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    I'm about to watch seldom shown 1980 Kirk Douglas sci-fier Saturn 3 on London Live. Its principal claim to fame is that Martin Amis wrote the script and his experience formed the basis for the movie business bits in Money. All set for characters called Barry Weightless and Terry Spacefood then.

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      Slow start but Saturn 3 is surprisingly interesting. The main plot is average robots taking over stuff but the set design, bright colours, ageing Kirk as about to be retired replicant and Harvey Keitel channelling Phil Oakey all make it watchable. Farah Fawcett is good too.

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        Saturn 3 was directed by Stanley Donen, who directed "Singing in the Rain"!

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          Damn, I saw his name but didn't connect. Retracting the above comment, Martin Amis is the least interesting thing about it. I mean, it's interesting from a Martin Amis point of view, in that his old man had strong connections to sci-fi, so you wonder what drew him towards it (apart from the money) but the film itself has a wealth of other stuff going on.

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            London Live show some genuinely curious stuff.

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              The Mary Millington story now; genuine doc rather than titillation. Interesting in showing how the Carry On > Confessions > Porn continuum worked back then. The general grottiness of the seventies writ large.

              David Sullivan doesn't come across as someone you'd necessarily want to give £500 million of public assets to.

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                Originally posted by Toby Gymshorts View Post
                London Live show some genuinely curious stuff.
                This afternoon's treat is a 1981 spin off/reunion Callan film.

                LL does show a fair amount of crap too - lots of Essex...whatever gangster films for a start - but some of their archive finds are enough to give cheapjack repeats based channels a good name.

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                  Yesterday on a 12 hour day flight, fighting to stay awake I watched

                  1 - The House, which is a thoroughly pedestrian modern comedy. Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler set up an illegal casino to fund their daughter's college education. It's exactly, 100%, what you'd expect from that pitch. It's not offensive, which actually means it's beating a lot of the current competition. But that's about it. Fine for watching on a plane, or on Netflix on a Monday evening when you're bored.

                  2- Table 19. A perfectly fine, well made Rom Com. It's nothing more, but it's actually pretty good within the confines of the genre. The table of the misfits at a wedding who don't fit in to any of the normal categories... Stephen Merchant and Anna Kendrick. Definitely not worth going out of your way for, but if it was on BBC2 on an early Sunday evening in 1986, you'd have been fine with it if the other choices were Songs of Praise on BBC1 and Highway to Heaven on ITV.

                  3 - Colossal. Which was very fun, and worth watching. Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis. 75% small town US rom-com with weird coercive power-dynamic element that seems more profound now post-Weinstein than it probably did when they made it. 25% Korean monster film. Definitely interesting.

                  4 - Binge watched the first 4 episodes of Handmaids Tale. Which has been written about elsewhere on OTF. Seriously bleak and brutal stuff.

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                    Saturn 3 trivia fluff: Keitel was so disinterested and let down by his experience on the film that he refused to perform any voice dubbing, whereupon his entire vocal performance was dubbed over by Roy Dotrice.

                    On a different tack, I recently caught up with Man on the Moon, Milos Forman's biopic of Andy Kaufman. It's a good watch and Forman knows how to gather up so many elements into a compelling whole. I suppose, though, you'd have to be fairly familiar with Kaufman's other work apart from Taxi, because the major setback of the movie - well, for a chump like me anyway - is that someone could easily watch the film and come to the conclusion that Kaufman wasn't an iconoclastic performer who delighted in putting a spanner into the works of dull, mainstream conformance entertainment, but a disruptive, spoiling asshole who buggered it up for other people. Well-made film though it was, I still struggled with that particular problem - genius or complete dick? - as the film itself didn't really reveal any hint of what made Kaufman a comedic revelation (I felt more for Danny DeVito's showbiz agent character, trying his best to defend or legitimise his client's volatile behaviour).

                    That aside, I still liked it, and Jim Carrey's performance was pretty impressive.

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                      Originally posted by Kev7 View Post
                      Stuck on You - The Football Sticker Story

                      Tonight at 8pm on ITV4 (repeat from last Tuesday).

                      Watchable here: https://www.itv.com/hub/stuck-on-you...ry/2a5477a0001
                      Some nice moments but in the end too much about the people who bought the Panini company and not enough social history of people buying the stickers.
                      Last edited by Felicity, I guess so; 28-11-2017, 15:13. Reason: removing ambiguity of 'buying Panini'

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                        Gregory Porter's "Popular Voices" on BBC4. Magical.

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                          20 Feet from Stardom - A 2013 documentary that was on FilmFour on Monday about the history and lives of background singers in the music industry

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                            Mildly surprised by the Clydebank Blitz thing on BBC2, not Ra Ra patriotism, but sympathetically treating the political situation in the shipyards back then, as well as the whole Blitz spirit thing being a bit less hagiographic than the usual shite.

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                              Bojack Horseman was better than I expected. At least the first four.

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                                Broadchurch series 3 on Netflix. Two episodes in. Has started OK and is really about the two leads, who are exceptionally good together. I expect some plot twists, and the whodunit aspect is a bit trite, but it's the leads who keep me watching.

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                                  The Defiant Ones (HBO). Four-part documentary-style series that follows the careers of Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine and a host of other hip-hop artists. It explained a lot of things to me that I previously didn't understand, like where the east coast-west coast rivalry originated and how Eminem entered the picture--I always thought that he had a beef with Dre, I guess because I thought he was dissing him in his raps.

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                                    It's worth watching the Nick Broomfield documentary on Biggie and Tupac, albeit very depressing, as is his Kurt and Courtney. Both are on HBO and/or Netflix.

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                                      Thanks, SD

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                                        Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View Post
                                        Broadchurch series 3 on Netflix. Two episodes in. Has started OK and is really about the two leads, who are exceptionally good together. I expect some plot twists, and the whodunit aspect is a bit trite, but it's the leads who keep me watching.
                                        Same. We quite like the show and the leads.

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                                          Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
                                          Alias Grace concluded this past weekend. The CBC did a darn fine job with it I thought. The adaptation called for a strong dose of Upper Canada Gothic and no one's better equipped for that than the Mothercorp.
                                          Just finished this on the PVR. Excellent in all regards.

                                          Have you dipped into Frontier at all? One of those Discovery co-productions with a bunch of other people. Big bucks, for sure. It's excellent, and stars that Jason Momoa guy who seems to be in everything these days.

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                                            No. I've been cutting back on TV a bit recently, but I'll give it a go.

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                                              OOh, Broadchurch season 3 - I didn't know it was out. Thank you!

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                                                I'm about halfway through Dark on Netflix. Which is compelling stuff, albeit complicated and dense.

                                                It's also a German production and shows the Germans can make TV with the best of them, given the chance. That it wouldn't have been picked up by ARD or ZDF I find depressing.

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                                                  Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
                                                  No. I've been cutting back on TV a bit recently, but I'll give it a go.
                                                  It's surprisingly good. It's all about the Hudson's Bay Company, the fur trade, native / settlers, and and Forts and settlements that the English set up, etc. Not a doc, but a full costume drama.

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                                                    Yes, Broadchurch is based around Tennant and Coleman. But the best thing about series 3 was the performance by the actor who played the Dad whose kid was killed in series 1 (Doctor Who's husband - too lazy to google his name).

                                                    Of course, nobody speaking in a genuine west - country accent will ever be taken seriously, unless they pretend they are from Bath. But watch it again. The bloke was brilliant.

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