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Watch, Watched, Watching: Festival Time!


Zorral

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Watched Boiling Point, a UK one continuous shot drama about a chef. Thought it was really great. Stephen Graham as the lead was just mesmerising from the first second to the last. I guess most people wokld recognise him from Snatch but he’s really good in everything.

Then I watched Everything Everywhere All At Once, for the second time. I don’t think it’s too hyperbolic to say I think it’s one of the best movies ever made. I love it so much.

It’s incredibly hard to make a movie with its own set of rules, that just does things it’s own way, which doesn’t tell a straightforward story and is endlessly creative. 
It’s also incredibly hard to make a movie with an emotional centre that moves the audience and has real heart.

So being able to do both and to do it so perfectly, to make everyhing feel so internally consistent and to do it all with such visual flair and obvious hard work… it just blows me away. 

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A writer for The Witcher in a recent interview casually mentioned that many of the writing staff actively dislike and mock the source material.

Quote

Q: "Can you discuss how the production team came about, like how they were recruited for X-Men '97?"

A: "For sure, in fall of 2020, Marvel's head of streaming asked me to develop a take to revive this show. From there I pitched it out, was hired. My LP was the first hire and he brought along all the amazing talent that followed. My general rule was you HAD to be a fan. No questions.
I've been on show - namely Witcher - where some of the writers were not or actively disliked the books and games (even actively mocking the source material.) It's a recipe for disaster and bad morale. Fandom as a litmus test checks egos, and makes all the long nights worth it.
You have to respect the work before you're allowed to add to its legacy."

Link here.

It really comes as no surprise and I suspect is common of the writing staff of shows like Wheel of Time, and Rings of Power, too. Writers get hold of a property they feel is outdated and want to improve upon it, and then write material antithetical to the property. It seems to be a bizarre but common trend, based on the shows that are produced.

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5 hours ago, IFR said:

A writer for The Witcher in a recent interview casually mentioned that many of the writing staff actively dislike and mock the source material.

Link here.

It really comes as no surprise and I suspect is common of the writing staff of shows like Wheel of Time, and Rings of Power, too. Writers get hold of a property they feel is outdated and want to improve upon it, and then write material antithetical to the property. It seems to be a bizarre but common trend, based on the shows that are produced.

I feel bad for Cavill who is known to often have to correct people on set about this or that, since he's such a huge fan.

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7 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Watched Boiling Point, a UK one continuous shot drama about a chef. Thought it was really great. Stephen Graham as the lead was just mesmerising from the first second to the last. I guess most people wokld recognise him from Snatch but he’s really good in everything.

Then I watched Everything Everywhere All At Once, for the second time. I don’t think it’s too hyperbolic to say I think it’s one of the best movies ever made. I love it so much.

It’s incredibly hard to make a movie with its own set of rules, that just does things it’s own way, which doesn’t tell a straightforward story and is endlessly creative. 
It’s also incredibly hard to make a movie with an emotional centre that moves the audience and has real heart.

So being able to do both and to do it so perfectly, to make everyhing feel so internally consistent and to do it all with such visual flair and obvious hard work… it just blows me away. 

He is amazing and gets nowhere near enough credit, he might just be the best British actor working today (along with Coleman). 

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Responding to IFR. 

Ouch. I remember Chris Avellone talking about the power of hate when it comes to writing – really, the impulse to fight back against stale narratives, question the universe's sacred bulls, and do the unexpected and head off in different directions. And I liked that in e.g. Star Wars: The Last Jedi. 

At the same time, actually hating the core property seems extreme for a writer hired to work in it. It's fine to know the universe really well and have some problems with it, but barely knowing it and not caring to, just having contempt for it, that seems wrong. Why even sign onto the franchise, in that case?

It isn't hugely important to me since if I was really attached to a creative work, I wouldn't tune in for extensions to it made by people other than the original writer(s). So I'm never going to watch The Rings of Power because the writers have inevitably failed to be a 20th-century RC Professor from Birmingham obsessed with languages and haunted by the trenches. Whereas I would watch The Witcher, since I like the games and haven't read the books, but not to the extent I'd care if the studios wanted to make huge changes running contrary to the spirit of the original. I'd just care if they made a good television show. 

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I went into the vault and rewatched Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story with Ben Still and Vince Vaugn yesterday. It's amazing to see how far we have come since 2004 as there is a lot of comedy in there that I do not think would work particularly well today. That being said, I still greatly enjoyed this film. Not sure why it never seems to have captured the zeitgeist as much as Zoolander did, but I think I probably prefer this one. The character of Patches O'Houlihan just cracks me up.

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Watched 2018's Wedding Guest.

Dev Patel had quite a year doing this movie and Hotel Mumbai as well that year. 

Enjoyed each quite a bit.

-

 

Description

Jay is a man with a secret who travels from Britain to Pakistan to attend a wedding - armed with duct tape, a shotgun, and a plan to kidnap the bride-to-be. Despite his cold efficiency, the plot quickly spirals out of control, sending Jay and his hostage on the run across the border and through the … More
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11 hours ago, IFR said:

A writer for The Witcher in a recent interview casually mentioned that many of the writing staff actively dislike and mock the source material.

Wow. That explains quite a lot why some of the writers' ideas were so far off of the source material. I always thought changes are inevitable in adapting prose to tv and can ba a good thing (The Expanse immediately comes to mind), but most of the changes they made in The Witcher were simply dreadful and completely unnecessary.

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5 hours ago, Veltigar said:

That being said, I still greatly enjoyed this film. Not sure why it never seems to have captured the zeitgeist as much as Zoolander did, but I think I probably prefer this one.

Yeah, Dodgeball is considerably funnier than Zoolander.  Curious what jokes/situations you think wouldn't work today?

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15 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Watched Boiling Point, a UK one continuous shot drama about a chef. Thought it was really great. Stephen Graham as the lead was just mesmerising from the first second to the last. I guess most people wokld recognise him from Snatch but he’s really good in everything.

This looks like The Bear "Review" episode on steroids. 

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15 minutes ago, Raja said:
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Mild HOTD spoiler :lol:

So much stupid. So many stupids.  Really, there was so much they could have done with this,

Spoiler

as in real life childbirth dangers and perils.  Yesterday a man entered a Dallas hospital's obstetric unit where his wife was giving birth and shot two nurses and,  I think, somebody else.  OTOH, that didn't seem to make any national headlines or news coverage.

 

 

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57 minutes ago, Zorral said:

So much stupid. So many stupids.  Really, there was so much they could have done with this,

  Reveal hidden contents

as in real life childbirth dangers and perils.  Yesterday a man entered a Dallas hospital's obstetric unit where his wife was giving birth and shot two nurses and,  I think, somebody else.  OTOH, that didn't seem to make any national headlines or news coverage.

 

 

I honestly am at a loss at where you're going with this. You think it would have contributed to the story to have some random deranged person storm in and kill a couple midwives during a birthing scene?

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Bored and hadn't been to the movies in a while so I saw Black Adam. Eh, it was ok at best. Most of the premise didn't make sense until a reveal later on that made no sense being a secret

Spoiler

That Black Adam wasn't actually the savior, his son was and he gave his power to his father to save him and he was then locked away by the Wizards because of his rage.  I mean hiding it from the town for thousands of years? And how did the secret group know but no one in the area did? Lots of this movie made little sense.

Don't waste your time unless you are a fan of the Rock, or want to see a big screen action movie. It leaves a lot to be desired. Oh and the worst part of all, my popcorn wasn't all that good! Good sized audience though considering it was a Sunday night.

Season finale for HotD last night. I really liked this show, not entirely surprised since I also loved GOT. The entire season basically set us up for the war to come but I never found myself bored, looking at my phone or anything like that. IMO they did a great job at building up these characters and showing their motivations for what is to come.

Spoiler

On the dragon battle, I remembered reading that part in a book or novella or something so when he was heading off to Storms end I was like, oh yeah, he dies here. I just wish we had gotten to see Winterfell in this episode, that and the Vale. Would've been nice to see more familiar castles.

I love the way they did the Dragonstone map table. 

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Started watching Thirteen Lives , recent movie about the Thai soccer team that got trapped in a cave. I think this might be the one where Elon Musk called a diver a paedo or something.

Ive no idea because I will never finish it. 
 

It’s so bad. It reminds me of those incident reconstructions on Police 999 or whatever those shows used to be called, where instead of using actors they had real people reel off lines robotically. I am not sure they used actual actors in this movie.

I lie, they used used two known actors and the movie is so bad they managed to make Colin Farrel and Viggo Mortensen look like they’ve never acted in their lives. What were they thinking signing up to this?

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Watched the first two eps of The Peripheral. 

It is fucking amazing and I want more of y'all to watch it so I can talk about it more. It has so many similar beats to Westworld in terms of tech + near future + weird timeline stories, but for some reason it's grabbed me so much faster than that ever did. The acting is awesome, good lines and scripting, bad-ass cybertech and drone work, and cool as hell to watch. 

I've not read the book but am going to go buy that now, because this is awesome. 

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15 minutes ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

Watched the first two eps of The Peripheral. 

Huh, never even heard of it.  I see Joy and Nolan are EPs.  No promises but I might check out the first two eps this week.

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It's on Amazon and I've debated checking it out. I stopped Westworld after 2 or 3 seasons because I thought it wasn't particularly engaging, so being like that wouldn't be a plus per se but it looks interesting enough for me to give it a try.

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21 minutes ago, Raja said:

It's on Amazon and I've debated checking it out. I stopped Westworld after 2 or 3 seasons because I thought it wasn't particularly engaging, so being like that wouldn't be a plus per se but it looks interesting enough for me to give it a try.

At least so far it's real engaging to me. The plot is definitely in media res and as a result we're thrown into the mix quite quickly while also giving us more meaty stuff and mysteries to look at. And unlike Westworld, we're given a main PoV character who is relatively clueless like we are, so instead of not asking questions we get a lot of the points we personally have raised. 

It's also gorgeous. Using London shots with techie overlays, shooting in Maryland for the outside shots and the country, the way they integrate tech, the lighting...it's so pretty. 

 

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