Ben X

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Posts posted by Ben X

  1. Posted

    On 1/26/2018 at 4:50 PM, twmac said:

    Train to Busan is a big Korean movie that is worth checking out, some good humour and likeable characters to go along with it. Mother and The Host are good shouts too.

     

    Just watched Train To Busan, it was fantastic. Would make a great second half of a double bill with The Host.

  3. Posted

    6 hours ago, Roderick said:

    You know what might be the actual thing that killed it, in the end? Not the hiatus of the podcasts, but the end of Ben's FPS-a-thon adventure. DAMMIT BEN

     

    Sorry! Hmmm, I did just get Shadow Warrior 2 free on gog...

  9. Posted

    Just watched first episode of season 11 and it was atrocious. 40 minutes of people in rooms spouting painfully clumsy exposition at each other, David Duchovny with an increasingly unconvincing lack of a single grey hair (appropriately, given Mulder's futile hunt for greys) and an unbelievable cop-out from the previous season's cliffhangers:

     

    the whole episode was a (psychic) dream!

  12. Posted

    Holy shit, that looks amazing and also incredibly difficult!

     

    So with the mod you upload a song and create the pattern of target blocks? Or just the pattern and the player has to own the track?

     

    Also, does the VR aspect add much to this? Seems like it could be a pretty similar experience with just the controllers and a big telly or monitor...

  14. Posted

    4 hours ago, Cleinhun said:

    it takes most of the first season to get to that point

     

    And the first season is 52 episodes long, right? That's all I have access to on Netflix anyway (plus they have them in the incorrect order), so maybe I'll check out the final ten episodes or something and see how I feel if further seasons come up.

     

    Be aware @Erkki that Terrace House is chill-out tv - it doesn't engineer any drama, so it moves pretty slowly and it takes a while to warm to the house-mates/commentors. But it's totally addictive once you're fully into it after a few episodes.

  15. Posted

    I love The Expanse, but it took me at least half the first season (including a read of the Wikipedia episode summaries) to fully grok all the background and storylines they throw at you. I'd say it's worth a re-watch at an early enough time that you're unlikely to fall asleep, @Erkki! 

     

    I'll +1 Terrace House, it's great. A reality show that avoids all the grossness of the genre. I recommend watching the different series in order, though - Boys & Girls In The City, then Aloha State, then Opening New Doors. (Apparently there's at least one earlier season that only got broadcast in Japan, but it only has fan-created English subtitles which don't last to the end of the season.)

     

    In cartoons, I finally rewatched Adventure Time seasons 1 and 2 and am now moving onto stuff I haven't seen. This show is great, it's like a family-friendly Rick And Morty. I also tried Steven Universe, but after ten or so episodes I found it mildly irritating - I've skipped forward to around episode 20 as apparently that's where the serialisation kicks in and it starts to pick up.

  19. Posted

    Original is an absolute classic.

     

    2 is awful. Robocop is acting really weird even before he gets his directives fucked with - it's like Weller is taking the piss or forgot which part of the film he was in. Then he gets turned into a comedy buffoon, then gets chopped up and we barely see him for ages while all this OCP bullshit goes on. The sub-plot with Murphy's wife is an interesting idea but doesn't go anywhere and feels tacked on to make Murphy less bland - his only characteristics in this are - pursuing a drug-lord, and is a robot and therefore easily fuckable-with. Lewis is barely in it.

    3 actually has a few nice touches and moments that feel more like the original - the general set-up of OCP pushing people out of old Detroit is cool, with the final set-up of cops and concerned citizens in a battle against OCP-paid criminal scum feeling like the logical conclusion, and Lewis, Johnson and Reed get some good moments. Plus the Johnny Rehab cartoon is amazing. There are a shitload of great character actors in it too - Rip Torn, CCH Pounder, Stephen Root, Bradley Whitford, Mako, Jeff Garlin. I even don't mind the jetpack and gun-hand, it feels logical that Robo would upgrade and customise for different situations and he can always take them off to go back to Classic Robocop, plus it gives him more of the superhero feel that, as Dan pointed out to me, they create with the face-mask.
    It's still not that good a film, though, obviously. There's loads of goofy shit, especially the villains and the kid, and Robo still spends far too much time being broken which is very boring and makes him seem weak (not in the first film, obv, the targeting system scene is ace). Plus that fucking pink pimpmobile (although once pretty much everything except the chassis is blown away it looks like Robo is driving around in a 1920s car, Mafia style, which would be an amazing film plot).

    Basically, Robocop only works as an origin story. If you're making an entire film where he's just a robot cop doing normal cop things, it isn't very interesting.

     

    However, this doesn't help the reimagining, which is very boring. It feels like it went through about ten screenwriters, all smoothing the edges off.  A Robocop where neither Murphy nor Lewis is much of a character but Casey Wong and The Old Man are.

     

    And now good ol' Neil Blomkamp is making what is apparently going to be a direct sequel to the original, based on the unmade sequel script the original's writers penned immediately after the first film: https://deadline.com/2018/07/robocop-neill-blomkamp-directing-robocop-returns-justin-rhodes-ed-neumeier-michael-miner-mgm-1202424639/ The article seems a tiny bit vague about the exact sequel nature of it, I wonder if they're going to do what the upcoming Terminator and Halloween films are apparently doing and explicitly erasing everything except the first film (or two with Terminator).

     

     

  20. Posted

    Disney bought 20th Century Fox. Bad news: homogenisation of all popular culture. Good news: X-Men and Fantastic Four in the MCU!

     

    Anyway, I saw Ant-Man And The Wasp and enjoyed it. Some very inventive action sequences and comedy setpieces. However, the narrative does feel overstuffed and characterisation suffers as a result. Also, the loose improv feel of the comedy dialogue doesn't really work - a Shane Black style polish would have really helped, I think.

    I probably prefer it to the first one overall...

  21. Posted

    That video's great. It's very funny the way it has Tom Cruise doing car, bike and helicopter stunts while occasionally cutting to Henry Cavill walking across a field. It's an interesting situation that Cruise is a multi-Oscar-nommed actor and also a relatively accomplished stunt performer.

     

    No MI thread is complete without the Tom Crooz video, though. If nothing else, MI2 brought us this:

     

     

  23. Posted

    I just watched Jason Bourne, and it's pretty striking how the then-44 year old Matt Damon visibly has a fair amount of grey hair coming through, whereas 55 year old Tom Cruise doesn't have a single grey hair on his head. He would look great for his age, but he's getting that dissonance where someone has the face you'd expect for their age but not the grey hair that goes with it and so they look like a weird puffy-faced person in their 40s rather than someone in their 50s or 60s with the expected amount of crag.

     

    So come on, SAM, what's your pet peeve?

  24. Posted

    @Roderick Would you go so far as to say "After the mildly entertaining but dumb experience that was Ghost Protocol, this was like a cool shower of awesome. Such a tight, personal and heartfelt action film. Really, how could anyone not have been disappointed in part 4 after this one? Phillip Seymour Hoffman is so effective and scary as a villain"?

  25. Posted

    Just saw Fallout. Really enjoyed it, it has all the usual strong points and the final sequence literally had my palms sweating. But this is pretty much the same film as the last three. As flawed as the second film is (though I still enjoy a lot about it), I kind of miss the days when the franchise was doing something wildly different with each installment, before JJ combined everything good about the first two movies and the tv show and filed off the rough edges.

     

    It also runs a little long. That combined with the lack of surprises makes this an MI film I'm not likely to re-watch for a few years at least.

     

    I enjoy all of the films to a similar enough level that it doesn't feel worthwhile my ranking them. 3 and 4 are probably my favourites, then 1, 5 and 6 jostle. 2 is last, BUT I still enjoy a lot about it.

     

    However, I happen to know that @BigJKO just embarked on a franchise re-watch (only including 2 on my insistence!), so he may be able to give a more precise ranking at some point soon...