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Watch, Watched, Watching: The Shield lands on top


Veltigar

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Watched Parasite over the weekend: very strong film, really enjoyed it, even if it wasn't quite what I expected from the reviews.

Also rewatched Dredd, which was stronger than I remembered in some ways and worse in others. It does well with the atmosphere but the aesthetic isn't quite right. But Urban is still pretty awesome as Joe Dredd. I want to see him come back and maybe Alex Garland to have another go at the writing too.

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2 hours ago, Mexal said:

Agreed with this.

Maladie seems utterly unlike Dru to me, but a whole lot like the Judge in Joe Abercrombie's latest trilogy, Age of Madness, the first two titles which have been published so far, in 2019 ad 2020, respectively.

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10 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Maladie seems utterly unlike Dru to me, but a whole lot like the Judge in Joe Abercrombie's latest trilogy, Age of Madness, the first two titles which have been published so far, in 2019 ad 2020, respectively.

Yea, think the point Ran was making is that Maladie isn't like Dru, like some reviewers were saying, and if you expected as such, might be disappointed in the chaotic energy Amy Mason is bringing to the character. Not saying you were, just that I agree with Ran that Amy Mason is doing a good job with the character and I like the crazy she's bringing to it.

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23 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Yea, think the point Ran was making is that Maladie isn't like Dru, like some reviewers were saying, and if you expected as such, might be disappointed in the chaotic energy Amy Mason is bringing to the character. Not saying you were, just that I agree with Ran that Amy Mason is doing a good job with the character and I like the crazy she's bringing to it.

She certainly has that timing down of leaping in a direction never expected. no matter how watchful and trepidatious and knowledgeable one might be.  That is how the Judge operates.  One doesn't think that Whedon is ignorant of of Abercrombie.

 

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3 minutes ago, Zorral said:

She certainly has that timing down of leaping in a direction never expected. no matter how watchful and trepidatious and knowledgeable one might be.  That is how the Judge operates.  One doesn't think that Whedon is ignorant of of Abercrombie.

I can see that. 

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1 minute ago, Mexal said:

I can see that. 

That aside, the single character that keeps this show rolling, is Laura Donnelly's Amalia True. Donnally's as powerfully solid in this, without us knowing anything about Amalia from Before (I've only watched 2 episodes so far), as she was as Jenny Fraser in Outlander. Among the many standout actors in that series, she was right up there with the two playing the protagonists Claire and Jamie.

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I think the odds of Whedon reading Abercrombie is very, very small. That said, the show's bible and outline was created somewhere in 2017 or 2018, with a bidding war in 2018 culminating in HBO landing it and giving it a straight-to-series order, so I genuinely think there's no chance one person influenced the other.

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13 minutes ago, Ran said:

I genuinely think there's no chance one person influenced the other.

According to many posts, including those on Reddit, by Joe, he's certainly more than familiar with the Whedon tv shows. Whether that applies to Whedon too, I cannot know, as I don't follow him anywhere, and don't know him personally.

 

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3 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

What did you expect from the reviews?

A slightly different tone, I think, a bit more satirical and less character-focused. Also, I was under the impression that the Kims moved into that bunker during the film, which they don't, but that was me picking stuff up wrong while trying to avoid spoilers, I think.

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2 minutes ago, mormont said:

A slightly different tone, I think, a bit more satirical and less character-focused. Also, I was under the impression that the Kims moved into that bunker during the film, which they don't, but that was me picking stuff up wrong while trying to avoid spoilers, I think.

I'm curious what kind of impression people got from reviews and general talk about it. I had no preconceived ideas, since I saw it in December 2019 at a film festival. I knew it had won some big awards already, but nothing else except the short synopsis.. You could feel from the first scene that the audience was really enjoying it, laughing at all the funny moments and rooting for the Kim family.   I wouldn't be surprised if early viewers were surprised and shocked at how the movie went, since the first half is pretty comedic. I remember some videos that were like "This is why I don't agree that __________ was too abrupt".

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3 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

I'm curious what kind of impression people got from reviews and general talk about it.

Reviews of Parasite made me think it was going to be a lot more amazing than it was. I had just seen Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters  very recently, and the memory of it definitely made me see the social commentary aspect of it as relatively unsophisticated. Technically a very well made, well-produced, well-performed film, but not as deep as some made it out to be, IMO.

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Certainly, nothing in the film felt abrupt to me (and I wasn't spoiled on the plot). What happens feels like a natural outgrowth of the desperation and precarious economic plight of the working-class characters, including Moon-Gwang and her husband. These people have lives that can collapse at any moment, so it's not a shock when they do.

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26 minutes ago, Ran said:

Reviews of Parasite made me think it was going to be a lot more amazing than it was. I had just seen Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters  very recently, and the memory of it definitely made me see the social commentary aspect of it as relatively unsophisticated. Technically a very well made, well-produced, well-performed film, but not as deep as some made it out to be, IMO.

Well, I thought it was pretty amazing. Does it have to be "that deep", whatever that means? And in what way exactly would it be "deeper" and more sophisticated? 

Or is it that, after the awards and the praise, people were shocked that it was actually a fun movie? :P

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2 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

Well, I thought it was pretty amazing.

You asked what impressions people got from reviews and public discussion. The impression I got from critics was that it was a more sophisticated film, in terms of social commentary, than it really was. 

Watch Shoplifters and you will see what I meant about the sophistication of that aspect of the respective films. They are very similar in some aspects of what they're concerned with, but Kore-eda's film is more mature and layered.

Parasite is certainly fun.

 

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Finished the first season of Invincible which aired on Friday. Glad to see it renewed for a 2nd and 3rd season as it entertained well enough and the 40 minute episodes were perfect in duration. If you like the Boys, you'll probably like this as it has a lot of overlapping traits (good guys don't always win, superheroes aren't always good, lot of comedy + violence and gore). I found the Mauler twins in particular to be hilarious. Overall, my only complaint/nitpick is there seemed to be a great deal of open ended plotlines left going into Season 2 (though they did address the main one as the focus of the final episode). As the episodes were released on a weekly basis, I kept wondering what happened to certain characters and plotlines from the previous episode and we never went back to them. Looking forward to Season 2 and how they get back to them.

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16 minutes ago, WarGalley said:

Finished the first season of Invincible which aired on Friday. Glad to see it renewed for a 2nd and 3rd season as it entertained well enough and the 40 minute episodes were perfect in duration. If you like the Boys, you'll probably like this as it has a lot of overlapping traits (good guys don't always win, superheroes aren't always good, lot of comedy + violence and gore). I found the Mauler twins in particular to be hilarious. Overall, my only complaint/nitpick is there seemed to be a great deal of open ended plotlines left going into Season 2 (though they did address the main one as the focus of the final episode). As the episodes were released on a weekly basis, I kept wondering what happened to certain characters and plotlines from the previous episode and we never went back to them. Looking forward to Season 2 and how they get back to them.

It was a bit all over the place in the first few episodes, and I wasn't sure what type of show it was trying to be, but once the plot got going it got better. I liked the last two episodes.

The worst of the open plots must be

Spoiler

the green glowing mummy that is just randomly placed at the start of one of the middle episodes, and never brought back. 

 

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54 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

The worst of the open plots must be

  Hide contents

the green glowing mummy that is just randomly placed at the start of one of the middle episodes, and never brought back. 

 

Oh man, I completely forgot about that one. Yeah "all over the place" sounds right for a description of the first few episodes despite being entertaining.

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5 hours ago, WarGalley said:

Finished the first season of Invincible which aired on Friday. Glad to see it renewed for a 2nd and 3rd season as it entertained well enough and the 40 minute episodes were perfect in duration. If you like the Boys, you'll probably like this as it has a lot of overlapping traits (good guys don't always win, superheroes aren't always good, lot of comedy + violence and gore). I found the Mauler twins in particular to be hilarious. Overall, my only complaint/nitpick is there seemed to be a great deal of open ended plotlines left going into Season 2 (though they did address the main one as the focus of the final episode). As the episodes were released on a weekly basis, I kept wondering what happened to certain characters and plotlines from the previous episode and we never went back to them. Looking forward to Season 2 and how they get back to them.

The thing I really liked about Invincible is how well they took advantage of the animated format to do some crazy battles that would be basically impossible to do on a TV budget.  The fight in the final episode is absolutely insane.

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