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Post by crowblack on Apr 25, 2024 21:42:55 GMT
I wonder given the success of the TV adaptation if we might finally see the original version go to the West End since it was postponed due to the pandemic. Seeing the way this story is now developing across social media and the media, probably not...
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Post by crowblack on Apr 23, 2024 10:21:10 GMT
There's now 1.6 million views on a Twitter post that shows Martha's dialogue alongside the still existing Twitter posts of the woman alleged to be the real Martha. He hasn't made much (any) effort to disguise her, from her ex job and field, looks, haircut, nationality, history, right down to the diet coke.
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Post by crowblack on Apr 23, 2024 9:45:51 GMT
Yes, there's a big difference between a stage show and a global netflix production with a pause button. We're in the 'true crime podcast' era, and things like the reaction to that poor woman who drowned in the river, amateur sleuths all over the scene. When a show is pitched as incredible but true, of course people are going to go, hang on, is it really true? Is there evidence? That's human nature. If the show uses vivid, direct quotes from social media accounts that still exist, legal cases that are public record, then yes, people are going to be traceable. If you say someone you worked with behaved in a certain way, then everyone you worked with, all listed on IMDB, will be in the frame, like Agatha Christie's Ordeal by Innocence. In my admittedly limited experience, I think a UK broadcaster would be more cautious here with safety checks and repercussions.
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Post by crowblack on Apr 22, 2024 11:59:53 GMT
And, inevitably, both names in the frame are now getting threats. The allegedly real people also look very like the actors cast to play them. This does feel irresponsible.
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Post by crowblack on Apr 19, 2024 19:44:29 GMT
Uncomfortable with a global TV drama based around a real woman with severe mental health issues who is presumably still out there somewhere hopefully trying to recover and rehabilitate.
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Post by crowblack on Apr 19, 2024 13:11:30 GMT
It's powerful, but I think it would have worked better if he'd been played by a much younger actor - there's a level of naivety, haplessness, vulnerability and delusion - and even the title - that don't really work when he looks getting on for middle aged himself. Martha's meant to be much older, one of life's losers, but looks the same age as him. There's also the question of why the other characters don't report or record the physical assaults on them: with the racial element and loads of witnesses to one of them they'd have a case for police action
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Post by crowblack on Apr 14, 2024 22:10:58 GMT
'Men', starring Jessie Buckley and several Rory Kinnears is on All4 for a month and I've just watched it - fantastic performances and setting, nods, perhaps, to eerie classics like The Signalman and Penda's Fen though I think it loses the plot with a lot of gratuitous and thematically confused Cronenbergian body horror in the last half hour
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Post by crowblack on Apr 11, 2024 19:57:26 GMT
There was a BBC Radio 4 series on a couple of years that said yes, foreign powers were indeed boosting 'genuine account' divisive Tweets and creating fake persona accounts to amplify wedge issues - this even included popularising the misogynistic, ageist term 'Karen'. I'm still seeing it, still report it - accounts that are a load of numbers, zero followers, just relentlessly picking on someone online.
Romeo and Juliet, with its Marvel Franchise actor, will have the additional problem of misogynist as well as racist fandoms, and many of these fans are actually female, probably teenagers, who will internet-pile-on actresses paired with their fan-favourite male.
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Post by crowblack on Apr 8, 2024 22:40:23 GMT
I've seen people say it perks up when the Italian police detective comes in - I'll give it another go. It looks beautiful with all the b&w and arty shots of statuary, but in my head I keep thinking "oh, Vienna!". I read all the Ripley novels in sequence a few years ago and maybe it would have made more sense if this series had missed out 'Talented' - a very well known movie and a hard act to follow - and gone straight into the stories where Ripley's older. As good as he is, I didn't think the Italian detective really saved it. But yeah he makes it a bit more watchable, but all the problems are still there. I don't think it's enough to change your mind if you didn't like it already. I enjoyed the last three episodes, the final one especially, but it was a bit of a slog getting there. Andrew Scott in Venice in some fine threads and a 'tache helps too.
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Post by crowblack on Apr 7, 2024 19:49:17 GMT
I've just finished it and it was so disappointing. Massively miscast, lots of style and little substance. Also story wise it doesn't work as an adaption. I like black and white, but it doesn't really serve anything here. And the number of 'arty shots' felt like it was the directors first job out of film school and wanted to throw everything at it. Sadly, I agree with all of this. I was looking forward to this series for well over a year and, as outstanding as Scott and Flynn both are, they were both miscast in this. Completely devoid of any tension and nothing I haven't seen before cinematically. I also don't feel there is enough story to flesh out 8 episodes. I love the original but this was a huge let down. I've seen people say it perks up when the Italian police detective comes in - I'll give it another go. It looks beautiful with all the b&w and arty shots of statuary, but in my head I keep thinking "oh, Vienna!". I read all the Ripley novels in sequence a few years ago and maybe it would have made more sense if this series had missed out 'Talented' - a very well known movie and a hard act to follow - and gone straight into the stories where Ripley's older.
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Post by crowblack on Apr 6, 2024 22:55:03 GMT
Is anyone watching Ripley on Netflix? It has Andrew Scott and Johnny Flynn and mixed reviews: some critics love it, but it's not working for me. It's a shame, as I was looking forward to it, but Scott and Flynn feel miscast - both too old for the set up to be plausible, and devoid of anything in their characterisation to engage me.
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Post by crowblack on Apr 2, 2024 21:13:22 GMT
We've just started watching Shogun on Disney and it's very good so far - recommended, especially if you enjoyed Game of Thrones. It's also, with its 17thc Japan setting, a lot better looking than House of the Dragon. My only gripe is the subtitles - rather small on our 32" TV.
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Post by crowblack on Mar 29, 2024 18:56:43 GMT
I'm another who found this so disappointing, as a fan of Mantel's work - I don't know why they gave it to Peter Kosminsky to direct: he seems humourless and has favourite actors who he casts regardless, it seems, of their suitability here.
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Post by crowblack on Mar 14, 2024 9:29:42 GMT
I do think that someone will one day come up with a concept that allows the seating in these old spaces to be modernised sympathetically but in a completely innovative way. I’ve got a half-formed idea of how it could be done in my head, it includes the stalls being tiered up to the level of the front wall of the dress circle leaving the space which is the rear stalls free for toilets and bars. Like I said, half formed and I’m not an architect so it’s probably cobblers and it would reduce capacity so would never happen. The Coronet in Notting Hill (taken over by the former Printroom) has done a great job, I think - the stalls is now the bar and the circle is the stalls, with a good rake. It retains a fantastic crumbly period atmosphere. The capacity is small though - still, even though I love period architecture and even got a local building listed, as an old goth who used to wear real Victorian clothing in my teens, they really were tiny compared to the 21st c average sized body, and seating and toilets designed for late 19thc physiques and comfort expectations are absurd today. My brother is 6'2" and hates theatregoing in anything other than the most modern theatre - and even then asks me to book him aisle seats. Keep the decor but strip out and redo the seating.
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Post by crowblack on Feb 6, 2024 22:19:59 GMT
Patsy Ferran will be playing a Tudor court jester in the upcoming comedy series Fools - sounds like a great role for her.
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Post by crowblack on Feb 6, 2024 18:40:37 GMT
The theatre that managed this the best that I came across was the (now closed) newest version of Above the Stag in Vauxhall. One large room filled with cubicles with a sink in the middle. Then a separate room to the side with some urinals in it for those not needing a cubicle. Worked very well. (Although people who say women keep their toilets cleaner have probably never had to clean a public toilet...) It's still an enclosed space not overseen by staff or cctv. If you're in the venue at a quiet time it could just be you (a woman) and a man or men, or a man could follow you in, as happened to a teenage girl raped in the mixed sex toilets at a fashionable bar in my local city centre last year.
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Post by crowblack on Feb 5, 2024 23:06:04 GMT
Hum. I see from Twitter the Donmar have gone from their notoriously inadequate toilet provision for women to forcing women to share with men in entirely mixed sex toilets. How lovely. Not.
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Post by crowblack on Dec 4, 2023 12:37:45 GMT
I wonder if they read this thread?
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Post by crowblack on Nov 29, 2023 10:05:20 GMT
Wish (2023) - **I'm truly baffled. Why does it feel like this is Lin Manuel Miranda's fault? My brain literally could not settle on the visuals, some magical nostalgia but mostly awful? It's a wild thing to look at. A mixture of 2D and 3D animation styles that never really mix together in a pleasing way. A couple of the songs are good in their own right, but you know you are in trouble when what the best part of your apparent 100th anniversary celebration is the minimalist sketches of classic characters that accompany the end credits. We're hearing a lot about fears over Ai (which I share) but a lot of the fare, especially for children, that Hollywood churns out feels like it's already being produced by it!
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Post by crowblack on Nov 26, 2023 0:06:54 GMT
I do want to see this, but I may wait till the longer cut comes out on TV because I can't handle cinema volume (I take it this is noisy, what with all those cannons!). I generally like Phoenix, but he's an odd choice for Napoleon. Ah well - I'm very much looking forward to Gladiator 2.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 24, 2023 12:06:39 GMT
Just caught up on Censor (2021) on All4 (with one day left to view!) - interesting, atmospheric psychological horror set against the background of the video nasty era in the 80s. I had to close my eyes during the grisly clips in the opening sequences. It's a feature debut by a female director, Prano Bailey-Bond, lots of familiar brit faces popping up, strong central performance from The Virtues and Calm With Horses' Niamh Algar, lovely Gregory Crewdson style lighting. Downside is the All4 ad breaks breaking the atmosphere but hey, it's free.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 20, 2023 17:48:16 GMT
Btw, I still haven't received my membership card! The Sight and Sound subscription customer service is rubbish too - no response to emails, and phoning them directly got an unhelpful response.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 20, 2023 10:34:17 GMT
Is it me or does walking through a ‘war zone’ seem in particularly bad taste at this moment? Of course they would have planned and designed this well before the Israel Gaza conflict- but this would make me feel uneasy. It was planned and designed during the Russia - Ukraine conflict which is still ongoing and much bigger and no one has complained about that. Nor should they. It's not a play that takes war and murder lightly. In contrast, I thought the BBC's decision to schedule a TV comedy drama with torture scenes at primetime last night was a bad one - they should have delayed it & found a different slot (when a British hostage in Iraq was murdered, ITV cancelled a Carry On film that included 'comedy' beheadings).
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Post by crowblack on Nov 18, 2023 23:11:14 GMT
V. much looking forward to this. Seeing next week. Never watched the TV series, however. What could I do to best prepare. If anything. Thanks folks. The best thing to do is to watch the show, as suggested, as the production really will be difficult to appreciate without knowing the show. If you don't have the time, on YouTube, the "Man of Recaps" channel recaps the whole show in three wonderful humorous videos. He really is the best recapper in the business, as he never misses an important plot point and he's very funny. Typically you'd watch that channel to remind yourself what you've already seen, but in your case, if needs must lol. Do the recaps cover season 4 too? From the sound of it, that's very relevant here as it's when the supernatural villain Vecna - Henry Creel, as a boy - is introduced and shows a bit of his 1950s backstory that's expanded on in the stage play. If you have Netflix, you can fast forward to the bits with the adult characters to get a flavour of their relationships.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 17, 2023 23:47:42 GMT
wishing for a much needed climax which sadly doesn’t materialize. Maybe that'll come with the strike-delayed TV season 5?
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Post by crowblack on Nov 12, 2023 18:21:41 GMT
Its plays have challenged the artistic, social and political orthodoxy of the dayTbf it sounds like it is doing that, in that it's very atypical for the Royal Court and a lot of other new plays of recent years. It might be one of those things like The Greatest Showman or Dr Doolittle, hated by critics but enjoyed by audiences.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 11, 2023 18:14:57 GMT
I'd guess Mullarkey is being held to a different standard because his play is at the Royal Court, where saying something is more important than at the National lol. Yes - I'm not a fan of his writing (Pity was one of the worst things I've ever seen) but the Royal Court seems an odd venue for this, and the world events timing hasn't helped when you're staging something light and fluffy at this particular venue, where most plays foreground politics over character or plot.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 6, 2023 14:13:29 GMT
Bts video on Stranger Things (TV)'s Twitter today (because it's Stranger Things Day).
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Post by crowblack on Nov 6, 2023 8:13:39 GMT
We watched this again on BBC4 last night and enjoyed it more: mum in tears in Ophelia's scenes. It's on BBC iPlayer 'for over a year'.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 3, 2023 14:43:57 GMT
I don't seem to be able to post pictures on here, but Ralph Steadman's poster for the RSC's mid-80s Mother Courage is stunning -
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