ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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The one I linked to on the last page? :) It's very good, isn't it? (Although Page 1 is the best to start, I think.)

Crap, sorry mate. Shows that I'm really following the discussion... :getmecoat

It's been a few years since I last saw that page in the digital bits, but I just remembered it because of the Air Force One movie, I totally didn't see that you linked that very article on the previous page.

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How an image is cropped is a large part of its aesthetic. (Which is why anyone who complained about BioShock's widescreen was an uninformed so-and-so, *sigh*, I digress.)

No man, you've got it all wrong. More degrees equals more enjoyment. Play Quake with fov 120! 360° vision would be gaming nirvana! Also, swap out textures for flat colours for maximal situational awareness and combat effectiveness.

Was The Shining always shown in 4:3? When I watched it on DVD, I thought I spotted the helicopter's shadow at the bottom of the screen, and presumed they had transferred an unmasked version of an originally widescreen ratio. If it was always full frame, though, either it was an error on their part or one on mine.

Anyway, I love films with strong visual styles, particularly Kubrikian stuff. I'm largely an idiot when it comes to films, though. I might post more about it later if I remember.

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Neat link, Thunderpeel.

"But once TV began capturing the imagination of American consumers, the Hollywood film industry was faced with a problem: so many people were buying TVs and staying at home to watch them, that theater attendance began to decline dramatically"

"What Hollywood began to do, was to experiment with making films in three-dimension (3D) and widescreen aspect ratios. Some of you may remember 3D films, which required that you wear a pair of rather silly looking stereoscopic glasses "

Haha, silly 1950s neanderthals; glad we don't have to go through that bull shit again. :shifty:

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Haha, silly 1950s neanderthals; glad we don't have to go through that bull shit again. :shifty:

What I especially like is that they're trying to sell 3D through polarised glasses as something new, when apparently it was mostly done with the same technology back then too. The differently coloured lenses of other attempts at 3D just became a more iconic image.

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If you manage to find a non-pretentious movie forum, filled with love for film, then really do let me know.

Like I already said, movieforums.com

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The modern glasses are slightly tinted too, but not all that much.

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The modern glasses are slightly tinted too, but not all that much.

I dunno, it's noticable though. But I wont start my own personal opinionated rant on why I hate 3D; I just found that information pretty funny and a little comforting that I can probably bet this fad will go away again someday.

But if Nintendo can make a glasses-less 3d thingy I wonder if the theatre can ever do it? I wouldn't mind that as much as I do putting on goggels.

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I finally saw The Terminator last night. It was awesome...I found it very interesting that although it's certainly science fiction, it's a very small, character-driven film and most of the sci-fi takes place off-screen.

Also, I watched Street Fighter.

Sagat: That's Vega, The greatest cage fighter since Iron Fist.

Ken: What happened to Iron Fist

Sagat: He retired...and became me.

But could someone explain to me how the timeline in the Terminator series works? I mean, if Kyle Reese was younger than John Connor, wouldn't him going back and impregnating Sarah Connor make John Connor be born as a different person?

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But could someone explain to me how the timeline in the Terminator series works? I mean, if Kyle Reese was younger than John Connor, wouldn't him going back and impregnating Sarah Connor make John Connor be born as a different person?

Huh? Reese was always younger then future Connor in every movie, unless theres a comic book or tv show or something that says other wise.

Also, if your eluding to that new thing, meh, most of the timeline and fiction in that didn't make sense according to the james camerons one. I consider those the only real terminator movies.

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The fact that it doesn't quite make sense is exactly the gag, GrouchoClub. It's the kind of mind-fucking paradox/time-loop that makes time-travel fiction fun! After the first movie, the timeline stops making any sense and, as Basil Exposition would say, "I suggest you don't worry about this sort of thing, and just enjoy yourself."

For anyone in London, the Prince Charles Cinema is playing a Robocop/Terminator double bill on the 2nd June. They're playing it in that order, which is a shame because it's hard for the audience to come down from the wild comedy and action of Robocop to the more serious Terminator (Ryan from Hello Games and I went last time they did it).

I very much enjoyed Iron Man 2. It was a very similar experience to the first one, if not as surprising - fun, cool, character-driven, but let down by a rubbish climactic fight.

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I went and saw Kick Ass on Monday and really loved it. It was a lot of fun, with great action bits and some really funny stuff as a bonus. To James and Rodi, I can only say that the little girl killing people only bothered me a little bit. It was weird at first, but as soon as I remembered that I'd seen other characters doing much worse in other films and it hadn't fazed me, I let myself go with it. It was wrong, sure, and the fact that she was 11 made it a bit more wrong, but it'd be pretty hypocritical of me to have a problem with it considering some of the films in my collection. I kind of liked that they only pointed it out once in the "you owe her a childhood" scene and left the rest to the audience, assuming that they were smart enough to realize that what Nic Cage did was pretty horrible and not sermonizing us. Also, Nic Cage's character in general was pretty sweet.

Actually, that was the only problem I had with it. Everything happened just a bit too easily. The only character with a really believable motivation for what they're doing was Cage's. Still, complaining about a lack of character depth in what is essentially a summer popcorn flick is a pretty minor thing to worry about.

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Well gosh, Miffy, now I feel like a dick that I just posted a rant called 'The Killing of Kick-Ass' on August: http://www.captainaugust.com/allies-of-war! Actually, no. I do get a little carried away, but that's because words are fun.

Well, I've said it before and I'll say it again: Kick Ass was just an episode of South Park. Would you complain about "kicking the baby" in South Park? Would you care that (almost) every episode has a joke about a child being horribly mutilated and killed (Kenny)? Nope. It's a silly, OTT cartoon. Kick Ass is the same.

Which isn't to say that some of your points weren't valid, Rodi -- but they messed the film up by trying to get "Big Daddy" to justify his actions. That was horribly wrong, if you ask me. The world of Kick Ass is stupid, retarded and utterly fictional. Trying to make it "realistic" defeats the purpose, and also mocks the reality of violence (and other twisted things that happen in the film).

Interestingly, in the original comic

Big Daddy lies about being an ex-cop, and is actually just a comic book collector -- how's that for lame?

Millar is a pretty goddamned awful writer, in my books, but his world at least keeps moving forward at a decent pace, deliberately having fun with the OTT violence, and without patronizing the audience with "this is bad" messages. The film managed to do the same, I think.

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I think that's my point, Thunderpeel, that's why I made the comparison to Sin City. It's not the violence that bugs me, it's that the characters are not believable within the context of the movie world. Kick-ass does attempt to bring a realistic world with realistic consequences. That's what makes these characters fail so particularly hard, that's the disconnect. No one expects Marv to act like a human being, ever, in his black and white noir world. But we have to swallow that

Hit Girl has a pleasant first day in school after seeing her father burn alive?

South Park works because the whole world is presented as a satire, completely farcical. Kick-Ass presumes realism. That's the difference.

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Was The Shining always shown in 4:3? When I watched it on DVD, I thought I spotted the helicopter's shadow at the bottom of the screen, and presumed they had transferred an unmasked version of an originally widescreen ratio. If it was always full frame, though, either it was an error on their part or one on mine.

This is actually a cause for some contention, for some odd reason, but the fact of the matter is that The Shining was shot for widescreen, with an eye on the open matte for TV showings.

Some people have bizarrely argued that The Shining (and most of Kubrick's films) were composed for 4:3, but it all stems from a misunderstanding: For home viewing, Kubrick hated black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. That was all, but he said it at a time when everyone had 4:3 TVs. The DPs he worked with composed their films for theatrical (e.g widescreen) viewings and tried to make sure that shadows and dolly tracks weren't in the open matte frame.

And for anyone who cares to argue (and many people continue to do so), here's Kubrick's own notes to his cinematographer on The Shining.

To quote: "The frame is exactly 1.85:1 (widescreen) -- Obviously you compose for that"

shining.jpg

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I see wide screen as a failure to produce vertically interesting content.

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I see wide screen as a failure to produce vertically interesting content.

Haha! That cracked me up... It's probably very true. Lazy bastards

Kick-ass does attempt to bring a realistic world with realistic consequences. That's what makes these characters fail so particularly hard, that's the disconnect. No one expects Marv to act like a human being, ever, in his black and white noir world. But we have to swallow that

Hit Girl has a pleasant first day in school after seeing her father burn alive?

Well, I saw that as happening months later, but I know what you mean.

South Park works because the whole world is presented as a satire, completely farcical. Kick-Ass presumes realism. That's the difference.

I would argue that it doesn't presume realism any more than certain episodes of South Park do, though. Yes, I'd say that the world of Kick Ass is THAT out there.

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I liked A Serious Man, even if I don't get it completely. I'll have to let it settle down before I can fully rake through the mud.

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Huh? Reese was always younger then future Connor in every movie, unless theres a comic book or tv show or something that says other wise.

I worded it poorly. My problem was that if John Connor exists in the future, then he already had a father who could not have been Reese. Then Reese goes back in time and impregnates Connor's Mom. His name will still be John Connor, but he'll be a different dude...how do they know this new John Connor will be able to save humanity? And did they really bank on Sarah Connor consenting to unprotected sex with Reese one time and then getting pregnant? What a long shot!

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It's called a paradox. And it was intentional.

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It's called a paradox. And it was intentional.

You were intentional. I'm familiar with the concept of a paradox, but this one...oh well, no use arguing sci-fi with nerds.

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If anything, you're expecting there to be too much of a sci-fi nerd answer.

But could someone explain to me how the timeline in the Terminator series works? I mean, if Kyle Reese was younger than John Connor, wouldn't him going back and impregnating Sarah Connor make John Connor be born as a different person?

No, because Kyle Reese is John Connor's father.

It's that simple, really. And part of The Terminator's appeal is this straightforward premise. It is reworking elements of fairytale and fable, the ideas of prophecy - where the character develops towards a narrative certainty. But there's a cause-and-effect twist, that the bearer of the information also sets the future into motion (as does the Terminator, providing the chip and arm that advances the research that creates Skynet, but that's in the sequel, which may be more complex, but is no less narratively coherent).

--

Speaking of sci-fi, there's an awesome mini-programme of films coming to the BFI Southbank in London in July. Here are some of the flicks they're showing:

Aelita: Queen of Mars

Things to Come

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

The Incredible Shrinking Man

Je t'aime, je t'aime / La Jetee

Fahrenheit 451

Fantastic Voyage

2001: A Space Odyssey

THX 1138

A Clockwork Orange

Silent Running

Solaris

Sleeper

Soylent Green

The Man Who Fell To Earth

and, er, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.

...but, wow! Some brilliant films there.

Edited by Nevsky

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I worded it poorly. My problem was that if John Connor exists in the future, then he already had a father who could not have been Reese. Then Reese goes back in time and impregnates Connor's Mom. His name will still be John Connor, but he'll be a different dude...how do they know this new John Connor will be able to save humanity? And did they really bank on Sarah Connor consenting to unprotected sex with Reese one time and then getting pregnant? What a long shot!

They weren't hoping that he'd impregnate her... because he already had. John Connor did exist in the future and his father was Reese. They didn't "plan" it, it wasn't a conscious thing, it was fated. I.e. Everything had already happened.

Yes, the above is a paradox, but I'm not sure it's possible to have any time travel stories that don't feature paradoxes, but at least the Terminator's is a subtle one: A time travelling man, has sex with a woman and impregnates her. Is such a thing possible? Well, no, not really; the future the time-travelling man came from isn't the same future he leaves behind: There's an extra person in it.

But if you can accept that the above could be possible, then I guess the Terminator is ok when it comes to paradoxes (provided you ignore the idea that it may have been John Connor's idea to send him back -- that opens a bigger can of worms).

(Actually, I suppose if you view time as a bunch of events that are always happening, and we're just experiencing them linearly, then it isn't a paradox -- is that right?)

Back to the Future, for example, has much more problems, because he went back in time and changed history -- and then jumped forward again: If he went back in time and changed history, then he wouldn't have any memory of the old history and quite possibly therefore wouldn't have gone back in time... which meant he wouldn't have gone back in time, and so therefore didn't change history (etc.).

In BTTF they skate past this problem with a wink and a nudge: Marty and Doc can remember the "old" past, but they never answer if they can remember the "new" past.

Terminator 2 has similar problems.

The best you can do with a time travel story is to say that the "altered" version of events is what always had happened. The Terminator does try to do this.

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