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I have no idea what the ideology of tonight's Masters of the Air was. Nazis bad? Luftwaffe good? German children good? German farmers and civilians bad? American POWs getting shoved into a boxcar bad? A train full of Jews in a worse boxcar slowly passing worse? (In October '43, when the main period of deportations was over, Treblinka was already closing).
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Feb 24, 2024 05:56
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"Those poor civilians (PS the RAF did it!)" turning into an extremely gratuitous lynching was also deeply weird in terms of the tone being all over the place. A woman pushing a stroller beats a POW to death with a bottle? The American flyer is saved the following day by the loving rural bumpkin Landespolizei. In conclusion, kill 'em all, Bomber Harris did nothing wrong, I guess?
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Feb 24, 2024 05:59
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Some Guy TT posted:i mainly find it funny that a person could watch the first season of true detective and think that the message was supposed to be dudes rock lol wtf
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Feb 26, 2024 08:08
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i say swears online posted:then what the gently caress is historical fiction Massive, middlebrow, book of the month hardbacks like Ragtime. You can feel like Gore Vidal at book club by observing that racism… is bad. e: Gore Videl’s historical fiction novels are like crack cocaine to grad school educated liberals, you have to be careful doling them out. DJJIB-DJDCT has issued a correction as of 08:35 on Feb 27, 2024 |
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Feb 27, 2024 08:33
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Someone wrote a really good article about what Obama liking the Wire says, both about him, and the limits of its critique, but I can't find it. Does anyone remember?
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Mar 4, 2024 16:10
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGIr4Mq_4C8
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Mar 6, 2024 15:43
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I think Being There is much, much, better than Poor Things, but I’m not sure they set out to do the same thing.
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Mar 9, 2024 05:08
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So some of you are describing the idea of Familiar Marriages, what the Victorians called “romance’s rival” - a marriage done out of Storge, Philia or Agape, rather than Eros. Marrying someone to take care of them was considered perfectly valid by the Victorians. But is that what’s happening at the end? Is Mark Ruffalo acting out of Storge, empathetic love and caring, without a sexual component that would sully it? I would say not very likely. That casts a shadow on the marriage as a happy ending, in the comedic tradition. Is the character reconciled by putting his sexual desire aside and pursuing marriage out of unselfish love? If not, there’s no real reconciliation, is there?
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Mar 9, 2024 06:04
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Some Guy TT posted:you can read the general any way you like we could also read him as representing british military intractability during the boer war or gunboat diplomacy or the classical stiff upper lip countenance of imperial british culture I don't think so, since I like those things and I didn't like him.
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Mar 9, 2024 17:03
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DaysBefore posted:Lmfao oh cool. Not surprising Rob McElhenney especially seems dumb enough to get into that The guy who bought a Welsh football club on a whim? Dumb? I don't think so!
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Mar 10, 2024 21:09
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the milk machine posted:lmao i forgot about this This is the first I’m hearing about it.
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Mar 11, 2024 00:41
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Barry Keoghan played a pilot from Oklahoma with a Brooklyn accent in Masters of the Air.
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Mar 11, 2024 03:51
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Pepe Silvia Browne posted:a lot of people have the impression that reading books makes you smarter but that only works if you're reading things that challenge you and make you think, not if you're reading the 10,000th variation on the same genre slop you've been consuming your entire life I feel like we've forgotten that dime novels were lowbrow popular entertainment before TV.
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Mar 13, 2024 12:08
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Some Guy TT posted:watching the springtime for hitler musical sequence from the 2005 film and what really bugs me about this is that theres nothing to really indicate its parody as in why is broadway musical camp hitler supposed to be obvious parody but none of the previous setpiece wasnt what kind of hitler would you expect to see in an unironically pronazi broadway show that isnt just hitler as urkel was the audience expecting a show that up until that point was about how great hitler is to depict him as an rear end in a top hat Because the book was written by a Nazi, remember? The libretto was by the gay composer and was mostly inoffensive. It was the casting that led it to be camp and a parody, which is why the producers cast who they cast. Springtime for Hitler was performed by the ensemble, all of whom are shown to be competent actors, singers and dancers. Since the music was competent, the production design was competent, and the ensemble were competent - because all of those people thought they were making a hit musical - the producers' were the only ones who were trying to undermine the production, they scene is played straight. This is true in the original film, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZKZ3C1ML8 The 2005 film, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_ACDUBURhE and on Broadway https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7laQLJ_K9C0&t=2577s Now, there are camp elements in the number, which reflects the producers selecting Roger DeBris as director and bringing on his flamboyant production team, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-c9Z0L2YLI The producers anticipate that the book by Liebkind being so at odds with Roger's style will contribute to the show failing, but none of the production team do. They are all earnestly trying to make as good a show as they can, so the choreography is gay, but it's not a parody, and so is the set design and everything else. DJJIB-DJDCT has issued a correction as of 18:11 on Mar 15, 2024 |
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Mar 15, 2024 17:59
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Let’s further breakdown Springtime for Hitler and what it means, with some background on theatre. We’re going to cover three things. What is “a show within a show” and how does it work? What kind of performances do we expect to see from actors when this device is used? (Depending on if they’re performing in the show we are watching or “the show within the show”) Finally, what kind of audience would attend a play like the one the producers stage during the 1960s? "The Producers," as presented on Broadway, (though I saw it during its Toronto run) encounters a unique challenge with its “show within a show” format. This format raises the question of how to distinguish between the performance we, the audience in the theatre, are viewing and the one being witnessed by the fictional audience within the play. By “problem,” I don't want to give a negative impression. Personally, I find the “show within a show” approach interesting because of its ability to incorporate parody and creative framing, playing with the narrative by allowing shifts in genre and tone. This technique is notably effective in "The Producers," but works in other shows as well, a recent example that also starred Nathan Lane was "Something Rotten." An instance where this is more of a problem is RENT. In RENT, if you’re familiar, Maureen stages her one-woman show. It’s supposed to be - as written - artsy and terrible. It’s a character moment that tells us about Maureen. She sucks. By the time they made the 2005 film version of RENT, Idina Menzel, who played Maureen on both stage and screen, was a huge star. This is a problem within the film, because Maureen the character is not supposed to be Idina Menzel, the actress. Idina clearly didn’t want to, or wasn’t directed to, give a bad performance as Maureen (within the one-woman show). She (Idina) hits all her notes, belts, riffs, and shows incredible dynamism in her vocal performance. These are all things Maureen, the artsy loser with delusions of grandeur, should not be able to do. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pXNd2V88d60&pp=ygURTWF1cmVlbiBzaG93IHJlbnQ%3D The play within the play is undermined by the performance being too good. It doesn’t tell us anything about the character. In fact, it gives the opposite impression of the character from what we’re supposed to have. Maureen is not supposed to be a great and talented performer and vocalist. An example of the opposite problem happened in a show that just finished its run on Broadway this week, the revival of Sweeney Todd. If you don’t know, this is the one that originally opened with Annaleigh Ashford and Josh Groban. Now, the reviews early in its run, from the media previews, people had problems with Annaleigh Ashford’s accent work. The point is that her accent undermined peoples impression of the character. It took them out of the play. (Whatever, I enjoy her as an actress, I think she made interesting choices in the role. She wasn’t trying to be Angela Landsbury. It’s okay to “miscast” someone from type, just like Hitler in the Producers, if it helps set the tone of the show. Too many performances in revivals, Lea Michelle in Funny Girl, are stuck in the shadow of their originating cast.) To save the production there was a bit of, I suppose you could say, stunt casting, because two of the biggest, most respected, stars on Broadway, Sutton Foster, and Aaron Tveit, were cast as replacements for Ashford and Groban. This led audiences, cornfed middle American tourists, going to Broadway to see Sweeney Todd, expecting to see those actors perform essentially as Broadway stars. This is the opposite problem as Mendel in RENT. So, when Sutton Foster, who is a very talented actress, as well as singer and dancer, decided to play a character and make vocal choices as the character we would say, singing the way the character would, audiences responded extremely negatively. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nwkR1svlmJg&t=85s&pp=ygUac3V0dG9uIGZvc3RlciBzd2VlbmV5IHRvZGQ%3D Can Sutton Foster, the actress, hit every note as written for The Worst Pies in London? Absolutely! Of course she can! She’s very talented. But should the character be completely polished vocally? I don’t think so. (We can circle back to this if you want, but this is kind of a problem with musical theatre generally, because some shows are sung through in a way that we, the audience, know the songs are diegetic. They are reflecting the characters’ speech. In other shows, the character’s singing voice is dramatically different than their speaking voice, and that tells us that the songs reflect the characters’ thoughts. Other shows have even more complex relationships between the book and libretto, but essentially the through-line in all of this is that there’s a relationship between music and character. That’s without getting into Rogers and Hammerstein, and the mid century innovation of the dream ballet - how dance, in addition to acting and singing, reflects the character.) So these are all of the performance considerations that are in the background of Springtime for Hitler within The Producers. How should the number go? How should the ensemble and the character of Hitler play their parts? Well, that leads us into the next thing we have to discuss, now that we’ve covered a bit about the device of a show within a show, and the relationship between performance and character. We have to talk about audience. That’s because within a show, within the show, (try saying that ten times fast) we are not the (only) audience. There’s a fictional audience as well. What is Springtime for Hitler supposed to convey to them? How would it be performed? Who is the intended audience and what kind of performance will have the intended result? Understanding the cultural and historical context of musical theater during Mel Brooks' era is crucial. The medium held significant prestige and cultural relevance. It was, chiefly, the mark of having upper middle class taste. Standards sung today, “the great American songbook”, often originate in musical theatre between 1950 and 1970. If you read impressive, newspapers and magazines, as well as Book-of-the-Month club books, you were expected to have at least a passing familiarity with the Broadway shows of the day. It was an important sign of taste, and the plots and songs of shows were often referred to in conversation. To provide an example of this, I almost guarantee that everybody here, even if you haven’t seen the shows, knows, at least some lyrics or phrases or references that allude to, Camelot, drat Yankees, My Fair Lady, Bye Bye Birdie, The Fantasticks, How to Succeed in Business, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Oliver!, Fiddler On the Roof, Funny Girl, Hello, Dolly!, Man of LaMancha, or Cabaret. For chrissakes, the first filmed part of the Adam Friedland Show contained a musical number from Cabaret. 34:15 https://youtu.be/NKo8VVqHoTA?si=L7GkD68bX2T9W_my] The Kennedy administration was dubbed 'Camelot,' in reference to the successful Broadway musical, highlighting the profound impact of musical theater in the mid-1960s. It was on everybody’s minds. It dictated how they thought about politics. It still does! Aaron Sorkin is practically the avatar of upper middle-class educated baby boomers, who developed their cultural preferences around this time. He refers to the ending of Camelot as a pivotal moment - connected to a political message - in his show The Newsroom. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N5bqAVUkUgw Will McAvoy : [to MacKenzie, smiling] Camelot. She's the kid at the end of Camelot! [Turns to Jennifer] Will McAvoy : Ask me again. Jennifer Johnson : I'm sorry? Will McAvoy : Ask me your idiot question again. Jennifer Johnson : What makes America the greatest country in the world? Will McAvoy : You do. [to MacKenzie] Will McAvoy : Hire her. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_lhduy0Em74&pp=ygUOY2FtZWxvdCBlbmRpbmc%3D Critic and theatre historian Ethan Mordden says that Broadway was mid century idealism, and liberalism, given cultural form. Broadway was a big deal. This is the cultural context in which Bialystok and Bloom are making their musical. so that being the case, how could they disgust and revolt an audience, on the opening night of a show, to guarantee it failed? The Producers revolves around the producers' intent to stage a flop by offending the post-war audience, capitalizing on the sensibilities of an era where the horrors of World War II were still fresh. The film and its 2005 remake illustrate this through the audience's shocked reactions, up until the very moment that the character of Hitler, contrary to expectations, can’t stay in character, and they burst into laughter. As you know, the twist ruins the producers' original plan, as the audience, thinking it’s a parody, loves, rather than hates the play, as intended. They were not intending to make a parody at all. A parody would not achieve the kind of failure that they said out to make. It had to be played straight, and so we see a straight performance. DJJIB-DJDCT has issued a correction as of 19:31 on Mar 15, 2024 |
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Mar 15, 2024 19:20
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Some Guy TT posted:its not the competency of the production itself that bothers me but the reaction of the audience in the 2005 scene that this is the most horribly offensive thing theyve ever seen only to change their minds when hitler shows up in the exact same showtunes style theyve already seen i should probably put these side by side to better explain what i mean Good post. The film does look cheap, which is weird considering it cost like $45M. Totally agree about the staging and crowd shots. "and now i can actually see why these changes were made the broadway musical version doesnt have an audience because it doesnt have an objective camera so the actual audience as in the people who are watching the show are just laughing their heads off at the whole setpiece theres no tension about the plan seeming to succeed only to fall apart when hitler shows up because the whole sequence is presented as an unbroken straight line not an abrupt pivot the 2005 film must have maintained these editing decisions solely because they were in the 1968 film even though they dont work at all with the changes that were made in the broadway musical adaptation im a little surprised the same person who made the broadway musical also made the movie although maybe i shouldnt be just because shes good at broadway doesnt mean shes good at film and her never having done another film suggests shes cognizant of these limitations" Excellent, excellent point. It's a very weird choice, exactly as you said, the camera makes a huge difference. Regarding the bolded part, the Means Girls movie (musical) is a loving disaster, and a lot of it has to do with the death of movie musical and (in Hollywood) screen actors who have been on stage. Before the film school generation of the 1970's, directors had worked in television, which at the time was basically taped theatre, or had started in actual theatre. Now, there are hardly any directors who have experience with both, they're locked into one or the other depending on what their BFA is in. Add to that, actors like Nicholas Cage who are clearly playing to the back seats of the house, which is to say stage acting, are rare. Awards go to realistic performances. Well, theatre, and certainly musicals, can't be realistic. The combination of those means you have acting choices and direction that is going to be off on way or another when people film musicals these days. The only good ones, to my memory, are filming of stage shows. I could be wrong, I've heard Schmigadoon was good, but I've already heard Crazy Ex Girlfriend and Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist suck. You have film actors who don't know how to be in musicals, or musical directors who can't shoot a movie. We're just not doing the genre any favours. DJJIB-DJDCT has issued a correction as of 21:37 on Mar 15, 2024 |
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Mar 15, 2024 21:27
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i say swears online posted:i did not watch season 2 but it seems like a radical departure iirc they were doing a thing where S1 was the Golden Age, so Lerner and Loewe and Rogers and Hammerstein, and S2 was Sondheim and other edgier shows of the 60's and 70's like Sweet Charity, Chicago, Cabaret, Pippin. IMO, just because of how the culture has gone, S1 would be more amenable to normies, and if those influences applied to S2, it would probably be more Theatre Kid fare. Grandparents in Iowa can probably chuckle to a harmless parody of a song from the Music Man, they may not be down for the whole cast being naked as a nod to Hair. They didn't get the sort of awards or viewership they were hoping for, so unfortunately we won't get S3 with the ALW mega musicals and Wicked, which is when cornfed okey dokes started going to Broadway on their vacations again, which might have helped their numbers.
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Mar 15, 2024 22:29
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YaketySass posted:They should have the Japanese speak English and the white guys speak Portuguese. I like when films and movies do this, and think they should do it more often. Pacific Overtures did a good job of the Japanese characters being "normal" and the Europeans being exotic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8WiudDlTBw Sondheim also somehow combined a Sousa march, Gilbert and Sullivan patter song, Dutch clog song, Russian dirge, and French can-can. DJJIB-DJDCT has issued a correction as of 14:14 on Mar 16, 2024 |
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Mar 16, 2024 14:12
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Do you watch foreign films like Mostly Martha with the dub or subtitles?
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Mar 16, 2024 20:49
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Augus posted:“Politics is not about right vs wrong or good vs bad. That’s idiotic. Anyway, the story here is there’s this one guy who’s like really really evil and he needs to be stopped” wtf do liberals think politics is?
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Mar 17, 2024 06:00
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Retelling the English Civil War in contemporary America would at least be interesting and 60-70% of the audience wouldn’t be familiar enough with the history to understand that California and Texas are the Roundheads, standing in for the south and east of England. "the words populous, rich, and rebellious seemed to go hand in hand". Seems like a slam dunk for a British director trying to depict a civil war that’s not the ACW all over again.
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Mar 17, 2024 12:36
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Isn't the joke on New Fraiser that Freddie is a working class fella who dropped out of Yale to be a fireman or something?
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Mar 17, 2024 14:30
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Adolf Hitler, famous for abolishing the Gestapo. In fact, the mark of absolute tyranny is getting rid of internal security services. It's the most devilish thing a dictator can do. e: The FBI is, and has been for a long time, bigger than the actual, literal, Gestapo was at its height lol
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Mar 18, 2024 08:01
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Xaris posted:cross posting from econ thread but i literally cant stop lolling at this slide from the Q1 2024 earnings report “new” and “creativity” were perhaps poor choices for the slide
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Mar 23, 2024 12:48
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Doc Fission posted:I had a kneejerk desire to defend the art critic conceptually and then realized I couldn't name more than one and had a real "girl sit down" moment at myself I think there is something to be said for the visual arts, and their critics, but British art auctions, specifically, since the 1970's have primarily become a vehicle for money laundering while at the same time a capitalist society associates aesthetic value with auction price, which means all discussion around art that doesn't discuss capitalism is meaningless.
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Mar 23, 2024 13:11
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Xaris posted:rachel sonnett. he really screwed the pooch on that one She's been in more and more stuff and is really good too. iirc he treated her pretty terribly. Under that "aww I'm a cute widdle baby" act, Stav seems like he can be an awful guy.
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Mar 26, 2024 13:19
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indigi posted:why are so many renowned 20th century English authors Catholic? they're like <5% of the English (not British) population but I can name four world famous authors off the top of my head (Tolkien, GK Chesterton, Gene Wolfe, the Clockwork Orange guy [ok I forget his actual name but he counts]) Because we go to good schools, read a lot, on pain of the ruler on knuckles, and tolle lege.
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Mar 28, 2024 21:21
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:https://twitter.com/triplekyun/status/1773295428290691207?s=46&t=UyfxoSAUKW7QZlR_GhkuYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMA2Kc7TiO0 This is a minstrel show. e: this is just as bad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lqRPUhPfho DJJIB-DJDCT has issued a correction as of 00:06 on Mar 29, 2024 |
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Mar 29, 2024 00:03
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I think you’re describing an episode of The Outer Limits.
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Mar 29, 2024 18:46
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Nichael posted:I really liked the new season of Girls5Eva. All the 30 Rock derivatives are basically the same show but it's fine, I'll happily watch that slop. I like it better than Kimmy Schmidt, and Fey and her husband working on Broadway has obviously given them access to some real talent. How many of the cast are Tony nominees or winners at this point?
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Mar 31, 2024 21:13
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Gumball Gumption posted:It's definitely funny but just too filled with weird poo poo for me to make it through an episode of any of her stuff. 30 Rock is so loving weird because it acts like it wants to be a criticism of a lot of different things but that mostly feels like it's so they can get away with doing it. For every joke that's a criticism it feels like there's 2 that are just "ok but that poo poo is pretty funny actually". We did a joke mocking blackface as a practice so we earned a couple blackface jokes because c'mon it's funny to see people all done up in makeup. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUFTUG_XeUc
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Apr 1, 2024 03:01
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RandolphCarter posted:kimmy has problems but the cut to reveal that dudes grandma is a muppet is one of the funniest things I’ve seen 💯
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Apr 1, 2024 11:51
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platzapS posted:The third season of Righteous Gemstones fails on a basic narrative level. Episode 2 is great, the one that ends on "we, the three and you". It's so satisfying to see the siblings in a bind because their own character flaws drive off the deacons/assistant pastors. How will they recover? Christ on the Cross. They massacred my boys.
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Apr 3, 2024 21:33
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Pepe Silvia Browne posted:He needs to be a lil unlikeable in Whiplash tho, the character is the type of person who when faced with the choice between getting pussy and being 1% better at Jazz Drumming chooses the latter. Dudes rock.
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Apr 4, 2024 13:27
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Footloose, Flash Dance, and Dirty Dancing are all different things, right?
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Apr 4, 2024 23:09
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Which one had "Maniac" and the music video with the water and chair (?) that was parodied so much in the 90's and early 00's?
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Apr 5, 2024 13:33
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“That violence, in Garland’s imagined near-future, begins when California and Texas secede from the Union and form a military known simply as the “Western Forces,” hellbent on marching to Washington D.C. and taking down an autocratic President (Nick Offerman) who’s already talked his way into a third term and is preparing to declare victory even as the White House becomes increasingly encircled by the enemy. But Civil War is not about the military, or the President, or the origins of this particular conflict, because Garland knows that a 2024 audience is smart enough to draw their own conclusions on those fronts.” e: Every review mentions the  Third Term in horror, which really encapsulates the limits of liberal political imagination imo
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Apr 9, 2024 17:11
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lol redditt: If all the movie has to say is "civil wars suck" then I expect it to be a disappointment if I were to watch it. As a historian or analyst it wouldn't satisfy me one bit. I already hate most movies about the first civil war because they do not properly explore the politics and strategic decisions of the players involved. How did American democracy fall in this movie? How does that connect to 2020? The 2020 election was not stolen, the arguments that it was are absurd and don't stand up to even light scrutiny, the "patriotic rebels" who attacked the Capitol on Jan 6 were jeopardizing the very thing they thought they were saving. The mess America is in right now is down to a lack of critical thinking skills and civic knowledge in the people, particularly when it comes to figuring out what motivates people. Does the movie address that? Also, the rich and powerful have nothing to gain in a civil war right now, civil wars don't happen because a few stupid peasants are mad. Wars are attempts to solve political problems, so if the movie has no political analysis then it means nothing. I don't want to watch yet another movie that is just about people being cruel or sad.
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Apr 9, 2024 17:21
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AV club: “The white-hot nucleus of this core is, as Garland has already made clear in interviews, the importance of a free press willing to do the hard work, get deep into the blood and guts, and document the reality of the moment. Simple as that idea might seem, Garland makes it clear through every image that the heroes of Civil War are making very deliberate, very dangerous choices along the way. Jessie, Lee, Joel, and Sammy might be occasional adrenaline junkies, even old hats at this sort of thing, but the experience of relentless observation and documentation has changed them, warped them, challenged their humanity. Garland goes to great lengths to document those challenges in ways both subtle and obvious. The film doesn’t choose sides, nor does it need to, because it’s not about the sides. It’s about the unflinching reality of such a moment, highlighted by the brief respites from the violence peppered throughout the narrative; that’s what makes Civil War an especially disturbing piece of thriller filmmaking.” If only there was some sort of conflict now we could use to judge the courage and determination of our heroes in the free press…
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Apr 9, 2024 17:32
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