On 4/25/2022 6:35 AM, anim8rfsk wrote:
> Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:
>>
>> What did you watch?
>
> Hey, thanks for asking!
>
> I watched several episodes of and caught up with THE ENDGAME.
>
> And boy, it wasn’t easy.
>
>

I know that feeling. It's why I have several episodes of The Black List
still waiting to be watched and the last episode of The Endgame still
waiting to be watched.

> I don’t know what they think AN EMP does, but it sure isn’t what they
> showed, which seem to be throwing a master fuse somewhere that once they
> got it thrown back on again everything came back just fine. It’s still not
> as stupid as the one in the Tom Cruise WAR OF THE WORLDS but it’s damn
> close.
>
> But let’s talk about that gold vault robbery (which was done much better 50
> years ago on MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE).
> They smuggle in a small device (better be nuclear) and scatter a bunch of
> tiny propane bottles around in order to vaporize 6000 tons of gold.
>
> Blink
> Blank, blank
>
> Gold vaporizes at temperatures above 5000° F. That’s like half the
> temperature of the surface of the sun. They are going to have to take that
> entire vault to that temperature and hold it there while the heat permeates
> the stacks of gold.
>
> Now, we do vaporize gold, but we do it on a very small scale to coat
> things.
>
> The walls are going to give before the gold (Steel melts at half the
> temperature gold does). They’ll probably take out the entire vault and the
> entire structure it’s in if not the whole block.
>
> And what do they intend to happen anyway? Do they think that vaporize means
> “literally decimate“ and the gold will be gone? Once it cools down you’re
> just gonna have melted gold on every surface but it will still be there.
>
> I was amused that the computer programmer built a literal physical back
> door into his program. How did he do that anyway? A section of wall that
> you can just knock through. Think of how many people he’d have had to bribe
> and then kill to ensure their silence.
>
>
>
>

On day two of my Stanley Kubrickathon I watched:

Fail-Safe (TCM) 1964 overly serious drama about some air force bombers
that thanks to a series of mistakes set course to bomb Russia. The
American president is forced to make some very hard decisions as a
result. Since this is a drama when people fight in the war room, no one
tells them they can't. The print TCM used was well past it's sale by
date and being in black and white didn't help either. But I guess the
movie was OK. I've only ever watched it once before about 30-35 years
ago on TV when I was a kid. I'm surprised by just how much of the movie
I remembered, including even bits of dialogue.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (4K
disc) 1964 war comedy directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Peter
Sellers as Dr. Strangelove (and half the cast). After an air force
general orders his planes to leave their fail-safe and bomb Russia, it's
up to Dr. Strangelove to plan out a new world order where people will
breed in caves. Or something like that. This is one of my favorite
comedies and it holds up great. If I had the time, I would have loved
to squeeze in By Dawn's Early Light since it has a plot similar to
Strangelove and also stars James Earl Jones.

Wargames - (blu-ray) 1983 sci-fi movie about a teen (Matthew Broderick)
who thanks to a computer programmer who built a backdoor into his
program, is able to hack the military and make contact with a
supercomputer that likes playing "Global Thermonuclear War." I've been
circling watching this movie for a couple of months. Then yesterday
when I was watching "2001," I was thinking Wargames would probably pair
nicely with it. Then while watching Fail-Safe there was so much talk
about taking humans out of the equation and putting a machine in charge
of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, that I just had to squeeze this movie in.
Since this is a dramedy, there is no fighting in the war room, but there
is a warning not to run in the war room since someone could get hurt.
Also a reference to taking the bombers to fail-safe. The movie holds up
very well, but it could really use a new print.

Full Metal Jacket (4K disc) - 1987 Vietnam war movie directed by Stanley
Kubrick. This is another Kubrick movie that I was indifferent too at
first but I've grown to appreciate it more with each viewing. I have
one more Kubick movie on 4K, but I'm saving it for later.

Hamburger Hill (Amazon Prime) - 1987 Vietnam war movie. I don't think
I've ever seen this movie before now. There were a ton of Vietnam war
movies made around this period, and I watched a lot of them, but they
all started to bleed together after a while. I could honestly never
keep track of which movie was which. Case in point, I was expecting to
see Willem Dafoe pop up in this, but he was in a different Vietnam War
movie, "Platoon." Although this one did have a number of recognizable
actors including Dylan McDermott, Courtney B. Vance, Don Cheadle and
Steven Weber. Like all Vietnam war movies of the period the plot
involved American soldiers walking around the jungle while pop music of
the era plays on the soundtrack. Well that and trying to take a hill.
I recorded this a while back and was waiting to pair it with Full Metal
Jacket. Even though I had this on my DVR I ended up streaming it from
Amazon instead. I did a couple of side-by-side comparisons and saw that
the streaming version had better picture and sound quality. Plus, there
was no annoying watermark in the corner either.

Big Sky - I caught up on the last couple of episodes. The show seems to
be getting slightly better.

Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty - "California Dreaming" -
When the show started I noticed that they cast Adrien Brody as Pat
Riley. I'm not a sports fan, but I recognized the name Pat Riley, but I
wasn't sure from where. In the back of my mind I kept thinking wasn't
he the coach. But on the show he wasn't the coach, his character was
sort of bouncing all over the place. I didn't want to look it up and
spoil things for myself, but I kept thinking he's going to wind up as
the coach. And finally in this episode he took some big steps towards
becoming the coach. But to my surprise his path to getting there
involves throwing the old coach under the bus, then backing up over him
a few times.

On 4/25/2022 1:14 PM, A Friend wrote:
> In article <t46egj$ic4$1@dont-email.me>, Arthur Lipscomb
> <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:
>
>
>
>> On day two of my Stanley Kubrickathon I watched:
>>
>>
>> Fail-Safe (TCM) 1964 overly serious drama about some air force bombers
>> that thanks to a series of mistakes set course to bomb Russia. The
>> American president is forced to make some very hard decisions as a
>> result. Since this is a drama when people fight in the war room, no one
>> tells them they can't. The print TCM used was well past it's sale by
>> date and being in black and white didn't help either. But I guess the
>> movie was OK. I've only ever watched it once before about 30-35 years
>> ago on TV when I was a kid. I'm surprised by just how much of the movie
>> I remembered, including even bits of dialogue.
>
>
> I was 11 when this came out. I really liked the animated maps at SAC.
> The low budget showed itself everywhere, though. I've been told in
> recent years that all the stuff happening in Omaha would actually have
> been at Colorado Springs, inside Cheyenne Mountain.
>
> I'd read the book before seeing the movie. The end of the book has the
> president leaving that little room he's in. On the way out he says
> he's going to recommend General Black, who dropped the bomb on New
> York, for the Medal of Honor.
>
> One other problem with the film is that it accepted the Soviet lie that
> Moscow was a mighty metropolis of seven or eight million people. It's
> actually about the size of San Francisco.
>
> I remember JFK telling reporters that he would never, ever, ever do
> what President Fail-Safe did to New York.
>
>
>> Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (4K
>> disc) 1964 war comedy directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Peter
>> Sellers as Dr. Strangelove (and half the cast). After an air force
>> general orders his planes to leave their fail-safe and bomb Russia, it's
>> up to Dr. Strangelove to plan out a new world order where people will
>> breed in caves. Or something like that. This is one of my favorite
>> comedies and it holds up great. If I had the time, I would have loved
>> to squeeze in By Dawn's Early Light since it has a plot similar to
>> Strangelove and also stars James Earl Jones.
>
>
> Strangelove was supposed to be a drama, but no one wanted to compete
> with Fail-Safe, which came out at about the same time.
>
> I liked By Dawn's Early Light quite a bit, and I'm still sorry we've
> lost Powers Boothe.
>
>
>> Full Metal Jacket (4K disc) - 1987 Vietnam war movie directed by Stanley
>> Kubrick. This is another Kubrick movie that I was indifferent too at
>> first but I've grown to appreciate it more with each viewing. I have
>> one more Kubick movie on 4K, but I'm saving it for later.
>
>
> My old man hated this film because it failed to glorify (by proxy) his
> experiences in the South Pacific in 1944-45. He was hard to please.

This isn't your father's war?

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

On 4/25/2022 1:14 PM, A Friend wrote:
> In article <t46egj$ic4$1@dont-email.me>, Arthur Lipscomb
> <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:
>
>
>
>> On day two of my Stanley Kubrickathon I watched:
>>
>>
>> Fail-Safe (TCM) 1964 overly serious drama about some air force bombers
>> that thanks to a series of mistakes set course to bomb Russia. The
>> American president is forced to make some very hard decisions as a
>> result. Since this is a drama when people fight in the war room, no one
>> tells them they can't. The print TCM used was well past it's sale by
>> date and being in black and white didn't help either. But I guess the
>> movie was OK. I've only ever watched it once before about 30-35 years
>> ago on TV when I was a kid. I'm surprised by just how much of the movie
>> I remembered, including even bits of dialogue.
>
>
> I was 11 when this came out. I really liked the animated maps at SAC.
> The low budget showed itself everywhere, though. I've been told in
> recent years that all the stuff happening in Omaha would actually have
> been at Colorado Springs, inside Cheyenne Mountain.
>
> I'd read the book before seeing the movie. The end of the book has the
> president leaving that little room he's in.

Now that you mention it, the President of the United States being in
that tiny little room talking to the Russian President doesn't make
sense! It didn't occur to me it was a low budget movie, but now in
hindsight I guess it was.

On the way out he says
> he's going to recommend General Black, who dropped the bomb on New
> York, for the Medal of Honor.
>
> One other problem with the film is that it accepted the Soviet lie that
> Moscow was a mighty metropolis of seven or eight million people. It's
> actually about the size of San Francisco.
>

Good catch! I hadn't thought of that. I was reading recently that
today Moscow is pretty much a Potemkin village and most of the rest of
Russia is dirt roads and third world level at best. It was in context
with the war in Ukraine explaining why the Russian soldiers are so eager
to loot everything they can get their hands on.

> I remember JFK telling reporters that he would never, ever, ever do
> what President Fail-Safe did to New York.
>
>
>> Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (4K
>> disc) 1964 war comedy directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Peter
>> Sellers as Dr. Strangelove (and half the cast). After an air force
>> general orders his planes to leave their fail-safe and bomb Russia, it's
>> up to Dr. Strangelove to plan out a new world order where people will
>> breed in caves. Or something like that. This is one of my favorite
>> comedies and it holds up great. If I had the time, I would have loved
>> to squeeze in By Dawn's Early Light since it has a plot similar to
>> Strangelove and also stars James Earl Jones.
>
>
> Strangelove was supposed to be a drama, but no one wanted to compete
> with Fail-Safe, which came out at about the same time.
>

I read somewhere once that there was a lawsuit over the two movies and
as part of the settlement fail-Safe got to be released first. But I
didn't bother to read any trivia for either movie while watching. I was
a little annoyed that TCM didn't even bother with a bit of trivia before
the movie.

> I liked By Dawn's Early Light quite a bit, and I'm still sorry we've
> lost Powers Boothe.
>
>
>> Full Metal Jacket (4K disc) - 1987 Vietnam war movie directed by Stanley
>> Kubrick. This is another Kubrick movie that I was indifferent too at
>> first but I've grown to appreciate it more with each viewing. I have
>> one more Kubick movie on 4K, but I'm saving it for later.
>
>
> My old man hated this film because it failed to glorify (by proxy) his
> experiences in the South Pacific in 1944-45. He was hard to please.

Did he at least like the drill instructor?