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Spoilers What Movie Are You Watching?
- Thread starter Huntn
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I have pre-recorded shows/movies on older media formats (not talking older storage/data mechanisms ... that's another whole conversation).
- VHS
- HD-DVD
- Laserdisc (quite a few of these ... and a functional high end Pioneer player)
I mean, they're not in use, they're just taking up space, I don't have any rationale, hahahaha
I did give away two boxes of DVDs several months ago, probably 100 discs[?] Some great movies, whole sets of various shows (like Sopranos).
You'd probably not want to watch it in that format on a modern TV today if you could.
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This eagerly awaited DVD just came in the post this afternoon but I'm certainly not going to watch it at night... it's a recording of a 2015 performance in Zurich of a new production of Berg's opera Wozzeck (based on fragments of Georg Büchner's unfinished 1837 play). It's in my plans for Friday afternoon!
This is the startling production directed by Andreas Homoki, with Michael Levine's set constructions, conducted by the Zürich Opernhaus music director Fabio Luisi. I love this opera but it's likely an acquired taste if one is not familiar with atonal music or expressionist opera of the early 20th century. The "puppet master" look of this production so suits the themes of exploitation and social injustices. Below is a trailer the opera company had put out as a teaser. More info about the opera itself here (Wikipedia). And here a review that sheds light on what makes this a stellar production.
This is the startling production directed by Andreas Homoki, with Michael Levine's set constructions, conducted by the Zürich Opernhaus music director Fabio Luisi. I love this opera but it's likely an acquired taste if one is not familiar with atonal music or expressionist opera of the early 20th century. The "puppet master" look of this production so suits the themes of exploitation and social injustices. Below is a trailer the opera company had put out as a teaser. More info about the opera itself here (Wikipedia). And here a review that sheds light on what makes this a stellar production.
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We've got 1 and 2 on deck for a re-watch (probably into the double digits for me ...) as a setup for the 3rd film I'll be picking up in September (digital release 09/10 or sooner). Somehow never made it to the theater
so this will be my first time (for #3).Side note: love me some Ninja Scroll
We've got 1 and 2 on deck for a re-watch (probably into the double digits for me ...) as a setup for the 3rd film I'll be picking up in September (digital release 09/10 or sooner). Somehow never made it to the theater
Side note: love me some Ninja Scroll
JW Three was a good movie if you liked the other two. We learn some more about his past, and the action is non-stop. So many other movies seem to run out of storylines or get really stupid after the first or second sequel. But John Wick Three was actually better than I thought it was going to be. I am sure there will be a fourth. Enjoy.
It was enjoyable, surprising, and fun for someone like me who lives in Los Angeles.
It's a very long flick, but the time went by quickly so it didn't feel unnecessarily long.
Peter Fonda. Part of a chain of acting greats. This link now gone. RIP easy rider. a2
Peter Fonda: the elegant rebel who set the counterculture in motion
Though born into Hollywood royalty, the charismatic actor sidestepped conventional leading man roles and installed himself at the epicentre of the 60s youthquake
![]()
In cinemas, the summer of 2019 has already been a strange reprise of August 1969, thanks to Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood delighting crowds with a what-if vision of Tinseltown history. Amid the namedropping in the film, the lack of reference to Peter Fonda is telling. If the whole point of it is to present a Hollywood counterfactual, one where the hippies never took over the movie business, then Fonda – whose role in that true story was more pivotal than any other – is best written out altogether. It is, in fact, a tribute.
Peter Fonda: a life in pictures
Stripped down to a simple list of credits, which film in what year, Fonda’s career tells the story of a supple, charismatic actor. But his influence went deeper and wider. He was the author of a mighty kink in the culture, that began that one summer 50 years ago with the release of Easy Rider – the biker tale that shook America and transformed Hollywood.
1:27
Easy Rider to Ulee's Gold: Peter Fonda's most memorable roles – video obituary
It is illuminating to put it side by side with Tarantino’s movie – a model village of meticulous nostalgia built by a man who was six years old at the time. Easy Rider was in every way the opposite – wilfully loaded with chaos and fuzz, the work of people who were very much there in the moment; a moving snapshot.
Fonda could have easily chosen to have been elsewhere. His childhood was streaked with tragedy and novelistic incident – the suicide of his mother, Frances Ford Seymour, when he was 10; the episode soon after when he accidentally shot himself in the stomach. Still, he had a golden future laid out for him, having been born into film business nobility, the son of a grand movie everyman in his father, Henry; his sister Jane a star, too, by the mid-60s. The kid of the family, leading man handsome, was surely next in line.
![]()
Peter, Henry and Jane Fonda in 1969. Photograph: Tim Boxer/Getty Images
Instead, he sidestepped his fate. Long before the mainstream made it compulsory, Fonda grew his hair to lengths that appalled casting directors, experimented with acid, and dove headlong into a southern California where movies, rock music and street culture were woozily blurring. He was a face in the scene so central he shaped its legacy by accident. His retelling of the story of his childhood shooting to John Lennon at a 1965 party on Mulholland Drive ended up at the heart of the Beatles’ tripped-out masterpiece She Said, She Said. (“I know what it’s like to be dead.”)
He was there, too, at the Sunset Strip riots in 1966, which erupted in protest at police harassment of the shaggy teenagers flocking to LA. He was not only present, but arrested. Something was simmering in America, and Fonda was key to it, off camera and on. Marginalised by Hollywood, he starred instead in the films that first gave big-screen form to the hippie moment, The Wild Angels and The Trip.
![]()
Fonda in Cannes in 2011. Photograph: David Gadd/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar
All of which meant that when Easy Rider arrived in 1969, it was propelled by real experience. Fonda was the film’s producer – the budget topped up by his credit card – as well as its star. His long-limbed, blue-eyed Wyatt was the perfect foil to Dennis Hopper’s scratty freewheeler Billy. And his life was in the soul of the movie. The power of Easy Rider wasn’t that it was a story of outlaw potheads, starring off-the-shelf hairy male leads. By 1969, anyone could have made that. It was the sense of a movie being of a generation, made without executive permission, that electrified a Vietnam-sick audience. It spooked the studios so badly they set loose untold cocksure young directors – Scorsese and Coppola et al – in a desperate attempt to play catch-up.
Sign up to our Film Today email
Read more
Few careers cause even one earthquake – and yet the sense of everything after 1969 as a postscript would be unfair. In the wake of Easy Rider, Fonda directed a pair of films – The Hired Hand and Idaho Transfer – with a loping personality well worth rediscovering. As an actor, he earned an Oscar nomination for the bittersweet Ulee’s Gold (1997). More wonderful still was The Limey, a playful crime thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh exactly 30 years after Easy Rider. The 60s were all over the film: Terence Stamp, the face of swinging London, was cast as an ageing ex-con colliding in LA with wealthy record producer Terry Valentine. Fonda was Valentine, a relic from the counterculture who never grew up and had made all manner of compromises because of it. Soderbergh included a shot of a billboard where Valentine advertised American Express; the original ad had starred Fonda – a wry and fearless note of self-deprecation.
To change history is one thing – to be frank about what happens afterwards takes rare honesty. And yet Fonda never did much compromise. He was still often on the back of a bike until near the end of his life, and in our recent troubled years, could be found assailing Trump on social media, forever an elegant rebel, happy in the now
Peter Fonda: the elegant rebel who set the counterculture in motion
Though born into Hollywood royalty, the charismatic actor sidestepped conventional leading man roles and installed himself at the epicentre of the 60s youthquake
In cinemas, the summer of 2019 has already been a strange reprise of August 1969, thanks to Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood delighting crowds with a what-if vision of Tinseltown history. Amid the namedropping in the film, the lack of reference to Peter Fonda is telling. If the whole point of it is to present a Hollywood counterfactual, one where the hippies never took over the movie business, then Fonda – whose role in that true story was more pivotal than any other – is best written out altogether. It is, in fact, a tribute.
Peter Fonda: a life in pictures
Stripped down to a simple list of credits, which film in what year, Fonda’s career tells the story of a supple, charismatic actor. But his influence went deeper and wider. He was the author of a mighty kink in the culture, that began that one summer 50 years ago with the release of Easy Rider – the biker tale that shook America and transformed Hollywood.
1:27
Easy Rider to Ulee's Gold: Peter Fonda's most memorable roles – video obituary
It is illuminating to put it side by side with Tarantino’s movie – a model village of meticulous nostalgia built by a man who was six years old at the time. Easy Rider was in every way the opposite – wilfully loaded with chaos and fuzz, the work of people who were very much there in the moment; a moving snapshot.
Fonda could have easily chosen to have been elsewhere. His childhood was streaked with tragedy and novelistic incident – the suicide of his mother, Frances Ford Seymour, when he was 10; the episode soon after when he accidentally shot himself in the stomach. Still, he had a golden future laid out for him, having been born into film business nobility, the son of a grand movie everyman in his father, Henry; his sister Jane a star, too, by the mid-60s. The kid of the family, leading man handsome, was surely next in line.
Peter, Henry and Jane Fonda in 1969. Photograph: Tim Boxer/Getty Images
Instead, he sidestepped his fate. Long before the mainstream made it compulsory, Fonda grew his hair to lengths that appalled casting directors, experimented with acid, and dove headlong into a southern California where movies, rock music and street culture were woozily blurring. He was a face in the scene so central he shaped its legacy by accident. His retelling of the story of his childhood shooting to John Lennon at a 1965 party on Mulholland Drive ended up at the heart of the Beatles’ tripped-out masterpiece She Said, She Said. (“I know what it’s like to be dead.”)
He was there, too, at the Sunset Strip riots in 1966, which erupted in protest at police harassment of the shaggy teenagers flocking to LA. He was not only present, but arrested. Something was simmering in America, and Fonda was key to it, off camera and on. Marginalised by Hollywood, he starred instead in the films that first gave big-screen form to the hippie moment, The Wild Angels and The Trip.
Fonda in Cannes in 2011. Photograph: David Gadd/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar
All of which meant that when Easy Rider arrived in 1969, it was propelled by real experience. Fonda was the film’s producer – the budget topped up by his credit card – as well as its star. His long-limbed, blue-eyed Wyatt was the perfect foil to Dennis Hopper’s scratty freewheeler Billy. And his life was in the soul of the movie. The power of Easy Rider wasn’t that it was a story of outlaw potheads, starring off-the-shelf hairy male leads. By 1969, anyone could have made that. It was the sense of a movie being of a generation, made without executive permission, that electrified a Vietnam-sick audience. It spooked the studios so badly they set loose untold cocksure young directors – Scorsese and Coppola et al – in a desperate attempt to play catch-up.
Sign up to our Film Today email
Read more
Few careers cause even one earthquake – and yet the sense of everything after 1969 as a postscript would be unfair. In the wake of Easy Rider, Fonda directed a pair of films – The Hired Hand and Idaho Transfer – with a loping personality well worth rediscovering. As an actor, he earned an Oscar nomination for the bittersweet Ulee’s Gold (1997). More wonderful still was The Limey, a playful crime thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh exactly 30 years after Easy Rider. The 60s were all over the film: Terence Stamp, the face of swinging London, was cast as an ageing ex-con colliding in LA with wealthy record producer Terry Valentine. Fonda was Valentine, a relic from the counterculture who never grew up and had made all manner of compromises because of it. Soderbergh included a shot of a billboard where Valentine advertised American Express; the original ad had starred Fonda – a wry and fearless note of self-deprecation.
To change history is one thing – to be frank about what happens afterwards takes rare honesty. And yet Fonda never did much compromise. He was still often on the back of a bike until near the end of his life, and in our recent troubled years, could be found assailing Trump on social media, forever an elegant rebel, happy in the now
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Thor: Ragnarok (2017)- Super Marvel movie. Creative story, outstanding performances all around, right amount of humor, and top notch CGI.
This is basically what I’ve said about individual character movies vs the big ensemble productions like Avengers, they are impersonal and lack individual character development and interaction. This is how ensemble movies come across to some viewers.
‘Thor’ Star Chris Hemsworth Says ‘Avengers’ Movies Are ‘Not Very Personal’
https://www.ibtimes.com/thor-star-chris-hemsworth-says-avengers-movies-are-not-very-personal-2588872
‘Thor’ Star Chris Hemsworth Says ‘Avengers’ Movies Are ‘Not Very Personal’
https://www.ibtimes.com/thor-star-chris-hemsworth-says-avengers-movies-are-not-very-personal-2588872
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Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019). This was a nice, simple, light horror flick. Somewhat predictable, but very entertaining. It felt like a Goosebumps story on steroids mixed with some elements from Creepshow. Pretty good CGI, and good acting. It will not win the Oscars, but this movie does what it’s supposed to do: entertain with a couple of jump scares.
Thor or Avengers? If Thor, the original movie is one of my favorite Marvel stories. If Avengers, they are successful, but not everyone’s cup of tea. I liked Infinity Wars because it tied to several franchises I’m vested in.
Watched the new Hellboy last night. It was an OK movie, but I think the original 2 movies were better. This version was much more in line with the comics version of Hellboy, though, and I enjoyed that aspect.
Avengers. Avengers began in 2011, right? And Thor just before it? MCU began in 2008 before the height of the recession. The first Iron Man was a decent flick. Disney bought MCU for... I want to say $8B and today the IP is worth several times over. The first half dozen films from the period weren't great visually compared to other studios that were spending money to look great. A lot of actors who weren't famous then got famous thanks to those movies.Thor or Avengers? If Thor, the original movie is one of my favorite Marvel stories. If Avengers, they are successful, but not everyone’s cup of tea. I liked Infinity Wars because it tied to several franchises I’m vested in.
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I'm curious since you spent most of your life living in Italy, are you familiar with the art house horror films that Pasolini made or were his movies very taboo and still are?
Not really taboo - at least after I was born. Watched a couple of his movies in school. I am not a fan.
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We all are.
Elections should be like the Hunger Games. 30 candidates, who survives can lead the country