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    Current Watching

    I've given up on Man Men. I watched the whole first season and Episode 1 of number 2, but just couldn't be bothered after about 10 minutes of 2:2 last night. It moves at such a glacial pace. I just don't care anymore. Am I a bad person?

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      Current Watching

      No. But you obviously have the attention span of an earwig.

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        Current Watching

        C'mon! I sat with it for a whole season waiting for something to happen. That's a lot of attention, I think.

        I don't think it's really the pace that bothers me, but the characters. I dislike them all. Except the gay guy.

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          Current Watching

          I certainly agree with you about the guys, I think the lack of positive male traits might be one of the series's faults. The gals are OK though.

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            Current Watching

            Le Diner de Cons which I had never seen; I looked forward to it so much that it couldn't live up to the level of hilariousness that I had hoped for, but nevertheless it was pretty damn funny. A nice old fashioned one-set farce.

            and the first decade or so of Inland Empire. I thought initially that it was just really, really bad-Lynch (shrieking singing; weeping women dripping mascara everywhere, bad motel room decor, strange focus pulls, bizarre close-ups, footsteps running away in the shadows that you somehow know belong to a deformed dwarf) but it was keeping watchable as well. Experience suggests that it may not have been going anywhere, I shall have to wait and see.

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              Current Watching

              Inland Empire was awful, awful, awful. I can't actually remember if I bothered watching it to the end - I think I did - but it felt like forever anyway.

              Le Diner de Cons was indeed very funny. It's a few years since I saw it, but I still recall that it had me in real fits of laughter. I am a fan of farce, which seems to be pretty unusual these days. Many reviews seem to dismiss it as a genre.

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                Current Watching

                Atonement. Same problem as the book, really, which I guess is worse on film: after the section in the country house, nothing happens. (I realise that's the point - that it ruinously defines everyone's lives - but still.) The film does benefit from having to heavily edit McEwan's endless, research-heavy sections in France and in the hospital, but what it's left with is a bit cursory: you don't feel that there's a huge amount at stake as Robbie tries to get home, and Briony's stint as a nurse doesn't really have a point to it at all.

                Worth seeing for the first section, though, which I thought was superbly directed and edited: there's some very economical, stylish visual storytelling, a tasteful use of sound and music (often there isn't any), and I liked both McAvoy and Knightley when they weren't doing their silly who-can-talk-quickest thing. But it does telegraph SPOILER who the rapist is (later on, its heavy-handed, in retrospect, treatment of BIG SPOILER Robbie dying - "You won't hear another peep from me" - doesn't matter so much because if you don't know the story you wouldn't guess that the next morning is a fiction).

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                  Current Watching

                  I'd go along with all of that. Except the second half had Dame Vanessa being...well, quite magnificent.

                  I am a fan of farce, which seems to be pretty unusual these days. Many reviews seem to dismiss it as a genre.

                  Do you think that's why no one really knows how to do it anymore? I sometimes think so. I watched Death at a Funeral recently which, I realised afterwards, is essentially a farce, but is far too static to raise anything but the odd titter. Farce has to snap, timing is everything, you just can't have dead expositionary bits, or have people sitting next to each other in cars having conversations. Most of all under no circumstances can you be given time to think about how ludicrous it all is.

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                    Current Watching

                    Frasier had a pretty damn good go at it a few times: springing to mind are the one in the ski lodge with the French bloke called Guy, and the, if you will, verbal farce of the one where Daphne's ex, Clive, comes to dinner.

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                      Current Watching

                      Something a bit bad has happened; I switched the tv on and became almost instantly addicted to Last Choir Standing.

                      This can't be a good sign.

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                        Current Watching

                        Recently i've watched the whole of the US Office, which is absolutely fantastic. Today i've watched In Bruges which was excellent and as good i've been told.
                        I don't watch TV too much but i'm enjoying watching Britain from Above on Sunday nights.

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                          Current Watching

                          Anyone else watching the new comedy series Unhitched

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                            Current Watching

                            I watched The Holy Mountain for the first time at the weekend. I am still speechless.

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                              Current Watching

                              Jodorowsky=genius, of that there is no doubt.

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                                Current Watching

                                I love the footage in Britain from Above, but by Christ Marr can be annoying.

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                                  Current Watching

                                  And he's never been more funny looking too.

                                  The BBC are doing more and more of this aerial stuff. Coast and the Apprentice and that Alan Titchmarsh programme about British wildlife all do it. All to push High Definition defintion TV I suspect.

                                  And in Britain from Above you often have this majestic shot of Andrew Marr doing his link to camera on the prow of a boat. Kenneth Clark will be turning in his grave.

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                                    Current Watching

                                    I've Loved You For So Long. Kristin Scott Thomas acting in French. It's a moving drama about the relationship between sisters, the nature of parenthood, sacrifice, redemption, etc etc, set in the familiar French environment of over the top gorgeous houses, cafes, bars, a world where it's easy to find someone to have anonymous sex in hotel rooms with and everyone has 16 people round to dinner every single evening. It was one of those deeply emotional pieces that make you feel that all French films are and will always be essentially the same. People sit around discussing how knowing Rohmer helps you understand literature, and play classical piano a lot.

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                                      Current Watching

                                      Well, House of Saddam was brilliant from start to end. It even achieved the difficult feat of feeling sorry for (or at least empathising with) the old monster after his sons were killed, as well as other total bastards gunned down throughout the program (like the General shot by his family).

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                                        Current Watching

                                        Kristin Scott Thomas was very good in Tell No One. She was acting in French there too. Maybe one twist too many but a very good film nonetheless.

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                                          Current Watching

                                          just bought the box set of absolutely , at the mo alternating between that & sledgehammer ( retro time )

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                                            Current Watching

                                            Recently saw Russian film The Banishment. I loved director Andrei Zvyaginstev's first film The Return and, whilst this one isn't as good (it loses its sure-footedness a little towards the end), it certainly kept me absorbed for its two-and-a-half hour running time. The Arvo Part on the soundtrack helped.

                                            I also recently watched Southland Tales, Richard Kelly's follow-up to Donnie Darko . It completely bombed on its release and it's easy to see why. And yet, despite its somewhat heavy-handed satire, deliberately crass casting and the sheer overload of crazy ideas and pop culture, I found it oddly compelling and, in places, visually amazing. It's one of those films with its own logic that you just have to, you know, roll with. This did become a bit problematic when battle-scarred war veteran Justin Timberlake started miming along to that Killers song recently discussed on the music thread (the "I'm not a soldier" one) but it was worth it in the end. A fascinating mess.

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                                              Current Watching

                                              Today i've finished watching Ken Burns' excellent documentary The American Civil War despite receiving it as a Christmas gift. No doubt i'll keep re-watching it.

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                                                Current Watching

                                                I thought Southland Tales was great. A lot more interesting, and definitely a lot more fun, than Donnie Darko.

                                                It seemed as much a satire of Hollywood attempts at heavy-handed satire as anything - hence the bewildering film within a film stuff. And any movie that worships so devoutly at the altar of Repo Man is fine with me.

                                                I'm hoping for a 4 hour long director's cut that restores all the original musical sequences.

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                                                  Current Watching

                                                  Yeah, there did seem to be bits of the film "missing", as it were. There were some graphic novels released explaining the back story but I never read them. Kelly did eventually bring out a 'director's cut' of Donnie Darko which sort of "explained" it more but I personally thought it weakened the film. I don't mind filling in the blanks myself sometimes (The two films I mentioned by Andrei Zvyaginstev require a little of this and are all the better for it).

                                                  Speaking of Repo Man, I remember Alex Cox assembling a version of that for tv that restored about 10 extra minutes. Unfortunately, all the swearing was dubbed over. The word "flipping" was used quite a lot and it was also the first time I'd ever heard anyone referred to as a "melon farmer".

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                                                    Current Watching

                                                    Speaking of Repo Man, I remember Alex Cox assembling a version of that for tv that restored about 10 extra minutes. Unfortunately, all the swearing was dubbed over. The word "flipping" was used quite a lot and it was also the first time I'd ever heard anyone referred to as a "melon farmer".

                                                    Unfortunately? The dubbing of banalities over the swearing was a superb touch by Cox and made everything even funnier (a deliberate riposte to the inane sensibilities of censors who cut too much out of films and blot out swearing to the edge of pointlessness). I'd love to see that cut again.

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