The Humour Club discussion

Have you ever texted through your first viewing of the Wicker Man, or gone in the kitchen for a cup of coffee and missed the ending? ‘Mmh, I wonder if Edward Woodward saved the poor girl.’ If not, you may agree with this…
https://www.ianjarviswriter.com/singl...

I have trouble sitting still for very long. My trick is to re-watch movies multiple times, and hope I choose different scenes to go walkabout on. Fortunately that's easy with cable here in the US - they show the same few things over and over for months on end. "Canadian Bacon" is usually showing on at least two channels here all day.

Multiple watches are great, Joel. I know a girl who has watched the end of Dirty Dancing at least twenty times and sobbed through it every time. I've often watched with her, vaguely hoping Swayze misses his catch, but he never does.

I mostly watch on DVD or streaming--so the movie can be paused while I go walkabout.

I don't go to the theater much these days. Folks are rude and annoying, and I've never cared much for popcorn or stale Raisinets. I'd rather eat a steak and watch a movie, so until they open an Outback Movie House that means I'm staying in.

These days I watch fewer and fewer movies, but when I do they tend to be older and part of a series. I will sit down and watch a movie by itself (I saw Ghost in the Machine and Rogue One--both sucked) but I prefer to get hold of 10-22 episodes of a TV show and watch 1-3 of them a day for a week. "Binge-watch" as the kids say. Like I said, I don't do that exclusively, but that's probably more than half my video/film/TV entertainment these days, and it has influenced the way I watch movies in that I prefer to sit down and watch 2-4 films in a series rather than just one installment, wait five years, and then watch another installment. So, even if I've seen film #1 and #2 in a series when #3 comes out, I'll watch them in order before seeing the latest one.

Also, because I'm in my house I tend to stop and start a lot more often whenever I need to get another beer, pee out another beer, or go buy more beer. I do try to get to some sort of "stopping point" in any particular film/TV show, but that's not a huge concern since I can just go back a minute or two.

You can eat a steak at the theater now. The Roadhouse theaters serve food and booze while you lean back in your huge recliner. I still prefer movies at home. These theaters are so comfortable I fall asleep.

I tend to stop a movie and replay scenes that were particularly well-constructed, or had an excellent bit of dialogue. When something is really well done, it's worth finding out how the writer did that.

I also tend to re-watch favorites once a year or so. Examples:
Favorite Drama: The Lion in Winter
Favorite Comedy: My Favorite Year

Oddly, both star Peter O'Toole. We must have similar taste in scripts.

There are a few more modern dramas that have such an excellent cast and performances, ( Schindler's List , for example), however I can't think of any that definitively tops The Lion in Winter.

Real Genius is a close second in the comedy category. The older comedies tend to have broader appeal and are not just pandering to the teenage dating crowd. Unfortunately, those of us who DIDN'T go through puberty last week don't go to the movies every Friday night, so most modern comedies have become almost unbearably trite and stupid.

The Lion in Winter is a great film with a brilliant cast. Some amazing actors in their (much) younger days there.

Ian wrote: "The Lion in Winter is a great film with a brilliant cast. Some amazing actors in their (much) younger days there."

Not THAT much younger! Why, it's only been....mumble, mumble, mumble....years!

Brena wrote: "You can eat a steak at the theater now. The Roadhouse theaters serve food and booze while you lean back in your huge recliner. I still prefer movies at home. These theaters are so comfortable I fal..."

Googled that. Not near my house, but might be worth a road trip....

Jay, I remember the scene with Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton swapping Batman cards in the playground

Do you remember Peter O'Toole's "drunk suit" from My Favorite Year? ...Granted, humor is subjective, but I thought that very funny, and one of the quirkiest sight gags on film.

Ian wrote: "Jay, I remember the scene with Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton swapping Batman cards in the playground"

I just realized that you may not have intended that as merely cute. Was "swapping Batman cards in the playground" a movie reference that I didn't get?

No, I was just being cute, lol - an allusion to them being youngsters

I realized another thing I like about watching movies at home: I can go back and try again to hear the bit of dialog I couldn't make out, or to figure out who the heck was who doing what.

Good point. They moved away from clipped English decades ago and dialogue has become more and more realistic over the years. Sometimes it's so realistic, wheezed and mumbled, and you genuinely can't understand it. You should try some of the British television dramas, where countless viewers complain about this. Actors and directors retaliate with: 'That's how people sound in reality,' which is true, but doesn't help the viewer understand the plot. It's like watching a porn film where the couple are hidden beneath a quilt, because that's how the majority of people have sex.

Worse, when you turn on the captions because you really want to understand a particular bit of dialogue, you often find that the captioning is useless. "I'd love to stay" becomes "Above the clay," etc.

I don't know if this is a faulty algorithm or if the research labs finally found employment for their English-speaking chimpanzees.

I realize that spending millions of dollars to produce a movie does entail some efforts to cut costs, but seriously, how much can it cost to compare the closed captioning to the script?