joefavs

DominicCobb said:

Is Romero’s Dawn of the Dead completely out of print? I was thinking about selling my DVD for a blu-ray, but not only does it seem like there’s no blu-ray that matches the DVD, it doesn’t even seem like the blu-ray’s available?

I think I read somewhere that the remastered Dario Argento cut is still in print in Italy, and it includes the theatrical cut as a special feature. No idea how true that is; the region was a deal breaker for me so I stopped following that lead. Might be worth looking into, though. Maybe someone here with the proper setup could rip it to an MKV.

This week I watched…

High And Low (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1963)
Shoot The Piano Player (dir. Francois Truffaut, 1960)
Judex (dir. Georges Franju, 1963)
The Princess Bride (dir. Rob Reiner, 1987)
This Is Spinal Tap (dir. Rob Reiner, 1984)
Gimme Shelter (dir. Albert & David Maysles, 1970)

Great stuff across the board. Judex deserves special mention for being totally crazypants. The only other Franju film I’ve seen is Eyes Without A Face, but between those two I’m feeling motivated to look into everything he ever did.

The November sale is here again and again I’ve gone a little overboard. I just ordered…

12 Angry Men
Barry Lyndon
Bottle Rocket
Brief Encounter
The Exterminating Angel
His Girl Friday
The Princess Bride

A friend and I might also go halvesies on the Zatoichi boxed set, since our access to the series dies with Filmstruck at the end of the month.

Variety is reporting that the lead character will be played by Pedro Pascal.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/variety.com/2018/film/news/star-wars-pedro-pascal-mandalorian-series-1203023818/amp/

I loved him on Game of Thrones, so I’m pretty happy about this. The fact that they’ve already been shooting for weeks and they’re just making this deal now makes me think this is probably more of an ensemble piece than they’ve been letting on, though.

Man, here we are in mid November and they haven’t announced anything special for the Christmas season. I was sure we’d get 4K releases of at least TFA and R1 to compensate for the lack of a new movie, but it’s been awfully quiet for awfully long. Could it really be that nothing at all will drop during the holidays?

I’m seeing Elvis Costello in concert tonight! He’s been my favorite songwriter ever since I listened to (and then swiped) my dad’s copy of My Aim Is True when I was 17. This a huge deal for me.

As much as I want to resist the impulse to default to “CAST THE STRANGER THINGS KIDS IN EVERYTHING” fever, she would be great and she’s exactly the right age to jump in on season 2.

Cassian might be my least favorite character of the Disney era; I thought he was totally one-note and boring in Rogue One. A series could really do a lot to change my opinion by fleshing him out, though, so I’m on board. Plus, I’d never say no to the possibility of more K2.

EDIT:

OutboundFlight said:

I’d love to see K-2 again!

Never got into RO because of the poor characterization (besides the robot). Bur while I’m not a fan of Cassian now, the six years old line could give way to some superb stories.

I’ve been beaten to my own opinion.

Mike O said:

joefavs said:

I saw North By Northwest for the first time the other day, and it was much more fun and breezy than I expected. You can really draw a straight line from that to the Coen Brothers.

I’ve always felt NBN was pretty much the prototype for the whole Bond franchise.

I felt that way as well, to a point. I find it tricky to nail down the exact nature of the relationship since Grant’s performance swings much farther into pure comedy than even the jokiest Bond actor; in spite of being pre-Bond, tonally speaking it plays almost like a Bond pastiche. The influence is undeniable, in any case.

I saw North By Northwest for the first time the other day, and it was much more fun and breezy than I expected. You can really draw a straight line from that to the Coen Brothers.

No love for The Undiscovered Country? It’s up there with Khan for me. Those two are more or less tied for my favorite of the original movies, followed closely by The Voyage Home. The Motion Picture and The Search For Spock are tied with each other as the middle-of-the-road Treks, and then The Final Frontier is last in my ranking, but almost entirely for execution; I actually think its premise is one of the best and most in line with the spirit of TOS.

I haven’t actually seen any of the movies with the TNG crew. I’m at the end of season 6 in my inaugural watch-through of TNG, and I’m looking forward to hitting the movies in a few weeks when I’ve finished.

As far as the Kelvin timeline films go, I don’t really want to integrate them into my ranking of the older movies, at least until I’ve seen the TNG films in between, but I will say that I enjoy them for the most part, and I’d rank Star Trek as best, followed by Beyond, and Into Darkness last.

joefavs said:

Here’s where I’m at so far. I’m only one behind going into the weekend, so it looks like I’ll actually make it. Much as I love my horror, I’m reeeeaaaally starting to look forward to going back to watching other stuff again. In viewing order:

1. Halloween (1978)
2. The Exorcist III: Legion (1990)
3. Drag Me To Hell (2009)
4. The Boy (2016)
5. A Dark Song (2016)
6. The Thing (1982)
7. The Conjuring (2013)
8. The Omen (1976)
9. Eyes Without A Face (1962)
10. The Ritual (2017)
11. Psycho (1960)
12. The Void (2016)
13. Night Of The Living Dead (1968)
14. Cronos (1993)
15. The Fog (1980)
16. Prince of Darkness (1987)
17. The Witch (2015)
18. Halloween (2018)
19. Shelley (2016)
20. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
21. Vampyr (1932)
22. Willard (2003)
23. Under The Shadow (2016)
24. The Exorcist (1973)

Finished tonight. The last seven movies were…

25. The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
26. Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist (2005)
27. 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
28. It (2017)
29. The Last Exorcism (2010)
30. An American Werewolf in London (1981)
31. The Evil Dead (1981)

After taking a couple months off, I’m back on Star Trek TNG. Five episodes into season 6. I’ve come to adore this show as much as TOS, but I’m also excited to get through these last couple seasons and move on to DS9 and eventually Voyager. For those of you who are well versed in 90s Trek, do you think it would be better to watch DS9 front to back before starting Voyager, or watch them concurrently as they aired?

Handman said:

Some of you may be aware that FilmStruck is where Criterion was streaming their content, along with TCM and all their wonderful movies. Unfortunately, Turner and Warner have decided to shut it down:

This saddens me greatly, since young people today only seem to know what’s online. These icons of cinema are being lost in the public consciousness.

I found out about this about two hours ago at a Halloween party and I’ve been in the foulest of moods ever since. They finally released their Samsung app last week and I was pleased as punch to finally be able to retire the Roku, and now I’m wondering why they even bothered. Some other service had better step in and fill the void, since Netflix and Amazon seem hell bent on transitioning to making a thousand original shows I’m never going to watch. God damn it. I guess I’ll have to make more room on my Criterion shelf now that I won’t be able to stream these anymore. Fuck. I am not taking this well.

Here’s where I’m at so far. I’m only one behind going into the weekend, so it looks like I’ll actually make it. Much as I love my horror, I’m reeeeaaaally starting to look forward to going back to watching other stuff again. In viewing order:

1. Halloween (1978)
2. The Exorcist III: Legion (1990)
3. Drag Me To Hell (2009)
4. The Boy (2016)
5. A Dark Song (2016)
6. The Thing (1982)
7. The Conjuring (2013)
8. The Omen (1976)
9. Eyes Without A Face (1962)
10. The Ritual (2017)
11. Psycho (1960)
12. The Void (2016)
13. Night Of The Living Dead (1968)
14. Cronos (1993)
15. The Fog (1980)
16. Prince of Darkness (1987)
17. The Witch (2015)
18. Halloween (2018)
19. Shelley (2016)
20. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
21. Vampyr (1932)
22. Willard (2003)
23. Under The Shadow (2016)
24. The Exorcist (1973)

Jay said:

Forgot this one. I watch it every year. Easily in my top 10. And the original is great, too!

I watch it at least once a year myself, but sometimes I wait for the first snowstorm of the year instead of doing it in October. Same goes for The Shining. I read somewhere that there’s an actual Antarctic research station that screens those two films back to back every winter when conditions get bad enough that they can’t leave until spring to freak out the newbies.

I’ve just read the first two books of N. K. Jemisin’s fantastic The Broken Earth trilogy. I was really bummed to learn that the film rights belong to TNT. A screen adaptation helmed by the right people could be world-shatteringly good, but I have serious doubts that TNT are the right people. I hope I’m wrong and it’s like AMC becoming legitimate overnight with Mad Men in 07 and Breaking Bad the next year, but my expectations are low. Anyway, this is supposed to be about the books. Go read them, they’re great.

I’ve been trying to watch a horror flick every day this month, but of course I’ve skipped some days and doubled up on others depending on my schedule and enthusiasm. I’ve been trying to maintain a pretty even split of old favorites and stuff I haven’t seen before. So far I’ve watched the following, in viewing order, with the bolded films being ones I just saw for the first time:

1. Halloween (1978)
   2. The Exorcist III: Legion (1990)
2. Drag Me To Hell (2009)
   4. The Boy (2016)
   5. A Dark Song (2016)
3. The Thing (1982)
4. The Conjuring (2013)
   8. The Omen (1976)
5. Eyes Without a Face (1960)
   10. The Ritual (2017)
6. Psycho (1960)
   12. The Void (2016)
7. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
   14. Cronos (1993)
   15. The Fog (1980)
   16. Prince of Darkness (1987)
8. The Witch (2015)
   18. Halloween (2018)
   19. Shelley (2016)
   20. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

As far as old favorites go, I still need to hit the original The Exorcist, It Follows, and at least one Evil Dead film. I watched Hereditary and the original Suspiria in September, so though they’re favorites of mine those won’t be part of my October challenge unless a friend wants to watch them in the next nine days. I’m supposed to rent that bonkers Nic Cage movie Mandy at some point with some buddies too, but schedules haven’t yet permitted it.

I had a dream last night that the trilogy in 4K showed up totally out of the blue on archive.org. Waking up was rough.

It’s definitely a long shot, but perhaps this lends credence to those rumors about an official KOTOR remake that were tossed around a year or two ago.

Is that not a photo of the toy? It looks to me like it’s just the toy.

I guess this premiered last night? I don’t have Disney XD, but I was always able to keep up with Rebels by buying a season pass on Amazon. I can’t seem to find that option anywhere for Resistance, though. Does anyone know if that’s coming, or am I going to need to find another solution?

I’m willing to bet the huge reveal at the end of the first season will be that Boba Fett is still alive. Anyway, the “lone gunfighter” angle certainly makes me feel better about the idea of a Mando-centric series. I found Filoni’s Mandalorians so, so tiresome. Hopefully this series just has the one bouncing off of more interesting characters, rather than a bunch of them yammering on about honor and family ad infinitum.

joefavs said:

Anyone else do any tabletop Star Wars gaming? I’ve really enjoyed Fantasy Flight’s stuff recently, I’ve played both their card games and I’d like to try their miniatures games. I also picked up some of the handbooks for the West End Games RPG a little while back but I haven’t had the chance to really sit down and learn them yet.

I played the X-Wing miniatures game this past weekend and I believe I’m hooked! Very cool mechanics, and the models themselves are beautiful. My friends and I just played with basic TIEs and X-wings, but I definitely plan to pick up the Falcon before we play again.

I’ve re-watched all of them in the past two weeks. Here is my ranking based solely on how much I enjoyed watching each movie on this particular watch-through. If I was making a definitive list, I’d flip a couple of these, but this is how I’m feeling about the series right in this moment.

1. Star Wars
2. The Empire Strikes Back
3. The Last Jedi
4. The Force Awakens
5. Solo
6. Return of the Jedi
7. Rogue One
8. Attack of the Clones (go figure, huh)
9. The Phantom Menace
10. Revenge of the Sith