ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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Saw Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins remake. I am in agreement with this movie. Though I'm not 100% sold on the fusion on display of the historic samurai epic with Miike's home-genre of postmodern splatter cinema, it worked fine here (though I didn't necessarily need to see the

limbless woman

, for my tastes).

The climactic battle was gratifying, but, as it SHOULD be, the final duel was the best. It felt lethal, dangerous, real. No tricks, no special stunts, just swordmasters against each other. So good.

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Someone might have recommended this prior to me but The Black Death, starring some kid, but actually starring Sean Bean, is pretty neat. The characters are all likeable/hateable, but could do with some more fleshing out. The combat scenes are done in shaky cam, as befits indie films (or you shall be cast out!), but is followable, for the most part. The shakycam in general is a bit. . .too shaky? Can that be a thing? And the acting is a bit off in places, but is, in general, surprisingly good.

Recommended. :tup::tup::tmeh:

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Watched all of Twin Peaks for the second time. Still excellent, but it sure has its share of flaws. The biggest problem I have withit is that the second season has way too much filler content. Some of the crazy wacky shit also seemed really out of place and unnecessary, but I guess that's to be expected from Lynch.

Still, very good TV series. If only all of Lynch's other works were as well done..

You do know that Lynch didn't have much to do with the second season and some other guy was leading most of that? That's at least what I read years ago from materials regarding Twin Peaks. Have I been mislead?

He wasn't very involved after the killer was revealed, and there were other problems behind the scenes. Some directors came in and were trying to be "kooky" for the sake of it, because they didn't understand the shows delicate balance. Lynch got frustrated (I think) and left them to it, making Wild at Heart instead. He still loved the universe though, even if he didn't like what was done with it.

Weeeell, ThunderPeel said it better. I should've read all the unread comments first before making my comments. :tmeh:

We have been watching surprisingly lot of movies during the past two weekends. I think 3-4 per weekend.

Last weekend we watched two Japanese movies, Shall we Dance and Tokyo Sonata.

The first one was pretty much awesome, I could never have imagined that you can make a great movie about old school dancing. The main character is great, even though is his motive at first is questionable, but what will depressed people do to change their lives.

Tokyo Sonata then again was unbelievably depressing. After that movie I really felt depressed,

even though the ending was leaving on a high note when the kid really turned out to be a piano playing prodigy.

Tokyo Sonata had as one of the main characters the same actor, Kagawa Teruyuki who had a big supportive role in Ryomaden, the story of Sakamoto Ryoma.

Gah, it really saddens me that I'm still missing "the fourth and final season" of Ryomaden. Dumb guy needs the subtitles and only couple of episodes have been done so far... I haven't found any dvd set that would include subtitles...

Edited by Kolzig

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Just watched two Denzel movies back to back. First, Book of Eli, which I loved, and then Unstoppable, which was terrible. Now you know.

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Oh no, I think you wrote the names of the movies in the wrong order by accident!

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I agree with brkl.

Although, I might not have liked Book of Eli because I had a different idea what that movies should have been. (I wanted it to be more Fallout).

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Book Of Eli was okay and Unstoppable was pretty lame, but the funny thing is I can't remember why or almost anything about either one.

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Also, Unstoppable wasn't too bad.

Oh, I found it absolutely dreadful. The terrible dialogue by terrible, stereotypical characters, the constant newscasts (which for some reason are always poorly made and fake looking in every move), the amateurish pacing... I really wanted to like it, too, but come on: the scene where they call the CEO playing golf and he's like "I don't care about human life only money money money ooh nice putt Mr. Other Rich Guy!" was maybe the worst thing ever.

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Oh wait. "Unstoppable", the one with the runaway train. Somehow that got mixed up with "Unbreakable" in my head.

Unstoppable is entertaining, but some parts are really annoying. Movies like that, with only one thing going on, don't really do it for me. You know they're going to stop that train, and it will be a close call, etc. etc.

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Book of Eli really didn't do it for me. You'd think that with Gary Oldman as a creepy villain you'd at least have some mileage, but...

Unstoppable, on the other hand, was super fun. I saw it in cinema and it was sex with trains. I loved those trains and how they shot them. The movie was predictable, but you knew that going in. To me it was just such a perfectly unsuspecting movie that did exactly what it wanted to do. I have nothing bad to say about it.

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Oh, I found it absolutely dreadful. The terrible dialogue by terrible, stereotypical characters, the constant newscasts (which for some reason are always poorly made and fake looking in every move), the amateurish pacing... I really wanted to like it, too, but come on: the scene where they call the CEO playing golf and he's like "I don't care about human life only money money money ooh nice putt Mr. Other Rich Guy!" was maybe the worst thing ever.

Yep. I also hated the mother and how she didn't look after her son. But there was also the stuff Rodi said, too.

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I'm not sure if I should recommend Rise of the Planet of the Apes... I usually really dislike summer blockbusters and absolute hate remakes/reimagining of favorite childhood films.

Firstly, I loved the old planet of the apes movies, no matter how cheesy the got. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes still remains one of my favorites and from the description that's what I figured where Rise was taking it's notes from.

On one hand Rise pretty much stayed true to the important bits of the fiction, but lost any sort of context or statement Conquest had. Granted it was cheesily heavy handed in the 1970's version, but at least it tried to give a basic premise a higher purpose. Rise doesn't really attempt any of this and gets into a lot of cliched moments. But boy, do I love the parts where the apes are interacting with each other and forming an evolved society, or what have you. It's just a shame this isn't the core of the film and happens over a couple of days.

Now on the other hand is the awful, awful, cringe worthy fan pandering of classic one liners from the first planet of the apes and makes the movie unwatchable when they crop up every 30 minutes. It's really poorly done, didn't need to be there, and just... barf.

For a cg summer movie that is a reboot of a franchise I like, it could have be worse, I enjoyed it though, but wanted a movie that tried to achieve a little more about revolution, equality, or some sort of social commentary that is relevant today, or not, since it didn't have any comment.

On the up side, the premise the director wants for a sequel does sound like the movie I was hoping for in this, so with any luck it'll do well enough so he can make it.

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On the up side, the premise the director wants for a sequel does sound like the movie I was hoping for in this, so with any luck it'll do well enough so he can make it.

Ooh. What's that?

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My immediate post on the S5 forums after coming back from watching it:

Wow, this was really good. I feel invigorated. Everything's just done so well, great storytelling. Serkis and Lithgow are great.

The story is rather simple and linear (and the ending is weakened by the trailers, sadly -

seeing as they show extended moments from right up to the last five minutes

) though, and sometimes has that 'first film of a series' feel, like the first X-Men movie - I can't imagine myself wanting to watch this again for a fair few years, there's not much more to get out of it. But damn do I want to watch the sequel - and it certainly sets one, or a cycle, up (

the astronauts disappearing, presumably to show up in film 3 once the surviving humans have been relegated to slaves in 2 and dumbed down to primitives uin the time between 2 and 3, or something

). The director also makes it feel like a CG movie a few too many times when he gets carried away with the wheeling, impossible camera moves, and there are a few clunking moments, but these are made up for by all the clever stuff going on.

It's hardly worth comparing to the 70s original, as they're such different films in every way, but the original is certainly more sophisticated and grand while this one is more slick and intimate.

Recommended for cinema viewing.

(I haven't seen any of the original sequels.)

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S5?

Short for: Section 5 of the cinema regulations act 1964. It basically states that no tall hats are allowed in cinemas as they may obscure the view.

At least, I guess that's what S5 is alluding to.

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S5?

Zombie Cow.

Apes: I quite enjoyed it, but I felt a bit let down. I think my expectations were too high. The stuff with Serkis was fantastic, and Lithgow was great, too. The story was intimate and worked... but for the things I didn't like: It didn't have anything poignant to say (unlike the original -- which at least attempted it) and James Franco's character didn't really have an ending to his story... or even much of a story to begin with. I also thought

the ending of the human race

was pretty unexciting... although the post-credits sequence was very cool.

To nit pick: It sometimes drifted into sci-fi when it didn't need to. For example, normal regular orangutans being able to hold conversations through sign-language... Or unnecessary CGI: Apes jumping through endless windows without so much as a scratch or, indeed, any difficulty. The corporate greed angle didn't work for me, either. The throw-backs to the original felt horribly forced, too.

But for the Caesar story, I did enjoy it. So what are they planning for the sequel? I'm eager to know.

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So what are they planning for the sequel? I'm eager to know.

I interviewed the director last week. This is what he said about his ideas for the sequel:

There’s so much we could do. I’m speculating when I tell you all this, because I don’t know yet. The ideas that I’ve had... all sorts for this. Full Metal Jacket with apes. I think you could start this story again eight years from where we left off, and that’s the next generation of apes perhaps going into a conflict with humans, and showing real fear, the same way that young soldiers are going into battle in this day and age.

Telling their story. And how apes are taking over cities, and being moved into human environments, and having to interact and deal with things that are part of our culture, and understand and evolve through them. And humans maybe existing underground because that’s the way that they can avoid the virus, and coming up aboveground in order to fight wearing gas masks, which is what dehumanises them.

Emphasis on the word 'ideas', as I don't think there are any plans in place yet anyway.

PS. Hello!

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Awesome, thanks for that. I had no idea you wrote for Den of Geek. Nice one. Also, nice interview. Lots of great questions. I note the use of "performance capture" instead of "motion capture" -- Andy Serkis would be pleased with you!

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Yeah, so the sequel sounds like what this movie really should have had rather than the super-human apes escaping Frisco. But yeah, over all, I liked most of it enough that'll I root for another one.

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