Film Discussion / Now Watching

[SS1535]

Titicut Follies - 1967 - fly-on-the-wall documentary about a hospital for the criminally insane in Massachussets. Hard to watch, but necessary.

Someone else watching TCM? haha I caught this one too, and I think it was very interesting. That doctor smoking while inserting a feeding tube is some of the most banal near-cruelty that I have seen.

[housepig]

Titicut Follies - 1967 - fly-on-the-wall documentary about a hospital for the criminally insane in Massachussets. Hard to watch, but necessary.

Someone else watching TCM? haha I caught this one too, and I think it was very interesting. That doctor smoking while inserting a feeding tube is some of the most banal near-cruelty that I have seen.

yeah, everything about that doctor disgusted me.

the funny thing was I didn't even know they were running it - I came up from band practice and my wife was in-between watching something, TCM was on in the background as it always in in our house. I caught a second of it and she said "oh, should I record this?" I'd heard about it for years but had never seen it.

I love TCM unashamedly; I watched 400 movies last year and over 200 were on TCM. it's one of the few cable channels I consider a must-have.

[SS1535]

Titicut Follies - 1967 - fly-on-the-wall documentary about a hospital for the criminally insane in Massachussets. Hard to watch, but necessary.

Someone else watching TCM? haha I caught this one too, and I think it was very interesting. That doctor smoking while inserting a feeding tube is some of the most banal near-cruelty that I have seen.

yeah, everything about that doctor disgusted me.

the funny thing was I didn't even know they were running it - I came up from band practice and my wife was in-between watching something, TCM was on in the background as it always in in our house. I caught a second of it and she said "oh, should I record this?" I'd heard about it for years but had never seen it.

I love TCM unashamedly; I watched 400 movies last year and over 200 were on TCM. it's one of the few cable channels I consider a must-have.

Yes, TCM is great---and especially adventurous around Halloween time surprisingly! My only complaint is that they do not show enough foreign movies, and that they tend to repeat the same selection of American films a bit too much. I also wish the TCM Underground lady had her show a little earlier---I am no night owl!

[housepig]

I also wish the TCM Underground lady had her show a little earlier---I am no night owl!

This is where a DVR comes in really handy - set it to record and catch it the next day! I watch almost nothing in "real time". Even stuff like the news or sporting events, I'll record it and start 15-30 minutes later at least so I can fast forward through commercials.

[Atrophist]

Just watched Significant Other, a painfully, embarrassingly bad alien invasion movie. The only reason I was interested in the first place is because of Maika Monroe, who was also in The Watcher, one of the best movies of 2022.

[SS1535]

I also wish the TCM Underground lady had her show a little earlier---I am no night owl!

This is where a DVR comes in really handy - set it to record and catch it the next day! I watch almost nothing in "real time". Even stuff like the news or sporting events, I'll record it and start 15-30 minutes later at least so I can fast forward through commercials.

True, I should get one because it seems that TCM doesn't want to make anything beyond a handful of movies available on demand per month!

The other thing that I have realized, though, is that they upload their intos for movies up on their website, so sometimes when I finally watch something I will look them up for some extra context.

[holy ghost]

The Banshees of Inisherin - what a weird flick. Pretty good. Great scenery. I enjoyed it. A ridiculous premise!!

The Nest (2020) - my wife thought this was about a book she read about an inheritance - it wasn't! It's like a horse thriller? Jude Law is pretty good in it. I enjoyed it.

Pale Blue Eye - Christian Bale and Edgar Allen Poe team up to solve a mystery. It was okay.

[33033]

Halloween Ends - weird ending to the series. Actually enjoyed the first two for what they were.

Promising Young Woman - really well done. Very good at shifting discomfort around.

Men - fantastical weirdness hit the spot for me on this. Really enjoyed it.

Crimes of the Future - loved Saul Tenser, weirdo Cronenberg-devices and such. Obviously it's good!

[Scream & Writhe]

January highlights

Obsession (De Palma, 1976)
Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
Death Walks at Midnight (Ercoli, 1972)
The Death of David Cronenberg (Cronenberg, 2021)
The Devils (Russell, 1971)
Harvest Time (Young, 2022)
The Cop (Boisset, 1970)
Espion, lève-toi (Boisset, 1982)
The Last Picture Show (Bogdanovich, 1971)
The Last Movie (Hopper, 1971)
The Conformist (Bertolucci, 1970)
The Stone Tape (Sasdy, 1972)
Moonlighting (Skolimowski, 1982)
Blow-Up (Antonioni, 1966) - 35mm

[33033]

Hell Of The Living Dead (1980) - What a weird film. It has Goblin but technically just some tracks they made unrelated to the film. Some good gore, and an awfully magnificent tour of stock footage.

Smile (2022) - Too long. Bring back 90 min films! So much fluff. This idea has sorta been done too. Definitely bust a gut at the reveal of the “monster” aka Richmond from The IT Crowd.

[holy ghost]

Watched some trashy movies lately....

Firestarter remake - 0/5 could not have made it worse. And the first one was pretty underwhelming too.

Thor movie with Natalie Portman - 1/5 really boring and not because they made Thor a woman or any of that misogynist nonsense, NP got a pretty flat role and the movie overall was just not very exciting. These Marvel movies aren't very good, if you ask me (you didn't). Quite frankly I'm just not into them.

TV:

The Bear - really good! I liked it. I don't know why kitchen culture is just people yelling but this was excellent.

Cosmic Love - my wife wanted to see this as a way to wind down for the evening, it's hands down the stupidest group of people in existence taking advice on who to fuck from a giant neon ball. Oh your moon is in Scorpio but maybe we should kiss? Hmmmm let me ask the giant ball.... Ricky is a Virgo but he kissed Courtney who has a Capricorn rising? Better storm off and ask the ball....

[Atrophist]

The Bear - really good! I liked it. I don't know why kitchen culture is just people yelling but this was excellent.

...

The kitchen scenes are basically Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential in filmed form.

I'm pretty sure that's where this all comes from. I've never worked in restaurants and don't know that much about the whole scene, but I do have a few friends who do, and they say that each restaurant eventually develops its own working culture. Some of them are like that. In others, it's the complete opposite and you'd be in trouble with your co-workers with that type of behaviour.

I watched a couple of episodes of this, it's okay, good performances, well made, etc. But not really my thing.

[Scream & Writhe]

February highlights:

Vanishing Point (Sarafian, 1971)
Flesh for Frankenstein (Morrissey, 1973)
Cross of Iron (Peckinpah, 1977)
Blood for Dracula (Morrissey, 1974)
My Own Private Idaho (Van Sant, 1991)
Burning Up Inside (Franco, 1979)
Point Blank (Boorman, 1967)
Witchhammer (Vávra, 1970)
The Third Part of the Night (Żuławski, 1971)
Cat and Mouse (Pohland, 1967)
Caliber 9 (Di Leo, 1972)
Twice a Judas (Cicero, 1968)

[adult human]

The kitchen scenes are basically Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential in filmed form.

I'm pretty sure that's where this all comes from. I've never worked in restaurants and don't know that much about the whole scene, but I do have a few friends who do, and they say that each restaurant eventually develops its own working culture. Some of them are like that. In others, it's the complete opposite and you'd be in trouble with your co-workers with that type of behaviour.

I watched a couple of episodes of this, it's okay, good performances, well made, etc. But not really my thing.

I've worked in a few kitchens and I really don't enjoy any film or TV that tries to dramatise what that environment is like. It just looks so artificial to me, even when it's well observed. An equivalent might be a TV depiction of a rock band where they've all got sleeveless black shirts and chains on their trousers and make 10 references to well known rock albums within 2 mins of dialogue. Even at high levels kitchen work is gut busting, unglamourous servant labour. Watched 2 episodes of The Bear and I'm not particularly inclined to watch more.

[housepig]

I've worked in a few kitchens and I really don't enjoy any film or TV that tries to dramatise what that environment is like. It just looks so artificial to me, even when it's well observed.

I think that flows through almost any industry - my wife is a massage therapist, and if we ever see a scene with one, she's picking it apart - "his fingernails are too long! can't wear long sleeves like that, they drag in the oil!" etc.

But most shows are only giving you enough detail to set a scene, not to be actually accurate, since it's not about the legitimacy for anyone who's NOT in the industry, but a frame for whatever the basic conflict or interaction between the characters, so they don't bother to necessarily get it right.

[adult human]

I've worked in a few kitchens and I really don't enjoy any film or TV that tries to dramatise what that environment is like. It just looks so artificial to me, even when it's well observed.

I think that flows through almost any industry - my wife is a massage therapist, and if we ever see a scene with one, she's picking it apart - "his fingernails are too long! can't wear long sleeves like that, they drag in the oil!" etc.

But most shows are only giving you enough detail to set a scene, not to be actually accurate, since it's not about the legitimacy for anyone who's NOT in the industry, but a frame for whatever the basic conflict or interaction between the characters, so they don't bother to necessarily get it right.

Definitely, it's rare if not impossible to properly depict these things in works of fiction that have a job to do in telling stories and also demonstrating character development etc. I suppose I'm taking specific aim here at when tv or films attempt - and are sometimes celebrated for - an elevated sense of observation or accuracy in setting the scene you're talking about. Things where professionals from that field will be consultants and so on. What you get is an enormous over saturation of references and tropes from those professions crammed into the end product. You get silly little things that are coincidental yet common within an industry being turned into these vaguely catalytic plot points or moments in a dialogue and it's really stupid. I knew within two episodes of The Bear that there would eventually be a scene which used Chicagoans not wanting ketchup in their hotdogs as the crux of its dialogue. When it came it was as stupid and crowbarred in as expected. But whatever. Still enjoyable enough.

[housepig]

I suppose I'm taking specific aim here at when tv or films attempt - and are sometimes celebrated for - an elevated sense of observation or accuracy in setting the scene you're talking about. Things where professionals from that field will be consultants and so on.

It's such a low bar, because it's so easy to shorthand a scenario that any effort to make it remotely more accurate gets that praise, even if the end result is just the same sitcom recycling with some better window dressing pasted on it.

I recently re-read "The Other Glass Teat" by Harlan Ellison, a collection of columns he wrote about television in the late 60s & early 70s when he was still involved as a screenwriter, and a consistent thread is how producers & directors would ask for accuracy and realism from the writers, and hire consultants for specifics, and then ultimately ignore them when it came time to crank out the show. Same as it ever was...

[holy ghost]

I read recently that on the set of Homicide: Life On The Street they brought the detectives in as consultants and Pembleton (played by Andre Braugher) yelled "CUT" when his character ordered a scotch and milk at the bar (he was not the director, not supposed to yell cut) as the other homicide detectives would never let him live it down if his character ordered that.

Who drinks a scotch and milk?

[holy ghost]

Watched Lords of Chaos last night - been wanting to see it forever but my wife has no interest watching Rory Caulkin play black metal cosplay. She was out at a work event so I had the house to myself. I was expecting it to be 100% cringe but it was shockingly GREAT? Like they portrayed Varg & Euronymous essentially as just scared insecure little boys, like the Lennon & McCartney of extreme metal and didn't provide a commentary or a defence of their actions. It was really well shot too, lots of great flyers and shirts and cool Norwegian shots. The Dead character was exceptionally well played too. I kind of watched it for a laugh but wound up liking it way more than I thought I would.

Also watched Escape from LA which was just as great and as stupidly fun as I remembered. Been trying to work my way through the Carpenter catalogue again after reading the Troy Howarth book about him last year. I still have not seen seen Memoirs of an Invisible Man and I really want to add that to my list.

[Residual / RT]

Watched Lords of Chaos last night - been wanting to see it forever but my wife has no interest watching Rory Caulkin play black metal cosplay. She was out at a work event so I had the house to myself. I was expecting it to be 100% cringe but it was shockingly GREAT? Like they portrayed Varg & Euronymous essentially as just scared insecure little boys, like the Lennon & McCartney of extreme metal and didn't provide a commentary or a defence of their actions. It was really well shot too, lots of great flyers and shirts and cool Norwegian shots. The Dead character was exceptionally well played too. I kind of watched it for a laugh but wound up liking it way more than I thought I would.

The recent Mayhem documentary was especially great with insight into Dead and his struggles with mental health issues.

[holy ghost]

The recent Mayhem documentary was especially great with insight into Dead and his struggles with mental health issues.

I haven't seen that, I fell off Mayhem post-DMDS. The Dead suicide scene in the movie was really harrowing to watch.

[holy ghost]

The recent Mayhem documentary was especially great with insight into Dead and his struggles with mental health issues.

I haven't seen that, I fell off Mayhem post-DMDS but it sounds intriguing. The Dead suicide scene in the movie was really harrowing to watch.

[Residual / RT]

The recent Mayhem documentary was especially great with insight into Dead and his struggles with mental health issues.

I haven't seen that, I fell off Mayhem post-DMDS. The Dead suicide scene in the movie was really harrowing to watch.

They interviewed his brother for it, it really showed a more real image of him that's been completely superseded by the black metal mythos version.

[Scream & Writhe]

March highlights:

The Blackout (Ferrara, 1997)
King of New York (Ferrara, 1990) - 35mm
Bad Lieutenant (Ferrara, 1992) - 35mm
Ms. 45 (Ferrara, 1981)
Sabotage (Hitchcock, 1936)
The 39 Steps (Hitchcock, 1935)

[Happiness, forever]

Duck Soup (1933) - i laughed much