What Are You Watching?

[Moonsilver]

I know I'm late to the game, but I'm currently watching Invincible and The Boys S2 on Netflix. Both are pretty great, and both have involvement with Seth Rogen, I've found.

[Orlion Blight]

16 minutes ago, Moonsilver said:

I know I'm late to the game, but I'm currently watching Invincible and The Boys S2 on Netflix. Both are pretty great, and both have involvement with Seth Rogen, I've found.

I'm interested to see what Seth does with Darkwing Duck! 

[Moonsilver]

Oh wow, I didn't even know that was happening, I am too now!

[urrutiap]

a few things Im watching

 

Robotech First Macross Saga for DVD

Ice Pirates

 

[Use the Falchion]

Saw F9 last night. My immediate text to some friends was "F9 is the love child between a superhero movie where everyone's power is "CAR," and Justin Lin's Star Wars: Episode IX fan fiction. And I love that part of it." 

The movie is the most experimental, most intimate, and most expansive of all of the F&F movies. It's fun, self-referential to the extreme (to the point of noting what part of the story the characters are in, and how many insane life-or-death situations the characters have been in and haven't received a scratch from), and utterly ridiculous. Let logic fly out the window with this movie, because Vin and his co-stars are all superheroes at this point. 

[urrutiap]

finished watching the rest of Robotech First Macross Saga earlier today.

 

then an hour and half ago earlier tonight i watched Kull the Conqueror

[Draginon]

Watched the first four episodes of Louis Malle’s Phantom India. It’s interesting and fascinating to see India through a historical lens like this but you also get a curated look at India as well. Malle focused on different aspects of Indian life, from the temples to the communists to the farming to nature, but would lambast any westernization of the locals. It’s pretty evident by where he chose to film as well since he stayed away from the north where everything is ‘colonialism courtesy of the English’ and thus not worthy of being Indian in his documentary. Even the commentary he provides gets a bit exoticism in nature, especially when he goes ‘I don’t want to fetishize this but I’m going to anyway’ or even goes ‘I don’t know what’s going on here but it’s something’, that at times it feels like he’s looking down at the locals while praising them at the same time. It’s a weird case of bigotry the way it goes since the attitude tends to be ‘I'll judge you but at the same time I’ll refuse to judge you’ so I’m not sure if Malle is being unintentionally bigoted or not. It might be best to not dwell on that question in the long run.

[Draginon]

Watched the rest of Phantom India. The more it went on the more it felt like Malle kept repeating the idea that India was losing its identity thanks to England, industrialization, the Congress Party and non-Indians visiting. The way he went on about it made it seem like the ‘authentic’ India is a land of poverty, dirty people and social unrest which just feels wrong the way he presents it. The final part was in Bombay and he spends the majority of it lamenting the loss of the ‘real’ India through the success’s and achievements of those making the country prosper to the point that it’s equal parts racist and colonialism.

It was a fascinating watch but Malle’s interjections and comments just skew things in a wrong direction.

[Draginon]

Just finished Louis Malle’s Calcutta. This was additional footage from filming Phantom India that he thought was interesting enough to be its own film.

It doesn’t have the same problems I had with Phantom India but you can still detect it a little.

It focuses on so many things in the city of Calcutta from a marriage to a funeral, from a woman’s protest of the government to a student protest of the government, from lepresy to the slums and even entertainment in the streets to a festival for Saraswati. The most bizarre thing he captured was the student protest taking a break so a religious caravan can pass through and as soon as it passed they restarted. That probably had to be the most respectful protest I’d ever seen.

[Spren of Kindness]

Got recommended The Chosen, and watched the whole first season.  It's probably the best piece of Christian media I've encountered in the last two years.  I'm going to start season two soon, hopefully.

[Draginon]

Just watched Louis Malle’s God’s Country. Kind of interesting and gives a look at how a farming community changed over the course of 6 years. It started in 79 and the community is prosperous and happy but when it changes over to 85 and you see how dejected and upset the people are at the Reagen administration to the point they want to do tax evasion to make a point. There was one family had hoped to have their kids take up farming but in 85 they hope the kids will go to college and pursue greener pastures because of the economy changing to make farming not worth doing.

Because of how recent the events are it really highlights how much people ignore problems and see it through rose colored glasses since my parents treat the Reagen administration as if it were hunky dory and ignore the fact that things weren’t, for example how the deficit went from 300 billion to 2 trillion over the course of 8 years. More people need to see records like this to understand that things have been messed up in this country for a few decades and not just a recent thing.

[Draginon]

Final Louis Malle documentary ...and the Pursuit of Happiness. It’s about immigration back in 86 and shows all sides of it from the success stories to the illegals treating it like a game when they get caught and ‘voluntarily leave’. The footage came from all over the country from San Diego, San Francisco, Miami, Dallas, Houston, New York and even middle of nowhere Nebraska so you get to see small differences in the stories.

One of the more prominent stories was from Houston where the black residents treated all the Asian immigrants as being part of a conspiracy to force them out of their homes to build houses for white people. I bring this up since the only other time blacks show up are from Africa and don’t have this crazy conspiracy stuff going on where immigration is concerned.

This film was made so close to when I was born and it’s interesting how much of this stuff I never saw in my life when I lived in California. I never saw the Asian and Hispanic communities mentioned as being prosperous in the areas I’d have been to as a kid so either things changed significantly in the 4 years before I was born or I was really colorblind as a kid to not notice the different people. For context I lived there until I was 10 so plenty of time for me to see the different cultures and peoples. To show how different the California of my childhood was to the one from now the last time I had gone, maybe 2-3 years ago, I was actually surprised by how many Japanese people I had seen along with all the Hispanic/Mexican owned businesses. TBH I don’t think I was ignorant of this stuff as a kid, it was most likely just stuff that didn’t register to me at all since I do remember seeing films with Asians and other people like that but it just didn’t phase me at all and they were just people. One example is Power Rangers. I remember watching MMPR as a kid and it never registered that Zach and Trini were different looking from the others. Same with their replacements Adam and Aisha.

This really shows how much society forces us to look at the differences between us since I didn’t notice, or maybe acknowledge, any differences until I had moved to Texas and people here made it a bigger deal than California did.

[urrutiap]

a few things Im watching this weekend

 

the newer DVD of Star Trek the Motion Picture that was released like last year or whatever

Godzilla vs Kong

the rest of Part 3 of Disenchantment on netflix

[Eluvianii]

I recently watched the original Godzilla from 1954. It was a ride, I had heard it was a response to the bombs, but I didn't really know to what degree. It was really good. 

On that note, I also watched Godzilla vs Space Godzilla. It's interesting what a few decades of popularity and merchandising can do. I don't say this in a bad way, but the focuses are so completely different. Nowhere near as good as the original but an extremely fun watch. Plus, mini Godzilla is adorable. 

[urrutiap]

last time i watched a modern Godzilla movie long before today's newer Godzilla movies and the new Godzilla vs Kong movie,  Godzilla 2000 was the last one i watched back in 2001 or 2002

[Eluvianii]

Well, that's just before they stopped making them, so at least regarding numbers, you didn't miss much. 

[Draginon]

@Eluvianii The OG Godzilla is a fun film. It’s crazy when you think about it that they weren’t planning on any future films considering the ending which makes you wonder how Godzilla went from destroying Tokyo for the heck of it to defending the city from other monsters in the later films. I have the Criterion Collection version that includes the US ‘remake’ King of the Monsters and it’s laughable in places like them saying Godzilla is like 500 feet or something and when the rampage is happening Godzilla towers over the buildings but somehow the American reporter is looking down at Godzilla from the newsroom... which is a three story building so how tall is Godzilla???

I also have the set that includes all the Showa films, including the 2 US films, so that’s going to be fun to watch.

[Draginon]

Celebrating the Olympics by watching all the officially sanctioned films from the IOC. Most of these are 3 hours so give me luck on making it through them all.

First up was The Games of the V Olympiad Stockholm, 1912 which is technically not a film but a whole bunch of short films and news clips from 1912 put together into a film format. It’s surprisingly in great shape for 100 year old film stock considering how rotted stuff from back then has gotten. Heck the IOC almost didn’t find this stuff until they did a check for the films of the games and happened to find this footage in Sweden and London.

It manages to cover almost all the events, maybe about 85-90% of them, but each is still a couple minutes long. It also takes an hour to get to the actual games because the first hour is just the preliminaries! The other two hours are the actual games, the opening ceremony, the medal ceremony and the various demonstrations shown. It’s neat seeing how distinguished and fancy everyone dressed for the games, especially the equestrian teams being in their military uniforms since every single participant there were lieutenants, captains and even the prince of Prussia.

The one thing that’s actually new for this film is the score which fits the period nicely.

Going to be nice watching the rest, though it’s a shame they don’t have any footage from 1896 Athens, 1900 Paris, 1904 St Louis, 1908 London 1920 Antwerp and 1932 Los Angeles since they managed to find footage for all the other games.

[Draginon]

The next couple Olympic films were short films so I’ve finished those.

First is The Olympic Games Held at Chamomix in 1924 which is more of a highlights reel of the events. It only covered a little of figure skating, hockey and ski jumping and very short bits of the ski marathon, military patrol and bobsleigh with nothing from curling, speed skating and Nordic combined. It was interesting to see how different the techniques were than they are now, especially on the ski jump where they stayed almost completely erect and swinging their arms wildly.

The other film was The Olympic Games as They Were Practiced in Ancient Greece which was only 8 minutes. It was an interesting vignette of 6 men in staggered motion and then showing the action in full motion. The wrestling almost looked like ballet the way it was performed. Oddly there’s a shot of a Greek woman randomly shown at one point.

The footage overall for these two is both good and bad. There’s obvious damage to them and the winter footage is sometimes blown out thanks to the sun reflecting off the snow. Inversely the footage is crisp with details, like seeing the snow spray during the bobsleigh and the lines in the ice during the skating event, and oddly is also blurry in parts of the picture. This probably has to do with the quality of the print and most likely can’t be fixed without damaging the picture itself.

Next film is the 1924 Paris one and its 3 hours.

[Draginon]

Next Olympics film was The Olympic Games in Paris 1924 and boy is the quality all over the place. For the most part the footage is excellent to the point where you can see individual blades of grass but there are some bits of footage where it must’ve been a copy since the details are excellent but the lighting is dark heavy to the point where some shots are completely dark in three corners. Then there’s some footage that is blurred and of lesser quality to the point that it was SD quality. Even then it’s still good quality since you can still tell what’s happening.

Now for the bad. There are tram lines visible throughout the film and the amount varies from barely visible to lines across the screen. The worst had to be during the polo match with some pretty heavy traming happening. Then there’s some damaged film during the rugby match that affects the black and white levels pretty bad. One review I had read thinks it was a mold stain. I’m not sure if they could clean it up any more than they did without finding a duplicate copy which might not happen since this was originally thought to be lost until they found the footage in England and France when doing the restoration project.

As for the games themselves they’re all covered I think, I wasn’t exactly keeping track of every single event, but it’s not exactly captivating the whole 3 hours since it was meant more as a theater newsreel format but there are moments that are good to watch like the high jump fails, the equestrian attempts and the gymnastics. The score fits the time period and gets pretty synchronized with the actions like the Danish gymnastic performance, false starts and the boxing match.

To be honest I’ll be kind of happy once it gets to the more cinematic films and aren’t so newsreely and that starts with the Berlin games which is 4 films away. It’ll also be nice to get to the sound pictures and actually hear the cheers since there’s something missing without that ambiance.

[Draginon]

Next film is The White Stadium/ Des Weiße Stadion. This film was thought lost until it was found in 2011 from elements coming from Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Russia. The first three make sense since the film is in German and French but it makes me wonder why they had footage in Russia.

The footage overall is so good for a film that was supposedly lost and you can tell when they used less than ideal footage by the B&W levels being off or heavy grain. Otherwise this looks a lot better than 1924 Paris!

Sound wise I love the music. The previous films were coordinated piano music that would be played in the theater and national anthems but this is a soundtrack. I’d listen to this film in the background just for the music. It reminds me so much of Ghibli, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy X & 7 with a dash of Danny Elfman thrown in along with some ‘wintery’ music. This music is so nice and relaxing to listen to.

As for the actual onscreen contents I think I enjoy the winter sports more than the summer sports. The summer games tend to get dull after a while for me but the winter stuff holds my attention much better. I think it has to do with the beauty and grace of the sports themselves which makes sense since the summer ones that I like are gymnastics and that’s about the beauty and grace of the athlete themselves. I did find it odd while keeping track of which sports remained that they showed curling but it apparently wasn’t played according to the IOC records. So was it just a random game played in between events? Also they didn’t film any of the 10,000 meter speed skating race that a Norwegian judge canceled while it was happening supposedly for melting ice but the description I read makes it seem like the judge was mad that Irving Jaffee, USA, was beating Bernt Evensen, Norway. The IOC tried to overrule the judge but the International Skating Union sided with him and thus overruling the IOC. Evensen for his part did advocate for Jaffee to get the gold medal but nothing ever happened.

The first half hour of the film felt like a nature/slice of life documentary and was so peaceful with beautiful shots of the St Moritz area. It almost felt like a different film once the Olympics start but you can tell it’s the same film from the cinematography direction. With how the film starts differently I could see that being the reason it was lost by having people not realize it was an Olympic film.

Speaking of the cinematography this film was directed by Arnold Fanck and his protege was Leni Riefenstahl, the director of Olympia which is considered the first great Olympic film so I’m wondering how much better that is since I find this to be the first great one in chronological order.

The next film sounds exhausting since it’s 251 minutes! That’s a 4 hour film! I might have to watch this in two parts.

[Eluvianii]

I just finished Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness. That was actually pretty dark as far as RE stories go. It even feels strange after they upped the campiness with Vendetta.

I enjoyed it a lot. It's nice to see one of those stories that are usually only background in the series take the spotlight. 

[Draginon]

Ugh...

The Olympic film The IX Olympiad in Amsterdam was so dull (insert Monty Python “it’s dull” skit here). Between the 4 hour time stamp and the boring music this film was a chore to watch. To show how bad it was I planned on watching it in 2 hour blocks on Wednesday and Thursday and I just couldn’t get past the first hour on Wednesday and the second hour on Thursday with no attempts on Friday and Saturday.

What also made it worse was the structure of events. Some events they showed the winning match or heat, some they showed. Every. Single. Match. And even at 4 hours they still didn’t show every single event. They didn’t even show the infamous women’s 800m race that made the IOC ban women from doing any race over 200m until 1960 because they decided the women were exhausted from being too frail and delicate to run that far. Barf!

Another really bad choice was the editing. They had intertitles to let you know what event was going on and who the winners were... when they bothered to let you know what event was on screen. I lost track of which boxing match was happening and during the swimming it announced it was one of the women’s swim matches but suddenly switch’s over to one of the men’s without telling you who won or that it was a different event altogether.

The music really brought this film down cause even the events I liked watching from the previous films, like the swimming, rowing and equestrian events, I kept nodding off and wanting to look at something else. I also kept checking the time code to see how much more there was and I tend to avoid doing that with any film so that’s a bad sign.

As for any positives I’ll say the footage is nice and clear with only a few minutes total of less than stellar footage. It’s worth noting because this wasn’t the official film, it was the rejected one and that only happened because the film studio was from fascist Italy and the Dutch board assumed it was going to be full of fascism propaganda so they took the footage and made their own film. If fascist propaganda is about making something extremely boring then they succeeded on that part.

The Dutch made one is next and I’m really hoping it’s better cause I don’t know if I could take another boring film so soon.

Edited July 11, 2021 by Draginon

[urrutiap]

watched Karate Kid II and III earlier today

 

now Im watching American Pie 2 with cast commentary on

[Spren of Kindness]

I learned of and watched the Winter's Dragon, a pilot for a Wheel of Time TV series that never happened.  By golly, but it was... bad.  Some of the acting was decent, but overall... yeesh.