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    #76
    Current Watching

    I've never got on at all well with Almodovar...be interested in how you find it as you go along.

    I am right now starting on the adaptation of Porterhouse Blue which I am tremendously looking forward to. I remember reading the book about 75 years ago and laughing an awful lot...

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      #77
      Current Watching

      Oh goodness, excuse my self-indulgence but it opens with the camera panning around a view that is almost exactly* that of a room I used to live in. *nostalgic sigh*

      *they must be at the top of Great St Mary's I guess.

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        #78
        Current Watching

        a deeper significance to the lax attitude to rape and beatings
        Films made in Spain within a few years of Franco's death were full of lurid 'let's see what we can get away with now the censors've gone' experiments.

        In Almo's case this became a kind of manifesto of filth, kitsch and trivia both celebrating the new freedom to represent and using it to question attitudes to gender, violence, sexuality etc.

        So without imagining those films, or yourself, in a newly post-fascist context, they can seem gratuitous.

        Having said that, Spain still has an appalling record of domestic violence (something like 60 murders a year by male partners), so the hangover of those attitudes/gender roles etc certainly still lingers, making the representation/questioning of such violence arguably still perfectly relevant/ungratuitous.

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          #79
          Current Watching

          Lyra: Market Hostel girl, eh? There's a smallish but non-zero chance I may have had sex in your room.

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            #80
            Current Watching

            Torchwood. Finally caught up on all the SKY + episodes, so I await the reintroduction of James Marsters with baited if slightly detached breath as he trawls through his early Buffy Spikeisms.

            Coincidentally, I'm also watching early episodes of Buffy seasons 1-3. Looking forward to Band Candy immensely.

            I watched Die Hard With A Vengeance. Stupid, mindless fun and Jeremy Irons is rather dishy, all pumped up like that.

            I'm not watching anything socially redeeming otherwise. Sorry.

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              #81
              Current Watching

              The Real Housewives of New York, and Rock of Love 2 (ft. Bret Michaels - again) are about the only things I reliably see.

              I love car-crash TV, and both of these clearly are.

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                #82
                Current Watching

                I've found a source for the complete Seinfeld, which falls into the category of TV Programmes That Everyone Loves But That I Have Never Watched. I've just downloaded the first couple of series now, which should be enough to be getting on with.

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                  #83
                  Current Watching

                  The only shows I can't really miss is Sgorio (Euro Footy Highlights and discussion show), and Y Clwb Pel-Droed (Welsh Footy Highlights). Everything else is pretty much take it or leave it, Football-wise.

                  I downloaded an entire series of a documentary called 'Cold War'. It must have been on the BBC a few years ago, but don't recollect it. Great insight if you like that kind of thing.

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                    #84
                    Current Watching

                    "Cold War" is excellent - it is a travesty that it has never been released on DVD.

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                      #85
                      Current Watching

                      Is that the series like World at War?

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                        #86
                        Current Watching

                        Yes - it was directed by Jeremy Isaacs, who directed "The World At War". For the record, the BBC's "The Great War" (which was made in about 1962, I think) makes up the final piece of the Holy Trinity of TV war series.

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                          #87
                          Current Watching

                          Speaking as a professional they're good in A Level lessons too.

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                            #88
                            Current Watching

                            Yeah, I've just stuck "The Great War" on now. It's a critically important series - talking heads with people that fought in the First World War. In many ways, the production values are such that it could have been made at any point in the last few years.

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                              #89
                              Current Watching

                              And there's none of those bloody re-inactments so beloved of recent history documentaries on TV

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                                #90
                                Current Watching

                                Well, the archive film is incredible. The amount of footage used in "The Great War" is more than I would have guessed even existed.

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                                  #91
                                  Current Watching

                                  Lyra: Market Hostel girl, eh? There's a smallish but non-zero chance I may have had sex in your room.
                                  Haha! No, 15 King's Parade. Now I think about it though, I may have had sex in more than one room in Market...

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                                    #92
                                    Current Watching

                                    I've never heard of the Great Way series. Any ideas how I could get hold of it?

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                                      #93
                                      Current Watching

                                      I've seen Sehnsucht - I thought it was fairly involving, but nothing particularly special. Perhaps not quite enough dialogue for my liking. I did enjoy (slight spoiler) the little post-modern touch at the end though. It actually raised the film quite a lot in my estimation.

                                      A German film I'd recommend is Life Is All You Get, which I just looked up on IMDB and discovered it was directed by the guy who went on to do Goodbye Lenin!.

                                      Then of course there's Herzog and Wenders. The latter's Alice in the Cities is probably my all-time favourite German-language film.

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                                        #94
                                        Current Watching

                                        Tell you what, the BBC is running things on the comedy front at the moment.

                                        I've not heard anyone talking about it, but Pulling is fantastic. The latest episode (with the recovering flasher) doesn't have a wasted line in it. It's there on their download thingy - watch it. Johnny Vegas's thing, Ideal, is good, and I'm enjoying Gavin and Stacey (which has its own thread) too.

                                        I also watched the fourth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm last week, which must constitute its imperial phase. Unbelievably great.

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                                          #95
                                          Current Watching

                                          I find Pulling really crude. (In terms of the way it's written and performed, not its subject matter.)

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                                            #96
                                            Current Watching

                                            Wow, I would have said anything but about that episode. Not a cliche anywhere in the script, seriously.

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                                              #97
                                              Current Watching

                                              That was the one where I tried to reacquaint myself with it, having given up after two eps of series one. No cliches, but it's all such sledgehammer wit. I'd have welcomed a couple of cliches.

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                                                #98
                                                Current Watching

                                                Actually scratch that, I just watched a bit more of it and it's full of dark/embarrassing cliches.

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                                                  #99
                                                  Current Watching

                                                  I've just received tapes of The Iron Man. This is going to be great.

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                                                    Current Watching

                                                    Oz; The Sopranos; Curb Your Enthusiasm; Entourage; The Shield; The Wire; The X Files; The 4400; Jekyll and a bunch of other stuff.

                                                    Since I gave up on watching TV back in January, I've watched pretty much nothing else but DVD boxsets rented from the library. If I ever go back to the box, I'll have to get used to watching weekly episodes instead of whole series in a couple of days.

                                                    I watched the first three episodes of The Sarah Connor Chronicles last night. Surprisingly good.

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