[Movie] Movies/Shows you have seen recently?

Just came back from HMV, they are having crazy movie sales lately so I got me Time Bandits, The Princess Bride, Platoon, and the original The Producers from 1968.

All movies I have not yet seen, but have been looking forward to for quite a while.

Additional Spam:
well just finished watching Time Bandits, and I have to say that the Fortress of Ultimate Darkness was pretty awesome, and the film as a whole was full of quirky bits that I quite enjoyed. I wish I had seen this as a kid, I would've loved it even more back then. My GF found it freaky, but not as much as Brazil. Princess Bride is up next.

Even more low-grade processed meat:
Heh, after the Ultimate Darkness comes the ultimate suffering. In the words of Miracle Max: "I've seen worse." Seriously I can understand the love for The Princess Bride now, as this movie is just great in just about every way. The pacing is perfect, and the characters are all so well-defined and charmingly unique. I'm sure I'll watch it again before too long, just to get the few bits I missed this time around.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Wrote a big ass thing below but here is the tl;dr:

I'm almost done watching Borgia (French one from Canal+ on Netflix, not The Borgias on Showtime), and it really impressed me. A period piece with a very rich subject matter set in Italy during the Renaissance. If you enjoy historical political intrigues/dramas, do watch it.

Spoiler:

I'd noticed Borgia on Netflix many times and almost watched a few times and then dismissed it, and then one day being extremely bored I decided to give it a go.

Turns out I've enjoyed it more thoroughly than just about anything I've watched in recent memory. It can be a bit hard to get into at first for anyone used to bigger budget productions (like the American version apparently), and for the fact that the cast is very international, which makes it odd at first in terms of everyone having a different accent. The prime example of this and in my mind the worst offender is the actor who plays Rodrigo Borgia, who is just about the only person with a thick American accent and plays the main role in the setup of the story (aka season 1). His acting isn't all that bad, but man that accent is ridiculous in this setting. In the end, I guess what I drove into my head was that they aren't speaking Italian as they should anyway, and that helped it become a non-issue for me.

If you can get over these few gripes though, it is really worth a watch, especially if you are interested in period pieces. The Renaissance has no shortage of famous artists and statesmen, and the blend here is what allows you to get transported into the subject matter. For example, Leonardo Da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli, who had known and, in the case of Da Vinci, been in the employ of Cesare Borgia, have supporting roles in the story. Josquin des Prés, a well-known music composer, is portrayed teaching Lucrezia Borgia the harp, and one of his most famous pieces for choir (Mille Regrets) is given a rendition on the harp in the show.

On the other hand, the show is also quite liberal in it's use of sex and violence, but it's nothing that should really phase anyone who's watched Game of Thrones or any other similar show, and gratuitousness has become a rather common trait in television anyway. The executions in particular are quite imaginative, and whether these are historically accurate becomes irrelevant when you remember that in the end the point is that these were commonplace public events, and that the general mentality of the age accepted this as part of life.

All of this is makes the show enjoyable and fits the subject matter well. Everyone in the show is a self-serving a-hole, and anyone who tries to act in a virtuous or moral way ends up taking it in the ass for it, sometimes quite literally. Family is always number one, and anyone who betrays this usually ends up paying for it as well. The show's central characters (the Borgia family) evolve quite a bit over the three seasons of the show, but rarely does this cause a lack of consistency. But in the end it is the historically notorious Cesare who, in my opinion, really drives the narrative and makes the show great, especially starting towards the end of the first season.

My favorite moment from the show below for those who have watched it already:

Spoiler:

Even though it was quite cheesy, I almost started cheering when Cesare is being prosecuted by Niccolo Machiavelli under pope Julius' influence, and after his change of heart brought upon by his discussion with Alessandro during the recess, his closing argument is literally an extract from The Prince. Actually for most of the show Machiavelli is probably one of the more unreadable characters, true to the actual debate that has lasted since he wrote his stuff, even if they did make him come out on Cesare's side in the end. I had reread the chapters on Cesare in the book the night before, as my first read of it years ago hadn't yielded enough of a lasting impression for me to remember most of it. It sort of encompassed the series for me, in terms of it trying to stay just close enough to history while embellishing mostly when it would truly have an impact. /remnants-of-an-arts-student-geek-out

There's nowhere I can't reach.

So in the last week I've watched all of Red Vs. Blue and now I'm just about done both seasons of Danger 5. Not sure how this coming week could be any weirder. Maybe if someone announced a crossover show of the two?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.