28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[Ezee E]

Two week trial. I'll give that a shot for sure.

[Mysterious Dude]

No Roku app until 2017? Well, I guess that'll give me time to sift through the smoking wreckage of my Hulu watchlist.

[StanleyK]

Possibly relevant to your interests:

- Turner Reveals Pricing Levels for FilmStruck and The Criterion Channel

- Turner to Launch FilmStruck Classic Movie-Streaming Service Oct. 19

Top tier is $10.99 per month, which gets you access to the full Criterion streaming catalog.

U.S. only

[Irish]

Possibly relevant to your interests:

Brian DePalma interviews Francis Ford Coppola about The Conversation (Filmmakers Newsletter, 1974)

[Spinal]

Box Office Mojo has a genre page for Comedy - Fat Suit. All things considered, it seems to be a rather profitable genre.

[Gittes]

[StanleyK]

Nostalghia has possibly the best ending to a movie ever. Nevertheless, watching Tarkovsky's movies this time around I did find most of them to be a bit too drawn out at some points (the biggest culprits being the third hour of Solaris and all of Stalker, which consistently wavers between tedium and transcendence; both are still excellent), with the exceptions being Andrei Rublev and The Sacrifice which are just about perfect.

MASH loses a lot of steam towards the end thanks to the football match that takes over the last half hour, but it's a pretty great movie, unlike my previous, lukewarm assessment of it.

I loved Rushmore, but The Royal Tenenbaums felt almost aggressively whimsical to me. There's something about the narrator and the novel theme that turned me off. I do remember The Life Aquatic being my favorite of his so hopefully that'll hold up better.

The first half of Ikiru is a masterpiece. I wasn't feeling the second half at all, but since I didn't have any problems with its pacing I figured I was finally starting to see eye to eye with Kurosawa. But then The Seven Samurai had the same issues as his earlier films. Whether it's 88 or 208 minutes, the scenes are really good for a while, but then they refuse to end and keep dragging.

I hated Happy Feet and I hated Happy Feet Two even more. That's probably a minority opinion around here, but... I'm not the only one, right? Someone else around these parts must feel the same.

[StanleyK]

George Miller ratings:

Mad Max - 5
The Road Warrior - 7
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome - 4
The Witches of Eastwick - 7
Lorenzo's Oil - 8
Babe: Pig in the City - 2
Happy Feet - 4
Happy Feet Two - 2
Mad Max: Fury Road - 6

That's an average of 5/10, which sounds about right. I don't hate the guy, but the love some of these films get has me scratching my head.

[transmogrifier]

Babe: Pig in the City is his best film by far.

[Ivan Drago]

Carnival of Souls is an AWESOME movie. The imagery is genuinely frightening, the tone is nightmarish throughout, and its existentialist themes are as relevant today as they were at its release in 1962. A new favorite of mine for sure.

[transmogrifier]

Oh, I hated that movie. Found it unbearable.

[Irish]

Filmstruck is live (the Criterion streaming service thing).

Currently drooling over their basic catalog: https://watch.filmstruck.com/#!/themes/

Holy shi------ https://watch.filmstruck.com/#!/genre/crime

[Ivan Drago]

Oh, I hated that movie. Found it unbearable.

Eh, different strokes for different folks.

Can we at least agree that Misery is amazing?

[Mysterious Dude]

Filmstruck is live (the Criterion streaming service thing).

Currently drooling over their basic catalog: https://watch.filmstruck.com/#!/themes/

There are a few Criterion titles on Hulu that seem to be missing from Filmstruck (Ordet, My Home is Copacabana, Profound Desire of the Gods, Ucho, Jacquot de Nantes). I find that vexing.

[Ezee E]

Watched Carnival of Souls on Filmstruck as my first one.

Seamless transition to the movie. No glitches. Great quality.

The movie was alright. Almost seemed like David Lynch got to film an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode in a way.

[Irish]

I had a different experience. I put on Madonna's Truth or Dare and the service buffered 3 or 4 times in the first hour.

The website seems flimsy and rudimentary. They've got 3 different analytics trackers on the front page (why?!); the watchlist tops out at 100, but the site doesn't tell you that and clicking "add" on new items does nothing; there's a bunch of required 3rd party services that are blocked by common ad-blockers, etc; there isn't any way to downgrade the service, as far as I can tell; several categories have 0 films in them; some films are miscategorized or not categorized correctly (eg: obvious horror films that don't show up under "horror"); the search is quasi-broken and returns too many false positives.

All that, coupled with the on-boarding problems they had yesterday, makes me wonder (1) what their developers have been doing for the last 6 months and (2) how much real world testing they did.

This surprised me because they're charging a premium to access the catalogue and other, smaller services like Shudder and Mubi don't have any of these issues.

There are a few Criterion titles on Hulu that seem to be missing from Filmstruck (Ordet, My Home is Copacabana, Profound Desire of the Gods, Ucho, Jacquot de Nantes). I find that vexing.

Are you on twitter? @FilmStruck responds to questions. I'd be curious to hear their explanation for this.

[Irish]

Have we talked about how ugly the Producers Guild of America has made American movie credits in the last 3 years or so?

Saw this article today and thought of you -- apparently there's a big controversy in the PGA right now over these credits.

The PGA created the p.g.a. mark in 2012 to prevent film financiers from buying awards-season glory. A panel of three unnamed arbiters reviews all materials to determine who contributed work on set or in a "decision-making" capacity.

"The purpose of the Producers Mark is to protect the integrity of the 'Produced By' credit," says PGA president Gary Lucchesi. "Drawing distinctions among producers' contributions inevitably results in disappointment for some. We have an appeals procedure to address those cases, and we encourage all producers to take advantage of the entire process."

Bizarre infighting and a lot of politics but I found some of the background info interesting.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/new...-debate-943127

[Dead & Messed Up]

Watched Roman Holiday for the first time last night. Fun and charming, but goddamn it builds up steam as it goes, and that ending practically made me scream in fury, but in such a satisfying way, like the creative team knew exactly how the film should end, which is often so so different from what the audience thinks they want.

[Spinal]

I used to be a Pan's Labyrinth is good, but not THAT good kind of a person.

I watched it again for the first time in 10 years. It really is that good.

[Skitch]

I used to be a Pan's Labyrinth is good, but not THAT good kind of a person.

I watched it again for the first time in 10 years. It really is that good.

awesome

[Dukefrukem]

Props to MC for bouncing back from a down year when it came to movie viewings. The 2015 section still has under 200 movie threads and it looks like we come close to ending the year near 200 in the 2016 section.

Still have several big releases coming up in December.

[Pop Trash]

I'm making a list of Trumpian (yeah, I know) movies for these post-election daze. Really, just any movie that comes to mind when reading news articles lately. So far I have...

- A Face in the Crowd
- Idiocracy
- Network
- Dr. Strangelove
- Children of Men
- Citizen Kane
- McCabe & Mrs. Miller
- The Great Dictator (hopefully this will become *less* relevant, rather than more relevant in the coming years)

Any others ya'll would add?

[Watashi]

Throw in Mad Max: Fury Road, Back to the Future II, In the Loop, and The Candidate in there.

[Spinal]

Arrival
Bob Roberts
Hangmen Also Die (worst case scenario)

[Mr. McGibblets]

Punishment Park