Burt Gummer’s Rec Room- March 2012 Archive
A gathering place for firearms enthusiasts, paranoid survivalists and those who worship at the Church of Chang
March. The green shoots of spring start pushin’ through, but here in Perfection, all we’ve got is sand, more sand and large angry subterranean worms. The season’s pass, but the Graboids are all year round.
Disclaimer: This is the part of the Church that is the most no holds barred. None of it is intended with malice, and although it can on occasion seem a little bit fraught, it is banter rather than venom. So, be warned that this is like taking a naked swim in a piranha tank and not recommended for the faint of heart.
Barfy
kloipy
Echo the Bunnyman
Judge Droid
Jarv
ThereWolf
Xiphos0311
Werewolves On The Moon 
HEHEHEHE can’t tell if this is good for Croneberg or not?
it’s certainly more in his wheelhouse than A Dangerous Method, which wasn’t a bad movie, but didn’t quite work for me. It was a decent biopic, but I was expecting more psychobabble I think.
Well I’m more saying he’s just reverting back to his old shit. I wasn’t totally digging his shit since History of Violence, but at least it showed attempt of him growing as a director. This just seems like bad habits die hard and he couldn’t help himself. It could be good IDK? But he looked like he was veering into something great possibly.
Yep, ADM would’ve had more substance if it focused on the psychoanalysis side more. I didn’t really care for the “we were such good friends but now you’ve hurt my feelings. boo hoo.” relationship between Freud and Jung.
For anyone who liked Garbage back in the 90’s, they’ve apparently got a new album coming out. You can download a song off it for free from their website.
http://garbage.com/
Probably on youtube too. I have no idea if it’s any good (hope so), as I won’t be able to check it out until later on.
I had such a boner for Shirley Manson back then. I don’t really know why. She wasn’t particularly attractive or anything. She did seem very cool, however.
Everyone did. She’s filth.
She looks odd nowadays. Or she did in the Terminator thing
At least it’s not just me.
Jarv’s right, everyone did. I’m actually sort of excited by the prospect of another Garbage album. They feel like a band that just sort of faded off more than burned out, or assimilated out of the 90s.
For some reason, I can imagine a new Garbage album actually being decent, which I dont think I could say for most of their contemporaries at the time.
Garbage sort of turned me off after that terrible Bond song. But I actually caught one of their music videos the other day and man it’s fucking odd, it was from Version 2.0 an album which I loved. Didn’t really listen to anything after that.
That being said another band that reminds me of Garbage with a similar music style and a very androgynous lead singer who failed at acting as well, released a new cd recently that went no where. That band is Bush.
I saw him in a film recently and he was quite good.
He was ok in that White Collar episode, but lets face it neither him nor Shirley are going anywhere with acting. They should’ve released a duet cd are something that would’ve been fun.
Have you heard Bush’s new music, it’s pretty blah from what I’ve heard.
That’s a good idea. I never really liked bush.
Watching Harry potter and the camping trip of doom part 2.
Did you see the fat cunt that plays Crabbe got a couple of years for looting the Sainsbury’s below our flat in the riots? Fat cunt.
I’m sure I watched part 1 recently and I can’t remember it at all, other than being bored.
Meh. Much better than the last few though.
Hangover 2 is fucking awful. I just want to beat fatass into paste.
If this doesn’t improve then it’s flirting with an Orangutan.
Just. Not. Funny.
At all.
90 laugh free minutes.
Lazy, unfunny, mean-spirited piss poor retread of the first film.
Final straw was Tyson coming back. That may be worse than the change-up.
Orangutan of Doom
The Hangover looks like a *meh* franchise. And you picked up on something that is a real turnoff for me watching a movie, is overt mean spiritedness. Don’t need it.
Did Harold sell this as being good?
Can’t remember.
It’s appalling. A good example is that In the first film one character loses a tooth. In this one it’s a finger.
That wouldn’t matter, except the kid is a fucking concert cellist and training to be a surgeon. I’d be pretty fucked off if I lost a digit, but he just laughs it off.
The fact they’re even looking for a kid on the streets of Bangkok makes it dodgy.
Every single joke is the same as the first film but nastier and more ill- natured. First film, one of them fucks a hooker, this one he takes it in the ass from a ladyboy.
The end is just embarrassing. It’s contrived, forced dogshit of the worst kind and may be the worst comedy of last year.
Didn’t think much of Shirley Manson until I saw her on Jools Holland’s show… I thought, ‘yeh, I think I could…’
It was just the way she carried herself – hair scraped back, bit cocky, strutting around the studio as if she owned it… I think the vocals were double-tracked though – not cool…
OK saw American Reunion. It’s solid, maybe the best of the series? Also I got a free high quality John Carter poster at the theaters. The poster was better than the whole movie I think it may be a Mondo Poster not an actual John Carter poster. It’s of this:
Finished Dead Space last night. Pretty good game. Felt a little repetitive towards the end, just in terms of the things you need to do. Kind of like you played the game front to back then back to front, so a number of things were repeated with a slight variation.
But overall it’s a solid game with great sound design.
Cool. I’ll lend you the sequel. Moves the story on, and has a more compelling plot.
You’re right, the big strength of the game is the sound design. Fucking terrifying on occasion. Also the device killing by dismemberment is pretty sweet too.
Interesting spoiler, an acronym of the chapter headings spells “Nicole is Dead”.
Getting pumped for the movie now?
What movie? I’m not watching the animated ones.
Prometheus? Is it not based on those games?
The Guardian has the knives out for Iron Sky. However, this made me laugh:
Pwnd. Have that you smug cunt.
here’s to hoping that iron sky lives up to its potential as a goofy film that will shut this pretentious asshole up.
That’s what I’m hoping. It won’t make any difference to the frauds though, as they’ve got their knives out for it good and proper.
It’s a weird film to have your knives out for though. A film that’s partly funded by the internet community. Low budget, silly. I can understand the knives for John Carter, but it seems, production-wise, Iron Sky is everything Carter is not.
It’s especially strange considering the Guardians recent ad campaign.
I don’t know what they’re playing at. I smell a studio bung, actually.
Iron Sky is the sort of thing they should be all over, because of the way it was marketed and funded. Instead, they’re sneering at it, and have written it off as being garbage.
Admittedly, if it were a serious art film about the problems of being a one-legged dyke in Iran who’s possibly been abused as a child (all in Farsi, natch) that had been marketed this way they’d have been all over it like a rash.
Actually, that isn’t true. I do know exactly why the knives are out.
The subject matter and ethos of it is so unashamaedly goofy (like Xi says) that it actively offends their pretensions. It’s clearly meant to be nothing more than a glorified fun B-movie, which in GuardianistaLand is a cardinal sin. Everything should be po-faced and earnest. Don’t forget this is the paper that did the epic “Black Dynamite is a racist film” argument, not to mention bed-spotting in TinSquared.
And I’m not joking about that racism one:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/aug/16/blaxploitation-spoof-black-dynamite
Good gravy. What a complete and utter crock of shit.
Astonishing, isn’t it. They’ve form for this and I reckon Iron Sky is getting the same treatment.
This guy who reviewed Black Dynamite’s a fuckwit.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2012/mar/19/we-bought-a-zoo-animals
How the fuck has the Guardian allowed someone who is obviously a retard to post reviews?
It’s a good question.
And this: ” the inmates’”
Is an astonishingly stupid way of writing about zoo animals.
And this must be the dumbest sentence in a review that I’ve ever seen:
Er? What?
Mind you. Have a look at his face. Looks like he got slapped with a wet fish.
He’s a cunt. I think he also did the “epic” The Wire is misogynist article.
Fucking cunts:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/feb/13/berlin-2012-iron-sky-review
Smug, patronising, obnoxious fucking cunt.
This makes me want to watch it more. The bastard has just sneered at it.
hmmm… I actually don’t find that review that patronising.
I read it in context with the other piece the guy wrote about “fan involvement”. Which was just 1000 words of sneering.
He actually said that it’s the same premise as Transformers 3, which is staggeringly wrong. It’s MOON NAZI’S.
The thing I found smug is this bit:
Firstly, almost all film making is collaborative, and now much hollywood stuff is done by committee now? Secondly, “proper comedy is a rare gift”? You can’t define comedy like that. Thirdly, “Fancy, fanboy titillating”. Oh get to fuck.
By the standards of The Guardian dealing with a film like this, it’s not too bad.
This comment beneath the article actually nails it for me:
Exactly.
Hahahahahahaha!
Release date: 20th April 2012.
You know what’s interesting about that? Hitler’s Birthday.
Sure. But are those two mutually exclusive? If the purpose of a film is to entertain, and that film achieves it, doesn’t that make it “good”. If a film achieves it’s goal, then it should be deemed “good”.
I took it to mean “good” as in what the Guardian would consider to be quality. Although they did do an article on schlock a while ago that was actually quite well conceived and covered a lot of gems.
I dismissed that comment because it was fundamentally flawed. A comedic film that’s community generated is no different to a comedic film that is produced by committee from Hollywood. Comedy is difficult no matter how it’s produced. The barren wasteland of Hollywood “comedies” over the last decade is proof of that.
Plus, as far as I understand it, the “community” who helped fund the film weren’t involved in writing the script, shooting the film, or delivering the lines. They merely helped those things happen by giving a few quid to the production.
Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s factually inaccurate, and just lazy reviewing.
I suspect it will need a good atmosphere as well, and if he saw it in a room full of uptight journos then it’ll go down badly. I also suspect the Guardian are fundamentally not equipped to deal with a film like Iron Sky.
On a different note, Gingertown is now up to 6 reviews of Hunger Games. Fatass doesn’t love it though. Which is surprising.
Obviously wasn’t given enough food as pay off.
6 is fucking ridiculous. 1 is enough. 2 if you’ve got a different opinion to voice.
I’m going to go see it after work.
One of the best things about the release of Hunger Games is… it’s not in 3-Fucking-D. So I can go to any of the screenings, instead of only 15% of them.
Thinking about seeing it at the Weekend. Nothing out there at the moment though.
Harold needs coproducer credit on it to Really love a movie…..stop gagging Jarv. Seriously Harolds opinion is based on how many donuts Yoko shotgunned into his carcass the nite before. You know its true.
Why can’t he just do the world a favour and lapse into a diabetic coma?
Jarv, something to look forward to.
What’s that referring to?
Hangover.
Oh fuck.
Let it die. Honestly, were it not for Sucker Punch, Hangover 2 is the worst film of last year.
It made $600m. I’m surprised WB are letting him say it’s the last one.
Apparently the Resident Evil series “needs more action”. Like fuck it does,if RE5 was anything to judge from.
http://uk.games.ign.com/articles/122/1221455p1.html
That’s the game series btw. I don’t recall any film adaptations as of yet. They really should. They’d make great survival horror films.
You’d think someone would. It’s begging for it.
Also, of the RE Games, 3 and Code Veronica were very action heavy as well. I don’t want every game to be a FPS.
He mentions that in the article. That he intends the numbered series to stay closer to the series roots (although making them more actiony like RE5), while using the Resident Evil name for other types of games. Like the one on the Wii witch is purely a “rail” shooter.
I thought RE4 managed to balance the two really well. A fair bit of action, but also the more deliberate pacing of the earlier games. RE5 was too fast paced and action oriented, which is why it wasn’t that good.
Of the ones I’ve played Code Veronica was the same. The Balance was way off, and some of the weaponry deliberately added to this. The Uzis in particular were a misstep, as was the explosive crossbow ammo.
RE3 had it about right, with basically Nemesis himself providing the tension.
I stopped after CV, because that’s the story complete.
Yeah I know, I was just musing on the lack of diversity. Talking about which I need to go and buy that FF 13-2. It’ll make me severely unpopular with the missus for a few weeks, but I’m fast approaching “obscenely good” territory in Batman.
I’ve managed to 3 medal all the fighting challenges now, all bar 2 of the predator ones and I’ve just started on the campaigns with Batman. I’m shite with Catwoman though, because I find it difficult to track what she’s doing and to use her weapons.
RE6 looks far too action based from the looks of this trailer.
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/news/a365866/resident-evil-6-characters-and-setting-revealed.html
My Arkham City is still in the plastic.
It’s much better than Asylum. The fighting is complicated still, but it’s different. However, the plot blows AA away. The voice work is stupendous, and a lot of the script is bang on. There’s still a fair amount of fighting, but mostly it can be (and should be) avoided, as the thugs are pretty much all armed. There are a few sequences early on where you “have” to fight, but for the most part you can truck around and just take them out with virtual impunity.
Where it goes wrong is that there are too many “unhittable” foes that you have to do something to first- the cunts with the car doors are irritating, but the really annoying bastards are the ones with armor. You don’t see too many of them at the start, but you get more of them in the challenges. Which pissed me the fuck off, actually.
Still, though, even a lot of boss fights rely on avoiding direct confrontation more than anything else- Freeze you fight by turning on the electromagnets and shit, 2 face you sneak up on, Penguin you have to ambush to disarm him, Ras al Ghul is a weird dream sequence thing (not unlike the Scarecrow).
The only direct fights are Solomon Grundy and Clayface that I can think of. Although I’m probably missing some.
New Silent Hill game’s out next week.
http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2012/03/23/downpourreview/1
Don’t think I’ve played a SH games since 2.
SH?
Christ. That’s completely played out, I reckon.
Of the games: 1 is a classic, 2 is excellent, 3 is the best of the series (genuinely fucking brilliant, and the best villains). 4 is a gigantic mess but creepy on more than one occasion, and I stopped playing because 4 was flagrantly NOT a SH game, just they decided to make it into one to cash in.
That Final Fantasy game is 17.99 at play if you want it.
It is payday today after all.
And I’m off work soon, but we can’t go to Spain because the Mrs’ boss is a dick.
How long are you off for?
I’d love a bit of a break myself. This weekend and weeknights next week I’m organising and packing. Next weekend I’m moving. The easter weekend i’m finalising my current place and handing in the keys. So the next three weeks are fucked. I might take a long weekend after that or something. Just to sit around and veg.
12 Days.
12 days and nowhere to go. Poor chap. You need a new game.
I hope this is a joke:
Fucking Wikipedia.
Hey everyone! Are you a fan of Harry Potter? Want all the films on bluray? Well, don’t get the plain old £30 box set, WB are releasing a new set! At just a shade over 6 times the price! Pretty amazing stuff!
That reminds me. HP and the Camping Trip of Doom part 2 was a huge BLAH!
Miles better than the first film, it still had serious problems, not least of which is that it felt rushed in some parts and overly leisurely in others. I think this is because the book jammed almost all the action into the last third. Warwick played 2 roles, which is awesome, natch.
I’d give it a meh, and thank fuck it’s all over. There was also a weird suggestion that Potter’s mother had the same Patronus as Snape (which they pulled right out of their arse).
Still, Radcliffe was the best he’s been in the whole series, and while they botched the Battle of Hogwarts (Mrs. Weasely v Bellatrix was completely fucked up) it was about as good as could probably have been expected.
I thought it was good. I haven’t read the book so I can’t compare. But the fact that something finally happened was a blessed relief and overall it was a satisfying conclusion. 3 is the best film by a long stretch though.
That’s the problem. I’ve read the book, and honestly, they fucking botched it badly. Bellatrix is sidelined in the film, and she kills at least one of the Weasleys that you don’t see. So, when Mrs. Weasley comes up against Bellatrix it’s really satisfying in a way the film isn’t.
Jarv, they didn’t pull that patronus bit out of their butt, it’s in the book…and it’s not that Harry’s mom had Snape’s patronus…
spoiler warning:
it’s pointed out elsewhere in the books that the patronus often has specific emotional value to the wizard using it. It’s how Harry figures out ultimately that Lupin and Tonks are together, he mistakenly thinks her canine patronus is Sirius, but it’s actually Remus.
What is implied by Snapes patronus is that he adopted it after Lily’s death, most likely as either a purposeful or indirect way of mourning and reminder. Either way, definitely a part of the books.
Ah. I’m clearly misremembering it. But now you’ve said it, doesn’t Dumbledore ask Snape?
I seem to remember thinking it was just a bit creepy and stalkerish.
spoilers again for Harry Potter:
As in the movie, Dumbledore asks him, or infers that he clearly does care for the boy….
and Snape’s response is to summon the patronus… and when Dumbledore asks him ‘Lily”‘ he says ‘always’. There are a few other tidbits in the book, most suggesting that Snape is saddened by the Lily he sees in Harry, and bothered by the James there, but ultimately is doing everything to protect him.
I never quite cared for how Rowlings lets us learn his nature after his death. I felt like Harry confronting Snape and learning would have required something on Harry’s part, some acknowledgment of misreading him…a gazillion times. But, instead, that always felt like a copout.
The problem is that she made Harry into a petulant dick for the better part of three (huge) books.
There was no way at all that he could possibly admit he was wrong.
and she denies him the opportunity, which should have happened–whether he’s ready or not.
Having him name his kid Severus is too little too late, and still doesn’t let us see how all that info impacted Harry himself.
That was creepy and gross, actually. Mind you so was “Albus”. Particularly considering what a massive, massive cock Dumbledore is.
SPOILERS It doesn’t take a genius to see that Snape wasn’t evil. I’m an idiot and I never once believed that he was Voldemorts lackey. I was always waiting for the “ta-da!” reveal.
Yes, but this is the problem with the books. They don’t even entertain the fact that he isn’t evil until the end. It’s bollocks- and it’s book 6 that really does the damage, but that’s a terrible book.
I mean, it seems like any adventurer/detective worth their salt could have sussed that Snape was not a villain had they done just an eensy bit of better research.
BTW, I acquired The Garbage Pail Kids movie. Were you wanting to do it? What series were you doing it for?
For the Vault. I’ve never seen it, and can’t believe it’s as bad as it is made out to be. Talking about which, you up for a few beers in the next few weeks? Easter, maybe?
It’s definitely not as bad as it’s made out to be.
It’s worse.
I’ll have to see about easter. I’ve got house stuff I need to do as the Easter monday is the final day of our tenancy so I have to make sure everythings sorted. I’ll let you know a bit closer to that weekend.
I’m off from the 4th April until 16th, so any time round then.
Righty-o.
Oh goody.
Looking forward to it. Where did you get it?
File host. Listed on a forum I use.
Not rapidshare?
No. Uploading I think. Its the only copy I could find.
I’ll have a check. I bet it’s on Stagevu.
Having checked, it’s still there, just whether it is still actually up on the site. Although the google did throw out about another 9 places.
Google may have old links.
No, I can get to the actual page.
The actual links page? Where the file is hosted? Or the webpage listing the links.
Just I struggled to find active links. Plenty that had inactive links.
The actual pages themselves. I daren’t download here or I’d have a go.
If you go to stagevu at the moment, you can’t search anything, but google still will find the specific url. However, whether the file is there to download is entirely different.
Garbage Pail Kids. That honestly might be the worst children’s movie ever made. If there’s worse, I dont wnat to see it.
Double feature it with Super Mario Bros.
No, Garbage Pail Kids is not only one of the worst children’s movies, it’s one of the worst movies ever made. And it’s not like a Troll 2 where it’s good bad, it’s just plain bad
There was a good review of it on AICN the other week.
hunger games review up: http://popcultureninja.com/2012/03/23/6957/
Off to see Hunger Games. Have a good one.
Try to not get arrested! Though I’m not sure what the age of consent is in the UK? It’s probably like 12 so you should be fine.
16.
It’s the UK, not the Southern states in America (Age of Consent in Georgia is 14).
Heheheh glad to see you’ve studied this.
It’s in that book in my crapper. Along with the american code to arm nuclear weapons up to the 90’s.
100 things you should know.
I’m sure we’ve had this conversation before.
creepy.
Why?
That’s just one fact of many in it. For example, I also know that Bayer used to sell Heroin before aspirin.
HG was… Solid. I’m trying to decide if it’s better or worse for having read the book. I’ll let it stew.
hi all, thought i would pop in and say hello
Hello Chipps good to see you raised up.
Hey it’s Chipps! how goes it Sirrah? how is life down there?
prometheus – surely it has to be more about the predators than the aliens within that universe. I’ve seen two trailers and at the start ‘acheologists’ discover directions back to some planet left behind years ago (somehow previously undiscovered). the aliens don’t seem capeable of this, only the predators. then we get there and presumably find alien pods left behind by the predators (or the alien home planet i guess).
From what I know about it, which isn’t a lot, it’s about the creation of the Xenomorphs.
I’m deeply concerned about this, to be honest. I’ll watch it, but it could be either great or awful. I can’t see it being meh.
it won’t be the Predators. I think it’s been clearly stated that it’s an alien race of sentient turtles and their lone sentient rat who engineer those spacecraft and the xenomorphs and their space jockey suits burn up when they fall through a time hole and end up in the sewers of New York. But just chill, you will like these changes.
supernatural: I agree with bartleby in that the first five seasons of supernatural had a great arc (though i though it did flounder with a whole season with dean trying to escape hell/his deal, didn’t really work) the final ep of season five is one of the best episodes of tv ever, it was shit hot. six really did flounder again. but i’m really getting in to 7. it has had some great episodes. it is more of a return to the early days where there is an over riding quest, while still having good independent eposides regularly, as a opposed to a more lost style, expand the story every week. they can now digress back to what it was, americana road trip horror. and they have had some good independent episodes. and the levitans arn’t that bad as villians. maybe dick roman (i just want him to say I’M RICHARD ROMA!!!) is just a shallow donald trump, but the actor makes it work. one thing i think is interesting is that these guys are deep south redneck style vigelanties/ruby ridgers. but the audience and the writers seem to be largly northern liberals (or what an american would call liberal to not confuse things by using it in its actual context). The jokes they make, the way the story turns. I think there is sometimes a disconect between what these guys would support politically and what they do support. these are second amendment guys. but the people writing the show are obamacare people.
I didn’t like 6 at all, so in a lot of respects 7 is better. 6 had two of the worst episodes full stop in it.
The problem they have, though, is that after you defeat Satan, where else can you go?
true, and most depressingly kripke planned for that to be the end of the story and has in fact left the show. six went no where. seven has been quite good. like i said, the overaching story has taken a backseat and it is has gone back to ‘the monster of the week’
Last week’s episode was better…right until the end, where they have short-termed nullified the positive effect of what happened. I’ve got some guesses though as to where they are going with thast and I worry it’s a cop-out answer to the question you just asked Jarv.
can i post to this? it seems not.
Hey Chipps! For some reason your posts went into spam, hopefully this corrects it for you! Been awhile man. Hope life is going great, hope the kiddo is filling your life with happiness!
Hi Chipps. How’s the chiplet?
Hey chipps.
hey chipps! how’s it going? sorry I missed your return.
I’m enjoying Supernatural still, but I think these past two seasons don’t have the structure of the previous ones. There are still bang-up stand alones, although there were more last season.
Part of my complaint comes down to the fact I really enjoyed that dynamic of seasons 4 and 5, which is summed up well by Castiel in last season’s ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ (incidentally, one of the show’s best eps, despite the subpar season): And then an old drunk, two brothers and a fallen angel stopped the world from ending and changed everything forever.’
I could have watched the old drunk, the two brothers and the fallen angel fighting evil for seasons, but they obviously wasn’t quite meant to be.
Watched loads over the past couple of weeks.
The Iron Lady. Great central performance, but more like a greatest hits than a proper narrative. Shame 1.5/4
The Lincoln Lawyer. McConnaghy and law are a good fit. A surprisingly taught thriller. Ryan Phillipe is a good sleeze ball, and its actually a great ensemble piece. Loads of good character actors at work. Marisa Tomie and William H Macy were excellent. 3/4
Moneyball. What a strange, but enjoyable little film. Nothing happens, yet it stays with you afterwards. A pretty amazing achievement what he did. And shock of shocks, it made Jonah Hill likable. After this and 21 Jump Street, I guess he is NOT the new Seth Rogan. 2.5/4
21 Jump Street. Wow, a lot of fun. Some of the jokes fall flat, but they throw so many out there that enough stick to make it a giggle. And quite silly at times too. The car chase, with the various petrol tankers not blowing up when expected, it witty and inventive. Dave Franco and Rob Riggle are great supporting fun. 2.5/4
Game Change. The Sarah Palin tv movie. Pretty good really. A great cast, with Woody Harelson a favourite. Julianne Moore is like Steep she got so far into character. A bit of Sorkin-lite. 2/4
And re-watced The Truman Show. Bloody hell, that is a good film! I think when I first watched it, I was still expecting Jim Carey to just be a rubber faced comedian, which after The Mask, Ace Ventura, and Liar Liar, is what we all though he was. But re-watching it, and knowing what a good serious actor he can be, the film packed a more powerful punch. There was a bit of silly faces with the “Good morning, and in case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!”, but otherwise it is a brilliantly directed film, and a very though provoking one as well. A really very good film! 3.5/4
Will not ever be watching The Iron Lady, and not interested in Moneyball.
However, The Truman Show is fucking stupendous, and I did quite enjoy The Lincoln Lawyer.
TLL and Moneyball are good. Truman as brilliant. Doubt I’ll ever see Game Change, because I couldn’t give two shits about Palin. The only chance of me watching it is if I went on some self-flagellating 100% Woody mission. I’ll see 21 Jump St at some stage. Most likely on video. Fuck all interest in The Iron Lady, and I’m a big fan of Streep. Marg just isn’t interesting subject matter for me.
Caught some of Death proof, again that is a shite movie. Cokey sucks.
Truly dreadful. Diabolically fucking awful, actually. Cokey doth indeed suck.
Cokey should be banned from directing.
Cricket going OK. England bowling nicely. If we can get Jayawardane out then it’s on. Although I am worried about our inability to bat in the Subcontinent.
Going nicely now. Jayawardane is a hell of a batsman at home.
Wooooo!
Only 3 to go. Depends entirely on England’s shitty batting this. A pretty good bowling performance, should not be totally undermined by rotten batting.
Shite. Anderson just dropped Jayawardane, then got smashed for 6 next ball.
Swann’s bowling badly again. I almost think he may be worth dropping for Bresnan if England are going to play both Patel and Panesar.
Jesus Christ. Monty’s just dropped Jayawardene twice.
Weekend’s viewing.
Naff all. Frankly. Aside from The Children, which I’ll write up today. Not sure how I feel about it, it’s such a grotesque premise, and brilliantly handled for the most part, but it reminded me of a Spanish film from the 70’s that is truly awesome. Name completely forgotten, I think it’s “Who can kill a child”.
And having just checked, the premise is almost identical- the only difference is that it’s a virus rather than demonic possession in The Children.
This is a fecking weird England line up though-
Strauss, Cook, Trott, KP, Bell, Prior, Samit Patel, Broad, Swann, Anderson, Monty.
Prior going in at 6. I’m not sure I like it, because I don’t think there’s enough variety in the pace bowling and Samit is basically a batsman that can bowl a bit, so why is he going in after Prior? Although he is a fat lad, which does make me laugh.
In a sane world, Bell should be on a warning about his place. He’s made fuck all since the Summer, in all formats.
who can kill a child? is a crazy movie, maybe crazier than The Children.
With Children, i was enjoying it, but think it just went overboard in the last third or so.
Up until then, it’s a finely coiled spring of paranoia. The creepiest bits are just simple stuff initially, like the kids all freaking out at the birthday party, or standing there in the snow looking on ominously. Sled scene and tent scenes were doozies though.
What got to me in it, was when the kids start killing the adults, and they’re obviously doing it, the parents are STILL trying to blame the teenager.
Neither of those movies interest me.
I’ve noticed something about Brit horrr–and take no offense here–but they make their adult characters even dumber than the American variants, although no one takes the cake for ignorant horror characters like Scotland. Oh my.
Jarv, I saw an interesting UK horror I missed called ‘Salvage’. Heard of it? From 2009, I think.
Depends on the film, to be honest, as it does with American Horror. Kill List, for example, wasn’t full of idiots. However at the other end of the Spectrum the Wicker Man relies on Woodward being a complete cretin or Summerisle’s plan can’t ever work.
I don’t think that accusation can be upheld if directed at any nationality. For them to work, it is a requirement that the characters in most horror films are dumb. Otherwise they will get away, make better decisions, etc. If the characters are smart you’d have a large number of very short, not very horrific horror movies.
As opposed to a large number of normal length, not very horrific horror films, as is the current scenario.
unfortunately, Kill List is the exception rather than the rule. Which is why it’s so darn good.
Jarv, have you seen Down Terrace? Get it for the Britain series! It’s Kil List guy’s first movie.
On its way. It’s meant to be really good as well.
It’s very interesting. It’s not the barn-stormer that Kill List was, but it’s worth seeing. I’m very interested to see what you think.
Will try to put up a salvage review this week. Finally going back to that Australian series too, with The Hunter.
I’m off work for 10 days from A week on Thursday, so am catching up a lot then (including TKD’s Long awaited Massacre at Central High review)
This is true, but the stupidity of your characters can vary and it usually has to do with who is making the movie. There are various reasons to make your characters stupid, some just to allow the movie to exist–usually American horror–while British horror films often seem to revel a bit in the characters being morons (which I kind of appreciate) and for the most part, unless it’s something like Scream, American films aren’t going to do that.
I may be off with Scottish horror, as about 80% of what I’ve seen is just so bad that the characters are obviously stupid because whoever wrote it couldnt think of a better way to do it anyhow.
No, it’s true. I’ve seen an awful lot of British Horror recently that’s either implausible or relies on the characters being absolute fucking submorons. A prime example was Daddy’s Girl, which could only work if the main character was so stupid he’d lose a battle of wits with a rock.
While very few Horror movies have intelligent characters (particularly slashers), there are some that just faceplant themselves all the time.
I don’t think it’s nation specific though.
Weekend viewing…
All of my possessions lying all over the place. Packing is just phase one of the nightmare of moving. BAH.
The Hunger Games – Solid.
Dial M for Murder – Alright.
Also watched new Fringe and had nearly all of White Collar season 3 playing in the background while packing.
That is all.
Played a bit of Assassins Creed.
Not sure about it, to be honest. I really dislike the fighting, because all you do is hold down R and wait for one to attack you, you then press Square at the right moment and gut him. Not convinced it works at all.
It looks amazing, and a lot of the sneak attack stuff is fun. I’m also not overly chuffed with all the 21st Century stuff- why not just do it as a historical epic? Then I saw it was Ubisoft, who did the Kain games (Soul Reaver was a cracking game), and they like to leave you on a cliff hanger.
Assassins Creed is hit and miss. A lot of it is brilliant. But it does get repetitive. They apparently fix that aspect a lot in the later games (so says my colleague who’s played them all. I’ve only played the first one.). As for the modern day stuff, I believe that is so that they can tell an overall, multi-game spanding story. The ending of first game is fairly open, set in the modern day. You complete the historical missions (the main game) and then it officially ends in the modern day bookend.
Yeah, I know.
The missions are all quite repetitive (I seem to have accidentally done them in the wrong order- I did Akra before Jerusalem (why pretend it’s open when it clearly isn’t)- but it doesn’t seem to have made any difference). They do all seem to be “Climb up to viewpoint, hop down, perform one of 6 proscribed tasks, climb up to next viewpoint, hop down, perform one of 5 tasks” and so forth.
A lot of it is stunning. The cut scenes are strange as well, because you can’t skip them, but can move… I reckon this would severely limit replay value, but meh to that.
The first game has absolutely zero replay value. I’ll never play it again anyway.
That’s what I thought when playing yesterday.
Replay value is the hardest thing to get right. I’m not sure many games have it.
I actually don’t really replay any story based games. The only one I have done is RE4, because I was poor and couldn’t afford a new game. That was really good though, so I didn’t mind.
Of the games I own:
I’ve replayed Dead Space, and Dead Space 2, but that’s because there’s a LOAD of missable stuff in them, and I got addicted to trying to get every trophy. DS2 also has a multiplayer, which is shit, admittedly.
GTA4- nope. Tried once. Bored in 2 minutes.
FF13- Yes, funnily enough. But it needs a long, long time between replays. The cut scenes in it are so good though, and I was only really replaying it for the attack on Cocoon which is dynamite.
Arkham Asylum. Yes, but only the challenges.
Arkham City. Nope. Started the campaign challenges, and got a bit bored. Will maybe come back to them.
Bioshock 2: Yes to multiplayer, no to story. I can’t see why you would replay the story to this. At all. I suppose if you kill the little sisters the game is drastically altered, but I can’t bring myself to do that. I know it’s not real, but I tried it once and it made me feel really uneasy.
Red Dead Redemption, yes to multiplayer, no to actual game. The travelling around is just too fucking boring.
Lost Planet 2- yes. Of all the games I own, this is the one with the most replay value. Firstly, you don’t have to replay the whole game. You can just pick which episode and chapter you want to play, so for a quick thrash you can replay some of the best missions and never go anywhere near things like the fucking train or Neos again. Plus the multiplayer is great in it. Probably the most satisfying multiplayer I’ve got. Well, Bioshock might be, actually. However, the difference with LP is that if you suck you can capture the flags etc instead, whereas in Bioshock if you suck then you’re just a bullet magnet. This, incidentally, is my biggest complaint with Bioshock. It’s too unfair when you’re at a low level- you just get fucking pwnd and there’s nothing you can do about it aside from hide and set traps. I’m level 40, and if I see someone less than level 10, then they’re fucked. I’ll just ruthlessly wipe them out over and over again, and there’s naff all they can do to stop me.
The problem I have is that I have a number of games that are unfinished, or worse yet, unstarted! So spending 10+ hours replaying a game isn’t going to happen.
I will, however, replay Heavy Rain at some stage. Do a few things differently.
Yeah, I don’t do that. So I tend to have a lot of time between getting a new game. This means that they tend to get played more, or I come back to them more often. However, even then, I’ll never play the story bit of RDR, GTA4 again. I do still come back to Lost Planet 2, and will no doubt come back to Bioshock 2, but only the multiplayer in both.
I’ll come back to both DS and DS2, but I’m not feeling a return to FF13 for at least a year, and hopefully by that stage they’ll have fixed every-fucking-thing that’s wrong with 14 and released it. It’s been lodged for over a year now.
I get games when they’re inexplicably cheap. Like Arkham City for £17. So they tend to sit there waiting until I finish up another game. Plus I have Modern Warfare, NBA and Fifa that I play every now and then. So story based games get played for a bit, then put to one side and come back to after a period of time. Like Dead Space. Played that in three bursts over a few months.
Me too. I find what I want, then wait until it costs what I want.
But I’ve no interest in sports games particularly. I used to, but I just got fucking bored. It was once of the ISS ones where I could win the world cup using Cuba that put me off.
Completely forgot God of War off that list. Very little replay value there as well.
I only play the career modes of sports games. I like that aspect of starting with a crappy player or team and progressing through the ranks. Makes it interesting.
If you play ISS on easy mode you could win the WC with NZ! Or even more unlikely, England!
No, I did it on whatever is the hardest.
I also managed to take Sheffield Wednesday to winning the Champions League on hard in Fifa. The problem is that there are set “ways” to score, and it’s about engineering them, so in Fifa, all I did was buy to lightening fast wings as soon as possible (poached from somewhere in Liga 2), and a cheeky 1-2 and they were in acres of space. Run it into the box, cut it back and BANG. Didn’t matter how shit the forwards were, they literally couldn’t miss. Admittedly, I started out in a right shitty league, and by the end of it, I’d be promoted with untold games to spare, so I’d be spending the training budget on the rest of the players. Second season in the league above, I had an average side, but a bit of judicious buying and they were starting to turn out OK.
I also liked the career thing. Prefer the Master League in ISS to the Fifa one though.
And England are always insanely overrated in those games.
Also, forgot to say, this will have been about 5 years ago.
The other thing is that you end up with formations that bear no resemblance to reality in football games.
Any team that went out with the one I used to use in ISS would be absolutely slaughtered.
It’s not as simple as all that now. I used to pretty much do what you did. Run down the wing, cross it and header. Would work enough times in a game to outscore the computer. But nowadays it’s a little harder. Not so much harder that you can’t win, but it’s not so one dimensional as it used to be. Plus, there are dramatic differences between good and bad teams. So much so that you have to totally alter your strategy when you play a team like Chelsea if you’re Plymoth Argyle (who I chose to take through the ranks from the lowest league).
I’d never head it, because it used to fuck me off something fierce how often they’d balls that up. Along the ground was the way forward.
It really had to evolve, because given that Fifa has a new version every year it was tedious basically playing and scoring the same way in every game.
The other thing was how cretinous the AI was in every one of them. Half the problems I always had, and why I ended up with fucking absurd formations, was that you’d set it up with, say, 4-4-2 and then find the strikers isolated because the midfield never pushed up, regardless of how “attacking” you set them up to be.
I only get them about every third year. I do get my money’s worth out of them. And they don’t evolve enough year to year. They tend to introduce something different (this year it was a different defensive control system) that doesn’t really work properly, and it either gets fixed in the next version or dumped.
Plus, a lot of the focus is online gameplay, which I don’t really have a lot of interest in for sports games. Some of that happens to be because the few times I’ve played online I’ve had my ass handed to me. Some people are ridiculously good at Fifa. And those are the ones that tend to play online.
Same is true of almost all on-line multiplayers, though.
Although I wouldn’t play on-line either unless it was against someone I knew. Getting tonked 10-0 would piss me off.
I used to play Madden too. Around Madden 07 or 08 it started to get far too complicated. You had to do too many off-field things, and in search of “realism” the gameplay became too laborious. I think I had about the 2004 or 2005 version which was a really good balance of fun gameplay and team management.
I used to play NHL a lot.
Took Atlanta or someone shite through to Stanley Cup wins. That was a good game.
I never got into hockey games much. I played one where I could get into a fist fight, but apart from that one I never really enjoyed playing them.
I used to turn that off. The fighting was never any good and just became an annoying break in the game.
Did you ever play any of the management games?
Management games? Like the football manager ones? I tried a few years ago, but it was too much. Training, sponsors, blah blah. Too much crapola. Plus you don’t actually get to play the games, so it didn’t work for me.
Just wondering. I tried one once and it bored the shite out of me. Yet loads of people seem to love them.
Yeah, a mate of mine said he was addicted to one of them. But I played it for about an hour or so and gave up. I played a cricket one a bit more, because although you don’t play the games, you directly choose everything about who bowls, how they bowl, the field, batting line up and how they bat etc. It’s more like you’re playing the game. I played that a little bit years ago, but overall I don’t play them.
And having just checked, I won’t be buying that. It’s an MMO, and I’ve no interest in that at all.
I don’t know about that. I didn’t play it, but was around when the wife did. I reckon I’d struggle to get through that again, even though I know that each decision changes the story. The control system and button pressing would bug me, I think.
I didn’t mind the control system too much. It was a bit clunky, but overall it was okay. I liked a lot of aspects of the game so I will give it another go to see if there are differences.
It may have been Mrs. Jarv’s inability to follow the on-screen instructions for pressing the buttons in the right order and whatnot.
Christ almighty. Hunger Games opening weekend was $215 worldwide. Crazy.
BTW, a couple of the cuts made to the UK version are obvious. Particularly one, which the shot is obviously cut short.
They cut to get it in as a 12a didn’t they? As I recall. I may wait for the DVD, which they’ll let go as a 15.
They did. Not sure if they’ll uncut it across the board for dvd. The 12A will stand I think. They may release an “uncut” version or something.
But the cuts won’t make that much of a difference. It’s only 7 seconds as per the report. It’s just about as violent as it needs to be.
The issues I have with it all relate specifically to my having read the book. But overall it’s a solid film.
Yes, I felt similarly… most of my issues are not without how it was made, or that it was a poor adaptation, but that it sometimes veered from what i was expecting, not simply because I wanted to see something, but a few of the adjustments or cuts were strange to me.
Some people–see the guy who posted on my review at PCN–seem to think it’s a piece of garbage for deviating so much (although, I dont think the deviation was really that extreme).
Ooooooh!
Flame war.
I don’t know if I can be bothered writing a review. Because it would literally be “the difference between the book is…” or “in the book…” etc.
Because it’s overall a solid film. My only real complaint is Ross’ direction during the early District 12 scenes. His handheld was out of control! Like he’d instructed the DP to swirl the camera in a circular motion. But that was brief (because that whole beginning sequence was far too brief), so I got over it.
My problems lie in the fact that it felt abridged. Like each sequence, and by consequence, the characters, were trimmed down to their smallest possible size so that they could fit the film under the cinema friendly running time of 145 minutes. Each sequence felt a little shortchanged, and important things got cut out and other things were put in. I don’t think we needed all the Sutherland stuff. What we did need more of is Woody.
It’s a mostly faithful film, diversions aside, that fails to match the book because of the above reasons and the fact that the book all takes place inside the head of Katniss. The movie is unable to provide insight into the thoughts and motivations of the character.
We also didn’t need the District 11 stuff (which wasn’t in the book). That shit was just out of nowhere. And it’s strange, because the actual act of the salute was, in the book, the rebellious act. If they’d properly established that then the whole riot sequence that they invented wouldn’t be necessary.
This is why, though, that I can’t decide if it’s better to have read the book or not.
On one hand, if you haven’t read the book I think you’ll accept the story more, and it might work better for you.
But on the other, I was able to fill in a lot of blanks, flesh out characters and place more importance on things because I’d read the book.
yes, that’s all exactly right. It was hard to review it, as I think it works quite well if you haven’t read the book, but I can see your points.
Have you read the other books yet, because that provides some–not all–insight into why some things are truncated and others made longer.
You can always use more Woody. I was surprised by how much I liked Kravitz’s take on the stylist.
I haven’t read the other books yet. But I easily assumed that those scenes were establishing a broader scope. The first book you learn about none of that, apart from what’s implied.
there’s that yet, but it explains why some scenes lack certain details–the mutts for example–and why Snow is getting more screen time than his role in book one allows.
The mutts was an interesting one. I’m not sure how I felt about them in the book. Initially, I wasn’t entirely unhappy to see that had been changed. But after consideration, I think it took the film to show that an important element is missing by changing that. Like the “monster” that is the Capitol is never fully established. Sure, you have your game of death, that’s monstrous enough, but the final twist of the knife, the true barbarism, the act that officially established the Capitol as “the bad guys”, was that last act. By removing it, it’s been diluted.
that’s down to Collins’ fault, as you will learn when you read later books. If I were Ross I’d make the same cut because it’s ultimately rendered moot by later stuff.
The third book is meant to be so fucking awful that people resent reading the first two.
Fair enough. I’ll find out when I read them.
And this is where I think the movie does fail. It doesn’t establish the oppressive rule of the Capitol. By glossing over the early scenes in District 12, you’re led to believe life ain’t so tough for young Katniss. Sure, she lives in a rural looking town and is dressed like she’s in the 1930’s Depression, but overall life’s not so bad.
In the book, things are much harsher, and everything has to be bought and paid for, so to speak. It’s a daily struggle to put food on the table, people die of starvation, and Katniss has held the family together. In the film, her mother watches the games on a projector in her house for god sake. In a town where the populace only gets electricity for a few hours each day, why the hell would she be able to afford a projector? And why should she when they struggle for food? In the book, it’s projected onto the big screen in the town square. That’s the only place they can see it, and they’re expected to attend.
Details like that is where Ross has failed to establish the oppressive rule of the Capitol.
Anyway, that’s why I didn’t write the review. Because it would all be bitching about how “in the book…” blah blah.
It’s a similar problem to the Fincher Dragon Tats adaptation. It’s tries to hit every plot point from the source material and ends up shortchanging them all.
But, I stress it’s a solid film. Well worth seeing. I’m just picking at it because I can.
Jayawardene vs the Poms. Couldn’t get that guy out, so it seems.
Dropped him 4 fucking times.
Hola all,
This was a busy weekend so I only watched Green Lantern again -it was on cable.
When I saw it at the theater I thought it was a mightily flawed but still mildly entertaining flick.
But good gravy, seeing it on small screen reveals far more warts, and while i noticed the bad editing, i did not notice how truly horrendous it was until i saw it again. The scene where he somehow appears on oa just as sinestro is saying sacrifice earth, and then he begs to be allowed to save earth i mean that was simply all kinds of messed up editing because he was on earth and had the means already to save earth, so why was he suddenly on oa begging to be allowed to save earth when the previous scen had him talking to his girlfriend?
The retarded use of the race track and other juvenile constructs to display the power of GL was a total misfire.
This was a poorly conceived and even worse executed movie.
I did not see Hunger Games, but wow, did that come out of nowhere or did you more plugged in folks know about it?
I thought it was crap but inoffensive. However, the wife hated it. Really hated it.
It never knew what it wanted to be. I think they were so scared of the chractare that they tried to have him appeal to the young kids as well as to adults and they tied themselves up in knots. On top of that, truly horrendous direction and editing.
I only knew what it was a few weeks ago when I read the book. Up until then it was just a title to me.
GL was about the same at the cinema as at home. Average, but not as bad as a lot of people make out. I liked it more than Craptain America or X-Men: The Wonder Years. But that’s faint praise.
I saw where you said it was solid, i will not be able to see it until two or three weeks from now. From the box office, it should still be around then!
I’d say so. It’s worth a look.
I’d go Cap>GL>X:Nappyrash.
Mystery Men still beats all!
Mystery Men is indeed awesome.
Casanova Frankenstein FTW!!!
I will have to watch that again very soon
Keep an eye out for the Overlord Bay cameo.
Say what? Isn’t he busy destroying the world?
’twas back when he was a young Padwan, learning from the evil two headed sorcerer Bruckheimer/Murphy.
But yes, he has a cameo. He’s in the Fratboys Gang. He has a line too. I think it’s “Can we bring brewskies?”. Something like that.
Two heads, but more chins than the chinese phone book.
A scary beast.
You poms are ridiculous. The first sign of sun and the blokes get their moobs out. You cunts make me hate warm weather.
Mystery Men has it’s moments…I liked Bill Macy as Shovel man there…
Lucille, God gave me a gift. I shovel well. I shovel very well
– Some guy from work who took his daughter to see Hunger Games thought the book was much better.
– Thor > Green Lantern > Captain America > First Class
– Watched El Dorado again last night…still find it entertaining.
– Saw a bit of Sabateur, which was from ’42 about a guy wrongly accused and on the run. It’s amazing how many strangers believe the dude that he didn’t do it. A rather bad movie from what I saw.
– Nothing new here, but IT monkey fuckheads screwed up the network again over the weekend. It’s amazing how they can still get a paycheck from us. Don’t know how to do your own job? Get a consultant! Um, I can’t do that, why can they? Pah!
All comic book movies > Green Lantern.
And yes I’m saying IM2 is better than it. IM2 is just fucking boring it’s decently made unlike GL.
Er, hell no.
I’d watch Green Lanter before:
any of the Spider-man films
Blade Trinity
Hulk films
X movies (except Wolverine)
FF2
Man-Thing
You get the picture…
Yeah I’m not even talking about entertainment value, just all those other films are much better made and crafted than Green Lantern.
Also they have action set pieces. Did anything in GL really qualify as “action”?
I saw a non Berg related Tom Hanks starring WWII movie this weekend, it blew.
Saw Hunger Games. Solid fucking movie. Pretty much shits all over John Carter. And the use of the word pulp to describe a movie actually applies to Hunger Games unlike John Carter. It was more like a classic 70s SyFy film like Soylent Green than Twilight.
Last night I watched…
White Collar… The last ep of s3. Pretty good season finale. Sets it up for an interesting (and blessedly different) season four. It was a good choice, if they run with it, because the show was very samey. This could breathe new life into it.
Mad Men… New series. Good show.
Shermi’s holding up a dreadful team performance from the Poms. Say it isn’t so!
Being obscenely busy.
Flicked it on, expecting us to be about 150 for 3.
Saw that shambles. Cursed them.
They just can’t fucking bat in the subcontinent, and Bell ain’t no Jayawardene to prop up the innings.
Just looks like Swann’s trying to 2020 his way to victory.
Live by the sword…
Broad and Swann twatted 51 off 41 Balls. The top order really are a fucking disgrace and an embarrassment, and all need a booting.
Seems to me that Pietersen and Strauss are done. Cook is badly out of form. Trott is a cunt.
Couldn’t you have saved this form for next year?
And Bell’s gone too.
England realy are abject shit in the subcontinent. Can’t play against spin there at all. You don’t have a spinner, and are in England. Totally different kettle of fish.
Cook hit 94 about 3 innings ago, so he’s not too far out of form (although that worrying dismissal was far too similar to how he used to get out). Strauss is done, and won’t make it till the end of the year, KP hit a shit load in the one-dayers, but he looks done in the tests as well. Trott is a fucking enigma at the moment. Playing the same way, just getting out to increasingly weird dismissals.
This isn’t going to be like how we thought he Ashes would go last time- i.e. neither side able to take 20. This is going to be if either side can score 300.
In all honesty, I think it’ll be home wins for the back to back Ashes. I think we’ve improved enough on our own track, but on the English wickets the Aussies are a mostly unknown commodity. Particularly the new bowlers.
Yup.
You’ve batsmen that have never batted in England, and some venerable types coming to the end of their careers. Your bowlers have potential for the most part but seem to get an alarming amount of injuries. England is hard to bowl in, and bat in, if you’re not used to it.
We’re carrying the entire fucking top order at the moment. Disgusting. Most of them will be gone by the time the trip to Australia comes, and we’ll most likely lose there.
Disgustingly, today, England’s numbers 8-11 contributed 88 runs off 83 balls, and numbers 1-4 contributed 41 off 87. That’s fucking awful. I think we should open with Jimmy and Broad in the second innings. May as fucking well, really.
Broad and Swann ripped out the openers for fuck all. Only Sanga and Jayawardane at the crease now.
Fucking hell.
And Swann’s just got Jaya.
Right. Massive batting collapse, please, Lankans. Make a game of it.
You only need about 60 to be safe.
And now Sanga. 41-4. Jesus.
Pity about the batting, really.
This looks like it could be good! That cast should at least guarantee a watchable movie.
The Iceman is an upcoming drama thriller film based on the life of notorious mafia assassin Richard Kuklinski.
Starring Michael Shannon, Winona Ryder, Chris Evans, Ray Liotta, Jay Giannone, James Franco, David Schwimmer, Stephen Dorff.
The poster says Benicio Del Toro, but I can’t see him listed on the wiki or imdb page.
Different poster. No mention of Del Toro.
Ah, the part that Del Toro was originally set to play is now played by Ray Liotta. Guess he dropped out somewhere along the way.
Unrelated news.
Last night, watched half of Mother’s Day. Complete and utter shit, squanders a good cast and only ducks the Orangutan because of de Mornay.
Hellboy 2. Meh. Troll market is good, last third is dull. An OK film. Elf prince is a duff villain though, and I don’t care about Abe making fishy love to Elf Princess.
Further unrelated news- they’re dropping two words from the TMNT remake.
It’s now going to be Ninja Turtles. No Teenage and No Mutant.
Pointless.
Saw that. Rubbish. They’re pushing the “But we’ve got the okay from one of the creators”. Yes, because one of the creators of TMNT wouldn’t say yes to absolutely fucking anything to get a film made by Michael Bays production company.
Overlord Bay: “I want a scene where Michaelangelo humps the pizza boys moped.”
Eastman: “That’s a one with how many zero’s? Wow! Yep. Sure. Michaelangelo humps a scooter. Brilliant. I approve.”
“The story is about one boy’s love for his first pet, a turtle with martial arts skills. I want wank gags and at least one turtle has to urinate on a government agent. Oh, and that rat thing “Splinter”? Fuck him. Rats are shit. Let’s have a giant fucking Werewolf instead”.
To be honest, I don’t really care very much. It’s been a long time since I was into TMNT. 20 years at least. I love the first movie, and I’ll just stick to that. I’m not beholden to the property (like some people are with Trannyformers for example). Them changing stuff really doesn’t bother me. There’s no “raping my childhood” horseshit here.
I truly think that the only thing that would get me so angry as to call it “raping my childhood” was if they remade Back to the Future. But thankfully that will never happen.
I’ve used that a lot, but I generally don’t take it seriously.
Couldn’t give a fuck about the Turtles.
Just strikes me as a waste of time.
Franchise. Franchise. Franchise.
That’s all they look for now.
HB2 is okay. I liked it more as a visual experience than for the actual story and whatnot. Some creative creature designs etc, and the troll market is brilliant.
Yeah, it’s alright. The story isn’t great, but some of the visuals are superb- particularly at the Troll Market. There’s enough there to definitely put it in the top tier of funnybook adaptations.
I liked Hellboy 2.
I just watched this morning a Hellboy cartoon, Blood and Iron or some such title as that. It was voiced by Pearlman, Blair, etc. It was okay, as far as cartoon movies go.
Well, once you finish the marvel series, you can move on to the other funnybook movies:
Watchmen, The Spirit, Hellboy 1 & 2, All the Batman films, All the Superman films, Green Lantern…
Just got to get over Ghost Rider 2, Bayvengers and a few others.
Ugh…I’ll pass on that because I do not want to watch Watchmen again, nor actually sit through The Spirit…or Spawn…shit like that. And I only like Nolan’s films, I dislike Burton’s. That would also mean watching the Superman movies…fucking hell!
The genie is out of the bottle! You can do it, and think how grateful Mrs. Pillows will be at all that quality cinema.
The genie is getting his fat ass right back into that bottle.
You’ll be alright- loads of people love the Superman Movies, the Batman Movies are OK for the most part, and Spawn is a classic, according to Koutch.
None of that comes across as reassuring in the slightest.
I think my brain would melt.
Yes, but where’s the GHOST RIDER: HIGH VOLTAGE review?
Seriously, your fans need it!
You really have a boner for him to do that movie don’t you?
three words:
New. Years. Eve.
I also have landed my stupid self with the unenviable task of the next Resident Arsehole film. I can’t believe I’ve now done 4 of them- total chang rating for the series: 2. Both earned for extinction. The other three movies didn’t manage to get a pathetic half a chang between them.
NYE was your fault though. And you didn’t go to the cinema to see it. Total Bastard’s missed GR2 at the cinema, so you’ll have to wait for video. Just gives you longer to appreciate that he’s got Ghost Rider 2 to watch.
I’ve got Bourne Friggin’ Legacy. I hate, hate, hate the Bourne sequels.
No it wasn’t. It was your fault. Thundercrack! was my fault.
It’s quite clearly your fault. You never would have had to watch it if you didn’t make the bet.
Just got an email from Lords. Apparently they are trying to take money from a defunct card. Before I ring them up, are you still up for Saturday 19/05/2012 and/or Saturday 18/08/2012. I’m not sure what they’re trying to take money for. The Windies or the Saffas or both.
I’d given up on them, since the ballot closed nearly 2 months ago.
Damn it. I’ve been booked by stupid work for the 19th. Stupid 25th Anniversary thing. Shitabgs.
August, defs, though.
I’m fucking dreading Resident Evil 5. I can’t see any way it won’t be awful. I’m mildly looking forward to Silent Hill 2 if it ever gets a release.
It’s in 3D. Which is poop, but looking at the cast list….
They’re going for Silent Hill 3. Get in.
I remember this was another Harold spooge fave where he did a Harry hit job on a competing film, this time Journey to the Center of the Earth. Fraser’s movie outdid it by 25m here in states.
Both movies needed Giant Robots. I got nada outta Hb too honestly, save the fx.
There were Giant Robots (well, large ones) in Hellboy 2 Tom.
Oh I’m well aware of that Jarv, they basically make a couple 2 minute cameos though. Gold bug armies need to be allowed to be Gold Bug Armies, don’t ya think?
So it still stands–NEEDS (more) GIANT ROBOTS.
Some potential at the cinema this week. 21 Jump St is out, which is getting astonishingly positive reviews. Also Wrath and Pirates! An Adventure with Scientists comes out this week. And that Act of Valor movie is out. I didn’t even know it had come out. It looks to be getting the boot at the end of the week.
And Hunger Games of course, for those that haven’t seen it.
I quite want to go, I’m not fussed about John Mehter, Hunger Games etc.
Decisions, decisions. It’s meant to cunt it down this weekend as well.
I’m moving this weekend, so I can’t go. Accuweather says possible shower on saturday and cloudy on sunday. Hopefully that doesn’t mean pissing it down.
It’s annoying me. The iPhone weather thing reckons it’s going to be fairly shit on Thursday. Which is a bastard, because it’s end of term, and I could spend all afternoon in the beer garden happily. Except if the weather’s shite, then I won’t. I’ll go home and instead.
Accuweather says Thursday is 19 “sunny to partly cloudy”.
The BBC reckon 22 and sunny.
None of them know, do they?
Dart. Board. Sorted.
I was under the impression that they just threw a load of kids’ pictures of weather up in the air and then whichever one landed face up was the one they went for.
No I think it’s one of those pull string toys. A weather version of the “The cow says moo!” toy. Pull the string, the arrow rotates, stops at… Hours of fun for the special ed employees at the Met.
Or are they laying out a load of weather symbols on a lawn and the first one a butterfly lands on is the one they go for
On another note, I fucking despise local journalists. Lazy fucking cunts to a man or woman. I’m currently writing the editorial for a local paper, because it’s about us, and they’re too fucking lazy to do it.
Probably easier to list people you do like. A substantially shorter list.
You’ve never had to deal with the talentless scum. If they’re any good they’re either already freelance or at a major paper. The bottom feeding cocksuckers I have to contend with are loathsome fucks to a man/ woman.
Why am I doing this cunts job for her. Incidentally, seeing as I think this is a waste of time, why isn’t the woman in my office responsible for foisting this garbage on me, when I’ve got a million better things to do, not doing it.
Don’t bother seeing John Martyr. Wait for Lovefilm and a lazy saturday arvo or something. Give HG a go.
There’s plenty out that’s good, including–in my view–John Carter. Might as well wait on it, as though I suspect its going to disappear from cinemas quite soon, and an afternoon with beer is best for it anyway.
Act of Valor sucks all around. Jump Street is funny. Seeing Wrath in a day. Pirates! looks great but havent seen it.
Smaller movies out there: Jeff, who lives at home is quite good, avoid Silent House, and if you can see Sound of Noise, do.
Gave Tree of Life a go…and fuck it. I turned it off, just not my type of movie. I could not get into it for the life (Tree of) of me.
Ended up watching Planet of the Apes instead since it was on.
Yeah, it’s a toughie. I saw it at the cinema so that guaranteed me getting through it, but if I watched it at home and I wasn’t in the right mood I think I’d have turned it off too. Didn’t work for me, as has been previously discussed.
Even if I saw it at the theater…I don’t know…maybe I would have felt bad bailing after paying all that money, but I doubt it.
I’ve never walked out on a movie. Paying money to see a movie at the cinema just makes me tough it out. And that includes stopping myself from walking out of Hannibal after 20 minutes. Also almost walked out of Spawn, Scary Movie, and GI Jane. If I got through those I can get through Tree of Life.
I’ve walked out once. 2033.
I’ve also got my money back for Attack of the Clones, but I’m like Droid, no matter how shit, if I’ve paid for it, I’ll bitch it out.
I’ve only walked out a few times, but in every case it was a scenario where money ceased being an issue.
One was during The Cell, after someone pulled a fire alarm, herded us all out into the beautiful August day, and on the way back in, myself and the gf at the time thought ‘It’d be much better out here than in there with that movie’ so we got our money back per the pulled alarm, and left.
Out of remorse I finished it when it came to video, but it only confirmed that I had made the right decision.
I walked out of a screening of that Mike Crichton movie Timeline. I was dying during it, and it was a screening, so towards the last third of the film—didn’t help that they had the heat at turkey roasting temp in honor of Thanksgiving—I just took off.
Only time I walked out solely because of the sheer awfulness of the film in question, was a screening of I Spit On Your Grave redux, where I realized about ten minutes in that it had nothing to offer anyone ever.
hehehe This made me laugh.
were you doing another google search for ‘ass up in the air’?
Heh.
I’m really struggling with this The Children Review.
No surprisingly I haven’t seen it when I do that search. I saw it on a guys gravatar and googled ‘donkey cart funny’. It’s the first pic that came up.
you still havent seen dont be afraid of the dark, have you jarv? you should remedy it.
With Children I spent time talking about it in sections–it’s a different movie prior to the craziness beginning, and a less interesting one after it.
Published.
Not sure about it.
Sounds like epic, point missing shit. Weller’s turn as Robocop and Murphy was fucking stupendous.
Michael Bay says CHILL.
About what?
I always listen to what Dark Overlord Bay demands. Else he threatens me with another Bad Boys movie and I’m weirdly compelled to watch them.
I know, in my heart, that they suck balls something fierce, and I’m almost certain that the second one may be the most worthless film ever made, but, damn it, I’ve got a total blind spot with them.
Extremely weird thing this.
S.Meyer, talent Vacuum and abused-by-her-prophet slagboat responsible for Twilight wrote a book in 2008 called The Host, which is a phenomenally lame puppet masters riff (according to what I’ve just read anyway).
Anyhoo, in the hope that it’s this year’s Twilight, it’s been filmed. What’s odd, though, is that the director is Andrew NIccol, the man behind Gattaca and S1m0ne (amongst other things). This makes me think that it may not suck a giant blue dong.
This is why he’s gone for it:
It’s crap, unsurprisingly, but that sounds right up his alley.
OUtta here.
Laters.
The new yank tv version of Sherlock Holmes stars Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock and as Watson they’ve cast… Lucy Liu.
*rolls eyes*
Wank.
You may begin your bitching in three…two…one….
Er, what is that?
Looks like they’ve robbed the 5th Element.
Shitbags. That’s this year’s birthday film.
I thought Resident Evil was your b’day movie?
It looks like they’ve kept some of Verhoevens imagery, particularly in the Recall machine, and just made a gun-metal colour schemed 5th Element.
After all the dogshit remakes, like Fright Night and The Thing, I think I’ve lost all fire in my belly. I just don’t care that this is movie exists.
You’ve got Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter on the 2nd. Or Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2 if you don’t like Bourne.
Resident Arsehole is late September.
Silent HIll 2 is going to get the shaft, I think. Could be this year’s Outlander.
Comes out in October last time I looked. Hope it doesn’t get the shaft.
Fuck that Lincoln movie looks shit. I think I’d rather see Bourne. Or neither. I’m not going to have a birthday this year I’ve decided.
See, I’d take that Lincoln movie over Bourne every time.
Sure, but you love complete shit.
True.
It may be good. You never know- it at least stands a chance, not like Bourne.
I’m ecstatic to say that Lovefilm don’t have The Thing remake, so I’ll never watch it.
Birthday or Christmas? Which would you prefer?
Produced by Tim Burton. Directed by the Wanted knobhead. The trailer looks like shit. Nah, I have to say I’d rather see Bourne. And I have a lot of hate for Bourne.
has at least got Night Watch (not that I’m a fan) on his CV. Whereas Gilroy has this:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1135487/
I haven’t seen Night Watch, but all I’ve heard is that it’s shit.
Gilroy has that Clooney lawyer movie, which was pretty decent.
I don’t like it. However, it’s imaginative, and there’s quite a lot of it that looks great. It is at least interesting.
Day Watch, on the other hand, is dismal fucking shite.
Michael Clayton? Boooooooooriiiiiiiiiing.
I like Clayton. But I like those types of films, whereas you like films called Rugsucker Sex Perverts From Mars or whatever that shits called.
I’ve honestly blanked the whole thing out of my mind. Just a vague recollection of being bored for long periods.
I don’t just like garbage like Oversexed Rugsuckers From Mars. I do watch a lot of different stuff. Everyone doubted me about Tinker Tailor, and from the posters here, it has been ceded that I wasn’t talking crap about it.
Even Conti, as I recall, agreed with me.
I haven’t bothered seeing it. I still need to finish the BBC one.
You do watch a lot of different stuff, but you have to admit, it slants heavily towards garbage.
The thing about the garbage I watch is that I’m hardly afraid to call it garbage, and I do it in the hope of finding some awesome. Not like nowadays where I’ve become extremely picky about what I see in the cinema due to the ludicrous level of expensive garbage out there (Particularly in the summer months). I’ve been watching mostly British stuff recently, and the hit rate of good-bad is far, far higher. Mostly because if I’ve heard of it, then chances are it’s good.
Hey, I’m not criticising. The original point was that I prefer to watch movies like Clayton over schlock or whatever, while you’re probably the opposite, going off your viewing habits.
It’s a fair point.
I’ve also got a LOT pickier and the rate I turn schlock off now is quite frightening. I seem to be sitting through a stupid amount of crap slashers, though, because the wife likes them and won’t let me turn them off.
She’s totally averse to almost everything else though.
That is a strange weakness. Unless they’re decent, slashers really bore me. But I suppose my “schlock” is comedy. I’ve sat through so much shit in the hopes of finding a decent comedy. Even to the extent of watching comedies that I KNOW will be horrible, like Jack and Jill.
I don’t understand it either. They mostly bore me. She did at least hate Scream 4, which cheered me up.
See, I’d never sit through half the comedies you’ve sat through. I’d have binned them.
I watched Bad teacher and The Change Up on a recommendation from a mate (Who I clearly need to murder, because they’re both awful). The worst of the lot, though, is Hangover 2. I cannot exaggerate how bad it is. It’s so bad that I have to Orangutan of Doom it, but on a comparison between these 0’s, my grimace of pain vaguely passed precisely 2 times during The Change Up, and about the same with Bad Teacher, but not once in Hangover.
And Hangover is a fucking lazy and more obnoxious retread of the first one, which was hardly earth shattering.
Well, I have no interest in Hangover 2. Hated the first one.
I just find comedies less demanding. I can put them on and do other things, and it will still be as good or as bad. Same with movies like Michael Clayton. But for a slasher to be effective you really do need to sit and watch it. Because it should be creating tension and whatnot, and you need to concentrate on the film for that to happen. And since nearly all slashers don’t work for me, I get bored really quickly. I couldn’t give a fuck if a boy that was picked on in high school is murdering women one by one on valentines day, or who’s murdering people according to urban legends. Unless they create tension, and work as a horror.
I tend to agree with you about slashers. Incidentally, I’d remove the whodunnit element as it’s almost always the weakest bit nowadays. I blame Prom Night for it- they didn’t really do that before PN.
Leaving aside the twist in Psycho, almost all the “great” slashers in history pre Prom-Night you know damned well who did it from the off. After that, though, they all had to have a Scooby fucking doo reveal.
Was Friday the 13th before Prom Night? Didn’t that have the twist reveal?
But you’re right. When I think about the horror/slasher films that work for me, apart from Scream they don’t hide the killer/s. And to be honest, there aren’t many on my list.
Friday 13th was about the same time, and it was a sort of reveal, but it wasn’t a whodunnit. It was more in line with Psycho’s twist. Prom Night, on the other hand, had the killer as one of the major characters inextricably linked to the incident at the start of the film. Friday didn’t.
Neither is a good film, but they both came out at about the same time.
The classic slashers are Peeping Tom, Psycho and Halloween. I’d go no further than that. Although there is a tier of very good- great ones, which includes Scream.
I don’t include either Nightmare or TCM because I don’t consider them slashers.
You don’t consider Nightmare a slasher?
No.
I struggle with it, but at the end of the day, I think it’s more of a ghost film. It’s a funny one, because it can fall into either category.
It wasn’t, for instance, in the documentary on Slashers that I watched recently.
I should mention, though, that that documentary was so, so comprehensive that they wouldn’t have missed it.
Maybe there needs to be a sub-category: the Supernatural Slasher.
You can stick most of the the Halloween, Friday, Nightmare films into that sort of pseudo hybrid category.
Interesting. I’d always considered it a slasher. But I supppose I can see how Freddy is haunting them.
The ways freddy offs his vitims, particularly in the later films aren’t slasher kills either. And he doesn’t wear a mask.
Mask/ Disguise wearing is integral to slashers. Almost all of them do it, even Psycho, has Norman in drag.
Not to mention that he wrote the Devil’s Advocate and adapted Armageddon.
It doesn’t even star Mr. Potato Head- it’s that Renner cunt, who I’m starting to really dislike.
Even with the presence of Roberts, Duplicity is better than Wanted.
Wanted has McAvoy and the elderly crack whore in it (by the way, if I see her name on a film now, it’s almost a guarantee that I won’t like it), and was based on a comic by that mean-spirited weegie dickhead Millar. So Hitchcock himself couldn’t have made it good.
I don’t understand how Hollywood assigns directors any more. Seriously, it’s weird.
And who the fuck wants a Bourne sequel without potato head?
Who wants another Bourne sequel? Full stop. Both sequels are complete shit. I’d struggle to give them a chang between them. And I don’t have a weird hang up about Damon like you guys do.
I actually like Damon. It just makes me laugh calling him Mr. Potato Head.
Bourne 2 and 3 are ruined by Greengrass’ horrible camera work and editing. And that neither story is remotely interesting. I saw 2 in the cinema and about 6 people left complaining of feeling carsick. I’d Orangutan that shite.
3 was a bit better, and I could be talked into giving it 1.5-2, but it was still pretty lousy. It just didn’t give me a headache. However, I saw it at home, which may also have made a difference.
The direction is horrible. But moreso, I hate them because they’re the same shit in a different location. Both Bourne sequels are retreads of the first one. And they’re almost beat for beat the same as each other (the sequels I mean), so I don’t know how you can say that one is much better than the other.
I also didn’t like that they killed Potente at the beginning of 2. That shitted my right off from the get go. Like killing Randy in Scream 2.
Totally agree.
The difference in rating is that it didn’t give me a headache, but I am more than willing to put that down to Screen size. I thought it was totally meh, and vastly better than 2. Which really pissed me off. Why kill Potente and keep pan-faced talent vacuum Julia Stiles around? Made no sense.
It’s also dramatically altered from the funny book. So they’ve dramatically altered a mean spirited funny book into a mean spirited action movie. That movie fucking stinks.
I don’t get that. If you’re going to alter something, then at least make it good.
HA! I enjoy Devils Advocate. That’s Pacino hamming it up to great effect.
Armageddon? Unless he wrote that cookie scene, he escapes. Whoever wrote that scene needs to be beaten with a sock full of coins. Otherwise, it is what it is. It’s an Overlord Bay film. Excess = Success.
It’s a lousy script. It’s Dark Overlord Bay, so Script= irrelevant.
Devil’s Advocate has a terrible script as well. Pacino squeezes a lot of ham out of some truly awful lines.
Michael “do the Cunt” Ironsides is guest starring on last nights Justified as a contract hitter for the DEEE-troit Mob. Justified is is rocking hard this season
I always think of him as the bald baddie in Space Hunter in the Forbidden Zone…..yes I am that sad.
Ironside is awesome. He stars in a lot of poop though.
God I still got all of last season to watch. I couldn’t get past how fucking stupid that opening episode of season 2 was. Hopefully it got smarter.
rasczaks roughneck!
Cricket’s a shambles. Looking at being 320 behind minimum. In theory with a tin pot bowling attack over 2 days England should get that. In practise? Not a chance.
Difficult chase that.
No chance. Caught and Bowled off a no ball a minute ago, caught but the numpty stepped over the boundary just now.
The batsmen need a good kicking.
Last Night, watched The Resident.
Shit. Utter shit. Awful fucking movie.
Boring, Crass, braindead, almost completely lacking in menace, a waste of Lee, Hillary Swank is just not attractive, and I fell asleep in it despite not being tired. Admittedly, the wife liked it, but she would.
Pity I don’t have a series to review it in.
Jarv gets pissy?
You could start a new series. “Mrs. Jarv presents…” And you can review all the movies she likes. Beaches FTW!!!
It’s not bad enough for that.
It’s crass and moronic and a waste of Hammer, but not in the same league of stuff that makes me angry.
and it’s a ‘Hammer’ movie Jarv. Hooray.
I just kept thinking through the whole sordid thing, get your ass back to Supernatural Papa Winchester.
It would have been out of place even in the mid 90s, when psycho creepers were all the rage with the soccer moms. I guess they still are, but back then they walled themselves into your attic and romanced from afar instead of winging and sparkling.
It’s the least “Hammer” Hammer movie that I’ve ever seen.
Rotten film.
Big spoiler this, but I would absolutely love to know the justification for the masturbation and rape in it. The former was not needed in any way, he had access to her apartment and could have been sniffing her underwear or something creepily. I did not need to see him in the tub writhing around with his hands in his pants.
The latter was beyond offensive.
Do you know of a better way to get on Beaks’ Top 10 list?
It’s not anal rape.
I didn’t say automatic selection as #1 of the decade. Just going for a Top 10 of the year here.
True.
My mistake. I think a good way of judging if something is a good idea is “What Would Beaks Do” and then do the opposite.
Branagh is directing the Jack Ryan reboot.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/kenneth-branagh-jack-ryan-movie-304813
The girl from Kick Ass is in the remake of Carrie.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/chloe-moretz-carrie-negotiations-kimberly-pierce-stephen-king-brian-de-palma-304746
Doesn’t have the required vulnerability IMO. Also, wasn’t Carrie graduating high school? That girl is 14 or 15.
Oh for fuck’s sake.
Load of shite.
Wrath review.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/wrath-titans-film-review-sam-worthington-303462
Who’s directing it? Is it still Surrender Hulk guy?
No it’s Battle: LA guy.
Oh christ. It’ll be shit then. Isn’t he also responsible for Ninja Turtles?
He is. But please, just CHILL.
Hehehehehe.
I saw that. Did you see Bay explaining the name change to Ninja Turtles.
Yep. Marketing changed it. Because it was too long. What a load of horseshit.
What I’m most surprised at is how much they’re talking about it. Seems like every change is getting a damage control statement from Bay or Battle LA guy. I think they seem to think a lot of people actually care. I don’t think that many do.
I don’t believe that about the length. I bet they were gagging to get rid of the faintly naff Teenage + Mutant bit of the title.
Just not “cool” enough.
I also don’t know a single person that gives a fuck.
But “Ninja Turtles” doesn’t sound cool either. Turtles simply aren’t cool. Period. Now if it was “Ninja Robot Lions” then that would be cool. Or “Ninja Tiger in a Hat”. Tres cool.
True.
However, Ninja is inherently cool, so the lack of cool of turtle gets offset by Ninja.
Mutant is fairly cool as well. Mutant Tiger in a Hat would be genius.
I reckon it’s like this.
Teenage – Marketing believes adults won’t go to a movie that is obviously directed at teenagers.
Mutant – Just makes them too “different”. They’re already humanoid turtles, the term mutant conjures up images of monsters.
But the real question is, will it be called “Hero Turtles” in the UK?
Dumbest piece of censorship ever.
There’s something else, though- everyone basically shortens it in conversation to “ninja turtles” anyway. So, they’ve got an old-ish property that nobody gives a fuck about, so they’ve changed the name to what everyone calls it in an attempt to bolster name recognition.
Cook’s gone.
Strauss is at his average now, so he’ll go in a minute.
They’re letting the spinners get all over them again. They just don’t learn.
And what did I just say? Bye bye Strauss.
So, so predictable. Scoring at 1 an over just puts pressure on yourself.
Jarv, the Alien Anthology bluray is £9.97 at Amazon.
Bear in mind this is the 4 disc version that only has the movies (2 version of each movie). Not the extras discs. But you have those on your dvd version so this might be a good option. Regular 6 disc version is £15.
Sorely tempting.
The missus will veto it…
Which is most unreasonable of her.
Oh I forgot to ask, how is life under the thumb?
Pretty awful. It blocks the sun.
You’ll find out soon.
Anyway, seeing as I just managed to persuade her that I needed FF13-2, I think I’m out of credit for a while.
Which, incidentally, I received in a case that is best described as “shattered”. The disc was alright, though.
Crap. The risk of ordering from the internets, because it’s a ballache to return. I have a spare PS3 case if you remind me to bring it next time we catch up. The PSN credit I got ages ago came in a game case for some reason.
Speaking of which, I’m free on the easter saturday I think, if you want to catch up for a few.
Might well have to be done. There’s no sport of interest to man or beast though. Unless England have next week off, in which case the humiliation will be on on Saturday
Talking about which, KP is trying to force the pace here to keep the scoreboard ticking over.
I wonder if Trott actually causes other batsmen to get out due to his inability to play scoring shots.
Already ordered one off Amazon. Cheers, though.
It’s the first time it has happened to me. Not. Fucking. Impressed.
However, as the game works fine, I don’t really care.
HA! I can talk my way into most things.
Against my better judgement, I think I might revisit the Clash remake tonight.
Christ. It’s terrible.
Utter rubbish.
Yes, I know.
I really would like to see the original cut. I wonder if it’s better. It most certainly couldn’t be worse.
I enjoyed the Clash remake more the second time through, a few nights ago. I realized I remembered almost nothing from it, despite have seen it only two years ago (while the memory of Harryhausen’s version is seared into my brain).
It’s almost a good silly adventure movie but it’s just too whiny and petulant, with too much daddy issue stuff. And there geography of their quest is maddening–their doesnt seem to be any sense of time or space applied unless the script calls for it.
At the end of the day the first movie is a fun throwaway and the sequel is a solid action movie, albeit light on intelligence.
I also saw whatever cut was on the bluray, and dont remember enough to know if I saw a different version.
The problems you mention are probably due to the fact that the film recieved massive reshoots. The original cut wasn’t released, but it was dramatically different. I’ll see if I can find the synopsis.
http://www.slashfilm.com/clash-of-the-titans-might-have-been-a-good-or-at-least-better-movie/
The original was CHUD but it now says Page Not Found.
I highly doubt that version will ever be seen. It’ll go down as one of the potentially interesting lost original cuts. Like the original cut of The Saint.
This.
Sank the film for me. Totally sank it.
To be fair, familial squabbling is integral to greek myth, but Perseus himself shouldn’t have it. And here he’s only the reluctant hero for as few minutes as it takes for the first monster to threaten his son, then he’s in badass mode for the rest.
The issue I haveis that they actually come up with a pretty interesting story regarding the strained relations of the Gods themselves–movies never try to really deal with thaqt, the Gods are always just the pompous observers–but they shoot it in the foot by smashing throguh everything so fast you only get a concept of what hey were trying at.
I think the issue with this one is , you can see the great movie inside straining to get out. I bet this one too has much that was cut to keep it lean.
Still, I do like a dopey monster romp, and this one is fun.
Yes, familial squabbling is all over the greek myth, what is not, however, is all the shite about being a demigod and all the bullshit rejecting his father.
no, that’s why it’s good to see that angle–in regards to Perseus–mercifully reduced. VERY MILD SPOILER: He’s on a quest to save Zeus (and stop Kronos) this time out.
let me clarify; it’s Wrath that has the interesting story, not the Clash remake.
Wrath is pretty entertaining dumbhouse actually. The script is thin and it’s not exactly got tons of charming characters but neither did the original or the remake.
What it does have are some exceptionally cool monsters and some very cool action scenes. It feels more like a crazy 80’s fantasy movie than the predecessor and you can see them actively trying to improve on what they thought their failings were the first time around.
What’s still sort of frustrating is how serious most of it is, but there’s more hamming it up from Feinnes and Neeson and even Worthington is a little more relaxed. I liked Bill Nighy but he really needed more screentime.
The 3D also didnt suck beyond belief this time. So, that was nice.
Visually, though, it’s spectacular. A fun night at the movies. It’s easy to view this as the real follow-up to the 80s movie instead of the 2010 rehash.
Has to be more 80’s dumbhouse. Worthington now sports the mullet he should have had in Clash.
I’m looking forward to Wrath. Of course I won’t see it until it’s out on DVD, but still it looks fun.
It’s fun stuff. What did you think of the remake JPT?
I like the remake for the most part.
Speaking of the 80’s….watched Belushi’s The Principle last night. Heh…”No More!”
Reminds me. I completely forgot that I watched The Freshman the other day. Quite enjoyed it.
Thought of the day:
“A Special Effect without a story is boring”.
George Lucas.
Wow, Alanis needs to add this one to her irony song.
Now, let’s be fair to Lucas now. That’s a completely accurate statement and he, himself, has never made a special effects movie without a story.
What he hasn’t said that is also is true is this; ‘Special effects glopped onto a childish, convoluted, badly written story is also boring.’
Since when are we being fair to Moleman?
Did you not get the memo?
I got the one about the TPS reports, but I must’ve been on the crapper when the no neck memo was sent.
So you didn’t get the memo?
I got one from Michael Bay. It was written in crayon and all it said was CHILL. But I definitely didn’t get a memo about a fat, useless, greedy sack of shit.
Was it a recent memo? Because a few months ago I got a memo from a fat, greedy, useless sack of shit that stated that anyone who didn’t pay money to see Red Tails was a racist.
No. It’s quite an old memo.
It was from a greedy, useless sack of shit and basically said “Waaaaah, why don’t you wuv me?”
I’ll get you another one issued.
Talking about useless sacks of shit, I just went to AICN today out of curiousity to see goatfucker pontificating about Total Recall.
I hate him.
when its sarcasm…
Hehehehhe.
No, it’s a fair point. He would be the expert on empty spectacle.
Spectacle implies spectacular. Intergalactic trade unions and congressional senates are anti-spectacle.
but that’s the thing, the trade disputes arent the spectacle, in his mind it’s the action scenes What he says above implies that stories drive special effects, which they did in the old movies. He’s blinded to his error now because he sees ‘story’ and believes this supports his special effects., The ‘plots’ of the most recent Star Wars movies are no doubt more complex and multi-faceted than the original 3 pictures, but that is entirely the problem.
The Senate stuff doesnt remotely resemble politics in any world, era or civilization. The romance is the same. These elements are no doubt more in-depth than battling the Empire or Han and Leia learning not to hate each other on the fly. But they just exist by themselves and dont match the spectacle part.
For instance, there’s a scene where Anakin and Padme run through some giant mashers in one of the movies (Clones I think) and then fight an arena full of Harryhausen critters, and then end up in the midst of a battle between aliens and Jedi and clone troopers and then there’s a lightsabber duel.
None of that, though, ties into the story Lucas wrote for that particular movie–it’s an offshoot, the whole thing. He was trying to tell a tale of political subversion and a forbidden romance. Neither of those stories factor into what is essentially a final third of pure special effects.
S.
This is true.
It’s an awful, awful film that one.
Anakin riding the space potato is genuinely one of the most awful things ever filmed. Not quite as bad as the performing muppets that the neck inserted into Jedi, but not far off.
None of the SW movies have complex plots
ANH = Misfits travel from A to B and defeat the Dark Lord.
Empire = Misfits travel from A to B and are defeated by the Dark Lord.
Jedi = Misfits side with the
Vietnamesenatives and defeatAmericathe Dark Lord.TPM = Cardboard cutouts travel from A to B and back to A, and nothing really happens.
ATOTC = Something happens. I actually can’t really remember. I have a lot of imagery mixed up with John Martyr now.
ROTS = Child murderer gets hacked to bits and left to die by his asshole best buddy.
Now, what makes the first two (in particular) fun and interesting is that they have character. The scenes aren’t superfluous action, but they successfully develop characters, and expand the scope of the story beyond the central band of misfits.
No it doesn’t. It’s group of misfits split up. Misfit A travels to B and learns something then goes to C. Misfits B and C travel to D then go to C. Everyone meets up and not a lot happens.
The thing is, though, the overall arc of the prequels is inordinately complicated. Lucas is trying to deal with Shakespeare level court machinations coupled with an epic mythological saga in a sci-fi universe. It’s about the rise of evil and power corrupting. Lucas does not have one iota of the talent to do this.
So, he still presents his fucknuts travel from A to B stories, but focuses on boring and extraneous detail, such as trade dispute and votes of no confidence in the galactic senate.
Incidentally, the politics of the galactic senate make not a jot of sense.
I like “John Martyr” though. That’s very clever.
It was a forehead slap moment when I thought of it. It’s so obvious and appropriate.
I meant “something happens” in the very loosest terms. I’ll rephrase. I’ve seen a film called ATOTC. I can’t really remember it. Something happens, in that cardboard cutout characters do things on screen.
That’s the one with rocket powered R2. Which is astonishingly lame. Even by Lucash’s standards.
The thing with the prequels, is that Moleman has made them so over-complicated. Not just the story, but everythings so awkwardly elaborate. The assassination attempt and chase at the beginning of ATOTC being a prime example. The whole sending in a centipede thing to assassinate the queen. “I sense it too.” And Obi Wan jumping out the window onto a pod thing and then the chase with a shape shifting assassin thing. And none of it’s exciting, or interesting. Anakin just jumps out in mid-air and floats down to the bad guys craft. Not a care in the world. Which is a fundamental flaw. If the character doesn’t acknowledge that he’s in danger, the audience doesn’t fear for him. I know he’s supposed to be the ultimate jedi and a cock kid, but that’s not the point. Look at that scene and the tower scene in MI4, with Cruise hanging out of the world tallest building. That scene works because Ethan Hunt a) doesn’t really want to do it, and b) is terrified. As he should be. It’s also better directed and looks real, but that’s not the point.
No-Neck is a terrible writer and director.
Man, the prequels fucking suck. I cannot believe anyone wants to go to TPM in THREE FUCKING DEEE.
Experience the magic of Galactic Trade Disputes in 3D!
Marvel at Jar Jar leaning out of the screen at you!
Thrill at Jake Lloyd in the podrace!
No fucking thanks.
Titanic comes out soon! Kate’s boobs in 3D!!! Propeller Man in 3D!!!
I disagree. That’s what ends up onscreen, and why it sucks, but Lucas is writing all of this subterfuge and clandestine plotting into the undercarriage of the prequels. He’s not good at it, so it doesn’t work but consider.
A New Hope: The Empire tries to crush the rebellion by capturing a key player and demonstrating their weaponry. An old Jedi he never wiped out trains a boy, grabs a pilot, rescues the princess. The rebel alliance destroy the Empires weapon. End.
Phantom Menace: There’s a Sith Lord puppeteering a trade dispute that he hopes will unsettle an entire galactic Senate enough that they will elect a corrupt Senator—also the Sith Lord—to a position of power, so he can in fact urge the Senate to solve the trade dispute issue. Except, that’s not really the plot. Its about some Jedis trying to protect a princes, who needs to get to the Senate so she can help sway the majority in the direction of the Sith lord/senator so he can rise to power. Except, they get distracted and spend over half the movie trying to scrape up enough money to fix their ship, which they do after enterting a youngster in a cut-throat race. That the youngster seems to have Jedi abilities is almost secondary to all else, and then one of the Jedi wants to train him, but the Council says no, so they all go back to Naboo to defend it against the battle droids all though none of them are truly necessary for the final fight, except to combat another Sith, who has clearly been set up as a decoy and ruse—the Phantom Menace if you will—to draw away their attention from the subversion at the Senate. In the end, none of it was worthwhile, because all it took really was one hotshot kid pilot in a starfighter and the help of the indigenous, who are early established as having about the same warrior capacity as Carrot Top. And he gets to train the kid. It’s definitely more complex, it’s just not dramatically satisfying. The whole thing is a series of detours governed by a plan that not even God could have concocted, depending on random coincidence as it does.
That is an almost perfect description of AOTC too.
I’m sure that one features the Dark Lord and Lee saying crap like “Aha the plan is coming together” when it quite clearly isn’t.
The absolute worst aspect of the prequels is that the bad guy’s plan is so complex and asinine that it would have been discovered by everyone but the dimmest of school children. So, he has the Jedi, who we have long imagined as this noble, wise race of warrior monks, revealed as nearly retarded, petty old farts of enormous arrogance and limited effectiveness. People can say that he didn’t all he want, but that bit right there—more than midichlorians or JarJar—destroyed his mythology so much, that the only way to retain the legacy of Star Wars is to pretend that they do not exist.
I think Lucas even has a scene in one of them where the younglings point out that someone deleted a planet from the archives, which is another example of over-thinking (they deleted the planet so the Jedi would find they had deleted it, and thus go to that planet, but only becauae they found the kimino kyber dart, which alerts them to the clones, which they will….yawn). No way that Yoda and company wouldn’t have ousted Palpatine about halfway through Menace.
The worst aspect of the prequels is that it makes ALL THE CHARACTERS WE LOVE from the the originals into ginormous CUNTS.
Yoda? CUNT.
Obi-Wan? CUNT.
Vader? CUNT.
Really annoying.
I would argue that it was Jedi that did this. The whole difficult “When I said he killed your father, what I actually meant was…” speech.
True. It’s all down to Moleman trying to dig himself out of the hole. He’s always maintained that he has a broad idea of the whole saga, but that’s horseshit. After the first one, he realised the limitations he’d placed on himself with the characters he’d established. Because he wanted the story to go in one direction, he slanted shit, made shit up and revealed crap about the characters. Luke and Leia being siblings for one. That just made things like the kiss in Empire incredibly icky. BAH! Stupid fuckhead.
It’s such an obvious fucking lie. I seem to remember that 7-9 were about the “new” Jedi who was to be Luke’s sister hidden in the outer rim somewhere. Except the cunt was pig sick of star wars so decided to, out of the blue, make Leia Luke’s sister.
And you’re right about the ickyness. It isn’t just the kiss though, there’s a conversation between him and Han where he’s basically saying “I’m going to nail her” that is so, so fucking wrong.
Moleman is an idiot who got lucky.
It’s such a shame though. He’s actually harmed the ANH and Empire so badly that I don’t really want to watch them again in their current form. And those were two of my favourite films.
Absolutely. If I can just persuade the missus that Ewoks do, in fact, blow then I’ll be able to forget about Uncle George’s singing space muppets once and for all.
And in Jedi, when he finds out/realises, he says something like “Somehow I always knew.” Which just leads me to ask, why the boner for your sister?
The other thing is he tried to make Vader noble, so what he had to do was basically de-sexualise the Jedi so that Vader’s big crime was “love”.
To do this, he basically turned pretty cool cross between magicians and samurai into a group of clammy-handed virgins who couldn’t find their arse on the galactic map. Possibly because they’d accidentally deleted it.
Yes, this is true, and a lot of that is because they do things that serve this ridiculously crafted ‘plot’. I think Lucas was purposefully trying to make something grander, and just missed spectacularly, mostly because he neglected what you said earlier; characters.
I do thank the heavens though that better fx werent available in 1977. When you look at the whole of Lucas’ ‘legacy’ I believe that if he had the technical choices and clout available to him back then, we would have gotten something very Phantom Menace like on the first shot. Limitations in what he could show and do forced him to limit his own sensibilities, which don’t seem very trustworthy.
The seeds of almost all the damage we saw in the prequels were sown at the end of Empire and in Jedi- Luke being Leia’s sister, leading to the difficult conversation about their mother.
The signs were there when he changed it from Wookies to Ewoks to appeal to kids. I don’t know where he got the idea from that Vader was the chosen one from, but it’s a crap idea.
I don’t know if he would. I still think we’d get something similar to ANH, abeit bloated and less entertaining. I think the longer he went on the more he was able to expand the universe in his own head. So all this shit he’d spent years dreaming up, by the mid-90’s he had the cash and the tech to do. And he didn’t want to leave anything out.
yea, I dont mean the exact same film, but rather it would feel the same. He’d have the budget to show all these extravagant places, so he would, and get so wrapped up in the tech he’d spend all his time trying to make it a travelogue instead of a film, one that needs an intricate mouse-trap plot to function.
It would be the same simple A to B story, but jam packed full of useless diversions that add nothing but tedium.
It’s the same thing that happened to Peter Jackson though. He got all the money he wanted, yes men lining up to suck his knob and call it ice cream, and the result is the bloated shitfest King Kong.
Some directors work better on limited budgets.
What’s surprising is that I always imagined the Clone Wars as something that was bigger and more expansive than pertaining to just Obi Wan and Vader. Not that it has to be my vision, but I fully expected the first movie to be Obi and Anakin serving as soldiers or something in the war. It seemed like the likely place to start.
I never figured we would see them almost singlehandedly responsible for everything that happens in this universe. That’s another problem. There’s absolutely no sense of these players being small in the midst of this vast predicament that they manage to turn the tide on by bravery, courage and embracing their gifts. Instead it turns out that Vader built C3P0, befriended R2, helped discover the clones, dismantle the senate, destroy the Jedi—it’s not just a betrayal, as Obi Wan described it in ANH, it’s a complete about-face to blatant eradication.
And when he does something tide-turning in Menace, it’s by complete accident. A ‘Whoop-dere it is!’ buffoonery of a kid pushing buttons and saving the day. There’s almost nothing in this world that isn’t a direct result of either the characters or descendants of characters we meet in the 77 film. This reduces the epic grandeur and appeal of it.
I liked the notion of a young boy taking off and making a difference in this grand conflict that he isnt necessarily connected to initially. Sure, Luke’s relationship to Vader starts to reduce that in the original trilogy, but it comes midway through the series, once we have already experienced the initial thrill of the story. How much better would the prequels have been if they had started at that point with Obi and Anakin, as young men just swept up in what’s going on in the galaxy? I guess, too, I always assumed the two were closer in age than a grown-ass man and a grade-schooler.
I don’t mind Vader being motivated by love to drive him to where he goes, but it’s got to be more tragic and dramatic and it’s got to start sooner. Three flipping movies, and then it’s all ‘Yes Master’ the minute he thinks the girl is toast.
Criminal.
I actually liked the reveal of Luke and Vader at the end of Empire. It gave the series a kind of epic quality that wasn’t quite there before.
And you’re right, when I tried to imagine the “clone wars” I imagined an all out war that lasted years.
And I imagined that the war took such a toll on Obi-Wan, because it lasted years and he was betrayed by his friend. He was utterly defeated in body and mind, and that’s how I rationalised a jedi to hiding out in a cave for years in the middle of fucking nowhere. Same with Yoda.
The Clone Wars was an epic blunder because Obi-Wan specifically says that Anakin was A PILOT in the Clone Wars. Admittedly, Obi-Wan is a lying cunt of the highest order, but I don’t reckon Lucas had a clue what to do with them.
Yeah, and that’s the way I thought they were going with the whole Pod race and Anakin piloting the ship at the end of TPM. Then the whole thing just kind of fell by the wayside.
I agree, but it worked after seeing a movie where Vader seemed like just another bad guy. By holding the mythic connefction back, it redefined who Vader was–just a black hat, to a guy with an alterior mission, find his son and bri9ng him into the fold.
In the prequels, those connections are just there to pay lipservice to the old ones, so no one would say ‘this isnt like Star Wars’, except, well, it wasnt like Star Wars.
Yeah my only problem with the prequels is that Anakin should’ve built R2D2, there is nothing special about C-3PO him building R2D2 makes no sense. Also seems like C-3PO would’ve ousted Anakin at some point as Darth Vader. If you have R2 being built buy C-3PO, in all his tinkering he could’ve gone back and added in a line from C-3PO saying “What’s that R2? You know this man? Oh stop with your non sense.”
or better, have him build neither of them… they get their minds wiped in Revenge anyway.
Well him building R2 makes sense because there is that whole other worldly smartness about him. C3-PO is just like all the other droids like him. But I didn’t know they got their minds wiped in 3? I’ve only seen that one once.
so have I, but I remember the groaner line ‘Take these droids away and have their minds wiped’ by Jimmy Smits.
For Jarv: Turdmen>Menace???
No. But Turdmen>Clones.