Current Watching

[JtS]

Current Watching

I've recently started watching Better Off Ted, it's great.

Last night I watched Gamer, a bit too graphic, some good bits, but overall a bit... meh!

[Guest]

Current Watching

I was going to see the Peruvian gay fisherman thing, honest, but then I kind of fell victim to the fact that I'll always choose whatever's Scandinavian & I saw The Girl Who Played with Fire. It is of course nonsense, & much less good than the first one in the same way that the book is much less good than the first one. It's just not as absorbing a story. And Michael Nyqvist is wearing the most ridiculous syrup all the way through & it's distracting.

[ian.64]

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.

I watched it 3D-less and can confirm that its heralded status as the finest in state-of-the-art, technological-breakthrough, blimey-I-have-seen-the-future-and-it's-3D-type-stuff easily loses its lustre when compared to the po-faced, arse-grindingly boring and astonishingly simplistic gubbins it presents as entertainment. Technical accomplishments are very much above board, but the feeling that I was watching an extended telly advert for a video game ('not actual game footage') never escaped me. And I've seen more exciting video game adverts.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Current Watching

I've been off work with miserable dental problems the last week or so; the only silver lining is that my local DVD place has all the seasons of Battlestar Galactica, which I've been watching through a fog of strong painkillers.

It's a terrific show on so many levels. (I appreciate I'm very late to this party and you probalby all know this.) I thought season 2.2 sagged a bit in the middle, but the quality is uniformally high. I shall commence season 3 this evening.

It also underlines the important thing about remakes -- if you're going to remake something, remake something that was a bit shit but contained the kernel of a good idea.

[sw2borshch]

Current Watching

I watched I, Claudius again a couple of years back after seeing a lot of it when I was at school and would agree with ian in the main, tremendous stuff. But the acting I found harder to stomach, it’s all so much more stagey than modern acting, like they know they’re acting, so they act, rather than just acting. I’m guessing that’s conveyed my point brilliantly.

I watched the first series of Rome, and quite enjoyed it, it was a bit of fun & who doesn’t like seeing people in the nicky-nacky-noo and all that, but I, Claudius is just so much more interesting, really.

[My Name Is Ian]

Current Watching

So, I'm watching an episode of Top Of The Pops from February 1970, and this is how it works out for me.

Firstly, the bands play their songs (as expected) but the cut-aways show Tony Blackburn in front of a swirly, psychedelic backdrop with music playing in the background as if he is breaking away from Jimmy Saville's fiftieth birthday party to talk to the audience. I don't know. Perhaps he is.

There are also several songs that, quite noticeably, aren't performed in the studio. "I Want You Back" is accompanied by three minutes of what can only really be described as "hot 1970 girls dancing", but Peter, Paul and Mary's version of "Leaving On A Jet Plane" is played to what looks like stock footage of an aeroplane taxi-ing and John Lennon doesn't fair much better with "Instant Karma". Look! Yoko's wearing a fake beard! Oh, crap off.

Shocking Blue and Billy Preston have got a bit of pizzazz about them (Preston, in particular, who leaps up from his "electronic piano" to throw some surprisingly elastic shapes at the end of his song, has), but I've never even heard of "The Candy Choir" and Tony doesn't even have the good grace to tell me who the woman who looks like Sandie Shaw guest-presenting "Paint Along With Nancy" is. Similarly, I wouldn't even have known that the next band was Vanity Fair if I weren't the sort of prick that knows that sort of thing.

Next up, though, it's Pan's People dancing to Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now", which is a wretched piece of just about the most dismal piece of not-even-post-hippy-wankocalypse ever written. Then there's a woman dancing around in a church wearing the sort of wedding dress that could only have been worn between about 1969 and 1972 - a veil and hotpants - to a piece of music that sucks even more of the life of my living room than Joni Mitchell just did.

But then... The Temptations, and they absolutely tear the place up with "I Can't Get Next To You". Now, it's post-Ruffin Temptations, of course, but this is just brilliant and Dennis Edwards leads them perfectly. I wonder what colour their matching shirts and tassled waistcoats are? Turquoise, I'm guessing. This is one of my favourite songs of all time. There's a knowing look between a couple of them during the instrumental break that gives it all away. They're nailing this song, and they know it. It's all in that look.

BJ Thomas can't top the version of "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" that he did on The Ed Sullivan Show, when a cloud followed him around the stage before eventually pissing rain all over him, and then Peter Marinello, of all people, presents an award to a young girl for being a very good dancer with a look in his eye that indicates that he will, in approximately 40 seconds time, be pouring champagne down her throat while telling her just how much Hibernian have been paid by Arsenal for him at great length. This is followed by a plummy-voiced chap from the NME giving Tony Blackburn a prize for TOTP being their music television programme of the year for 1969.

Finally... Edison Lighthouse. I've always been unaccountably fond of "Love Grows", but I can see just how thoroughly irritating it might have got while being number one for five or six weeks, or however long it was. Are there any other one hit wonders that are now more famous than the thing (edifice, in this case) for which they were named?).

And that's that. They used to do this sort of thing every week in 1970. I feel exhausted.

[My Name Is Ian]

Current Watching

Sorry about that. I don't know what came over me.

[Guest]

Current Watching

I love Peter, Paul and Mary's version of "Leaving On A Jet Plane" so I enjoyed it.

[George]

Current Watching

More old TOTP reviews by Ian (or anybody else for that matter) should be greatly encouraged. Huge chunks of the TOTP archives are lost right up to the late 70's as the BBC in their wisdom wiped the tapes or in the case of the first few shows didn't even bother recording them.

[Sean of the Shed]

Current Watching

As an occasional poor sleeper, I decided to watch 10 Things You Need To Know About Sleep on BBC1 last night. There was some real inciteful stuff on there. Apparently stimulants such as coffee and alcohol can mess up your sleep pattern, people who sail single handedly around the world find it difficult to get to sleep for any long period, and snoring partners can keep you awake. Fuck me. By the time they got round to telling us that thick curtains would be advisable if you have to sleep during daylight, I had dropped off. So what do you know? It worked.
Next week they are apparently explaining how large pieces of faecal matter found in large forested areas may well be that of bears, how the man in the unusual headgear who hangs around the Vatican and the leader of the largest denomination of the Christian faith could be the same person, and they'll be revealing some scientific research that may upset members of The Flat Earth Society.

[Ek weet nie]

Current Watching

I predict a riot.

[Eggchaser]

Current Watching

sw2boro wrote:

I watched I, Claudius again a couple of years back after seeing a lot of it when I was at school and would agree with ian in the main, tremendous stuff. But the acting I found harder to stomach, it’s all so much more stagey than modern acting, like they know they’re acting, so they act, rather than just acting. I’m guessing that’s conveyed my point brilliantly.

I watched the first series of Rome, and quite enjoyed it, it was a bit of fun & who doesn’t like seeing people in the nicky-nacky-noo and all that, but I, Claudius is just so much more interesting, really.

It also shows that Brian Blessed was once a very fine actor rather than just a shouty imitation of himself. The long camera shot of his dying face is a superb piece of acting.

I think because the sets were made by Blue Peter they had to act their arses off so you didn't notice the massive "brass bound" doors had just wobbled after Sejanus had slammed them shut.

[sw2borshch]

Current Watching

I’m not sure I know enough about these matters to quite “get” the nuances, but my feeling was that it was a set of actors who were used to the stage and proper theatre, much like when I watched “Abigail’s Party” for the first time earlier this year, but even more so, and the modern style of TV acting simply hadn’t bedded in yet.
I watched most of them with a lad I shared a house with at the time, and one day another mate came round and was (like, all like) “Jesus, what are youse two watching? How can you watch this? It’s all so wooden and false. Why are they shouting? Why is everyone acting so weird? It’s like watching fucking Shakespeare at school, etc.” which really brought it to my attention – he was right, but you know, the past is a different country, they do things differently there, so I didn’t mind. It was part of the enjoyment, for me, a historical document about a (fictional) historical document. And you should know the trouble I ever had getting that mate to watch anything in black & white, although he did enjoy the part of “The Battle of Algiers” that he watched with me.

[sw2borshch]

Current Watching

I meant to say, one of the great things about “I, Claudius” is how unsettling it all is. Both the subject matter and the atmosphere. No warm, fuzzy comfort in this show. And even though re-watching it did have a nostalgia value for me, it just reminded me that it used to give me the freak as a child too.

It was a harsh world even for the pampered elites in them days.

Anyone know where I can get a T-shirt?

[Lucia Lanigan]

Current Watching

Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract. Fucking lush. I was hoping it had been made in 1975 or something and inspired Adam and his Ants, Malcolm McLaren and that lot, but it was more likely the other way round (1982). You forget that postmodernism can be so much fun, when it's just licence to piss about with all the good stuff you like. Every shot's a painting, with added sex comedy, and the costumes are, naturally, fabulous.

[sw2borshch]

Current Watching

I didn’t watch it, as I suspected it would be atrocious, but ITV started a remake of “Bouquet of Barbed Wire” last night.

Should I watch the original?

[Sean of the Shed]

Current Watching

Went to see The Other Guys this afternoon. The leading actors (Ferrell, Wahlberg, Coogan, Jackson and the Rock) might seem off putting to some, but they all suit their respective role, even Wahlberg who hasn't made a good film in years, and the film is laugh out loud funny pretty much throughout.

******************spoilers***********************

Funniest stuff includes a silent and respectful fight at a wake, using the back of a Prius as a "soup kitchen" (you'll have to watch to find out what that means), how normal people react after an explosion, falling for bribes, getting your elderly mother to pass on sex talk and learning artistic things just so you can tease the sissy kids.

[Reed John]

Current Watching

Last week:
Saw The Town, Ben Affleck's latest contribution to the growing subgenre of Boston crime films. Others include The Departed, Gone Baby Gone, and Mystic River.

It's not nearly as good as Gone Baby Gone, which Affleck also directed. He also plays the lead in this one. It's not very realistic. It's super violent and it goes over-the-top on trying to feature iconic Boston locations. The three major crimes in the film take place near Harvard Square, in the North End and **small spoiler*** Fenway Park. In real life, if such a real bank robbery crew existed, they'd probably go after places with easier getaway routes, like some shopping center in Framingham.

But despite all of that, it's not total shit. Affleck and the Hurt Locker guy are good as the main characters. John Hamm - in just about everything now - is good as the Gman.

If you like violent crime movies or have any connection to Boston and like those "hey, I once got drunk there" moments as the scenes fly by, then you'll enjoy it. Otherwise, meh.

Also, meh, was Wall Street II, which I saw last night.

Maybe we should do a whole thread on Sequels that come 10 years or more after the first. I have great hopes for the new Tron film coming out at Christmas, but the sad fact is that it is usually not worth it - ex) the Star Wars prequels, the fourth Indiana Jones film, Godfather III. This would be one of those except the original wasn't really that great. Still, I felt the need to see it because I'd seen the original about 50 times on TV - again, it's not that good, but it has a kind of 80'sness about it that I find compelling as I get older - and I generally like all the actors in this one.

I guess Oliver Stone felt he had to make something about the current state of affairs caused by Wall Street so why not dig up Gordon Gecko and stick him in that (Charlie Sheen does have a cameo where he explains in a very forced and unnatural way what happened after the events of Wall Street).

In this one, Shia LaBeuf plays a boy-genius who works for the big investment firm that suddenly goes under and brings the economy down after it. Shit ensues. Josh Brolin plays the douche in charge of a rival that secretly helped to bring down Shia LaBeuf's outfit and is now getting bailed-out, moral hazard, blah blah blah. Turns out Gordon Gecko, just out of prison, is going to be Shia Labeuf's father in law. His daughter is played by the girl from An Education doing an American accent. More stuff happens. There's a subplot about nuclear fusion and sustainable energy.

The acting is fine. Susan Sarandon in a bit part is probably the best of them all, but the plot is very muddled and the character arc of the reformed-but-not-oh-but-maybe-sorta for Gecko doesn't come off as believable. Eli Roth is good as the ancient voice of history.

As the first film, that I know of, about the most recent Wall Street crash, it's sort of interesting. It has it's moments. The best, I thought, being where Gecko says something like "we were mere pikers compared to these crooks." That jumped out at me because indeed, compared to the shit storm we are now dealing with, the big insider-trading scandals and what not of the 1980s seem like petty crimes. And as with the first Wall Street film, the main problem, I think, is that Oliver Stone - either because he's a conspiracy theorist or just because he's trying to make a morality tale and can't be bothered with too much complexity - seems to be telling us that the reason the economy is fucked is because a few extraordinarily greedy and devious people running a brilliant conspiracy to do something that was illegal anyway. As if the problems are merely a question of law enforcement.

What this all might mean, among other things, is that contrary to how it's often portrayed, the level of total avarice on Wall Street and perhaps in the USA and the planet generally is pretty much constant all of the time. It's just that sometimes they're more successful than other times and then when the crash inevitably comes, a lot of people seem to think it happened because those assholes suddenly got "too greedy" when in fact they weren't any more or less greedy than at any other time.

In fact, the problems are a lot more systematic and widespread than just a couple of douches* on Wall Street. He tries to show a bit of that here - *** like when Gecko talks about the Dutch Tulipmania and the recognition that all they're all doing is looking for the next bubble and that history will repeat **** but it gets kind of lost in all the subplots and subsubplots.

*Although I haven't seen much evidence to show that most of the people on Wall Street aren't, in fact, the exact sort of doucebags that they are always stereotyped to be. UA, GY, or others who know such things can set me straight and I'd like to believe it's just a few bad apples, and that most of the people in big finance are decent folk who just like numbers and want to help grow the American economy to put similarly decent hard-working folk in good jobs, but the more I read about the bonuses and their resistance to any and all regulation and the general entitled attitude of these fuckheads, I'm starting to think that it's a lot worse than that and that pretty much all of lower Manhattan can go fuck itself.

[Disco Child Ballads]

Current Watching

I watched Spooks for the first time in ages tonight and I didn't know until now that Sophia Myles had joined the cast. I've now got a very good reason for watching it each week.

[Ginger Yellow]

Current Watching

UA, GY, or others who know such things can set me straight and I'd like to believe it's just a few bad apples

No, it's really not. It's an industry where making money is the be all and end all, and more importantly where the amount of money they make is how (most) people measure their self-worth. What sort of person do you think that would tend to attract? Don't get me wrong, I know plenty of investment bankers who are decent people (possibly because I cover the nerdiest part of the market), but the cunt/slimeball quotient is higher than probably any career outside ad sales.

[Guest]

Current Watching

Enter the Void. I've been waiting to see this for, like, a year. And I wasn't disappointed. I'm sad that I had to work on Friday & Saturday so I missed the screenings of the longer original cut, but there'll be a DVD.

Anyway it's brilliant, of course. Almost a masterpiece. Noe is a genius. It's horrible and beautiful and mesmerising and strange. And Dr Sigmund would probably have approved of the central idea that all men really desire is to escape to a kind of dream state in which they're back in babyhood being breastfed by their mothers and also somehow fucking them in neon lit seedy hotel rooms.

[Ek weet nie]

Current Watching

I saw the extended cut back in February - it was awe=inspiring. It ranks as my favourite cinema experience.

[Guest]

Current Watching

I expect that I would be able to remove the word 'almost', from what I've heard. Lucky you to have seen it in the cinema.

[Reed John]

Current Watching

No, it's really not. It's an industry where making money is the be all and end all, and more importantly where the amount of money they make is how (most) people measure their self-worth. What sort of person do you think that would tend to attract? Don't get me wrong, I know plenty of investment bankers who are decent people (possibly because I cover the nerdiest part of the market), but the cunt/slimeball quotient is higher than probably any career outside ad sales.

What is so galling is their sense of entitlement. Even after they broke the world, they think they deserve anything they want tax-free and that the rest of us should be grateful for the chance to have them as our overlords.

[Ek weet nie]

Current Watching

To Lyra - yeah, I know I was lucky that the Dublin Film Festival had it - funny thing was there were at least 20 walkouts and a general murmur of discontent when it finished. I was flabbergasted by the reaction, I can only assume that the dissenters had no idea what they were letting themselves in for.

Have you watched Winter's Bone? I was blown away by it. The sense of place, society and culture was fantastic.