What film did you watch last night?

[AndyRM]

Is it the 1951 version that was originally called the thing from another planet or world?

Yip.

 

[welsh dragon]

CitizenFour - a documentary covering Edward Snowden's leaks of NSA material showing how the US government has been systematically spying, wholesale, on the communications of the modern world.

As one of the characters featured says, the US has a well-established criterion for bugging citizens' phone calls, emails, google search history etc, known as 'probable cause' - ie, it believes there is good reason to suspect the subject to be up to no good. This has now been abandoned. To all intents and purposes, the new criterion is 'no particular cause required'. Ie, it now employs the capability of modern data-gathering and analysis technology to routinely hoover up and sift everything. Which it can then leverage for its own purposes, whether in suppressing political protest or helping US Corporations gain an edge over foreign competitors. True, it does still need some kind of judicial sanction to spy thus on communications between US citizens which take place entirely within the US; but any communications that cross the national border lose all such protection. And any communications involving non-US citizens are subject to no oversight or legal review whatsoever.

And what is our government doing to protect us from such super-snooping? Well, to say 'nothing' doesn't come close. Indeed, according to Snowden, GCHQ exceeds even the zeal of America's NSA in its snooping, operating 'probably the most intrusive and systematic spying in the world'.

News International eat your heart out.

Chilling stuff, brilliantly presented.

No wonder they want to shut these people up.

 

[welsh dragon]

Yip.

I may have found sonewhere to watch it. Called stage vu? I might be able to download it.

 

[AndyRM]

I may have found sonewhere to watch it. Called stage vu? I might be able to download it.

Get involved! Stage Vu is pretty good for streaming stuff.

 

[User6179]

That actually looks pretty good...!

Also I'm not getting the poor reviews for The Thing. Did you accidentally watch the 2011 version and get confused @welsh dragon and @Eddy ? It's one of Carpenter's best IMO, but I am a massive fan of his.

Over the weekend we watched Olympus Has Fallen. 5/10. Totally mindless and utterly ridiculous but very entertaining.

I remember watching The Thing on VHS and thought it was a great film , a bit dated now but would still give 7/10

 

[AndyRM]

I remember watching The Thing on VHS and thought it was a great film , a bit dated now but would still give 7/10

I've still got it on VHS... I dunno why I persist with my VCR, you have to turn it up incredibly loud to hear over the hiss of the tape, and the formatting is usually wrong. It's exciting if I've forgotten to turn it back to a reasonable level before turning the TV on again...

 

[User6179]

Get involved! Stage Vu is pretty good for streaming stuff.

Veehd is a lot better , just join and you don't need to download the software.

 

[User6179]

I've still got it on VHS... I dunno why I persist with my VCR, you have to turn it up incredibly loud to hear over the hiss of the tape, and the formatting is usually wrong. It's exciting if I've forgotten to turn it back to a reasonable level before turning the TV on again...

I got rid of the Video recorder when it made more noise than a 2 stroke engine , couldn't hear a film for the clatter , think I still have an old Betamax in the loft .

 

[stephec]

Hysteria - the story of a Victorian doctor's invention of the vibrator.

Starts out as comedy, then has a sickly sweet ending.

Decent enough with a few faces that make you think, "where have I seen him before."

Maggie Gyllenhaal as one of the main characters, and Sheridan Smith as her saucy minx ex prostitute friend, what more do you need?

 

[Melvil]

Mockingjay. The partner likes it. I don't.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

I needed something I didn't need to think about and was crap but entertaining. A cite woman or two and no story line always helps, so Hercules (2014) was being pushed by Netflix and met the bill. 6/10 seems about right.
Carrying on with that theme I started to watch Elektra, but only got half way through it before my husband got home last night. It is also meeting the above requirements!

 

[Elybazza61]

Dallas buyers club watched on Saturday;good film with excellent performances from Matthew McConaughey,Jared Leto and Steve Zahn who I haven't seen in anything recently.

 

[AndyRM]

Dallas buyers club watched on Saturday;good film with excellent performances from Matthew McConaughey,Jared Leto and Steve Zahn who I haven't seen in anything recently.

He's been slumming it on the telly, albeit in some excellent shows: Treme and Modern Family. And the less good Mind Games.

 

[swee'pea99]

Gladiator. Blimey. That's a Big Movie. I had seen it before, but many years ago. Just as impressive as I remember.

 

[mustang1]

Stop at Nothing. Lance Armstrong story 2014.