The Criterion Channel

[DaBargainHunta]

5th Ave Girl was fun. Rich old guy meets poor young girl (Ginger Rogers).

For a noir version of this premise, check out Robert Siodmak's The Suspect if it ever returns to the Channel or shows up elsewhere.

Tonight? Maybe Night Moves with Gene Hackman.

[RCRochester]

Originally Posted by DaBargainHunta

5th Ave Girl was fun. Rich old guy meets poor young girl (Ginger Rogers).

For a noir version of this premise, check out Robert Siodmak's The Suspect if it ever returns to the Channel or shows up elsewhere.

Tonight? Maybe Night Moves with Gene Hackman.

Definitely watch Night Moves if you've never seen it before. Fantastic piece of neo-noir.

[DaBargainHunta]

Originally Posted by RCRochester

Definitely watch Night Moves if you've never seen it before. Fantastic piece of neo-noir.

I'm almost tempted to ask you to post this in the noir thread, just because there's one guy there who absolutely loses his shit whenever the term "neo-noir" is mentioned.

[DaBargainHunta]

Night Moves is indeed a great noir, as RCRochester said. Definitely worth watching for Gene Hackman + Melanie Griffith and James Woods in early roles.

I'm watching The Adventures of Prince Achmed (not expiring) for my Film Club tonight + maybe Heels and Twisted Metal elsewhere (both TV series) if I have any energy left.

Tomorrow, I'll probably get back to the expiring picks on the Channel. Maybe Fran, maybe something else. (How musical is The Three Musketeers?)

[fdm]

What I spent the last few days doing on and off (on my Mac):

[Show spoiler]I got the urge to upgrade my Mac from Mojave to Ventura, or at least to try it on for finally switching over size, as a lot of support for software on Mojave is being dropped, and security updates have been just about non-existent for quite some time. Not really excited about it as Mojave has served me well and it's been a bit of a wild ride moving things over from Mojave… still in progress… But wanted to move along before the next MacOS, just in case something else becomes unsupported.

Last straw was just recently not being able to subscribe to new podcasts in iTunes on Mojave. And it turns out that none of the old podcasts that I accumulated via iTunes on Mojave got transferred over by Apple… The iTunes split into Music and TV seem ok(-ish (don't really like their interfaces)), but Podcasts gets nada.

I plan to keep Mojave around for pretty much ever (until this computer croaks anyway) to do things that can't be done in subsequent MacOSes, and now I just discovered another reason why. Firefox seems to be significantly slower too…

Back to the channel tonight… same plans still that I mentioned the other day.

[fdm]

Sing And Like It was pretty good in terms of the cast, lots of familiar faces from that period, likeable characters. The ending took a few tries to keep me awake through most of it though; even another day to give the ending another shot took some effort to watch it all the way through in one go (I'm sure it's just a me thing though).

Fran is recommended. The story's a pretty sad set of circumstances but mostly well done.

[Cpt. Feeney]

I've been strapped for time this month.
I did try Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, which I couldn't get into. I found Leigh's performance to be tricky, she's the hardest to hear among all the cast, and her lines are the hardest to decipher. Also Alan Rudolph is a great journeyman director, but it felt to me like this film could've done with a more artistic grip.
I also tried Mad Dog Morgan, which is a fine example of sloppy directing. It has got some striking visuals, and Hopper's performance is not at all bad on average, but he's allowed to flounder through scenes that lack any intensity, with choppy bits of what feels like ad lib dialogue, and poorly judged ad lib dialogue at that. It's the kind of oversight that really disconnects an audience.
BUT I really enjoyed Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, especially Diane Ladd's turn as the mouthy waitress. Loved the relationship between her and Ellen Burstyn.

[fdm]

Re: Mrs Parker… closed captions, that's the only way to go with this film if you want to follow it closely. (I recall trying to watch it somewhere else a while ago where there were no CCs available, and gave up quickly to wait for them to become available somewhere else down the line. The channel had them, right?) I liked the different characters from the era and how they were presented, didn't have any problems with the film (the CCs probably helped a lot in that regard), and I'm pretty easy sometimes.

Speaking of which, if I didn't already, I'd recommend giving The Anniversary Party a shot. It's a little more straighforward, not trying to recreate history or anything like that… I tend to like these sorts of films

[Show spoiler], where things get out of hand, and fall apart to a pretty significant degree

. Found it to be pretty funny all in all, and it had a great cast.

Fired up Living On Tokyo Time early this morning, it started out interesting enough, but I started to nod off so decided to put it off until tonight.

(I was in the mood just prior to doing that to watch something on Apple TV+, ended up watching Greyhound. Need to spend more time over there… get me some great streaming sound quality for a change. )

(Still also multi-tasking, squeezing in Mac things here and there.)

[DaBargainHunta]

I got sidetracked with Barbie, Heels, and Twisted Metal (none of which are on the Channel, in case that isn't obvious). I'm not sure if I'll get back to the Channel in time to watch anything else. I ended up watching 7 out of the 17 on my list, so that's a pretty good number.

I was considering Fran, but I'm not in the mood for sad.

Mrs. Parker is another one I'm considering.

BTW, I agree with fdm - I just leave CC on all the time now. Makes life easier.

LMK how Living on Tokyo Time if/when you finish it.

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore gets my highest recommendation if you haven't already seen it. I'm glad you were able to catch it before it expired, Cpt. Feeney.

[Cpt. Feeney]

Yikes, CC. The only interaction I have with CC is when it's on by default, and it makes me rage-curse while I fumble for the controls.
I'd at least try headphones first, before giving in.

[nathan_h]

Yes, headphones work great for challenged hearing situations. Cheaper and more effective than fixing the speakers and the room (acoustic treatment, and so on). But not a great solution if more than one person wants to watch, of course.

Sometimes in interim fix is what is often labelled "night mode" or "dynamic range compression" (or Dolby Volume or Audyssey Dynamic Volume on some AVRs) can work well to keep dialog from fading into the background.

And in some cases of significant hearing loss, just getting the room set up well with good speakers with the right settings still doesn't solve it....and even headphones aren't enough, so the ubiquitous nature of optional CC these days is a real benefit to many folks.

[fdm]

Regarding Living On Tokyo Time, I was right in middle of it (CC's turned on!) and promptly at 1am my ISP decides it's time to bring the net down for several hours in the early morning. At least I went to sleep earlier than usual, didn't get any more (less?) sleep than usual though. I thought the film was going along pretty well, and will get back to it sometime today.

I have to try and remember that my ISP does that sometimes, usually early Monday mornings, possibly just the last one of the month, and time my watching accordingly… They've gotten better this year, but still once in a while their "service" also goes down randomly (fortunately for the dish, last weekend was the only time it's ever physically gone down in decades ). And just as I was about to post this, the net randomly went down again (and up again about 20 minutes later (they're trying to improve reliability they say… and rebooting here and there)).

Regarding headphones: I hate watching movies with headphones.

More regarding CCs: usually any more I have them on fairly often, an added bonus to that is I get to amuse myself at how bad the captions can be sometimes. (At least I can still read them!)

[fdm]

So I did finish up Living On Tokyo Time, and all in all pretty good. Was worth the watch.

Following that I ended up at "…but then, she's Betty Carter" which was an hour documentary snapshot of this jazz vocalist circa 1980. I'm not really a fan of jazz vocalists, as they tend to stick to jazz standards and the like, which I'm not really big of a fan of, too lightweight for my more extreme tastes. [edit] But this was still quite watchable and Betty was pretty distinctive in her own way and had an interesting story that deserved to be told.[/edit]

But anyhow both were nice ways to close out this month's watches.

[WorldForgot]

Originally Posted by fdm

Regarding Living On Tokyo Time, I was right in middle of it (CC's turned on!) and promptly at 1am my ISP decides it's time to bring the net down for several hours in the early morning. At least I went to sleep earlier than usual, didn't get any more (less?) sleep than usual though. I thought the film was going along pretty well, and will get back to it sometime today.

I have to try and remember that my ISP does that sometimes, usually early Monday mornings, possibly just the last one of the month, and time my watching accordingly…

This iz an annoying fix, I know, but if you have a tablet or android apk virtual/emul you can hdmi up, you could download the movie for offline viewing using the CC mobile app

[fdm]

Originally Posted by WorldForgot

This iz an annoying fix, I know, but if you have a tablet or android apk virtual/emul you can hdmi up, you could download the movie for offline viewing using the CC mobile app

Actually not a bad idea. (If the internet's up…)

One thing I've noticed recently, and it's not even totally foolproof, but with the Roku CC app there's a white line that appears underneath each film that shows if you've watched it and how far along you got (and which also correlates to whether the continue watching button appears for a film even if you've finished watching it). I've come to the conclusion that a big part of that line's (or button's) accuracy depends on you being logged in to the channel in only one place. And possibly for good measure, if you quit the application immediately after watching the film the application just may register the movie as fully watched. (And one step further can sometimes help if things are still muddled up, pull the Roku's plug.) Silly, but it's the little things sometimes…

[Cpt. Feeney]

I caught Flesh+Blood before the bell, and loved it this time around. It might even be my favourite Verhoeven. It has a great medieval story, full of typical traits of the era. It gets a bit silly in the last ten minutes or so, after Martin gets his due, with other characters getting a come-uppance more typical for an action movie, and it's a shame to top off Ronald Lacey's great performance as the priest with this kind of fantasy, but hey if that was the price for the budget, it is forgiven.
I'd jump on a 4k for this.

And to usher in the new arrivals I watched Dog Day Afternoon, which is a terrific transfer, it does justice to all the great footage of 1970s New York, a setting I will always be partial too. Gotta admire too, for all Lumet's adherence to a raw feel, and for all his apparently plain style, how strong his films end up being, from their look to their performances, there's not a weak link in sight.


Fdm, are you in a nice place out in the country somewhere? With your spotty internet and ability to avoid headphones at all hours, I guess there's pros and cons. I do wonder if I'll get fed up with the city, and head for the quiet myself.

[koberulz]

Well it just took me over two hours to watch The Haunting, which runs 1:51, because it kept pausing to buffer. And when it was playing, it looked awful.

[fdm]

Originally Posted by Cpt. Feeney

I caught Flesh+Blood before the bell, and loved it this time around. It might even be my favourite Verhoeven. It has a great medieval story, full of typical traits of the era. It gets a bit silly in the last ten minutes or so, after Martin gets his due, with other characters getting a come-uppance more typical for an action movie, and it's a shame to top off Ronald Lacey's great performance as the priest with this kind of fantasy, but hey if that was the price for the budget, it is forgiven.
I'd jump on a 4k for this.

And to usher in the new arrivals I watched Dog Day Afternoon, which is a terrific transfer, it does justice to all the great footage of 1970s New York, a setting I will always be partial too. Gotta admire too, for all Lumet's adherence to a raw feel, and for all his apparently plain style, how strong his films end up being, from their look to their performances, there's not a weak link in sight.


Fdm, are you in a nice place out in the country somewhere? With your spotty internet and ability to avoid headphones at all hours, I guess there's pros and cons. I do wonder if I'll get fed up with the city, and head for the quiet myself.

I caught Flesh+Blood at a film festival back when it was first out. Don't recall if I've watched it since, but not because I didn't like it. It was early in my film watching days, but the film festival flyer had a picture of JJL on its cover and I just had to find out who that was. I like most of Verhoeven's films, though I still haven't watched some of his earliest films.

Where I live was kinda sorta in the country when I moved here 25 years ago. 5 acre lots in my neighborhood, but it's slowly but surely becoming surrounded by the suburbs, so traffic is more of an issue these days, when I bother to go out (I used to commute about an hour or so each way to/from work). Used to be quieter and darker at night too.

I usually keep the windows closed if I'm going to go loud, but otherwise if the weather's ok and I feel like it, I'll open up a window or three, never had a neighbor complain. The skunk on the other hand… And the wife swears she doesn't mind me watching at loud-ish levels even when she's trying to sleep, didn't say a thing even when I watched John Wick 4 the other day. But usually I keep it down.

Oh well I'm about to go out and try and beat this afternoon's or tonight's monsoon…

[Cpt. Feeney]

I live in a city centre and we can hear raving drunks heading home along the street at any and all hours of the night. Not a lot can be done about that, but my sound system? Can't get away with a damn thing after a certain hour.

[fdm]

I had a small urge one time while driving through my old haunts near downtown about wanting to move closer to the thick of things. But I got over it in a few days.