ysbreker

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I liked Coraline a lot. I might be misremembering but I think it had the best/most interesting use of 3d in any movie I've seen (restrained 3d in mundane reality, pronounced 3d in button eye world - plus the physicality of claymation).

Was hoping that boxtrolls would be great, the reviews have put me off seing it sadly.

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There's finally a Wonder Woman movie coming.  Also a whole bunch of other ones.  Here's the plans for the next few years

 

“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” directed by Zack Snyder (2016)

“Suicide Squad,” directed by David Ayer (2016)
“Wonder Woman,” starring Gal Gadot (2017)
“Justice League Part One,” directed by Zack Snyder, with Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill and Amy Adams reprising their roles (2017)
“The Flash,” starring Ezra Miller (2018)
“Aquaman,” starring Jason Momoa (2018)
“Shazam” (2019)
“Justice League Part Two,” directed by Zack Snyder (2019)
“Cyborg,” starring Ray Fisher (2020)
“Green Lantern” (2020)

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So excited for Wonder Woman; wish we had gotten a pre-rebranding version of Shazam but I'll take what I can get.

 

Get ready for six years of guessing about which Green Lantern the reboot will be about!

 

Preferred Scenario: John Stewart

Most Likely Scenario: Hal Jordan again

Best Possible Scenario: B'ox

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Get ready for six years of guessing about which Green Lantern the reboot will be about!

 

Preferred Scenario: John Stewart

Most Likely Scenario: Hal Jordan again

Best Possible Scenario: B'ox

 

I'm rooting for Mogo myself.

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After Man of Steel, I basically could not give fewer shits about these movies. Ben Affleck and a Wonder Woman movie are the only things that seem like they could do any kind of uplifting of that movie universe for me.

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My personal favorite Lantern is Hal, but I think a movie about Kyle Rayner would be more interesting to watch because of his artist background. Of course, then we run the risk of having the original woman in a refrigerator appear onscreen.

The best part was when they brought her back as a black lantern and she was just a black refrigerator.

No matter who they have in the movie I probably won't see it (as someone who has read every single gold and silver age GL issue). I still hope it's not Kyle Rayner though, I dislike him so much. I did get excited when they announced Taika Waititi as Pieface in the last GL movie, but I ended up not seeing it.

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I saw Gone Girl yesterday, and I have to say it was genuinely very good! I had heard mixed things, but was pleasantly surprised by the acting, direction and writing (particularly the dialogue).

 

The one sore spot is that there are a couple of plot points that could be interpreted as buying into rape myths, specifically in terms of women manufacturing rapes as punitive measures against men. However, my feeling on the story otherwise was that I didn't necessarily see it as lending credence to that myth so much as showing the extreme nature of the particular woman.

 

As such, a give it a qualified recommendation. It's a good film, but could be considered triggering for rape culture/myths.

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I think it probably helps that there are two other strong female characters that balance out the crazy one.

 

Also that cop banter, so dumb and great. I just kept waiting for every scene with the cops.

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There's finally a Wonder Woman movie coming.  Also a whole bunch of other ones.  Here's the plans for the next few years

 

 

“Shazam” (2019)

 

Don't forget they've confirmed The "Dwayne Johnson" Rock as Black Adam.

 

 

I'm with Jon, I have basically no excitement for any of these projects. I'm casually hopeful for a Wonder Woman movie because it's a female heroine. 

 

 

I'm reminded of a tweet that sums up my feelings on DC. "DC makes good icons. Marvel makes good characters."

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I just saw Gone Girl last night myself, and I want to say I like it.  My opinion on that film has kinda been a rollercoaster.

 

Coming out of the theater, I felt I had really enjoyed the film.  But as I was going home after the movie, I really couldn't stop thinking about how Amy's basically a collection of stereotypes constructed from the fever dreams of MRAs. 

 

I kinda feel I need to watch it a second time to totally sort out my feelings.  Maybe it's just something ugly in my own subconscious, but the read I got on that movie watching it the first time is that the way Nick's flaws being exposed are all front-loaded creates a situation where he basically becomes the unqualified good guy around the time of the "faked her own murder" revelation, and the general vibe going forward is "Shlubby everyman who makes 'mistakes' gets haunted by psycho bitch". 

 

But things like Amy asking Nick to "own up" to the abuse and how quick he is to slam her against that wall in the bathroom at the very end suggests that the relationship might have been physically abusive, even if it's not in the way the diary details.  Of course, she also asks him in the same breath to "own up" to all the purchases she made and hid from him, so the first impression I had was "Oh, she's just asking him to lie, and this is basically an admission that the abuse was fake".

 

Basically, the more I think about how this is a movie about people putting on performances, I'm a little less worried about it, but at face value some of those performances come off as truth telling more than the movie should have allowed. 

 

Ultimately, I have to wonder if the movie wouldn't have been more effective if it was less sympathetic to Nick, if it was prepared to continue revealing misdeeds by Nick as the real Amy story unfolds.  As it stands, it kinda feels like the first part of the movie presents two competing narratives, and instead of getting across the point that neither of the narratives is exactly correct, the immediate impression I got from my first viewing from the time of the sudden revelation of Amy's deception was that her stories are nothing but a pack of lies and Nick's version was probably right.  As I think more and more about the movie, I can kinda separate from that interpretation, but I'm left wondering if I got that impression because it's what the movie presents, or if it's some shitty attitudes I've internalized that led me down that path.

 

(Sorry if that's a little jumbled.  I've sat down to write on this like 3 times now as this has been turning over in my head.)

 

Outside of crazy plot spoiler territory, though, I thought the other aspects of the film were great.  I'm a huge Trent Reznor fanboy, so I am most assuredly biased, but I really enjoyed the score even at its weirdest with all the strange droning noises.  Incredible performances from the actors pretty much all around,  And, yeah, the cop dialogue was great, although I had that "I know this actor from somewhere else, but what?" feeling the entire time from the lead detective.  (Joanie Stubbs from Deadwood, as it turns out)

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Haven't seen Gone Girl yet but I reckon that's a fair reading. FILM CRIT HULK argues on Twitter that it's a deliberate satire of that kind of interpretation though, I can't wait to read a full article on the matter if he ever gets around to doing it.

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In terms of interpretations I don't think the film left a lot of room for anything other than a straight reading. If I had known more about the film I wouldn't have gone to see it. Difficult to enjoy it after reading about GG for months.

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In terms of interpretations I don't think the film left a lot of room for anything other than a straight reading. If I had known more about the film I wouldn't have gone to see it. Difficult to enjoy it after reading about GG for months.

 

I don't know, I'm kinda coming around on the movie.  This AV Club article (serious spoilers there) talks a lot about the angle that I'm reading the film from (but I do disagree with his last paragraph). 

 

We get the bit of backstory on Amy, and we get to see her parents. Her parents are horrible people who used their daughter's real experiences to create a better fictional version of her.  So much about her is rooted in fiction that I can get a reading on this movie where her acting in horrible stereotypical ways isn't because of a lazy writer, but because she is a writer who is so steeped in the stereotypes that applying them to her real life is something she's found to be effective.  My last post, I mentioned how the story is rooted in performances, and in a way that's still true, but it might have been more appropriate to say that the story is rooted in fiction.  Amy spends the whole movie cloaking herself in fiction.  Pretty much all of her scenes in the present involve her spinning a fiction of some sort, whether it's talking about fashioning the "cool girl" facade, framing Nick, pretending to be the Southerner who is fleeing domestic abuse, the woman on the run from a vengeful ex, or the kidnapping survivor, plus all of the scenes from the diary are very explicitly fiction. 

 

A road like this is always something to be somewhat concerned about, because it's literally saying that stereotypes and tropes aren't because of lazy writing but because the writer of the piece is portraying a writer who uses those stereotypes and tropes.  But considering the skill of so much of this movie, I'm willing to buy this.

 

Think about the scenes of her watching Fake Nancy Grace or the interview with Nick.  When she sits down and watches those TV segments, she's different.  If you think of the bits with Desi, she very much doesn't want him there as she watches the interview.  If you look at those scenes, she much more resembles a child watching Saturday morning cartoons.  She's wrapped up in the same fictions as everyone else, but it's also what makes her so able to recognize the power of cliche.  Cliches, stereotypes, and tropes are all considered bad writing, but they persist because people consider them to be believable.  Amy is an embodiment of these awful stereotypes, but that's because she's deciding to play those roles. 

 

Even the decision to come back to Nick makes sense in this context.  Amy's smart enough to see through the obvious bullshit which Nick thinks he can pull off, to connect with her enough that she gives up on the frame job.  She comes back to Nick, instead, because has spun an impressive fiction like Amy can, like they both used to do with each other.  If he can keep up the lies, then he has her genuine interest again. 

 

It's also why the lead detective can see right through Amy, even when she had just been convinced that Nick killed her.  She did actual investigation, and wouldn't allow herself to rely on cliches and stereotypes to connect the dots.  It's why she feels for so long that they need a body, because the evidence she has is circumstantial, and while you can certainly use some cliches and stereotypes to cobble those together into a believable story, she resists the urge and bases her investigation on the provable facts.  It's because she resists buying into those stereotypes that she can be at the interview with Amy and immediately start picking at the holes in Amy's story.  Amy's response to that is to play up her "survivor" character more, enough to convince the men in the room (who want to believe her story) into shutting down the detective.

 

I am with you that the surface-level examination on the film reveals an ugly thing that feels uglier in the current climate of a hate campaign that shares the same initials.  I'm still not totally comfortable with the film myself, but I'm starting to warm up to the idea that this movie is something like Fincher in Fight Club, where if a real examination of the film gives you a very different outlook than the cursory read does.

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Just saw 'The Skeleton Twins' which has Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig, and a rather bland title. Really good movie though. Quite different from what I assumed a Hader-Wiig movie would be like. Repeat: it's really great.

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My girlfriend has been after me to see that with her for a couple of weeks now. Gonna go Friday, if all pans out. Excited!

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Checked out Star Wars Rebels last night after seeing a few positive reviews around the net. 

For me, it was a lot better than expected. I didn't want to go near it at first because the aesthetic seemed kinda wretched looking. I guess a lot of it comes down to the fact that it's TV animation and they have to compromise (that wookie hair, yeeeesh), but I actually got used to it pretty quickly. 
 

Sidenote: Interesting to note that Team Fortress 2 Source Filmmaker shorts are on par with (if not better than) the animation quality on display here. 

Anyway! The story really fucking flies, and there's some nice intriguing stuff scattered in there. The characters are surprisingly likable and the plot is interesting enough. It probably moves a little fast - it really feels constrained by its short running time and kind of feels the need to have a JUMP TO HYPERDRIVE or a SPACE BATTLE every few minutes. But overall I really quite liked it and I'm gonna keep watching. 

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holyshit!



The film has a wonderful Bosch and Wheatley--especially A Field in England--vibe, direction and look to it.

I was surprised to hear that the novel was going to be adapted into a film. The novel is so damn offbeat, bizarre, surreal, and very literary--as in, it's perfect for the medium--that a film adapt would have a hard time portraying those parts. I'm not a big fan of adaptations, but I'm very interested to see how this film will tackle the novel.

EDIT: Yeah, I'm really excited about this 

 

 

I like the teaser more than the trailer. 

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So I just recently started watching Ally McBeal. It's actually pretty good! I sort of ignored it in the 90s/early 2000s because I thought it was some lightweight sitcom that held no appeal.

 

It turns out that while it is often light, it's actually about some pretty serious stuff a lot of the time too. Just as one example, since we've all been thinking about it a lot recently, it's actually a very well rendered look at modern feminism. There are a lot of women in the show, and they're all realistic and flawed individuals, but are all interesting and powerful in their own ways too. Many of the plot points are directly relevant to a discussion about feminism, and they're handled intelligently and with a good balance of naturalism and practicality versus ethics and morality.

 

Anyway, I'm only part way through the first season at the moment, but I thought I'd mention the show because if anyone else ignored it the first time you may actually be missing out.

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Has anyone been watching Peaky Blinders? My wife started watching it and I was around and started the series myself as it caught my interest. I finished the first season and I feel like it's been consistently great outside of a somewhat boring and confusing first episode, but I suppose they had to get that exposition out of the way.

 

I think my only annoyance might be the use of modern music during the violent scenes, but I like the use of Nick Cave's Right Red Hand as the main theme. Such great performances besides just the usual by Cillian Murphy. It's also very beautiful to look at and has the added bonus of being condensed into the right amount of episodes, no filler, like all fine British shows.

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I am skeptical of Peaky Blinders because the name is just the most twee Cockney name I think I've ever heard. I was hoping it wouldn't end up being good because I just can't take that name seriously.

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I just watched it last week myself.  It was on the whole enjoyable, but there was a lot of wasted potential.  It's sad because the show's setup has so much great conflict and intrigue built into it.  There's the communists, IRA, police, big time racketeers, gypsies, and the Peaky Blinders all with different interests and all brought together over the guns.  Sparks should have been flying from the start, but instead most of the threads just whimper out.
 
Sam Neil and Annabelle Wallis's characters were also woefully underdeveloped and one-dimensional.  They're both supposed to be deeply conflicted characters, but none of that ever comes out believably on screen.

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Perhaps you're right about the inspector, but the Grace character is one of the major reasons I enjoyed it. I think a lot of her info is still intentionally withheld for season 2, as she still is a bit of an unknown when it comes to backstory and she's not telling.

 

The name? It's based on an actual gang around the turn of a century, but I think they've been altered to be of Irish descent and it's by no means a historical account. It is a bit goofy, but eh.

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Looks like I spoke too soon. Just marathoned the four available episodes of season 2 and it has just kind of turned into simply yet another violent gangster show. Pretty much lost all interest in the characters and plot threads. Oh well.

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