ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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Oh shit, I can't deal with horror of any kind, I am way too scared a person. I'm afraid of the dark enough as it is :)

That makes it tough sometimes, because some horror is extremely fascinating. Once I heard about Ringu, for example, I had to see it. It was just too interesting to pass up. I saw it in broad daylight and was afraid for days and weeks afterwards. Generally I shy away from horror though, I know I can't deal with it.

I will play some scary games though. Especially the Silent Hill series is, again, too interesting to not play. Games like Resident Evil I don't consider horror though, zombies are generally a lot less scary than weird poltergeisty shit. Dawn of the Dead is something I can easily sit through and be fascinated by.

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Oh come on, the first Evil Dead is not gruelling! Maybe Raimi hadn't quite tuned his comedic sensibilities to the extent of the second movie, but there's some slapstick mixed with the horror.

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Oh come on, the first Evil Dead is not gruelling! Maybe Raimi hadn't quite tuned his comedic sensibilities to the extent of the second movie, but there's some slapstick mixed with the horror.

In part 2, yes. But there's zero slapstick (or humour) in part 1. It's pretty gruelling (but I loved it!).

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Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is not a good movie. Half of it is amusing enough, the other half is awful. I'm frankly stumped that Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, the prolific writers of the original movies who usually have this sort of action romp down (Mask of Zorro, Aladdin, El Dorado), wrote this. It comes across very strongly as a fanmade movie, trying to copy all the Pirates bits but never able to make it sparkle quite as much as even the second and third movies -in all their wonky scriptiness- did.

The best part about the movie was Geoffrey Rush's Barbossa. Which is all the better, because in fact this movie isn't about Jack Sparrow at all. If you look closely, you'll find that every major plot point involves Barbossa, and his is the most well-rounded (and by far interesting) story arc. Sparrow is just there for the sake of it, on screen to do his weird stuff and generally be capricious and contrary. Barbossa is fantastic and I would've liked to see more of him. The only character in the movie worth a damn.

You know you're dealing with a bad script when even someone with the charm of Johnny Depp doesn't manage to sell some of the lines.

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*Phew* I'm hoping I can finally enjoy On Stranger Tides the book then, without feeling the pressure to see the movie while it's at the cinema.

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I'm frankly stumped that Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, the prolific writers of the original movies who usually have this sort of action romp down (Mask of Zorro, Aladdin, El Dorado), wrote this. It comes across very strongly as a fanmade movie, trying to copy all the Pirates bits but never able to make it sparkle quite as much as even the second and third movies -in all their wonky scriptiness- did.

Eh, the second and third movies were awful. Chest starts out fine but goes totally nuts and three is a convoluted, insane mess. I'm not surprised the fourth one is wank, but mark my words: there's a fifth one in the works, but all they'll do is change the director and - if things get loud enough - the writers. Jack Sparrow will sail again.

Actually, if you think about it, the first movie was about Will Turner, but the character is so *bland*, in particular compared to Sparrow, that he's thought of as a supporting character. So really, those movies have mostly had shitty writing all round. Except the part about acquiescing requests. That was funny.

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Storywise part 2 and 3 were terrible and convoluted, but they did have sparkle, a charm, something anarchic. I enjoyed watching them even when I resented all the missed opportunities. A movie can exist on that strength alone. On Stranger Tides lacks even those redeeming features.

Will Turner was bland, but sometimes a straight man is needed to ground the world into something believable. That was something I feared when first hearing of OST, I thought the movie would crumble because it was all Sparrow wackiness. In that regard it actually does pretty well, the character at least never becomes tedious to watch (despite his presence in the film being completely superfluous).

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While I have enjoyed all three, they're not something I go out of my way to watch. If I get bored during a TV screening, I turn it off.

That said, this scene will always be with me.

9A-eluzWfbY

Fantastic.

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As a series of stand alone sketches the two PotC sequels are fine (I really enjoyed the three-way fight at the end of Dead Man's Chest). But as a whole film that is meant to have a narrative and a structure and a plot we care about... I find the second one is only passable and the third one is awful

Edited by DanJW

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and for the fifth movie Depp will ask $150m?

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Just watched the 4th one, not terrible - except the clergyman storyline - but incredibly boring and soulless; they even got Jack Sparrow wrong:erm:

But I love Dead Man's Chest and I'm always surprised that most people don't : I think it has the best swashbuckling tone of the three movies, and I love how it manages to build a pirate mythology that is heterogeneous , detailed some places, laconic in others, but still makes sense and feel 'alive'. I also think the three storylines really do a good job of confronting this fantastic universe to the "real" world of the time while keeping the details of this pretty sparse. I also think it's aesthetically the most successful of the three.

Frankly, I never thought it was mess - or even more so an obscure one - and I think the abundance of detail and parallels are truly necessary to give the movie its sense of breadth.

As for the other : I didn't like the first one, and the third one had a collection of very nice moments, but the storyline, despite the very promissingpremise of pirates vs a charted world, was really uninteresting and added up to nothing.

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Man, what's up with Doctor Who? Is this Season Of The Two-Parters or something?

Also, The Shadow Line, featuring the council assassin from Serenity, and Christopher Eccleston isn't half bad.

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Jesus. I did mean presently, because there are several past shows that at least come close. But Doctor Who is the only show that occasionally has me looking over my shoulder as I walk through a dark house, after some episodes.

Early-mid X-Files did that to me on good weeks, probably more successfully than any show has since. (That could be because I was an early teenager at the time and now I'm 30...) I don't watch much genre TV at this point, so for me Doctor Who is the only show that comes close (or even tries), but I'm not actually creeped out by it that often. (I like that it does a good job of being creepy and mysterious, but it doesn't genuinely scare me.)

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is not a good movie.

...

The best part about the movie was Geoffrey Rush's Barbossa. Which is all the better, because in fact this movie isn't about Jack Sparrow at all. If you look closely, you'll find that every major plot point involves Barbossa, and his is the most well-rounded (and by far interesting) story arc.

And there's the problem (in the spoiler) -- "If you look closely you'll find..." sure, but if you don't look closely, the entire movie is The Jack Sparrow Show, which is completely wrong. The reason he worked so well as a character in the first movie is because he was never the focus of the story -- he showed up part way through other people's story, on a trajectory 30 degrees off from the rest of the plot, and stayed that way, bouncing around off-angle to the rest of the world, intersecting it only at either the least or most appropriate moments that the film could support while keeping the wheels from falling off. Over each subsequent sequel the story has become more and more about Jack -- slowly bringing that 30 degree off-axis tilt to the rest of the plot further and further back in line with everyone else -- and I think they've become worse and worse because of it.

Elliot and Russo seem to be masters of coming up with fun plots on the page (case in point: both Barbossa and Blackbeard's story is fun "if you look closely," or if someone excitedly tells you about it before you see the movie), but at least with the Pirates sequels they seem unable to focus on the things that actually deliver that plot, instead overindulging on the side stuff which amuses them (or which they think people will be amused by). When watching the movies you can always tell the reason they thought to include something, or why they figured a character for a particular moment or motivation, but the actual beat by beat execution of the stuff increasingly feels like it came out of the mouth of a sugar high kid or a rambling homeless person.

It's really frustrating. I had no expectations for the first film and came out surprised and loving it. It was a great classic Hollywood adventure story, a well told, character-fueled pirate tale built on clever plotting and a reasonably unconventional structure. Not a thing anyone actually expects to exist. The sequels have become an increasingly convoluted mess. I was hoping the fourth film would be a chance to wipe the slate clean and do something free of all the baggage the sequels accumulated, but instead they diverted even further from the structure and clean intelligent storytelling which made the first film so good, and topped it off with what seems like a significantly lower budget, and an inferior director and cinematographer.

Also, I think they finally stole the last page they could from Monkey Island's playbook, by reducing the goddamn plot all the way down to "find the 3 items to unlock the big door." On Stranger Tides was, against all odds, a story of the Spanish versus the English in a race to complete the Three Trials.

Oh yeah, "On Stranger Tides." It had nothing to do with the book. Seems like they named it that solely to avoid lawsuits. "Suggested by the novel 'On Stranger Tides' by Tim Powers" is the wording in the closing credits of the film.

*Phew* I'm hoping I can finally enjoy On Stranger Tides the book then, without feeling the pressure to see the movie while it's at the cinema.

So yeah, you're in luck. The film and the book have nothing in common other than a character and a location feature in both. Oh and the name.

Ack I wrote a lot. I write a lot when I'm frustrated I guess.

Edited by Jake

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Man, what's up with Doctor Who? Is this Season Of The Two-Parters or something?

One more besides this one to go (that we know of). I like two-parters. They make for richer storytelling when they're earned, so I'm happy this series has had so many goes at them.

Also, The Shadow Line, featuring the council assassin from Serenity, and Christopher Eccleston isn't half bad.

Want to see this. I love Chris Eccleston. He's one of the best, most underrated actors I've had the pleasure of seeing. Seriously, everything from Flesh and Blood to Elizabeth has had outstanding performances from him.

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One more besides this one to go (that we know of). I like two-parters. They make for richer storytelling when they're earned, so I'm happy this series has had so many goes at them.

Agreed!

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Oh, don't get me wrong. I love two-parters. They're absolutely fantastic. That said, there have been a lot of "Ohhhh man!" moments for me this season.

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That said, there have been a lot of "Ohhhh man!" moments for me this season.

You should embed a youtube of you reading that line, to clarify.

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Perhaps "awwwww" would be more appropriate to express disappointment and expectation? Either way, your request is unlikely to be fulfilled.

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. . .I have nothing to say that will add or detract from how incredibly correct that video is. Man.

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What about Eastbound & Down?

I've mentioned this several times in this thread, but nobody has ever picked up on it. I highly recommend it.

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Oh yeah, "On Stranger Tides." It had nothing to do with the book. Seems like they named it that solely to avoid lawsuits. "Suggested by the novel 'On Stranger Tides' by Tim Powers" is the wording in the closing credits of the film.

So yeah, you're in luck. The film and the book have nothing in common other than a character and a location feature in both. Oh and the name.

Say what?! Why did they even bother with the name/buying the rights if there's so little connection?? Oh well, I'm enjoying the book anyway.

Also: I noticed you said "Spoilers" but then didn't use the [noparse]

the butler did it

[/noparse] tags... I presume they weren't anything major then, but I didn't want to look incase they were?

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Say what?! Why did they even bother with the name/buying the rights if there's so little connection?? Oh well, I'm enjoying the book anyway.

Also: I noticed you said "Spoilers" but then didn't use the [noparse]

the butler did it

[/noparse] tags... I presume they weren't anything major then, but I didn't want to look incase they were?

When I said "in the spoiler" I was referring to the contents of Rodi's spoiler (quoted above in my post). I didn't say anything spoilery but what I was saying was based off of a

-wrapped remark Rodi made.

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Hey, has anyone here seen Eastbound & Down? Looks like it's probably quite bad...

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