TODAY I WATCHED (Movies, TV series) 2014

tohostudios wrote:

tohostudios wrote:

But now Molina has left the game.  If there's one guy this team cannot afford to lose, it's Yadier Molina.

And now the worst has happened.  Molina is out 8-12 weeks after tearing a ligament in his thumb last night.  That essentially ends his season and probably also ends the Cardinals' season.

Man those types of injuries are killer. The Cards are a resilient team. I bet they persevere.

TNA Impact

Scared Straight
The First 48 Hours

Caught the last few innings of the Pirates-Cardinals game. At least the Bucs were able to salvage 1 game out of the series

Lockup
Law & Order SVU

Francis Ford Coppola's THE CONVERSATION - my God, what a great, great movie! I almost enjoyed this more than Godfather II! Nothing but total praise for this, a movie that is right up my alley, a complex character study and suspense thriller wrapped up in one tight package. Gene Hackman, who looks twice his age in 1974, plays a paranoid private eavesdropper who is riddled with guilt for a past job that had killed people. Now he's on the trail of a couple for the director of a corporation (bit part by Robert Duvall) and his henchman (Harrison Ford!). It turns into a series of twists and turns where you get wrapped up in Hackman's esoteric psyche and the puzzling plot itself. Very deliberate, with some BAD-ASS, and I mean BAD-ASS shot choices, with a fascinating piano-musique concrete score by the great David Shire. The fun here is trying to figure out the true meaning of the recorded conversation between the couple as Hackman enhances the audio (pre-NCIS style!) throughout the entire film. Highly recommended. One of my favorite sequences is Hackman's first personal confession to another woman; the camera follows the same tracking three times from her face to his, with each shot starting a different point in his story. I haven't seen a movie this good in a long-ass time.

WITNESS - Peter Weir has never let me down, and finally getting around to see this further solidifies that point (hell, I'm even a fan of his much-maligned THE MOSQUITO COAST). A near-great movie in which Harrison Ford actually gets to stretch his acting muscles by way of subtlety and nuance. Kelly Preston, however, is the true shine here. She is drop-dead gorgeous, even with minimal makeup and an Amish costume, and her acting truly moved me (did they really have to put her in Top Gun??). The photography here is sweeping, the score (Weir loves his synthesizers) is quaint but fitting, and the portrayal of Amish culture is the most fascinating aspect. My only complaint is Ford's character is pretty much a blank page, although the makes Ford's performance even more fascinating by the way he uses body language, tone, and facial gesturing to make the character his own. If you really think about it, the script is the weakest link here and could fit a Lifetime Network movie-of-the-week; it's truly Weir's soft and subtle direction and the poignant cast talents that make this so memorable. Still trying to figure out the last shot, though; I'm positive it means something. Look for an early stint by a young Viggo Mortenson.

Pawn Stars

Green Acres

First episode of The Leftovers

I think I'm going to like this show.

Cards vs Brewers

Pirates vs Reds

Smackdown
Law and Order:SVU

24
Newsradio

Defiance  

Heavily panned by critics and a commercial failure, but darn it, I like it.

One of my favorite B action movies and video store finds from way back.  Sometimes I miss Blair Video and their dollar Wednesdays.  

Baby, The Rain Must Fall

The Avengers
Under the Dome - Season 2

Last night I watched Whitney Cummings "I Love You" and Anthony Jeselnik "Caligula" stand up shows on Comedy Central.

Cardinals vs Brewers

8-0 Redbirds in the 5th with Wainwright on the mound for STL. If this score holds we'll be tied for first in the NL Central.

WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT - my oldest (5), who just had his tonsils out, wanted to watch this in his vicodin-induced stupor rather than submit to bedtime. He enjoyed it as much as I did when I was 8 in the theater. I still think it's rather dense for kids who don't really understand the Chinatown-influenced plot and gumshoe noir parody. But there's something still fun for them to enjoy with all the cartoons running around. Watching it for the twentieth or so time, I'm still amazed at how they pulled this off; it really does have some magic to it. I'll never forget skipping church with my family on Sunday morning to see this (a rare occurrence with my parents) in the theater and the stone sour look on my mom's face as we left and she said, "that was NOT appropriate for children." She was so mad she began a wild boycott with Disney--didn't last very long haha.

PRINCESS MONONOKE - holy shit. I've seen a handful of Miyazaki, and was NOT expecting this, the single most elaborate animated feature I've laid eyes on. I'm not a huge fan of anime but it never ceases to surprise me. I always go in with low expectations and the result is sheer shock at the pure intelligence and ideas put forth by the script, and then the quality of the animation (if you can get past the exaggerated facial histrionics). Here we have an epic fable, and I mean epic like Tolkien, that I couldn't quite follow due to its complexity and layers of eastern mythology. Nonetheless I registered easily thanks to the brilliance of the animation, the depth of the characters, the elegance of the animals, the central conflict, the deliberate direction (great uses of silence), and gorgeous score. F*ck Jackson's overrated LOTR. This is what fantasy is all about.

I've yet to see a Miyazaki flick I didn't like.... I prefer to watch the original soundtrack with subtitles. My personal favorite of his is Spirited Away.

thejokeriv wrote:

I've yet to see a Miyazaki flick I didn't like.... I prefer to watch the original soundtrack with subtitles. My personal favorite of his is Spirited Away.

Same here, and Spirited Away is my favorite as well (also my first). What a gorgeous movie.

The original soundtrack is my preference as well; I forgot to mention the biggest downside to the Americanized version of Mononoke is Billy Bob Thorton as a monk. Talk about distracting! And the voice didn't fit as well. The others did a good job but being that these are films steeped in Japanese culture it's much more fitting to hear the original language. I'm going to see Mononoke again soon in the original language for greater effect (and perhaps better comprehension of the complex story threads).

Pirates vs Reds. McCutchen pretty much wins the game himself with the tying solo shot in the top of the 9th and the go ahead solo shot in the top pf the 11th.

AM Raw