? I've been catching up on South Park during my daily lunch breaks.)

I guess I should say I vaguely remember watching it in Germany in the early 90s. It ran on ZDF, if I remember correctly, and I can remember the melody of the theme song. I know the lyrics said something like "Ketchup Vampire... Ketchup naschen... Sieben Flaschen" (I guess I remember they rhymed naschen with Flaschen, but I don't recall all the words).

Anyway, I think the concept was interesting enough to get me to watch a few episodes back then, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't engaging enough to get me to watch the entire series.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Something tells me I will enjoy the chopped-all-to-hell dub more than the full series, whether thanks to nostalgia, to the Elvira frame, or to my love of sloppy editing.

There's a movie from my youth I absolutely love called Ninja, the Wonder Boy. It, too, is a distillation of an entire series. The original is called Manga Sarutobi Sasuke. In this case, the original was twenty-four half-hour episodes, and the edit was a single feature at just a hair under ninety minutes. The music's pretty rad. I dug and dug about a decade ago for a subtitled version of the original series, but I never found one.

I take that back. I think I found a torrent, but the torrent was dead. I also found an Italian dub that I could sorta follow, but I didn't want my half-understanding of the Italian to color my opinion of the series, so I only watched an episode or two. It has been years since I looked. Maybe I should renew my efforts.

[Space Tycoon]

I am finally getting into Brooklyn 99. Scratches me right where I itch.

Late to the party as always.

[Slartibartfast]

I've just watched Judd Apatow's documentary "The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling". It's long, and it gives a good portrait of Shandling as a man dominated by an overbearing, neurotic mother who was psychologically destroyed by grief over a dead teenage son. It also shows Shandling's respect for California-type crystal-worship and Ram Dass reverence, to the shame of all involved. Conan O'Brien in this documentary is not mugging for the audience or bullying anyone to curry favor with an audience, so he comes across for a change as a clever, insightful person. The portrait of Shandling that emerges is one of a difficult but beloved person--a person so beloved that those remembering him are often moved to tears.

This is probably the most accomplished film that Judd Apatow has yet produced. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in comedy.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

"Ramm das, Ram Dass!"

I need to get on that Shandling documentary. I think it's the kind of thing made for me. Apatow's at his best talking about comics and to comics. Every now and then, I'll be in a bookstore, I'll see that book of interviews with comedians he did (some of them when he was a teen, because he comes from money and had supportive parents), and I'll pick it up and read an interview or two. It's good stuff. One day I should just buy it.

[Slartibartfast]

Since I last wrote, I've seen

"Wayne's World" (1992). The best of the SNL films. Sorry, "Blues Brothers".
"Bob Le Flambeur" (1956). The movie that started the nouvelle vague. A heist movie with a great twist and the best last line in movies.
"Halloween" (1978). Except when Laurie drops the knife, no one acts stupidly in this movie.
"Halloween" (2018). A good horror movie, but suffered in comparison to the 1978 movie, which I watched immediately before it.

The only one of these that I was seeing for the first time is the 2018 "Halloween".

I think that horror movies were richer in the era before mobile phones. For that matter, I think that life was richer in the era before mobile phones. The 1978 "Halloween" is scary in a you-have-only-yourself-to-rely-upon way that the 2018 "Halloween" is not.

[Space Tycoon]

I should probably start watching that Game of Thrones series. I hear it's good.

[elephanter0]

My legs. Pretty hairy

[elephanter0]

I should probably start watching that Game of Thrones series. I hear it's good.

Yes for the first two or three seasons. The last two seasons were... quite something. Sometimes it seems to me that the script was written by dragons.

[Space Tycoon]

"Quite something" as in... awesome? Or not so much.

Oh, and welcome to the board.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

I second Spacey's board-welcoming, elephanter0!

[Slartibartfast]

I recently watched "Under the Silver Lake", which I heard about from Red Letter Media and had not heard of from anywhere else. I'm in Australia, and I don't remember this movie being marketed here at all. It was a kind of Thomas Pynchon-type story about Hollywood. It was interesting and worth seeing, but it's going to strike a lot of people who expect resolution from their narratives as a frustrating joke of a movie.

I also watched "Dragged Across Concrete" by S. Craig Zahler, the guy who directed "Bone Tomahawk" and "Brawl in Cell Block 99". "Dragged Across Concrete" is a two-hour forty-minute movie about two cops (Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn) who get suspended from the force for abusing a suspect, and then use their free time to plan to rob a drug dealer. I highly recommend this to people who like Zahler's other work, but I'd warn people who haven't seen any of it that he likes to make use of cartoony-but-still-disturbing prostheses during violent scenes, and this movie has several violent scenes that will shock unprepared viewers. This movie held my attention from the beginning to the end.

I also highly recommend "Brawl in Cell Block 99".

I'm also watching the BBC-HBO series "Chernobyl", which I think is excellent and which is impossible not to see as an allegory of the failure of the modern American government.

[Slartibartfast]

I watched "Deadwood: The Movie".

This post will contain spoilers. Highlight the text below to read the spoilers.

It turns out that this should be called "The Wake of Charley Utter", because Utter is killed off early in this movie (in 1889) and the aftermath of his murder drives the plot. He is killed off because he won't sell his land to George Hearst so that Hearst can install telephone poles in Deadwood. This struck me as no advancement on the killing of Whitney Ellsworth, in terms of storytelling. Samuel Fields is an eyewitness to the murder, and Bullock takes Fields into protective custody. Harry, who is Bullock's deputy, corruptly allows assassins employed by Hearst to attack Fields, but they are stopped by Bullock in a Dirty-Harry-type standoff. Trixie and Sol get married, and Hearst attempts to have the sheriff of Lead arrest Trixie for shooting him back in 1877. Bullock tells the sheriff of Lead that he has no jurisdiction in Deadwood, and instead takes Hearst into custody. On the walk across the street to the jail, Bullock allows a mob to beat Hearst in the street, as punishment for ordering the murder of Charley Utter and also for just being George Hearst. Bullock talks to Samuel Fields, who says that before he died, Utter seemed relieved of a burden. Bullock weeps.

Throughout this whole movie, Al is dealing with failing health due to a life of drinking. Al's story doesn't intersect with the main story of the murder of Charley Utter and the coming of the telephone.

After Utter's murder, Utter's land is put up for auction. The town prevents it from falling into Hearst's hands and thereby frustrates him.

Coming in the wake of the disastrous final seasons of Game of Thrones, this movie seems comparatively good. As a solid piece of plotting, though, it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

[colmatrix]

Loved Deadwood just for the wrap-up, acting, and the chance to finally say goodbye to all the characters I loved so much over the years.

Watching Chernobyl now. Haunting, breathtaking, heartbreaking, frustrating, but most of all, captivating.

[Space Tycoon]

Like many people I've always been fascinated by the Vietnam War. I've been watching the excellent Ken Burns documentary on Netflix for a little while now, whenever I feel like having my mood dampened. I understand it's been attacked by the rabid right and the far left in more or less equal measure.

To me, that seems like they did their job.

[Slartibartfast]

I've seen "Once Upon a Time In Hollywood" three times since its release ten days ago.

I liked it.

I have this idea that it's the last movie, and that I might not be going to the movies much anymore.

[Space Tycoon]

I've been watching Death Dive to Saturn on the 'flix.

No, it's not some pulpy 50's space opera. It's an overview of the Cassini probe and it's marvellous mission to the ringed planet. There's a section about Enceladus and Titan, which in my opinion may be the most interesting places in the Solar System--that we could personally visit, that is.

Seriously, you can have Mars. I want to go sailing on Titan's lakes of liquid methane.

[Space Tycoon]

El Camino. It was exactly what it needed to be. I had considered that it might be mind-alteringly awesome; simultaneously I feared it could misfire awkwardly. Neither extreme was realized. El Camino is a fitting epilogue to the Breaking Bad Saga.

It is that rarest of sequels that demands no further sequels. The story is complete.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
...And having said that, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before some studio twerp decides we need "When Badger met Skinny Pete", or some such nonsense.

[Space Tycoon]

The Game Changers.[/]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSpglxHTJVM

[Slartibartfast]

Ford v Ferrari - I liked it. It was good to see a movie so single-mindedly focused on a subject (in this case, racecars), even if I don't have a strong interest in that subject.

Knives Out - I liked it. This was a cute movie that, on my first viewing of it, was not quite as good as Clue, but was still very enjoyable.

1917 - I liked it. This movie held my attention and I kept thinking about it in the weeks after I saw it.

Avenue 5 (pilot) - This was a strong pilot, and I enjoyed watching it.

Justified (the whole series) - this might be the best start-to-finish solid television show in the medium. It doesn't reach the dramatic heights or the psychological insights of The Sopranos, but the character work in this show is strong throughout and it's light and highly enjoyable.

[Slartibartfast]

The Rise of Skywalker - This was incoherent gibberish. I enjoyed watching it, but only because it was so incoherent and dumb. At the end of The Last Jedi, the Resistance had been reduced to only a few hundred people. How does The Rise of Skywalker deal with this dramatic population bottleneck and cliffhanger? By ignoring it completely. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Also, Kylo Ren is morally irredeemable from the beginning of the first movie when he orders everyone in that village to be murdered. Anyone who takes seriously the notion that such a person can be redeemed after an unforgivable action like ordering the murder of everyone in a village is not a serious moral agent.