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[Heartofice]

6 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

I feel like Ridley just wants to crank out as many films as possible and is not overly concerned with quality control anymore.

I feel like many of the issues in Napoleon are ones I’d find in a lot of his movies actually, lots of style, not much substance. Sometimes it works, quite often it doesn’t 

[polishgenius]

2 hours ago, Veltigar said:

I feel like Ridley just wants to crank out as many films as possible and is not overly concerned with quality control anymore.

 

He's been cranking out nearly a film a year for the last twenty years. It'd be madness if they were all little movies, let alone the scale he often works on. It's absolute madness, the pace he works out, and it's not conducive to genuinely good filmmaking with any consistency. 

[kissdbyfire]

All the talk about Ridley Scott and now I'm trying to remember what was the last film of his I've seen, and which one was the last one I actually liked. Have to go find a list now.

[Heartofice]

52 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

 

He's been cranking out nearly a film a year for the last twenty years. It'd be madness if they were all little movies, let alone the scale he often works on. It's absolute madness, the pace he works out, and it's not conducive to genuinely good filmmaking with any consistency. 

How much is actually him these days? At this age I’m assuming he is delegating a lot of work to other people and more over seeing?

[kissdbyfire]

Started watching Shining Girls. Only 1 ep so far but looks interesting. Anyone seen it?

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

9 hours ago, Heartofice said:

How much is actually him these days? At this age I’m assuming he is delegating a lot of work to other people and more over seeing?

I will say, once again he nails the atmosphere and look of the film as he always does, so I can see touches of him in it. It’s the story and characters that falter. Although everyone seemed a little too clean for revolutionary French mobs for my liking…

[IlyaP]

5 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Although everyone seemed a little too clean for revolutionary French mobs for my liking…

Needs more cowbell.

[polishgenius]

I'm not gonna be able to see it for a few weeks but Godzilla Minus One is getting rave reviews and I can't fucking wait. 

[Ran]

Just finished Blue Beetle, which was painful enough that I started skipping ahead to get to the "good" parts. It's a pretty poor film, honestly, and not sure why I decided to put it on other than I was tired after a long day and wanted something brainless. The zany extrovert Latino family was cloyingly on the nose and annoying, for the most part, especially (sadly) the sister, though at least they gave the Abuela a couple of good gags. It's just not a good film, really, though I did like Xolo Maridueña and have liked him since The Karate Kid TV series. Oh, the actress playing Jenny Kord was also pretty stilted and uninteresting.

Just a poor film all around, I'm afraid, very little to redeem it. Blue Beetle was their try at a sort of Latino Spider-man, except Marvel beat them to the punch with the Miles Morales cartoons, and also actually made good use of him rather than a stilted, by-the-numbers superhero film with basically nothing to redeem it except its very mediocrity.

Did decide to watch Squid Game: The Challenge, and it's been fun reading the exit interviews with cast members on EW, especially after this last tranche of episodes where they talk to Trey (the son in the son-mother pairing) about why he did ... well, the crazy thing he did on the glass bridge. Contextualized the way he put it, it not only made sense of what he did, but also I think contextualizes a lot of the out-there behavior we sometimes see from players. In particular, the "dalgona" game ... the guy who ended up botching things and getting the umbrella for his team was a total nervous wreck through the whole thing, which seemed histrionic, but Trey pointed out that before the game started, but after the decision was made, Spencer (the guy) was basically in this big, cold white room with all the other players who he had consigned to almost-certain doom for seven hours waiting to finally carve out the umbrella, and that that would have been torture.

The rest of the meta stuff about it, I do not care about. It's just a TV show, one of a zillion reality competition shows out there. The only thing I dislike is, as others say, the American-ness of it, it's overly produced and spends too much time on personal back story, but nothing some judicious skipping couldn't fix.

Been watching Fargo season 5 -- I loved the first two seasons, bounced off the 3rd part way, and didn't watch the 4th (which seems universally panned), but Jon Hamm and Juno Temple seemed fun in the trailers, and so far not been disappointed. Ole Munch's background "reveal" (if it is, in fact, real and not just his delusion) was quite fun, but then again Hawley has always dabbled with weird and inexplicable phenomena in his work (e.g. season 2's UFO) so it's no different here.

[Buckwheat]

I just saw Napoleon today and I am disappointed ... I agree with all the bad reviews on here.

Spoiler

I was the most bothered by the main actor. Wasn't the young Napoleon supposed to be a charismatic, ambitious ... living man? The actor (who, I am sorry to say, didn't look 25 or however old he was supposed to be in the beginning) acted like he was an old man with one foot in the grave all along, even when he was supposed to be an infatuated 20-something. I couldn't believe the men would actually follow this man after his speech to the soldiers after he returned from Elba.

The relationships between the characters weren't fleshed out enough, the story didn't seem like it follows a silver lining. Also too much voiceover.

And yes, I also recognised the score from Pride and Prejudice immediately. Weird choice. But at least I learned something new - I thought until now that the song was not written for P&P the 2005 movie, but that it was an original from the 1800s!

[IlyaP]

8 hours ago, Ran said:

Just finished Blue Beetle, which was painful enough that I started skipping ahead to get to the "good" parts. It's a pretty poor film, honestly, and not sure why I decided to put it on other than I was tired after a long day and wanted something brainless. The zany extrovert Latino family was cloyingly on the nose and annoying, for the most part, especially (sadly) the sister, though at least they gave the Abuela a couple of good gags. It's just not a good film, really, though I did like Xolo Maridueña and have liked him since The Karate Kid TV series. Oh, the actress playing Jenny Kord was also pretty stilted and uninteresting.

Who thought we needed a Blue Beetle movie? I still can't figure out why this exists. (Also, the score is monumentally bland, with only a few, scant moments of interesting compositions and ideas.)

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

3 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Who thought we needed a Blue Beetle movie? I still can't figure out why this exists. (Also, the score is monumentally bland, with only a few, scant moments of interesting compositions and ideas.)

It was meant to be content filler for Max until they inexplicably decided to release it in the theatres.

[polishgenius]

3 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

It was meant to be content filler for Max until they inexplicably decided to release it in the theatres.

 

I mean, not quite. The initial plan had been to do that, yeah, but they changed that after Soto pitched, before filming started, because they thought he had something. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

9 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Who thought we needed a Blue Beetle movie? I still can't figure out why this exists. (Also, the score is monumentally bland, with only a few, scant moments of interesting compositions and ideas.)

We came *that close* to getting Wonder Twins.

[Veltigar]

I have caught up on the seventh season of Rick and Morty. Good season so far. I don't think any of the episodes will become classics, but I also haven't watched any duds yet. It's just a reliable good time throughout, and as long as they keep at least this level, I'll be very happy to tune in every week. Also did not notice that they swapped the voices out until someone reminded me, so that's also pretty wel done.

On 12/1/2023 at 6:34 PM, kissdbyfire said:

All the talk about Ridley Scott and now I'm trying to remember what was the last film of his I've seen, and which one was the last one I actually liked. Have to go find a list now.

For me it was House of Gucci (no better place to release style over substance than there) and The Last Duel right before that I really thought was great.

On 12/1/2023 at 6:30 PM, polishgenius said:

 

He's been cranking out nearly a film a year for the last twenty years. It'd be madness if they were all little movies, let alone the scale he often works on. It's absolute madness, the pace he works out, and it's not conducive to genuinely good filmmaking with any consistency. 

I want to believe @polishgenius I think that has been my problem all along.

Seriously though, I always assumed I could tell which one of his many movies would turn out good (The Last Duel) and which one would turn out to be bad (Alien: Covenant, Exodus). Napoleon has shattered that assumption.

On 12/1/2023 at 7:23 PM, Heartofice said:

How much is actually him these days? At this age I’m assuming he is delegating a lot of work to other people and more over seeing?

I think pretty much all his children are in on the family business. He's still responsible for a lot of the storyboarding though. Apparently, he makes these drawings called "Ridleygrams" to map out his vision for a film. There was a good article about all this stuff in the Napoleon thread.

On 12/1/2023 at 3:59 PM, Heartofice said:

I feel like many of the issues in Napoleon are ones I’d find in a lot of his movies actually, lots of style, not much substance. Sometimes it works, quite often it doesn’t 

Over the last couple of years he was doing fine though. So sad that he falters here.

12 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

And yes, I also recognised the score from Pride and Prejudice immediately. Weird choice. But at least I learned something new - I thought until now that the song was not written for P&P the 2005 movie, but that it was an original from the 1800s!

It was written explicitly to invoke the music of the time, so don't feel too bad about it  

[Heartofice]

4 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

Over the last couple of years he was doing fine though. So sad that he falters here.

12 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

Was he though? You and me will still disagree over whether The Last Duel was a good movie, I don’t think it was. 
 

But if I go back through his most recent movies we have:

- House of Gucci ( I actually liked it but it’s hardly high quality movie making)

- All the money in the world (didn’t see it, don’t remember hearing about it)

- Alien covenant ( vomit)

- The Martian ( ok this was pretty good)

- Exodus Gods and Kings ( dear god)

- The Councellor  (err)

- Prometheus ( looks worse by the day)

- Robin Hood ( maybe his worst historical epic?)

 

Robin Hood was 2010 so that’s almost 14 years worth of movies and I personally think Martian was the best of the bunch, and it’s not amazing. Maybe Scott is getting a lot of hype, I hadn’t realised until looking at that list just how many actual turkeys are there. 
 

Plus if you go even further back it’s a real mixed bunch too. 

[Veltigar]

The trick is, you don't go to see his bad ones  Like, I have never seen Exodus and the Counsellor. All The Money in the World is a short so that doesn't count either. If you just follow that guideline the quality of his output markedly improves 

[Ran]

The Counsellor is a big whiff for a lot of critics, IMO. I suspect there's going to be a critical re-evaluation of it in years to come.

[IlyaP]

53 minutes ago, Ran said:

The Counsellor is a big whiff for a lot of critics, IMO. I suspect there's going to be a critical re-evaluation of it in years to come.

Still can't get myself to watch that movie. It just looks like a big nothing.

[williamjm]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

- All the money in the world (didn’t see it, don’t remember hearing about it)

I had forgotten that this was a Ridley Scott film. I thought it was an okay film, but nothing special. It's probably most interesting when focusing on Christopher Plummer's Getty senior and his refusal to pay his grandson's ransom but as a thriller it isn't particularly thrilling.