ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
The best thing I've seen in the past few months is Archer. Is anybody else into this? I love it!
I saw Tarantinos last movie, Django Unchained, yesterday. Typically Tarantino; lots of violence (and some of it was incredible brutal), but that's not the main attraction, so it's quite good! I liked it very much, not close to Pulp Fiction of course, but still recommended!
I have been wanting to see Prometheus for a while, but now I won't prioritize it...
jkhamler: The best thing I've seen in the past few months is Archer. Is anybody else into this? I love it!
Aah, I love Archer! So excited that it's back for a new season!
Just watched "Der Himmel über Berlin" by Wim Wenders from 1987. Only 26 years ago. But you won't find the places, because some little things happened afterwords in this town.
The plot: Angels watching people without the ability to change things only to give a little quantum of solace to the afflicted. One of them falls in love with an artist in a circus and changes sides only to make the acquaintance of an other guy who changed sides some years ago.
Among the angels: Bruno Ganz, Otto Sander and Peter Falk, the artist: Solveigh Dommartin
This movie gives a nice chance to dream and to awake.
If you like the subject shorter, watch the 8:35 min movie "Spin" by Jamin Winans ...
Just saw The Hunger Games... Great movie, but ugh so horrible!
Last weekend I saw District 9 and Invictus — both great movies, and it was a nice Apartheid related movie weekend!
I loved District 9, quite an apartheid approach to little green men.
I saw an odd, but very interesting, Korean film called "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring." It takes place on this small, very small floating zen temple on a small lake. An old monk lives there raising an orphan boy, the boy grows up, leaves, comes back a murderer, leaves with the police, then returns as the monk after prison and the old monk's death. Beautiful movie. Not much dialog.
Watching the mess that the series Spartacus has become, it's getting old. What happens in the slave camp is not at all interesting, it's like watching the rowdy footballers at the local pub act like animals, not very interesting, just more of the same. The Romans are much more interestingly portrayed, but sadly they don't get as much attention in the show. Interesting depiction of Marcus Licinius Crassus though, last episode had him decimating his men for cowardice. Heavy scene, done the proper way, draw lots, and the 9 who didn't get picked take clubs and beat the 10th to death. When Crassus says that the troops showed they feared the enemy more than him, said something like "an error this night I intend to see corrected, and to cast fear upon proper name of Marcus Licinius Crassus" it was a scary pronouncement. But watching the slaves act like barbarians, meh.
Still haven't seen The Hunger Games, but have it on the DVR.
Jeff
I'm afraid I'm recovering from the BeoVirus.
Ww have been watching the light froth of the Emil Zola novel transformed by the BBC - it is not obvious as to whether this is Paris or London, or Galleries Lafayette versus Harrods .... but all the accents are English with the odd Scotsman - but most people have French (like) names !
None the less it is relaxing nonsense that precedes our catch-up of the Swedish version of Wallander - they have way more episodes that the English equivalent and I really like the style of acting, direction and production.
PS the first series I mentioned is called "The Paradise"
BeoNut since '75
elephant: with the odd Scotsman - but most people have French (like) names !
with the odd Scotsman - but most people have French (like) names !
In my experience, most Scotsmen are a bit odd...
And I too have to get back to Wallander, easier now that I have a TV that streams Netflix and such.
It's been an interesting week for movies, 3 new ones and an old one rediscovered.
Dark City - an old one, but quite interesting. Aliens have taken humans and built an ever changing city to study us, they can change reality by thought and want to understand if the soul is distinct from memories. So they extract everyone's memories, mix and match them, and reapply, to see if, say, a man becomes a serial killer if he is imprinted with the memories of a serial killer. Very moody atmospheric movie, the city is surreal, an off scale mix of a number of different conflicting times and styles.
Safety Not Guaranteed - quirky love story about an intern at a magazine who falls in love with the subject of an article she's helping with, a man who advertises for a companion for time travel, safety not guaranteed. Funny and sweet.
Sleeping Beauty - very odd tale of a young woman who gets caught up being a sleeping beauty, allowing herself to be drugged to sleep naked in a bed, for a lot of money, while old rich men fondle her. Thought provoking.
After Fall, Winter - very ultimately sad but at times touching and darkly funny story about a failing but once popular American author who goes to Paris, meets a young woman and they fall in love. Both are very damaged people, she works as a dominatrix, but isn't into it, he is into BDSM, but it plays out not in a way you'd think. Ultimately very tragic but worth watching, the actress playing the young woman, who's name escapes me now, is an extremely talented actress.
We are watching Game of thrones - season two. We baught it on Bluray. A very good series, ainchent time, peolpe and demons fighting about the throne of the 5 kingdoms. The series are very good - and the scenery in the series are awesome. Look at it! :)
Jeff:After Fall, Winter - very ultimately sad but at times touching and darkly funny story about a failing but once popular American author who goes to Paris, meets a young woman and they fall in love. Both are very damaged people, she works as a dominatrix, but isn't into it, he is into BDSM, but it plays out not in a way you'd think. Ultimately very tragic but worth watching, the actress playing the young woman, who's name escapes me now, is an extremely talented actress.
Thanks for reminding me of the title - we watched it months ago and it is a strange tale.
Afterwards my wife likened it to Romeo & Juliet (star crossed lovers), but there is a difference I think - for Juliet and Romeo the tragedy comes from without - brought on by a dysfunctional society. In this story the dysfunctional forces are within the couple.
It does contain a scene of Paris gypsies and a scam ... one that we were subjected to but escaped !!
Anyway, the reason I came on today was to relate that in the latest Swedish Wallander ("The Ghost" with sub-titles) there is a BS 3000 (or 3200) on the wall of the luxury home the detectives walk into.
My wife noted the same thing, it had a Romeo and Juliet vibe, but the roles were kind of reversed at the end, but you make a good point in that the dysfunctional emotions that doom the couple come from within.
I guess it's a sign of a good film that I'm still thinking about this several days after watching it, it did have an impact. The actress is Lizzie Brochere'. I thought she was amazing in it, her moods and expressions felt real and not forced, and she has amazingly large and expressive eyes, which worked well for the part. That said, I hated the ending, I wouldn't have expected or even really liked a traditional love conquers all happy ending, but not the way it turned out. I had no respect for the male character, he was weak and self destructive. Her character rang in many ways true, I've known women who had been abandoned by their fathers and while not quite as messed up the results were of the same quality if not quantity.
An interesting run of movies lately:
The Dark Knight Rises - pretty good Batman fare, a good end to Christian Bale's tenure as the caped crusader
Valhalla Rising - very odd, surreal movie, about 130 lines of dialog in the whole film. About a Viking warrior-slave called One Eye who escapes his captors, goes with a group of Christian crusaders who manage to stumble onto the New World. One Eye doesn't have a single line of dialog, and the whole film is very moody and atmospheric, I enjoyed it
Iron Sky - clever premise but an ultimately disappointing flick about Nazi's on the moon. An American moon mission accidentally discovers Nazi's on the dark side of the moon who have been there since the end of WWII. Decent special effects, and the cutest little Nazi Fraulein ever can't rescue hackneyed, juvenile, and unoriginal political "humor" that they felt compelled to insert
The Man From Earth - excellent story about a professor who tells his colleagues that he is a 14,000 year old cave man and their pontifications and reactions to his story, written by the same writer who wrote several original Star Trek episodes (Jerome Bixby) who also wrote the one "Requiem For Methuselah" where the crew encounters a man living with a female android on a planet who is an immortal human. Very, very good and unusual movie
Dark Shadows - derived from the old US soap opera of the 60's, Johnny Depp does a marvelous job as a resurrected vampire restoring his family business and estate, while Eva Green plays a delightful over the top portrayal of a witch who cursed him. Lots of fun
Whore's Glory - odd documentary showing the lives of prostitutes and their johns in three countries, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Mexico. Surprisingly interesting considering the topic, especially in the last two countries, covers the lives of women in the most squalid and depressingly poor third world conditions imaginable, or even not imaginable to most of us First Worlders.
I also returned to watching one of my favorite scifi shows, The Lexx, truly one of the oddest and most creative shows ever.
Jeff:Iron Sky - clever premise but an ultimately disappointing flick about Nazi's on the moon. An American moon mission accidentally discovers Nazi's on the dark side of the moon who have been there since the end of WWII. Decent special effects, and the cutest little Nazi Fraulein ever can't rescue hackneyed, juvenile, and unoriginal political "humor" that they felt compelled to insert
I watched this last week - thoroughly enjoyed it - even the OT political humour - e.g. the Palin look-a-like as President and the scene where the North Korean representative tries to claim responsibility but the other members of the (revamped) security council laugh him done.
I even bought some of the sound track from iTunes to give my BeoLab 11 a workout ... and may even hit the "complete my album" button one day.
We are continuing our love affair with Scandinavia - we have started watching "Borgen" - a Danish political drama about the coming to office of a female Prime Minister, and I have started reading the Norwegian "Harry Hole" detective stories.
But the big consumption this week was buying the first season of "The Game of Thrones" on the Apple TV and watching two episodes a night - a commentary on the parlous state of free to air and Foxtel programming. I can see us buying season two next week !
The part about the Nork was humorous, but the rest of it, well, living in this country, the US, we get inundated with the same lame anti-everything but leftist rants and "humor" over and over and over. What might have been amusing, even to a conservative or libertarian, the first few times gets old after endless repetition.
Game of Thrones season 3 has just started on HBO over here, we've been enjoying that a great deal. Spartacus finally died a well deserved death, it had gotten so formulaic and so just a mindless repetition of brutal violence and explicit sex it got boring (never thought I'd say that about explicit sex!). The only interesting character was Crassus, who was well laid out, but not covered enough, though the scene where he decimates his troops was perhaps the most well done of it's type I've seen. Brutal but realistic.
We have a series that just ended its first season here, Vikings. Very good historical drama on History channel. Great acting, story, script, and production values. They have about the creepiest soothsayer I've ever seen, old man, black lips made up in a black smear, black rough hooded cloak, and no eyes, just a mass of scar tissue where they should be. Very unsettlingly acted as well.
Jeff: it got boring (never thought I'd say that about explicit sex!)
can't believe you said that well actually I can ... there should be moderation in all things, and most shows spiral out of control as Season.N+1 tries to top Season.N which topped Season.N-1
Jeff:We have a series that just ended its first season here, Vikings. Very good historical drama on History channel. Great acting, story, script, and production values. They have about the creepiest soothsayer I've ever seen, old man, black lips made up in a black smear, black rough hooded cloak, and no eyes, just a mass of scar tissue where they should be. Very unsettlingly acted as well.
My eldest, a frustrated Viking who loved the bottle of mead we brought back from the Struer trip, is into this show - but I have not seen it. However I am sure he will remedy that
Note Keith, can we have a mead emoticon please ?
Beosound Stage, Beovision 8-40, Beolit 20, Beosound Explore.
Chris Townsend:Eurovision Song Contest cough cough
Don't feel bad Chris - so am I, on an MX2000
--mika
The Hangover....whahaha
Just watched "Looper." An interesting time travel tale with a few new twists. Apparently in the future, 30 yrs ahead, time travel is invented and highly illegal. And it's just about impossible to dispose of a body, so that when the big crime mobs want to erase someone, they pop them back 30 yrs and have an assassin called a looper do it and dispose of the body. Interesting opening scene, guy with a gun standing in a corn field in front of a large square of plastic. Checks his watch, points the gun at the canvas, pop this guy suddenly appears on his knees, hands tied behind him, with a bag over his head. Bam! Shoots him, cuts open the guys jacket back, there's several bars of silver for payment, and dumps the body. Lots of interesting twists in this one.
Jeff:Just watched "Looper."
On the other hand I watched the remake of "Total Recall" last night.
Now I think I am a nice fellowand fairly generous in my assessmentsbut I have to tell you that ...
it was bloody awful !
Long live Arnie on Mars !!
In fact even John Carter on Mars was better than last night's dog ..........
I agree, the new Total Recall sucked. Attractive actors and actresses, high production values, expensive special effects, and overall dumb as a post and shallow. Honestly, a tunnel thru the center of the planet was deemed to be more credible than a Mars colony? The Arnie version rocked. I really can't stand the tendency to remake pictures that were really about perfect the first time.
On a related note, it's amazing to me how many works by Philip K. *** have been made into movies. Total Recall, Minority Report, Imposter, Paycheck, A Scanner Darkly, Screamers, and probably even more I can't recall right now. Blade Runner, which was Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep. One of my favorite authors, Looper has enough oddness in its plot to have made me think it could have been a PK *** story.
His trilogy of surrealism, three short novels which will definitely bend your head, are A Scanner Darkly, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldrich, and Ubik. Some of PK ***'s finest work.
Honestly now, you can't write Philip K D i c k due to the nanny filter? For shame!
Jeff:The Man From Earth - excellent story about a professor who tells his colleagues that he is a 14,000 year old cave man and their pontifications and reactions to his story, written by the same writer who wrote several original Star Trek episodes (Jerome Bixby) who also wrote the one "Requiem For Methuselah" where the crew encounters a man living with a female android on a planet who is an immortal human. Very, very good and unusual movie
Oh yes - I remember the old Star Trek episode 'Requiem for Metusaleh' I have to say, that I prefer 'The Next Generation', though...Right now I'm watching Season 2 of Star Trek TNG - the new remastered version on BluRay. Well - it's not only remastered...they did not only upconvert from videotape. They actually took all of the original footage - the original camera negatives - and started 'from scratch' editing every episode. Truly amazing Picture quality Forget about the blurry version shown on tv for the last 2 decades (and on the web). This is really Star Trek as you have never seen it before.
And offcourse I'm going to the Cinema to Watch J.J. Abrams' new Star Trek movie when it arrives in Denmark (we'll have to wait 3 weeks)
Guess I'll also have a look at 'The Man from Earth', you mention...
elephant:I agree - it is amazing how many PKD creations have made it to the big screen I wish some of my favourites had made it
Yes - but most of the movies are very different from the original stories. Total Recall is based on a short story ("We remember it for You - wholesale").And Blade Runner is also very different from the original novel 'Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?' as mentioned earlier.Seems like they have only taken the basic ideas from PKD's stories...But he definitely did have a lot of good ideas
Recently I watched the movie 'Imposter' -based on a short story from the book 'A handfull of darkness' - which was the first PKD book I read.The movie was quite good - and offcourse they had to 'upgrade' the story, as it was from the 50's...
Btw...Which ones are your favorites?
Ah, Repo Man, a true classic! Similar name, Repo Men wasn't a bad cyberpunk kind of ditty either.
PKD, so much good stuff he wrote, his very early short stories almost read like old Twilight Zone episodes, not as bizarre or surreal as his later stuff but the seed was obviously there. They take the story and often do change it beyond all recognition though, although A Scanner Darkly is about the best adaptation and most authentic I've seen. PKD was a paranoid schizophrenic, and his stories made determining what, exactly, was reality out of a number of competing, and none of them compelling, choices seem all too real no doubt because of that. He wrote one short story about a group of people stranded on a swamp planet, their ship had crashed and they had no memories of how they got there. They had built a colony but were constantly attacked by unknown forces, and when they finally dug the ship out of the muck they found out they all were paranoid schizophrenics on their way to a hospital colony in an automated ship, and they weren't sure if someone was attacking them, if they were attacking themselves, or if they were just all imagining it all. That one read too true.
I have really mixed opinions about ST:TNG. There are a certain number of episodes that are just inspired, Vulcan Alzheimer's, Darmok about languages, the early Borg (what a concept, a completely parallel computer based society), and more. But too many of them degenerated into mamby pamby politically correct hand wringing, it was like a character never died, and had to be possessed by an alien to even have a bad hair day, they were all too perfect.
One of the most famous ST:TOS ones was City On The Edge Of Forever, which was written by Harlan Ellison, and he hated what they did with it. In the original story it wasn't the doc accidentally injecting himself with the drug that led to problems, it was a crewman selling drugs. Roddenberry told him this is the future, people don't do drugs, and Harlan replied yeah, right. Also, in the show Kirk stops McCoy from saving the woman and destroying the future, while in the original script there were only Spock and Kirk in the past, and Spock had to stop Kirk from saving her, he was willing to destroy the future to save the woman he loved. Lots of differences.
elephant:Problem is that SF moved from being hard science to swords and sorcery ! Or speculative fiction.
I wouldn't say that sci-fi had moved to Swords and Sorcery. S and S is a genre of its own...and so is Fantasy. Some people tend to to mix it all up and call it all science fiction -which it is not. Some will say, (and I agree) that Star Wars is not sci-fi, but more into the Fantasy genre -or some would even call it Space Opera.There is still lots of real sci-fi - both as novels and film.
elephant:So my favourites hark back to the old days Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Wyndham and so on. Favourite stories were Dune, Mission of Gravity, Nonstop, Trouble with Triffids ...
Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Wyndham and so on.
Favourite stories were Dune, Mission of Gravity, Nonstop, Trouble with Triffids ...
Those writers are some of my favorites too...
-but I guess You mean 'Day of the Triffids' by Wyndham - instead of 'Trouble with Triffids'
You must have been thinking of an old Star Trek episode: 'Trouble with Tribbles'
I started out with the classics, Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, etc. but as time has gone on and I've aged I tend towards more abstract stuff, PKD, Harlan Ellison, William Gibson cyberpunk stuff, and my now favorite author, Gene Wolfe. Also still a fan of Ray Bradbury, he's lasted since my teen years as a fave.
Wolfe is a master of prose and imagery and allegory. Just about any story by him is worth the read, but his two acknowledged masterworks are The Fifth Head Of Cerberus, and The Book Of The New Sun. Both stand up to repeated readings, especially the New Sun, as it is highly allegorical and philosophical. He also is definitely a classical scholar, lots of Greek and Roman references, and old religious themes. He wrote a novel called Soldier Of The Mist, about a Greek soldier from the Peleponnesian War who suffered a head wound that destroyed his ability to transition short term memory to long term memory. He carries a scroll around that says "Read Me Each Day" where he writes his history after the wound so he can read it and understand who he is and where he is. He gets sold as a slave to a ship captain who loves him because he can tell him the same jokes every day and he'll laugh at them.
Amazing author. Maybe we need a thread of "What Are You Reading Now" to continue this line of discussion?
And don't forget Stanislaw Lem ...
His most famous novel "Solaris" got on moviescreen by Andrej Tarkovskij in 1972. The film played not in the same league as the novel but was not too bad.
Try "Czas nieutracony", written in 1948, published in 1955 due to polish censorship. It tells the story of a psychiatrist who tries (in vain) to save his patients during Nazi occupation. (It is no light stuff)
The other novels, short stories, bogus recensions (Imaginary Dimension (dt. Imaginäre Größe)) are real science fiction dealing not only with physics but with neuroscience, philosophy, theology, history etc., mostly with tongue in cheek.
Adoptions as movies will be difficult...
I just finally watched The Hunger Games recently, excellent movie. Liked it enough that I got and read the trilogy, of which the movie is based on the first book. The later books get quite political in an almost Orwellian way, pointing out you can't trust any leader. After finishing the books yesterday I rewatched the movie and actually enjoyed it even more, which is almost unheard of for me. The movie is an excellent adaptation of the book, and knowing the more detailed story from the book filled in some things.
I was amazed I liked it better after reading the book, as I can still remember the massive disappointment the movie Dune was after the book.
Currently listening to Four Season's recomposed by Max Richter and also George Porter - this guy is unbelievable. Both amazing, if at very different ends of the musical spectrum :)
The SciFi channel had a pretty good miniseries of Dune, much much better that the movie if not as expensively made. I found it quite enjoyable.
Best crash scene in any movie has to be the beginning of Pitch Black where the spaceship crashes.
I really am enjoying Game of Thrones and need to read the books, which a friend tells me are very good too.
Went to see the new Star Trek in 3D. It was great fun, but I sacrificed a crown to a Milk Dud which wound up making it an expensive movie for me!
I watched every episode there is on Netflix. Loved it!
Just finished Game of Thrones season 3 and also trying to get through House of Cards and season 4 of Arrested Development.
Apple just announced four new "channels" on its ATVs - so I did the upgrade, but only two appear "down under" - one is "CrunchyRoll" which is subtitled Anime ... even the free samples will probably keep my son busy for a day or three