Watch, Watched, Watching: Watching Severance and working for Lumon

[Derfel Cadarn]

10 hours ago, Ran said:

Eh, Backdraft was pretty well-regarded at the time, as I recall. I certainly had no problem with him in it, his faults didn't really seem to matter much given the form of the thriller and the cast around him. But YMMV.

Baldwin is also in the more recent straight to DVD sequel. 

[Heartofice]

9 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Some of the stuff shown in the movie - especially when inside the speed force early on in the first half of the movie in particular, is apparently intentional, as the director, Andy Muschietti, wanted to give viewers a sense of something different, and strange, to convey the weirdness of what Barry experiences. Points for at least thinking about these things and wanting to try something weird and different?

Yes it's weird, but it's also just bad. The ambition is there, but the technical ability to achieve that ambition is not. 

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Yes it's weird, but it's also just bad. The ambition is there, but the technical ability to achieve that ambition is not. 

At least he tried? Better than not at all, right?

[Heartofice]

1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

At least he tried? Better than not at all, right?

I liked the sequence itself, it was fun and I kind wish more of the movie was like that.

The problem I'm raising is that, it's all very well having these amazing ideas, but the techie CGI bods don't have the time/resource/money/skill to implement it. The Batman sequence afterwards was actually much worse, I think they were fully CGIing Batfleck's head in this movie, it just looks freakin' weird. The action in that bike chase is so over the top, but never finds the right balance between ludicrous and realistic, so hits a bad, uncanny valley middle ground.

[BigFatCoward]

The Bear, do they ever stop shouting all the time, its really draining. 

[Ran]

5 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

The Bear, do they ever stop shouting all the time, its really draining. 

 

(Basically, no,  though there are points where they start getting everything together more smoothly and things are not quite as tense. But they still shout to make sure everyone hears.)

Edited March 20 by Ran

[Heartofice]

18 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

The Bear, do they ever stop shouting all the time, its really draining. 

Everyone loved the Christmas episode, but the first half of that I found was giving me a stomach ulcer. The Bear is a good show, but it's just jabbing you with negative emotion so often that it isn't always a fun watch. 

[Mexal]

9 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Everyone loved the Christmas episode, but the first half of that I found was giving me a stomach ulcer. The Bear is a good show, but it's just jabbing you with negative emotion so often that it isn't always a fun watch. 

Did they? I think people appreciated the craft but like you, it was far too stressful to actually enjoy let alone love. Everyone did love Forks though (one of my all time favorite episodes of TV), which is directly after the Christmas episode and I suspect a large part of that is because of the stress of the Christmas episode.

[Heartofice]

3 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Did they? I think people appreciated the craft but like you, it was far too stressful to actually enjoy let alone love. Everyone did love Forks though (one of my all time favorite episodes of TV), which is directly after the Christmas episode and I suspect a large part of that is because of the stress of the Christmas episode.

Well from the reaction on here and elsewhere it seemed it was pretty popular, I personally didn't like all that much due to it giving me stress. 

And yes, I think Forks brought me back on board with the show, it was much more feel good and inspiring, and Richie is a likeable underdog.

Edited March 20 by Heartofice

[TheLastWolf]

Eastern Promises

A History of Violence was more raw but this one was sublime. Phew never going to a public bath ever. And that drip. That throat threat. That naked cool. Argh. 

Spoiler

Crackpot: Kolya is Semyon's son, the papa scene is a hint.

 

[Ran]

Finally watched Ferrari on Amazon Prime. It's mid-tier Michael Mann, but that means there's still some really excellent stuff. Penélope Cruz is particularly really good as Enzo  Ferrari's long-suffering wife, rendered bitter by losses she's suffered and humiliations she's enduring. Adam Driver is not very much like Enzo Ferrari,  but he has real presence on the screen and conveys the ruthless single-mindedness of Enzo really well. Shailene Woodley as his mistress (that's who @Relic mentioned awhile ago) was definitely not the best casting choice, she felt pretty weightless, but otherwise it's a good cast. The only downside is that they really pushed the budget on shooting on location and recreating some of the races, so the VFX is sometimes quite poor, which is a shame when Mann's such a meticulous craftsman.

[Ran]

Watched the new Road House, directed by Doug Liman and starring Jake Gylenhaal as a very different take on the character of Dalton. I'd describe him as a slacker sociopath more than a philosophical bouncer, and in fact his performance kind of reminds me a little bit of Swayze's character in Point Break moreso than the original Road House Dalton, with a smattering of Gylenhaal's Lou Boom from Nightcrawler.

Connor McGregor (who hit the "supplements" hard) is almost certainly getting a Razzie for his performance, but I admit there's one scene where you realize that he really means to be playing a complete nut and it's just so hilarious.

Spoiler

After he crashes the stolen driving school car and checks out the pad to try and make sense of what happened after Dalton swept through it, and his action figure stance and stiffness is just... it has to be intended, him posing and acting oddball for an audience of no one but himself, right?

I don't think this one is going to be a cult classic, but the fights were pretty interesting and Gyllenhaal was kind of charming in a goofy way. 

And, going back to Liman, Casey Neistat is a long-time friend of his and ended up doing a pretty interesting video leading up to the SXSW premiere. Lets just say that Liman and Amazon butted heads over the movie, and he's not afraid to be very voluble and explicit about the beef (and, ultimately, its resolution):

 

Edited March 21 by Ran

[BigFatCoward]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Connor McGregor (who hit the "supplements" hard) is almost certainly getting a Razzie for his performance, but I admit there's one scene where you realize that he really means to be playing a complete nut and it's just so hilarious.

 

Which just goes to show how easy it is to beat a test, he was the most tested UFC fighter in the last year (i don't know when it was filmed but he is still comically distorted).

[JGP]

2 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Which just goes to show how easy it is to beat a test, he was the most tested UFC fighter in the last year (i don't know when it was filmed but he is still comically distorted).

May be easy depending on who supervises the testing of MMA fighters, but McGregor is significantly larger than I’ve ever seen him. Roid usage is pretty obvious generally— the vascularity, you can see it in the face, and the shoulders specifically. Steroids can’t save Conor’s wee pecs tho lol

Gylenhaal however is so cut I wouldn’t be surprised if he did a cycle or two of Tbol, but that one is up in the air.

Insofar as the movie, unfortunately laughable. 

edit: hate posting on my phone

Edited March 21 by JGP

[polishgenius]

4 hours ago, Ran said:

Connor McGregor (who hit the "supplements" hard) is almost certainly getting a Razzie for his performance, but I admit there's one scene where you realize that he really means to be playing a complete nut and it's just so hilarious.

  Reveal hidden contents

After he crashes the stolen driving school car and checks out the pad to try and make sense of what happened after Dalton swept through it, and his action figure stance and stiffness is just... it has to be intended, him posing and acting oddball for an audience of no one but himself, right?

I don't think this one is going to be a cult classic, but the fights were pretty interesting and Gyllenhaal was kind of charming in a goofy way. 

 

One of the things to remember about Conor McGregor is that he appears to have been out of his mind on coke for pretty much the entirety of the last two years. That would have to have an effect on a man.  

[polishgenius]

In other news, Physical 100 is back, oh yeah. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

29 minutes ago, JGP said:

May be easy depending on who supervises the testing of MMA fighters, but McGregor is significantly larger than I’ve ever seen him. Roid usage is pretty obvious generally— the vascularity, you can see it in the face, and the shoulders specifically. Steroids can’t save Conor’s wee pecs tho lol

Gylenhaal however is so cut I wouldn’t be surprised if he did a cycle or two of Tbol, but that one is up in the air.

Insofar as the movie, unfortunately laughable. 

edit: hate posting on my phone

Look how long Lance beat the doping tests, and in general there's a common rumor that NBA players are typically using banned substances. It's why they're all said to drop weight or just skip international tournaments with more regulations. 

Anyways, remaking Road House is dumb. I'm guessing it's a little better than the reimaging of Point Break, but why do it?

[JGP]

2 minutes ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

Look how long Lance beat the doping tests, and in general there's a common rumor that NBA players are typically using banned substances. It's why they're all said to drop weight or just skip international tournaments with more regulations. 

Blood doping is very different than PEDs -but that's pedantry- your point remains. 

 

9 minutes ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

Anyways, remaking Road House is dumb. I'm guessing it's a little better than the reimaging of Point Break, but why do it?

 It's not. I was dying and almost turned it off but stayed for the laughs.

[Ran]

Not seen the Point Break remake, but lets be honest, Bigelow's Point Break is a much better film than the original Road House. The latter is a cult classic, for good reasons, but it certainly could be remade in a way that could yield a better film (but one that will have to lose some of its essence in the process; see below). But the thing that makes the "cult" part of it -- the sheer over-the-top 80s-ness, the "I-don't-give-a-fuck"-ness of it, the Swayze-ness of it -- that stuff can't really be replicated.

I sound like a broken record mentioning Sean T. Collins (he of the 365 essays on Road House), but he saw the film early and remarked that you can't really purposefully make a film as stupid as the OG Road House was at times these days, but you could quite purposefully make an odd one, and I think that holds. There's a real weirdness at the core of the film's depiction of Dalton, of the villains, of the whole conflict, everything, and that has to be deliberate.

But I don't think it makes a better movie. The fight choreography, especially the way they blended VFX into the fights to get what looked like some truly real punches to the face in, was pretty good, but otherwise...

 

 

 

[TheLastWolf]

Annie Hall 

Only she can fix me now