Giles

thanks!

davidh777

Last year I jumped on that River Kwai/Guns of Navarone BD double-feature for $7.50 and made a mental note to get another copy for my dad. Well, with Father's Day coming up, I bit the bullet and sent him my copy as a present and made a mental note (OK, I actually added it to my Amazon cart) to get another one for myself sometime (currently in the $11-12 range new from third parties).

Except now I want to watch those movies. Guess it's DVD for now.

Maybe I should start Rome season 2 now and finish it next June! HBO has been advertising that and Deadwood a lot as "what to watch next" after Game of Thrones ends, probably because they know I cancel in the offseason. Deadwood HAS been on my list a long time.

shadokitty

I've been meaning to watch Deadwood for quite some time, as since we subscribe to HBO through Dish, I get it on HBO Go.

Just finished a good episode of 1000 Days For The Planet, on Pivot. It was all about how people are trying to save the animals that encroach on the palm plantations in Indonesia, and many times are poisoned.

Giles

off tonight to see the new documentary film:

"RAIDERS!: THE STORY OF THE GREATEST FAN FILM EVER MADE" and the fan film itself: RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK: THE ADAPTATION

I can't include the adaptation, but I can obviously include the doc.

~

outside of just plopping my ass into a chair and watching something this morning, I decided to hook up with a friend and check out the exhibit "The Greeks: Agamemnon to Alexander the Great" at National Geographic - just fascinating. If you're in Washington DC this summer/Fall, I highly recommend it, it is it's only East Coast presentation of the exhibit.

Ash Ketchum

This coming Monday, June 20, marks the birthday of both Errol Flynn and Audie Murphy. Lots to choose from for this challenge, but I'll go with TO HELL AND BACK for Murphy, based on his war memoir, since I recently got it on DVD, and for Flynn, OBJECTIVE BURMA, since I have that on disc also.

Gobear

Thanks, Giles. Metro's Safe Tracking has discouraged my non-work-related adventuring, but I will check this out.

I highly recommend watching OJ : Made in America, a 5-part documentary on ESPN. Yes, FX already showed an OJ miniseries, but this documentary is excellent, tracing O.J.'s life against the background of America's deeply dysfunctional racial dynamic. In the 1960s, for instance, OJ refused to associate himself with the civil rights movement, preferring to use his fame as a college football champion to ingratiate himself with powerful white men.

DWilson

I brought this one up on the TV Forum. Terrific show. The OJ situation and how it plays into America's, -specifically Los Angeles's, -racial dynamic is just fascinating.

pacaway

This is finally an excuse to watch my NASA Archives Apollo mission sets. I've watched the first two discs of the Apollo 11: Men On the Moon set now and it is fascinating stuff! All the raw footage from the moon landing and walk! Do you know that when Neil Armstrong said "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." the video went on for another two hours of Neil and then Buzz walking around, picking up samples, conducting solar wind experiments, commenting on the surface features, etc.? It's awesome to watch that stuff and listen to them communicating it back to Mission Control. I just have one more disc to watch in this set which covers the voyage home and debriefing. Exciting stuff. Long though... there's over 10 hours on these three discs. Then I can move on to Apollo 15...

Giles

I highly highly recommend watching 'Last Man on the Moon' (the Apollo 17 mission) which, if you have it, is up on Netflix streaming currently.

Giles

well at least WMATA is fixing the multitude subway problems but at the cost of really making everyone's travelling in and around the DC area an utter nightmare .... ugh... thankfully going down to E Street to see the new De Palma documentary wont be a problem.

pacaway

Thanks for the tip! I only have the Apollo 11 and Apollo 15 sets, so I'll have to look for that on Netflix.

ntnon

Tennessee Johnson is young Andrew (VP to Lincoln) Johnson.

mrcellophane

Today, I watched one of my favorite films, Ang Lee and Emma Thompson's Sense and Sensibility. Screen Archives is having a sale so I picked up the BD for $20. The film looks magnificent, and the transfer highlights the level and care and detail taken with the set design. There's hardly a scene that doesn't contain an intricate pattern, piece of artwork, or bowl of flowers, and each of the houses and spaces reflects something of the people who own and inhabit them. It's a brilliant film.

TheBigDave

Yesterday was a Western triple feature:

Destry Rides Again (1939)
Dodge City (1939)
3 Godfathers (1948)

Today was a Cary Grant wartime/comedy marathon:

I Was a Male War Bride (1949)
Operation Petticoat (1959)
Father Goose (1964)

pacaway

Okay, I watched it. Thanks for the recommendation. It was very interesting. It really covered a lot of the Gemini and Apollo missions, as Gene flew in THREE of them! The first space walk, the last orbital mission to the moon, complete with a mock lunar landing in which they spun out of control, and finally the last moon landing.

Ash Ketchum

I've seen 14 westerns so far in this challenge, mostly on the Encore Western Channel, but some on Amazon Prime (a great source of little-known westerns) and some on DVD and one (THE SEARCHERS) on Blu-ray. I loved an offbeat Audie Murphy vehicle, THE WILD AND THE INNOCENT (1959), in which he plays a trapper come down from the mountains to trade the fur pelts he and his uncle spent a year trapping, only to get saddled with an unformed mountain girl, Sandra Dee, who turns out to be quite beautiful when cleaned up. The two of them get involved with the local brothel, with Murphy getting infatuated with the top whore (Joanne Dru) and Dee targeted by the sheriff/pimp, Gilbert Roland, who comes on heavy to her and fits her out in fancy clothes and then expects her to earn her keep. It takes the naïve Murphy a long time to get wise. Very unusual.

Oh, and I've seen one Cary Grant war movie, DESTINATION TOKYO, definitely not a comedy.

shadokitty

I started to watch Fistful of Dynamite on Hulu last night, but something came up and I had to leave before the movie was over.

Ash Ketchum

Question about eligibility:

I didn't get to watch a complete film yesterday because of Father's Day, but I did to go to see a Broadway musical with my daughter. It was "An American in Paris" and it's set in Paris right after the war and, unlike the Gene Kelly musical, mentions the Nazis, the occupation, the French resistance, and what people did during the war.

It's not a film, but can it still be eligible? If not, can it be used as a Wild Card?

Thanks.

Trevor

I'd count it.

davidh777

I've seen two eligible stage shows this month: Motown The Musical and Paint Your Wagon.

I usually go heavy on the Westerns for this and the B-movie challenge but have come up short this year.

BobO'Link

I purchased S1-3 of Downton Abbey as a blind buy and really enjoyed those seasons. I found the remaining ones are on Amazon Prime streaming and began watching them. Then I find there are a couple of documentaries about the series, one of which focuses on Highclere castle, the setting for the show, which sounded interesting so I start watching. It's sometimes amazing the little tidbits of information stumbled across in these type shows. I hear the name Carnarvon mentioned early on and it's revealed that Highclere was the home of George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, who, along with Howard Carter, discovered Tutankhamun's tomb. The current Earl of Carnavon is his grandson. They have replicas of some of the Tutankhamun discoveries on site as well as a few genuine artifacts.

BobO'Link

That's one of my favorite musicals (one of a small handful I'll watch without someone else prodding/asking). I've not seen it in several years and should get it out for a viewing this year.

shadokitty

To celebrate World Surf Day, I just finished a good documentary on surfing on Outside Television, as part of their Outside Film Festival, called The Essence of Surfing.

mrcellophane

I had no idea there was a World Surfing Day! You learn something new every day! I've never been surfing, and the few times I tried water-skiing ended in disaster!

Over the weekend, I got in two movies: The Cimarron Kid and Evita. The former is an Audie Murphy western and biopic of Bill Doolin. It's a pretty standard outlaw story with several impressive set pieces. There is a shootout on a railroad turntable that was fantastic to watch; I watched it again after the film ended.

Evita is one of my favorite modern musicals. Madonna plays Eva Peron and does a very good job. Anotonio Banderas plays Che who narrates the story, and Jonathan Pryce plays Juan Peron. Gosh, they hit out of the park. Pryce looks eerily like Peron and gives a very nuanced performance. The film also retains "The Lady's Got Potential", a song that is usually replaced with "The Art of the Possible". I much prefer the more exposition-heavy "Potential".

shadokitty

I only found out a few days ago when Outside Television said they were playing surfing shows all day long to celebrate it.