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[Zorral]

Friends in the biz are raving about this one. Action over the top.  Way over the top.

RRR’ Review: A Hero (or Two) Shall Rise
Scenes of glorious excess make the screen hum with energy in S.S. Rajamouli’s action epic set in British colonial India.

....  It's not long in “RRR” before a tiger and a wolf collide midair during a brawl with one of the film's two musclebound heroes."

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/05/movies/rrr-review.html

Somehow, I missed this, until clued in today by my email box.  Check out the other rave reviews on google.

On netflix currently, after its theatrical release a couple of months ago. I guess it's part of the Baahubali series, which I've been watching over the last year or two.  So much action!

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

5 hours ago, Spockydog said:

Watched (most of) Troy at the weekend.

JFC, what a load of shite.

It's a proper sausage fest, with a bunch of middle-aged white guys in terrible, terrible wigs. The script was awful, the acting dreadful. Brad Pitt manages to turn in one of the worst performances I've ever seen.

Most of all, though, it is just so incredibly fucking boring.

After the Big Boss Fight, with no sign of a giant horse, we turned it off with forty-five minutes still to go.

 

Spoiler

The horse show up right after you turned it off.

It was pretty remarkable back in the day but yeah, it doesn't age well. Back in the mid naughties there was a minor trend of films historicising myths and folk tales. Troy was one, King Arthur (2004) was another. 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

A new two part George Carlin documentary is on HBO Max now. It's made by Judd Apatow, and it's constructed from 12 or so hours of unseen interview footage done by Carlin, so it gives the doc a sense of him narrating interspersed with outsider perspectives. It's pretty good.

I think as alt righters try to claim Carlin as one of their own, it's important to go back and get a sense of who he was--and he was not a pro-capitalist, Republican or alt-right Republican.

[Heartofice]

15 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

  Reveal hidden contents

The horse show up right after you turned it off.

It was pretty remarkable back in the day but yeah, it doesn't age well. Back in the mid naughties there was a minor trend of films historicising myths and folk tales. Troy was one, King Arthur (2004) was another. 

Think it was all a reaction to Lord of the Rings success, anything historical or mythical got greenlit. I lapped them up at the time and was deeply disappointed.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

39 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Think it was all a reaction to Lord of the Rings success, anything historical or mythical got greenlit. I lapped them up at the time and was deeply disappointed.

More Gladiator than LOTR. If it's sword and sandals and can be presented as historical fiction, it had a good chance of seeing the light of day. This is what gave us Rome on HBO, which is still excellent.  

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

I'll just drop this here. No reason. It makes me laugh.

 

[Ran]

1 hour ago, Centrist Simon Steele said:

I think as alt righters try to claim Carlin as one of their own, it's important to go back and get a sense of who he was--and he was not a pro-capitalist, Republican or alt-right Republican.

He hated the term libertarian, but he was pretty much a left libertarian  who was very strongly anti-authoritarian. Everything else came from that_: anti-censorship, generally anti-government, anti-corporate, anti-political correctness, etc. I recall some quip of his that the number one rule he has is to never trust anyone in authority, something like that.

I'd say he has some slight commonalities with some of the alt-right, but he'd think they're all jackasses. Back in the day he said he'd consider himself just left of center. Where he would be now is anyone's guess, but I'd like to think he'd stick to his guns on censoriousness, authoritarianism, and corporatism.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Where he would be now is anyone's guess, but I'd like to think he'd stick to his guns on censoriousness, authoritarianism, and corporatism.

Probably in about the same place. He would hate cancel culture and be generally annoyed with a lot of developments on the left, but ultimately what he hated most beyond general authority is rich white Christian men and those are not in short supply in today's pop culture. 

[Corvinus85]

9 hours ago, Spockydog said:

Watched (most of) Troy at the weekend.

JFC, what a load of shite.

It's a proper sausage fest, with a bunch of middle-aged white guys in terrible, terrible wigs. The script was awful, the acting dreadful. Brad Pitt manages to turn in one of the worst performances I've ever seen.

Most of all, though, it is just so incredibly fucking boring.

After the Big Boss Fight, with no sign of a giant horse, we turned it off with forty-five minutes still to go.

 

 

4 hours ago, Ran said:

Peter O'Toole was excellent as Priam, and the scene with Achilles after Hector's death was very good, IMO. But the script isn't great, it's true. That said Achilles storming the beach is a breathtaking piece of choreography, really selling the "godlike Achilles" of The Iliad. 

George and I discussed Troy years ago, while the first season was filming. I shared that Linda had a huge disdain for it (if you can be a fangirl of the Bronze Age, Linda is it), that it was a terrible adaptation of The Iliad... and he defended it and said something along the lines of, well, sure, but it's not called The Iliad, it's called Troy. In retrospect...

Please check the credits to determine why the script had the quality it did.  From wikipedia

Quote

Troy is a 2004 American epic historical war film directed by Wolfgang Petersen and written by David Benioff.

 

[Ran]

3 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Please check the credits to determine why the script had the quality it did. 

Well, that's why George and I were talking about it.  That said, you know, the adaptation of A Game of Thrones was pretty excellent. Of A Song of Ice and Fire. . . .

 

[Zorral]

3 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

More Gladiator than LOTR. If it's sword and sandals and can be presented as historical fiction, it had a good chance of seeing the light of day. This is what gave us Rome on HBO, which is still excellent

[Centrist Simon Steele]

4 hours ago, Ran said:

He hated the term libertarian, but he was pretty much a left libertarian  who was very strongly anti-authoritarian. Everything else came from that_: anti-censorship, generally anti-government, anti-corporate, anti-political correctness, etc. I recall some quip of his that the number one rule he has is to never trust anyone in authority, something like that.

I'd say he has some slight commonalities with some of the alt-right, but he'd think they're all jackasses. Back in the day he said he'd consider himself just left of center. Where he would be now is anyone's guess, but I'd like to think he'd stick to his guns on censoriousness, authoritarianism, and corporatism.

It'd be interesting to see his take on masking--I think it was "You're All Diseased" where he really went off on vaccinations. I was listening to Apatow on this though, and his thought was that Carlin would do exactly what no one expected. 

[Spockydog]

3 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

Please check the credits to determine why the script had the quality it did.  From wikipedia

So, lemme get this straight. Actual humans from HBO watched this shite and then decided to hand over control of their biggest ever show to this hack?

What in the actual fuck.

 

[briantw]

20 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

So, lemme get this straight. Actual humans from HBO watched this shite and then decided to hand over control of their biggest ever show to this hack?

What in the actual fuck.

 

I mean, it worked out pretty damn well for all parties involved right up until the end.  Game of Thrones is the biggest hit HBO has ever had and pretty much carried their brand back to the prominence as the premium cable network.  It was also a cultural phenomenon the likes of which we may never see again.  

Like, Game of Thrones made fantasy mainstream to the point that we're getting fucking Witcher, Wheel of Time, and Lord of the Rings TV series.  Likely none of those series gets off the ground, let alone with a massive budget, without the success of Game of Thrones.

The ending sure as hell sucked, as did the final season in general, and the season and a half or so before that wasn't great either, but I don't see how anyone can look at Game of Thrones as anything other than an absurd success that was tarnished because the showrunners wanted to jet early and go play in the Star Wars universe, and also because George RR Martin couldn't finish a book in ten goddamn years.

[DMC]

17 minutes ago, briantw said:

I mean, it worked out pretty damn well for all parties involved right up until the end.

Yeah.  While virtually everybody on this board may lament (at the least) HBO hiring D&D, pretty sure HBO is satisfied with the results.

[briantw]

4 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yeah.  While virtually everybody on this board may lament (at the least) HBO hiring D&D, pretty sure HBO is satisfied with the results.

Probably not so much satisfied with how opinion turned on the show so quickly, but they certainly got their money's worth from hiring D&D.

And, like, the first four seasons were awesome.  The show only really started to struggle when they started dropping and consolidating so many plot lines from the fourth and fifth book and then fell apart completely once they ran out of source material, even if we did still get a few really cool moments like Dany's raid on the Lannister supply caravan.

The show never really let up visually, either.  The battles by midway through the series up until the end were some of the most visually impressive feats we've ever seen on television, and it may be a while before any of them is surpassed.  I've yet to see another show do anything on par with the Battle for Castle Black, Hardhome, the aforementioned supply raid, or Battle of the Bastards.  The logic of those battles may not have always made a ton of sense, but they looked incredible and felt like they got the most out of their budget.

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, briantw said:

Probably not so much satisfied with how opinion turned on the show so quickly, but they certainly got their money's worth from hiring D&D.

And, like, the first four seasons were awesome.

Right.  HBO's mistake was still relying on D&D in the later seasons and accommodating their truncated ending (even though IIRC they tried like hell to get the two to make as many episodes as possible).  They should have moved on from D&D then - if only because it was clear D&D themselves wanted to move on (and shoulda just quit).  But, it's not surprising they danced with the horse that brung em, and that certainly doesn't mean they regret hiring them in the first place.

[briantw]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

Right.  HBO's mistake was still relying on D&D in the later seasons and accommodating their truncated ending (even though IIRC they tried like hell to get the two to make as many episodes as possible).  They should have moved on from D&D then - if only because it was clear D&D themselves wanted to move on (and shoulda just quit).  But, it's not surprising they danced with the horse that brung em, and that certainly doesn't mean they regret hiring them in the first place.

Pretty spot on take.  When it became clear that they wanted to move on, HBO should have let them but kept the GOT gravy train rolling through ten seasons and given us a proper ending.  Hell, bring in Martin full-time to do the scripting.  It's not like he's working on Winds anyway.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

41 minutes ago, briantw said:

And, like, the first four seasons were awesome.  The show only really started to struggle when they started dropping and consolidating so many plot lines from the fourth and fifth book and then fell apart completely once they ran out of source material, even if we did still get a few really cool moments like Dany's raid on the Lannister supply caravan.

To be fair, Feast and Dance are probably unfilmable as is whereas the first three books are far easier to put on screen.

[IlyaP]

6 hours ago, DMC said:

Right.  HBO's mistake was still relying on D&D in the later seasons and accommodating their truncated ending (even though IIRC they tried like hell to get the two to make as many episodes as possible).  They should have moved on from D&D then - if only because it was clear D&D themselves wanted to move on (and shoulda just quit).  But, it's not surprising they danced with the horse that brung em, and that certainly doesn't mean they regret hiring them in the first place.

Does anyone know why D&D didn't simply let someone else take over the show? If they were tired and needed a rest, why not say "hey, <Trained TV Show Runner Person>, wanna take over for us?"

That way the show could have continued and avoided having an allegedly truncated ending (I've not seen much of the show).