Yeah, I watched it assuming I couldn’t go wrong with Wilder/Lemmon/MacLaine, and I was incorrect.

Casting Halle Berry strikes me as more racially insensitive than Elizabeth Taylor - you’re getting into “Africa is a country” territory there. 

Waterworld was perfectly entertaining, especially Dennis Hopper who knew EXACTLY what kind of movie they were actually making. The girl actor (Napoleon Dynamite’s future girlfriend!) was not annoying, Jeanne Tripplehorn looked amazing, Michael Jeter did his usual oddball thing, Costner’s gruff minimalism was put to…

“The Vatican openly condemned Taylor for ‘erotic vagrancy.’”

Yeah, Cleopatra almost certainly wasn't Liz Taylor pale, but there's no reason to think she looked any different from a woman living in Greece or Turkey today. 

It was also the last big blockbuster and positively reviewed film Costner was cast in for the rest of the 90s. Especially compared to The Postman which cost half as much and bombed spectacularly.

It usually goes one of two ways. Sometimes, the resulting movie is an unmitigated disaster, a Heaven’s Gate or Waterworld.

Irma La Douce is problematic to the point of being unwatchable these days. It’s a very pale shadow of The Apartment.

I remember loving how Taylor player the scene with the servant who tries to poison her. The woman begs for forgiveness and Cleopatra benevolently says, “I forgive you... Now drink it yourself.” It was awesome and campy and ridiculous. 

We watched Cleopatra in my 7th grade Latin Class. Ostensibly to get an idea of Ancient Roman times, but I think really it was our teacher was a Liz Taylor fan and wanted an excuse to watch it. I remember it being quite a spectacle, not entirely boring, and a bit risque for 12 year-olds.

I try and watch it once in a while, whenever it pops up on British telly. However with the ad breaks included, the film is nearly 5 hours long.

For the record, that Vox piece about Cleopatra’s ethnicity is giving entirely too much credence to the ideas of Hilke Thuer, whose claims are based on several extremely strained interpretations of the record. Thuer is not reflective of mainstream scholarship; he’s closer to an anti-Stratfordian truther. Cleopatra…

I just re-read the book for probably the fourth or fifth time. It’s great, but the pacing is very odd.

The Aziraphale And Crowley bits are all excellent, but they disappear for long portions of the story. Newt, one of the main characters, doesn’t appear until almost halfway through. The Horseman scenes, which don’t…

You’re correct. What I meant to convey was they stopped with the helmet cam quite quickly and loosened their rules from “the shot must be from the POV of the character currently having the interior monologue” to any character in scene, to some shots being of the scene. 

it wasn’t like 24/7 every shot being POV...I’ve never understood why found-footage movies can’t just mix regular film with changing to the found-footage perspective for certain set-pieces.

I think more so than some acting specific acting genius of Mitchell and Webb, the real success of the show is just how much the writing paints an incredibly relatable picture of your average neurotic British mindset and psychology.

The situations they find themselves in may be a lot more absurd, but almost anyone who…

I mean, it’s an odd character and not a totally successful one, especially compared to say Sophie. I also think Doby is very inconsistent in her depiction.  But what do you mean, “problematic”?

I loved the original I think it had a lot do because because Mitchell and Webb played their roles perfectly (Bonus Olivia Colman, too!). I’d be a little leery of a.) any new version of it, and b.) an American version of it.

Yes but who'll play Dobby? And will they have Jodie Whittaker play Peter Capaldi?

Peep Show works because of Mitchell and Webb. The concept of two underachieving losers teaming up was old news in the 1920s, just putting two women in the roles and moving it to New York or Los Angeles means nothing to me. It’s not even that well known in the USA, why not just do something new?