Media things

[sholio]

A couple of days ago, I watched the first episode of Knight Rider on Netflix for nostalgia value/cheesy entertainment, after noticing that it was streaming. If you grew up in the US (or US-adjacent) in the 80s, you almost can't not know about this show, in which David Hasselhoff is consistently upstaged by a talking car; I was head over heels for it when I was about 8.

It is definitely everything I expected based on my hazy childhood memories - "awesome" is not one of these things, but "ridiculous" and "hilarious, although not necessarily in the intended ways" certainly apply.

One thing that has become much funnier with the passage of time and the development of David Hasselhoff into a cornball pop icon is the reactions of everyone in the show to David Hasselhoff's face. So basically, he's played by a different actor at the very beginning, then gets shot in the face and experimental plastic surgery turns him into David Hasselhoff. As it does. This means that you get a "IS THIS ... MY FACE???" scene which is everything you would expect of a BUT MY FACE!!!!! scene played by David Hasselhoff. (I have to say that if experimental plastic surgery turned me into David Hasselhoff, I would also be upset about it.)

The mood whiplash between a guy losing everything and everyone he cares about, getting his face shot off, being presumed dead, and having PTSD about it vs. wacky hijinks with a talking car is certainly a thing. Also, a car that talks and drives itself was highly futuristic in the 80s and is much less so now. However, I was sufficiently entertained that I may watch more of it. I seem to remember a) the first episode is probably as close as the show gets to competently written, and b) there is later h/c with the car and also an episode in which David Hasselhoff plays his evil twin with a mustache.

In further mood whiplash, I continued my intermittent "watch all the Daniel Brühl things" based on the extremely scientific method of observing which movies he appears to be hottest and/or most adorable in, based on Tumblr gifsets, and then watching those. Woman in Gold (2015) appears to score quite highly on the Daniel Brühl Hotness Scale (exhibit A) and he is indeed very hot in this movie, and also very adorable, as his character is extremely sweet, although sadly not in it very much. The actual plot - based on real events - concerns the deeply odd team-up of Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds as, respectively, an elderly Jewish woman trying to reclaim art that was stolen by Nazis in WWII, and a family friend who is a lawyer and is helping her. The core friendship between the two of them is very sweet, although it's very weird seeing Ryan Reynolds in a dramatic role, made even weirder because every now and then he slips into campy Ryan Reynolds mode, which is extremely tonally jarring in a movie about the Holocaust. Tatiana Maslany plays a surprisingly convincing young Helen Mirren. It feels Very American in some ways (e.g. everyone speaking English in most of the Austria scenes, though they do have subtitled flashbacks), but I liked it.

Comments

[silverflight8]

In further mood whiplash, I continued my intermittent "watch all the Daniel Brühl things" based on the extremely scientific method of observing which movies he appears to be hottest and/or most adorable in, based on Tumblr gifsets, and then watching those.

Is there another way to order the watch of the filmography of your crush???

He's so beautiful in that. I need to watch it...eventually.

[sholio]

He is very beautiful in this -> I need to watch this was definitely my thought process. :D It's free on Amazon Prime! (With ads.)

[silverflight8]

A progression logical in the extreme! :D

He's done a lot of movies and I'm sure some are good and some are bad, but honestly, it's never him that make them bad (and yes OK I am biased by his face, but seriously, the best movie I watched this year was undoubtedly Good Bye, Lenin!)

[sholio]

Honestly, as the experience of pursuing an actor to different projects goes, the ratio of good to bad is heavily weighted toward actual good stuff - at least that's been my experience so far! It's true that I'm being very choosy (and I still haven't seen Good Bye, Lenin - I know it's good and plan to watch, I just haven't quite been in the right mood!) but I have had FAR worse experiences at pursuing an actor that I liked between projects. So far, I don't think I've seen anything of his that I've really disliked, and as you said, he is usually excellent in it no matter what.

[tamsin]

Have you watched The Countess with Brühl yet? He was very cute in that one.

[sholio]

I have not! It's on the list though. :D (Mostly I haven't because it looked sad, but he does look very adorable in the gifs I've seen.)

[tamsin]

It is sad but also a pretty good movie, and Daniel Brühl has a lot of chemistry with the main actress. Looking forward to reading what you think of it if you ever get around to watching.

[sovay]

and b) there is later h/c with the car

What?

Woman in Gold (2015) appears to score quite highly on the Daniel Brühl Hotness Scale (exhibit A) and he is indeed very hot in this movie, and also very adorable, as his character is extremely sweet, although sadly not in it very much.

I am glad he delivers for his screentime.

[silverflight8]

and b) there is later h/c with the car
Don't judge! Some people can be well comforted by their cars! See Transformers et al!

[sholio]

and b) there is later h/c with the car
What?

There is AT LEAST one episode where the car gets wrecked and it's all very angsty and whether or not they can rebuild the car's memory module is a Very Big Deal. Basically the 1980s talking-car-show version of the obligatory "someone's in a coma" episode.

[sovay]

Basically the 1980s talking-car-show version of the obligatory "someone's in a coma" episode.

That's delightful.

(I have never seen Knight Rider: I actually did make it through the '80's without encountering the show and discovered its existence years later in the filmography of William Daniels.)

[selenak]

Trufax: I know Barbara Schönberg, who is Ryan Reynold's character's mother and the friend Helen Mirren is walking across the graveyard with, also the daughter-in-law of composer Arnold Schönberg, and herself the daughter of an exile, composer Erich Zeisl; Barbara, by now a lovely old lady, is a German/English translator. So when I was visiting her some years back in Los Angeles when the movie had come out in the US, but not yet in Europe, she asked me whether I had seen it, and I said, not yet. She said the one thing that she was a bit disgruntled by were that her parents, who were young Maria's best friends in Vienna, were not included as characters in the Tatiana Maslany section of the film, but she told herself they are buried in the graveyard her cinematic alter ego is walking through with Helen Mirren, so they are present in the movie after all.

Meanwhile, another friend of hers who was present that afternoon in the Schönberg garden also asked me whether I had seen the movie yet, and when I said no, not yet, he remarked: "It's all very well, but they cast Ryan Reynolds as Randy. I mean, you've met Randy, right?" I said yes, I had met Randy. "Randy does not look like Ryan Reynolds!" he continued, snorting.

I saw the film at last on my flight back to Germany, and I thought it was well made, though yes, very American, not least because the roles and amount of screen time of Daniel Brühl's character and Ryan Reynold's character should have been switched in terms of rl - Hubertus Czernin didn't have to accost Maria and her US lawyer at the airport, he had alredy written to her and been contact with her about the case long before Randy Schönberg came on board. It was Czernin who found the relevant documents (there was no dramatic break into the archive by Maria and Randy), and who informed the heirs of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, including Maria, in the first place of how Austria had gotten into the possession of those five paintings. But the film's dynamics demanded the other main character to be American, alas for us and Daniel Brühl. :)

[sholio]

That is so cool that you know some of these people, and I really appreciate the background; how odd it must be to see fictionalized versions onscreen! I would have loved a version of this that was focused on Hubertus Czernin instead.

[scioscribe]

I need to watch Woman in Gold! I've also been very, very compelled by the gifsets. (I WANT TO PET HIM.) I probably would have watched it for him at some point even if it had been terrible, but I'm glad to know it's actually enjoyable.

[sholio]

(I WANT TO PET HIM.)

This is a valid reaction; I spent the entire movie wanting to pet him. He is very pettable in this. And it is genuinely really enjoyable!

[ckd]

Knight Rider had a ridiculous amount of Evil Twin trope going on. Michael's evil counterpart (complete with beard), KITT's evil counterpart (no beard, obv :-), and a couple of masked impostors of other characters.

[sholio]

I remember the evil car and now wish very much that it had an evil goatee too. I believe the evil twin had an (evil?) semi truck.

[ckd]

IIRC the truck didn't have an AI so "evil" is arguable, but it did have the traditional "same invulnerability power as the hero" evil twin/villain thing going.

[aelfgyfu_mead]

KITT's evil counterpart
I wasn't remembering the evil twin thing until I saw this and my brain shouted, "KATT!"—which is sadly wrong, because I just went to verify and found that it is instead KARR, but I am amazed that my brain came up with anything. And, frankly, horrified.

[sholio]

That's astonishingly close though! And sounds like something the writers of that show would actually have come up with.

[aelfgyfu_mead]

And why do I even care about KITT and KARR any more at all? I can't actually remember the plot! I can't remember Hasselhoff's evil twin. I just remember that there were two cars facing each other down, and I really cared about KITT!

Minds are funny things, or at least mine is!

[sheron]

I continued my intermittent "watch all the Daniel Brühl things" based on the extremely scientific method of observing which movies he appears to be hottest and/or most adorable in, based on Tumblr gifsets, and then watching those.

This is the most relatable sentence of them all.

(Laughs forever)

[sholio]

I have a brand, and I have a theme.

[leesa_perrie]

Ah yes, Knightrider! I loved the show as a teen, mainly for KITT if I'm honest! I mean, who can't like KITT!! :D

(Also, I have been known to have a thing for computer/androids in the past!)

[sholio]

KITT is great. I remember drawing little comics about him when I was a kid.

[cornerofmadness]

I saw some KNightrider while I was in the hospital earlier this year. It was both better and worse than I remembered and was glad to see it again

[sholio]

Better and worse than you remembered is actually a REALLY good way to put it! That was pretty much my reaction too. "Hey, I like this a lot more than I thought I was going to! But wow, that thing that just happened was SO TERRIBLE!"

[cornerofmadness]

Pretty much (I was also rewatching Hart to Hart this past week and that was more on the worse side) There is some real tackiness to Knight Rider but it had some fun stuff too. It also has things that just wouldn't fly in a show today (like about 90% of what KITT can do)

[st_aurafina]

I didn't realise that Michael got his face shot off!! That's amazing.

I had such a crush on KITT. Omg.

[sholio]

It was actually surprisingly dark for 1982 television! You don't really *see* it - he's shot from an angle - but it's very clear that's what happened and then there's all the "we had to give you a new face" afterwards, plus he has panicky flashbacks involving the shooting.

... I'm pretty sure the show dispensed with even that level of emotional and physical realism afterwards, lol.

KITT was the best. I used to draw tiny little comics about him.

[timespirt]

Knight Rider was cornball but at the time it was good. Now, not so much...but still...

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Knight Rider! I had a fraught relationship with that show. Somehow, I found Hasselhoff annoying from the get-go, but I loved the car, I loved Devon—I loved all the good guys except Michael. So I did a mix of watching and hate-watching at the same time. I scarcely remember it, except that I can still recall KITT's voice.