TV and ill advised in flight movies
Apr. 5th, 2019 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silversandbeaI spent last weekend in Western Mass, visiting old college friends and folks I technically didn’t know from college but have met since on trips back to the area. This is not the most scenic time of the year for Western Mass, but it’s notably warmer and not flooding or prepping for flooding, so it’s doing a lot better than most of the Midwest right now. Even having to walk through the rain without an umbrella (I sort of forgot about the concept of umbrellas) seemed nice. I took a late night flight back on Sunday - which was then delayed to the point where we landed on Monday. And got up at my usual time to get to work. Work on Monday was rough.
I chose to watch Cabaret on the flight back, which. I mean, it's not like it's super explicit, but if you don't have any sound or context to go along with it, you just have visuals of Nazi violence interspersed with burlesque. I hope that the people sitting around me were either not paying attention or knew what I was watching - the college aged woman who was mostly watching 13 going on 30 was definitely sneaking peeks.
Meanwhile, on the flight to Boston I happily watched Babylon Berlin on my ipad, with full frontal nudity, sex scenes, and a good amount of violence while being sat next to an eighteen month old and her father. Look, that kid was out, the father was mostly asleep and not paying attention, and I just angled the ipad away from their faces. It all worked out.
Other stuff I've been watching besides Cabaret:
Derry Girls (season 1): I watched all of this in a weekend - though there are only six half hour episodes, so not too hard to do. I have a low tolerance for cringe comedy which keeps me from watching a lot of things that have teen protagonists, but for whatever reason, this didn’t set it off. Maybe because it was too broad? There was still plenty of amazing facial expressions and dumb teenager stuff in it, and I love Sister Michael.
Babylon Berlin: And then I switched over to watching this. You know, for maximum whiplash. Apparently this is the most expensive non-English language show that’s ever been produced? And I mean, it looks it - there’s a lot of great period detail in there, from the fabrics to the locations, to the way that the characters interact with their surroundings - it's all fantastic and seems very meticulous.
The plot ended up getting a little too ridiculous at the end (there’s this one drowning scene that takes, like, five minutes and has characters hanging out with no issue with their mouth open), and I had some issues trying to remember who some of the side characters were, but otherwise it was pretty enjoyable.
Despite the fact that I'm usually watching TV while spinning and therefore have to look away from the screen from time to time, I switched over to the subtitles – not only did I recognize the dub voices from other foreign language Netflix shows (apparently Netflix doesn’t just recycle their on screen actors), but it was just not a great dub performance from anyone.
This is also the least queer thing I've seen that was set in the Weimar Republic, by far. It's funny, because this weekend someone was claiming that the setting was the reason why Dumbledore/Grindenwald wasn’t shown on screen – you can’t have anything queer happening in 1920’s Paris or Germany! Meanwhile I'm just primed now to believe that if something uses either one of those settings, it's because the authors want to add some gay and trans folks to a period story and only have them die horribly offscreen a decade later instead of getting sentenced to labor or killing themselves onscreen. (she's young, I was gentle in my response)
Snow White and The Huntsman: Once a quarter, my husband and I get together with our first couple friends and watch a . . . horrible? campy? movie. Usually it's not completely irredeemable, most of the time it's camp, but it has to have a special something that makes it fun to watch and talk about but not exactly 'good'. Also, these days we try to avoid anything that would scar the five year-old in the room. For the record, my last three picks have been: Bring it On, Guardians (the Russian superhero team up film where the love interest is a werebear with a machine gun and there's a woman whose role seems to be to sympathetically listen to men's tragic backstories), and Jupiter Ascending. Other people have chosen Beach Party Bingo, The Last Dragon (which has the best 'based on a true story' backstory), Superman 4 and - before the kid got old enough that he'd want to pay attention from time to time - Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
Anyway, said friend is teaching Fairy Tales this semester, so she chose this - it was between Snow White and the Jeremy Renner Hansel and Gretel movie. What I mostly knew about the movie was that it was what turned Kristen Stewart off men and blockbuster films, and she seems to be better for leaving those two things behind.
Another friend (not watching with us) described it as good except for K. Stew, and while she's not great in this, she's also not notably worse than most anyone else. The friend responsible for showing it to us described it as each actor was in a different movie, with little in common except for a) amazing costumes and b) a lot of beautiful establishing shots. What else it had going for it is more of a mystery. There were also a lot of references to much better fantasy films - there was one shot that was directly lifted from Lord of the Rings, and the Deer Spirit was very Princess Mononoke. It was kind of fun to watch because you could sense where there could be a better film (Dan was stating that he would watch a version that was just about the magpies trying to free Snow White, and I would have watched a lot more of that sequence).
It’s also just very much a Strong Female Character and Mainstream Grimdark film – and honestly, a lot of it seemed to be a marketer’s idea of stuff that audiences go for – or went for in 2012 – and put them all together without worrying about coherence. But, you know, fun costume design and pretty scenery will take me pretty far.
Abby’s (Pilot): I was so excited when this was first announced - because Michael Schur and a Natalie Morales vehicile, and sure, bars, whatever! I really want Natalie Morales to have a TV series that lasts more than a season, because she is the best. But, like, they need a joke writer. I'm not sure if they have one. It was just so awkward and the cast is so great! They are definitely trying their best to make these random sentences without any sort of jokes in them funny. I’m going to continue watching, but I really hope it gets better.
I chose to watch Cabaret on the flight back, which. I mean, it's not like it's super explicit, but if you don't have any sound or context to go along with it, you just have visuals of Nazi violence interspersed with burlesque. I hope that the people sitting around me were either not paying attention or knew what I was watching - the college aged woman who was mostly watching 13 going on 30 was definitely sneaking peeks.
Meanwhile, on the flight to Boston I happily watched Babylon Berlin on my ipad, with full frontal nudity, sex scenes, and a good amount of violence while being sat next to an eighteen month old and her father. Look, that kid was out, the father was mostly asleep and not paying attention, and I just angled the ipad away from their faces. It all worked out.
Other stuff I've been watching besides Cabaret:
Derry Girls (season 1): I watched all of this in a weekend - though there are only six half hour episodes, so not too hard to do. I have a low tolerance for cringe comedy which keeps me from watching a lot of things that have teen protagonists, but for whatever reason, this didn’t set it off. Maybe because it was too broad? There was still plenty of amazing facial expressions and dumb teenager stuff in it, and I love Sister Michael.
Babylon Berlin: And then I switched over to watching this. You know, for maximum whiplash. Apparently this is the most expensive non-English language show that’s ever been produced? And I mean, it looks it - there’s a lot of great period detail in there, from the fabrics to the locations, to the way that the characters interact with their surroundings - it's all fantastic and seems very meticulous.
The plot ended up getting a little too ridiculous at the end (there’s this one drowning scene that takes, like, five minutes and has characters hanging out with no issue with their mouth open), and I had some issues trying to remember who some of the side characters were, but otherwise it was pretty enjoyable.
Despite the fact that I'm usually watching TV while spinning and therefore have to look away from the screen from time to time, I switched over to the subtitles – not only did I recognize the dub voices from other foreign language Netflix shows (apparently Netflix doesn’t just recycle their on screen actors), but it was just not a great dub performance from anyone.
This is also the least queer thing I've seen that was set in the Weimar Republic, by far. It's funny, because this weekend someone was claiming that the setting was the reason why Dumbledore/Grindenwald wasn’t shown on screen – you can’t have anything queer happening in 1920’s Paris or Germany! Meanwhile I'm just primed now to believe that if something uses either one of those settings, it's because the authors want to add some gay and trans folks to a period story and only have them die horribly offscreen a decade later instead of getting sentenced to labor or killing themselves onscreen. (she's young, I was gentle in my response)
Snow White and The Huntsman: Once a quarter, my husband and I get together with our first couple friends and watch a . . . horrible? campy? movie. Usually it's not completely irredeemable, most of the time it's camp, but it has to have a special something that makes it fun to watch and talk about but not exactly 'good'. Also, these days we try to avoid anything that would scar the five year-old in the room. For the record, my last three picks have been: Bring it On, Guardians (the Russian superhero team up film where the love interest is a werebear with a machine gun and there's a woman whose role seems to be to sympathetically listen to men's tragic backstories), and Jupiter Ascending. Other people have chosen Beach Party Bingo, The Last Dragon (which has the best 'based on a true story' backstory), Superman 4 and - before the kid got old enough that he'd want to pay attention from time to time - Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
Anyway, said friend is teaching Fairy Tales this semester, so she chose this - it was between Snow White and the Jeremy Renner Hansel and Gretel movie. What I mostly knew about the movie was that it was what turned Kristen Stewart off men and blockbuster films, and she seems to be better for leaving those two things behind.
Another friend (not watching with us) described it as good except for K. Stew, and while she's not great in this, she's also not notably worse than most anyone else. The friend responsible for showing it to us described it as each actor was in a different movie, with little in common except for a) amazing costumes and b) a lot of beautiful establishing shots. What else it had going for it is more of a mystery. There were also a lot of references to much better fantasy films - there was one shot that was directly lifted from Lord of the Rings, and the Deer Spirit was very Princess Mononoke. It was kind of fun to watch because you could sense where there could be a better film (Dan was stating that he would watch a version that was just about the magpies trying to free Snow White, and I would have watched a lot more of that sequence).
It’s also just very much a Strong Female Character and Mainstream Grimdark film – and honestly, a lot of it seemed to be a marketer’s idea of stuff that audiences go for – or went for in 2012 – and put them all together without worrying about coherence. But, you know, fun costume design and pretty scenery will take me pretty far.
Abby’s (Pilot): I was so excited when this was first announced - because Michael Schur and a Natalie Morales vehicile, and sure, bars, whatever! I really want Natalie Morales to have a TV series that lasts more than a season, because she is the best. But, like, they need a joke writer. I'm not sure if they have one. It was just so awkward and the cast is so great! They are definitely trying their best to make these random sentences without any sort of jokes in them funny. I’m going to continue watching, but I really hope it gets better.
