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    • CommentAuthorDave
    • CommentTimeMar 11th 2014
     

    Anyone see the new 300? Is it any good?

    •  
      CommentAuthorApep
    • CommentTimeMar 17th 2014
     

    Well, I’ve now seen the first two Hunger Games movies, and… I’m not impressed.

    Sorry, I know some of you guys are fans, but I don’t quite get it.

    For starters, the whole Evil Regime is clearly run by a bunch of morons. Because only the stupidest and most cliche of villains would actually pull a suspected rebel out of a crowd for a big publicity event and execute him on the spot. Seriously, it’s like they want these people to rebel. And it’s hard to be afraid of people when they’re this laughably incompetent.

    Not that I really feel all that much for Katniss either. I mean, is she supposed to be this emotionless sociopath? Because if so, Jennifer Lawrence does a great job pulling that off.

    And honestly, Katniss is kind of a boring character. In the first movie, I’m far more interested in pretty much every other person in the eponymous games than her. Partly because they’re actually doing something, rather than pretty much just hiding in a tree for two days. Which also makes her sudden PTSD in the sequel all the harder to swallow. I’m really not getting why this whole rebellion is forming around her, except as a Joan of Arc thing (i.e. she’s a symbol, but doesn’t really do much actual fighting, leading, or strategizing).

    So, yeah. Hunger Games. Not impressed.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeMar 17th 2014
     

    I mean, is she supposed to be this emotionless sociopath?

    Kind of. This comes out most in the third book and tends to annoy the fans who think Katniss is like a perfect angel or something, which amuses me.

    But then again I’ve yet to see the movies so I can’t really judge how they handle that.

  1.  

    she’s a symbol, but doesn’t really do much actual fighting, leading, or strategizing

    Basically this. Eating the berries made people think she was someone to follow, so the rebels are using her because everyone likes her and thinks she’s something she’s not. She’s not actually a good leader. The government is incompetent though.
    •  
      CommentAuthorApep
    • CommentTimeMar 17th 2014
     

    Okay. Good to know I’m not misinterpreting anything.

    I also think the names for all the genetically engineered critters are kinda stupid, but that’s a whole separate issue.

  2.  

    ^^Most of the names in general are kind of stupid.

    The third one (which will be two movie because Harry Potter set a precedent that will never stop being abused) gets into a lot of how Katniss is just a figurehead for the movement, which I liked.

    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeMar 28th 2014 edited
     

    I found a movie called Mysterious Skin, looked interesting and it starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and he’s always been very good.

    ... do not watch this if you have a weak stomach. Seriously, I feel physically ill.

    on the other hand, the acting and directing was incredible, I can appreciate that at least.

    • CommentAuthorNossus
    • CommentTimeMar 29th 2014
     

    sounds like a good movie

    •  
      CommentAuthorTheArmourer
    • CommentTimeMar 29th 2014 edited
     

    Cross Posted.

    Just watched Frozen.

    Good.

    And since there’s no sub-discussion of Frozen in this thread yet, I’ll get it going.

    SPOILERS

  3.  

    I thought Frozen was cute, and I would have been absolutely obsessed with it if I’d watched it when I was 5, during my Disney Princess craze. But I thought Anna was kind of annoying (then again, it is a Disney movie, so I won’t complain too much)...my favorite was Kristoff, just because he was pretty much the only person with common sense. So yeah, I liked it, but I think I would have liked it more if it hadn’t been SO HYPED as the best thing ever. It was better than Tangled, definitely, but the songs and everything were nowhere near The Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. But I loved the sister relationship angle…I liked it so much I wish they had played it up even more than they had.

    EDIT: Sat next to two guys on the plane back to school who were talking about how much they loved ‘Let It Go’. Maybe this is my punishment for being so grouchy about it, but it was very interesting that two college guys were so obsessed with what is essentially a Disney Princess movie. :D

    •  
      CommentAuthorApep
    • CommentTimeMar 29th 2014
     

    Saw The Lone Ranger a few days ago through Netflix. Honestly, it wasn’t all that bad, if viewed as an action-comedy, with more focus on comedy than action. And I sort of excuse a lot of the plot holes/weirdness with “Tonto’s telling the story, and he’s crazy”. That’s also the excuse I have for a lot of Johnny Depp’s behavior (though I probably would have had the actual Native Americans say that he’s not really one of them, and is just some crazy white guy, but that’s me).

    It might also help that I’m mostly unfamiliar with the source material, so I’m not getting upset about any comparisons between the two.

    So yeah, it’s actually not that bad a movie, if you’re willing to give some leeway. And maybe overlook some casting interesting casting decisions.

  4.  

    On Frozen,

    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeMar 30th 2014 edited
     

    Legend, 1985, directed by Ridley Scott:

    “I am the lord of darkness! I require the solace of the shadows and the dark of the night.”

    ... Said while sitting in a chair directly facing a massive roaring fireplace.

    LOL.

    “Is not your heart black, and full of hate?”
    “Black as midnight, black as pitch, blacker than the foulest witch.”

    Not even 5 minutes in, this dialogue is GOLD.

    “There is only one lee-ure for such disgusting goodness, one bait that never fails”
    “What is this bait? Please, you teach me.”
    INN-NO-SENSE. INN-NO-SENSE.”

    “It’s time you start acting like the princess you are. You should be out looking for a handsome prince on a white charger, not visiting poor people like us”

    OMG young Tom Cruise with no pants (just a well-positioned raggedy tunic).

    “As long as [unicorns] roam the earth, evil can never harm the pure of heart.”

    I should stop with the quotes every few seconds, but this is like the epitome of terrible 80s fantasy. And it’s hilarious!

    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeMar 30th 2014 edited
     

    I’m eating dehydrated apple chips instead of popcorn, but this is my face right now

    So apparently killing a unicorn will make the world instantly become deep winter, and also all the people are frozen except for Princess and Forest Boy, and of course the baddies. Baddies who speak only in rhymed couplets.

    “Mortal world turned to ice, here be goblin paradise!”

    “ You only shot it because the Princess was there! Twas beauty brought the beast to bay!” — This, from an otherwise barely coherent half-pig goblin minion.

    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeMar 30th 2014 edited
     

    This face…

    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeMar 30th 2014 edited
     

    THE LORD OF DARKNESS SEXY-DANCING TO WOO THE PRINCESS

    WTF were they thinking, I mean WTF seriously.

    •  
      CommentAuthorFalling
    • CommentTimeMar 30th 2014
     

    It’s a really weird film. I somehow like it for some undefinable reason. It’s not the worst of the 80’s fantasy films, though it isn’t as good as Lady Hawke or Dragonslayer. But there’s something to its quirkiness that I like.

    •  
      CommentAuthorApep
    • CommentTimeMar 30th 2014
     

    Plus it has Tim Curry in it. You can’t go wrong with that.

    @Falling – Oh, man, Dragonslayer. That movie is both awesome and incredibly depressing. Dark fantasy before that was thing.

    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeMar 30th 2014
     

    Yeah, I couldn’t help but hear Rocky Horror Picture Show when Curry-Demon was speaking.

    •  
      CommentAuthorApep
    • CommentTimeApr 4th 2014
     

    Saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Awesome movie, as expected. It’s also probably the closest we’re going to get to a S.H.I.E.L.D. movie, which is good (though Hawkeye was absent, which kinda stank).

    I do have one small complaint, though:

    •  
      CommentAuthorResistance
    • CommentTimeApr 4th 2014
     

    I saw Divergent. Like the book, it was, well, not very good. But it was one of those movies I just had to see because the trailer made the part where they jump out of trains seem really cool.

  5.  

    Captain America holyshitbananaballs.

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeApr 18th 2014 edited
     
    @ Apep:



    I have to rant on _The Hobbit_. I know I have already, but I'm going at it again. Bluntly put, I'm not looking forward to Part 3. Just thinking about it makes me angry, and it's thanks to _The Desolation of Smaug_. Unlike LOTR, I actually read the source material before seeing any of the films and I found _An Unexpected Journey_ both a decent movie and a decent adaptation. Then comes Part 2 to absolutely demolish that goodwill. I touched on a few things when I first saw the movie, but I'm going to focus my diatribe on one section in particular.

    Mirkwood.

    Quite possibly my _most_ anticipated sequence of the entire story, and yet it turned out to be absolutely and intolerably _stupid_. I was waiting for a Moria-like sequence: dark, atmospheric, protracted, something that captured the weirdness and danger and at least _attempted_ to convey an idea of the time it took to pass through. The woods weren't dark at all, they weren't seething with unseen creatures, no noises, no black squirrels, no giant moths or bats, no eyes glaring from the dark, no enchanted stream, nothing. Instead, we get all sorts of inflated nonsense with that idiot tack-on Tauriel. Now, I don't have a problem with them actually adding a character and I don't mind the character of Tauriel in and of herself. But her purpose was beyond pointless. It was like an intentional, chronic slap in the face. What went through Jackson's mind? "So, should we focus on capturing the scope of Tolkien's work and bring his actual written version of Mirkwood to life? 'Cause I was thinking it'd be way cooler to just have the dwarves, like, hallucinate a bit so we can breeze through that and get to this nifty love triangle between Kili, Legolas, and this Tauriel chick THAT NO ONE WILL EVER SEE COMING. And not just there; we'll slap it onto the story whenever we have other boring stuff like the bleeding climax with Smaug. In fact, towards the end let's manufacture more tension by rehashing the whole scenario from Fellowship when Arwen saves Frodo from becoming a Ringwraith. Yeah. Awesome stuff audiences are clamoring to see."

    Not looking forward to how Part 3 will be butchered.

    /rant
    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeApr 18th 2014
     

    I completely agree, Rocky. Mirkwood was the most disappointing Peter Jackson thing since cigarettes were found to be harmful.

  6.  

    ^ In the theater, I was laughing my ass off at Lee Pace flamboyantly invading other people’s personal space. I’m hoping that Thranduil rides into battle on a party elk, but otherwise, no big expectations for part 3.

    I also hated how the love triangle was handled, but to be fair to PJ, it does seem that it was something the studio forced on him. You would think that someone who’s made the studio bazillions of dollars would have a little more pull on something that minor, but apparently not. If Tauriel had been the guard that got drunk, allowing the dwarves to escape, that would have given her much more narrative purpose.

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeApr 19th 2014 edited
     
    I know what I'm about to say will be measured as blasphemy against Benedict Cumberbatch, but Bard was far and beyond one of the best things about the movie, in my opinion. While it was actually cool to see Legolas again (and I do mean that), the movie picked up immediately with his arrival. He's sort of like this trilogy's version of Aragorn, but not at all a carbon copy (aside from having an ancestor that failed to destroy an evil character). Luke Evans brought the right level of tempered cynicism to his character.

    The major problem with this middle chapter is that we lose what made the first one so engaging: Bilbo and the dwarves. We spend so much time with the Elves, with Gandalf scouring around Dol Goldur, with the unnecessarily-still-alive Azog that the only dwarvish action and hijinks we get is sandwiched in with the beginnings of that love triangle and the bafflingly silly sequence with the forges and huge golden statue.

    On the upside, I went to see _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_ yesterday and can second Willow's sentiment. Awesome movie was awesome. Best one Marvel's done, in my opinion.
    •  
      CommentAuthorApep
    • CommentTimeApr 19th 2014
     

    Tried to post this earlier, but my session timed out. Ah, well.

    @Rocky hidden:

    As for Hobbit 2 being weird, I think part of it might be because they needed to put in all the stuff that’s not in the book somewhere, and putting all that in the third movie along with the Big Climactic Battle scene would just be too much. Besides, not all that much really happened between Biblo & co escaping the goblins and them reaching the mountain in the book. Yes, I wish they’d spent more time with Beorn, and the bit in Mirkwood was too short, but there’s only so much that could be fit into the allotted time limit. Maybe some of that stuff will be fixed in the Special Edition (because you know there’s going to be a Special Edition).

    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeApr 19th 2014
     

    Yes, I wish they’d spent more time with Beorn, and the bit in Mirkwood was too short, but there’s only so much that could be fit into the allotted time limit.

    How about prioritising the actual story first? That would be an interesting new concept.

    • CommentAuthorWiseWillow
    • CommentTimeApr 19th 2014
     

    Yeahhhhh. Hobbit 2 pissed me off for the same reasons.

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeApr 19th 2014 edited
     
    Long version:


    tl;dr version: The constraints of a trilogy format forced them to merely adapt The Lord of the Rings, whereas the opportunity of a trilogy for The Hobbit would've allowed them to actually get as close to a 1:1 text-to-screen translation as has ever been possible.

    And don't get me started on the cinematography.
    •  
      CommentAuthorFalling
    • CommentTimeApr 22nd 2014 edited
     

    but to be fair to PJ, it does seem that it was something the studio forced on him. You would think that someone who’s made the studio bazillions of dollars would have a little more pull on something that minor, but apparently not.

    Unless we know this is true, I think we should be careful what amounts to critical fiction. From what I’ve read, most of the adaptations had a movie reason that Phillipa or Peter chose.

    I dunno. I was the biggest Tolkien purist when it came to LotR’s. It took me awhile to get over it (enjoyed them temporarily and then refused to buy them, but wound up liking them.) But for me, it’s simply interesting to see what, how, and why they adapt what they do.

    I agree that I miss the Mirkwood sequences. I suspect we’ll get some of that in the extended, but it did feel truncated. However, one thing that is very consistent in all of Jackson’s films, LotR’s included is a tremendous time compression. Fellowship, Gandalf takes off from the Shire and arrives at Orthanc in seemingly days. Here, I’m pretty sure Azog travels to Dol Guldor in half a night. A 17 year interval turns into not much time on screen with Frodo-Gandalf’s reactions. So time compression doesn’t bother me too much. I wish they did more with the Faerie elements of Mirkwood, but they did play a bit with weirdness of Mirkwood- them going all loopy.

    I’ll admit, I’m not too keen on the forge fight, but I really liked all of Smaug and Bilbo’s interactions prior to. I also really liked how they fleshed out Laketown, establishing who Bard was (rather than getting the ‘grim-voice’ a page before Smaug get’s shot.)

    I like contrasting Tauriel vs Thranduil perspectives with Legolas in the middle. And little things like the hidden dragon scars on Thranduil. That was very Faerie (things are not what they seem), even if we missed out on the disappearing feasts.

    Maybe having Gandalf running around loses the focus of the film, but I expected it would be included and I absolutely wanted it to be, so I can’t complain on that front.

    The barrel sequence was goofy, but fun. The book version wouldn’t have been particularly cinematic- all the dwarves stuffed in barrels and the main character invisible for the entire trip. Actually an interesting change is how little Bilbo uses the Ring- very much influenced by the retroactive knowledge of what the Ring is. Bilbo has a moment of crisis after killing that ?grub? and seems to recognize that something overtook him, something was off. And from then on he only wears the Ring when he must.

    This works on two fronts- one, having Bilbo invisible so long on screen doesn’t work so well. And two, this is just the sort of thing you would think the Ring might do had Tolkien gone back to rewrite the Hobbit with LotR’s in mind(something he tried and was convinced to abandon.)

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeApr 22nd 2014
     
    I was going to post a lengthy wall of text, but I many of my sentiments are shared in the "Cinema Sins video":https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03LhYBNLXWo.
    •  
      CommentAuthorFalling
    • CommentTimeApr 25th 2014 edited
     

    I disagree with Movie Sin 3. That flash back was taken verbatim from Tolkien’s Quest of Erebor. Maybe in movie terms it’s unnecessary. But it does answer the question of why a hobbit of all things, plus puts things into a wider context beyond a ‘there in back again’ adventure. I would also argue it builds a little more on Gandalf’s badassness (very funny imagery imagining bandits jumping Gandalf.)

    Eagle issue. Originates from Jackson’s decision to excise Radaghast from Fellowship. Butterfly taxi service problems all originate from his first film. Also, the decision to have no talking animals makes this more difficult.

    Ah! All the Beorn stuff is super nitpicky from someone that has already become disillusioned by the film. I suspect 1000 sins broke the film in these guys eyes, but those particular ones are pretty snarky/ fluffy. (Are there any forests that aren’t Dark.)

    Some of these problems exist in the book- the colony of spiders for instance. They acknowledge that they exist in the book. But that sort of complaint comes from someone already broken out of the secondary world. Who is to say a giant spiders in middle earth don’t live in colonies? At least you have to pin that one on Tolkien, not Jackson. Same with the whole noise thing.

    Complaining that Legolas is in the film completely misunderstands what the film makers are doing (or for that matter the sort of revision that Tolkien was involved in.) In Fellowship it is revealed that Legolas is the son of the king of Mirkwood. It follows that he would have been in Mirkwood at the time of the dwarves. Jackson purposefully approached the telling of the Hobbit through the lense of the wider context given by the LotR’s and the appendices. Not to excise all that knowledge and tell a story as though he was Tolkien before he even thought what the Ring was and what it could do. Jackson COULD have told that story, but this sort of criticism is asking him to tell a different story altogether. It’s like wishing Night of the Living Dead or Last Man on Earth to dump the slow pace and add fast walking dead because that’s scarier. They COULD, but it’s not at all the story they decided to tell.

    Ah! I’m going to stop the running commentary and just watch it. Suffice it to say, I don’t think very highly of this sort of criticism.

    edit.
    Bah. This snark drives me nuts. “Unlikely elf dwarf romance” Counts as a sin? Just a premise? Intrinsically? It doesn’t say why, whether it was poorly executed, how it was poorly executed. Just on the face of it. Elf. Dwarf. Romance = unlikely and therefore sin.

    It’s a laundry list of dislikes, but only some are actually explained where it can actually be justified as a sin. (As opposed to personal dislike.)
    /edit

    If you get a chance, this is Professor Corey Olsen’s part 1 podcast on common criticisms on The Hobbit films. It is more in line with my sentiments and well worth the listen if you have the time.

    Common Criticisms Part 1

    •  
      CommentAuthorFalling
    • CommentTimeApr 25th 2014
     

    Now don’t mistake me. I do have issues with both Hobbit films. But not this sort of criticism.

  7.  

    And now for some quick movie impressions:

    Winter Solider was pretty fun. I’m so used to having good Avengers based Marvel movies that it didn’t really leave an impression though.

    Transcendence was terrible, even worse than I was expecting. It somehow managed to take what could have been a really intense, dramatic movie and made it boring while drowning itself in it’s own pseudo-science.

    Oculus was actually not bad. A very different movie than I was expecting, even if it was still pretty standard in it’s own way. It had it’s flaws, but over all I liked what it did.

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeApr 25th 2014 edited
     
    bq. I disagree with Movie Sin 3. That flash back was taken verbatim from Tolkien’s Quest of Erebor.

    Early in the first movie we knew the dwarves had been sent to Bag End by Gandalf, who would later enlist Bilbo as their burglar. It's a wasted prologue and would've served the purpose of the story further toward the beginning of the first film, especially in place of the awkward Frodo/Bilbo scenes. I support the inclusion of additional material when it makes sense, and chronological placement is a huge factor of that. Otherwise you're wasting the audience's time telling them what they already know.

    bq. Some of these problems exist in the book- the colony of spiders for instance. They acknowledge that they exist in the book. But that sort of complaint comes from someone already broken out of the secondary world. Who is to say a giant spiders in middle earth don’t live in colonies? At least you have to pin that one on Tolkien, not Jackson. Same with the whole noise thing.

    I can't really agree with that, mostly because Tolkien actually gave the Mirkwood sequence room to breath. Too many foreshadowing details are left out. In the film, they cross the woods in an hour or two and, boom, spiders. Seems terribly rushed and convenient. Cinema Sins' complaint, if I remember right, had to do with them hanging the dwarves so close to prep them for eating. In the book, they were hung in a row along a branch, which alludes to some sort of sentience. And the noise-to-draw-the-spiders-away was pretty stupid. _All_ of them leave just because of a thud? If that were the case, they should've swarmed the dwarves when Bilbo first flicked the web. If one of them is keen enough to find and wrap Bilbo, one of them is keen enough to investigate a nearby thud.

    bq. Complaining that Legolas is in the film...In Fellowship it is revealed that Legolas is the son of the king of Mirkwood. It follows that he would have been in Mirkwood at the time of the dwarves.

    One instance where we agree (and not the only one), although I wonder if Tolkien ever explicitly mentioned where he was during the events of the Quest for Erebor. His is an addition I don't mind, especially since it stands to reason he was not only in the Woodland Realm, but also would've participated in the upcoming Battle of the Five Armies. Trouble is, this is where things start leaving "drawn from the appendices" territory with the introduction of Tauriel. Her purpose, by and large, has been to serve as a quasi-romantic interest. I'm not going to call the movie out for sexism so much as poor storytelling choices. Tauriel was fabricated for the film and simply wasn't implemented well. The instant she arrived to save Kili I knew where they were going with the character (which is saying something of a new character when I found Bard far more engaging), and after that it simply became a game of guessing the character beats. We were given an entire first film of nearly three hours to establish the dwarves' yearning to reclaim Erebor (and with a freaking _song_, no less), so why is the story being fluffed up with this relationship? Maybe I'm overreacting, but it actually smacks me as "Tolkien maybe didn't quite know what he was writing, so we added this element to fill out the story". What would've been interesting was if they'd used Tauriel as a catalyst for pulling the Mirkwood elves from their withdrawn tendencies, Legolas specifically. Or as a longtime sympathizer of the Erebor dwarves. Or a friend of the men of Esgoroth. Or just _something else_.

    bq. It’s a laundry list of dislikes, but only some are actually explained where it can actually be justified as a sin. (As opposed to personal dislike.)

    That's Cinema Sins' MO. More venting then genuine criticism, though I find they hit the nail on the head on more than one occasion.

    I was stoked when I heard this would be a trilogy, because I believed it meant more detail from the story and more time devoted to the story. My opinion, the fact they've been adding as much as they have while minimizing what's actually in the book renders any "drawn from the appendices" supportive arguments moot. We're looking at a total of _nine hours_ they would've had to tell a story that's not even 400 pages long! Why am I watching a glowing She-Elf rub a dwarf's wounded leg somewhere in Lake Town?

    Edit: I want to make one thing clear, though. As an adaptation, I found this very poor, but I enjoyed it just as a movie.
    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeApr 26th 2014
     

    Akira

    Probably one of the most stylistically beautiful films I’ve ever seen. I am a little confused, though.

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeApr 29th 2014
     
    "The cast of Star Wars Episode VII has been officially revealed.":http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/apr/29/star-wars-episode-vii-cast-return-new-actors
  8.  

    The new cast looks great! Hopefully we won’t have a Hayden Christiansen repeat. My only problem is that out of 7 new actors, only 1 is female. :P

    I never got into The Clone Wars TV show but at least they had more equal representation.

  9.  

    I’m honestly not bothered by a lack of representation on Star Wars. Granted, I’m also not a very big fan of the movies and I think the prequel trilogy had exactly as much merit as the original trilogy in terms of dialogue, story telling and set design.

  10.  

    I’m not in love with it either, but that doesn’t mean that it gets a free pass for certain fundamental principles. :P

    •  
      CommentAuthorsansafro187
    • CommentTimeApr 30th 2014 edited
     

    I think the prequel trilogy had exactly as much merit as the original trilogy in terms of dialogue, story telling

    no

    set design.

    lol what

    e: I mean it’s totally cool to not like the original trilogy or whatever but this opinion is some serious horseshit

  11.  

    Maybe it’s because I was the only person out there who didn’t actually grow up on Star Wars or see any of the movies until I was 13, but I honestly thought both movies were clunky in how they presented their dialogue as well as the plot points. I also think the prequel trilogy had some interesting designs going for it in costume, set and monsters. I don’t see the gap in quality a lot of people seem to attribute to the two even though I still like them both.

  12.  

    Yeah, I’m going to have to go with sansa here, at least as far as dialogue is concerned. The Leia/Han romance, while not the greatest ever, is certainly miles better than ‘I hate sand’.

    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2014 edited
     

    On the plus side, Leia has a friend to talk to now! :D Do you think they will pass the Bechdel test?

    edit: In terms of acting, the prequel series were far clunkier than the originals. Some of the acting reminded me of high school drama class, all awkwardly-positioned blocking and unnatural pauses.

  13.  

    Maybe it’s because I was the only person out there who didn’t actually grow up on Star Wars or see any of the movies until I was 13, but I honestly thought both movies were clunky in how they presented their dialogue as well as the plot points. I also think the prequel trilogy had some interesting designs going for it in costume, set and monsters. I don’t see the gap in quality a lot of people seem to attribute to the two even though I still like them both.

    The prequel trilogy barely even had any sets so I don’t know why you keep saying “set design” unless you just mean “backgrounds.” It was all soulless blue screen shit.

    I don’t see how you can say they’re on the same level of clunk in plot point delivery either. The storytelling(both in a visual sense and a structural sense) is almost always simple, clear, and effective in the OT. You know who’s doing what, why they’re doing it, and what’s trying to stop them. It’s basic drama. The prequel trilogy is just convoluted and arbitrary in turns. Characters move from story station to story station for the vaguest reasons, taking breaks between video game cutscenes to have static conversations while sitting down. Shit almost never builds off itself so there’s little sense of propulsion, and combined with all the empty CG it makes all three prequel movies inert in their bones.

    I mean I don’t even really consider it a matter of opinion. The prequels just do not execute basic fundamentals.

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2014 edited
     
    The acting, especially in the later episodes, is hard for me to watch. Sam Jackson just comes off as robotic. But Episodes 2 and 3, to my eyes, were too heavily digitized and way too colorful. Sometimes came across as outright cartoonish. Episode 1, being shot on film, had a more believable palette and integration of CGI.

    bq. Some of the acting reminded me of high school drama class, all awkwardly-positioned blocking and unnatural pauses.

    A lot of that is actually from the editing, and boy is some of it bad. I noticed it most prominently during the first conversation between Obi-Wan and Jango in Episode 2. Every shot starts early and trails after the actor delivers his line, which made it feel like they were in a teleconference with a two-second lag.

    bq. I mean I don’t even really consider it a matter of opinion. The prequels just do not execute basic fundamentals.

    I still hate the fact they butchered the music as presented in the films and cribbed from the previous movies.
  14.  

    Some of the acting reminded me of high school drama class, all awkwardly-positioned blocking and unnatural pauses.

    Part of that is the writers’ fault. Natalie Portman can act, but there’s not much you can do with ‘Anakin, you’re breaking my heart’.

    For the record, I love the idea of Padme as a pacifist senator involved in political intrigues, but the execution didn’t work out.

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2014
     
    !http://www.lagzero.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/sw7_cast-850x482.jpg!

    I have some theories about why they may be sitting where they're sitting in that photo--specifically Daisy Ridley's placement. I'm starting to get really, really anxious for this. I remember what it was like when anticipation for _The Phantom Menace_ was heavy. Despite what it turned out to be, I enjoyed experiencing that anticipation and seeing fresh Star Wars imagery _everywhere_.


    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2014 edited
     

    I may have found the only movie that would actually be improved by the “it was all just a dream!” twist. It is called Mio In The Land Of Faraway, and it is absolutely dreadful in every respect. The script, the dialogue, the acting, the premise… everything about it is either almost satirically wooden, hackneyed beyond measure, or written from an omniscient perspective that the characters cannot have shared with the author.

    (hidden for spoilers, in case you want to watch) :

    It starts out fairly promising, if a bit ham-handed, but everything after he ran away from home fits firmly in “fever dream” territory, from the greenscreen effects to the surreality of the characters who act just naturally enough to drown in the Uncanny Valley, to the kid knowing exactly what questions to ask to advance the plot, ignoring several more immediate questions that would be far more logical to ask first.

    Anyway, just… Have a look for yourself. Am I being unfairly pessimistic?

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeMay 3rd 2014
     
    Hans Zimmer is dead to me. His score for _The Amazing Spider-Man 2_ is a little more than a hideous cacophony of cheap, digital instrumentation--basically a head-on collision from the normally separate "original soundtrack" and "music from and inspired by" albums. What a horrible collection of noise.

    I _really_ miss Jerry Goldsmith.
    •  
      CommentAuthorApep
    • CommentTimeMay 4th 2014
     

    I finally watched Frozen... and I had to leave the room within the first half-hour. Why? Because in the first 18 minutes of the movie (I know because I looked at the clock), there were not one, not two, not three, but I believe four musical numbers. The first two actually served some purpose – setting the mood, and establishing the relationship between the two main characters, respectively. The third one I was okay with, but the fourth? No. No, movie, now you’re just padding out your run-time. And it’s only about 100 minutes long, so that’s a bad sign.

    Yes, the songs themselves were good, but you need to space them out a bit more. You do not need to sing about every little thing.

    And you want proof of this? I came back about half an hour later, in the half of the movie with significantly fewer musical breaks, and you know what I noticed? The plot actually moved! Stuff happened, and no one felt the need to sing about it! Amazing!

    Also, I can’t help but think, “Gee, maybe if ice-girl (no, I didn’t bother to learn her name) had actually tried to figure out how to control her powers, none of this would have happened. Maybe if her parents had actually bothered to help her figure out how to control her powers instead of locking her in her room for years on end, this whole situation could have been avoided.”

    And don’t tell me “well, that’s addressed in another song”, because this problem is blatantly obvious. I don’t care that it’s marketed to children, Disney has already shown that they know kid’s aren’t stupid.

    (And I can’t help but feel that it’s treading a bit on Bobby Drake/Iceman’s sub-plot from X-Men 2. Only X-Men 2 actually addressed that issue. And without singing, too.)

  15.  

    I just have to add in it never stops making me giggle when I remember that one of the composers of Frozen was the same guy who did Avenue Q and The Book of Mormon.

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeMay 13th 2014
     
    !http://media3.s-nbcnews.com/i/newscms/2014_20/439326/140513-affleck-batman_45dbe1466503c9fbf883828b25cc6f55.jpg!
    • CommentAuthorWiseWillow
    • CommentTimeMay 13th 2014
     

    I know the monochrome doesn’t help, but this reeks of excessive grimdark.

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeMay 13th 2014
     
    Nah, it's just the monochrome.
    • CommentAuthorWiseWillow
    • CommentTimeMay 13th 2014
     

    Nono, I don’t like the suit’s design.

    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeMay 14th 2014
     

    Those ears.

    Is he a bat, or a fox?

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeMay 14th 2014
     

    KITTY!

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeMay 14th 2014
     
    They're taking visual cues from the costume in _The Dark Knight Returns_, hence the shorter ears and the large symbol. This Batman is supposedly semi-retired. At any rate, I'll take short ears over ridiculously long ones (I'm looking at you, Arkham Asylum games).
  16.  

    I don’t know, every time I see the short eared Batman I think of

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeMay 14th 2014
     

    In all seriousness, I actually don’t mind the ears. They look fine. But they still look like kitty ears.

    (and I find semi-retired Batman to be incredibly boring, so we’ll see how I feel about this thing. The Dark Knight Returns worked really well—once. I really don’t care to see it again.

    Which is, by the way, why Arkham Asylum was great, because it wasn’t like OH ORIGIN STORY or OH RETIREMENT OLD BATMAN DRAMA, it was just you are Batman, here are lots of bad guys, you are awesome, go punch everyone. Which is what we all really want here.)

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeMay 18th 2014
     

    New topic: I keep hearing Amazing Spider-Man 2 was kinda a muddled mess, but it’s very very pretty. Should I watch it anyway, or will I just be disappointed? Is the pretty enough to distract me from the plot?

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeMay 19th 2014
     
    Dunno. I'm getting really burned out from all the superhero/comic book movies, so I probably won't see it for a while.
  17.  

    I’m getting really burned out from all the superhero/comic book movies

    Yup. But they’ll keep making them until they end up like westerns.

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeMay 19th 2014
     
    On the other hand, just got back from _Godzilla_ and boy was that cool. I think it better captured the gait and scale of such massive creatures, and the whole visual language of the film was engrossing. First half is filled with suspense, last half with really awesome moments.
    •  
      CommentAuthorApep
    • CommentTimeMay 26th 2014 edited
     

    Just got back from the new X-Men movie. Overall, pretty good – not quite First Class good, but certainly better than probably every other X-Men related move since the second.

    I liked that it’s at least something of a period piece, because bringing at least part of the cast from First Class was great. Also, they managed to have Logan be a major part of the plot, without making it all about him. So much so, in fact, that (minor spoiler) he’s actually absent for the film’s resolution. Also, this film once again retcons X-Men 3 out of existence (along with any movie with “Wolverine” in the title), which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned.

    But there were a few things that bugged me.

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeMay 27th 2014
     
    •  
      CommentAuthorApep
    • CommentTimeMay 27th 2014 edited
     

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeMay 28th 2014 edited
     


    Against my better judgment, the "Payoff Trailer":http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjs1y6m9ETk for Transformers: Age of Extinction has me wanting to see it. Thus far, I like the rotated central cast, especially Wahlberg, and Nicola Peltz doesn't seem to be as blank a slate as Megan Fox. Other stuff has me more excited, though. Stanley Tucci and Kelsey Grammer? Sold. The voices of Ken Watanabe and John Goodman? Double sold. I like the redesigns, especially to Optimus—odd as it sounds for me to praise it, his new mouth-plate looks awesome. I really, really like the design of the antagonist—Lockdown, I think he's called (probably an alias)—from his general structure to the self-assured attitude in his gait, his data-laced faceplate, his ship, that face-to-gun feature, the fact he transforms into a Lambo. He looks awesome.

    Even more than that, though, I'm loving the examples of the cinematography thus far. The shots of Optimus driving through Monument Valley, the rule-of-thirds framing structure when his mouth-plate slides into place, Lockdown striding through the smoke with his ship looming behind him.

    I dare say it's looking rather good on a purely visual level.
  18.  

    Gravity alternative title: Sandra Bullock and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Space Mission.

    •  
      CommentAuthorlilyWhite
    • CommentTimeJun 23rd 2014
     

    Saw Maleficent yesterday. I…really didn’t care for it. How they handled Maleficent and other characters just really dissatisfied me.

    •  
      CommentAuthororganiclead
    • CommentTimeJun 24th 2014 edited
     

    The thing that might bother me the most is that this could have served as an interesting plot…had they not made it about Maleficent and the Sleeping Beauty.

    This. I really hate villain movies that just turn the heroes into one dimensional villains instead of injecting shades of gray into a black and white story.

    And since I’m already posting, I’m a bit torn on what I’m hearing about Into the Woods. Apparently the changes aren’t as big as they were first made out to be, but I’m still a bit iffy about what all’s going to change to make it a more family friendly experience. I’m also iffy about Johnny Depp’s presence in general, but then I have to remember I didn’t hate his singing in Sweeney Todd.

    •  
      CommentAuthorApep
    • CommentTimeJun 30th 2014
     

    Just watched Bad Company (the movie that inspired the song). Pretty good, but seeing young, baby-faced Jeff Bridges was kinda weird.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeJul 1st 2014
     

    Transformers 4 is glorious.

    I mean, it’s a horribly incoherent story that went on way too long, should’ve cut out half the characters, didn’t explain the backstory at all, and had plot holes you could drive a Transformer through, but it also had Optimus Prime with a sword riding a fire-breathing robot dinosaur, which was the point I turned to my sister in the theater and said, with tears almost coming to my eyes, this is the greatest movie that has ever been made.

    Definitely something to watch once, and then never watch again.

    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeJul 5th 2014
     

    Transformers 4 is glorious.

    Probably the silliest movie I’ve ever seen.

    • CommentAuthorDave
    • CommentTimeJul 5th 2014
     

    Probably the silliest movie I’ve ever seen.

    I would have to agree with you there, on the other hand it did have, as Swenson so eloquently put it, Optimus Prime with a sword riding a fire-breathing robot dinosaur. Ultimately, I think a lot of a movie’s quality is largely in the eyes of the beholder. Some films are complete trash, yes. On the other hand, even the trash has it place.

    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeJul 5th 2014
     

    Oh, I’m not disappointed because I went in fully intending to see a mindless and stupid summer movie with friends, and that’s exactly what I got.

    I couldn’t ever recommend it to anyone in good conciseness, but I don’t regret seeing it.

    • CommentAuthorDave
    • CommentTimeJul 6th 2014
     

    I couldn’t ever recommend it to anyone in good conciseness, but I don’t regret seeing it.

    Pretty much all of the Transformers films in a nutshell.

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeJul 6th 2014
     
    I really want to see it on the basis of its cinematography. I'm surprised by the quality of what I've seen in trailers and clips--especially since a sequence like "this":https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_TAwH0-frk has camerwork that, IMO, handily trumps most of what directors like Peter Jackson have been doing lately.
  19.  

    Snowpiercer was excellent. Go see it; it’s an unusual film, very different that the usual apocalypse genre. Very good acting, very tight cinematography.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeJul 7th 2014
     

    I couldn’t ever recommend it to anyone in good conciseness, but I don’t regret seeing it.

    An excellent way to put it.

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeJul 9th 2014
     
    First trailer for "Exodus: Gods and Kings":https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tuaPQdIGdQ.

    Also, Star Wars Episode VII is filming in IMAX.
  20.  

    I’ve spent the last few days trying to sum up my feelings for Edge of Tomorrow, and have only arrived to the conclusion that I liked it munch better than Transformers 4. The monster design was pretty generic, but the movements themselves were interesting to watch. The main characters weren’t particularly interesting (even if I loved Rita for being so ruthless through the entire movie), but they didn’t make me cheer for their deaths during their entire time on the screen. The beginning was really strong, but the ending felt like they had no idea how they wanted to end it and just picked up the first thing they could think of. I guess I have the same sort of fondness for it that I have for 80s action films and have some appreciation for the fact it’s not another movie about a manly man protecting his family or seeking out revenge against the baddy bads.

    I’m really looking forward to the Boxtrolls. I don’t know anything about it or about the production, but the fact it’s by studio Laika is enough to put my butt in the seat.

    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeJul 28th 2014
     

    The Raid 2

    It was way better than I expected, and an overall completely beautiful and kickass movie.

    •  
      CommentAuthorApep
    • CommentTimeJul 29th 2014
     

    Hercules

    Short, non-spoiler-y version:

    Not bad. Not great, but it’ll kill about 90-odd minutes (plus previews), and you probably won’t regret spending the money to see it, especially if it’s a matinee. If you enjoyed 300, you’ll enjoy this.

    Longer, semi-spoiler-y version:

    • CommentAuthorWiseWillow
    • CommentTimeJul 29th 2014
     

    Lucy was pretty good, albeit weirdly obsessed with its version of fantasy science.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeJul 29th 2014
     

    I just can’t bring myself to care about that movie. In 2014, we’re still throwing around the stupid “10% of your brain” thing? No matter how good the rest of the movie is, if it thinks I’m that stupid up front, I just don’t know that I can deal with it.

    • CommentAuthorWiseWillow
    • CommentTimeJul 29th 2014
     

    Apparently the movie DELIBERATELY DOES NOT CARE. The idea is WHAT IF. What if we only used part of our brains?

    It’s a dumbass concept, but there’s some very cool effects and some interesting existential ideas. Honestly, I went to see it because I wanted to support a female driven film, regardless of the sketchy racism and lack of secondary female characters.

    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeJul 30th 2014
     

    I’ve heard that it’s actually pretty decent despite the dodgy science. We are able to put aside scientific oddness for so many other movies (Elysium comes to mind at the moment), why not this one? Willow, how did your willing suspension of disbelief cope? Were the characters and story elements enough to carry the movie?

    • CommentAuthorWiseWillow
    • CommentTimeJul 30th 2014
     

    Sometimes I had to eyeroll, but the elements were interesting enough to carry it. The film is a little choppy at times, but again, it’s neat.

    • CommentAuthorWiseWillow
    • CommentTimeJul 31st 2014
     

    NO IDEA WHY, BUT THERE’S A 7 PM SHOWING OF GUARDIANS OF THE MOTHERFUCKING GALAXY TONIGHT AND I AM FUCKING GOING. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeJul 31st 2014
     

    Have fun! I’m jealous!

    •  
      CommentAuthorResistance
    • CommentTimeAug 1st 2014
     

    Going to see Hercules tonight. I’ve heard it’s a kind of eh movie, but knowing that now, I can go and have fun with it.

    •  
      CommentAuthorApep
    • CommentTimeAug 1st 2014
     

    Saw Guardians of the Galaxy. Good stuff, as always. Still, I had a few problems:

    1) Since it’s a team movie, with no build-up, they have to establish all the characters in the movie. Including the villains. They did alright, but I still think the villains could have been developed more.

    2) Kinda worried about how they’ll connect this up with the other Marvel movies. Not much connecting it to the other ones as is, aside from a brief appearance of Thanos and his chief minion from Avengers (and no, I don’t consider that a real spoiler), and that guy Benicio del Toro played at the end of the last Thor movie. Apart from that, this is pretty stand-alone. Not sure how to feel about that.

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeAug 1st 2014
     
    bq. 1) Since it’s a team movie, *with no build-up*, they have to establish all the characters in the movie.

    Unless we're confining this "criticism" to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, don't open that can of worms. We're already moving away from the annoying push to make trilogies out of everything and onto the _entirely_ pretentious mindset that we now need shared universe franchises. Blockbusters have already been severely dumbed down since the days of _Jaws_, the last thing we need is some ignorant ubiquitous push to make sure ensemble flicks have their own handful of build-up movies.
    •  
      CommentAuthorApep
    • CommentTimeAug 1st 2014
     

    I’m just saying that, because just about every important character has to be introduced, some of them don’t get much development. For example, I get the impression that the relationship between Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Nebula (Karen Gillian) is supposed to be important. But since they share a grand total of two scenes, you don’t get to see that. Same for the big villain – I sort of get his motivation, but it’s still pretty simple.

    I guess my point is that the movie could use a little extra run-time.

    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeAug 1st 2014
     

    the last thing we need is some ignorant ubiquitous push to make sure ensemble flicks have their own handful of build-up movies.

    Just imagine an entire prequel intro/build-up movie for each member of Ocean’s 11.

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeAug 1st 2014 edited
     
    bq. I guess my point is that the movie could use a little extra run-time.

    See, this. I can get behind this. I'm sorry for "calling you out" for your criticism (I genuinely didn't mean to do that), but I've been seeing far too many concerns over the "non-Marvel way" of universe building and it's driving me up a wall. Problems with a film are problems with a film, not whatever build-up movies it could've had. Strong storytelling doesn't need build-up, and build-up doesn't fix poor storytelling.
    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeAug 2nd 2014
     

    I watched The Godfather part I and II today. Yeesh, I just feel sad now.