JoshV
1841
I’d forgotten just how utterly dull the start of the Idiana Jones TV series was.
Still waiting for Bahimiron to post all those soft-core movies they’re carrying, now.
For research.
JoshV
1843
Really? I came across a bunch of these a while back, I think they had like ‘Caged Heat’ and other 70s sexploitiation available.
Beneath the Dark caught my eye while browsing earlier this evening and on a whim I watched it. It’s a decent little supernatural mystery, sort of a Twilight Zone-ish sort of thing. I had one of the main twists pegged fairly early, and I wasn’t sold on the handling of a couple of the story elements, but the setting appeals and there’s some nice atmosphere. And like Triangle, I had never heard of it before I ran across it on streaming. (Though, admittedly, Triangle’s more original and striking.)
Caged Heat is only available as a “SAVE” right now. Not instant. Amazon Jail was available a long time ago, briefly, but was pulled from instant.
Edit - searching for “Emmanuelle” generates a couple hits.
The Other Guys with Will Ferrell and Mark Walhberg is now available. I thought it was uneven but hilarious in places. Totally worth a stream.
Tyjenks
1847
Stephen King’s The Stand is out now. I do remember enjoying it after coming in with low expectations, but after 17 years, not sure how it will stand up.
Has anyone watched it recently?
Amazon Jail was around long enough to kill the Bad Movie Club in the most awkward way imaginable.
Anyway, just look for Late Night Comedies. There’s plenty of stuff there. But what I was talking about was the Emmanuel stuff and at one point they had some other movies I remember most certainly not at all watching on Cinemax Fridays when I was a kid, like Lady Chatterly’s Lover and such. If you’re holding out for The Bikini Car Wash Company, it may be a while.
jason
1849
On the whole, the movie was poor, but the Sam Jackson and Dwayne Johnson stuff was absolutely crazy and made it worth seeing just for that one scene.
So so glad they finally allow you to add a whole show to your queue and not just individual seasons. They even have a little ‘New shows’ blurb when you look at it in your queue on Xbox.
The Square. Not the same director as last year’s excellent Animal Kingdom but shares some of the same DNA (Blue-Tongue Films). Definitely worth seeing.
-xtien
“It’s all talk isn’t it?”
Cyrano
1852
There’s an update for the Netflix software for 360 today that adds some Kinect control. Unfortunately, instead of letting you browse your instant queue, you can only browse a handful of “recommended” titles. Why they would give you a selection of what they guess you’d like to watch instead of what you told them you’d like to watch for sure is beyond me.
JoshV
1853
There are a bunch of Nova episodes up that I actually really enjoyed, each one tries to answer a different question. “How Does the Brain Work?”, “Can We Live Forever?”, “Can We Make it to Mars?” They seem geared towards a younger audience, but I felt they did a good job of being packed with information, but not bogged down by it, and moved at a brisk pace.
Jag
1854
The Three Musketeers with Michael York is on instant. I remember liking it as a kid, not sure how it stands the test of time.
Elizabethtown is on now. Not sure how long it’s been.
It’s the movie about a shoe that ruined a guy’s career which has acquired some notoriety as a movie that ruined another guy’s career (i.e. Cameron Crowe). It seems pretty obviously descended from Billy Wilder’s Avanti!, which makes sense because Crowe reveres Wilder.
I’m watching the scene where Kirsten Dunst comes up to Orlando Bloom on the plane and positively insists on talking to him even though he, of course, doesn’t want to, because in movies beautiful women always insist on talking to the heroes and the heroes are too cool to talk to them. I don’t think most men in the real world would react that way to Kirsten Dunst if she insisted on talking to them on a long flight, but we’re in MovieTown. I can’t offer any personal anecdotes in this direction, because I’ve never had a woman who looked like Kirsten Dunst walk up to me on an airplane and insist on talking to me; but then I don’t look like Orlando Bloom, either. Maybe Beautiful People sort of sniff each other out.
Anyway, I’m a Crowe fan of old so maybe will finish watching this. Up to now I primarily know of it as the movie which (via its trailer) taught me how to pronounce “Louisville.” Assuming it’s correct on that point; I’ve never sought independent confirmation.
40 minutes in:
Bruce McGill shows up, yay!
Then Orlando Bloom’s cousin bursts out into song apropos nothing. Bah, calculated eccentricity.
Houngan
1857
It is correct. Loovul. Or Looville. Maybe Loouhvul, but then you’re putting on airs.
H.
I watched it last night. Still worth watching. The Fourth Musketeer is also on instant. I remember that I watched it years ago but I have no memory of it now.
And if you’re watching the Michael York Three Musketeers, don’t forget there’s a sequel that was filmed concurrently that wraps up the story and it’s a pretty good film too.
Final thoughts on Elizabethtown…
The Crowe touch is there, just a little off, a little distorted, and so it comes across more as self-parody. As Susan Sarandon danced I found myself thinking “this is almost lovely” and “this is absurd” more or less simultaneously. The third act sequence has some pleasant and uplifting shots, but also depends on the conception of a character (Kirsten Dunst’s Claire) as a person whose only function in the universe is to find some morose guy and Show Him How To Love Life. I’m tired of these movies where guys mope around and then the Manic Pixie Dream Girl comes along and shows him the way. In real life, moping guys seldom meet Manic Pixie Dream Girls, mainly because women have better things to do with their time than find moping guys and fix them. Crowe worships Wilder, but “The Apartment’s” Miss Kubelik didn’t just exist to fix Jack Lemmon; in fact, she had deep problems of her own that the film devastatingly explored. Crowe himself is capable of better female characterizations, as both Say Anything (in which Ione Skye is almost an equal protagonist, and Lloyd Dobler more or less the Manic Pixie Dream Guy, but still possessing his fair share of introspection and ego) and Jerry Maguire (in which Renee Zellweger shows a fierce determination to Get Her Man for her purposes and also to raise her son right) demonstrate. I think a key screenwriting difference is that in those two movies, Crowe gives the female leads someone besides their romantic opposite number to talk to (Skye and her dad; Zellwegger and her sister). Dunst, by contrast, talks to essentially no one but Orlando Bloom, thereby coming across as more of a guardian angel than a free-standing human. Guardian angels are deeply boring, unless written by Charles Dickens or played by that guy in “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
You also see these running themes in Crowe’s films. We already know he likes road trips and people listening to (and singing along to) pop music in cars and buses. There’s more of that sort of thing here. He also likes to have the bland central EveryMan protagonists approached by eccentric weirdos who dispense wisdom at inappropriate moments. There was the Kinko’s Guy in Jerry Maguire, and here in Elizabethtown there’s the dude in the hotel hallway who starts philosophizing in a drunken ecstasy.
I did like the idea of the endless, all-night phone call. While I’ve never had a call that long, I could relate to the strange romantic wonder of an hours-long conversation.
So, a well-intentioned misfire by one of the masters of modern dramedy. Here’s hoping Crowe gets back on the horse and makes more good movies in the future.
