I Just Watched...

[Masha]

Forget About It (2006)


A low-level mobster has crafted the perfect retirement plan: steal four million from his uncle and then enter witness protection. All goes well until he is located in a retirement community which is home to three combat veterans and a bombshell.

I like Burt Reynolds very much and Charles Durning is usually a lot of fun. I hoped this would be somewhat similar to: The Crew (2000) as it is Burt Reynolds and his fellow seniors inadvertently having to fight the mob.

I am sorry to say that not even: Raquel Welch could save this.

I give any movie which makes me laugh the benefit of the doubt when it comes to a weak script, poor direction and worse editing. I am sorry to say that that is not the case here. I believe I smiled at least twice. That is as wild and wonderful as it gets.

4.2/11

This movie is available for viewing for free with commercials on: TubiTV

[norfious]

I just watched Blue Thunder (1983) because I have been binge-watching Roy Scheider's films and tv shows lately. Honestly, I had low expectations for this title because I am not an action movie fan, but I thought I'd give it a shot because I had the same initial thoughts about Cohen and Tate (1988) and ended up loving that film. Well, Blue Thunder did not live up to even my lowest expectations.

Scheider's acting was good, as usual, but the plot was quite unbelievable and uninteresting and there were elements of his character that I thought were not cohesive. I try my best to suspend my disbelief when I watch films and try not to get caught up in thoughts of "But what about...?" and "But why..?" but I really couldn't help myself with this one. Scheider's character was also unbelievably nonchalant and almost chipper during some tense scenes, which did not match well with how his character was conveyed in most of the film.

The one scene that I did kind of enjoy, if just for a laugh, was the end when Scheider walks away from an exploding helicopter and does nothing more but wince. I'm not sure if he actually enjoyed the film or not, but the expression on his face seemed to convey the thought of "Well, thank goodness that's over."

An excerpt from the Lonely Island song "Cool Guys Don't Look At Explosions" is incredibly apt for this whole film: "Walk fast from that boring explosion, and don't think about the people you've killed."

[Swithin]

Elite
Season One: Eight episodes (Netflix)
(There are six seasons, 2018-2022, with a seventh season in the works.)

This fabulous series is basically a soap opera, filled with every cliche in the book, yet it's quite wonderful. The cast is beautiful; no one is fat or ugly. The production values are terrific, and the story is engaging. There is class conflict, bullying, nudity, sex (straight, gay, bi, threesome), violence, murder, corruption, parties, and drugs; and once in a while, true love.

A high school collapses. Three poor students from the school are given scholarships to a posh school, where all the other students are super rich. The trio consists of a sweet, introspective boy whose brother has just been released from jail; a hothead comedian who wants to be a model; and a Muslim girl with a very strict, traditionalist father. These kids fall in with a very wealthy group of friends. The interactions between the trio and their new friends basically serve as the storyline for much of the series. Although there is a lot of compassion evident in many of the relationships, I wish the kids would have exercised more discretion. Secrets revealed, even to closest friends, lead to trouble!

[HoldenIsHere]

Elite
Season One: Eight episodes (Netflix)

I know some people on the old TCM forum liked to bash Netflix series, but there are a few that I like quite a lot so it's nice to see some positive comments, Swithin.

Some of the series that really enjoy are:

CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA (based on the Archie comics character)
BOO, B**CH
WEDNESDAY
RATCHED
HOLLYWOOD
THE POLITICIAN (Bette Midler is hilarious in Season 2!)

I haven't started watching LOOCKWOOD & CO. yet but I'm looking forward to that one.

[Swithin]

Elite
Season One: Eight episodes (Netflix)

I know some people on the old TCM forum liked to bash Netflix series, but there are a few that I like quite a lot so it's nice to see some positive comments, Swithin.

Some of the series that really enjoy are:

CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA (based on the Archie comics character)
BOO, B**CH
WEDNESDAY
RATCHED
HOLLYWOOD
THE POLITICIAN (Bette Midler is hilarious in Season 2!)

I haven't started watching LOOCKWOOD & CO. yet but I'm looking forward to that one.

Thanks for the recommendations. When I switched cell phone providers last June, the new company (T-Mobile) gave me Netflix. I'm enjoying a lot of the films and series. I finally got to see The Crown, and I can't wait for the new season of Babylon Berlin, which should drop soon. And I loved Peaky Blinders! Some good films too, including the new All Quiet on the Western Front, which just today won the BAFTA for Best Movie. (I liked it, but I think prefer the earlier version.)

[EP Millstone]

Elite
. . . The cast is beautiful; no one is fat or ugly . . .

T-I-L-T!

Is that your opinion, Swithin? To wit, are you saying Fat=Ugly?

Or are you reporting on the aesthetics of the show's producers and casting directors?

[Swithin]

Deleted. Double post, although I perhaps should have kept it in, in case I could get double likes!

[Swithin]

Elite
. . . The cast is beautiful; no one is fat or ugly . . .

T-I-L-T!

Is that your opinion, Swithin? To wit, are you saying Fat=Ugly?

Or are you reporting on the aesthetics of the show's producers and casting directors?

No. If I meant that, the word "Fat" would have been redundant, wouldn't it? Actually, the reason I put that in was that I heard today (on LBC, a UK radio station) that Roald Dahl's children's books are being rewritten to excise words like fat and ugly, as well as other words. Roald Dahl has nothing to do with the series I was touting; the words were just on my mind because of the UK news. (But, as it happens, the cast members of Elite are all actually svelte and beautiful!)

An article in this week's Spectator (UK) has this title:

The rewriting of Roald Dahl is an act of cultural vandalism

[laffite]

....as well as practicing Necrophilia in a figurative sense.

[TikiSoo]

An article in this week's Spectator (UK) has this title:
The rewriting of Roald Dahl is an act of cultural vandalism

I agree, unbelievable.
Doesn't art give us a window to what life was like before our times? You CAN'T eradicate the past, why does anyone think it can be changed?

For some reason I survived the idea of young Peter Rabbit being attacked by a giant human with a iron tool. Distasteful? Yes. Scary? Yes, but you survive. Stories, especially children's stories are supposed to open your mind & teach lessons.

Some stories illustrate inhumanity and exploitation. Watching old movies I sometimes marvel at how far we've come (child labor/slavery) and other times wonder why we haven't evolved farther by this time.

[Swithin]

An article in this week's Spectator (UK) has this title:
The rewriting of Roald Dahl is an act of cultural vandalism

I agree, unbelievable.
Doesn't art give us a window to what life was like before our times? You CAN'T eradicate the past, why does anyone think it can be changed?

For some reason I survived the idea of young Peter Rabbit being attacked by a giant human with a iron tool. Distasteful? Yes. Scary? Yes, but you survive. Stories, especially children's stories are supposed to open your mind & teach lessons.

Some stories illustrate inhumanity and exploitation. Watching old movies I sometimes marvel at how far we've come (child labor/slavery) and other times wonder why we haven't evolved farther by this time.

Here's a brief excerpt from the long article.

The vandals have come for Roald Dahl. His books for children are to be cleansed of their ‘offensive’ content. Sensitivity readers – what we used to call censors – have been employed to pore over his works and expurgate any word or passage that might hurt a kid’s feelings. If you weren’t worried about cancel culture before, surely this egregious assault on some of the best-known children’s books of the modern era, this posthumous purging of an author’s output, will change your mind.

What right do blue-pencil-wielding sensitivity readers have to drive the juggernaut of correct thought through Dahl’s imaginary landscape?
Every fashionable political belief of the 2020s is being crowbarred into Dahl’s fictional universe. So Matilda no longer reads Rudyard Kipling – that imperial old brute! – but Jane Austen. One of Dahl’s witches who posed as ‘a cashier in a supermarket’ is now a ‘top scientist’. We wouldn’t want any young witch to feel that the STEM subjects aren’t for her. Words like ‘crazy’ and ‘mad’ have been excised, lest they appear to make light of mental-health problems. Even such everyday words as black and white are out. Characters no longer turn ‘white with fear’ and the Big Friendly Giant no longer wears a ‘black cloak’. Why? In case a black kid feels offended when he reads that fantastic tale? The patrician urge of the sensitivity police to protect ethnic-minority children from certain words is infinitely more insulting to them than Dahl’s tales could ever be.

Let us be frank about what is going on here. This is a cultural purging. These arrogant alterations represent a profoundly censorious attack on one of Britain’s best-loved writers. They can doll it up in the language of ‘sensitivity’ and ‘inclusion’ as much as they like, but to the rest of us it still smacks of a Stalinist correction of wrongspeak.

[Detective Jim McLeod]

A Tough Winter (1930) DVD -4/10

Stepin Fetchit helps out the Little Rascals when they mess up the house with homemade taffy.

I am still going through my newly acquired Little Rascals DVD (as I mentioned on the Additions To Your Collection forum) and this is one I never saw before. It was withdrawn from circulation due to controversy over Stepin Fetchit's stereotyped character.
Just taking it as at face value, it is one of the weakest of the Our Gang shorts. The pacing is as slow and lazy as Fechit's character. Though he has one of the funniest moments when he says he can't read a letter during the day since he went to night school. The gang making the taffy is mildly amusing and there are some laughs when Fetchit messes up the plumbing and electricity. This would be only worth seeing as a curio or you want to be an Our Gang completist.

[HoldenIsHere]

An article in this week's Spectator (UK) has this title:
The rewriting of Roald Dahl is an act of cultural vandalism

I agree, unbelievable.
Doesn't art give us a window to what life was like before our times? You CAN'T eradicate the past, why does anyone think it can be changed?

For some reason I survived the idea of young Peter Rabbit being attacked by a giant human with a iron tool. Distasteful? Yes. Scary? Yes, but you survive. Stories, especially children's stories are supposed to open your mind & teach lessons.

Some stories illustrate inhumanity and exploitation. Watching old movies I sometimes marvel at how far we've come (child labor/slavery) and other times wonder why we haven't evolved farther by this time.

Here's a brief excerpt from the long article.

The vandals have come for Roald Dahl. His books for children are to be cleansed of their ‘offensive’ content. Sensitivity readers – what we used to call censors – have been employed to pore over his works and expurgate any word or passage that might hurt a kid’s feelings. If you weren’t worried about cancel culture before, surely this egregious assault on some of the best-known children’s books of the modern era, this posthumous purging of an author’s output, will change your mind.

What right do blue-pencil-wielding sensitivity readers have to drive the juggernaut of correct thought through Dahl’s imaginary landscape?

They can doll it up in the language of ‘sensitivity’ and ‘inclusion’ as much as they like, but to the rest of us it still smacks of a Stalinist correction of wrongspeak.

The problem with this argument is that the changes to Dahl's works are driven by the profit motive.
It is not "sensitivity readers" who clamored for the re-writes, but those who hold the rights to Dahl's works ---the Roald Dahl Story Company (headed by Dahl's grandson Luke Kelly) ---- who want to clean up Dahl's stories to make them marketable to today's audience.

Vandalism it is not.
No alterations are being made that aren't sanctioned by owners of the properties.

Stalinism it is not.
It is, in fact, pure capitalism.

[LawrenceA]

The problem with this argument is that the changes to Dahl's works are driven by the profit motive.
It is not "sensitivity readers" who clamored for the re-writes, but those who hold the rights to Dahl's works ---the Roald Dahl Story Company (headed by Dahl's grandson Luke Kelly) ---- who want to clean up Dahl's stories to make them marketable to today's audience.

Vandalism it is not.
No alterations are being made that aren't sanctioned by owners of the properties.

Stalinism it is not.
It is, in fact, pure capitalism.

I've also read in articles about this that Dahl himself changed passages in his works during his lifetime to revise things that he felt were no longer in touch with the times.

I don't condone censorship, but as Holden points out, this is pure market pandering and absolutely capitalist.