Current Watching

[Sits]

By coincidence we've just started our first episode of Mum now. S1E3 as the first two have gone from the ABC's app. The way it's started we could still get hooked.

[Hot Pepsi]

I’m watching Broadcast News. I’ve seen it before, but was inspired to watch it again by a recent episode of The Rewatchables.

It’s one of the best romantic comedies from a great era for romantic comedies.

The themes of unrequited love and picking the wrong suitor are timeless, but kids today wouldn’t believe there was a time when network news mattered or that anyone working in TV news cared about journalism.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Albert Brooks' first, and presumably last, stint as a newsreader was hilarious and I loved the redundancies scene with Jack Nicholson as the TV executive crying his crocodile tears - "I feel awful. If there was only something I could do" and his stone-faced response to the comment "Well, you could always take a salary cut".

From the same scene:

Paul Moore: [after firing one of his workers] Now, if there's anything I can do for you...

Employee: Well, I certainly hope you'll die soon.

[Femme Folle]

Just started watching Chernobyl this week and so far it's very good indeed. I'm glad to see it has an appreciative audience here too. I'm simultaneously making my way through Serhii Plokhii's book on the subject, which is a good corrective for the parts of the TV series where dramatic licence is taken. So far the series is very faithful to actual events. Monday's episode is one of the darkest, grimmest episodes of TV I've seen in a while. It depicts the horrible fate of the first responders to the incident - pure body horror.

"City 40" is the name of the documentary about the closed cities. You might find it interesting. It's on Netflix.

[Hot Pepsi]

Albert Brooks' first, and presumably last, stint as a newsreader was hilarious and I loved the redundancies scene with Jack Nicholson as the TV executive crying his crocodile tears - "I feel awful. If there was only something I could do" and his stone-faced response to the comment "Well, you could always take a salary cut".

.

Yeah that was great.

Specifically he says "You can make it a little less brutal by knocking a million dollars or so off your salary."

Jack Nicholson just looks at him.

Paul says "Just a bad joke. I'm sorry. Awful. It's a miserable day and that was some kind of totally sick-joke defense mechanism which does not indicate any of my feelings -- not one -- but just shows the kind of stress this represents for all of us."

It's kinda dark, really.

It's also the only romantic comedy I can think of that doesn't end with any one ending up with any one else and yet everyone is OK. I thought that was disappointing when I saw it in high school, but now, of course, I know that's how those things usually work out in real life.

One other thing...during the airport scene, they show William Hurt drifting away from the gate in one of those "mobile lounges" like they have at Dulles. But IMDB says that was filmed at BWI and when Holly Hunter gets in the cab, she tells the cabby to take New York Avenue to Dupont Circle. That clearly means they were supposed to be at BWI. (Google maps says the NY Avenue route is 2 minutes slower than the Beltway, but in those days it might have been faster. It might even be faster now.) So does that mean that BWI used to have those mobile lounge things?

[Nocturnal Submission]

Ah, very good on the dialogue, or duologue in fact. It's been a long while since I saw the film and didn't see the exchange on Wikiquote.

I quite like the fact that two of the three principals went on to voice a couple of the most popular characters in animated films in the last 20 years.

[Hot Pepsi]

Albert Brooks also did a number of voices on The Simpsons, including Hank Scorpio.

Until recently, I thought Albert Brooks was Mel Brooks' son. He's not. His real name is Albert Einstein.

[WOM]

He's the brother of Super Dave Osborne (Bob Einstein).

[Lang Spoon]

Was super Dave funny? I never got it when Clive James had him on. But I were but a nipper.

[WOM]

In a very specific way. Like...early to mid-80s sort of thing. Not enduring, really. Bob was good as Marty Funkhauser on Curb Your Enthusiasm, though. He tells Jerry Seinfeld an outrageously filthy joke which is great for the cringe value.

[Ray de Galles]

I liked it too. Saw it at the cinema last year.

(It was the Full Monty with synchronised swimming though. )

The Pool Monty, as the gag went around the time of its release.

The Full Monty was a bloody awful movie, not just poor quality but appallingly put together - it shouldn't have beeen allowed to leave the edit suite in the state it did. I remember hating 'Billy Elliot' too. 'Brasses Off' is ten times the film of either of them.

[Hot Pepsi]

Super Dave Osborne made a lot of sense in the 80s on Letterman. That was a time when Evil Kneival and shows like That's Incredible! were presented without irony. His deadpan earnest delivery fit well with Letterman's vibe of "this is really just a parody of a talk show."

His episode on Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee is very good.


As part of this "rewatching movies from my youth phase," I'm watching Reality Bites. As we discussed on that other thread, it's remarkable how aggressively, even cloyingly specific it is to people, like me, born in the early 70s.



The Full Monty was a bloody awful movie, not just poor quality but appallingly put together - it shouldn't have beeen allowed to leave the edit suite in the state it did. I remember hating 'Billy Elliot' too. 'Brasses Off' is ten times the film of either of them.

That's not I remember it. I liked both those films ok. Haven't seen Brasses Off.

[Lang Spoon]

Brassed off. V much in a similar vein to t'Full Monty. Pete Postlethwaite is as good as you'd expect, Ewen McGregor as pisspoor. Truly, until Aiden Cunting Gillen made his Carcetti debut, I never thought there could be as wooden and pisspoor at accents a modern UK/Irish actor as Poor Ewen. Fucker can't even do a proper Embra in Trainspotting (just like Gillen can't go Full Dub in Love/Hate without seeming laughable).

[Hot Pepsi]

Is that about a brass band in a dying mine town? I have seen that.

[Lang Spoon]

That's the bunny.

[Ray de Galles]

Yeah, 'Brassed Off', bloody auto-correct. Obviously the Ewen McGregor and Tara Fitzgerald are the least interesting thing in the film so the "love story" between them was pushed to the fringes. The rest of the cast and plot are great though, fantastic soundtrack too - I listened to it again on the Wimbledon supporters club coach out of Halifax in December.

[Sits]

To be fair to Billy Elliot it did feature Cosmic Dancer by T-Rex so it can't be all bad.

If you want a great movie about uplifting against-the-odds public performance, it's As It Is In Heaven. Sublime.

[ursus arctos]

I highly recommend clicking through to read this thread on Chernobyl from someone who was living in the USSR at the time.

[URL]https://twitter.com/slavamalamud/status/1132029943297265664?s=21[/URL]

[Femme Folle]

Wow, that's very high praise. Good to know that the show is so accurate.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Yes, that was a really interesting analysis of the series. Knowing how authentic the portrayal is certainly adds to it's appeal.

As mentioned by Reg upthread, the physical deterioration of the plant workers and firefighters that we saw in the third episode was grim. I'm surprised that the medical authorities let them suffer and didn't just administer lethal doses of morphine or something similar.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Oh, I agree that was the hook, but my reading of it was less the group of men fighting back again unemployment and their situation and more about a group of men finding a way to deal with issues raised by factors internal or external. A reflection of current times where getting men to open up about how they feel and how it's OK to not be OK.

You do realise this is basically the exact premise of the last of the Summer wine.

[WOM]

I really enjoyed Steven Soderbergh's Mosaic, which ran daily on HBO last week. It's had mixed reviews but I thought Sharon Stone's OTT portrayal of an even more OTT character, was choice. And Devin Ratray as the local cop, excellent too.

We finally got to this on the PVR and quite enjoyed it, too. A few quibbles around the 'style' of Soderbergh's filming and such, but a good story well told. Some oddball loose ends they didn't tie up, mainly due to it being something viewable on an app, as well. And the app had a 'choose the order of the story / choose your own ending' element that couldn't be replicated in the broadcast version.

[Hot Pepsi]

I’m watching The Lonely Island’s ridiculous and hilarious tribute to Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire in the 80s.

[Hot Pepsi]

I got the extended cut of Almost Famous on DVD. All things being equal, I’d rather own it in the cloud, but it was a lot cheaper on DVD.

[San Bernardhinault]

Episode 3 of Chernobyl was bleak as hell, but I'm not sure it had the narrative drive that the first two had and I found it marginally less compelling.