Shout! Factory
The Weekend Watch is an open thread where you can share what you’ve recently watched, offer suggestions on movies and TV shows we should check out (or warnings about stuff to avoid), and discover queue-filling goodies from other FSR readers.
The comments section awaits. I’ll get the ball rolling with the movies/TV my eyeballs took in this weekend.
I missed Oliver Stone’s Alexander when it marched into theaters back in 2004, but the upcoming Blu-ray release of his preferred director’s cut gave me the opportunity to close that gap. The film didn’t do well back then commercially, and it’s pretty easy to see why. Put simply, the movie is a mess. The editing and narrative choices overpower Alexander’s (Colin Ferrell) character and actions and deflate any hope of an emotional reaction from viewers.
Antonia Bird’s Ravenous has been a favorite of mine for years, and Scream Factory’s upcoming Blu-ray gave me an excuse to watch it yet again. Sadly, the HD remaster is pretty much a disappointment as it’s loaded with artifacts and looks barely better than a VHS, but on the plus side, in addition to the ported over extras and new interview with Jeffrey Jones, the movie itself is still phenomenal. Blackly comic, exciting, suspenseful, funny… all that plus an incredible music score to boot.
Simon is a 1980 release starring Alan Arkin, but I don’t recall ever hearing of it before. It’s a comedy from Marshall Brickman that pokes fun at several aspects of American culture. Arkin plays a professor who is fooled into believing he’s an alien by a brain trust of five morally bankrupt scientists, but when he escapes from their lab he winds up hunted by the military and a mentor to the American public. It’s an odd little film.
On the television side of things I of course watched the latest episode of Orphan Black, and I’m happy to say it was my favorite of the season. Here’s why.
And finally, in an effort to continue making you all jealous that I’m doing it for the first time… I’ve moved on to watching season two of The Wire. This is the shipyard season, and while I’m not entirely sold on some of these dockworker characters – a couple of them feel really broad – I’m enjoying seeing a lot of familiar faces from season one. Jimmy McNulty in particular is such a wonderfully appealing prick.
What did you watch this weekend?