What DVD / Video did you watch last night? (pt3)

[TheHoodedClaw]

Ahem, well, I just watched The Equalizer. It's Denzel doing his everyman-with-depths thing, and it's about as formulaic as expected. Nice use of the contents of a large hardware store though.

 

[8115]

Dogtooth. Absolutely loved it. Very good. One to watch again.

 

[belboid]

Boyhood

Bloody hell, but that's good.

Pina - Wim Wenders' dance thing with Pina Bausch. Very well worth watching

 

[butchersapron]

Before Your Eyes/The Children of Diyarbakir - pretty good drama about two very young kids in the Diyarbakir whose kurdish activists parents are offed by the turkish state and who are are left alone to fend for themselves, but i felt the constant symbolism dragging around the neck of the narrative.

A re-watch of Sacco and Vanzetti with someone whose recently became interested in the case.

And then Mourir à 30/aka Half a life an interesting film from Romain Goupil -it's a sort of look back at his and his mate (Michel Recanati) life from the mid-60s to mid-70s, how they developed from school student strike leaders into national leadership trot figures (the Ligue Communiste for spotters, Krivine's lot) until the banning and imprisoning of many after the july 21st anti-fascist activity. I doubt it was intentional but they look like a bunch of back-stabbing competitive careerists bureaucrats - the worst sort, the sort that believe. Anyway,the film has loads of relatively unseen stuff from 68-73 - including the pre-math to july 73. You can watch it with subs here - and skip to 1 hour 28 to see what i'm on about regarding july 73.

 

[belboid]

First half of the Detectorists. Damned good stuff, it's nice to be able to watch Mackenzie Crook in something that isn't toss. Simon Farnaby is a bit rubbish, but otherwise it's cracking stuff.

 

[gabi]

Mr Turner... Slow. Very slow. But a brilliant portrayal by Spall and some beautiful cinematography.

 

[moon]

I woke up early so watched Room on the Broom and The Gruffalo on the iplayer, both produced by Michael Rose.
Such a delightful way to start the day

 

[DotCommunist]

Los Angeles Plays Itself

really good- heres a description

Consisting mostly of shots from other films, this documentary discusses the many representations of the city of Los Angeles in film and on television. Professor Thom Andersen compares the city as it exists in real life with its depictions on screen to examine how L.A. and its massive community have been misrepresented over the years. In addition to critical analysis, Andersen explains how directors portray the city itself as a character, and he also delves into L.A.'s dark history.

warmed to the narrator when he gets to dissing the Walk of Fame 'None of the blacklisted are here but the blacklisters and the informers are celebrated. It should be called the walk of shame'

fascinating stuff, from architecture to landscape to history character, all played out in the truth and lies of cinema. reccomended

 

[Voley]

Los Angeles Plays Itself

really good- heres a description

warmed to the narrator when he gets to dissing the Walk of Fame 'None of the blacklisted are here but the blacklisters and the informers are celebrated. It should be called the walk of shame'

fascinating stuff, from architecture to landscape to history character, all played out in the truth and lies of cinema. reccomended

Sounds good. Never heard of that before, ta.

 

[butchersapron]

Hellfjord - brilliantly funny Norwegian black-comedy mini-series. Not really keen on *** crossed with *** style comparisons but...league of gentlemen/hot fuzz/good bits of the comic strip. Hope they're doing a second series.

 

[DotCommunist]

Sounds good. Never heard of that before, ta.

available to stream on vodlocker- 2 n half hours long though, may need a snack break- i did

 

[butchersapron]

available to stream on vodlocker- 2 n half hours long though, may need a snack break- i did

Is it the 2014 digitally remastered one or the one from the 90s with no official clearance for the many film clips so pretty grubby and filthy almost unwatchable pirated private vhs taped off the telly footage?

 

[DotCommunist]

Is it the 2014 digitally remastered one or the one from the 90s with no official clearance for the many film clips so pretty grubby and filthy almost unwatchable pirated private vhs taped off the telly footage?

was very clean and watchable- so not the older one I'd assume, crisp and good sound etc, no complaints on that front here

 

[butchersapron]

Oh yeah,and Time Lapse a fairly decent time-travelish thing with a good ending. Nice easy watch. And Triage, again, a fairly decent-ish look at war and guilt and forgiveness and all that. Ok if you want to watch a straightforward attempt at serious and worthy without the bombast you may expect from a film with colin farrel film in the lead.

 

[butchersapron]

was very clean and watchable- so not the older one I'd assume, crisp and good sound etc, no complaints on that front here

Def the new one then cheers - might as well grab a copy and actually be able to see what's going on on screen this time.

 

[butchersapron]

Los Angeles Plays Itself

really good- heres a description


warmed to the narrator when he gets to dissing the Walk of Fame 'None of the blacklisted are here but the blacklisters and the informers are celebrated. It should be called the walk of shame'

fascinating stuff, from architecture to landscape to history character, all played out in the truth and lies of cinema. reccomended

Published yesterday: The Hollywood Blacklist, Revisited - Colin Beckett interviews Thom Andersen (for everyone else, that's the bloke who made the film dc is talking about above)

Few have done more to counter this mythology of the blacklist than filmmaker, writer, and teacher Thom Andersen. His 1985 essay “Red Hollywood” was the first in a series of what he would later describe as “fugitive and ephemeral” contributions to blacklist scholarship. Primarily historiographical, the essay is a caustic dissection of the ways commentators have employed the blacklist and its victims. Andersen savages three generations of liberal historians and cultural critics for their refusal to face the true political and aesthetic stakes of the HUAC hearings, and provides a sensitive sketch of the social forces and political goals that animated Communist screenwriters, directors, and actors.

Guernica: Why have so many mythologies about the blacklist lingered when many of their material supports have dropped away or been altered?

Thom Andersen: There’s no one alive today who defends the blacklist except for Richard Schickel [the American journalist and film critic who currently writes forTruthdig]. It’s an example of something I talked about in Los Angeles Plays Itself in relation to L.A. Confidential (1997): “History is written by the victors, but it’s written in crocodile tears.” We have a Malcolm X stamp, a Paul Robeson stamp, a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. We pay our respects to these people precisely so that we can continue policies which are completely antithetical to what they stood for.

 

[DotCommunist]

What they share is a kind of rejection of the idea of politics as the art of the possible, which is a great problem of the American left today—that it has decided to devote itself to causes it can win, like gay marriage, bicycle lanes, banning smoking. Thereby turning politics into the art of the trivial, a petit-bourgeois politics, a kind of recycling.

worth reading that in context, but see the import

 

[trabuquera]

BAD BOYS (1983) - so not annoying Martin Lawrence / Will Smith wisecracking, or some dodgy gay erotica, but a much weirder, baggier, more low-budget offer. Sean Penn is a juvenile delinquent (yes, 1983 really was that long ago... ) who ends up in an unusually hardcore young offenders' institution where rape, beatings, stabbings, gang leadership and the occasional accidental death are the order of the day. It's amazingly rubbish, but still holds your attention* because:

- it's just so retro - dial phones, hardly any drugs, everyone smoking tabs all the time ...
- cast: it has loads and loads of actors who've barely been off telly since (Esai Morales, Clancy Brown, Reni Santoni) all looking astonishingly fresh faced and youthful
- music: because it's PRISON, and prison is full of ethnic hoodlums, and because hoodlums play loud 'urban' music through large boomboxes, there is a surprising amount of good funk / early electro / even some go-go I think in it. If there's an OST of this it would be worth finding.

*well, sort of - it's really long and the script is one cliché stacked on top of another, so I gave up after a couple of hours an didn't catch the end.

 

[Dexter Deadwood]

Finished season 1 of The Shield, i'll be back for more after a quick film or two.

 

[The Boy]

Finished deadwood. Would quite like to watch seasons 4 and on, but hey ho.

 

[Dexter Deadwood]

Finished deadwood.

 

[Idris2002]

Theory of Everything aka I Married a Dalek

Based on Stephen Hawking 's wife's memoir, which apparently is much more bitter than the film.

Alright for what it was, but no more than that. Also disconcerting to see an era I remember become the subject of costume period drama.

 

[DrRingDing]

Watched and enjoyed Wild yesterday.

A young woman goes on a long hike with a massive bag and a shit load more baggage. She manages to trim her bag down to size and loose some baggage along the way (as well as some toenails). Worth a watch but you can feel this was crow-barred into a film format fairly inelegantly by Nick Hornby.

 

[The Boy]

Dark floors (2008). Lordi of eurovision star as the monsters in this poor horror effort. Think Mr lordi co-wrote actually.

A father and his autistic daughter get stuck in a lift at the hospital and monsters in the guise of a Eurovision act start turning up. Think it has something to do with the daughter, but the film was neither as camp or fun as I had hoped so stopped caring.

 

[Dexter Deadwood]

'71
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2614684/

It was moody, dark and very slow. It's out there on The Magnet Bay.

 

[Voley]

Gravity. Rubbish plot, rubbish Sandra Bullock, rubbish George Clooney but totally ace to look at. Wish I'd seen it in 3D at a big cinema really. Liked the music too.

 

[Yetman]

Book of life, box trolls. Both good.

Housebound, not that good.

 

[jeff_leigh]

Finished season 1 of The Shield, i'll be back for more after a quick film or two.

I watched the whole series in one go, it's the only way to do it. Get into all the subplots and character developments

 

[Indeliblelink]

Painted Boats (1945) - Ealing Studios docu-fiction about the English canal boat system. Lovely

 

[DotCommunist]

first two episodes of the new series of 12 Monkeys

Its a good start, its never going to be gilliam is it but it has a strong enough character of its own that I'll give ep three a fair shake