The Lady Killers

I watched the Chen Brothers version of this story. While I was watching I realised I'd seen the original years and years ago back in the 90s… I really loved it.
This version isn't bad, it's very quirky and funny. The setting is shockingly different though- New Orleans modern America, rather than 1950s Britain. Interestingly though the characters seem to be mostly retro people out of time, Like Tom Hanks is a Southern Gentleman from the 1950s (or earlier), J.K. Simmons is a TV showman from the 1960s, Ryan Hurst's Lump is a grid iron player from the 1930s, Tzi Ma's General is a Vietnam War era boss… Marlon Wayans Gawain is the only one that fits in the time it's set.
Irma P. Hall, the “lady”, Marva Munson, is a queenly old black woman from the 1960s.
It's such a charming mix.

The violence is subdued and off screen too which I like.

Hanks is super special in this.

Ozoneocean wrote:
like dpat57 says, it's a vast cultural and political conspiracy and Paul finds himself to be the unwitting focus of that, rather than a person who just happens to be born “special”.

I feel like the Villeneuve movie dialed up the prominence of the “chosen one/prophecy” trope, while the basic rudimentary plot line seemed a lot less important in the book. Maybe that's what irritated me about the movie. When reading the book, I felt like the plot line was more like a clothes rack on which Frank Herbert could drape his musings on philosophy, religion, politics, and human nature. And those were the things he actually cared about. One thing I also liked about the book was how Herbert conceived of the future as a gothic and baroque. I like Lynch's movie because it really amplified that baroque aesthetic.

Still DUNE, I liked the quasi medieval aspect of still having to fight with swords and knives 10,000 years in a high-tech future. Fast-moving objects are stopped by the personal force shield but the slow-moving blade penetrates. A stroke of genius, that. Paul wasn't some magical being, he was trained by the Duke's warmasters Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halleck to a peak of fighting excellence few could match.

I re-read all the DUNE books last year, they were on special on Amazon, couldn't resist. The evolution of the Bene Gesserit and the Bene Tleilaxu was fascinating.

I babble a bit whenever DUNE comes up, sorry. :)

dpat57 wrote:
I babble a bit whenever DUNE comes up, sorry. :)

Babble away! lol I loved the book when I read it, way back when. Dune was a huge influence on both of my comics. That's probably why I get annoyed when somebody interprets the book in a way that I feel does a disservice to the source material. In my opinion, the Villeneuve movie dumbed it down and made it too mainstream. I felt that the books were almost psychedelic in mood, and the movie lost almost all of that. Some documentarians suspect that the book was significantly influenced by Frank Herbert's use of psychedelic mushrooms. That was pretty radical for 1963!

fallopiancrusader wrote:
Some documentarians suspect that the book was significantly influenced by Frank Herbert's use of psychedelic mushrooms. That was pretty radical for 1963!

I read that the biggest part of the Dune influence for him was that he was doing survey work in the desert for a few years and found all the scientific concepts and the realities of trying to survive there fascinating and he wondered why no one had really exploited that setting. So he decided to set up a whole vast mythology out there.

Farinelli (1994)

“Castrato! Castrato!

A tale about two brothers, one a composer the other a singer, who are famous musicians in the mid-1700s. Their popularity brings them notoriety, especially from noble women whom they share equally.

Bring in the main antagonist, Handel, who turns out to another musical genius of the time that learned that collaboration worked better than competition.

Of course I knew about Neon Genesis Evangelion, I'd seen memes, and cosplayers in tight red suits and red wigs, and wondered. So I watched the 26 episodes over several evenings and liked it lots, maybe aside from the last couple of episodes which were mind f*cks that veered heavily into the psychological torture of traumatized kids (and adults too), none of which was enjoyable. The kids pilot the giant EVA mechs with bio connections to their occupants, no wonder they were suffering. Anyways, favorite character – no surprise – was beer-for-breakfast Captain Misato, cool, fun, serious, dangerous.

kawaiidaigakusei wrote:
Farinelli (1994)

“Castrato! Castrato!

Their popularity brings them notoriety, especially from noble women whom they share equally

I don't get it, how could they share the women if one was a “castrato” (someone whose testicles were removed as a kid so that his voice would stay childish forever)?

marcorossi wrote:

I don't get it, how could they share the women if one was a “castrato” (someone whose testicles were removed as a kid so that his voice would stay childish forever)?

The film is worth a watch! The singer brother would lure the women, and the composer brother would finish them off, spreading genetics in the process. Half way through, I was wondering if the movie was a giant elaborate joke because of the pact the brothers formed.

The walten files.

marcorossi wrote:

kawaiidaigakusei wrote:
Farinelli (1994)

“Castrato! Castrato!

Their popularity brings them notoriety, especially from noble women whom they share equally

I don't get it, how could they share the women if one was a “castrato” (someone whose testicles were removed as a kid so that his voice would stay childish forever)?

A man who is castrated is often still capable of an erection. He just doesn't produce semen. It's suggested in the movie that he can't climax himself but loves to make others climax and that leaves a part of him empty which he tries to fill with opium.
Might want to look into the historical record of the love affairs of eunuchs and harems and dowager empresses. The record suggests they were not as asexual as their physical condition would indicate.

dpat57 wrote:
Anyways, favorite character – no surprise – was beer-for-breakfast Captain Misato, cool, fun, serious, dangerous.

She was my fave too <3

I saw that when it came out pretty much, initially I found it cool and interesting for its realistic take on Angels and the cool props that mecha used. Eventually though it wore on me because the themes are pretty dumb, the psych stuff at the end is shallow and basically an excuse for no budget left and the whole idea is that it comes down to a juvenile sort of Solipsistic philosophy that most people fall into when they try and come at philosophical ideas themselves in a basic way.

But the start of the anime was great!

I will one day get through the remakes haha!

Handyman saitou in another world

I've finally signed up to Crunch Roll and I'm binging all the isekai goodness I can find 😅

This one is cool. The guy is just a handyman.

The best moment came when the woman knight was professing her love to him in a heartfelt moment after lots of adventures, but just as she was about to say it BOOM! A monster flew Out of the air,landed on her head with its jaws, and blood started pouring down. Saitou was shocked and dumbfounded…

But, she just shrugged, heaved the monster onto her shoulders and continued saying she loved him and then tore the monster in half with her bare arms😁
That was awesome

Your kind of woman!

Someone said they were watching The Brothers Sun on Netflix and enjoying it, I started watching the pilot, looks pretty good, serious content but fun characters, will continue viewing… although I cancelled Netflix, I just wasn't watching enough to justify the cost, dunno when it runs out.

Yesterday I watched a lot of.episodes of Urusei yatsura on Netflix.
It's a remake of.the old.one, with Lum and Ataru in their full splendor, and I'm liking it a lot.

I have been watching different adaptations of “Turn of the Screw”. It is a story by Henry James that has been adapted several times. “The Haunting of Bly Manor” 2021, “The Turning” 2022, “The Turn of the Screw” 2009, “The Mystery of the Lake” 2009, “In a Dark Place” 2006, “Presence of Mind” 1999, “The Others” 2001 (Which is an inversion of the story).

I did not like “Haunting of Bly Manor” as it fell into the nothing-core genre, a whole lot of nothing happens for 6 hours, then it's damage control for the remaining episodes. I have seen “The Innocents” 1961 and remember it being quite good. There is a prequel called “The Nightcomers” with Marlon Brando. I may watch those again. “The Turning” features my favorite performance of Miles from Finn Wolfhard, but is not as clever as it wants to be.

“The Turn of the Screw” 2009 - is a BBC production starring Michell Dockery. It tells the same story in 90 minutes that Bly Manor takes 8 hours to tell. This is a worthwhile version with good performances and practical effects. I laughed out loud when the governess was fighting off a ghost, and the camera revealed that she was actually slapping the piss out of one of the kids she is trying to help.

“The Turn of the Screw” 2020 - This is almost word for word the same movie with the twist that it is a play within a movie. The main character is an actress filling in for the lead in the play and we are watching the performance. A viewer who is familiar with the material will notice that some things are off. It comes off as a Twilight Zone episode and is easily my favorite version of it.

That's an interesting survey of the Turn of the Screw! ^_^

————

I'm watching the second season of Goblin Slayer.

Couple of issues with it… the r*pe stuff still crops up. I thought that was just going to be a shocking intro in o the first season and then we'd distance ourselves from that but it's always a persistent danger. This makes all the extra light super friendly anime, sugary interactions the girls always have very creepy and sad.


The other thing is that the premise doesn't make sense anymore.
The idea was that it's a weird, super gritty D&D focused thing (rather than a computer game based fantasy world), where a high level guy just goes after a minor threat like goblins over a personal vendetta- the show shows you have dangerous and evil those things can be and other characters join him in his thing.

The trouble is that they're proven NEVER to be a minor threat. They're reasonably easy to kill but they can still slaughter YOU and your whole community just as easily… and yet adventures STILL treat the idea of going after goblins as beneath them and townsfolk still are not scared of these roving bands of savage, torturing, murdering gang-r*pists.
They don't even have defensive measures on their towns, homes or farms…

If the people treated them like the threat they were they'd all have walls and ditches around their places, armed patrols, guards, everyone would be trained to fight and they'd have organised days where they'd all do sweeps across the entire countryside to wipe them out. They'd never send lone groups of people after them either, the entire community would have a crusade XD

Have been watching Christina Ricci movies, she was in a bunch of Indy movies that I have never watched. She is the sort of actress who they bring in for star power when they want to do something creative.

Anything Else: A Woody Allen film where Ricci steals the show as the “Manic Pixie” girlfriend of the lead character. Everything thing he initially loves about her drives him crazy by the end of the relationship. I've been there. Great film.

Miranda: A weird British espionage film where Ricci plays a chameleon-like seductress. Unusual and worth a watch.

Monstrous: Set in the 1950's Ricci plays a mother who has just left her abusive husband and is hiding in a new town with her son. The son develops a relationship with a spirit in the lake that tries to draw him in. The plot takes some unexpected turns. As I said above, this is a movie that would not have been made without Ricci involved.

All is Faire In Love: An attempt to make a goofball comedy 20 years after Adam Sandler killed funny movies. Something I would expect from Matthew Lillard. Ricci had already done Monster, Anything Else, and Black Snake Moan, I'm not sure why she had to do this. Meryl Streep in a 5th-grade play.

After.Life: For instance, the same year she was in this very original horror movie with Liam Neeson. Neeson plays a mortician who speaks to the souls of the people on his slab before they move on. If you are like me and have had a lifetime crush on Christina Ricci, she looks more like Christina Ricci in this film than she has ever looked like Christina Ricci. The best movie on this list.

Faraway Eyes People are trapped in purgatory for a second chance to meet their soul mate. Oblivion seems more interesting to me. Another movie about the afterlife, and an arthouse film that only exists because Ricci is in it for about 10 minutes. It breaks the Hollywood format, which is a relief to see.

Escaping the Madhouse - The Nellie Bly Story: Nellie Bly was an amazing influential woman who deserves to have her story told. This is a goofy by-the-numbers Hollywood-style TV movie where everybody has a happy ending and the bad guys get their comeuppance. A complete waste of Ricci, but with a stand-out performance from Judith Light, she would be a great villain in a better movie. Shows like this are why I no longer watch new movies and TV.

10 Things to Do Before We Break Up - With Hamish Linklater, another actor I like. It suggests a cute premise, and then completely ignores it. Still a good movie worth a watch.

Distorted: With John Cusack in a minor role. An original techno-thriller filmed on a shoestring budget that manages to look good and not be completely silly. 100% believe Manchurian candidate experiments have been attempted.

Saw Dune Part Two on cinema with my brother and two friends. It was a very satisfying film. Like the first movie it's very loyal to the novels and kind of went out of its way to get across the message the novels had, which was very satisfying to see. It was cool as well as funny to see Christopher Walken as the Padisha Emperor. Also I feel like Dave Batista, playing Rabban, has really grown as an actor with the role he had here. Overall satisfied. I Recommend this movie along with part one.

We've been watching True Detective: Night Country (season 4) and gotta say, we're not much enjoying the spooky supernatural aspect that's been dumped into the mix this time around. It's not as if the previous 3 seasons set us up for this, it's weird and quite alien. I just wanted a detective story. But no. Also, bonus moan, while the British actors (there are several) perhaps don't stick out like sore thumbs to American audiences, they sure do to us.

Quickie edit to say we finished watching this season and the ending was confusing and unsatisfying, it didn't have to be that way, but the makers insisted on it. shakes head

I just finished binge watching Avatar, legend of Aang and Avatar, legend of Korra.

Aang is nice, but a bit more childish. It really becomes good from the second half of the second season IMHO.

Korra has better drawings, but it is very anime-like. The characters are much more well rounded but the plot is less incisive, also IMHO the bad guy of the second season was stupider than the others and this makes the plot of the second season suffer a bit.

All in all both series have all the positives of good shonen series without the drawbacks (like the fights that go on for 300 episodes).

I also totally have a crush on Lin Beifong.

Come to my arms, Lin! I know you just need some love! I'm gonna cuddle you!

I doubt that if I met a person like that in reality I would react the same way. Weird.

As of late I've been obsessed with Kamen Rider! even though it seems intimidating to get in to it's actually pretty easy to decide which one to start watching just pick one that looks cool! since most of the series are somewhat disconnected and each one is pretty unique with it's take on Kamen rider for example the first series is based off the manga with Kamen rider being an experimented on human turned in to a “cyborg” by bug alien people and Kamen rider OOO is a wondering man who get involved with a coin-based homunculi called Ankh and becomes Kamen rider with a belt given to him by Ankh to collect coins, and those are the ones I've watch recently there are way more series that I need to watch either way i'm enjoying the ride :o)

Some years ago I watched Kamen Rider Black (I found all the episodes subbed on youtube) and it wasn't bad.

Musgoku Tensi: Jobless Reincarnation
This is another Isekai anime except it's a really high quality one with excellent artwork!

It's an action drama with comedy about a 35 year old jobless loser recluse who's killed and gets reincarnated into a fantasy world.
So mostly the same old stuff, except he's not a teen when he dies… and he's literally reincarnated, so he starts life as a tiny baby.

This means we get to see him grow up from a crawling baby, into a toddler, into a child and so on. All the time he has the knowledge and awareness of a grown man but he's discovering the world for the first time, learning the language, the rules and laws of the world, how to use magic, how to read and write etc. so it's not just like the usual overpowered, over-aware crap. His grown man awareness is sort of just riding on the shoulder of this new persona he has and he's genuinely a new person.

The show is consistently good and very high quality all through. The only thing I don't like about it though is the sudden changes in tone, often MASSIVE! -from a light comedy about growing up and gaining knowledge to super drama about having to leave home, get a job and earn money… and the switches and changes get SOOOO much bigger than that.

That isn't a criticism of it as a whole, other people might have zero issue with that aspect at all, it's just something I personally have trouble with.
Overall I really like and respect it. I can't binge it because the tone changes make that too hard, but that's a good thing because it encourages you to enjoy episodes separately.
I recommend it.

Ozoneocean wrote:
Musgoku Tensi: Jobless Reincarnation

Yeah, it's a great show. It's actually isekai for a change (too many isekai authors seem to only write this genre / trope to explain how the protagonist uses phrases and references things from XXIst century Japan, when they're in a medieval fantasy setting and completely nullifies the past world struggles, traumas, personal experiences of their protagonist, so basically they could be any random person from the new world, they're just not). This one puts A LOT of emphasis in character development, in its protagonist overcoming his emotional baggage or falling back to his old mentality when stuff gets rough. It's a lot more relatable. People do often criticize it for its tendency to do creepy sexual harassy stuff involving minor characters for laughs and fan service, but I think it does have a function, it contrasts the actual meaningful, impactful moments of growth. But yeah, this is a series where the story grows out of the characters and it's much less predictable, because even the most ordinary things can have great significance to them.

sleeping_gorilla wrote:
Have been watching Christina Ricci movies, she was in a bunch of Indy movies that I have never watched.

All is Faire In Love:

After.Life:

Distorted:

So I saw this and figured why not? Love Christina Ricci.

Liam Neeson is super creepy without being absurd or an obvious nut. After.Life was really good even considering that the last movie I'd seen the other male lead in was the work comedy Waiting (a movie that tried so hard to be Clerks or even Clerks 2 and just failed miserably. Even the two rap wannabes stand-ins for Jay and Silent Bob were awful. Though the rap video over the credits was a lot of fun)

I've read that Christina Ricci likes doing indy movies because she isn't fond of typical Hollywood fare and likes the kind of subject matter you only do in indy produced movies. But she still shines in a big period piece like Bel Ami set in Third Republic France (that's the late 19th century after Napoleon III and before WW2)

And I really liked All is Faire in Love because it worked as a goofball comedy and you can tell the cast had a lot of fun. Seeing stuff on Amazon Prime you can look up the cast. Pretty sturdy bunch with lots of credits and the legendary Ann-Margret. Fortunately Adam Sandler didn't kill comedy for me. Heck, I still watch Bob Hope movies and count all the routines everyone has stolen from him over the years.

—
On another tack saw Stan and Ollieabout the last tour of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in the 1950s. Truly magnificent and believable portrayals of such well known performers without either actor falling into caricature. Amazing stuff but them it was a BBC movie.

This is indeed quite watchable!

Ozoneocean wrote:
Handyman saitou in another world

I've finally signed up to Crunch Roll and I'm binging all the isekai goodness I can find 😅

This one is cool. The guy is just a handyman.

I saw the entirety of the series The Mentalist. It was really good actually. It's another in the genre of the murder mystery show with an outsider genius detective helping the police (there are so many of these from Monk, to Bones, to Castle, to Psych etc…).
The series ending was good.

Throughout the run they had a silly overall arc about a genius serial killer call Red John/ Arcs are popular these days but such a stupid idea because it constantly leaves stupid cliffhangers that get really boring after a while and you build stuff up so much that it can only be disappointing when it gets resolved.

In this case they had to resolve it about halfway through season 6 (probably to avoid cancellation and retool to attract viewers), and then they rebooted the show and moved the setting from the CBI offices in Sacramento California to the FBI offices in Houston Texas. It just became so much better! The characters were good, their relationships were great, and I wish it had continued.

Plus I love the overall message that all psychics are fake ^_^

I watched that not long ago, I kept expecting it to veer more into psychics are real territory, luckily it didn't. I did feel the whole red john thing went on far too long, 4-5 seasons too long.