What are you watching?

[Erestor Arcamen]

Yup I just finished it, typical Hammer, worth the watch.

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Odd to think of Joseph Losey working for Hammer.

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

Odd to think of Joseph Losey working for Hammer.

And now this songs stuck in my head 🤣

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

PBS Nova is doing a miniseries on innovative technologies. Interesting work on inflatable space stations at 39.00 in this one:

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

PBS Nova is doing a miniseries on innovative technologies. Interesting work on inflatable space stations at 39.00 in this one:

I watched this one the other day, interesting but I think I’d lose my lembas

 

[Rivendell_librarian]

I recently watched Testament of Youth - quite similar to the Tolkien biopic but better imo with a really powerful anti-war message and a great performance by Alicia Vikander of Vera Brittain

 

[Deimos]

One of the greatest movie endings ever....
(Being There with Peter Sellers playing the character Chauncey Gardiner)

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

I see this documentary I watched the other night is also on YouTube:

 

[Deimos]

@Squint-eyed Southerner ... pretty fascinating (I watched the entire presentation)... thanks for posting it 🙂

 

[Berzelmayr]

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

"Unavailable in your country". 😟

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

I'm watching IU perform live, because she never fails to lift my spirits. 😊

She wrote this song at age 16, BTW.

Edit: Yes, even this one, though it brings tears every time, and especially when she added the orchestra and chorus for the end of her first world tour (for an audience of 100,000):

(English captions available)

That was the encore -- after singing 18 songs! Jeez.

I imagine everyone knows by now of the declaration of martial law on December 3, causing fear in the South Korean population, and retraumatizing survivors of the 1980 Gwangju Massacre. Although IU's concert took place on September 2, it hadn't appeared on any platforms, until she uploaded it December 4, as if to reassure people that indeed, "love wins all".

Now I'm in tears again. 😭

Second edit: Someone in a reaction video nailed the feeling: "It's like being enfolded in a pair of comforting arms". I'm sure that's exactly what she intended. 😊

 

[Rivendell_librarian]

This beautiful and quietly moving film is well worth a watch imo.

 

[herlig9]

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

I posted this clip from 1976 in the Music thread (half a decade ago? 😳) but it was taken down by YouTube soon after. Now it's been uploaded by someone else, but I'm posting it here, for "watching" value, more than musical:

Red Vest Guy at 1:00 is doing some Kung Fu Fighting. 😁

In hindsight, the mid-70s might just have been the absolute nadir of fashion. 😲

 

[Ent]

My last watch was an old Bomba film... you know, Bomba, Lord of the Jungle, played by Johnny Sheffield (1949 through 1953), who also played "Boy" to Weismuller's Tarzan years earlier in the 1930s. (Which of course I also watched back in the day.)

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

The MGM Tarzans started skimping with Tarzan Finds a Son, recycling clips. Even worse-- in my opinion 😉 -- the Breen Office forced them to give up Maureen's loincloth bikini

And substitute the one piece "jungle dress".

 

[Halasían]

"Unavailable in your country". 😟

Here too.

---

Watching a clip from Apocolypse Now. This is one of the best scenes. Features a young Harrison Ford as 'Colonel Lucas'.

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

New series Star Wars Skeleton Crew. Sort of like The Goonies in space, not too bad so far

 

[Maedhros_Nelyafinwë]

I just saw Wicked and I was shocked by how good it was! At first, I didn't want to watch it because I saw Ariana Grande was casted as Galinda. I thought it was just a dumb celebrity casting and she would just sing in pop style. But I kept hearing good things about the movie, so I decided to go see it. VERY glad I did!! The costumes were absolutely phenomenal, and the singing was quite good. I particularly liked the Elphaba actress. Her belting sounded very effortless and healthy. And I actually really liked Ariana as Galinda. I forgot it was her, and I just saw the character. She adapted to the musical theater style quite well, and even sounded operatic on those high notes.

The costuming was honestly better than what I've seen in many a period drama. I think Galinda and Elphaba wore corsets, given that their silhouettes looked nice and snatched, and their fitted jackets and dresses fit very smoothly on them, not wrinkling or moving around. They looked like they were clinging to something solid. There were also many sources of historical inspiration in the costuming. For example, Elphaba's gorgeous overcoat in the beginning, with the corded embroidery and amazing puffed sleeves, looked very 1890s to me. I also saw characters with authentic 1920s fingerwave hairstyles. I've seen some 1920s period dramas where they don't do proper fingerwave hairstyles. And in general, I just wanted everything in Galinda's wardrobe.

Now, I had never seen Wicked on Broadway or anything, so I wasn't that familiar with the show. But I watched it with a musical theater friend, and I asked her afterwards how accurate it was to the show. She told me it was very accurate and they only made a few minor changes here and there. But otherwise the dialogue, song order and everything was exactly right.

I'm very glad I didn't allow my preconceived judgment about the actress to get in the way of my enjoyment of the movie. I finally feel like we have an actual good movie version of a Broadway musical. It seems like the Wicked movie actually understands what Broadway fans want in a movie: we want to see the show as it's written, with good quality vocals, though maybe with some slight creative changes in the scenes since a movie format is more flexible than a live stage performance. Neither the 2004 Phantom movie nor the 2012 Les Mis movie deliver on this, unfortunately. The Phantom movie vocals are an atrocity and make my ears bleed. The Les Mis movie had beautiful and heartfelt acting, but the vocals were poor (with the exception of Samantha Barks as Eponine, and Aaron Tveit as Enjolras, and they're both Broadway people). And yes, all that is my opinion. But my opinion is backed up with knowledge I've learned from taking classical voice lessons.

But anyway, in my opinion as a seamstress and soprano, Wicked was amazing and you should go see it!