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Last film you watched?


Lemonade

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Django Unchained

 

Easily the best Tarantino film for quite some time. Maybe even since Pulp Fiction. The cartoon characters and b-movie schtick that have overwhelmed his recent films is dialled back and you get a much more respectful homage to the style, this time spaghetti westerns.  There's a few bum notes - the n word being employed so often by a white writer/director is jarring and the odd 20th/21st century reference scattered throughout is a little unsettling in a wild west setting.  Great dialogue, genuine humour (the lynch mob arguing about masks was briliant) and a classic revenge story with great leads and a director who loves the genre make it work. Tarantino almost spoils it with his narcissistic desire to pop up in all his films but that's quickly forgotten in the manner of his character's swift departure.

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When Wrestling Was Golden : Grapples , Grannies and Grunts

 

A documentary about the rise and fall of British 'rasslin between the late 1950's and the mid 80's. I stumbled across it on youtube and had an hour to spare. Turned out to be really good. Lots of info on the background and the development of wrestling and how it went from dingy smoky town halls to 22 million living rooms via massive TV deals. There's some good interviews with key figures such as Max Crabtree, who was the promoter responsible for the Big Daddy / Giant Haystacks feud. Kendo Nagasaki makes a bizarre appearance in which he speaks through a medium, claims to have been alive during the days of the Samurai and shows off his missing finger.

 

The main focus seems to be wrestling's shift from a show of athleticism in the 50's to an almost soap like pantomime in the 80's. 

 

Well worth a watch even if you're aren't really a wrestling fan.

 

You can watch it on Youtube here

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Django Unchained

 

Easily the best Tarantino film for quite some time. Maybe even since Pulp Fiction. The cartoon characters and b-movie schtick that have overwhelmed his recent films is dialled back and you get a much more respectful homage to the style, this time spaghetti westerns.  There's a few bum notes - the n word being employed so often by a white writer/director is jarring and the odd 20th/21st century reference scattered throughout is a little unsettling in a wild west setting.  Great dialogue, genuine humour (the lynch mob arguing about masks was briliant) and a classic revenge story with great leads and a director who loves the genre make it work. Tarantino almost spoils it with his narcissistic desire to pop up in all his films but that's quickly forgotten in the manner of his character's swift departure.

 

I loved it, thought it was a fantastic film.

 

With regards to the N word, it was jarring but it would have been used a lot in the time the film was set in - apparently Leo DiCaprio was really uncomfortable using it, but Tarantino told him he either goes full bastard and does it or the viewers will be grossly offended by him as an actor playing the part, rather than hating the character (if that makes sense... it does in my head).

 

Also loved the soundtrack, the mix of old western-style music and hip hop/rap (I'm shite with those genres, not sure what the difference is) was great.

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I loved it, thought it was a fantastic film.

 

With regards to the N word, it was jarring but it would have been used a lot in the time the film was set in - apparently Leo DiCaprio was really uncomfortable using it, but Tarantino told him he either goes full bastard and does it or the viewers will be grossly offended by him as an actor playing the part, rather than hating the character (if that makes sense... it does in my head).

 

Also loved the soundtrack, the mix of old western-style music and hip hop/rap (I'm shite with those genres, not sure what the difference is) was great.

 

I can understand that.  It's what I told myself as I was watching it but I guess decades of watching westerns with language altered for more enlightened times rather than being authentic has changed my perception of how they should talk in these films. Having said that I don't imagine for a second that Tarantino was doing it for reasons of authenticity, maybe on some level but I imagine the main reason was mischief and to challenge the viewer.

 

Made me want to play Red Dead Redemption afterwards.  Need to dig it out this week.

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I dunno if it counts as a film as such, but the programme on the Piper platform last night was pretty horrific, im not ashamed to say i shed a few tears watching those men break down as they told their stories. I can only begin to imagine the horrors they went through. Very worth watching, even if you know nothing about the disaster. 

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I can understand that.  It's what I told myself as I was watching it but I guess decades of watching westerns with language altered for more enlightened times rather than being authentic has changed my perception of how they should talk in these films. Having said that I don't imagine for a second that Tarantino was doing it for reasons of authenticity, maybe on some level but I imagine the main reason was mischief and to challenge the viewer.

 

Made me want to play Red Dead Redemption afterwards.  Need to dig it out this week.

Ha, totally agree on the mischief point :) I do like that he calls it a "southern" too.

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I dunno if it counts as a film as such, but the programme on the Piper platform last night was pretty horrific, im not ashamed to say i shed a few tears watching those men break down as they told their stories. I can only begin to imagine the horrors they went through. Very worth watching, even if you know nothing about the disaster. 

Agree with you there Milner, there's aspects of the whole thing i just cant bear to try and get my head around, too tearful,

 

Really really sad.

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A Field In England - Directed by the guy who did Kill List (which I liked, but holy shit it was super intense). A group of English civil war deserters try to head to a pub across a field, get forced to search for gold by an evil alchemist, ingest a bunch of magic mushrooms and some thoroughly weird shit ensues. That's pretty much all that happens, but it all happens in a cool way. I liked that for an artsy film it still had a fairly silly sense of humour, the director uses sound really well, and stuff that might have seemed quite wanky-film-student-ish (shot in black and white, tripping out scenes) worked pretty well IMO. Even though I have no clue what was going on for some of it, I still found it a bit more accessible than a lot of other arthouse films. 

 

7/10 (maybe more once I watch it again)

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A Field In England - Directed by the guy who did Kill List (which I liked, but holy shit it was super intense). A group of English civil war deserters try to head to a pub across a field, get forced to search for gold by an evil alchemist, ingest a bunch of magic mushrooms and some thoroughly weird shit ensues. That's pretty much all that happens, but it all happens in a cool way. I liked that for an artsy film it still had a fairly silly sense of humour, the director uses sound really well, and stuff that might have seemed quite wanky-film-student-ish (shot in black and white, tripping out scenes) worked pretty well IMO. Even though I have no clue what was going on for some of it, I still found it a bit more accessible than a lot of other arthouse films. 

 

7/10 (maybe more once I watch it again)

I bought that in Asda the other day, not watched it yet though....did you see his last film "Sightseers"? Worth a watch. A geeky couple go on a caravan holiday and start killing random folk who annoy them.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Stone Cold Steve Austin

Used to like wrasslin' when I was a kid. Haven't really watched it for well over 10 years. Good documentary though. Alot of insight into his early career which I didn't know anything about, and the development of the Stone Cold character as the anti-hero. His character definitely jumped the shark around the time he turned into a comedy character. Some of that stuff is pretty awful - like when he's singing Kumbaya with a guitar to Vince McMahon - and interestingly, he regrets a great deal of it. Still, can't fault his commitment to his job through injury, carrying on with a broken vertebrae and when Owen Hart nearly killed him. Good watch.

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King of Kong

 

Watched this last night after a friend recommending it. I had no idea what it was about, other than it being a documentary. It turns out it tells the story of a battle between two people to have the world record score on the original Donkey Kong arcade game. I thought it was excellent. At times it seems bizarre just how seriously some people take this but the film sucks you in and you end up caring too. By the end I really did care which of the two main guys ended up with the record but I wont spoil it as I'd highly recommend watching it.

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