Watched Trance last night. You should watch it if you're a fan of Danny Boyle movies or Rosario Dawson doing full frontal nudity.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
Just finished watching Hell on Wheels' second season.
That fucking sucked.
Every single ancillary character ranges from boring to unlikeable--especially the token angry, home-wrecking black guy for whom I simply cannot give a damn.
The only side-story that held even a modicum of interest for me was the Swede using his lower status to socially engineer everyone into rioting and unrest. But it went in a stupid "Natural Born Killer" direction where he now suddenly keeps this 'likes to kill' ethos that he was trying to attach to Bohannon in an effort to create some sort of archetypal relationship between the two of them. The Swede was a conniving lone shark, not a fucking sociopath.
Killing off Lily Bell was the absolute worst thing they could have done and essentially guarantees that I won't keep watching. Aside from Durant and Bohannon, she was the only reason I kept an eye on the show. Bohannon and Durant could support the show if it focused more on them and less on all the boring sidestories and half-baked romantic drama....But I know that's not going to happen.
I thought with the first season, Hell On Wheels got off to a very engaging start. A possible widening revival of the American Western, even.
But at some point I just lost interest. Likely for the reasons you described, that I just stopped caring what happened to these characters. It's a tough balancing act in film and television, to create characters original enough to be interesting, but familiar (or clichéd) enough to be likeable so that viewers can identify with them.
Another thing that kills many shows is when they change creative staff from one season to the next, and that causes them to change the direction of the series in a very inconsistent and jarring way.
Some examples from a few series I like:
The excellent 1985 first season of Twilight Zone (with talented people like Harlan Ellison and Allan Brennert), that lost its staff (and its quality) in the second season.
And Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, where despite keeping the same cast, the producers completely changed the direction of the series to something insulting to viewers, and the series died about 10 episodes after the change.
Likewise the difference between the first and second seasons of the original Outer Limits series.
I don't know what the story was with Hell On Wheels, but regardless, it just wasn't the same series as when it started out.
The first season was good. Colm Meaney's speech about how history will view him compared to the innovation that he'll bring the country was great. From second season on it's all downhill.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
Following a motif (totally by accident), I just watched all of the (current) seasons of Sherlock.
Cumberbatch is a pretentious fuckface and I can barely stand him for some reason, but I suppose that's why the role suits him so well. I really enjoyed his conversations with MyCroft.
All the gay jokes were really annoying--especially since I know they only included them to pay homage to modern society's interpretation of two men living together as friends and colleagues as being subtext for something else entirely.
I realize it's kind of a commentary on modern day London, but you could tell that the show was compelled not to show him smoking. And when it did, it always made sure to call him the antichrist for doing it. Fuck that shit. Besides BBC being apart of prime-time television's silly non-smoking campaign, Holmes snorted coke for fuck's sake. Accuracy is more important than your fucking agenda.
Also, I hate the first name basis. I realize they focused on his first this time around to move away from the older period rendition of the character, but it just didn't feel genuine.
Those things aside, its pretty damn enjoyable. The only one that really wore on me was the Baskerville case. Beyond that, they were all fun.
Picked up a few movies today with gift cards and some cheap used ones.
Zombie hunter X Men days of future past 3D Universal soldier the return Universal soldier day of reckoning 3D Hitman
Zombie hunter was cheap as chips and was unsurprisingly made on a budget smaller than Snarfs sex life (yeah, I exagerate, nothing is that small), but it was ok because it was no worse than expected. The only thing that pissed me off is that it portrays Danny Trejo as the main star on all the artwork (which is the only reason I bought it), but he is little more than a cameo. Hate this tactic with budget releases.
Days of future past I hadnt actually managed to see before, and it was really enjoyable. Yeah there were a lot of continuity errors in a film thats main concept was to correct previous continuity errors, but getting past those and just enjoying the film for what it was is where the real enjoyment comes from.
The two Unisol ones I picked up for the completist factor more than anything. The return I own on DVD from years ago, and I remember it being ok for what it was, but nowhere near a patch on the original. Day of reckoning I expect to be shit, as the one before that was most certainly not a good film. But as I say, completist (and no, I do not count the made for tv films).
Hitman is just a film I like, so I picked it up, nothing more.
Moms night out. It was ok. Trace Adkins had the best parts.
Why were you looking at Trace Adkins's parts?
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
It's about two warring Yakuza factions, the daughter of one of the Yakuza leaders (and the obsession of the other Yakuza boss), a group of amateur filmmakers, and a random passerby who got caught in the middle. The two warring factions are going to stage one final confrontation (no guns allowed, just swords and knives) and they've hired the amateur filmmakers to film everything.
It's from Sion Sono, so it's not surprising that there's a lot of gore (hands getting lopped off, people getting shot, people spurting blood in ridiculous amounts, etc.) But unlike Suicide Club or Noriko's Dinner Table, this one isn't gloomy nor is it too ambiguous. It's actually very, very funny. Probably Siono's most accessible film (provided that you're not too queasy. It's not that gory anyway, probably just on the same level as Kill Bill.)
Roughly in the same genre of martial arts action, I recently rewatched Frank Miller's 300 film.
I make fun of it as a bit over-the-top gritty and macho, and in many parts resembles a video game, but it's still very atmospheric and engaging to watch.
I like Sin City only slightly less. Both very true to the original Miller stories.
Good documentary on writer/director John Milius. Lots of good stories about his batshit crazy stunts from good friends George Lucas and Steven Speilberg(who fucking knew?).
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
Just added Full metal jacket to the list of blu rays. Also waiting for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid & Ghostbusters 2 to arrive.
A seldom shown or mentioned Redford film that I thoroughly loved is The Electric Horseman (1979). It also has a soundtrack with most of Willie Nelson's best songs, and he plays a supporting character role. With Jane Fonda, and Hal Holbrook who also played "Deep Throat" opposite Redford in All the President's Men.
Art: "I mean, he shoots Theo Tonin, fakes his own death in a spectacular fashion, pushes a guy out of an airplane while he's flying it, parachutes into Harlan County with enough coke and cash to jump-start the economy of a small country, and then he has the balls to get a job in law enforcement, not once but two times! He spends a couple of days riding around with you Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Art Mullen: while you're looking for him, and now he's run off with a hooker that's half his age. That's some bad-ass shit."
Laughed. So. Fucking. Hard.
The series overall has been up and down, but it's been worth sticking to.
Art: "I mean, he shoots Theo Tonin, fakes his own death in a spectacular fashion, pushes a guy out of an airplane while he's flying it, parachutes into Harlan County with enough coke and cash to jump-start the economy of a small country, and then he has the balls to get a job in law enforcement, not once but two times! He spends a couple of days riding around with you Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Art Mullen: while you're looking for him, and now he's run off with a hooker that's half his age. That's some bad-ass shit."
Laughed. So. Fucking. Hard.
The series overall has been up and down, but it's been worth sticking to.
Also, these last two seasons are so damn predictable. No matter WHAT story development occurs, the Deputy Marshals are always one step ahead of everyone. There really is no point in twisting and turning the plot if the immediate result is always the same.
Ok, so not a DVD, but I watched Age of Ultron at the cinema on Thurs.
Also have a pile of blu rays to work through:
Bad Neighbours The Rock Shrek 1-4 (in 3D) Kung fu panda 1&2 (in 3D) Monsters vs aliens (in 3D) Unbreakable Guardians of the galaxy (in 3D) Drillbit Taylor
Other recent ones I picked up: Sabotage Zookeeper Starsky & Hutch Sex drive No country for old me Ride along
Eeeehhh...I dunno. There's some decent ideas lingering in the fifth season, but it's bogged down by a shitty primary antagonist(s) the greater purpose of whom seems to be establishing a creepy southern white guy narrative that transcends Boyd, Dewey, et al. Obviously they made Boyd the low collar, scumbag, southern white guy that's designed to encompass the racist criminal archetype that the audience is meant to dislike immensely, but the writers also saw a need to establish Boyd's likability so he could be a suitable rival-cum-friend for Raylan. As such, they have needed to, at times, juxtapose Boyd and his crew with significantly more violent, more stupid, more red-in-the-neck, and more overtly racist antagonists to give him the proper anti-heroish image.
In the first season, it was pre-gunshot Boyd and post-gunshot Boyd. In the second season, it was Boyd and the Bennett brothers. In the case of season 3, the situation was reversed with Limehouse being subtly characterized as a lesser evil that's just trying to get by as a black man in a southern world that despises him since--of course--it's the white guy that's the scum of the earth (but other than that, it was Boyd vs Dickie Bennett). Season four made sure to get in a creepy, racist, southern white guy dig through a rich criminal character who got his house repossessed. In season five, we meet Dewey Crowe's cousins. Season six features an arguably worse evil than Boyd, but he's clearly being portrayed as a creepy, unlikable antagonist.
As I pointed out earlier, the Deputy Marshal's become progressively more unlikable as well. Raylan has compromised himself and the allegedly "just(ified)" principles upon which he operates--as a deputy Marshal--a hundred times over in how he ceaselessly violates civil rights, deals out unnecessary beatings, unjustly coerces people to do his bidding, and corruptly uses taxpayer resources to fund his pet "anti-Boyd" projects (Raylan even used the star on his belt as an excuse for acting this way multiple times. Congratulations on vindicating the anti-feds you friggin douche bags). The only problem here is that the show refuses to acknowledge these violations and continues to favor everything Raylan and his federal compadres do. Obviously, it's easy for them to say he walks a gray line with the deaths of Bucks and Augustine, but his everyday behavior is just casually ignored as though it's irrelevant to the larger character. Even with the Marshal's office going into full blown dick-mode with assault, harassment, illegal search and seizures, and outright corruption the show's narrative turns a blind eye to all of it because--in the writers' mind--they're all just a bunch of stupid, racist hillbillies who have it coming to them.
The truly poetic binary behind his relationship with Boyd is honesty versus dishonesty. Boyd is honest about his nature while Raylan lies to himself and others. They both inherited the same brand of anger from their fathers that made them inherently violent men, but Raylan only thinks (falsely) that he's risen above that anger because he wears a federal badge and fashions himself as a heroic cowboy figure. That being said, it must be reiterated that Boyd's character has been put through the ringer and mangled five ways from Friday just to make him seem even more ruthless than you could possibly give him credit for. I do not believe for a moment that the Boyd of the last five seasons (yes, even the fifth for all the crap it pulled) would be as callous as he's turned out to be in season 6. The end result is Boyd being almost totally incomparable to Rylan even though they're supposed to complement one another. As such, it's taken for granted that Raylan is the better man despite the similarity in origin between the two characters.
The last two seasons (especially the sixth) have effectively nullified the aspects of Boyd's character that assigned him so much charisma and likability--not least of which was his capacity for developing personal attachments with his associates. Then, suddenly, along comes season six and he has no apparent capacity for affection aside from his romantic feelings toward Ava--which they've gone out of their way to accentuate with abuse and general creepiness. It all serves to soften the blow of his inevitable downfall for the viewers (think Shield meets Dexter). The shit he ends up doing just cannot be reconciled with the other seasons.
On top of all this was a shitty side-story involving Ava going to prison and becoming disaffected with Boyd. If you're going to watch it, I won't say anymore, but the Deputy Marshals show their true colors when they take advantage of her being wrongfully imprisoned--with them knowing the charges are bullshit the whole time.
Eeeehhh...I dunno. There's some decent ideas lingering in the fifth season, but it's bogged down by a shitty primary antagonist(s) the greater purpose of whom seems to be establishing a creepy southern white guy narrative that transcends Boyd, Dewey, et al. Obviously they made Boyd the low collar, scumbag, southern white guy that's designed to encompass the racist criminal archetype that the audience is meant to dislike immensely, but the writers also saw a need to establish Boyd's likability so he could be a suitable rival-cum-friend for Raylan. As such, they have needed to, at times, juxtapose Boyd and his crew with significantly more violent, more stupid, more red-in-the-neck, and more overtly racist antagonists to give him the proper anti-heroish image.
In the first season, it was pre-gunshot Boyd and post-gunshot Boyd. In the second season, it was Boyd and the Bennett brothers. In the case of season 3, the situation was reversed with Limehouse being subtly characterized as a lesser evil that's just trying to get by as a black man in a southern world that despises him since--of course--it's the white guy that's the scum of the earth (but other than that, it was Boyd vs Dickie Bennett).
I'm in the middle of season 3, and I have yet to see it the way you're describing it here. I think that you're projecting a bit much onto the show here. If anything, the Bennett's have been shown to be a complex bunch. Yeah, Dewey and Coover weren't that bright with Coover being downright foolish. But Doyle and Mama were shown to be more clever and far thinking. Boyd was shown to be using the whole Nazi thing as a ploy from the first episode. I've yet to see Limehouse get a justification for what they're doing. All of the bad guys except for the Dixie Mafia people have given one excuse or another, but they're no less valid than Walter White's were in BB.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
I caught the "using white supremacists" aspect, and I agree that the writers were using it to nullify the toxicity of associating with supremacists. But, narratively speaking, it fails to diminish the role he played as a penultimate redneck--especially as a redneck leading a bunch of other rednecks. Disingenuous or no, he's still the anti-establishment guy with a swastika on his arm and southern accent.
Dewey and Coover are the baddies who get most of the face time. I'd say they're far more representative of the antagonism than Mags. Their defining moment in that season was when Raylan and Rachael meet with them for the first time when Coover was disposing of rats with a revolver in a dilapidated hovel before he comes out to greet them with a rodent carcass and a racial slur (as though there was any other reason for her to be in that scene). That being said, aside from representing hillbillies in general, they also represent Mags in particular. And however smart and clever she and Doyle may be, they're still the ones who--literally--dropped the hammer on Coover, giving them a more brutish image than a smart one.
I'll wait til you finish season 3 to talk about Limehouse. I will say though that his motives don't require an elaborate or overt statement of justification to passively assign his position a kind comparative legitimacy or moral authority. Suffice it say, he gets bit pretty bad in that season, but the treatment he receives lacks the same severity applied to anyone else who pulled the same kind of shit he has.
Last edited by Pariah; 2015-04-283:31 AM. Reason: Last sentence got cut off.
My family came from Kentucky, and my father remembers his grandparents as being very distrustful of the government. There's a very clannish element brought over from Scotland with those people that make outsiders the enemy. The hatred for government goes back to the Whiskey Rebellion and possibly even further back than that under British rule. And racial issues are something that's going to exist in such an environment. I guess I don't have much problem with that being addressed as it's something that I'm used to. There's no real preaching going on with it. It'd be bullshit if they never addressed it.
Dewey and Coover are obviously grunts. Grunts in any TV or movie production aren't going to be that smart or good whether they be rednecks, Chinese, Russian, Latino, etc., etc. If you have a problem with it here against hillbillies, then you'd have to have it anywhere it's used with any ethnic/cultural background.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
I'm in the middle of watching that season! 