Motion Pictures (that anuse me)

[blombluss]

I didn't mind television savalas in Capricorn One, calling everyone perverts whilst flying a plane. That's my ambition in life (as well as staging a fake mission to Mars of course!!!!).

[vom]

Hell yeah Horror Express. Just checked on Letterboxd and it got an 8/10 from me, no regrets, banger

[An Unicorn]

i watched the new frankenstein film and it was absolute bollocks. poor old guillermo del toro and his increasingly useles film making abilities (i didn't see pinochio so maybe that was good who knows)

Who nose!!!

[An Unicorn]

although also i was trying to think if there are any actually good frankenstein films and i'm pretty sure there's not

What about the original Franklin Stein?

[blombluss]

I've just watched all of series 28 of South Park, and...

...it's good, insane, viciously satirical, disgusting, and...

...it's just left me rather depressed, tbh.

I admire what they've produced, but that's all, and I absolutely wouldn't watch it again.

[dng]

Blimey

[blombluss]

Maybe it's me, maybe I'm getting soft or summat.

[blombluss]

Old and tired, probably.

[dng]

no, i meant blimey that you managed to watch south park at all

[dng]

and also that there's 28 serieses of it

[blombluss]

Ves.

Also, the stuff with Studio Ghibli / Totoro is making a valid point, but the way it's put across... ugh...

[dng]

I don't know anything about any of that. And hope to maintain this ignorance forever

[CandyDarling]

I get what you mean. They've been quite successful at attacking the Trump administration in a way, but it's all so overbearing and the comedy laid down so thickly, it's just not remotely enjoyable.

It's very different to something like, say, Not The Nine O'Clock News or Spitting Image, when they'd have a go at some really horrible thing in the 80s. There you got some kind of actual catharsis from it, whereas with South Park there's no real wit present - everything is just sort of thuddingly obvious and tired. (And to go back further, there's those WWII Looney Tunes shorts with Daffy Duck smashing Hitler over the head with a massive hammer!)

I can't help but compare recent South Park with Stewart Lee's "Man Wolf" show, which tackled some of this stuff and more UK-based horrors in a much more interesting manner. I saw him perform in Basingstoke a few months ago, and despite the grimness of a lot of what he was talking about, I left feeling that I had been actually entertained. (To the point that I went to the merch table and got one of his books and the 7 inch vinyl single of the show's theme music.)

(As a demonstration, here's a joke from Stewart Lee's show written down from memory. I would put this behind a spoiler tag but this feature seems to no longer exist)
STEWART LEE: I'm going to do a knock-knock joke now. Knock-knock!
AUDIENCE: Who's there?
STEWART LEE: Benjamin Netan.
AUDIENCE: Benjamin - (we all suddenly realised what the punchline was, and started laughing)
STEWART LEE: I'm afraid that anyone laughing at that is now at the risk of having to serve a jail sentence of up to 15 years...

Compared to the more playful style of what I saw Lee do on stage, South Park just comes across as feckless and stupid, and they only succeed because the people they're attacking are way more stupid than they are.

The various South Park writers have always dealt in really clunky writing, I think. It was amusing for a bit in the 90s, but it was really starting to pall for me around the fourth season in the space year 2000, let alone now.

[Pual]

Basically, satire is shit. If politicians can get you laughing at them then they can get away with murder.

[Pual]

On the other hand, they hate surrealism because they don’t understand it.

[blombluss]

I get what you mean. They've been quite successful at attacking the Trump administration in a way, but it's all so overbearing and the comedy laid down so thickly, it's just not remotely enjoyable.

It's very different to something like, say, Not The Nine O'Clock News or Spitting Image, when they'd have a go at some really horrible thing in the 80s. There you got some kind of actual catharsis from it, whereas with South Park there's no real wit present - everything is just sort of thuddingly obvious and tired. (And to go back further, there's those WWII Looney Tunes shorts with Daffy Duck smashing Hitler over the head with a massive hammer!)

I can't help but compare recent South Park with Stewart Lee's "Man Wolf" show, which tackled some of this stuff and more UK-based horrors in a much more interesting manner. I saw him perform in Basingstoke a few months ago, and despite the grimness of a lot of what he was talking about, I left feeling that I had been actually entertained. (To the point that I went to the merch table and got one of his books and the 7 inch vinyl single of the show's theme music.)

(As a demonstration, here's a joke from Stewart Lee's show written down from memory. I would put this behind a spoiler tag but this feature seems to no longer exist)
STEWART LEE: I'm going to do a knock-knock joke now. Knock-knock!
AUDIENCE: Who's there?
STEWART LEE: Benjamin Netan.
AUDIENCE: Benjamin - (we all suddenly realised what the punchline was, and started laughing)
STEWART LEE: I'm afraid that anyone laughing at that is now at the risk of having to serve a jail sentence of up to 15 years...

Compared to the more playful style of what I saw Lee do on stage, South Park just comes across as feckless and stupid, and they only succeed because the people they're attacking are way more stupid than they are.

The various South Park writers have always dealt in really clunky writing, I think. It was amusing for a bit in the 90s, but it was really starting to pall for me around the fourth season in the space year 2000, let alone now.

An excellent post, Michelle! *thumbs up*

[blombluss]

Basically, satire is shit. If politicians can get you laughing at them then they can get away with murder.

True. It's mostly a good safety valve for the establishment.

[An Unicorn]

On the one hand, coalition building, thankful to have anyone on the right side of things rather than not, etc etc

On the other, in 2005 those fuckers were jiggling about puppets and snickering about how awesome it was that we were killing those filthy sand monkeys and all the libs were terrorist sympathizers for opposing war, and it's a pretty straight line between then and now.

[endar]

ironically it was the tories who opposed it here, as if they wouldn't have done the same thing if they were the government at the time

[Pual]

I dont think the tories did oppose the Iraq war - just nobody was listening to them anyway.

[dng]

I got a vincent price/edgar allan poe box set for christmas. it doesn't have the masque of the red death on it for some reason, but it does have the raven. i wasn't sure how you'd adapt the raven into a film, and it turns out you adapt the raven into a film by ignoring the poem entirely and just having vincent price, peter lorre and boris karloff having increasingly absurd wizard battles for an hour and a half

[dng]

best film ever, obviosuly

[dng]

also jack nicholson's in it

[dng]

no one knows why

[vom]

hooray, I love those films

[CandyDarling]

Absolutely everyone on Bluesky is debating Avatar at the moment. Here is my "hot take"

100000yearslater_Bluesky_avatar.png (66.33 KiB) Viewed 25365 times

[dng]

My mum bloody loves the avatar films for some reason, and is always trying to get me to watch them when we have disney+ on the tv (which is whenever my brother or sister are here and log themselves in to their accounts)

[dng]

Also its kind of depressing that a films success is now purely measured in merchandising

[dng]

Even more depressing than when a films success was measured purely in american box office takings

[dng]

The only other films my mum loves so much are chicken run (the first one only) and paddington (the first two only)

[dng]

And absolutely any old shit with poirot or miss marple in it

[Bruce Sato]

I watched a bit of that Peter Ustinov Poirot flim that isn't Death on the Nile the other day and I sort of wish I hadn't. The only fun thing was realising that the woman who looked like Diana Rigg really was Diana Rigg, thereby solving the mystery.

Seeing Maggie Smith (who was also in it) in anything always reminds me that my great-uncle apparently went out with Maggie Smith for a while, something I only learned recently and has amused the hell out of me.

[Pual]

I was reading that suggested the new avatar film is the 3rd one. I can’t even remember that a second one was released.

[dng]

tonight i watched key largo, and it was bloody brilliant.

[CandyDarling]

Also its kind of depressing that a films success is now purely measured in merchandising

Yeah, if I had had more characters to spare I'd have mentioned that in my posts as well. Ordinary audiences now talk about films like writers for Variety did 25 years ago.

[blombluss]

I hatt the muppets and their films.

I am truly evil!

[dng]

Poor old the muppets

[vom]

I cannot understand this

They're so lovely

[blombluss]

I think I'm probably racist.

[An Unicorn]

The only other films my mum loves so much are chicken run (the first one only) and paddington (the first two only)

Wait i missed the subsequent chickens runs

[vom]

they cleverly replaced Mel Gibson with somebody worse

[CandyDarling]

Nowadays Mel Gibson looks like a massive Pepperami

[Bruce Sato]

Tonight Mother and I watched A Night At The Opera (one of my Christmas presents). I don't think it's as good as the Marx Brothers' best Paramount films, but it's still very good.
Among the extras are a number of short MGM films, and we also watched one of these, How To Sleep, which amused us greatly.

[blombluss]

Some company called Peacock have turned one of my favourite flims (The 'Burbs) into a telly show starring Jack Shitehall. I am appalled and disgusted and I will have to watch the programme so I can continue to be appalled and disgusted.

[CandyDarling]

Peacock is a streaming service run by NBC, who are in turned owned by, erm, some other bastards. It's named after their logo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIxGyrQz_e8

[blombluss]

Right-o! I haff learnt summat! *thumbs up*

[blombluss]

I watched Happiest Season, billed as the first mainstream lesbian Christmas rom-com, a few days back, and it's main problem as a rom-com is that one of the main characters behaves badly to their other half throughout the film, and they don't deserve their happy ending. So I thought: 'have I missed something here?', and from what I can tell, those who've watched it are split about 50/50 between those who reckon the movie is really good, and those who kinda think what I think.

On the plus side, I had no idea who Aubrey Plaza (who also thinks the ending is wrong!) is, and she's the best thing in the darn thing!

[An Unicorn]

Aubrey Plaza's really having a moment lately, isn't she?

[vom]

I watched Happiest Season, billed as the first mainstream lesbian Christmas rom-com, a few days back, and it's main problem as a rom-com is that one of the main characters behaves badly to their other half throughout the film, and they don't deserve their happy ending. So I thought: 'have I missed something here?', and from what I can tell, those who've watched it are split about 50/50 between those who reckon the movie is really good, and those who kinda think what I think.

On the plus side, I had no idea who Aubrey Plaza (who also thinks the ending is wrong!) is, and she's the best thing in the darn thing!

you watched this in January? you're a renegade

[vom]

we're as far from Christmas as we've ever been