Current Watching

[ian.64]

Current Watching

Dead Of Night

Old '40's Ealing pormanteau of ghost stories, wonderfully done and with a terrific Michael Redgrave performance as a ventriloquist whose dummy does a fine job of taking over his personality to the darkest extremes. Wonderful production values for its time - one of the cameramen is Douglas Slocombe, who would go on to work for Spielberg on his Raiders films - and a chance to indulge in the sheer honest, artful simplicity of it all.

One for the collection.

[Guest]

Current Watching

re Primer - I always just refer people here:
http://neuwanstein.fw.hu/primer_timeline.html

[Guest]

Current Watching

Dead of Night is really scary! I love it, it's brilliant.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Current Watching

Ginger Yellow wrote:

I'm pretty sure I posted about Primer when it came out. It's utterly brilliant and one of my favourite sci-fi films ever. One of those films where the first time you see it you have very little idea what actually happened but you know you want to see it again immediately to find out. And gradually the sequence of events becomes clear.

It's about two scientists with decent jobs in hi-tech who, while looking for a viable project to make their fortune, succeed in building a time machine in their garage.

Engineers. And the genius touch is that they accidentally create their time machine while trying to build a perpetual motion machine.

Ah good I was hoping someone else had seen it. A couple of questions — it's the type of film that raises tons of them. Where is Aaron right at the end, in some kind of warehouse? (I was very tired when I watched it so very likely missed something.) Also Carruth — the director — has said that the science is all "real" (whatever that means) albeit theoretical, is that valid?

The thing I love most about Primer is that it understands that film itself is actually a time machine. Surprisingly few movies play with that idea at a fundamental level. Chris Marker's short La Jetée does (and I'm certain Carruth must have seen that a dozen times,) also Kubrick in 2001. But this movie really pushes it.

Lyra, that timeline is even more complicated than the film. I think I'd rather just watch it again.

[Guest]

Current Watching

I haven't seen it since it came out. You've made me really want to rewatch it.
Love La Jetee. Interesting question about film as 'time machine', I'm not sure exactly what you mean - something very precise I'm guessing - but like I say I need to see it again really and then I might get it.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Current Watching

Not really precise. It's just that the process of film-making does something very similar to what the two guys in Primer were doing with time. That is you shoot film in real time (in an order that has nothing to do with the story.) Then you cut it up and rearrange it. In that sense time is being moved about as it is in Primer. Because of that there are all sorts of reverberations going-on between the subject, the film, and the process that make it brain-achingly fascinating.

[Reed John]

Current Watching

Has anyone else made an effort to watch Rubicon (on right before Mad Men)? I've seen every episode, but I still don't understand what's going on.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Current Watching

I've been watching it. It's your basic conspiracy thriller isn't it? You won't know exactly what's going on until the end I'd suppose.

[delicatemoth]

Current Watching

Following up a couple of posts on the 'Mosque at Ground Zero' thread, I just tracked down and watched the first episode of Justified. Highly entertaining hokum about a Wild West-style rulebreaking cop tangling with white supremacists in eastern Kentucky. The props and costumes folk obviously had a ball doing the racists' base and tattoos, and the lead actor has a permanent dangerous smile on his face, reminiscent of Burt Reynolds in Gator. I'm looking forward to the rest of this.

[Uosdwis R Dewoh]

Current Watching

Highly, highly recommend The Man From Earth. The last work of Jerome Bixby (writer of many early acclaimed Star Trek episodes and other miscellaneous Sci Fi) about a college professor, who seems to be upping sticks for no reason. His academic friends throw him a dinner party only for him to try and convince he's a 14,000 year old man and he moves on every 10 years so people don't notice his aging. Genuinely intelligent science fiction and it makes for compelling watching. I'd love to see it on a stage.

[Ginger Yellow]

Current Watching

Haven't watched it yet, but it has come to my attention that Better Off Ted is back! Well, sort of. They're airing the two episodes that were already filmed but not aired when the fucks at ABC cancelled the show. It's going to be bittersweet viewing, like the last semi-season of AD.

[Levin]

Current Watching

I'm currently not watching werckmeister harmonies, mainly because I didn't realise it was 4 hours long when I put it on my love film list. Is it worth watching?

[Ek weet nie]

Current Watching

Werckmeister Harmonies is awesome and it's only 2 hours 25 minutes long. Although the first scene in the bar is about twenty minutes long, if that's not floating your boat it might be best to bail after that.

I think you might be confusing it with the 7 hour Satantango re: duration.

I've watched the first four episodes of Rubicon. I like the fact that it isn't just a straight procedural (although the fourth episode seemed to be leaning that way) and the main character is good to watch. Would prefer less conspiracy and more grunt work though. Can't say that I'm too engrossed in it so far but I will probably give it a full season chance to impress before dropping it.

Thought they could have got more detailed with the case study on the kill/no-kill in episode 4. It seemed to me many aspects were just ignored.

[Levin]

Current Watching

Ah, I think LoveFilm have taken 2hrs25min and converted it to 225minutes on the disc. It'll be a lot easier to find the time for it. Cheers.

[Ginger Yellow]

Current Watching

Ah, man, it really is bittersweet. It had been a while since I watched Better Off Ted - since the cancellation, in fact. I'd forgotten how awesome Phil & Lem are. I'm going to miss them.

In more cheery news, the new Futurama continues to be great. They still don't seem to have worked out what to do with the Fry & Leela relationship - it's off and on again, but not in any coherent way. Still, the jokes are mostly great and some of the episodes have been superb. It grates a bit when they do the obvious parody episodes - the iPhone one and the Da Vinci Code ones were a bit weak - but otherwise I'm loving it.

[ian.64]

Current Watching

Currently working my through my DVD box-set of I, Claudius. The only drawbacks I can see are the sometimes doughy and quickly-dated make-up jobs (although the efforts made to make Sian Phillips's psychotic Roman matriarch, Livia, a dessicated old hag in later episodes are impressive), and the curious episode where one character, the steadfast Aggrapina, appears not to have aged while all around her look more haggard and grey-haired (the episode 'Reign Of Terror').

And that's it. All the rest is still compulsive, compelling and utterly magnificent. The acting's still as high-quality as you can possibly ask for, the direction's terrific and Jack Pulman's script is one of the best there's ever been, a sharply intelligent masterclass in black humour and astute character portrait.

If you want to know at least one example of why this is one hell of a series, then take a look at Brian Blessed's portrayal of the emperor Augustus. Today, he's rent-a-character with a wind-tunnel gob and a loud line in annoying, larger-than-life prats on hand to add a bit of oomph to quiz shows and other televisual bits and bobs.

But, fucking hell, he could act back then and he makes Augustus a funny, considered, magnetic and sometimes fearsome character. It's a superb performance - one of many. Next time you see him doing duff, self-parodic fillers between shows on Dave, just grab a hold of this and see how good he could be before becoming Britain's Best Duff Old Cove.

I've been watching it for a few nights this week and will resume after the weekend. All that bloodlust, scheming, incest, poisoning, politicking and betrayal can wear you down a bit.

But, it's great.

[Guest]

Current Watching

Sounds fab ian. Better than HBO's Rome??

I just watched series 1 of Damages. I liked it well enough. Nicely put together & so on, although so twisty that you begin to mistrust everything rather than being surprised, etc. But there is wit there too. Like a few really nice visual gags.

and I've been watching Leverage for work & it's aces. Except the soundtrack is annoying. But that's OK.

[ian.64]

Current Watching

Better than HBO's Rome??

I tried to sit through at least one episode of that and failed. That's the trouble with I, Claudius and with a film like Spartacus. After them, any other dramatic recreation of Roman times seems inadequate, because they both cover all their bases - script, acting and tone - with immaculate skill and brilliance. I, Claudius, for instance, could take that sleekly-photographed piece of anaemic piss, Ridley Scott's Gladiator, and give it the most colossal slapping of its life, even though its settings scream 'television studio'.

It's that good.

[Guest]

Current Watching

I think ancient Rome is multi-faceted enough even in our imaginations to be able to stand multiple interpretations! The trouble is, people have this idea that it requires/deserves/whatever a particular kind of style & tone, and this idea is itself a product of stuff like I Claudius...

[ian.64]

Current Watching

True, but I, Claudius in particular had the trump card of humour - which sharpens its drama - yes, the concept of ancient Rome was a lofty one, but a writer like Pulman brought events and characters to a level that removed the stuffy pomposity that sometimes suffocates historical drama. To refer to the phrase of Peter Shaffer, they don't 'shit marble'.

[Guest]

Current Watching

I'm sure HBO's mix of sordid poverty & ludicrous sex and fictionalised history is just as 'unrealistic' as anything else - I mean it owes as much to Petronius & Suetonius & so on as Graves' books must have, & in its own way it's just as constructed an interpretation & so on. But it's a lot of fun. I went to a classics conference a few years ago & they put on a screening of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. It wasn't bad.

[Mr Shit]

Current Watching

I watched Avatar for the first time recently and spent every second of it wishing I'd seen it in 3D.

[Guest]

Current Watching

You jest surely. Although I have not bothered with Avatar so what do I know.

I am watching Mad Men because it makes kind of soothing background telly for working. It's kind of weird because, and you all know this already I'm sure, nothing much actually happens, but it's quite gripping. And all those long takes & so on, all part of the period piece effect but it's a nice change.

and then I had to watch Killers for work yesterday and I don't really understand this film, because it wants to mix up its genres and that but is so firmly stuck in its ideas of what these genres mean that it can't make it work at all.

[Ginger Yellow]

Current Watching

Well, the only thing going for Avatar in 3D is the 3D, so I can understand the sentiment. I can't imagine sitting through that tedious, cliched bollocks in 2D.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Current Watching

I've seen a couple of excellent South American films recently.

The Maid (Il Nana) is a great black comedy, ambiguous enough to wrong-foot you all the way. It was shaping up to be a nifty film about the nature of work at first, but took it beyond that into something else.

Magic Gloves, an Argentinian film from 2003, is another apparently cosy one which deals with big ideas while remaining funny and empathetic. If you can imagine a feel-good update of Blue Collar for the credit era - it's not easy, I admit - that's sort of what you're in for.