TODAY I WATCHED (Movies, TV series) 2015

Bubba Ho-Tep is a hoot, definitely worth watching once.

Criminal Minds

"House of Whipcord" (1974)



This British exploitation flick is a strange, ultra sleazy combo of the Gothic horror and women-in-prison genres. A free spirited French gal living in swingin' London is kidnapped and deposited in a remote, privately owned women's prison run by an insane fundamentalist female warden (who is quite obviously inspired by Mary Whitehouse, the UK's infamous moral crusader and censor of the era). Features lotsa whippings, torture, a couple of murders, hints of incest (!) and a fair share of T&A, which kept me interested for a while, but eventually things got dragged out just a bit too long. Fans of vintage trash will probably get a kick out of it anyway.

S.D. wrote:

Bubba Ho-Tep is a hoot, definitely worth watching once.  

Agree - pretty funny stuff

"K-9" (1989)

Enjoyable - if a bit generic - action comedy with Jim Belushi as a lone-wolf narcotics cop (is there ever any other kind in movies?) who gets saddled with a new partner - a stubborn German shepherd police dog named "Jerry Lee" - in order to bring down a drug cartel. The dog is the best actor in the whole movie.

"Savage Island" (1985)

Tedious chicks-in-chains flick about a gang infiltrating your typical hellish third-world women's prison camp to steal a fortune in diamonds... or emeralds... or something. Rumor has it that this movie was actually stitched together out of leftover footage from two other prison-girl flicks, which might explain why Savage Island is seemingly plotless and simply stumbles from one poorly-shot action scene to the next. The prison girls aren't even much to look at. The best of the lot is Linda "The Exorcist" Blair, who gets top billing but she's only in it for about two minutes, tops. Ignore, delete, destroy.

Mad Max Fury Road definitely gets an A but tbh it's not something I would ever return to. Highly impressive with eye popping color (loved the old fashioned technique of overexposing day shots for night scenes) and practical stunts trumping cgi--I mean, this really is the best 'F*ck you' to Michael Bay--but frentic action movies have never been my cup of tea. Still, being that Miller is 70, he deserves all the accolades being thrown his direction.

"Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade" (2007)


This documentary looks back on the glory days of video game arcades and catches up with a select group of high scoring kids who dreamed of becoming "professional" gamers - before the Great Video Game Crash of '83 wiped everything out and they had to face the "real" world.  Some have faced it better than others.
This flick works as a companion piece to The King of Kong, since it features a lot of the same people: kids who were famous for fifteen minutes in the '80s but have grown up into some seriously sad-sack mofo's who have obviously never kissed a woman.
You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be thankful that none of these guys live next door to you.

Ever see Game Over? It also details the fall of the Atari. Pretty interesting stuff.

Required Fields wrote:

Ever see Game Over? It also details the fall of the Atari. Pretty interesting stuff.

Yup, that was a fun watch as well.

There was a story in the news about the infamous Atari E.T. Cartridge Dump just a few weeks ago. The city of Alamagordo, N. Mexico (where the Atari dumping and subsequent excavation occurred) recently auctioned off the bulk of the material that was recovered from the dig, to the tune of $107,000:

http://www.engadget.com/2015/08/31/buried-atari-cartridges-ET-ebay-sale/

There is a lot more CG in Fury Road that most people realize.  Almost all the backgrounds were created digitally (mountains, everything, they basically just filmed out in the middle of a desert with nothing around, so any cliffs, rocks, trees, whatever was added after the fact).  

The stunts too, because there are LOTS of composites being used...yes, a sequence is full of real stunts, but it's often 7 or 8 different stunts layered together in post production to make it appear like it's all happening at the same time.

I would be willing to bet the CG shot-count for Fury Road isn't that far removed from any other blockbuster in the multiplex right now.

Today I watched a bunch of Adventure Time (man this show is intensely thought-provoking for being targeted at children, it's very psychedelic believe it or not). Also watched some Comedy Bang! Bang!, Maron, and the other day I watched Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom, both of which were immensely entertaining. Very quirky stuff.

Fat Freddy wrote:

"Savage Island" (1985)

Tedious chicks-in-chains flick about a gang infiltrating your typical hellish third-world women's prison camp to steal a fortune in diamonds... or emeralds... or something. Rumor has it that this movie was actually stitched together out of leftover footage from two other prison-girl flicks, which might explain why Savage Island is seemingly plotless and simply stumbles from one poorly-shot action scene to the next. The prison girls aren't even much to look at. The best of the lot is Linda "The Exorcist" Blair, who gets top billing but she's only in it for about two minutes, tops. Ignore, delete, destroy.

It was indeed stitched from leftover footage from two other movies.

Some versions gave secondary billing to Penn & Teller, even though only one of them (Teller, if I recall correctly) appeared in it.

Wurthless wrote:

Today I watched a bunch of Adventure Time (man this show is intensely thought-provoking for being targeted at children, it's very psychedelic believe it or not). Also watched some Comedy Bang! Bang!, Maron, and the other day I watched Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom, both of which were immensely entertaining. Very quirky stuff.

You should have been a kid in the '70's, most of the kids shows were very psychedelic due to everyone involved being off their tits all the time! 

Magic Roundabout was insane!

Required Fields wrote:

Some versions gave secondary billing to Penn & Teller, even though only one of them (Teller, if I recall correctly) appeared in it.

It's Penn actually (when his name showed up in the opening credits, I sez "what the hell is he doing in this?" Haha)... he plays a building security guard who gets shot & killed by Linda Blair about two minutes into the movie. Haha!

The Worriker Trilogy (BBC) - Episode 2: Turks & Caicos



I loved the first episode of this spy series (Page Eight also starring Bill Nighy, with Rachel Weisz) but didn't know it was part of a series because in the US it was released as "Page Eight" and I thought it was a standalone film. Amazon Prime has the entire series for streaming so I'm a happy camper.

Hell of a cast too...Bill Nighy, Christopher Walken, Winona Ryder and Helena Bonham Carter plus a fine cast of character actors including James Naughton, Dylan Baker, Rupert Graves, Zack Grenier and Malik Yoba. Typically excellent BBC production.

Boris2008 wrote:

Wurthless wrote:

Today I watched a bunch of Adventure Time (man this show is intensely thought-provoking for being targeted at children, it's very psychedelic believe it or not). Also watched some Comedy Bang! Bang!, Maron, and the other day I watched Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom, both of which were immensely entertaining. Very quirky stuff.

You should have been a kid in the '70's, most of the kids shows were very psychedelic due to everyone involved being off their tits all the time! 

Magic Roundabout was insane!

Oh for sure, I'd loved to have been a kid back then. You can totally tell the creators of Adventure Time enjoy being "off their tits" a whole hell of lot too. Consciousness-expanding drugs are fairly obviously a huge influence on the show's style and themes.

Fear The Walking Dead

Fear The Walking Dead Episode 3

Johnny Cash : American Rebel documentary.

S.D. wrote:

There is a lot more CG in Fury Road that most people realize.  Almost all the backgrounds were created digitally (mountains, everything, they basically just filmed out in the middle of a desert with nothing around, so any cliffs, rocks, trees, whatever was added after the fact).  

The stunts too, because there are LOTS of composites being used...yes, a sequence is full of real stunts, but it's often 7 or 8 different stunts layered together in post production to make it appear like it's all happening at the same time.

I would be willing to bet the CG shot-count for Fury Road isn't that far removed from any other blockbuster in the multiplex right now.  

I had a feeling. George Miller was quoted as saying the movie is 90% practical effects and 10% CG and the first thing that came to my mind after seeing the movie was "clever marketing."

Worricker:  Salting The Battlefield (Masterpiece Theater)



An excellent conclusion to this series of television films.

I finally got around to watching Valkyrie the other night.

It's pretty decent, considering I know how things played out in the end (SPOILER: Hitler survived, but we still won!! USA! USA!!). The only thing that bothered me was the casting of Tom Cruise and other British actors to portray high-ranking Nazis. They didn't even try German accents. Granted, that could've been way worse, but it still kinda takes you out of the movie when Tom Cruise is being, well, Tom Cruise.

The only way to make a film like that authentic is to cast actual Germans speaking German and then use subtitles. But 'Muricans are generally too lazy to read subtitles and get confused by accents...so instead you get...Tom Cruise.

S.D. wrote:

The only way to make a film like that authentic is to cast actual Germans speaking German and then use subtitles.  But 'Muricans are generally too lazy to read subtitles and get confused by accents...so instead you get...Tom Cruise.  

Yea, I get that noone would watch it sub-titled and all. But it was weird to see all text in the movie written and typed in German when everyone spoke perfect English. You're telling me Kenneth Branagh couldn't have put on a little accent? Even Hitler spoke the Queen's English.

I think a fake German accent makes it even more laughable than just having the actors speak in their normal deliveries. Having them speak normally is a simple suspension of disbelief...but if they botch the accent? Then it's a comedic footnote in film history.