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Post by gothicarchiesfan on Jun 22, 2020 3:43:06 GMT -5
Hello all, even though we are scheduled to begin the TRR rewatch today, please feel free to keep posting in the TBB thread as much as you like. I understand that many of you are still catching up and I don't want anyone here to feel obligated to post only in certain places at certain times. The schedule is really more of a rough guideline and the main object of these rewatches is for people to have a free and relaxed space to talk about the film/tv adaptations of these great books. Thanks again to tk for their incredible work on getting this rewatch together in the first place.
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Post by gothicarchiesfan on Jun 22, 2020 14:26:58 GMT -5
Although this is shown here, if I remember correctly in TRR there will still be a scene in which Lemony comfortably drinks coffee while sitting in an armchair while stating that Uncle Monty is going to die. (Is it his apartment over there? Did he return to the apartment after escaping? Or was Lemony's narration scenes in TRR recorded (in the fictional universe of the show) before the scene in which Lemony runs away from his apartment? ) It's unlikely he's narrating that scene from his apartment as you can see out the window and he's clearly somewhere in the countryside. :Edit: With the advent of the show's version of what happens to the Self-Sustaining Hot Air Mobile Home, it has become far harder to date this sequence in retrospect.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jun 23, 2020 13:06:18 GMT -5
I liked the fact that they kept Lemony Snicket talking about the years that passed and they still thought about how they could have saved Uncle Monty's life. This makes it clear that Lemony has access to information about what the Baudelaires thought, even a few years later. Daniel Handler, who was part of the creative team at that time, showed no regret for that sentence. There is something on his mind about the source of the detailed information about the Baudelaires, including his private thoughts and conversations. I believe it is the book on the island where the Baudelaires wrote about themselves.
The times refer to counting backwards.: 23:02 ep 3. Was it a real snake back there acting on the set, or was it a fake background?
21:05 ep 3 - it took me by surprise again.
20:21 - Is Monty trained in criminology? What is the name of this college for me not to appear there or accidentally?
20:00 - Stephano breaks the fourth wall to advertise netflix?
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Post by gothicarchiesfan on Jun 24, 2020 6:34:45 GMT -5
I liked the fact that they kept Lemony Snicket talking about the years that passed and they still thought about how they could have saved Uncle Monty's life. This makes it clear that Lemony has access to information about what the Baudelaires thought, even a few years later. Daniel Handler, who was part of the creative team at that time, showed no regret for that sentence. There is something on his mind about the source of the detailed information about the Baudelaires, including his private thoughts and conversations. I believe it is the book on the island where the Baudelaires wrote about themselves. That does seem like the most plausible explanation for why Snicket is so knowledgable about how certain people were thinking at certain times, though I'm sure at some points it was just guess work.
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Post by gothicarchiesfan on Jun 25, 2020 17:56:14 GMT -5
I think it's perhaps prudent to extend the rewatch schedule to 2 weeks per book instead of one to allow everyone the time to catch up and not feel left behind.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jun 25, 2020 19:21:04 GMT -5
I agree! Unfortunately the most of us is adult.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jun 27, 2020 15:47:46 GMT -5
Now I realized something that I had forgotten. The start of part 2 of TRR is really cruel. Seeing Uncle Monty's body must have been scary for the most sensitive children. For me, it was great.
Edit 1:
I don't understand why the Incredibly Deadly Viper is again being accused of killing Uncle Monty. That was the plot of the film, I understand that in the film things needed to be very fast due to the time ... But why resort to this change again? And poor Mamba du Mal lost prominence.
Furthermore, thanks to TRR (in the books) we are sure that Olaf just pretends to be an idiot. He really spent time researching books, and reading a lot and even making graphics in order to prepare for the plan he executed. This makes him a much more scary villain, because he is smart and knows how to search in books, like Klaus.
Edit 2 - I just realized in the books that Mamba du Mal appears in history with the sole aim of making Klaus' journey in searching for unknown information in books relevant. He already knew that Vik was harmless, but he had to discover that Mamba du Mal killed differently than what happened in the death of Uncle Monty.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jun 28, 2020 16:19:53 GMT -5
I have to admit that I liked the final part of TRR. Like the whole Olaf troupe, it was put on the scene. I think the difference between that and the books, is that when I first read TRR I didn't realize that the doctor was Count Olaf's assistant. I was a child, and I was surprised. In fact, in TMM I was also surprised, and in TAA I was also surprised to find out who Count Olaf's helpers were. (Maybe in TMM, no ...). Despite this, the part of finding evidence made sense here. And mamba Du Mal was mentioned again, so everything is fine about that. But with respect to Jackelyn, again I did not like the fact that she was there all the time and did not help the children. Does that really make sense? I mean, Count Olaf could have killed Sunny out Klaus while he was alone with them, and she did nothing? Besides, why was she using the spyglass to look at an empty spot? If I were her and I was disguised as a statue with a spyglass in my hand, at least I would be looking in the direction of the house. Besides, at the very least, I would have called for backup a long time ago. Something like the real police or other volunteers. Did she stay there as a passive observer? And even for that she was helpless, because she was looking at the wrong place. Is this a criticism that all ASOUE adults are frustrating? It could be ... but the music used seems to indicate that the objective would be to show that Jacquelyn is an exemplary volunteer. I could even understand if the fire-extinguishing members never resorted to violence or threats, but right after that we see her chasing Count Olaf and we see her using bladed weapons and a harpoon trigger to threaten Count Olaf. Why didn't she do this before, when she was armed and willing to use such weapons?
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Post by Dante on Jun 29, 2020 4:25:03 GMT -5
I suppose the show doesn't credit the idea that neither the Baudelaires, nor more pertinently we the viewers, wouldn't recognise Count Olaf's troupe through their disguises. If we recognise Olaf, we should recognise his troupe; though this is probably exactly why they take pains in the books after TWW to disguise their faces. It's interesting that the entire troupe gets brought into play more often; was that a recognition of the fact that the troupe are, to an extent, fan favourites, or was it seen as a waste not to make more use of them? Or did their collective shenanigans simply help to fill the time? TMM is a rare exception, probably to place more emphasis on Dr. Orwell and to keep the tightness of the original climax; it's interesting that Fernald was used instead of the bald man, but the bald man isn't characterised as being so talkative in the Netflix version (he's more playing the original role of the henchperson of indeterminate gender, really).
I tend to agree that the inclusion of Jacquelyn is a bit of a miss in TRR; perhaps a case of style over substance, where her role makes less sense the more you think about it (though this is true of much in ASoUE). Others have also complained that the Baudelaires following her recommendation for which of their relatives to stay with next undermines both their independence of thought and the theme of their fate being arranged without their consent by inept adults; though Netflix's Season 1 is playing with that theme throughout, anyway (and hence Josephine turns out to be a lousy choice and so the Baudelaires very directly make their own choice for where to go next).
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Post by Hermes on Jun 29, 2020 6:19:36 GMT -5
The show foregrounds the troupe much more than the books do; and this will be important later, when they stay together to the end instead of being picked off one by one, and even get one of the controversial reunions at the end - though sadly, this leads to the sidelining of the freaks, who largely replace them in the book series.
Yes, the bald man is very much a silent type, though I think his facial expression sometimes shows that he, like the HHM and the HOIG, has some doubts about Olaf's methods. Only the WFW are unequivocal enthusiasts for Olaf at this point - a bit suprisingly given that in the books they are the first to desert him.
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Post by gothicarchiesfan on Jul 2, 2020 1:24:31 GMT -5
TRR: VFX Before and After [From Zoic, CVD, LUX, EDI]
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Post by Uncle Algernon on Jul 2, 2020 4:53:46 GMT -5
Oh my *God* the puppet Inky
I want it
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Post by catastrophist on Jul 13, 2020 11:03:35 GMT -5
The re-watch has quieted down; I hope everyone's doing OK. Revisiting the series has been a balm during some tough times, and these two episodes are personal favorites. In fact, when I interviewed cast and crew for The Incomplete History of Secret Organizations, nearly everyone mentioned TRR as a highlight. That's partly because of the set. While most TV houses are just a collection of rooms spread across different sound-stages, Monty's was built pretty much the way it appears on screen: you could walk up the driveway, through the front door, and find a house with a functional upstairs and downstairs and rooms that actually connected. Unlike most of our sets, which skewed gloomy, this was supposed to be a place where the Baudelaires could feel at home, and it felt like a home for those of us on set too.
Unlike later animals that would appear on the show, most of the reptiles in Monty's collection were real, supplied by an actual reptile zoo outside of Vancouver. I was a huge reptile nerd growing up (the kind of kid who, like Klaus, was always ready to correct people on the difference between reptiles and amphibians) so our field trip to the zoo to "audition" reptiles -- aka hold them and see which ones were camera-friendly -- is still one of the best days I've ever had on any job. Getting paid to play with lizards for a Lemony Snicket TV series was a "pinch me, I can't believe this is real" kind of day.
One of the bigger mysteries I've seen discussed on this board is the "lost scene": the photo of Lemony standing in front of Monty's house, now boarded-up and overgrown with vines. This was the original opening to 103, which showed Lemony investigating the events of TRR years later. We would have first seen the ruined house, then the camera would move up and then down to reveal its Baudelaire-era glory. This was one of the things we really tried to do in the first season: establish that Lemony is telling the Baudelaires' story from a point in the distant future. However, making this clear turned out to be a lot harder than we thought. The notion that all these locations had since fallen into ruin was exciting on the page. But in practice, it was hard to convey. If the building was too ruined, it looked like an entirely different location. (Based on online reactions, most people never got that, for example, Lemony at the end of 105 is supposed to be standing on the cliff where Aunt Josephine's house used to be.) But if the set wasn't ruined enough, it was hard to tell that any time had passed.
On top of that, the time it took to re-dress the set, and then re-re-dress it for a Baudelaire scene, meant it wasn't practical for our busy production schedule. So when we were writing S2, those scenes ended up getting cut at the script stage and we rarely used that device again. (A bit of a bummer: Josh Conkel originally wrote a really beautiful opening for THH Pt 1, where Lemony met Hal in the ruins of Heimlich Hospital.)
Reptiles and production design aside, the real reason these eps are personal favorites is that they contain some of my first on-screen writing for the series. During pre-production, as the set was being built, the director Mark Palansky had the idea to use Birdman-style tracking shots to show off the way the rooms were actually connected. That was the genesis for the big set-piece in 104, where we follow Klaus out the window and into the reptile room, then reverse to show Violet simultaneously sneaking downstairs and outside, both connected by the sound of the Shrieking Iguana Clock. Daniel (amusedly, accurately) pointed out I'd lifted this device from The Penultimate Peril, but since he'd set up the Shrieking Iguana Clock in 103, it felt appropriate to use it here. I braced for fans making the connection but I think we got away with it. Until now, of course.
Finally, while VFD played a role in our TBB adaptation, one of the coolest things for me as a fan was reading Daniel's script for 103, complete with secret codes hidden in "Zombies in the Snow", and realizing that we weren't just working off the main series; we were going to get to play with the supplementary books too. That opened up a lot of fun ideas and discussions, that I'll try to remember if the re-watch goes on...
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Post by gothicarchiesfan on Jul 13, 2020 14:43:10 GMT -5
As many of us are quite busy during this time, I think we should try and extend the schedule again. Maybe have another week for TRR another and then after that have two weeks for each subsequent book and the 2004 film?
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jul 13, 2020 15:42:49 GMT -5
As many of us are quite busy during this time, I think we should try and extend the schedule again. Maybe have another week for TRR another and then after that have two weeks for each subsequent book and the 2004 film? You order and we obey. After all, you (and tk, I think) are the organizer. Just don't leave us without guidance, please.
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