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Solid down to a man. I think that makes it seem boring is that Oldman's Smiley is so stonefaced and unperturbable, but that's always been the character, he's a completely unremarkable person (and an observant fusspot), which makes him ideal for espionage work. All of the other characters are allowed to have these damning quirks, like being lazy womanizers, drunken degenerates, etc.
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Nov 13, 2015 21:39
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By the way, With Bob and David is up on Netflix now.
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Nov 13, 2015 22:58
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:It does what good adaptations do: let the actors convey the interiority that the novel provides in text. That's not what good adaptations do and that's not what the movie did either.
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Nov 13, 2015 23:24
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wafflesnsegways posted:It's a weird adaptation of a good book. They didn't try to replace all of the internal thoughts and descriptions in the book, they just left them out. The acting is really good and there are good scenes in it, but I wouldn't have understood any of it if I hadn't read the book. Yeah, you benefit a lot by reading the book, which is fantastic, or by watching the awesome Alec Guinness adaptation since they cover tons of details the new version didn't have the runtime to do. That said, I saw the Oldman version first and loved it so much that I picked up the book and watched the old miniseries. Though I had read The Spy Who Came In from the Cold before then so I already knew I liked John le Carrè. The soundtrack and cinematography of the Oldman version is also top notch, on top of all the great performances.
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Nov 13, 2015 23:32
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The only part I didn't really get was how the guy who was gunned down at the beginning of the film and later taken to a Russian black site ended up back in the UK as a teacher but that's kind of a minor thing overall.
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Nov 13, 2015 23:55
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wafflesnsegways posted:That's not what good adaptations do and that's not what the movie did either. In what way is it bad?
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Nov 13, 2015 23:59
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:In what way is it bad? To my mind, what makes an adaptation successful or not is how well it translates the characters, story and themes from the source material. Certainly a lot gets lost in the transition for any book to movie transition, but I think the bare minimum one can expect would be that the characters should be recognizable from one version to the other, and that the basic themes of the original work should be evident in the adaptation. TTSS does neither of these. The characters bear the same names as their literary counterparts (with one minor but bizarre exception), but that’s about it. The book has a number of different underlying themes from which the filmmakers could have chosen, but they decided to go with a facile cynicism that, ironically, romanticizes espionage just as much as any James Bond film.
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Nov 14, 2015 00:46
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SaintFu posted:The book has a number of different underlying themes from which the filmmakers could have chosen, but they decided to go with a facile cynicism that, ironically, romanticizes espionage just as much as any James Bond film. This is interesting. Could you elaborate?
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Nov 14, 2015 00:53
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:This is interesting. Could you elaborate? At its heart, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a book about people who work in an office. There are a lot of things that le Carré puts in that make it feel like a spy novel—jargon, tradecraft, and so on—but the basic story could be moved to a number of different kinds of organization: a large law firm, a police department, a corporation, etc. So what makes the story worthwhile is that le Carré is able to use the story and characters to explore certain themes. For instance, Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch in the film) is a man who has too much emotional investment in the institution to which he belongs, and when the Circus lets him down, he has a kind of nervous breakdown in slow motion. Smiley himself is betrayed on a personal and professional level when his colleagues, with whom he has close personal connections, drive him out of the service. And besides the personal/institutional tension, there’s some exploration of Britain’s perceived role in the world vs it’s actual position. These are just a few examples off the top of my head.
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Nov 14, 2015 01:31
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mysterious frankie posted:I'm glad someone else can confirm that The Visitor exists. I mentioned it in this thread a while ago and got nothing. I was hoping to form an ad hoc support group for people left in the wake of that bewildering film, but since no one was forthcoming at the time I just went ahead and channeled all that rage and confusion into the resurrection of the Northside Chicago street gang The Almighty Gaylords. I'm watching it now. The score is the craziest loving thing. That and everything else about it. What is that disco gymnastics montage about?
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Nov 14, 2015 01:52
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Erebus posted:By the way, With Bob and David is up on Netflix now. I knew nothing about Mr Show Version 2.0 so it was a nice surprise. So far its great
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Nov 14, 2015 05:41
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SaintFu posted:At its heart, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a book about people who work in an office. There are a lot of things that le Carré puts in that make it feel like a spy novel—jargon, tradecraft, and so on—but the basic story could be moved to a number of different kinds of organization: a large law firm, a police department, a corporation, etc. I haven't read the book, but that's exactly how I would describe the movie. From what I remember, all the "espionage" takes place off screen and the entire thing is about office politics and intrigue. The only complaint I ever heard against the movie was that it was difficult to follow due to the spy jargon that gets tossed around. I found the general air of confusion surrounding the jargon to actually work in the films favor.
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Nov 14, 2015 06:40
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WizardVan posted:I knew nothing about Mr Show Version 2.0 so it was a nice surprise. So far its great I'm only two episodes in, but yeah, it's good stuff.
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Nov 14, 2015 06:55
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There's a new John Mulaney stand up special on Netflix. I thought it was pretty funny.
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Nov 14, 2015 07:17
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drunken officeparty posted:There's a new John Mulaney stand up special on Netflix. I thought it was pretty funny. I watched this last night and agree it was very good. Not quite as funny as his previous special, New in Town, but still very solid.
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Nov 14, 2015 15:52
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Started watching Kristy last night. It was 2am so I didn't finish but I liked what I saw!
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Nov 15, 2015 02:40
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The best thing about this movie Kristy is that they're rocking the poo poo out of my first car, the 1971 Plymouth Satellite.
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Nov 15, 2015 05:04
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Does anyone who has Amazon Prime/Netflix think that Hulu adds to the content or is it more of the same? I'm really tempted to get Hulu just because of the Bond collection and Seinfeld. I've looked through the catalog and it seems pretty good so far. The new episodes for tv series also help a lot.
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Nov 15, 2015 05:07
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DoYouHasaRabbit posted:Does anyone who has Amazon Prime/Netflix think that Hulu adds to the content or is it more of the same?
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Nov 15, 2015 05:42
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I watched Kristy off a recommendation here, I liked it. Definitely see the comparison to You're Next, but not as Home Alone-esk as that was. You're Next was more fun to watch and laugh with, while Kristy felt more like real terror.
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Nov 15, 2015 06:52
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Hulu has Difficult People and Casual, both of which are pretty decent shows.
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Nov 15, 2015 07:52
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:even Cumberbatch was really good in that movie I was shocked because I generally find him really colorless, but he's really strong there. Toby Jones, as usual, is my jam. SaintFu posted:At its heart, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a book about people who work in an office. There are a lot of things that le Carré puts in that make it feel like a spy novel—jargon, tradecraft, and so on—but the basic story could be moved to a number of different kinds of organization: a large law firm, a police department, a corporation, etc. This sounds pretty much like the movie. I'm not really clear on what themes you feel are absent. The spy stuff is even more clearly marginalized in the film than in the book, if anything.
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Nov 15, 2015 13:50
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DoYouHasaRabbit posted:Does anyone who has Amazon Prime/Netflix think that Hulu adds to the content or is it more of the same? I've been on Hulu almost exclusively since I got the Hulu + a few weeks ago. Blazed through entire seasons of Bob's Burgers, iZombie (which is really, really good), the Flash, and random episodes of Seinfeld. Its totally worth it.
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Nov 15, 2015 15:33
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Hulu is better as an actual live-TV replacement, at least in the sense that you don't have to pay for cable anymore (if you care about commercials, you're still kinda hosed). I use Netflix primarily to catch up on series and movies that I haven't seen before/in a while, and in that respect it's very good at what I want it to do. There's a lot of turnover in the catalog but I'm not the type of guy who likes rewatching The Wire every year or whatever so I'm fine with some stuff leaving. Though hopefully I'll get around to seeing Lawrence of Arabia before it leaves.
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Nov 15, 2015 15:37
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Hulu has been fantastic for us, there's just so much stuff on there, even older shows that died after one season- it's kinda interesting to go through them and see what did/didn't work. Them adding the commercial free option was an absolute godsend. We still watch netflix but not nearly as much as we've been watching hulu.
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Nov 15, 2015 15:49
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computer parts posted:Hulu is better as an actual live-TV replacement, at least in the sense that you don't have to pay for cable anymore (if you care about commercials, you're still kinda hosed). They have a (mostly) commercial-free tier now, and it's great, even though it feels overpriced.
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Nov 15, 2015 15:53
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Posted this in Genchat but I'll just repost it here with some additions: With Bob and David is the steady decline in quality from a show already showing a decline in quality fifth season that Mr Show never had. It's not bad or anything and it's often funny with moments of brilliance but it overall just seems really sloppy, with sketches going on way too long and struggling to find a point with a general lack of direction or tightness that the original run mostly had. It's fun seeing the old gang back together but they really don't seem to know why they got back together other than because other people wanted it. It feels like I'm probably being too negative because it's still a funny and good show but overall there's like 2-3 sketches I'd call great and the rest are just good or worse. The show has the same sense of humor it always did but, for better or worse, these four episodes feels more like them getting together to gently caress around for a little bit without worrying too much than the soul destroying stress factory that produced the original series. I think I'd probably be a little more kind if it were a ten episode set but it has a far lower good/bad ratio than any of the original seasons and it's condensed into a much shorter package so I felt it all the more.
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Nov 15, 2015 16:44
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axleblaze posted:Posted this in Genchat but I'll just repost it here with some additions: With Bob and David is the steady decline in quality from a show already showing a decline in quality fifth season that Mr Show never had. Pretty much my thoughts exactly on the show. The fact that one of the "episodes" was a behind the scenes thing shows they were really struggling to fill time. After all this time too, the people in the live audience are obviously the die hard Bob and David fans, but this just led to ridiculous amounts of laughing at the end of every single sentence uttered during a sketch. The volume and amount of laughter just got to be really off-putting after a while. Also, I think John Ennis might be the Picture to Jay Johnston's Dorian Gray.
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Nov 15, 2015 17:02
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magnificent7 posted:Started watching Kristy last night. It was 2am so I didn't finish but I liked what I saw! You're in for a treat if you're only partway through. I thought the second half was a vast improvement. Slandible posted:I watched Kristy off a recommendation here, I liked it. Definitely see the comparison to You're Next, but not as Home Alone-esk as that was. You're Next was more fun to watch and laugh with, while Kristy felt more like real terror. Hi! Glad you liked it. I definitely agree with you about Kristy being much more frightening than You're Next. Granted that might have more to do with You're Next being a group of people while Kristy follows one vulnerable young woman. I'm definitely enjoying this new wave of.... girl power anti-horror films?  Whatever you want to call it, they're fun. For the most part. I just watched Bound for Vengeance and I don't know what to make of it.
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Nov 15, 2015 17:29
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Chichevache posted:I just watched Bound for Vengeance and I don't know what to make of it. I wasn't aware this actually came out already. It was at Sundance this year under the name "Reversal" which, while not a great name, is certainly better than Bound By Vengeance. I didn't hear great things at Sundance but I'll still probably check it out.
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Nov 15, 2015 18:00
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mysterious frankie posted:I'm glad someone else can confirm that The Visitor exists. I mentioned it in this thread a while ago and got nothing. I was hoping to form an ad hoc support group for people left in the wake of that bewildering film, but since no one was forthcoming at the time I just went ahead and channeled all that rage and confusion into the resurrection of the Northside Chicago street gang The Almighty Gaylords. If this trailer doesn't sell anyone on why they should watch "The Visitor" then I don't know what will: https://youtu.be/c0vBRdplSps G-III fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Nov 15, 2015 |
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Nov 15, 2015 18:50
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DoYouHasaRabbit posted:Does anyone who has Amazon Prime/Netflix think that Hulu adds to the content or is it more of the same? Hulu has a lot of great content netflix doesn't have. Aside from current episodes of running tv shows, it has a lot more in the classic TV showcase. For example, I discovered Newhart on Hulu, and it's not there on Netflix at all. Amazon Prime adds the least value to me. Maybe I'd use it more of their app wasn't so hard to use.
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Nov 15, 2015 18:53
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Is Hulu on-par with Netflix as far as features go? As in, add a show to your watchlist, it will keep track of watched episodes? (in other words what HBO Now doesn't do)
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Nov 15, 2015 19:11
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david_a posted:Is Hulu on-par with Netflix as far as features go? As in, add a show to your watchlist, it will keep track of watched episodes? (in other words what HBO Now doesn't do) Overall, Hulu has a lot of the features of Netflix, it just lags behind mainly in usability. Basically, almost anything you can do in Netflix, you can do with Hulu, it just can be a bit harder. Obviously, background stuff it does automatically, like keep track of episodes you've watched. You don't even need to add a show to your watchlist to get notifications about it. Because I've watched a few episodes of Bar Rescue, I get notifications when there are new episodes, which is really helpful... if I wanted to watch new episodes of Bar Rescue... which I do. Now, I use the PS4 app, and as I said, it needs a usability enhancement. The app overall is very clunky. First off, it doesn't support the PS4 remote, so you either have to use a controller, or deal with annoying things like not being able to back out of a menu once you get into it. But even with that removed, browsing can be a little difficult, and the selecting an episode takes more steps than necessary. So, you go into a TV show, select an episode, and THEN you select to play an episode. It's one extra click, but drat it, it's loving called good design! I deal with this poo poo in my job, I don't need Hulu giving me this poo poo at home when I'm trying to watch TV. Oddly, it's a lot easier to find something on Hulu than on Netflix through browsing. Netflix, you just have to hope you stumble on things. Hulu is a good value, and they really are a competitor to Netflix in terms of overall quality.
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Nov 15, 2015 19:28
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SaintFu posted:At its heart, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a book about people who work in an office. There are a lot of things that le Carré puts in that make it feel like a spy novel—jargon, tradecraft, and so on—but the basic story could be moved to a number of different kinds of organization: a large law firm, a police department, a corporation, etc. I thought I replied to this, sorry. For some reason I was reading romanticizing as 'glorifying', but anyhow, I definitely agree. This is what I like best about the film, especially set against the last decade or so of sorry-rear end espionage films. This is also especially why I like the recurring staging of the Christmas party and the public school (or private, however it goes), ironically singing the Internationale, etc. because it like so much of the imagery of the film is about this kind of rotten camaraderie. Britain playing this great game that it will inevitably lose because it is busy trying to find the romance in its institutional traditions. This even works with Bond and all the sad America Jr. stuff in those movies.
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Nov 15, 2015 20:03
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:Also, I think John Ennis might be the Picture to Jay Johnston's Dorian Gray. Is there room in this theory to explain why Mary Lynn Rajskub looks better now than she did 20 years ago
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Nov 15, 2015 22:45
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david_a posted:Is Hulu on-par with Netflix as far as features go? As in, add a show to your watchlist, it will keep track of watched episodes? (in other words what HBO Now doesn't do) Yes, although it has quirks depending on which app/platform you're using, and some placement of things seems poor. Also, it kinda weirdly separates favorites from my queue, I think because the service focuses more on telling you about things you can watch than Netflix. Overall it does what it needs to do.
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Nov 15, 2015 22:54
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Anyone have any thoughts on The Nightmare? I wasn't expecting an actual documentary, but I was really getting into the people's claims that their sleep paralysis was letting them see into the malign supra-reality lurking behind daily existence. Yet the movie kind of backed off on them right as they were getting around to claiming that they were seeing behind the veil of existence, or at least something independent of their own psychologies. I guess maybe that would be a mean thing for the movie to do, and kind of at odds with the impulse to capture their subjective experiences and the way that the objective medical diagnosis of sleep paralysis does nothing to communicate what experiencing it is actually like. But if they're going to start making claims about other people seeing their demons or Laotians bringing evil spirits into the United States in their dreams, I say go with it.
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Nov 16, 2015 01:51
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Jack Gladney posted:Anyone have any thoughts on The Nightmare? I wasn't expecting an actual documentary, but I was really getting into the people's claims that their sleep paralysis was letting them see into the malign supra-reality lurking behind daily existence. Yet the movie kind of backed off on them right as they were getting around to claiming that they were seeing behind the veil of existence, or at least something independent of their own psychologies. Here's what I wrote way back when I saw it in January: quote:Earlier when I was writing about The Forbidden Room, I mentioned that I like movies that have a fever dream quality to them. There is something about the illogical ways nightmares actually play out that I find inherently scary and interesting. This movie with its very concept seemed to promise it would deliver some of that and it didn’t disappoint.
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Nov 16, 2015 01:58
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mysterious frankie posted:I'm glad someone else can confirm that The Visitor exists. I mentioned it in this thread a while ago and got nothing. I was hoping to form an ad hoc support group for people left in the wake of that bewildering film, but since no one was forthcoming at the time I just went ahead and channeled all that rage and confusion into the resurrection of the Northside Chicago street gang The Almighty Gaylords. The Visitor's (Jerzey's) theme music stands out so much, is so wildly inappropriate, and yet it seems to be the best thing about the film. Or maybe the Sam Peckinpah cameo.
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Nov 16, 2015 02:13
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