Stream This: Two Mia Farrow Greats, Hannibal (S3), Terminator 5, Etc...
Monday, July 18, 2016 at 5:30PM In the effort to stay au courant we'll alternate between Netflix and Amazon Prime for streaming news each week. And we'll freeze frame select titles at random places just for fun and see what image comes up. You know how we do.
LAST CHANCE AMAZON PRIME
Amazon Prime has a far better movie selection than Netflix on a month to month basis but they are officially the worst streaming provider in terms of providing dates of expiration on their movies/tv shows. Sometimes the titles don't expire after they're marked for expiration and sometimes they vanish even if they haven't been marked. Sometimes without warning they suddenly cost money when they were once free. And they don't do press releases to announce expiring titles like the other services. So it's all rumors in a way. But supposedly they're losing these titles (among others) at the end of July and they're all worth checking out...
There's no reason why you shouldn't have complete confidence in your chances to come out of this alive and in one piece."
Airplane (1980)
This smash comedy mocked the disaster epic genre and started the spoof craze. That spoof genre peaked early - maybe even here. It's kind of unreal how fast and quick the visual and verbal gags come.
7 more freeze frames after the jump...
Look what I've brought you, my darlings - Two chapters, one for each cheek!
Quills (2000)
I've made no bones about the fact that I think Geoffrey Rush usually overdoes onscreen but if you're ever going to go big-bigger-biggest, playing the Marquis de Sade is the role in which to do it. Philip Kaufman's penultimate film (I wish he hadnt retired!) was Oscar nominated for Actor, Costumes, and Art Direction. I remember being mildly surprised that Kate Winslet was shut-out (she was SAG nominated) but you can't be shortlisted every time.
[music playing]
The Bounty (1984)
This remake of Mutiny on the Bounty was the film debut of Daniel Day-Lewis! But it stars Mel Gibson in the prime of his beauty before the crazy was exposed. In the montage sequence we randomly landed on we're staring at Mel cavorting with his island beauty and dissolving to a sweaty Anthony Hopkins trying not to think about Mel's glistening flesh. Subtle! (Speaking of homoeroticism...)
Also Supposedly Leaving : The Aviator (2004) Oscar heavyhitter... "the way of the future", Benny & Joon (1993) with young adorable versions of Julianne Moore, Johnny Depp and Aidan Quinn, The Black Stallion (1979) two Oscar nominations and a special achievement Oscar, Election (1999) which should have netted Reese Witherspoon her first Oscar nomination, Heartburn (1986) with Meryl & Jack, and School Ties (1992) which features a who's who of then future wannabe stars as young prep schools in a 1950s anti-semitism drama.
NEW TO AMAZON PRIME
Here's what's newly available on Amazon Prime this month. We've freeze framed 5 more titles at random to share whatever popped up.
I like to flirt, yknow? Sometimes people take it too seriously.
Broadway Danny Rose (1984)
Woody Allen's black and white comedy, nominated for Best Director and Best Screenplay features Mia Farrow in prime chameleon mode (you can scarcely believe it's the actress you know from other pictures) as the jaded mistress of a lounge singer. She's really sensational here as she so often was (Globe nominated - she lost to Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone). It's always so depressing when an actor deserved multiple Oscar nominations and receives exactly zero.
There daddy, do I get a gold star?
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
I'm so glad that women don't call their boyfriends/husbands "daddy" anymore like they did in 1950s and 1960s pictures. I have only ever unequivocally loved three horror films in my life (as in 'all time favorite films' sized love) and this is one of them. The others are Psycho and Carrie if you haven't been reading long - strange that they were all made within a 16 year period. This is another film Mia should have been Oscar nominated for. She was Globe nominated, losing to Joanne Woodward in Rachel Rachel who actually beat Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter.
I still believe I am in conscious control of my actions. Given your history that's a good day."
Hannibal (Season 3)
I gave up on this show about halfway through Season 1 because I found it so repulsive with its identification and hallucinated reenactment of serial killings. Still, I recognize that it was sumptuously made and well acted and I like TV creator Bryan Fuller's work so much in general. People swore by this show for so long I almost started again. But then I heard that female characters kept getting short shrift and grisly ends. But then Gillian Anderson came on board? So many mixed messages from the univers about watching this show. Readers, did you?
Ardor (2014)
Yes he is beautiful, Alice Braga, yes he is. As a noted Gael García Bernal fan I feel the guilt that I have somewhat lost track of his career aside from Mozart in the Jungle. He works a lot on film but his projects dont get the attention/releases that they used to stateside. Has anyone seen this one set in the Argentinian rainforests?
-What will it be like?
-If it doesn't kill us both... it'll hurt.
Terminator Genisys (2015)
AVOID! This terrible reboot of a franchise that did not need to be rebooted since the concept allows constant recycling made me angry. Emilia Clarke is terrible. The climax is lame. And anything that qualifies as a best bit is borrowed glory. Most stupidly it is PG-13 so, after a handful of features in which the time travelling was always shot the same way and thus made for fun passages of time in the way the series looked side by side, this one has a series of very obvious complicated cuts and lighting choices to make sure that butts (GASP. NSFW) are never shown even when the leads are fully naked -- it's so obvious it's like Austin Powers mocking of attempts to hide nudity. This is stupid since an ass shot does not prompt an R rating. Movies have gotten so prudish in the 21st century!
ALSO NEW (July):
Reader Comments (17)
Re: Hannibal. It had a lot of promise but it was SO SLOW. It did have some truly spectacular can't miss episodes and the moodiness of the whole thing (score and cinematography and some of the acting) was sublime. With that said, I wouldn't recommend the series as a whole due to the pacing leaving a ton to be desired - so many incredibly slow paced episodes in which nothing happened.
Mads Mikkelsen is the bomb. He has never been better than in this and that is saying a lot. Another, of many things, awards bodies should be ashamed of I suppose.
Hugh Dancy is not quite up to Mads' level. with that said he does good in a very demanding and showy role.
Lawrence, Anderson & especially Rohl are all terrific in good key roles. Lawrence has less to work with but the two ladies definitely have their moments.
"You can't be shortlisted every time."
...unless you're John Williams.
Broadway Danny Rose is one of Woody and Mia's very best films.
"Terminator: Genysis" is a horrendous- a script that makes no sense what so ever.
Can we just all agree Mia has been criminally underutilized since 92 when she should have got a Best Actress nomination for Husbands and Wives.
I tried several time with Hannibal. I just can't take that much violence. Sorry.
I will eventually finish watching "Hannibal". I found it rewarding in many ways, but it was really hard not to feel depressed and even defeated if I watched more than one episode at a time. It was such an incredibly well done and well-acted show, but it can be draining.
As for "Terminator Genisys", I have never seen any movie that relied so heavily on callbacks to previous movies in the series, yet it never delivered even one honest emotion. And why on earth would you hire Emilia and Jai to portray humans in a series built around robots? I doubt real actors could have saved such a horrible script, but when you pick two people with the combined acting range of a sofa to play your leads, you're guaranteed to fail.
I loved Hannibal. I think it's one of the ten best shows of this decade, easily. That said, Nathaniel, your two complaints (female characters getting the short shrift and the repulsive nature of the murders) don't really get resolved. The former, I'd assert, does improve - Gillian Anderson's character is all sorts of fascinating and they finally (FINALLY) give Caroline Dhavernas something real to do, but not in a way that improves the early failings.. The latter.... no, sorry. The show doesn't pivot away from the death phantasmagorias at all. The best I can say is that they become somewhat more stylized. Except not sometimes. And it's the not sometimes that are really fucking disturbing (the penultimate episodes in seasons two and three.... egads. I screamed)
But's also one of the most formally interesting television shows I've ever seen. The sound design and scoring, art direction and cinematography - all combine to remarkable effect. I actually think Dancy does better than Mikkleson, particularly in the last half of season two where he has to juggle a particularly difficult task. At it's peak, the writing achieves a level of grace that television rarely aspires to.
I really wanted Mia Farrow to be nommed for Rosemary too, but the line up that year is so rock solid that it even ended in a goddamn tie.
I love Khaleesi, but yes Emilia is a bad actress.
I'm STILL in shock that NBC ever aired Hannibal - it's gory, surreal, and VERY heady. So much so that I often wasn't quite sure what exactly was going on (especially since so much of it revolves around the game of "who's playing who" with regards to Will and Hannibal). But because of that it's totally fascinating to watch and talk about. It's possibly the most beautiful TV show ever made on the level of production/costume design and cinematography, which is deeply unsettling considering what the show is about, but that's kind of the point. It's a bit of a corrective to the whole "rooting for the criminal anti-hero" thing that has plagued many TV shows of late - there may be fun in watching Hannibal get away with it, but the show never, ever forgets that he's a dark, twisted, terrible person - and it never lets the viewer forget, either.
Also: Gillian Anderson is freaking INCREDIBLE in it, to say nothing of Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen.
For what it's worth, I have a really difficult time with gore, which is why I generally don't like horror films, but I was mostly good with Hannibal. In its best moments it hits the classical version of The Sublime (the "terribly beautiful") right in the sweet spot, which is a pretty rare thing to achieve.
Mia Farrow should have been nominated for Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo, and Rosemary's Baby. An honorary Oscar is warranted :-)
RE: Hannibal, I also came close to dumping it, not because of the gore (although I agree it’s a lot), but because in the early going it was procedural but didn’t seem to be offering much other than new ways to disgust its audience. It takes a significant leap in S2 where it ups the stake and has more of a handle on the Will/Hannibal relationship. With regards to the female characters, I often felt like canny casting papered over some of the show’s weaknesses in that respect. I second what everyone has been saying in that Gillian Anderson is bowl-you-over spectacular, but her part is very thin on paper and she only really gets more to do in S2 and 3. Similarly, Katharine Isabelle and Gina Torres are great, but the writing doesn’t quite seem up to her level all the time. The show is much more interested in its primary, increasingly homoerotic relationship between its two central characters, which it pretty much nails, but there’s a lot of superlative stuff happening elsewhere that doesn’t always work. When it does, it’s great (S2 is comfortably its best), but then it takes a long slide in S3.
Whenever I watch "Rosemary's Baby," while Farrow's acting is fine, she's so frail-looking from the get go, I don't get the sense of Mama Mia becoming gradually sapped of her energy. Which always makes me wonder how Tuesday Weld, who turned the role down, would have played it.
Farrow is also fascinating with Elizabeth Taylor in "Secret Ceremony," as the disturbed Cenci, playing poor little rich girl who pretends embittered hooker Taylor is her mother.
As for Farrow's tremulous turn as Daisy in "The Great Gatsby," her performance for me is like drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth.
I've never seen any of Mia Farrow-Woody Allen collaborations, which really anchors her resume, will have to remedy that!
Craver - thank you. It's crazy that Game of Thrones fans are so hardcore that they don't care she's not a good actress and root for Emmy nominations. If you love the character, despite the performance, root for the writers to win their Emmys. Clarke does not need to be a repeating nomine when there are 30+ women doing spectacular supporting work out there as series regulars.
Farrow is spectacular in both Rosemary and Danny (a film I just don't get), but both those lineups are pretty rock solid. Especially 1968, when pretty much any of those women could have won and it would have been deserved, much like the year we just had. I have been trying for years to find a way to get Julie Andrews in for Star!, but it's darn hard. Harumph.
I would have given Mia the Oscar in 1968. I've seen Rosemary's Baby probably a dozen times, and her gradual unraveling never fails to draw me in and devastate me.
"There's a sale at Penney's!!"