Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with TV and movie

Looking for recommendations for recent popular music soundtracks

cosmic.osmo — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:21:43 -0800

Does anyone have any recommendations for somewhat recent (post-2000) TV or movie popular music soundtracks (or some other kind of compilation)? I tend to like alternative rock, but I'm open to any genre. I've realized that I've been in a musical rut for the past several years, so I'm looking for a fast way to discover new music and expose myself to some of what I've missed. I've gotten the soundtracks to Scrubs and Garden State, and I've found a lot that I like in them, but I'm also almost finished with them.

So, any recommendations?

Examples of image zooming/enhancement cliché from movies/tv.

dunk — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:30:01 -0800

I'm looking for examples of the film and tv cliché where images from surveillance video or photos are magnified and enhanced (usually to a ridiculous degree). I know about Enemy of the State and this clip from CSI (I'm guessing one of many examples from that show) is what made me think of compiling a list. They don't necessarily have to be things that are impossible in the real world, I'm more interested in the dialogue than the image being enhanced. If I get enough good ones I may make a supercut.

Demo Reel

silsurf — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 09:29:08 -0800

What do you want to see on my demo reel? I am putting together a demo reel as a cinematographer and want to make it as fun, simple and uncluttered as I can for the prospective employer.

I have the following footage:
Lots of dailies from a tv show that I did 2nd unit on recently

A few complete scenes from movies I have worked on as an operator, but shot a day here and there on second unit.

My old reel which is pretty dated.

I am working with an editor and he is putting together an overall montage of footage, basically just making the best 5 minutes he can.

I also think there should be one or two scenes that are complete, showing coverage and my ability to design a scene properly.

What else? One idea is whether to make a second, shorter montage of just the most recent TV show I did the 2nd unit work on, it is by far the slickest of the material, is it excessive to have two montages?

My experience in reels is that folks don't look at much, they watch the montage and that is it (if you are lucky) I think often they watch the first two minutes of the montage and then move on. So, is the rest really worth spending much time on? I don't know.

People put stills on, but I think that seems useless, they are not hiring me to shoot stills, but moving pictures.

I shot some demo spec spots, but they are really dated and I think they do not stand alone very well.

All input appreciated.

Henry

What a strange movie...

razzamatazm — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 22:55:38 -0800

Weird movie memory filter: I feel like it was a Disney Channel movie. The premise was a 14ish year old girl wanting to be in a boy's band, so she ended up dressing like a boy and they let her in the band. She was also in an all girl band and it happened that they had to perform on the same day. Chaos ensues, and she is found out in the end... Any help is great.

I want to see more bad people

reenum — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:48:37 -0800

Please suggest movies, TV shows and books that feature unrepentant, amoral characters I was a big fan of Seinfeld when it was on, and now love It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and Eastbound & Down.

The common thread running through these shows is a character or group of characters who are often selfish at best, amoral at worst and unrepentant about it. Also, the characters don't seem to have an epiphany that makes them "good", like the case with many movies and books. For example, I loved the movie Roger Dodger until the ending.

I want more of this. I'd love suggestions on TV shows (except Weeds), movies, and nonfiction books or biographies. I've read about such characters in fiction, so don't need recs on those sorts of books.

Thanks!

Don't leave the theatre yet...

niccolo — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:33:23 -0800

Here's a tough question! I'm looking for two examples of films/tv shows that have recipes (for cooking) in the on screen credits. Apparently Spaceballs is one (in the closing credits, the recipe for fudge brownies appears).
I need two more examples!

TV-movie where a healer slides a lump under a woman's skin

XiBe — Thu, 14 May 2009 13:59:47 -0800

[TVMoviesFilter] Trying to remember an old, cheap-looking movie from a single rememberance: in a room full of rich people, a magician/healer slides a woman's neck tumor/lump through to her finger, at which point he cuts it off with a knife. It's really foggy in my memory, I must have seen in (French) TV in the mid- to end-80's (so probably made earlier in for US TV, 70's?), and only this scene stuck in my head, nothing else. I'd but just curious to know more about this.

My rememberance of that scene starts with the magician/healer. He might have been performing in front of that rich audience earlier, or circled around them while performing, restaurant-style, not sure.

He spots a lump on an old lady's neck (or face or cheek, erm), and start to push under the skin, down to neck, over the bonnes, to the arm, and finally the finger. This takes a few minutes, all the while keeping the lump clearly visible under the skin.

That's when suddenly he reaches for a knife on the table, and quickly strikes the finger he is keeping in his other hand, wham. We don't see anything, 'cos a white flash serves as an opener to the next scene, where it gets blurrier in my mind - wether she's stunned at being healed this way, or men from the room grab the magician and take him away, or maybe even both...

Hivemind, does that strike a bell for you too?

Thanks a lot for any input! :)

What are the best documentaries / movies on depression?

jfricke — Tue, 12 May 2009 23:35:39 -0800

What are the best documentaries / movies on depression? A friend of mine lately told me that after watching the movie Prozac Nation, she could understand much better what it means to have depression for me. I skimmed through the movie at YouTube and I don't think it is that great. I might be wrong but nevertheless I wonder whether there are any better movies/documentaries on the issue of depression. I really liked Stephen Fry's "The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive" and ideally I would like to find something like this for chronic depression. Any suggestions?

Identify this (probably really awful) movie!

phunniemee — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:10:53 -0800

Identify this (probably really awful) movie! The scene:
We're in some land where people live before they are born. Apparently, you grow up here and age as you normally would until the day that you're born on Earth and you have to leave the before you're born world.
The scene follows a teenage boy (in a blue...toga?) and a teenage girl (in pink), both with dark hair (I think), who have fallen in love. Unfortunately, the time has come for one of them to be born, and now they have to be split up. (How tragic!)

It was something that came on TV, basic cable, when I was a kid (so we're talking early to mid 90s). My mom was watching it and it was just on as I walked in and out of the room, so I don't really know the rest of the movie. I'm pretty sure this is just a side story, though. The movie had a 60s feel to it, and for a long time I thought it was some scene from Jason and the Argonauts, as I had seen that movie about the same time. (I just watched Jason and the Argonauts last week, though. It's not Jason and the Argonauts.) But as far as color and style went, it could have easily been that. It's possible it could have been a Mystery Science Theater 3000 thing (my mom watched a lot of MST3K) and I'm just not remembering the mocking, but I went through the episode guide the other day and can't find anything on there.

As I've been thinking about this, though, I think this other random-scene-from-a-movie-I-saw-when-I-was-little might be from the same movie. Here's what I remember of that:
A man (and maybe his mom?) were on a quest (?), and come upon a fountain of youth. Or something similar. It was in this room surrounded by a bunch of young-looking people (wearing purple?). The guy (or possibly his mom) was about to take a drink from it, when suddenly the man realizes that, while all these folks hanging out in the fountain room are hot young things, they are also blind (omg!) and that's the price you have to pay for immortality.

It had the same (cheesy 60s movie) look and feel of the earlier scene, so my brain might be linking these two for that reason only, but I have a good feeling that they're the same one. Searching the "fountain of youth" "greek myth" and "blindness" movies on IMDB have turned up nothing.

This has been bugging me off and on for years (years!) so if you guys have any idea as to what the movie (or movies) is, I will heart you forever.

Yes, I know I could ask my mom if she remembers, but I'm almost certain she doesn't. If I asked, she would spend hours searching for it online using the same methods that I already have and coming up short. I don't want to waste her time.

Sweet nutcracker

Johnny Assay — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 06:58:07 -0800

Movie/TV ID question: a half-remembered scene where a minor (?) character cracks nuts with his wooden hand. A "colorful detail" from a movie popped in to my head yesterday evening, and I can't figure out for the life of me figure out where it's from. A character has a wooden hand that he opens and closes by using a screw/knob placed somewhere up his forearm. He uses this to crack nuts by opening the wooden hand, placing a nut in its palm, and then cranking the knob with his other hand so hard that the nut breaks. Then repeat.

That's all I remember accurately. I have a feeling that this was a minor character in the movie/TV series; perhaps it was something like a cop movie or a western, and he was doing this while the main character was talking to him? I have no idea when I saw it, though it probably wasn't within the last three or four years. Any help the hive-mind can offer would be greatly appreciated.

1980s TV Movie - Planet w/Non-Stop Rain

DavidNYC — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:58:09 -0800

TV Movie ID: A sci-fi-ish TV movie from the 1980s which mostly featured children living on a planet where it never stopped raining. I don't recall much of the storyline, but I seem to remember that one of the main characters was a girl who I think had grown up on Earth and knew what sunshine was like. (The rest of the kids knew nothing but eternal rain.) She was treated like a pariah and, for a while, locked in some sort of closet or store-room by some of the other kids. Of course, during her confinement, the rain briefly stopped, allowing everyone a short moment to experience the outdoors in the sun. By the time she was let out, the rain naturally had started up again.

TV Movie identification

fire&wings — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 09:33:27 -0800

Crap tv-movie identification filter. An American TV movie most likely made in the 90's. It had a ridiculous, weepy title along the lines of "The Emancipation of Cathy Lee." The female lead had dark curly hair and played a lonely woman writing to a prisoner while also possibly looking after her disabled parent. I think some cringe-inducing scenes featured her reading out the letters. She lived in a large house with an elaborate conservatory/greenhouse where the climax took place, involving a fire and the convict finally tracking her down (he wasn't the understanding soul she thought he was, after all.) I thought it may have starred Richard Thomas but after searching I appear to be confusing it with "Down, Out and Dangerous," so no idea of the cast, sorry. Any ideas?

What would be interesting to a high school class?

FeldBum — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 04:46:46 -0800

My wife, a high school teacher, has an extra period with her students tomorrow. She wants to show them something (documentary, TV episode) interesting and have a discussion afterward. Suggestions? So far, I thought of these:

Taxi to the Dark Side
An Inconvenient Truth
Man on Wire
Standard Operating Procedure
Something from Frontline, if I can figure out how to download an episode for her.
An episode from The Wire or Generation Kill

DVD player that isn't hostile to end-users?

odinsdream — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:54:31 -0800

Can you recommend an upconverting DVD player with component output that ignores region coding and allows me to perform any action at any time? Can you recommend an upconverting DVD player that doesn't treat me with active hostility? I'm specifically looking for a player that:

1. Ignores region coding, or can be easily set to ignore region coding without installing new firmware.

2. Never, ever restricts me from fast-forwarding previews/warnings/anti-piracy tirades or skipping to a particular menu.

I can work around these issues by ripping the discs and then re-burning them but this is highly inconvenient.

It would also be nice if the player had all of the usual standard cool things, like digital audio output and some nice pulldown detection, and didn't sound like a jet engine.

Where can I find more awesome kick-butt music?

stewiethegreat — Thu, 08 May 2008 12:05:55 -0800

I'm a classical music aficionado but have recently been watching the TV show alias and love the kick-butt music super-hero music featured there. Help me find more? Specifically, I loved Sinead O'Conner's No Man's Woman, Badfinger's Come and Get it, Kryptonite, and some of the great 90's anthems by SmashMouth, U2 and others.

I like listening to those songs to rev me up for big presentations or when jogging, but I'd like to, um, expand my repertoire. Things that make me feel like a super-heroine or a kick-butt spy.

Can you make more suggestions? (Stewie's gf asking)

Thanks!

How can I use my TV speakers as the center channel on my receiver?

odinsdream — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 07:02:13 -0800

How can I use the speakers in my TV as the "center" speaker on my receiver? I have a receiver hooked up to four normal speakers. I'd like to use the speakers in my TV as the center speaker.

My TV has audio inputs for each set of video inputs. These are normal RCA red-white connectors.

Is there some way to connect powered speaker wires to these without breaking the TV? My first thought was to open the TV and disconnect the speakers from the internal wiring and substitute my own. I'd prefer not to do this since the TV is new and still under warranty.

The other problem would be that the TV has two internal speakers, left and right, which I want to treat as one.

Any thoughts?

British mystery TV shows/movies?

gentle — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 18:26:51 -0800

Great British mystery television shows/movies? My girlfriend and I are both rabid fans of good, old-fashioned British whodunnits. Nothing like a rainy Sunday curled up in the sofa to watch an insufferable amateur detective line up a bunch of eccentric upper-class Brits by the fireplace to expose their innermost red herrings: Poirot, Miss Marple, Jonathan Creek, Cadfael, Inspector Alleyn, Sherlock Holmes, Gosford Park -- we have pretty much watched them all, including numerous Agatha Christie movie adaptations. What else is out there? Must be British, or feature mainly Brits; extra points for smoking jackets, quaint little villages in Dorset, vintage automobiles and funny little Frenchmen. (We don't like modern police procedurals that much, though; Inspector Morse is all right, but not quite our cup of tea.)

Have You Seen These Books (on TV)?

Karmakaze — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 05:49:19 -0800

Have you seen these books in the background of movie/tv scenes? I'm looking for examples of where the Martindale-Hubbell Directory has been shown in movies or TV shows – those shots of lawyers standing before a wall full of the books. The link in the question is probably your best visual reference - that's the 2003 edition, but it's more or less what they look like every year. It needs to be exactly that brand of directory, but it can be any year (it been printed every year for about a century).

I'm trying to help some marketing folks, so I'm looking for specific examples with as much information as possible – name of movie or show, name of the actor/actress and/or the scene/episode in which they appeared, and any other details that might help locate the footage.

Can't remember the title for an old superhero movie.

krisak — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:52:25 -0800

I'm looking for a superhero movie or TV show from the 70s or 80s. I can't remember the title or much of the plot, but I do remember one key premise. First off, I'm pretty sure it's not Greatest American Hero, specifically because part of the premise was that when the hero in the suit sees the color red he loses his powers. I watched the first season of GAH recently and that didn't seem to be part of the premise.

Other than that, all I really remember was a scene where the hero was running alongside a car, talking to the driver, when he spots a red building (barn?) and loses his power.

Chicken Feet!

albernathy0 — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 21:01:07 -0800

Please help identify a children's horror program either on television or VHS (most likely) that I watched as a child in the early 90s. If it was a television program I have a feeling that it would have been on PBS. I am most confident however that it was a VHS video I rented from the library. I associate the words, "Chicken Feet" with what I remember. The scene I remember best is of a children's room, outside is rain and lightning, and suddenly you see this big monster chicken in the closet! That's really all I recall. The movie was live action. Thank you so much for the help!

movie filter

queue_strategy — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 18:19:58 -0800

Cable TV Movie filter Been searching for an application that will alert me on new movies and other content premiering on my local cable provider (Cox cable). Would love to see a weekly email with personalized listings so that I could peruse and schedule interesting movies and other programs to be recorded.
Any ideas?

Whats the name of this movie that I saw on TV?

jammnrose — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 21:18:11 -0800

Whats the name of this movie that I saw on TV at least 8 years ago? It had a plot that revolved around the 13th floor of a building. The movie I saw had a plot that revolved around the 13th floor of a building (hotel i think...). There was no 13th floor button on the elevator, but the "secret" floor was accessed by turning the 12th floor button upside down (it was a round button).
Towards the end of the movie there was a fire or explosion on the 13th floor.
This may be a movie-movie, but it might also be a tv-movie.

Whither realistic cops on TV and film?

East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 — Tue, 29 May 2007 05:56:34 -0800

Which cinematographs or televisual serials most faithfully depict the operations of police or detectives?

Funny movies dealing with investments...

Sreiny — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 14:32:09 -0800

Asking for a friend: Looking for a movie or tv show that deals with investing in a comedic way. The whole show or movie doesn't have to deal with investing, but maybe a part in particular. Are there any that you can think of that go about this in an interesting/funny/ironic way? Thanks.

Gremlins in the Duct Work

beowulf573 — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 08:10:18 -0800

Help me find a tv movie from the 70's or 80's that had gremlins in the ducts. For years I've had a few images from a tv movie from the mid to late 70's, possibly early 80's stuck in my head. It involves a family living in a house that has gremlins, imps, or some sort of supernatural beings living in the ducts.

I remember the last scene involved one of the family member being taken away by the gremlins and camera started on the fact of a character sticking his head in and pulling away though the duct work.

Help be find this movie and bring peace to my troubled mind.