Movies

[Shale]

Spent yesterday watching random geeky stuff. Most of it was TV (e.g. the Warren Ellis episode of Justice League, which was awesome) or things I'd seen before (Firefly, watch it you peons). Only new movie on the agenda was Return of the Living Dead, which was hilarious. Especially when a pair of hapless paramedics are crushed under what looks like a full-speed football team composed entirely of zombies.

[Captain K.]

Lots of movies recently.

Wall-E:  I can't fault the quality of the film, but I didn't really enjoy it.  It was rather depressing actually.  The whole mission was so screwed up that returning to Earth seemed rather pointless at that time.

James Bond - Expand Your Vocabulary Edition:  Dug it.  Also, Bolivians have the best hats.

Casino Royale:  Watched this after Quantum of Solace.  I think QoS was a bit better, but this had the awesome chase scene with the bomber who flips off buildings like Spider-man.

Bolt:  Really good and heartwarming.  Especially liked the scenes with Mittens teaching Bolt to be a real dog.  Bolivia makes another appearance as well.  They must have a good PR agent.

[Grefter]

Castlevania Series Named Bond Movie - This was good.  Bolivians DO have the best hats.  It is really quite good.  I think I liked Casino Royale more because it had that awesome opening sequence (There hasn't been a movie where someone gets hit on a toilet that is bad.  Boondock Saints is like the best movie ever made according to this standard and it is pretty close) and more pistol whipping.  Still good action stuff, can see a bit more parallels to the Bourne style choreography, but it is more in line with the first movie of that trilogy so it is sliiiightly less fast action camera changes.

The more I think about it though, especially in this movie it is like someone has taken some basic notes from comic books and is using fast takes as establishing shots kind of like you do with comic panels, but aren't playing to the strengths of the medium or the style as much as they should.  Comic books get away with it of course because they can be as slow or fast as appropriate, in a movie they have to be fast.  They also are a complete and total waste of screen space having a single shot to establish something very minor for an action sequence, there is so little in the shot that matters.

This kind of makes me have an evil robot chubby for someone to say, make a movie using comic book style aesthetic in the same way that the video game XIII did with video games.  Could be interesting.  Could be epic fail, but I would be interested in it anyway.

[Shale]

Jeez, this topic has been dead all month? Lame.

Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death - is Wallace & Gromit, therefore massive awesome. The ending bits in particular. (Tell me that wasn't a reference to the 1966 Batman movie. Go on, try.)

[Taishyr]

... wait, there's a new Wallace and Gromit out? Must watch.

[Xeroma]

... wait, there's a new Wallace and Gromit out? Must watch.

[Strago]

... wait, there's a new Wallace and Gromit out? WHY AM I NOT WATCHING THIS RIGHT NOW. MY LIFE IS MEANINGLESS.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Wallace and Gromit hype

I approve of this.

[Captain K.]

Randomly went to the movies yesterday, but the only thing that had a showtime close to when we arrived was Bedtime Stories.  So we watched it.  Actually it was pretty good.  Much better than the trailers suggested.  Good family movie.

Tropic Thunder:  Good, but their Booty Sweat is a total ripoff of Booty Juice.  Rusty Cundieff did that joke 15 years ago in Fear of a Black Hat.

[metroid composite]

Juno - sounds really pretentious (isn't Juno is some kind of awards ceremony?)  Turned out to be about a pregnant teen with a sense of humor and a sarcasm streak.  Highly enjoyable.

Kandahar - Pretty much a movie about the state of Afghanistan under the Taliban (released before Sept 11 2001, so of course very few people paid attention to it until then).  It's basically 100% setting, which makes it not my kind of thing (I'm not very fond of LotR either, for instance).  Did seem to be quite good at capturing local character in a very foreign cultural landscape, though.

[Hunter Sopko]

Juno - sounds really pretentious (isn't Juno is some kind of awards ceremony?)  Turned out to be about a pregnant teen with a sense of humor and a sarcasm streak.  Highly enjoyable.

Also a city in Alaska. Never heard of an awards ceremony named Juno...

[metroid composite]

Juno - sounds really pretentious (isn't Juno is some kind of awards ceremony?)  Turned out to be about a pregnant teen with a sense of humor and a sarcasm streak.  Highly enjoyable.

Also a city in Alaska. Never heard of an awards ceremony named Juno...

*Checks*

Oh, apparently they're Canadian only.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_Awards

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Juno - sounds really pretentious (isn't Juno is some kind of awards ceremony?)  Turned out to be about a pregnant teen with a sense of humor and a sarcasm streak.  Highly enjoyable.

Fuck that movie. Fuck it.

Anyway, I got pushed in to seeing that Benjamin Button movie. It's based off a 30-page Fitzgerald story, and the director decided to pad the movie to three hours. Did not particularly care for it.

[Ryogo]

Juno - sounds really pretentious (isn't Juno is some kind of awards ceremony?)  Turned out to be about a pregnant teen with a sense of humor and a sarcasm streak.  Highly enjoyable.

Also a city in Alaska. Never heard of an awards ceremony named Juno...

*Checks*

Oh, apparently they're Canadian only.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_Awards

None of you know anything Canadian...
Dunno what a tuque/toque is, dunno about the Juno's, Probably don't know what back bacon is either

The Juno awards are the Canadian equivalent of the Grammies. Only Canadian's are eligible.


Anyways, watched Death Race.  I loved it, being a huge fan of the Twisted Metal games.  I was waiting for Sweettooth or Axel to come out at some random point to pwn everyone the whole time, but alas, it was not meant to be. Good action, but what I thought was a bit of a predictable ending. But hey, it's an action film, that's normal.

[Shale]

MC is Canadian. I'm not surprised he's not completely in tune with music awards, though.

[Dark Holy Elf]

The Alaskan capital is Juneau.

Juno is the name of Jupiter's wife in Roman mythology.

[Captain K.]

The Day the Earth Stood Still:  Good movie with an environmental message.  Now excuse me while I go shoot a polar bear for dinner.

[OblivionKnight]

Saw a few movies with the girlfriend:

The Libertine: Yeah, no.  Johnny Depp is a great actor, but this movie was really...painful.  Slow, hard to follow...I understand it's a period film, but...yeesh.  Definitely not worth the money to rent - should have spent it on something else. 

To summarize: Johnny Depp is an asshole man-slut in the reign of King Charles II who is a famous playwright.  He meets a shitty actress, teaches her how to act, and apparently decides he wants to give her syphyllis too (did I mention he has that?  yeah) for the rest of their lives!  Love at first sight!  She leads him on and doesn't care to love him back, but he learns this on his deathbed at the end, after he puts on a very...risque play for King Charles II.  Eventually, he does something nice for the king, then dies.  It's several plot lines going on at once, and the only good parts are Johnny Depp's acting, the gratuitous sexual references (a dildo CAR), and boobs.  So I guess it wasn't a complete waste, but it wasn't worth sitting through just for those.

Mamma Mia: Liked the musical way better, but that's just about a given.  Anyway, good adaptation.  A few oddities they added in/changed, but overall good.

[Hunter Sopko]

Burn After Reading- Coen Brothers goodness. Starts slow, but gets good. Not great, not among their best works, but still entertaining. Brad Pitt steals the show by acting like a complete dork.

[superaielman]

Resaw Men in Tights. Amusing even if a lot of the jokes have aged some.

[metroid composite]

Quantum of Solace:
Action sequences were okay, though had some cinematography issues in that it wasn't always clear that "this camera cut is where the character is looking" instead of "this camera cut is something happening concurrently".  Not that the action was bad, just not especially standout.  Plot was "don't think about it too deeply", though entertaining to joke about.  Overall, okay but not great.

[Dark Holy Elf]

QoS - Decent but short of incredible. mc's pretty much right about the action scenes. Pretty solid generally, continues the trend of "Bond girls" who have more than paper-thin character worth, Daneil Craig is good, Judi Dench hype, etc. Also helped by the fact that, unlike El Cid, I found Greene much more compelling than Le Chiffre. That said, it still could have been much better; it's a little muddled in the direction it takes at times, suffering from a glut of stuff happening. Casino Royale was better, but this one was certainly worth seeing at least.

[Grefter]

Yeah regarding camera stuff, see what I said above.  It looks like they are trying to use fast takes to establish the surroundings better with fast input focusing on things that are going to play a part later to make them seem less like arse pulls.  I think it is a technique that needs refinement but I can certainly see where they are coming from in trying to do it.

[metroid composite]

Charlie Wilson's War
Entertaining.  Charlie Wilson was a no-name senator into hookers and blow (more or less), though he does seem to be surprisingly intelligent.  Then somehow he becomes the driving force behind the USSR-Afghanistan conflict.  Well-acted, well-scripted, likeable flawed characters.

[Sierra]

Valkyrie: Saw this yesterday. It was pretty good. Crew of awesome British actors makes up for the presence of Tom Cruise.