Films and TV - What are you watching?

PureElegance

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Double posting, but I can't believe The Brave Little Toaster is going to be 30 years old this year. Wow. I've been listening to some of its songs today and I thought, "It came out in 1987... Thirty years ago! WHAT." I really enjoyed that movie, it was one of the first ones I had ever seen, but it was always a dark movie for me. Especially that scene with the flower that thinks it finally found a friend in the Toaster's reflection, but the Toaster leaves and the flower wilts and dies.


That was always ingrained in my memory. And the song, "Worthless" is still... something that cuts deep for me XD I find the whole movie a bit grim. I'm glad it got made because I doubt it would have been made nowadays. Disney didn't want to work on the movie so it gave it to a subsidiary with a tiny budget, but they made it work anyway. Many of the animators and story people went to Pixar afterwards too and helped create Toy Story. The Brave Little Toaster was actually the one John Lasseter pitched to Disney to make into a CG film, but they fired him literally minutes later for that and so The Brave Little Toaster was a traditionally animated film.

Richard hasn't seen Toy Story and I'm shocked. I'm going the Social Justice Warrior route and he'll need to go to Classic Animated Films Education Class and watch them repeatedly and learn all the popular quotes such as, "There's a snake in my boot!" XD

I saw Don Bluth's Anastasia (1997) a few weeks ago and loved it all over again. The art was amazing, I loved the real-world setting, the animation was extremely fluid, and I really, really liked Dimitri as a male character. He had so many emotions throughout the movie and I loved that.
I know Don Bluth had his mix of successes and failures, but I really wonder why he wasn't able to keep his successes up. Anastasia IMO was great, but Titan AE (which I haven't seen) flopped and the studio closed down.
Even before that though he had An American Tail, The Land Before Time, etc. ... I enjoyed all his films though even though I guess the consensus is that they all weren't amazing, haha.

back to writing about the death penalty, woohoo. XD
 
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PureElegance

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OMG so mad right now ::batsu:: No one ever watch the show "Reasonable Doubt" on Investigation Discovery. My mom and I are sucked into real crime shows again because my dad loves them and now he's home, and we were testing out this one show. Unlike the rest of ID's shows, it's new.
It's about a retired police officer and an attorney (who graduated from Touro Law even though she hides this fact on her website/LinkedIn) who try to "help" people who were possibly wrongfully convicted by gathering clues. I'm interested in the topic area and was a fan of "Cold Case" that had two women who did a huge amount of work, gathered new evidence, and even got some exonerations. So I thought this show would be like that. BOY WAS I WRONG.

OMG every case so far has been "sorry, your son/father/husband is totally a murderer, there is no hope" but tonight's was the worst. This was the case with the most WTF moments. Basically, this guy was convicted of killing his former affair partner and his wife and son have been trying to get him out for 23 years. Things that stuck out to me were:

1. The only eyewitness changed their initial story from seeing a black guy and a white guy in a red truck with a body slumped over in the back seat to (a week later) seeing Our Guy with a body in a black truck, to even waving at him and saying hi.
2. Tire tracks by the body didn't match up to Our Guy's tire tracks. Nothing was done about this.
3. The blood found under the seat of Our Guy's car couldn't be identified to the victim's. So no one knows whose blood this is and somehow this is OK because there is blood in the car. SO THAT MEANS HE KILLED HER.
4. Bone fragments found were never matched to the victim so again, no idea whose bones these were.
5. Police handed the medical examiner 3 vials of blood from the victim/found at the scene, but one vial goes missing, isn't entered into evidence afterwards, and no one knows where. Police said there were never 3 vials of blood, the medical examiner made a mistake when writing there were 2 blue vials and 1 purple.
6. Police didn't consider any other possible suspects, just focused on Our Guy.

(Maybe the show leaves out stuff, but I'm just basing my opinion on it.)

They get experts to say that the witness is totally unreliable, there should've been a lot of blood spatter on the car, the blood wasn't matched to anyone (for some reason, in 2017), etc. By far this is the most "promising" case they had and I was believing Our Guy was innocent. Or at least I want to know whose blood was in his car. I want follow ups! But they never do anything thoroughly.

Again though, they're WEIRD and seem to want to get this case "closed." They're strange towards Our Guy. But what was worse was that they were so rude to the wife.

The Touro attorney throughout the show would say things like, "Woman to woman, you knew about the affair?" She already said she did, even others said she did. (WTF is up with this 'woman to woman' thing??) More: Can you look me in the eyes and say you knew about the affair?/Why are you helping him? x 100

I felt like they were trying to paint the wife as some poor lady who needed saving. She knew about the affair, they talked about it and it ended, he regrets it for the rest of his life, but I guess it means he's a murderer? Or that because of the affair it's time to BELIEVE HE'S A MURDERER TOO? They already had a long marriage (12+ years) before the affair so this wasn't some guy she happened to be with either. She and their son believe in his innocence and are looking for help... I just thought, "Leave her alone!"

I won't go into the rest, but again they say that THERE IS NO HOPE HERE YOUR HUSBAND/FATHER IS A MURDERER and give them the reasons why, which were really general and they don't bring up things we saw in the episode for some reason. When the son objects to some of their conclusions the police guy goes, "Let's move on." WTF?

The final whammy was when the attorney went to the wife and said, "You've sacrificed for this man who cheated on you, you and your son have done all this work, but would he have done the same for you?"

The wife said, "We're done here." OMG I WOULD HAVE SLAPPED THE ATTORNEY. I can't believe she was so disrespectful. I would've told her to get out of my house. The episode ended right there and then. I hope the Touro attorney was proud of herself. WHAT WAS THAT?

worst show ever ::batsu::

Anyway, the more I see these crime shows in general the more I want to proclaim, if the police arrest you, ASK FOR AN ATTORNEY IMMEDIATELY, DON'T TALK TO THEM. There are so many false confessions and long interrogations and police lying about what evidence they have against you, it's ridiculous. Then when they make a mistake it takes forever for them to admit it. Ugh. ::hora::
 
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flowersofnight

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Just watched last night for movie night:
RIGHTING WRONGS

Question for anyone who knows about Chinese movies - what's the deal with "bad endings"? WIthout spoiling it too much, this movie was about a prosecutor who turns vigilante to take out the corrupt police department, and pretty much everyone ends up dying in the end. Someone once told me that in Chinese movies they're not allowed to show "vice getting rewarded" or something, so anyone who did things wrong has to get their comeuppance - you can't commit crimes and live happily ever after. Anyone heard of this, or know if that's the real truth?
 

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I watched Police Story 4: First Strike last night, a large part of it was shot in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast which are pretty close to areas where I grew up (at around the same time too!). At the same time, I am amazed at how much Chinatown has changed as well, I remember going there a few years ago and it seemed like there was a lot of development underway, but when I went there a few months ago it was a total ghost town.
 

sanctum

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Last night I watched Sadako vs. Kayako and it was a total snoozefest, the first chunk of the film was a fairly uninteresting rehash of the Grudge and Ring curses (which for some reason kills in 2 days rather than 7 now), the actual versus-ing doesn't happen until the very end of the film and is extremely lacklustre.

I'm really wondering if Koji Shiraishi is ever going to make something as good as Noroi again...


You'll be pleased to know I finally did! I did a marathon viewing over a couple of days off work last month while I was deathly ill (then took some more while after I was hospitalised).
 
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sanctum

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Oh man, I just watched "The Warriors" here, and it was fantastic - true art ::squee:: Plus it's clearly the direct inspiration for things like "Final Fight" and a thousand others XD

220px-TheWarriors_1979_Movie_Poster.jpg


This one? I've always meant to watch that, seems to be one of those classics that inspired a lot of things, but doesn't have the mainstream following that its legacy suggests.
 

etherealspirits

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Oh man, I just watched "The Warriors" here, and it was fantastic - true art ::squee:: Plus it's clearly the direct inspiration for things like "Final Fight" and a thousand others XD
Going old school there. I saw that many moons ago. It definitely was controversial in it's time.

I'll add a few to this thread. Just binged watched Mr Robot and I have to say, it's definitely binge watchable. Really looking forward to season 4 and more of Elliot's inner dialogue. They say they try not to let current events affect their writing for the show but damn, it's very relate-able to current times. Plus the choice of songs, it works.

Also just saw Crooked House. A little cheesy in the acting at times but otherwise good fun and what a location. The house is amazing, it's Tyntesfield House, an estate in England that is open to tourists if ever in the area. Ending is a tear jerker and explains why it was never made into a movie before. Also some fun music in this one.
 

flowersofnight

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This one?
Yes indeed!
If you do track it down, be aware that a lot of the re-releases are "director's editions" that have been added to, edited, and so on. I ended up getting an older DVD copy because it was the only one that matched what was originally shown in theaters.
At least it's not as hard as finding the original "Star Wars" ::meev::
 

sanctum

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Recently watched Hellraiser: Judgement, it was as average as I expected it to be, the police elements played out like a lousy Se7en clone and the Stygian Inquisition went a little too hard on the gross-out approach, the gratuitous nudity just feel cheesy too.

But, I was actually really impressed by Paul T. Taylor as the new Pinhead, granted he was only briefly in the film but I think he did a fairly good job as the character. Also the Auditor character was pretty cool too.

I'm still disappointed that the series went in the literal heaven/hell direction, for me, the Cenobites are far more interesting when they're ambiguous inter-dimensional sadomasochists.

Hopefully next time they have a better budget and free reign to make a real Hellraiser film, rather than bolting on the franchise to an existing script.
 

flowersofnight

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Tonight's filmic: "Serse", by G. F. Handel: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0009PS68E
Originally written for male sopranos in the lead roles, but since those are unavailable in the modern day, they used cross-dressing women instead XD The staging is kinda-sorta modern (a sort of abstract Art Deco look) but this isn't some Eurotrash thing, it's played seriously. The acting is great too, so it's definitely worth checking out.
 

flowersofnight

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Just finished with the famous English dub of Ghost Stories which was great :lol:
For those who haven't heard of it, they took a completely paint-by-numbers anime about ghosts haunting an elementary school, and made the most ridiculous and offensive dub imaginable over it ::meev:: Absolutely worth checking out if you're not offended by much XD

Next: trawling Ebay's VHS section for something to top this XD
 

ghostpepper

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Just finished with the famous English dub of Ghost Stories which was great :lol:
For those who haven't heard of it, they took a completely paint-by-numbers anime about ghosts haunting an elementary school, and made the most ridiculous and offensive dub imaginable over it ::meev:: Absolutely worth checking out if you're not offended by much XD

Next: trawling Ebay's VHS section for something to top this XD

oh man. . . just watched a compilation clip thing. the jesus crazy girl is amazing haha! Have to watch this now xD thank you for this.

The Sabrina remake on netflix was the last thing I watched.
have been meaning to watch the Tales from the Crypt series again now as an adult/man-child.
 

etherealspirits

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Just finished with the famous English dub of Ghost Stories which was great :lol:
For those who haven't heard of it, they took a completely paint-by-numbers anime about ghosts haunting an elementary school, and made the most ridiculous and offensive dub imaginable over it ::meev:: Absolutely worth checking out if you're not offended by much XD

Next: trawling Ebay's VHS section for something to top this XD

I remember seeing a few episodes of this, in the original Japanese. I try to avoid English dubs if possible. You are a brave soul for going there. Your description reminds me of when subgroups would go rogue and write totally fake subs with really offensive stuff.

Currently watching the first season of Val Helsing. It's interesting even with some flaws. I also saw Hereditary last night. It's actually a pretty good movie. After watching it I was glad I don't have an attic.
 

flowersofnight

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I try to avoid English dubs if possible.
Well, this one was a special case because the dub was intentionally... "unique" XD
In general I'll default to watching the Japanese with subtitles, unless there's someone really annoying in the cast like Megumi Hayashibara (yeah I said it XD) And if the dub is in French I'll watch it in French ::mana::
 

Hampo

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So you think you have the worst dub in this town, eh?
Take a look at this!
 

flowersofnight

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Recent arrival: in my unceasing campaign to get a little culture and stop being such an ignorant boor, I finally got my hands on:
FIST OF THE NORTH STAR

I'm about 10 episodes in (of 152!!) and this really has a surprising amount of charm - which is not exactly what you'd expect to say about an anime where the guy spends half his time exploding people's heads. But charm is the right word nevertheless, if you ask me.
 
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