Movies (recently seen)

[End Master]

Well if Locke is still out there lurking, I watched the first three seasons of Justified and I definitely think it's a pretty good series over all. It got better towards the end of the 1st season when they had an ongoing storyline rather than just isolated episodes. They continue that pace in the next two seasons as well.

Can't really think of any good movies I've seen lately. Can't even really think of any really horrible ones either. I mean I saw Oblivion recently and that was just sort of meh. It was basically like one of the better SciFi channel movie attempts if they actually had a big budget and access to Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman. Wasn't excessively terrible, just sort of ho-hum.

Wasn't really our first pick for movies, but that new Oz movie wasn't playing at the time we were set to go to the movies.

Saw that Jack the Giant Slayer movie when it first came out and that was okay. Didn't care for the ending, but the giant army was cool enough. Made me sort of wish they were making a movie based on Ragnarock with the norse gods fighting giants.

And the best thing is everyone would die in the end!

[Locke]

Yeah, I'm still lurking. I think I have a talent for it. I guess some people are just born to lurk.

I picked up where I left off with Justified some time ago, and the characters have stayed over the top enough that it can be surprisingly entertaining on that score. My favorite scene is the one where Dewey Crowe tries to buy a ski mask. I also kind of miss the psychopath organ-jacking nurse. He had a talent for crazy.

Still watching Game of Thrones. I've read the books, but it's still interesting in its own right. There are small deviations from the plot of the books there. It never goes far enough to change the general story, but the differences I've seen are interesting enough that I wish they would throw a curveball and change it up significantly at some critical juncture. Given that Martin is a writer/director for the show as well, I'd love to see two strikingly different stories come out of it (pretty sure that will never happen. But remakes and adaptations in general ought to take that angle more often).

Made me sort of wish they were making a movie based on Ragnarock with the norse gods fighting giants.

And the best thing is everyone would die in the end!

There ought to be enough material there for a miniseries or something. I doubt that would do it justice, but I feel like I've already seen the Hollywood version (i.e. "the action movie").

Ragnarok isn't the end, though. Two humans survive, and a few of the gods, including sons of Odin and Thor. Thor's hammer also comes through it, and is passed down. Balder and one or two others come back from the dead afterward.

Not sure what happens to the other realms.

[apotheosis]

Game of Thrones is rocking my world. Wish the episodes were 3 hours long and there were twice as many per season (seriously). My only complaint about the show is that it goes too fast and does not delve into much detail...

But that is why I'm waiting to read the books until after I finish the series, or at least I'm going to stagger the books so I don't get ahead of the show.

Also, Shameless and House of Lies have been great. Californication has jumped the shark and so has Dexter. Walking Dead had its best season yet.

In terms of movies.... the Evil Dead remake was entertaining, but it wasn't scary enough to be scary and it wasn't funny enough to be funny. Some entertaining gore though.

[VishaaL]

I have seen Man of Steel recently...
This movie is a American superhero film produced by Christopher Nolan and directed by Zack Snyder...

[Dragavan]

I have seen Man of Steel recently...
This movie is a American superhero film produced by Christopher Nolan and directed by Zack Snyder...

Wow... don't hold anything back... tell us how you really feel.

[End Master]

Going back a couple posts back about my wish to see a movie about Ragnarok, well those wishes still haven't come true, but I have been watching the first season of Vikings.

It's pretty cool so far what with all the bloodshed, raiding and values dissonance and all. The acting isn't bad either.

Glad to see the History channel is at least trying to make the attempt of having something remotely historical on it for a change. (Even if probably not the most accurate)

[End Master]

Recent Movie round up

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

This wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. It actually was pleasantly vulgar and bloody. Some cool looking witches as well, before they all got blasted to hell anyway. I think it was a better idea that they just said fuck it and went over the top with the violence and stuck with modern language speak.

The Avengers

Didn't mind this one either. I'm usually kind of "meh" on super heroes movies in general, but this one held my attention.

Evil Dead (Remake)

Surprisingly this one was okay too as far as the remake plague goes. Sort of fell apart at the end though. Would've rather seen an everyone dies ending rather than the usual final girl ending.

Searching For Sugar Man

Pretty much had to get around to watching this one given that it's about my uncle and all.

The documentary was kind of amusing in that there were all these rumors and myths about him being dead from various fans and my family (And of course his own) knew exactly where he'd been living in Detroit for years as well as interacting with him every now and then. Even funnier since he didn't even know anyone was looking for him, but then he's always been a bit scattered and just did his own thing.

The documentary sort of places him a bit on a pedestal, but eh what the hell, good for him.

[End Master]

Well since Ves' back I can mention the newest artfag movie I just saw yesterday (Assuming she hasn't already watched it).

Enter the Void

Yeah so this one was done by Gaspar Noe, the same guy who did I Stand Alone and the more infamous Irreversible.

Now on one viewing (And you'd only want to view it once assuming you made it through the first time) there are two ways the movie could be interpreted but the director plainly stated in an interview what the movie was really about so I'm guessing he just wanted to be a longwinded bastard because he could've easily told the same story in half the time since he had no real goal of being cryptic.

If you've seen Irreversible, he does something similar here in style because the movie goes a bit backwards (It jumps around back to the present eventually though), but rather than getting progressively boring the closer it gets to the end, the movie just sort of stays constant mediocre.

Anyway I doubt if I'm spoiling anything, so here's the plot. This guy is a drug dealer in Tokyo and he's reunited with his sister after years of being apart due to their parents getting killed in a car accident. Towards the beginning of the movie he's involved in a drug deal gone bad and he gets killed. Then the movie starts going all the way back to when he was a kid before his parents got killed and progresses from there until it reaches the present again and what happens after he got killed.

Now there are a couple things going on. First the movie is mainly told through first person since you pretty much see the whole movie through the eyes of the drug dealer (Or the back of his head). After he's dead in the present, it gives the impression that he's floating about like a ghost and spying on everyone. In few cases he enters inside a few people. (More on that later)

There's some incest subtext going on throughout the story. Him and his sister never actually sex each other up, but she's practically making out with him and licking on his ear at one point and he sniffs her panties when she isn't around and regularly watches her dance at the strip club, so there's enough there to notice that they're a bit closer than average and this of course is due to the whole incident where they lost their parents and didn't have anyone else at first except each other.

It's pretty obvious if he made the full moves on her, she wouldn't have resisted, but I'm guessing he didn't because he was a horrible coward that was afraid to seize his destiny! Lol.

Anyway there are a few moments where he sort of screws his sister when he's dead since he enters a couple of guys when they're doing her and with the second guy he goes into her womb and by the end he's "reborn" as her son. (He has sort of a mom-breast fetish too in the flashbacks).

Or he would be reborn if the director hadn't said the whole movie was a dying dream because the protagonist was incredibly high on hallucinatory designer drugs when he got killed.

A character earlier in the movie even mentions how he took some of the drug and lived an entire lifetime only to find out none of it happened, so there was the hint of what was going on the whole time, but due to the way the movie is shot and how the protagonist was reading a Tibetan reincarnation book in the beginning (And the fact it takes place in an Asian county) it's sort of understandable that most think he's going through a rebirth process.

Really, it isn't that bad of a movie overall, but its incredibly slow in places and has a lot of that camera panning artsy shot stuff. It doesn't help that he introduces these flashing strobe effects throughout the movie. I get that the director likes to assault the viewers senses (Like he did with the low hum and spinning camera in Irreversible) to make them feel more "immersed" or whatever, but I'm getting fucking epilepsy over here. Wouldn't bother watching it again.

I still liked I Stand Alone better. Less epilepsy and more misanthropic rants.

And on that note, might as well mention I watched a less artsy movie called Maniac.

This one was actually a remake of the old 1980s slasher movie of the same name. Surprisingly they got Elijah Wood to play the maniac this time around. This movie also does a first person perspective, so you see through the maniac's eyes and you only see Wood's face in mirrors most of the time.

Now in the original movie the maniac (Joe Spinell) was a big slightly overweight grubby looking dude who looked like a fucking criminal to begin with. Maybe not even necessarily a serial killer, but he already had the look of someone who you didn't want to be around. They couldn't really go physically intimidating route with Elijah so he adopted a more soft spoken anal retentive pale appearance which worked for him.

As you might expect the protagonist is a creepy loner living in his mannequin store and goes out at night to cut up whores…well to be fair they aren't all whores, he just thinks they are because he's got mommy issues. Then he scalps them and puts their hair on the mannequins and pretends they're girlfriends. And of course there's that ONE, that he MUST have because she's possibly the only one he can really connect with.

Really that's all there is to it.

I suppose due to the fact Elijah's eyes look like a nervous deer caught in a headlight and he's of slighter build, he sort of comes off as a slightly more sympathetic tortured soul than Joe did in the original. However he also sounds more like he's whining due to his voice, whereas Joe sounded like a complete fucking nutjob when he's screaming and ranting about the voices in his head.

Anyway it was better than most remakes go. If anything it was pretty faithful to the original with just an overall update and a couple of major changes near the end. Still liked the original better though.

[dreamshell]

What's weird is that these are both movies I recently had recommended to me...

[Vesnic]

I would hate to be seen as lacking, not having my own artfag film to recommend. As it so happens, I do have one, but it seems that my movie watching has taking a plummet recently. I guess I just don't feel drawn in by very much these days.

End, I can't say I have much love for old Gaspar. You recommended I Stand Alone to me awhile ago, and I think I got as far as those two fat feces-sacks jawing about fucking their daughters or whatever before me and the TV got totally turned off. I (barely) managed to sit through Irreversible, which I likewise found gratuitous and disgusting. Either subtlety is just not this guy's strength, or he has a comment to make about the SCREAMING OBVIOUSNESS of modern film-making, but if this is the case then he's really running the danger of being SCREAMING REDUNDANT. Being a technical acrobat or a shock jock doesn't make one an auteur. I've met some people who will go to great lengths to defend this guy, but I Just don't see it. Irreversible left me feeling not only nauseous but also vaguely dirty, like I'd just sat through a two-hour ghetto peepshow not realizing that my pants were soaking through with someone else's jizz and someone had stuck an HIV-infected needle in my arm.

Anyway, here's my recommendation. I'll just put as a header here that this is NOT a political film. Thank God. It's not about saving the spotted zebra or championing the poor oppressed Walla Walla Bing Bang tribe of Southern Ukelele. It's not that such causes are unworthy. On the contrary, they are eminently worthy. It's just that the politically correct (read: corrupt) dialogue around these issues has made such a dribbling idiocy of the whole thing that we all really need to just start from scratch.

The Patience Stone

This is a personal film, a narrative from within the mind and heart of one brave and intelligent woman as she tries to come to grips with the horrors and injustices that surround her in war-torn Iran.

The film opens with the woman trying and failing to cobble together enough money to buy medication for her husband, who has been in a coma since being attacked by one of his own faction in a brawl. With the profound sense of absurdity found in all the better war films, the viewer wonders how it is, in this poor apartment made a ruin by constant shelling and gunfire, that niceties like saline solution can even exist. Although it is clear that this woman has no love for her husband, and indeed it is evident in the way she physically handles him that he is almost a stranger to her, she is nonetheless absolutely determined to keep him safe, hydrated and as comfortable as a comatose man can possibly be. Every object she possesses becomes invested with an incredible depth of meaning, partially due to the way she carefully considers and weighs all the possibilities, and partially to the absolute paucity of material wealth which is making her life so untenable. She has two children to care for in addition to her potentially mortally ill husband. She has a few coins, a few cushions, little or no water, an aunt living at the other end of the city, a photograph, a veil and a Koran.

The plot is almost tangential to the real central drama of this woman's thoughts as a heady combination of fear, resourcefulness, hopelessness and nascent awareness bring her inner dialogue from a mere accounting of events to an absolutely mystical, mildly insane exodus of the spirit. The "action" as it were reaches a thrilling climax when her husband's eyes suddenly open just as as she is in the midst of telling him that he is not the father of their two children, that he is in fact impotent. An almost fatal overdose of symbolism takes over at this point, and the denouement is somewhat rushed and hectic, yet this could also be considered appropriate in a world where so little is determined by personal volition and so much by chance, fate and the too-often destructive will of other people. The ending, posed in a moment of transcendent and timeless beauty, will leave you wondering and also hoping, against hope.

Four out of five stars on the Ves-o-meter!

[End Master]

So I finally got around to seeing the Ender's Game movie since Katie dragged me to see it suddenly.

Seeing as I've never bothered to read the books, (Still knew the general plot though) I thought it was alright.

Even without reading the books though I knew that they must've really been skipping through a lot of stuff, since a lot of the movie felt very "rushed" even at two hours. One moment Ender's in one training sim and beating the shit out of some asshole that's been fucking with him, the next they've promoted him and he does the same thing all over again until he finally blows up a planet.

Anyway like I said, I thought it was okay. I have no regrets about funding Orson's crusade against same sex marriages. I mean hell I already helped Mel fight against the Global Zionist Conspiracy when I went to see Apocalypto!

Just a sucker for crazy lost causes...

[Vesnic]

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

I don't know what the fuck that was, but it was not The Hobbit. I think noble, gentle (if also somewhat smug and self-righteous) Tolkien is rolling over in his grave. It's not that Legolas doing his nimble barrel ballet while slaying a horde of baddies so dense, you can't see the forest for the orcs wasn't pugnaciously awesome, it's just that this little foray was basically just fanfic with a massive budget behind it. Also, I'm a little miffed that they didn't sing the barrel song. I know that trying your darndest not to get shot through the head with a high-speed arrow can be kind of distracting, but couldn't those dwarves spare just a wee moment to harmonize to, "Roll, roll, roll roll roll, rolling down the hole. Heave ho, splash, plump! Down they go, down they bump!"

This was what we did in the rather low-budget school play. It was fun. I played the temperamental guy with the tree on his head.

Now I'm not one of those to pick every last detail. I'm always amused at how many videos are mass-nerdproduced on YouTube giving a long and agonizingly painstaking list of every last millimeter of difference between source material and Hollywood moneysnarfer. These guys would, I'm sure, make excellent accountants, but even the passing observer can fill in the plot holes here, because someone blew through them with a small cannonball and/or blunderbuss.

Speaking of things that go boom in the night, a little bomb went off somewhere in the very sketchy neighborhood where I was partaking of this entertainment just as I was leaving. Then a cruiser went flying by. Who needs movies when you have the Revenge of the 3rd World fer realz?

Anyway, you all know the story and you've probably all seen the movie, so I'll just sum up to say I think it was actually a good deal better than the first installment, purely in terms of CGI fun and a more coherent story. While it's not exactly an actor's movie, I got the feeling that the cast, newcomers and oldcomers alike, were more comfortable with each other and with the insanity that is Middle Earth according to Peter Jackson.

A couple of wry observations:

It continues to be extremely funny to watch actors who are obviously ten years older (I'm looking at YOU, Orlando Bloom!) play their younger, more innocent selves. Maybe I'm just not cool enough to know that elves age in reverse. Benjamin Button was an elf. He made oodles on his story here on Earthy-Earth just because no one had seen his like before, just like Superman is impressive when the other Kryptonians aren't around, but then when the hometeam shows up there's lots of hurt feelings and lawsuits and...but I digress.

Sherlock and Watson...in a different life! It was just like the fireside chats of yore at 221B Baker Street, except Sherlock's pipe was filled with MOLTEN GOLD and Watson had pissed his pants. And probably pooped them too. Even with the voice distortions and the physical metamorphosis of reedy little Benny into a ferocious golden-eyed dragon, I could totally still feel the love and the bromance, couldn't you?

Stupid chick, they're saying. They don't even do the recordings simultaneously. Or do they? Too lazy to look it up. Probably not.

ANYWAY, I recommend lightly and do try not to get terrorized by angry jihadist orcs as part of your escapist venture, and if you're looking for a total change of pace and a brand-new hitherto undiscovered story, I totes recommend a little gem called The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien.

[End Master]

I dunno if it would qualify as fanfic, it didn't have a bunch of gay sex between characters who originally showed no sexual interest in each other before.

I always thought that was a prerequisite anyway, better ask Mizal for a ruling, she knows more about that stuff than anyone else here.

EDIT: As for the movie, I thought it was okay. I sort of thought they were going to kill Smaug in this one and it was going to end just before the battle of the five armies, but as you know they seem to be going in a different direction with the original story.

[Vesnic]

I dunno if it would qualify as fanfic, it didn't have a bunch of gay sex between characters who originally showed no sexual interest in each other before.

Funny you should say that, End. I was originally going to the use the term "fanwank" but then I thought that was a bit rude, really. It's true though. Fanfic never evolves before it devolves. No wonder GRRM hates it and has more then once stated he will TAKE YOUR ASS TO TOWN if he catches you in the midst of generating some really hawt "San-San" porn. Not that I'd know anything about that though...

One more thing that occurred to me was how unintentionally funny some of this shit in the movie was. First there's just the ever-growing chasm of impossibility as single elves take on entire orc armies. Then there's Bilbo and he's in a hall the size of several consecutive man-sized football fields, where the gold is so deep it can actually conceal a sleeping dragon and he just happens to happen upon the Arkenstone, just like that? That easily? Does Smaug use it as his teddybear or his anal plug or something? That immediately points to another question, and maybe this one really is for Tolkien's ghost. What the hell does a dragon do with all that gold? I mean, it's obvious old Smaugy hasn't done much for the place, and he clearly needs some dental work. Do dragons just look at Scrooge McDuck-style swimming pools and think, "Yeah, baby, finally I gets me a bed, the real right fluffy stuff!"? Are gold coins the equivalent of downy bed linens for our spiny-boned friends? If this is indeed the case, then I don't know why Smaug can't just go to work with Sleepy's to make some sort of proper dragon bed out of other, less paid-for-with-sentient-life materials, using some of the gold he got from the dwarves as payment (after all, he has been technically guarding the stuff for all these long years, preventing little bands of Ali Baba-style thieves from nabbing the loot bit by little bit. The place was locked up tight, you say? Well balls, I'm sure someone would have found a way in. There's only one key to the mountain, you say? So how does Smaug get in and out? And why don't dwarves ever make back-up keys. The fate of the whole universe depends on this one stinking key and they leave it all up to Butterfingers Baggins?...Anyway, so Smaug buys himself a custom mattress and manse, then returns the rest, (and there will be leftovers since the stuff is just endless and the mines seem inexhaustible), which he would no longer need, returning occasionally to say hi to his squat little friends and to ask them for another...wait for it...golden shower!

There was another implied pun that was just begging for some mockery earlier on in the film, but seeing as I'm fat, old and gouty I've naturally forgotten it.

What will Peter Jackson himself do with his own gold coins? Pour them out in the basement of his McMansion until they overflow the pool table? Buy himself New Zealand? Start campaigning for dwarf-elf rights? The choices are truly limitless.

[Sponge.]

why don't you just smoke weed? I smoked up before I went in and the movie was fine. Thats how they are meant to be watched

Speaking of things that go boom in the night, a little bomb went off somewhere in the very sketchy neighborhood where I was partaking of this entertainment just as I was leaving. Then a cruiser went flying by. Who needs movies when you have the Revenge of the 3rd World fer realz?

wtf, where do you live