Nah. I thought the message for Interstellar was just too heavy handed and therefore cheesy because of it.



Saw this last night and you know what? I actually thought it was pretty decent. I've red reviews saying it's the "worst film of all time" which is mental. Fact is, even if you didn't like it's message or what it was doing all the actors were first rate, especially the females. Jennifer Lawrence is one of those I don't want to like but she was brilliant in this.

i need to catch up with the moobys. been too long trapped in a TV prison, due to heavy workload (45 min shows are easy to schedule in a cramped day/ between chores)

since winter is coming and things got COLD here i'm switching to tragedies and horror.

any recommendations for the season? i'll be looking and the halloween/horror things suggested last year that i missed (like-- necrophiliac, or something-- ha ha ha ha-- dead german dicks).

but serious tragedies also welcome, eh. not just b movies or classic horror.

I've been the same. Too much work, climbing and football has meant I've been totally out the loop with films. So yeah, can't give you any recent recommendations sorry.

Give an example of the kind of thing you're thinking of.

e.g. macbeth! (the musical, lol) --- or any modern versions thereof
(i'm about to restart house of cards which is ... richard the 3rd? or something) (it's not really a musical, it's just a word joke)

but anything with an unhappy ending, really. romances gone to hell like betty blue or bad timing or those anti-sex tales of eroticism gone awry. things that end in death/loss/defeat. in northrop fry's words, "the death of the hero."

the exception to "tragedy" being proper horror movies where the gore and disaster overwhelm any "heroism" by the survivors.

thanks in advance!


not necessarily recent. old works too-- better even cuz i can rent a disk or stream instead of buying a 2 movie tickets plus plus plus.

ps- was reviewing my list and will be bumping up "the witch" and "the love witch" (so many!)

I'll keep it to the horror stuff, just to keep it tied in with the halloween thing, and stick to more recent ones. The film I mentioned in the last page, The Forest, might fit the bill. Top of the list for downer-horror though has to be The Mist, Eden Lake and Martyrs. Also The Descent (but make sure it has the British, not US ending). Perfect for any feel-bad Halloween night.

For earlier stuff. Tonnes of American horror from the 70s, especially Romero and Cronenberg. And Carpenter's The Thing, of course.

oh hell yeah, thanks. romero deserves a special mini-festival this year.

cronenberg requires no recommendation with me, but good reminder, i actually moved CRASH up in my list earlier today (have seen it but worth a rewatch with that whole sex/death thing that must follow the summer "romance" genre).

carpenter i need to see more. will look after THE THING!

also, the ones in your previous paragraph. and yeah, US endings generally suck terribly.

(for miserable endings, the french are experts, ha ha ha)

Les Enfants du Paradis, my fave French film, has a heavy downer ending... great movie though. Love the "anarchist"

Go on a Harry Dean Stanton binge.

oh hell yeah, garance! that movie was a fucked up story. great story tho. and yeah french ending lol

hm....

not all are tragedies though

in paris texas he becomes hero-- just for one day

in wild at heart the hyenas eat him but the movie itself is a "romance" probably. in pretty in pink he's a loser but same thing.

etc.

so many movies though!

genre. northrop. myths and shit.

*Shudder* fuck that film. Fucked me up for days that did. I can be pretty out there in my taste, but man, that was out there

Yeah, shudder is right. Evil film.

sounds like the right thing to watch in the christmas season...

right up to the solstice when the sun is nearly dead... yeah

then of course the life of brian

wait... martyrs 2008 or martyrs 2016?

ETA: FRENCH VERSION NOT AMERICAN! FUCKING ... GAAAAAAH! !@#@#!@#!

Martyrs and now Inside have both had American remakes that have had little to no hype around them, because the original French films were so damn good and unique in their own way, if you have not seen either of these movies seek out the original French versions. Neither are hard to find.

The Void

Probably my favourite of the recent crop of 80s throwback movies (It Follows, House of the Devil, etc). Fans of films like The Beyond and The Thing will be in heaven.

Dead Poets Society.

Oooooooh! Whassis? Thanks for the rec!

Still a great movie.

What’s his face... the guy who played the “Watson” analogue in HOUSE, M.D., was in this. (I say “Watson” analogue because that show was clearly an attempt at a modern adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, right?)

Anyway... “O Captain my Captain” and whatnot.

Anyone thinking about going to see the new Blade Runner film? I refuse to read any in depth reviews or trailers for it for fear of having it spoiled. However, from what I've heard is that it's been rated pretty highly everywhere. I'm actually really glad about that cos after too many fucking shit sequels, reboots whatever else I was expecting it to just be mediocre.

However, having said that I'm trying not to build it up too much before. Again, I've done that too many times that I've almost turned into a jaded Philip French film watcher.

I need to absorb the original Blade Runner more before I bother with this one.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000494/?ref_=tt_cl_t2


I mostly know him from this and "Swing Kids".

OH YEAH! Swing Kids! Shit yeah!

So do you think I’m off the mark on HOUSE being a Sherlock Holmes for snarky science-types?

I AM TOTALY FUCKING FLIPPING OUT ABOUT IT!!!
Blade Runner is one of my favorite movies of all time.

This is such a huge deal to me. It makes the new Star Wars and justice league both look like stupid little flights of fancy.

I AN pissed that Jóhann Jóhannsson was removed from the project. I loved the variations on the original score that I was seeing in previews, and I can’t imagine why they went with the (also awesome) Hans Zimmer instead of Jóhannsson. Especially after his excellent work on Villeneuve’s other movie that made my heart and brain explode, ARRIVAL.

Also, I hate Jared Leto, but I love Ryan Gosling more than I hate Jared Leto, so there’s hope.

Denis Villeneuve doesn’t do shitty movies. This is going to be rock solid. A lot of old fanboys are pissed about it but I say FUCK THEM, IT LOOKS FUCKING AWESOME.

Wow. Yeah.

Sarcastic or nah?

Because I was legitimately floored by it. It’s not that the ending was some huge surprise (I was piecing things together), but just the way it was executed... it was so beautiful and so heart-wrenching and so heart-warming and so global and so relevant and so personal all at the same time. Plus it had aliens. Stories of that caliber usually don’t have aliens.

I was just in tears by the end of that movie. I went into it expecting to be let down, too! I really can’t inagine NOT being blown away by that movie.

Plus Amy Adams hotty-bobotty vroom vroom and all that.

You know how I feel about Amy Adams.

No sarcasm. Thought we talked about Arrival before. I loved it so much.

Never seen House before, so I can't comment.

i've seen a couple of episodes of "house"

gimmicky "genius" shit for geriatrics-- i have it mentally lumped in the same lot as NCIS, as advertisers probably also do

---

anyway, speaking of "shit", just finished watching (not really) "underworld:blood wars"

i'm a sucker for kate beckinsale in a rubber suit but she looks so botoxed/cgi'ed it's like a weird mannekin/video game character.

she's so naturally hot-- why couldn't she let herself hotly wrinkle, instead of this nonsense? fucks sakes

everything else was of course terrible, so i feel cheated of the only justification i had to watch this garbage.

anyway rrr ok.

--


he gave a few venereal diseases to chloe sevigny in the last days of disco

kate beckinsale was in it! as the hot friend.

Super excited about 2049. I can't wait.

I'm watching half cult, half crap horror movies on Netflix.


Children of the Corn
Dark

Zombeaver
Paranormal Whacktivity

Hahahaha

But HOUSE is way better than NCIS. More to be lumped in with... uhhh... maybe Better Call Saul for a modern reference? Smart... for a Fox Show. But still mostly a procedural.

There’s more to it than that. It’s not total shit.

And it’s totally a Sherlock Holmes thing. The Watson guy is name “Wilson,” for fuck’s sake. The “Holmes” guy is named “House.” Wow, I just realized how right I’ve been about this all along.

“Holmes” ... “House”

Yup. Totally a Holmes and Watson thang.

Will always have a soft spot for that one.

hmmm...no way-- i've seen episodes of house. saul doesn't feature flying viruses jumping from an old lady to a teddy bear to a sick child in the hospital

that is more in the tradition of, er, what's the one, CSI, where miraculous science explanations happen in full gci animation for the benefit of the ignorant public-- science as the new opium of the people. and of course--the misunderstood genius! battling the idiocy of others! ughhh..

this is more like the other shit science show... "numbers". where the guy juuuuust happened to have worked in the branch of mathematics that will solve the crime of the week. i tried watching that a bit too some years ago but ayayay.

saul is about the eroding power of lies and has nothing to do with that kinda bullshit. also because they don't have to crank out 30 episodes per year and fill up weekly slots the writing is good and deliberate and free of fluff and filler.

oh, the one with the bullshit science i actually did like was "lie to me," with tim roth. it had good characters and storylines for the most part. turned a bit shambolic near the end and probably a good thing it was cancelled before it jumped the shark.

Lie to me is just House with Tim Roth. It’s House with applied psychology instead of medicine.

I know house is basically bad tv, br it had its moments, and broke through that procedural, once-a-week thing on several occasions. Not great, but not terrible. Gets pretty weird from time to time. I hadn’t seen the entire thing until just a coupe of years ago, and while plenty of it is stupid, it also has some interesting twists along the way.

You’re right though. It’s no Better Call saul, not even the same kind of show, but I was struggling to find something to compare it to that didn’t lend to the argument that it’s nust total shit.

yeah, i wasn't really attracted by the "magic science" though. which i knew upfront to be total bullshit. i mean, we all read "microexpressions", but it's not like the exact arithmetic of the show.

where it got watchable for me was in the complications that fictional knowledge brought to life and personal relationships-- that is, the writing of the characters on top of the magic science gimmicks-- who do you trust, and with what, and how much, and how do you relate to them-- that sort of thing.

since the pseudo-science was psychology, it naturally fed into more intricate character writing.

and tim roth is lots of fun to watch, yeah--that definitely made it entertaining. not groundbreaking anything though, just fun stuff. i've paid a lot of bills in front of that show.

oh hell the fuck yeah!

THE WHOLE GRITTY CITY



checkit:

http://thewholegrittycity.com

Ok, but psychology isn’t pseudoscience. The show stole from real theories, and made it look like a superpower. But ... y’know... *actual* psychology — that is, the systematic study of human behavior in relation to the brain — is not pseudoscience. It’s science science.

I took chemistry classes that were soft as butter compared to advanced quantitative research methods in neuropsychology, or psychopharmacology.

The show actually pisses me off because it feeds the public misconception that psychology is just sitting in a chair and judging people. That’s just clinical psychology, and yeah, it’s not great.

I just didn’t like how old that shit got. “You’re lying.” Wow. Ok. Way to knock the wind out of me, whatever-the-fuck your name is. I had no idea this episode was going to be about you dealing with someone who was *lying*. Whoah.

It’s a lot like that OTHER-other science gone stupid show “Bones.” That show does an excellent job of making a perfectly reputable (but nowhere near as reputable methodologically as psychology or medicine) science, in that case applied anthropology, and just making it look like a goddamn joke.

What’s the deal with making science look LESS INTERESTING than it actually is by cooking up drama around it? I’d rather read a textbook than watch that show.

The dude in Lie to Me is based on a real person — Dr. Paul Ekman — whose work and theories on deception and identification have been pretty roundly criticized. He’s a pop psychologist, and his work was applied to airport SPOT technology, and has come under fire for being hastily implemented despite insufficient internal validity testing.
I had a cognition professor who would roll his eyes when talking about Ekman and go on tangents. Loved that guy.

Anyway, these are all bad television shows, but as far as I’m concerned, House is the best because it doesn’t make any reputable fields of study look positively daffy. It just goes to way too much trouble to make microscopic stuff exciting, and to find obscenely ridiculous ways of telling captivating stories based loosely on the tenants of medicine. But at least it doesn’t make people call psychology a pseudo-science. Yeeesh.