Category Archives: film & television
Caffeinated Links: Wood Design, Breaking Bad, Mumford
The world’s lightest timber table (8 kilograms!) showed up at the London Design Festival this weekend RT
Grantland beautifully unpacks the latest, heartrending episode of Breaking Bad -“Certain things just aren’t supposed to happen. We’d never seen something so ordinary twisted into something so ugly. Certain people and institutions aren’t supposed to be punished for the sins of one individual. When and if they do come, the metaphorical chickens are meant to roost home-adjacent, not inside the walls of the baby’s nursery.” RT
Birchbox highlights a multi-tasking face cream French women adore RT
“Your books on your shelves start becoming much more organized and they stop falling over because you’ve got bookends. It’s the main way in which it’s affected our lives, a real tangible way” –Marcus Mumford, on how life changes after winning awards like Grammys, RT
YESSS. British actress Billie Piper has just signed on to star in our highly anticipated new drama series PENNY DREADFUL. Piper will play “Brona Croft,” an Irish immigrant to Victorian London trying to escape a dark and sordid past. She joins recently announced stars Josh Hartnett, Timothy Dalton, Eva Green, Reeve Carney, Rory Kinnear and Harry Treadaway. RT
Share this:
Pop Bits
Austenland is a ridiculous but, surprisingly, highly entertaining little flick. As long as one goes in with the understanding that there will be not a dollop of seriousness in this effort and that it’s straight flimsy from start to finish, it’s a really enjoyable ride.
And on that note, I just realized that JJ Field, who stars in it alongside Keri Russell, is also in a film with Benedict Cumberbatch, called Third Star.
So the film stars these two men –
Need I say more?
Share this:
This Week in Trailers
Booyah. Statham beats people up again, this time with a kid on the side. Also, I approve of the recent trend of casting James Franco as a douchebag.
Colin Firth. Post-war angst. Revenge. Forgiveness (?). Nicole Kidman. I will eat this up with a spoon.
Share this:
Caffeinated Links: Colin Firth, Ken Follet, Breaking Bad
One must always share the trailer for a new Colin Firth film. Methinks forgiveness and hatred and suffering and revenge and love are all a part of this and all for the better. Also – great cast. RT
Did you know that there was more than one miniseries adaptation of Ken Follet‘s books? I did not. Adding World without End to my watchlist asap. (Also – Ben Chaplin!)
How the Bard would end Breaking Bad –
“In Shakespeare’s works, each of us has a certain destiny. We can try to thwart it or challenge it, but ultimately we must align ourselves with it. The consequences of doing otherwise depend on the world in question. If the world is benign, you get slapped around a bit and fall in line. If the world has a malignity or malice toward you, you’re going to get slapped around and die. What can you do about it? Nothing. In either case, once Shakespeare’s characters discover who they really are, the world harmonizes; it falls into place.” RT The Atlantic
North America is so woefully behind the times transit-wise. New study shows living near convenient transit increases your happiness. “Well-planned transit can be more than a ride — it can be a positive emotional force.” RT The Atlantic
A damning Steven Lloyd Wilson film review is one of my favorite things. “I’m at a loss to say what the director was even aspiring to do. Whatever it was, he failed. Catastrophically.” RT Pajiba
Dramabeans is having a meetup in Seattle September 21st. If Korean dramas are your thing (and they should be) go to this. RT Dramabeans
Share this:
THR Interview with Benedict Cumberbatch
Share this:
Hello Gorgeous: Kat Dennings
Share this:
Ce n’est pas la vrai vie
This was not a particularly memorable film, but it was the best-cast film I’ve seen in years.
Share this:
Hey, Los Angeles (Caffeinated Break)
Hugh Laurie’s love letter to Los Angeles in The Telegraph is the kind of defense I wish I could give of LA to the (many) unbelievers I’ve encountered since leaving the City of Angels.
“I love you, I hate you: you might call it a mixed message, if the message weren’t so unmixed. You’re allowed to love Paris, up to a point, New York, more or less, Dublin and Glasgow, definitely, but loving Los Angeles is just plain wrong. Oxymoronic, in fact – if you promise to go easy on the oxy.
…And then, as the drowned man said, there’s the weather. Great, fat dollops of it. On the eighth day, God reached down and set southern California’s thermostat to “lovely”, and he hasn’t really touched it since.
But Los Angeles, if it’s anything, is a place of reinvention, the edge of a continent, both inner and outer, from which you can step off into a new life and a new way of looking at things. Or, if you prefer, you can decide that your old life was just fine. Either way, you end up better off.”
And the Huffington Post has a fairly brilliant analysis of a troubling aspect of the ever-increasing collisions between nerd culture and “pop” (as in “popular”) entertainment.
“I enjoyed Star Trek Into Darkness, but the worst part of the movie was the almost complete recreation of the Kirk-Spock death scene from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It’s not so much that J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof did recreate that scene, it’s that they did so in an effort to make people watching say, “Oh, I get it.” Great! I mean, of course you “get it.” How could you not get it? Everyone gets it. That’s the problem. The best kind of fan service is when very few people get it. Being beat over the head with a reference to a prior movie isn’t fun for anyone.
I keep thinking about Whedon’s sentence, “I feel that’s what all of culture is becoming — it’s becoming that moment.”
-Joss Whedon Is Right About ‘Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom’
Share this:
Shiny
Coffee and Irony 