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Ramsay B.

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On 7/29/2017 at 9:55 AM, Annara Snow said:

 

Last night I went to finally watch Spiderman (which I didn't get to do before because of work and other obligations - I'm now on my vacation, officially starting on Monday) but I was late so I ended up watching Valerian instead. Worst movie I've seen in a long time. Everything you two said above is true. The visuals were the only good thing. The writing was abysmal - whoever wrote it seems to have no atorytelling skills. They couldn't even tell the simple, Avatar-like plot properly. They drop you in and expect you to care about these underdeveloped characters they haven't even properly introduced. It's full of cliches, predictable extremely male gazey. I almost fell asleep a couple of times. Rhianna's character is the only interesting one and should have had more screentime (but not to deliver male gazey fanservice as in her first scene). The casting is also awful. The two leads have no charisma or chemistry with each other, and their interactions are based on every cliche possible. I don't know why casting Cara Delevigne to play one dimensional characters in SciFi blockbusters is a thing now, and here it's worse than in Suicide Squad, simce she had so much more screentime. The characters are, or are supposed to be, the cliche feisty hot female character and a handsome roguish ladykiller male character with romantic tension, and maybe you could get away with it with the right actors  But Dane DeHaan is laughably miscast (is Luc Besson really that clueless as to what a sexy, roguishly charming man is supposed to be like? Couldn't he have consulted some women?) and Delevigne hasn't shown any talent or screen presence. Her casting seems to be stunt casting, it's not like there aren't enough actual actresses in her age range who are at least as attractive and a lot more engaging and charismatic.

On another hand, Dunkirk was amazing and kept me on the edge of my seat throughout (literally! It's one of the movies that make me understand why the expression "on the edge of my seat" exists). I don't get why people are thrashing it in this thread.

I too was stunned at how badly miscast the two leads were. DeHaan's Valerian is the biggest douchebag (really no other word for it) in movie history. He's a straight up clueless, sexist bro. He's not just bad, he's gross. And he seems to be doing an exaggerated Keanu impersonation for the whole movie. Delevingne's Laureline is a shallow cliche who rolls her eyes anytime anyone says anything to her. At one point she rolls her eyes at a computer. She's supposed to be hyper competent, and yet still manages to be easily captured (due to her failure to listen to her male partner) and has to be saved by the manly Valerian. Early in the movie her entire team dies saving her and Valerian and all she cares about is that her dress got ruined. Laureline and Valerian are supposed to be our heroes, but they're just awful people. This is a testament to just how bad both the writing and the acting are, but for me it's the acting that is the bigger problem. While nothing short of a complete rewrite could have made this a good movie, halfway decent casting could have at least made it watchable.

 

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I finished watching the first season of American Gods. Overall I liked it a lot, even if it can't escape some of the flaws of the book. I think Ricky Whittle does a good job of portraying Shadow, but it can be a bit frustrating having a protagonist who is so oblivious to what is going on around him, it's perfectly understandable that he might have problems accepting some things but he should at least have a suspicion about who Mr Wednesday is even if he can't bring himself to believe it. The plot is quite meandering (which is another thing inherited from the book), fortunately I think the 'Coming to America' vignettes and the subplots added to the adaptation like the Mad Sweeny and Dead Wife roadtrip tended to be entertaining, perhaps they're often more entertaining than the main plot. I think the casting director did a great job, Ian McShane is perfect as Mr Wednesday as are the likes of Peter Stormare as Czernobog or Gillian Anderson as Media. I also thought Emily Browning did a good job as Laura, and I particularly liked her interactions with Sweeny.

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So I was watching an episode of MASH today. In the episode there was a patient who was suicidal because his rifle backfired on him and disfigured his face. So most of the episode he was on suicide watch, but finally he found an opportunity to sneak off and get into the anesthesia gas. Colonel Potter goes over and tries in his kindly manner to talk him out of it.

I'm thinking: "Heh, if that was Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, he'd try to make him suck more gas"

Then Col. Potter goes, "You want to kill yourself, I'll help!" and he put his hand on the gas mask and holds it to the guys face, the guy struggles and breaks free and says "You tried to kill me you crazy old man!" and Potter explains how that proves he really doesn't want to die.

So that's over and I'm still thinking how that reminded me of Gibson jumping off the building with the suicidal guy in that Lethal Weapon scene when Col. Potter says "I'm getting to old for this crap!" as he's walking away. I was just floored.

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@Midnight has been my favorite show for several months now.  It is excellent at presenting current events without being overwhelmed by Orange45.  Unfortunately, its last show will be August 4th.  I'm not sure what I will watch after that humor-wise.

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21 hours ago, drawkcabi said:

So I was watching an episode of MASH today. In the episode there was a patient who was suicidal because his rifle backfired on him and disfigured his face. So most of the episode he was on suicide watch, but finally he found an opportunity to sneak off and get into the anesthesia gas. Colonel Potter goes over and tries in his kindly manner to talk him out of it.

I'm thinking: "Heh, if that was Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, he'd try to make him suck more gas"

Then Col. Potter goes, "You want to kill yourself, I'll help!" and he put his hand on the gas mask and holds it to the guys face, the guy struggles and breaks free and says "You tried to kill me you crazy old man!" and Potter explains how that proves he really doesn't want to die.

So that's over and I'm still thinking how that reminded me of Gibson jumping off the building with the suicidal guy in that Lethal Weapon scene when Col. Potter says "I'm getting to old for this crap!" as he's walking away. I was just floored.

It might have been the inspiration for it (meaning the scene  in Lethal Weapon). Now I'm curious of similar scenes in TV or movie around or before that time..

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27 minutes ago, Argonath Diver said:

Oh, man. I was hardly expecting much, but I figured the Guy Ritchie King Arthur movie would be a solid late night casual watch. I absolutely couldn't last past ten minutes.. It's just astonishingly bad. Transformers 2 bad. 

My buddy at work keeps insisting that I watch this and The Circle. Both have gotten horrid reviews and trashed on these threads but he thinks I'll like them both for some odd reason, which I'm starting to take as insults really.

I watched Dazed and Confused yesterday for the first time in years and still love it.

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2 hours ago, Argonath Diver said:

Oh, man. I was hardly expecting much, but I figured the Guy Ritchie King Arthur movie would be a solid late night casual watch. I absolutely couldn't last past ten minutes.. It's just astonishingly bad. Transformers 2 bad. 

It was amazing how fast this film just went quietly away post-release and nobody even mentioned it at all.

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22 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

He peaked at Lock Stock. The signs were there in Snatch when he basically just remade Lock Stock with bigger actors. I thought Man from Uncle was half decent however.

Snatch>>>Lock Stock, imo.  The characters are so much better and more memorable. Bricktop, Bullet Tooth Tony, Boris etc. I love both movies though. 

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Gommorah fans  -- season 2 comes streaming to netflix 8/21 -- yay!

Just re-watched season 2 of The Last Kingdom -- damn if it isn't better even the second time around.  For one thing I wasn't so nervous for the fate of favorites, and knowing what happens allowed me to focus on the performance excellences and the scenery, and how some of the characters are getting deeper as the actors know them better.

I continue watching the Turkish historical, Resurrection, set in the 13th century during which the mongol invasions are roiling politics and various tribal groups all the way to Europe, and the Chinese historical (2012) set during the warring periods of the 5th century B.C.

About to begin Big Little Lies.  It looks as though it shall be quite different from the novel which I read last summer.

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Watched the first episode of Endeavour last night (Morse prequel). I thought it was great and look forward to watching the rest of it. The guy playing Morse has a great blend of earnestness, charisma and innocence. Plus the 1960's setting gives it an extra bit of interest/conflict - with the way things used to be done back in the day.

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Watched Dunkirk. Very good film. Would have loved a bit more an expansive view at the fighting at Dunkirk and the Germans pressing them back, that would have made for very good context. It's my only niggle with an otherwise very tense film. The dogfights scenes surprised me with how interesting they were.

Also 7 episodes into American Crime Story, a 10 episode series with Cuba Gooding Jr, David Schwimmer and John Travolta about the OJ Simpson trial. I'm not very familiar with the subject but even if I had been I think I would still like this series a lot. As it is, very enjoyable series, lots of intrigue, rivalry and nastiness. Travolta is quite hilarious here as Robert Shapiro, a vain lawyer.

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On 8/1/2017 at 4:20 AM, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

He peaked at Lock Stock. The signs were there in Snatch when he basically just remade Lock Stock with bigger actors. I thought Man from Uncle was half decent however.

Richie's Man From Uncle is one of the most underrated films in its genre.

23 hours ago, Nictarion said:

Snatch>>>Lock Stock, imo.  The characters are so much better and more memorable. Bricktop, Bullet Tooth Tony, Boris etc. I love both movies though. 

I loved Lock, Stock... back in the day but I remember being very meh about Snatch. In fact, I've only seen it the once. I need to give it a re-watch one day. 

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49 minutes ago, PetyrPunkinhead said:

Richie's Man From Uncle is one of the most underrated films in its genre.

I loved Lock, Stock... back in the day but I remember being very meh about Snatch. In fact, I've only seen it the once. I need to give it a re-watch one day. 

I'd say we are both pretty aligned here. I have never quite understood the love people have for Snatch, but that may be something to do with when I saw it and the other movies I saw in conjunction. Snatch came out at a time when British Gangster movies were all the rage, and Lock Stock was fresh in my mind. For me Snatch is a tired remake of Lock Stock in many ways, with mostly unbelievable corny stereotype characters that just come across like a parody of those in Lock Stock. LS was at the time something fresh and new and exciting, Snatch was just an attempt to recapture that magic with a bigger audience. I didn't think it worked at all. But I wonder if viewed on its own in isolation it would come across far better. 

I will say though, having grown up around Irish gypsies and tinkers... Pitt is pretty laughable

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