Part One:
One of the greatest aircraft ever. Sit back and spend an hour to see why.
Part Two:
Fascism, explained. 45 minutes
Excellent analysis, from an unlikely source.
Part Three:
Middle-Aged Sex. 30 minutes
I find the parallels to today quite interesting.
Here’s an article which resonated with me:
Why are today’s TV shows and movies so GRAY?
I’ve now got to the point where the movie has been consistently dark during the first five or ten minutes, off I go to somewhere else. Ditto the Brit movies in which the dialogue is either mumbled, spoken in an unintelligible accent or both. Also, the ones where impenetrable slang is in more than half the dialogue — I know, it’s realism, but still — I don’t expect characters to speak Received English via the Royal Shakespeare Company either.
And for gawd’s sake, S-L-O-W D-O-W-N when you speak your lines.
Pardon me if I just want to know what the hell is going on in your precious Work Of Art. Cinema is becoming like modern art, where the expression is so personal that it needs explanation by the auteur. And don’t give me that “mood” jive, either. You wanna see a mood, just watch my expression as I hit the “outta here” button on the remote.
I do make an exception for the Scandi-noir movies and TV shows, because the Scandis only ever get about two hours of sunlight a day, so an average production would take years to shoot if they waited for sunny days.
But even that’s a problem: in every police station I’ve ever been in (and there have been quite a few hem hem), the rooms are brightly lit to almost daylight levels. In the movies, I’m constantly yelling at the screen for someone to hit a light switch.
No wonder they miss so many clues: they can’t fucking see them.
And no wonder so many people are ditching Netflix, Prime et al., when so many movies are being made according to the Intangible / Unintelligible Sludge formula.
Ever wondered about Rolls-Royce? Wonder no more.
And no asinine commentary: just a bunch of craftsmen going about their business. Wonderfully calming.
Am I the only one who found this little turnabout amusing?
Appetite for money, of course. When Depp was first involved in that “#BelieveAllWomen” court case, Disney dropped him like a hot rock.
I wrote this at the time:
Considering that Depp’s performance was the only thing that made the whole thing at all watchable, this should be its death knell, and not a moment too soon. I watched the first two Pirates movies with huge enjoyment, lost interest after that. I doubt that anything Disney does would make me watch another one, unless the new lead character was portrayed by Carol Vorderman, in the nude.
Now that Depp’s been cleared of all the accusations made by his loony ex-houri, no doubt the foul moneygrubbers at Woke Disney will be all too willing to welcome him back into the fold, to play Captain Jack Sparrow for the umpteenth time so they can refill their vault at Gringotts Bank.
And I hope that he tells them to go and fuck themselves.
As Britishland gathered to celebrate their Queen’s Platinum Jubilee yesterday, the crowd was immense — even larger than the Lightbringer’s inauguration (click both pics below to embiggen).
I noted this picture, too:
Conspicuously absent were Prince Ginger and his Hollywood houri. No doubt the Royals wanted the crowds to cheer (which they did, mightily) and not boo (which they would have).
I am, as Regular Readers are aware, a huge fan of gloomy Scandi detective shows. My latest binge was The Killing (on Prime), which I devoured, all twenty hours of it, over a couple days last week.
*Disclaimer: I know that Denmark isn’t regarded as a Scandi country. As far as I’m concerned, any country on the western shores of the Baltic which has damp, freezing, miserable weather, gets dark at about 4pm, and features actors speaking a language which sounds like a chicken with its throat half-cut, is a Scandi country. Also, if the heroine detective — they’re all heroine detectives; all the men are idiots, clowns or bad guys — is halfway between plain and ugly, and the plot is dense and contains about five different story lines, then it’s a Scandi detective movie.
As was The Killing, in absolutely every respect.
However, in this show I saw something out of the ordinary: a woman with quite a large part, who was not halfway between plain and ugly. Let me introduce you all to Marie Askehave:
In the TV show, she has coal-black hair which shows off those startling blue eyes to perfection:
Also, she’s one of those women who doesn’t do well in still photos — in a movie medium, though, she’s captivating.
The show’s good, too.
Lest anyone thinks I’m going overboard about plain-to-ugly Scandi female detectives, here’s The Killing‘s lead, Sofie Gråbøl:
…and that’s a studio pic — she looks far worse in the show.