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TV & Movies

You are here: Home / Archives for TV & Movies

Programming Note (Open Thread)

by Betty Cracker|  August 23, 20233:44 pm| 182 Comments

This post is in: Food, Open Threads, TV & Movies

Everyone who knows me in real life is aware that I worship Ina Garten as a goddess. And yet somehow, no one thought to inform me that she launched a new TV series called “Be My Guest With Ina Garten.” A couple of years ago! I had to stumble across it while scrolling through options on HBO Max when I woke up at stupid o’clock today and couldn’t get back to sleep!

The premise is Ina Garten invites people she admires (some folks she knows, some she’s never met) to her house in the Hamptons to cook, mix cocktails and shoot the shit about life. In the first episode, the lucky guest was actor Julianna Margulies. They made margaritas and a haddock recipe Margulies often cooks at home, with Ina Garten serving as sous-chef. Margulies was fan-girling out as hard as I would have!

Ina Garten and Julianna Margulies

That’s the only episode I’ve seen so far since I just discovered this treasure trove today in the wee hours, but there’s three seasons, and other guests include Stanley Tucci, Nathan Lane, Nora Jones, Faith Hill and Misty Copeland.

Anyway, now you know.

Open thread!

Programming Note (Open Thread)Post + Comments (182)

Medium Cool – Have You Ever?

by WaterGirl|  August 20, 20237:00 pm| 163 Comments

This post is in: Books, Medium Cool, Popular Culture, TV & Movies, Culture as a Hedge Against This Soul-Sucking Political Miasma We're Living In

Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

So, have you ever read a book, or seen a movie, or heard a story, that made you wish you could live in that time or that place or in that setting?  Have that challenge or experience that adventure?

I have no sense of what year the movie Witness came out, but I do know that was a very stressful period in my life.  I was really drawn to that movie, and sometimes I wished I could have a simpler life, or could live in a simpler time.  (I feel (fairly) certain dancing in the barn with Harrison Ford had nothing to do with it!)

When I was young, I would hear stories from my uncle and others who had worked on the railroads when they were booming – and it seemed like it would have been exciting to have been a part of something like that.

Perry Mason definitely made me want to become a lawyer.  It can be interesting sometimes to think about the road not taken.

Anyway… how about you guys?  Have you ever read a book, or seen a movie, or heard a story, that made you wish you could live in that time or that place or in that setting?  Did any of those stories change your path?

 

Medium Cool – Have You Ever?Post + Comments (163)

Summer Blockbuster Equal Time Open Thread: Oppenheimer

by Anne Laurie|  July 24, 202310:20 pm| 126 Comments

This post is in: Movies, Riveted By The Sociological Significance Of It All

Looking for "Oppenheimer" tickets?

Director Christopher Nolan has some tips for how to see his film — including where he'd want to sit. https://t.co/i6b5UHSjRO

— The Associated Press (@AP) July 23, 2023

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Christopher Nolan movie, and this won’t be the one that breaks that string, if only because I have enough paranoia dreams about nuclear war already. But it *is*, no doubt, a worthy & significant film. So here’s a space for y’all to discuss it…

Vanity Fair had a piece on The Cast of Oppenheimer and the Real People They Play” — many useful pictures!

New York Review of Books included an informative, inimitably NYRB review from a critic who lists his biases up front:

If you’re a member of any dynasty prominent in twentieth-century political history—with Roosevelts, Churchills, Windsors, and Kennedys at the forefront—your relatives are certain to be reincarnated in a nondocumentary film sooner or later. The halo effect of those families’ global fame sometimes also encompasses lesser participants on the periphery of momentous events. So when I read that Christopher Nolan, the British-American director best known for his Dark Knight Batman trilogy, would make his next feature about the theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, what excited me most was personal. Often called the father of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer was a longstanding intimate and colleague of I. I. Rabi (rhymes with “hobby”), winner of the 1944 Nobel Prize in Physics and a first cousin of my paternal grandfather. To this day members of the Rabi branch of our Stammbaum, whom I call my nuclear family, still refer to the physicist by his nickname, Oppie…

During my youth Oppenheimer was the world’s most famous scientist after Einstein—a stature he achieved by directing the Manhattan Project’s desert laboratory in Los Alamos, where he led an unruly pack of young scientists to build the first nuclear weapon. His death at sixty-two in 1967, of throat cancer from decades of relentless chain-smoking, made the front page of The New York Times. Since then he’s inspired an unusual number of theater pieces for a scientist, including at least three plays, two musicals, and an opera performed at the Met. Having admired Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s magisterial 2005 study American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, I was encouraged to learn that Nolan used it as the basis for his screenplay. The book brought me back to my early familiarity with Oppenheimer’s story, which combines the mythic import of the Ring cycle with humanizing details that exemplify the inextricable links between world-changing occurrences and the minutiae of everyday life…

show full post on front page

The perspicacious Helen Newmark Rabi had known the more-sensitive-than-thou Oppenheimer since early childhood—they were classmates at New York’s private, progressive Ethical Culture School, where he enrolled in 1911—and considered him an insufferable poseur. Rabi held a more amused, though hardly uncritical, view of Oppenheimer’s high-flown airs. They first met in 1929, while both were pursuing postgraduate studies in Europe, and these fellow New York Jews took to each other right away despite their very different upbringings, temperaments, and worldviews. Rabi attributed their dissimilarities to class, his colleague having been, in his unsparing words, “a rich spoiled Jewish brat,” the eldest son of highly assimilated German Jews. The Oppenheimers’ full-floor apartment on Riverside Drive was hung with a Blue Period Picasso and three Van Gogh canvases, among other artworks, the opulent opposite of the two-room Lower East Side tenement flat where Rabi grew up in an impoverished Galician-Jewish family. For him, science was the universal equalizer of humankind, rather than the transcendental elevator of the spirit that Oppenheimer deemed it to be.

Far more than I’d imagined possible in a film about a scientist, Nolan conveys the thrill of discovery that gripped the small international confraternity of physicists who between the two world wars advanced into the new conceptual frontiers opened by Albert Einstein (played here, a bit clownishly for my taste, by Tom Conti) with his theory of relativity. Oppenheimer’s director-screenwriter not only clarifies highly arcane scientific information for the lay viewer but makes it exciting, a propellant to the human drama onscreen. If at times there seem to be too many full-screen montages of swirling atoms and distant galaxies, happily we are spared clichéd close-ups of furrowed brows before inspiration strikes…

Not having been inside a movie theater in more than three years because of the pandemic, I found Nolan’s pull-out-all-the-stops IMAX extravaganza an exhilarating reintroduction to cinema, stunningly realized by the sweeping cinematography of the Dutch-Swedish Hoyte van Hoytema. The bass-heavy audio mixing by Willie D. Burton seems more suited to the usual IMAX car chase fare than to a drama with many intimate scenes, in which dialogue is often covered by the thumping soundtrack. Understandably, the tour de force of the special effects team, led by Scott R. Fisher, was preordained to be the first atomic blast. Especially memorable is the delay between the detonation’s visual and sonic impact, the latter happening after a startlingly long interval, as thunder does with lightning. Elementary physics, but very effective…

NYRB also had a (should be paywall-free) repost of Thomas Powers’ original 2005 review of American Prometheus, and three related Oppenheimer bios — “An American Tragedy”:

One of the many complexities of the character of J. Robert Oppenheimer is apparent in his response to the discovery of nuclear fission in January 1939. “The U business is unbelievable,” he wrote to a colleague once he had satisfied himself that uranium atoms really did split when bombarded with neutrons. “It is I think exciting, not in the rare way of positrons and mesotrons, but in a good honest practical way.” He meant that fission didn’t turn physics upside down and inside out like so many other discoveries of the first decades of the twentieth century. Fission was as practical as a hammer…

The speed of Oppenheimer’s mind would not have surprised those who knew him. At thirty-four Oppenheimer was famously brilliant. The surprise was his enthusiasm for the “good honest practical way” fission might be put to work. His whole life had been moving in an entirely different direction since his discovery of physics, and especially theoretical physics, at Harvard in the early 1920s, then at the Cavendish lab in Cambridge, England, and finally in the German university town of Göttingen, where he studied with Max Born, argued with his fellow students, and developed “some taste in physics.”

For a decade theory dominated his life and later his teaching in California until the mid-1930s when Oppenheimer suddenly discovered politics—specifically, the “popular front” politics of the American Communist Party as it tried to rally resistance to fascism. Oppenheimer’s politics were, however—like his physics—mainly theoretical. He always insisted he never joined the Party himself, and the FBI, despite a dozen years of relentless surveillance and phone-tapping, never managed to prove he did.

Oppenheimer early in the war readily agreed with a US Army security officer, charged with weighing his loyalty, and said it seemed he had “belonged to nearly every fellow-traveling organization on the West Coast.” He went to rallies, helped raise funds for refugees of the Spanish civil war, made substantial donations of his own to a representative of the Party, fell in love with one Communist, and was close to many others, including his brother Frank, who joined the Party in 1936 and remained until about 1942. For Oppenheimer in his Red period communism was a noble ideal, a way of conceiving a just world, and very likely—much in the way of his physics, his ambitious reading, his tailoring, his interest in art, food, wine, and martinis made exactly so—another means of distinguishing himself from the ordinary run of mankind…

Vulture (NYMag) has a post on “The Troubling Reverberations at the End of Oppenheimer, Explained” — which includes answers from Christopher Nolan. I found it interesting, but, of course — spoilers! (for the film itself, not for the history behind it).

======

And then, of course, there’s the social media response to Oppenheimer…

Amazing that so much twitter discourse over Oppenheimer is based on the mistaken assumption that it's actually The Wind Rises.

— Paul Wang (@Cataphrak) July 21, 2023


(The Wind Rises)

The guy's name is the title of the movie. It's like how Titanic was about how great the ship was or how The Godfather was about how wonderful it was to be Vito Corleone. https://t.co/3gJV0M5OgZ

— Starfish Unexpectedly Cancelled For Hating Hitler (@IRHotTakes) July 22, 2023

Ah yes the real victims of WWII: the Japanese https://t.co/JZjWIhS2rw

— Gas Stove Prayer Warrior (@canderaid) July 20, 2023

If you want people to sympathize with the Japanese in WW2, showing everyone their perspective is probably the worst way to go about that. A movie "centering Japanese voices" would be bone-chilling.

— Now on Threads! (@agraybee) July 22, 2023

Every facet of Hot Political Take-dom!

National Review’s movie critic on Oppenheimer: Nolan evokes “the atrocity of the January 6 show trials” pic.twitter.com/4x2LLD4Onr

— Christian Vanderbrouk ?????????? (@UrbanAchievr) July 21, 2023

Oppenheimer was a fine movie but its politics were a bit iffy. wouldve been way better if at the end Oppenheimer turned to the camera & said "i am anti-American now" & then specified hes the exact kind of anti-American i am pic.twitter.com/fbMm8HSSwx

— Nicholas Grossman (@NGrossman81) July 23, 2023

magical, somehow we've invented *another* moronic form of Oppenheimer discourse.

do you think maybe the *several known atomic spies* had something to do with this https://t.co/Z82gPgYQYw

— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) July 22, 2023

They already made this movie it's called "Hidden Figures" I wonder why you don't find it inspiring https://t.co/7wAztfZTu9

— The okayest poster there is (@ok_post_guy) July 22, 2023

It looks different when yours are the boots about to be on the ground, of course…

I remember the WWII vets in my neighborhood talking about The Bomb. The Army and Marine vets were all for it. The Navy and AF guys were convinced that at least Nagasaki wasn't necessary.

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) July 22, 2023

Summer Blockbuster Equal Time Open Thread: <em>Oppenheimer</em>Post + Comments (126)

Medium Cool – Barbie!

by WaterGirl|  July 23, 20237:00 pm| 244 Comments

This post is in: Culture as a Hedge Against This Soul-Sucking Political Miasma We're Living In, Medium Cool, Popular Culture, TV & Movies

Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

I’m heading out of town in the morning, but for tonight’s Medium Cool, you can talk Barbie.  Yes, Barbie.  I guess this movie is a cultural phenomenon?

You guys have been all over this in the comments, and Martin suggested that this would be a good Medium Cool discussion.  The Thin Black Duke had some interesting thoughts in that thread, as well, but I don’t know which thread it was so I can’t add them here.

Medium Cool – Barbie!Post + Comments (244)

Sunday Morning Open Thread: We Like to Watch Argue

by Anne Laurie|  July 23, 20238:37 am| 177 Comments

This post is in: Food, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Television, Trump Indictments

Sunday Morning Open Thread 8
 
American consumer products, still taking over the world!

The first “American Chinese food” restaurant opens in Beijing.

For Chinese like me who’ve only seen the oyster pail in TV series, the food is intriguing. For Americans in China, such Chinese takeaway may come with a sense of nostalgia. @USA_BaoziLover pic.twitter.com/UelNDQt8b8

— Worth Work Words (@work_worth) July 21, 2023

If the Hollywood strikes drag on, we’ll need fresh content:

Fabulous https://t.co/Qx7tHpRAIh

— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) July 21, 2023

The new Trump TV Show
“Trump’s Trials”°•Oct. 2: New York civil fraud trial°•Jan. 15: Second E. Jean Carroll civil defamation trial°•March 25: Manhattan hush-money trial°•May 20: Federal classified documents trial in Florida
Check local listings https://t.co/fblZ6W6lVm

— EJ Dionne (@EJDionne) July 21, 2023

From the Jason Aldean meltdown to “pajama boys”, here are 5 ~totally real~ stories you might’ve missed if you don’t watch Fox News.

And yes, I do talk about Jesse Watters’ mom: pic.twitter.com/67uAGUqjZE

— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) July 21, 2023

Sunday Morning Open Thread: We Like to <del>Watch</del> ArguePost + Comments (177)

Saturday Morning Entertainments Open Thread

by Anne Laurie|  July 22, 20239:16 am| 148 Comments

This post is in: Movies, Music, Nature, Open Threads, Readership Capture, Space

Like I do every year, here are some songs I’ve been listening to this summer — a mix of old and new. Look forward to hearing what I’ve missed. pic.twitter.com/H2Do2iaD1p

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) July 20, 2023

Per Rolling Stone:

… The playlist also features throwback songs by the Rolling Stones, the Pretenders, the Beths, the Bangles, Janet Jackson, Ella Fitzgerald, and Leonard Cohen. Plus, how could you leave “California Love” by 2Pac off a summer playlist?

Last month, Obama sat down with Hasan Minhaj and was asked whether he actually curated his year playlists. “People seem to think, ‘Well, he must’ve had some 20-year-old intern who was figuring out this latest cut,’” he said. “No, man! It’s on my iPad right now!”

A highly technical process is underway in Los Angeles to put NASA's retired Space Shuttle Endeavour on display in the vertical launch position complete with external tank and two solid rocket boosters. https://t.co/HrA97VMGY6

— The Associated Press (@AP) July 21, 2023

Jason Momoa, who dreamed of a career as a marine biologist before Hollywood anointed him as Aquaman, is going back to his roots as Discovery Channel's new host for "Shark Week." https://t.co/ycwsYuEs9r

— The Associated Press (@AP) July 20, 2023

Nature updates…

show full post on front page

Otter chaos: A sea otter launched into the spotlight after social media images circulated of her aggressively wresting surfboards away from surfers off the coast of California is building a fan club as she continues to evade capture. https://t.co/tR69P5Lg79

— AP Oddities (@AP_Oddities) July 21, 2023

It's now a porcine of interest: Authorities have determined that there is “no acute danger” near Berlin where a potentially dangerous animal was spotted. Experts analyzed a video and concluded the animal may have been a wild boar, not a lioness. https://t.co/edTJIrjkcW

— AP Oddities (@AP_Oddities) July 21, 2023

Every time this happens I donate $50 to @ColinAllredTX https://t.co/FtZznmWC7g

— Pax Bidenica (@TonyMoonbeam) July 20, 2023

they just declare war on any movie that they think will be big. if they're wrong (ie people generally like the film), they'll just memory hole the outrage. if they're right (ie people generally dislike the movie often for unrelated reasons), they get endless mileage

— Lesbian Death Bed: The Bed that Eats Pussy (@bitterkarella) July 21, 2023

Saturday Morning Entertainments Open ThreadPost + Comments (148)

Medium Cool – Walked Out, Turned It Off, Or Stopped Reading

by WaterGirl|  July 16, 20237:00 pm| 288 Comments

This post is in: Books, Medium Cool, Popular Culture, TV & Movies, Culture as a Hedge Against This Soul-Sucking Political Miasma We're Living In

Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

Let’s dedicate tonight’s Medium Cool to the subject of movies we walked out on (in the theater), movies or TV shows that we stopped watching before the end, and books we stopped reading before we got to the end.

Don’t just tell us which book / movie / show you didn’t finish.  I’m especially looking forward to hearing the why!

Medium Cool – Walked Out, Turned It Off, Or Stopped Reading!

I think the hardest movie I have ever watched was Schindler’s List, but I never thought about walking out.  Thank goodness for the music in that film or I never would have made it through!

If you feel like it, we can also talk about really tough books / shows / movies we have made it through, and why.

Announcement:

The first part of Subaru Dianne’s two-part series on Josephine Tay will be in two weeks, on July 30.  Then we’ll skip a week and come back to it on Aug 13.  I asked SD to share a bit of her plan for us in this series.

Scottish-born Elizabeth MacKintosh (1896-1952) wrote in various genres under several pseudonyms, the best known of which is Josephine Tey. Although Tey published only eight mystery novels, she occupies a prominent spot in the Golden Age pantheon thanks to her 1951 masterpiece The Daughter of Time.

I suggest we discuss Tey and her works in two Medium Cool sessions. On July 30, let’s go over the five books featuring her detective Alan Grant: The Man in the Queue, A Shilling for Candles, To Love and Be Wise, The Daughter of Time, and The Singing Sands.

On August 13, let’s get into Tey’s three stand-alone mysteries: Miss Pym Disposes, The Franchise Affair (Grant appears briefly in this, but he is not the protagonist), and Brat Farrar. These books introduce elements of profound moral/ethical ambiguity.

I love Tey’s writing, and I can’t wait to read your thoughts and comments in a few weeks!  ~ SD

Okay, back to our previously scheduled event for tonight, talking about books we closed, shows we turned off, and movies we walked out on.

 

Medium Cool – Walked Out, Turned It Off, Or Stopped ReadingPost + Comments (288)

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