DVD and TV Logging
Jun. 5th, 2016 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckBy the Pricking of My Thumbs - This Miss Marple (Geraldine McEwan) DVD came up when I was looking to see if the library had the second set of the Tommy & Tuppence series I’d been watching, and I thought I’d try it based on them being in it. I couldn’t finish the movie. Tommy was on screen for about ten minutes and then vanished. Tuppence was an alcoholic and obviously quite depressed. From what I could tell, now that her children were grown, she was regretting the things— specifically the possibility of a career in intelligence work— she gave up in order to have them. McEwan as Miss Marple simply faded into the background which— Yes, that’s something Miss Marple is supposed to do, but it’s a terrible choice for a movie where she’s the star.
Deadpool - I’m the wrong audience for this movie. I was kind of bored through most of it, and I didn’t actually like the main character. I don’t know if Cordelia is interested in trying this movie, but I’m quite sure she’d be horrified if she watched it with us. I’m not worried about the sex or the swearing because she might find them too much but that would only be embarrassment. The violence might be more than she’s willing to deal with.
Doctor Who: The Underwater Menace - This is a Second Doctor story. Episodes 2 and 3 still exist with video and audio. Episodes 1 and 4 are audio only with some stills. I had trouble following the audio only bits. I was more than a bit annoyed by Polly in general because she seemed to be there only to scream. The mad scientist was way, way over the top ridiculous. I couldn’t figure out what he thought he’d get out of destroying the planet.
5000 Years of Magnificent Wonders: Disc 1, Ancient Egypt - The main bit on this DVD was actually extremely superficial, skipping over centuries and only hitting highlights. It only ran about forty minutes, so it had to be superficial. It just would have been a lot more worthwhile if it had focused more. The extras were actually more interesting. One was about Cleopatra and the other about the treasures of Tutankhamen. I saw the King Tut exhibit when it toured the US in the mid 1970s. I don’t remember it very well. The detail that sticks most strongly is that they tried to cut off the group going into the exhibit between me and my mother. I was eight or nine, so that scared me pretty badly. I have much vaguer memories of being really awed by the treasures. The famous mask was actually not that big a deal for me. It was pretty, but it was far less interesting than the other things— toys, boats, chairs, canopic jars.
The Last Starfighter - I read the novelization of this back in the early 1980s. I don’t think the movie actually came to Paw Paw, so I never saw it. I’ve been meaning to check it out from the library ever since I noticed they had it. I didn’t remember much from the book, but I didn’t expect any plot twists or anything. And there weren’t. It was a fun movie, and I don’t regret the time spent, but I don’t think I’m going to remember the details for long.
The Moving Finger - I watched all of this Miss Marple (Geraldine McEwen) movie, but I never did figure out who the characters were or how they related to each other. That was partly me not paying attention and partly the whole thing not being very interesting at all. This one was the third one out of the set of four that I tried, and I don’t think that I’m going to bother putting in the fourth, given how I’ve felt about the first three.
Mysteries at the Museum season 1 DVD 1 - I wasn’t really happy with this. The voiceover was kind of over-the-top and sounded as if the narrator was trying to make everything horribly melodramatic. I’d have liked something more matter-of-fact better. The artifacts are definitely interesting, but… I feel like the show was trying to make me feel like I was watching some sort of action/suspense show instead of what’s pretty much a documentary. The story of the Enigma Machine, for example, ought to be interesting, but it really wasn’t.
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind - I’d seen this before, fifteen or twenty years ago, and I had a vague memory of it being very pretty and very sad. Rewatching it, I found it much less sad than I expected. People still did terrible things to each other and to the world, but there was some hope, too. I’d thought that Cordelia might want to watch this because she’s been chasing down other Miyazaki titles, but apparently she wants to avoid being in the living room with us more than she wants to see this movie. Ah, well. She can get it from Netflix or from the library herself and watch it in her room. The copy I got from the library is Blu-ray, so she can’t watch it anywhere but the living room, but the library has the movie on DVD, too.
Sleeping Murder (Geraldine McEwan) - I got this set of Miss Marple movies because they came up when I searched 'Tommy Tuppence' in the library catalog. Those two aren’t in this movie. This made decent background while I worked on other things, but I kept having to stop because I could see two characters falling in love and I wasn’t ready to have things go there (she has a fiance in India, and he works for the fiance and has been tasked with helping her set up in England). McEwen did a decent Miss Marple, but I don’t have a lot of basis for comparison, so I can’t judge how she stacks up against other Marples. It’s very frustrating that these aren’t close captioned. I could follow everything, but captions make things much, much easier.
Deadpool - I’m the wrong audience for this movie. I was kind of bored through most of it, and I didn’t actually like the main character. I don’t know if Cordelia is interested in trying this movie, but I’m quite sure she’d be horrified if she watched it with us. I’m not worried about the sex or the swearing because she might find them too much but that would only be embarrassment. The violence might be more than she’s willing to deal with.
Doctor Who: The Underwater Menace - This is a Second Doctor story. Episodes 2 and 3 still exist with video and audio. Episodes 1 and 4 are audio only with some stills. I had trouble following the audio only bits. I was more than a bit annoyed by Polly in general because she seemed to be there only to scream. The mad scientist was way, way over the top ridiculous. I couldn’t figure out what he thought he’d get out of destroying the planet.
5000 Years of Magnificent Wonders: Disc 1, Ancient Egypt - The main bit on this DVD was actually extremely superficial, skipping over centuries and only hitting highlights. It only ran about forty minutes, so it had to be superficial. It just would have been a lot more worthwhile if it had focused more. The extras were actually more interesting. One was about Cleopatra and the other about the treasures of Tutankhamen. I saw the King Tut exhibit when it toured the US in the mid 1970s. I don’t remember it very well. The detail that sticks most strongly is that they tried to cut off the group going into the exhibit between me and my mother. I was eight or nine, so that scared me pretty badly. I have much vaguer memories of being really awed by the treasures. The famous mask was actually not that big a deal for me. It was pretty, but it was far less interesting than the other things— toys, boats, chairs, canopic jars.
The Last Starfighter - I read the novelization of this back in the early 1980s. I don’t think the movie actually came to Paw Paw, so I never saw it. I’ve been meaning to check it out from the library ever since I noticed they had it. I didn’t remember much from the book, but I didn’t expect any plot twists or anything. And there weren’t. It was a fun movie, and I don’t regret the time spent, but I don’t think I’m going to remember the details for long.
The Moving Finger - I watched all of this Miss Marple (Geraldine McEwen) movie, but I never did figure out who the characters were or how they related to each other. That was partly me not paying attention and partly the whole thing not being very interesting at all. This one was the third one out of the set of four that I tried, and I don’t think that I’m going to bother putting in the fourth, given how I’ve felt about the first three.
Mysteries at the Museum season 1 DVD 1 - I wasn’t really happy with this. The voiceover was kind of over-the-top and sounded as if the narrator was trying to make everything horribly melodramatic. I’d have liked something more matter-of-fact better. The artifacts are definitely interesting, but… I feel like the show was trying to make me feel like I was watching some sort of action/suspense show instead of what’s pretty much a documentary. The story of the Enigma Machine, for example, ought to be interesting, but it really wasn’t.
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind - I’d seen this before, fifteen or twenty years ago, and I had a vague memory of it being very pretty and very sad. Rewatching it, I found it much less sad than I expected. People still did terrible things to each other and to the world, but there was some hope, too. I’d thought that Cordelia might want to watch this because she’s been chasing down other Miyazaki titles, but apparently she wants to avoid being in the living room with us more than she wants to see this movie. Ah, well. She can get it from Netflix or from the library herself and watch it in her room. The copy I got from the library is Blu-ray, so she can’t watch it anywhere but the living room, but the library has the movie on DVD, too.
Sleeping Murder (Geraldine McEwan) - I got this set of Miss Marple movies because they came up when I searched 'Tommy Tuppence' in the library catalog. Those two aren’t in this movie. This made decent background while I worked on other things, but I kept having to stop because I could see two characters falling in love and I wasn’t ready to have things go there (she has a fiance in India, and he works for the fiance and has been tasked with helping her set up in England). McEwen did a decent Miss Marple, but I don’t have a lot of basis for comparison, so I can’t judge how she stacks up against other Marples. It’s very frustrating that these aren’t close captioned. I could follow everything, but captions make things much, much easier.
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no subject
Date: 2016-06-05 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-06-06 05:29 pm (UTC)I haven't watched much Second Doctor, so I think this was the first time I'd seen Ben and Polly. I'd seen stuff with Jamie before, but that was around 1990, so my memories are pretty vague.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-06 02:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-06-07 08:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-06-06 04:31 pm (UTC)It seems like they changed things just for the sake of changing them! I wonder if the murderer is the same... ;)
no subject
Date: 2016-06-07 08:02 pm (UTC)The murderer was the woman's uncle in this adaptation. Is that how it is in the book?
no subject
Date: 2016-06-07 08:29 pm (UTC)The husband/love interest in the book (Gerald and Gwen I think) were of a similar age, with Gerald staying behind in Australia for a few months to wrap up his work, so Gwen picked the house and set up housekeeping without him. She had the nightmares that inspired it just before he arrived, prompting her to consider institutionalizing herself until Miss Marple talked her out of it. She was friends with Jane Marple's nephew Raymond, which is how Miss Marple met her, and Raymond has appeared in a number of Miss Marple mysteries and short stories.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-08 03:14 am (UTC)And, for some reason, the mother's new identity involved being part of a close knit theater group. That part didn't make much sense to me except as a way to pile up suspects.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-08 02:12 pm (UTC)In the book, we meet Gwen, an newlywed from Australia, as she arrives in the UK for what she thinks is the first time in her life. She is searching for a new home for herself and her husband, who is planning to join her soon. She finds a lovely house in a small town that just calls out to her.
While she is waiting for Gerald to arrive, she has some odd occurances - nightmares, attempting to walk through walls because she feels a door should be there, walking off the end of the deck because she thinks there should be stairs. In the course of the renovations, she finds the exact wallpaper behind a cupboard that she imagined the room should have, and it freaks her out enough that she goes to stay with friends. She goes to a play with friends that makes her freak out, and Miss Marple happens to be sitting beside her and witnesses it. Gwen thinks she's going mad, but Miss Marple explains it's probably a memory that's coming back.
When Gerald arrives, the reunited couple decide to investigate, discovering that Gwen had actually been in the UK before, and lived in the house with her father and step-mother Helen (Helen and the father had met when Gwen was 3 and she and her father were coming back to the UK from India after her mother's death from fever), hence the foggy memories. Miss Marple is concerned that they'll dig up more than they should, so she finds an excuse to visit the town and be on the scene to protect them.
In the course of the investigation, they find out Gwen's father died in a sanitarium, convinced he'd murdered his wife. So there is some trepidation that Gwen might be the daughter of a murderer. Eventually they find the body buried at the end of the deck, the maid that had looked after Gwen as a child is murdered when she comes back to town at Gwen and Gerald's request to provide information as to what she saw that night, and, thinking he's about to be found out, the murderer (doctor/Gwen's uncle/Helen's creepy brother) attacks Gwen, and triggers her to remember the last bit of the repressed memory that she'd not been able to recover yet.
I really don't know why they changed it, as the story as summarized above certainly provides a good, and easily videographed, story.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-08 09:15 pm (UTC)In this version, the original murder victim just vanished. It was the day of their planned wedding. The father fell to his death in what was assumed to be a suicide but labeled an accident and was actually murder to keep him from asking questions (or noticing that the I'm-happy-don't-look-for-me postcard wasn't actually in her handwriting). As far as the police were concerned, nobody had been murdered all those years ago.