Recent Viewing Part IV

Silicon Valley

Very clever, insightful and at times truly cringe-worthy look into the world of ICT startups (versus the Big Players) in ...well...Silicon Valley.

Given the male-dominated niche environment of the setting, I thought this might "just" be another Big Bang Theory (which I found amusing for about one season and then it just became annoying and exasperating in much the same way Friends did two decades ago).
But no, this series keeps throwing one curve ball after the other, keeping you on your toes, being really quite funny and -amazingly- properly suspenseful at times (the final episode of season 2 is an absolute nailbiter).

Another winner from HBO!

I'm liking The Big Bang Theory a lot, very funny and witty. Jim Parsons shines as a severely socially awkward uber-nerd. What comes out of his mouth verbally is the best thing about the show IMO.

I like it but I've only dipped in and out irregularly.

The many references and nods to Star Wars and Star Trek are most welcome for a fan like me. And of course their nerdiness is something I can definitely relate to.

It's a pretty entertaining show, even if it's a cross between HOMELAND and 24, and ends up as a rather shallow affair. But I keep coming back to it. Love Sutherland in pretty much anything he does.

love it too, love the characters!

I strongly dislike Big Bang Theory, which likes to pretend it's for nerds/geeks while simultaneously using them and their culture for cheap cynical laughs. The hypocrisy turns me off.

King Kong(1933) the RKO film and another monster of sorts Martijn.

"Son of Kong"

:shrug: i like it

Saw Dunkirk last night as well, in IMAX. I think it's equally unfair to either call it 'his masterpiece' or 'best film yet', or to criticise the film for not being that. People usually tend to say these things whenever a new, great film comes out, and they usually forget about those comments a year after. They said it when Interstellar came out, and I didn't agree on that back then, and I don't now.

Dunkirk was not the film I expected it to be, but it should still be looked at for exactly what it is. It's a film with a very simple premise; get 400.000 young boys off the beach of Dunkirk and take them home. It's a film in essence about survival. It doesn't have a specific start or end, you're thrown into a situation and it shows this situation without glamorisation. In a way, it's Nolan's least Hollywood-film yet, as it's essentially a mood piece. It doesn't dazzle you with a maelstrom of battle, which I kind of expected after all the talk - it doesn't slap you around the head with blood and death, but what it does better than any war film I've seen so far, is to constantly remind you of the fear and anxiety of war. Even in quieter scenes of dialogue, there's that constant threat of a fighter plane attack. Also, the casting of boys at the exact age of soldiers back then, instead of casting actors in their end twenties, made you realise all the more how awfully young they were, thrown in the face of death. I didn't need any dialogue or back story to empathise with their horrible situation. You don't need a name to feel for someone - you feel for all of them. And in that, I think, the film succeeded.

And then there's that ending -[spoiler] that nagging feeling of the boys for not having done anything, just staying alive, and then that response, "that's enough". I think that was the essence of the film, that futility of what they were doing, that futility of war, which got to me.[/spoiler] It's a film with a surprising lack of heroics, it's just young boys thrown into this situation, which sets it apart from warfilms of the past, and justifies its place in the warfilm tradition.

As for characters , you need them mate to connect to feel to be affected and sympathize otherwise its plain plastic dolls getting killed on a beach so who cares so what. If it wasn't the historical background to all of this to make sense, this movie would have sucked balls.

I didn't mention cash at all. Its an ego film. An artistic wish. Remember how everyone was baffled when the choice of new Nolan film was announced after interstellar ? I understood why last night . Its a good film but anyone could have made it . Its standard . If he asked for all that logistical nightmare and budget for all of this ten years ago, they would not grant him. He truly wanted to make this film and now he could and he did it but other than that, for me as a viewer , it doesn't say anything else.

A director getting the artistic freedom to do what he wants thanks to the studio? Halelujah. Finally not a piece of shit dictated by audience demand and studio systems. I take this and this way of filmmaking over the Marvel or Disney controlled crap any day. A director who made his film, stands by it, knows what he is talking about, and that's why people keep talking about - it's a director who had his own vision and can be criticised by that, they're deliberate choices untouched by commercialism and you can actually talk about the choices he made.