Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2016 7:18 am
Spy was a great movie
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Moments when a piece of entertainment completely rocked you.
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Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2016 4:23 pm
I just came home from a showing of the Ghostbusters remake, and I've got to say... wow! I had pretty tepid expectations, because the trailers made it look like a really bad comedy -but instead it was a really good popcorn-action-comedy. I mean, the original Ghostbusters had a better villain, and therefore a more interesting big action climax... but on every other note, new Ghostbusters beats the shit out of it.
Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2016 4:26 pm
If you think about it that way, the thing that dragged down Ghostbusters (2016) movie was a misanthropic manchildSchleiermacher wrote:I mean, the original Ghostbusters had a better villain, and therefore a more interesting big action climax...
Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2016 9:10 pm
I am 90% sure that when it finally makes it way to TV and I end up watching it I'm going to be very disappointed in all of you. I refuse to have my skepticism tempered. And after that I'll need to rewatch the original to see if there's anything actually there or if its sacred status is just a collective fever dream, because fuck me I remember nothing about it at this point.
But then again I got a kick out of the first half of Jurassic World for being so fucking nineties it hurt, so perhaps my taste is suspect. "Ahh, yes, raptors - if we train them for war they'll be the perfect addition to our 152nd lions and tigers and bears (oh my) division." "I'm sorry, I can't talk about this right now, I have to go have some incredibly awkward sexual tension with a woman who is too busy being a corporate go getter to listen to her vagina. We're probably going to go rescue some dumb siblings who are kind of mean to eachother but are totally there for one another when it counts, all while "WHAT HAS SCIENCE DONE? WHY DID WE PLAY GOD?" chases us around." Solid 8/10 accidental parody of the tropes of my childhood followed by a bunch of boring and directionless action. I think if that movie hadn't taken a nosedive into snoredom about halfway through, people would have left the theater as entertained as they were baffled. Come on, there's no fucking way you didn't laugh when they introduced the military raptor plotline. That shit was great.
Honestly, where the fuck does Hollywood find its writers? Who read that script and decided they wanted to sink a hundred million dollars into it without also deciding to spend a little bit of that hundred million dollars on hiring a better scriptwriter?
But then again I got a kick out of the first half of Jurassic World for being so fucking nineties it hurt, so perhaps my taste is suspect. "Ahh, yes, raptors - if we train them for war they'll be the perfect addition to our 152nd lions and tigers and bears (oh my) division." "I'm sorry, I can't talk about this right now, I have to go have some incredibly awkward sexual tension with a woman who is too busy being a corporate go getter to listen to her vagina. We're probably going to go rescue some dumb siblings who are kind of mean to eachother but are totally there for one another when it counts, all while "WHAT HAS SCIENCE DONE? WHY DID WE PLAY GOD?" chases us around." Solid 8/10 accidental parody of the tropes of my childhood followed by a bunch of boring and directionless action. I think if that movie hadn't taken a nosedive into snoredom about halfway through, people would have left the theater as entertained as they were baffled. Come on, there's no fucking way you didn't laugh when they introduced the military raptor plotline. That shit was great.
Honestly, where the fuck does Hollywood find its writers? Who read that script and decided they wanted to sink a hundred million dollars into it without also deciding to spend a little bit of that hundred million dollars on hiring a better scriptwriter?
Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2016 9:21 pm
Put me in the camp of people who found the new GB watchable but uninspiring.
I cannot say that I have a huge affection for the original. In the original's favor, it lacks the drawn out, CG-heavy, weightless and meaningless fight scenes the new one ends with. I do hope Kate McKinnon gets to do more stuff though.
I also recently saw Spy for the first time. I found that to be a genuinely fun spy-movie parody. I really do not know why Feig & Co. were not able to make a Ghostbusters movie that was at least as good as Spy.
I cannot say that I have a huge affection for the original. In the original's favor, it lacks the drawn out, CG-heavy, weightless and meaningless fight scenes the new one ends with. I do hope Kate McKinnon gets to do more stuff though.
I also recently saw Spy for the first time. I found that to be a genuinely fun spy-movie parody. I really do not know why Feig & Co. were not able to make a Ghostbusters movie that was at least as good as Spy.
Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2016 9:43 pm
I don't think it actually has sacred status. I think it's literally just that a specific set of people who were a specific age when it came out are also the people who are disproportionately represented in the "talk a lot about internet movie culture" demographic.DSMatticus wrote:And after that I'll need to rewatch the original to see if there's anything actually there or if its sacred status is just a collective fever dream, because fuck me I remember nothing about it at this point.
It's like, not a bad movie, maybe even good, but I think sacred status basically boils down to "I watched it when I was 14" spread across the specific people who most talk about what is sacred.
It's basically like there was some movie that Ebert watched when he was 14 that he probably rates super high, and no one else cares about that much, but it counts as a classic, cause everyone is like "well Ebert likes it, so it must be classic."
Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2016 3:02 am
It really depends on where you want to draw the line on what constitutes sacred cow status--the first film isn't Citizen Kane but in terms of popularity it has an awful lot going for it. It went toe-to-toe with Beverly Hills Cop* at the domestic box office, got decent reviews and appealed to adults while the cartoon show gave it a long tail due to children who were very young when it came out being able to discover it via VHS and reruns. It will never be an Important Film but it's like Back to the Future in the sense that Joe Blow is probably going to think you're a weirdo if you call it a shitty movie.
*One thing that has helped GB age a bit more gracefully than I expected is that it's not as alarmingly homophobic or sexist as a lot of '80s comedy. It's not going to win any gold stars for inclusiveness, but luckily for the film you have to work pretty hard to make Sigourney Weaver come across as an idiot, so it dodges some bullets it might have otherwise taken right to the chest with a lesser actress. Faint praise, but it really kinda sticks out if you've seen Eddie Murphy's old stuff recently.
*One thing that has helped GB age a bit more gracefully than I expected is that it's not as alarmingly homophobic or sexist as a lot of '80s comedy. It's not going to win any gold stars for inclusiveness, but luckily for the film you have to work pretty hard to make Sigourney Weaver come across as an idiot, so it dodges some bullets it might have otherwise taken right to the chest with a lesser actress. Faint praise, but it really kinda sticks out if you've seen Eddie Murphy's old stuff recently.
Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2016 3:46 am
I watched GB as well this weekend. I found it to be of a similar flavor to Spy, but not quite as good. McKinnon and Jones were the highlights of the movie, but most of that was short snappy gags, not drawn out humor. Wiig and McCarthy I thought were the weaker main characters and the ones with the most screen time. Hembrock was great but overused. I can understand the temptation to overuse him, but still.
Having a villain rather than a cosmic disaster in progress felt like a mistake.
Having the mayor and all government officials be cartoon parodies played well with my tween niece who saw it with us, but I felt a bit insulted and preferred more nuanced portrayals of city bureaucrats.
It was a fun couple hours and paced almost too fast since I kept trying to find an easy spot where I could get up and leave to refill popcorn and that moment never came. Unlike Independence Day Resurgence when I could have left at any opportunity and been better for it (at one point after an ID:R action sequence my wife had to use the restroom and I correctly advised her that she could go now and miss nothing of value).
Having a villain rather than a cosmic disaster in progress felt like a mistake.
Having the mayor and all government officials be cartoon parodies played well with my tween niece who saw it with us, but I felt a bit insulted and preferred more nuanced portrayals of city bureaucrats.
It was a fun couple hours and paced almost too fast since I kept trying to find an easy spot where I could get up and leave to refill popcorn and that moment never came. Unlike Independence Day Resurgence when I could have left at any opportunity and been better for it (at one point after an ID:R action sequence my wife had to use the restroom and I correctly advised her that she could go now and miss nothing of value).
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 4:11 pm
Stranger Things is the After Sundown tV show
Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2016 5:32 am
I've been watching The Wire on and off for the last 6 months or so, and I just finished it. The last episode might legitimately be the best single episode of television every created.
It is just..... so good. To see that powerful realization of how the game never changes, just the players, and some of them are the same, and some aren't, and here they are, in the same situations all over again. But at the same time, you can see that some people escaped, and some people made changes, but ultimately, it's the same game.
It goes through a pretty typical scenario of "this is where these people are now/are headed" events, and yeah, it does a better job at it than most shows, because it does better everything than what most shows do, but like, it starts with the longest and drawn out character ending scene and progresses to shorter and shorter ones as the episode goes on.
But something I didn't realize when I first started watching the nearly entire episode of those conclusory events each and every one reflects some other scene from early on in the show, I only really noticed it when it literally had a character repeat word for word a line from the first episode to the same judge...
It's showing new characters in literally the exact situations that they used to introduce old characters.
There's a former beat cop now a detective ratting out his bosses to a judge for not pursuing a case he wants, there's the gangster who was the up and coming rival for the businessman gangster, and now he's the businessman gangster, in the same place as his former enemy, there's the guy who just took the rap for murders, meeting the guy who took the rap for murderers in season 1 or 2, there's a new "outside the lines, hated and hunted" Omar character, sticking up, I think, the exact same guy that Omar stuck up in his intro scene, and he shoots him in the same KNEE. There's a new group of troublemaking young kids who will surely later become the next round of gangsters, there's a new bubbles and a new young kid getting high with bubbles, there's a new judge quoting lines from the other judge in his first episode. There's a new young kid getting arrested to go to juvie who will eventually become one of the new gangsters.
But something I didn't realize when I first started watching the nearly entire episode of those conclusory events each and every one reflects some other scene from early on in the show, I only really noticed it when it literally had a character repeat word for word a line from the first episode to the same judge...
It's showing new characters in literally the exact situations that they used to introduce old characters.
There's a former beat cop now a detective ratting out his bosses to a judge for not pursuing a case he wants, there's the gangster who was the up and coming rival for the businessman gangster, and now he's the businessman gangster, in the same place as his former enemy, there's the guy who just took the rap for murders, meeting the guy who took the rap for murderers in season 1 or 2, there's a new "outside the lines, hated and hunted" Omar character, sticking up, I think, the exact same guy that Omar stuck up in his intro scene, and he shoots him in the same KNEE. There's a new group of troublemaking young kids who will surely later become the next round of gangsters, there's a new bubbles and a new young kid getting high with bubbles, there's a new judge quoting lines from the other judge in his first episode. There's a new young kid getting arrested to go to juvie who will eventually become one of the new gangsters.
Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2016 6:13 am
Now you should go back and watch it again. Or, at least that's how I felt after finding this website a few days ago.Kaelik wrote:I've been watching The Wire on and off for the last 6 months or so, and I just finished it.
http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watchi ... ry-episode
Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2016 1:15 am
Jurassic World sagged heavily in the second act, but the climax with the Velociraptor and T-Rex fighting the 31 flavor crossbreed dinosaur together is one of the most ridiculously awesome mindless action sequences ever.DSMatticus wrote: think if that movie hadn't taken a nosedive into snoredom about halfway through, people would have left the theater as entertained as they were baffled.
Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2016 1:33 am
I was hoping the crossbreed thing would pick up a light pole and start swinging it, or SOMETHING. They make a deal over how smart it is, and even the raptors in 1 worked out how to use door handles.Darth Rabbitt wrote:Jurassic World sagged heavily in the second act, but the climax with the Velociraptor and T-Rex fighting the 31 flavor crossbreed dinosaur together is one of the most ridiculously awesome mindless action sequences ever.DSMatticus wrote: think if that movie hadn't taken a nosedive into snoredom about halfway through, people would have left the theater as entertained as they were baffled.
Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2016 2:45 am
I thought that fight was pretty lackluster and uninspired. Nothing interesting or ridiculous happens, and neither the special effects nor the choreography are enough to carry it. It's just... there. All in all the film's main dino-antagonist was pretty poorly utilized. They made a supposably superintelligent giant man-eating chameleon, and it provides us with two ridiculous moments (one of which is so outrageously implausible it's funny-bad and one of which would have been at home in a decent movie) and then spends the rest of the movie being a T-Rex but different.
I continue to stand by the first half of that movie, though. I give it two stickers that look like smiling fruit and a spot on the fridge for a week.
I continue to stand by the first half of that movie, though. I give it two stickers that look like smiling fruit and a spot on the fridge for a week.
Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2016 7:04 pm
Got to play a brought-back from GenCon demo copy of Arcane Academy last night.
It's about to be the next Splendor / Sherriff of Nottingham / Codenames / King of Tokyo. By which I mean that in the 1 to 3 year timeframe, it will become hard to get away from at quite a few boardgame groups.
It's about to be the next Splendor / Sherriff of Nottingham / Codenames / King of Tokyo. By which I mean that in the 1 to 3 year timeframe, it will become hard to get away from at quite a few boardgame groups.
Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2016 3:14 pm
Hearthstone's new event (Kharazan) dropped this week, and the free intro scenario where you play as Medivh is awesome. You get to be a slick OP wizard and feel like a total badass, and then do it again on a higher difficulty and feel extra badass. Totes recommended, although total beginners might take a little while to figure out the combos involved.
Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2016 6:21 pm
I've watched it now. And yes. Yes it is. The differences are:OgreBattle wrote:Stranger Things is the After Sundown tV show
- The Shallow Maya is tinted blue instead of green.
-Username17
Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2016 8:28 pm
Yeah, if I ever run AS everyone can just go ahead and assume Stranger Things and Lucha Underground are canon.
Posted: Tue Aug 23, 2016 6:11 am
Stranger Things was fan-fucking-tastic.
I haven't really liked anything Baz Luhrmann has done since Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, but I'm really digging the Get Down. First episode is kind of all over the place, but it tightens up in subsequent episodes.
I haven't really liked anything Baz Luhrmann has done since Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, but I'm really digging the Get Down. First episode is kind of all over the place, but it tightens up in subsequent episodes.
Posted: Tue Aug 23, 2016 9:14 pm
Saw the "Last Bastion" cinematic for Overwatch and despite not playing it I really liked what I saw. Short simple examples of show, don't tell.
Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2016 4:49 am
Psychstick does a parody worthy of Weird Al
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=naogC9vl2cU
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=naogC9vl2cU
Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2016 4:20 am
Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2016 11:22 pm
The IDW comic is probably the best thing to come from 4e.
Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2016 2:04 am
"Jonathan Strange & Mister Norrell" on Netflix rocked my world for seven episodes
Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2016 4:15 am
That came up on my "you'd really like this" list. I opted for Luther, but I'll add it so when Luther's over, I can go back to it.