Watch, Watched, Watching: It's Award Season

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

So I'm watching Kill Bill Vol. 2 on Netflix. I noticed that Pai Mei's incredible dialogue was all incomprehensible and foreign and weird to me. Then I realized that there were no subtitles for some reason. So I turned the subtitles on.

Now all the english language dialogue is subtitled but the non-english dialogue isn't. 

What? No. This makes me sad. 

[Heartofice]

I finally got to watch The Creator. I doubt anything I say is new or unique, but I really liked it. It brought back a sense of engagement and escapism into a different world that very few other movies have managed to capture. Everything felt consistent and thought out, and I loved how real it was, and how that just kept me locked in. 
 

I think a lot of other people have said the same, but that The Creator can look 100x better visually, have more impressive visual effects than movies that have more than twice the budget is a damning verdict on Hollywood movie making. 
 

It has to just come down to skill and an understanding of how to best apply visual effects, when it works and when it doesn’t. Gareth Edwards just gets it, he always has. I think back to any movies from the past decade or so that have made me go ‘wow’ when I saw them, movies that use their CGI to create a sense of awe, and it’s only 2 men who have managed it. Edwards and Villenueve. Both work in quite a similar way, and both try to make the visual effects seamless from their surroundings, they aren’t there to create flashy shots, it’s about creating a believable majestic sense of awe.

I remember watching Monsters and my jaw dropping from some of the shots in that, the same with his Godzilla movie, which might be one of the only trailers in the last decade I had to repeatedly watch because of the beautiful shots. And then Rogue One I go back and watch often just for how it looks.

Hes doing the same thing in all of those movies, but he’s basically perfected it.

So why does Hollywood, especially Disney / Marvel think they can just hand the visual effect keys to people who have no experience and expect them to understand how to work with computer effects… effectively! Everything from Marvel seems deeply naive in comparison, no understanding of the limitations of what computers can do, and what they really can’t do.

You get the sense a newbie director will come in with these amazing storyboards with some ideas of shots, and they just hand them off to the effects firm, hoping they get them back months later and it looks ok.

She Hulk just got cancelled, because they burned through their budget ( which I find deliciously ironic) but it’s maybe the most egregious example of not understanding the limitations of CGI. You could have made a She Hulk that didn’t look hideous and wonky in every shot, but you’d need to light shots properly and frame them in a way that didn’t expose the flaws the entire time. It’s not just a matter of over worked visual effects artists, it’s also understanding the basics. But the system seems to hand off responsibility to FX external teams and expect better results. 
 

Technology might have moved on in the last decade, but you have to know how to use it. If I can go back and look at things such as District 9 ( even the short film it was based on) and think it looks much better than Quantumania then that’s also pretty damning. 

[Ran]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Hes doing the same thing in all of those movies, but he’s basically perfected it.

He really is very, very good at it, but he understands it as someone who was doing his own VFX. He understands the pipelines, he understands the challenges, and he understands how to make it all work. 

Unsurprisingly, The Creator lead the Visual Effects Society Awards with a total of seven nominations.

[Heartofice]

7 minutes ago, Ran said:

Unsurprisingly, The Creator lead the Visual Effects Society Awards with a total of seven nominations

How many did Quantumania get?

[Heartofice]

On 1/20/2024 at 7:53 AM, Ran said:

I just read that the BBC has revived it as Gladiators back in the UK, with apparently positive reviews in the press.

The British version never really had the glamour of the American Gladiators though 

 

[Ran]

39 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

How many did Quantumania get?

Zero. Full list of nominees here.

[polishgenius]

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

Zero. Full list of nominees here.

 

'real-time project' is such a funny way of saying 'video game'. 

[Consigliere]

On 1/19/2024 at 11:46 PM, Corvinus85 said:

Yeah, while I enjoyed season 2 of Reacher, the wanton disregard of the law, bloodthirstiness at the conclusion, and the near swerve into the fantastical was too much. Never ready any of the books, but I don't really believe this one was the same.

The quality of the dialogue also took a massive nosedive this season as well. The repetitive catchphrases were absolutely cringeworthy. Season 1 had a good balance between brains and brawn but season 2 reduced Reacher to nothing more than a meathead. The fight choreography was also shit this season plus the actor, Alan Ritchson, seems to have bulked up way too much - he could hardly move in some fight scenes. The supporting cast were also rather flat and forgettable and the less said about the Scooby Doo villains, the better.

Edited January 21 by Consigliere

[hauberk]

13 hours ago, dbunting said:

Shoot out scene (shocker!) and the view is from above as he goes room to room with a shot gun.

It does not stand out but that’s not surprising. 

[Ran]

Decided to watch The Equalizer 2, for the hell of it. It was appreciably worse than the first film, falling into an obvious and lazy formula. Worst of all, the main villain was almost immediately obvious simply due to casting and who'd been introduced up to that point, with no attempt to play around with misdirection to at least give a plausible air of mystery.

 

[polishgenius]

Equaliser 2 was worse than the first one for a couple reasons, for me: first, the 'looking out for a local kid' plot that didn't really make any sense or tie into anything beyond the directors wanting him to have someone to fight for in the finale (and just generally the plot was less focused), and second while they didn't forget quite because the finale and the scene where Frank meets the guy's family play up to it, for large parts they lost sight of the fact that the fun of the first one came in large portion from Frank being, to the bad guys,  pretty much a horror movie killer working in the service of good. 

[Nictarion]

I thought John Wick 4 was great. I liked both Caine and Mr. Nobody a lot, and the “dragon’s breath” scene was definitely memorable for me. That sequence alone was worth the price of admission. 

[Ran]

10 minutes ago, Nictarion said:

I thought John Wick 4 was great. I liked both Caine and Mr. Nobody a lot, and the “dragon’s breath” scene was definitely memorable for me. That sequence alone was worth the price of admission. 

I stopped long before that (not long after Caine was introduced, which is something, because I love Donnie Yen).

I'll probably dive into it again at some point.

[Veltigar]

The season finale of Reacher season 2 has more endings than Return of the King. None of them were any good sadly, but they kept trying to see what would stick I guess.

As pointed out earlier, the villains in this season are the dumbest bunch of assholes ever cobbled together. I don't know if anyone is counting, but Reacher and company must have killed like twenty conspirators. Not taking into account operational costs, these idiots were risking their life for at most 3.25 million USD a pop. Great money if you can earn it legally, but to get involved in terrorism in such a way that you will get killed or incarcerated for life as result it really is chump money.

I was also unpleasantly surprised by the whole plot about 

Spoiler

Senator Lavoy. Surely no senatorial security team would risk their lives to cover up a crime like this and commit a dozen murders as well as other illegal activities?  

I'm not entirely sure whether I'll return next season. Perhaps I'll still binge it when its all done, as that works better for this show imo. What I do know is that it sadly isn't must watch tv, which it might have become if the second had mimicked the quality of that first season.

[williamjm]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

Equaliser 2 was worse than the first one for a couple reasons, for me: first, the 'looking out for a local kid' plot that didn't really make any sense or tie into anything beyond the directors wanting him to have someone to fight for in the finale (and just generally the plot was less focused), and second while they didn't forget quite because the finale and the scene where Frank meets the guy's family play up to it, for large parts they lost sight of the fact that the fun of the first one came in large portion from Frank being, to the bad guys,  pretty much a horror movie killer working in the service of good. 

I thought the third film was a lot closer to the formula of the first film than the second was.

53 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

As pointed out earlier, the villains in this season are the dumbest bunch of assholes ever cobbled together. I don't know if anyone is counting, but Reacher and company must have killed like twenty conspirators. Not taking into account operational costs, these idiots were risking their life for at most 3.25 million USD a pop. Great money if you can earn it legally, but to get involved in terrorism in such a way that you will get killed or incarcerated for life as result it really is chump money.

I suspect Robert Patrick wasn't going to be content with just an equal share.

To be fair, they probably didn't think they were risking their lives originally, their original plan was to do things without anyone else noticing and when that was no longer possible they were already committed.

[kissdbyfire]

I'm watching Boy Swallows Universe and I'm loving it. I haven't read the book, so I don't know how faithful or not it is, but I'm finding it thoroughly delightful. It's not perfect, but then what is. It's heartwarming and gut-wrenching, funny and sad and suspenseful and horrifying, and there's even some physical comedy. 

It's fairly well written and directed, and the cast is absolutely fantastic. The young actors (all of them, not just the 2 central characters) are excellent. Bryan Brown is great, as is Anthony LaPaglia. A pleasant surprise for me was Simon Baker; I think I had never watched anything w/ him apart from a couple of episodes of The Mentalist, which I really, really didn't like. But he does a fantastic job here, and I almost didn't recognise him... but I had that "he looks familiar" thing nagging at me so I looked it up, and then I saw it, so to speak. 

Solid 8/10 for me. ETA: If it doesn't jump the shark in the last 2 episodes I have left to watch. 

Edited January 21 by kissdbyfire

[Veltigar]

12 hours ago, williamjm said:

I suspect Robert Patrick wasn't going to be content with just an equal share.

Most definitely, which makes the others even dumber since there is less money to go around for them.

12 hours ago, williamjm said:

To be fair, they probably didn't think they were risking their lives originally, their original plan was to do things without anyone else noticing and when that was no longer possible they were already committed.

That's the insane thing about this plot though, how on earth could anyone think they'd get away with something like this? If planes had started going down (especially planes carrying important people), than the full resources of Uncle Sam would have been dedicated to finding those responsible.

There is no way such a vast conspiracy within the confines of one defence contractor would not have been discovered. Especially if so many people within the security team (who seem to have had a sketchy past) all of a sudden seemed to have come into a lot of money. Perhaps I would be milder in my assessment if the rest of the series had taken more care to work within the limits of my suspension of disbelief, but with everything else going on, this was just too much for me.

[Isis]

Watched this absolutely pitiful film called Time Trap on Netflix about some students who go into a cave to look for their professor who has vanished and they get caught in an abnomality. I was really hoping for a so-bad-it's-good scenario here but it was just weak. Don't go there.

We also started watching South Park from the very beginning as I want to get my money's worth out of Paramount + - I have definitely seen the first four seasons multiple times (I had them on VHS!) but there were lots of bits I'd forgotten. I'd forgotten that the mayor was such an awful human. 

We recently bought a multipass for our local cinema (three minutes walk from our house) and I am determined to go and See Poor Things this week, having failed for the past two weekends.

[TheLastWolf]

True Detective S4E2

Spoiler

1. Travis Cohle daddyo

2. Spiral shit again

3. Tuttle? Seriously... pedo hillbilly cultists sweet home alabama funding origin of life experiments up in the arctic (cohle again, so s1 no coincidence?) Maybe the non cellular decay bacteria immortality thing?

4. I'm afraid I'm going to learn everyone's been fucking everyone in this town. Ugh I know it's cold but still control your pants folks.

5. Supernatural forsho, like a whole town normalized these visions or apparitions. No scientific unga bunga giing to explain the guy who lmao, survived 48 plus hours naked. White Walkers didnt work the first time around.

6. Foreshadowing, Qavvik dog gonna eat him

7. The trailer, golden eagle, indian thing? And the cousin's name...plus the voodoo props again

8. Gaea is the she who is awake forsho

 

And it's not empowerment to make female characters insufferable jerks who do things that make up what was problematic when the men did them for so long onscreen

We need a thread ppl

Edited January 22 by TheLastWolf

[dbunting]

19 hours ago, Nictarion said:

I thought John Wick 4 was great. I liked both Caine and Mr. Nobody a lot, and the “dragon’s breath” scene was definitely memorable for me. That sequence alone was worth the price of admission. 

That was the shot gun scene I was thinking of. The scene that I didn't like was the stairs. Seemed to go on forever.