ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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Ah so that's what you peeps were specifically referring to.

I was thinking of a closer comparison to the other show being sentimental.

I enjoyed the feeling of peeling back layers with the show. Seeing how someone as weird as Tobias went about his day or watching Gob implode was a lot of fun with the extra screen focus.

Early episodes felt strange but by halfway I was comfortable with the swing of the show.

Re: Princess Mononoke I love the voice acting in that. Billy Bob Thornton made that for me. That movie wouldn't be the same without shouty guy either.

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Well the problem with animated movies being voiced by celebrities is usually celebrities have no fucking clue how to voice act.

 

That said, you could have a place like Funimation who uses bad voice actors so the celebrities aren't as bad in comparison. I don't know why most productions are so afraid of paying voice actors that do a great job in multiple productions and not exclusively piss poor anime. Tekkon Kinkreet and Paprika did though if I recall, but I think that was because they were a Sony pictures release as opposed to Disney or whatever.

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I've been watching and enjoying Torchwood, which I've avoided for a while despite Netflix's persistent recommendation because I haven't seen Dr. Who. That said, boy is that series corny. Does it ever get less corny? Even just the way they draw their weapons or some of the kinda hamfisted dialogue contributes to this sense of "ugh" that's persisted through the first half of the first season.

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I'm rewatching the Final Destination series.

 

Final Destination 1 is pretty terrible. The death scenes are really unconvincingly staged and the script has some insanely bad dialogue in it. Like, so bad you would think screenwriters James Wong and Glenn Morgan spoke English as a second language if you didn't know they wrote some of the greatest X-Files episodes.

 

"My mom couldn't deal anymore. She married this asshole who my mom with my real dad would have crossed the street to avoid this guy." - actual line from Final Destination

 

There's a couple moments like that, where basic syntax is mangled in confusing ways. Also wastes a lot of time with a "the cops think Devon Sawa's killing them all" sub-plot that goes nowhere.

 

Final Destination 2 is easily one of the greatest horror films of the 00's. It's clever, economical, explores the concept to it's full potential and constantly keeps you guessing.

. It's somehow way more ridiculous and way more convincing than the first. Big fan of this one.

 

Final Destination 3 is the emotional Final Destination. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is the lead and the movie wastes a ton of time on her survivor's guilt and PTSD, as if it wanted to be a dumb dead teenager movie and Fearless at the same time. They're still trying to figure out what's going on an hour into the movie. And most of the effects are CGI-based, which is lame. Still some fun moments, though.

 

Gonna have to watch Final Destination 4 (AKA The Final Destination) and 5 soon.

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I just finished watching The Guest.  That seems like a very appropriate thing to have watched after spending a bunch of time this week playing Hotline Miami 2.  It's pretty cheesy, but, man, I really enjoyed that film.

 

I mean, seriously, how can you not love a movie that casts Lance Reddick as

psuedo-Nick Fury?  Actually, all the Captain America comparisons are pretty incredible when you look at it from that angle.

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That Final Destination 2 scene is pretty incredible, in a bizarre, convoluted sort of way. I think I remember seeing other clips from that film and being amused too.

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Which blade runner version should I watch? Been listening to the soundtrack and have a mad hankering to watch it again.

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Ooh, that's a complicated one. If I recall correctly: probably the Director's Cut (takes out the studio-added narration, adds the dream shots and maybe fiddles with the ending) or possibly the Final Cut (from a few years back, pretty much the same but with some continuity errors fixed and perhaps some subtle tinkering). There are probably a few people out there who will advise you to watch the theatrical cut, but I think that's a tiny minority, plus I think there's an assembly cut and maybe one that came between Director's and Final that I'm not familiar with.

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Yeah, the Final Cut is the one to watch.  The "Director's Cut" is actually the work of another editor who was working from notes provided by Ridley Scott, who was too busy to actually oversee it.  The Final Cut is the one where Scott had full control.

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Good to hear Final Cut getting approval, as it's the version I recently bought on blu-ray but haven't had a chance to watch yet. He actually got Joanna Cassidy back in for a few shots to cover up some shoddy stunt work or something, like 25 years later, right?

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Sooooo, i was in bed (it was the evening time after all) and i booted up netflix, and they didn't have Blade Runner, so i watched Ender's Game which was suggested. It was alright, if i'm being generous. I usually can't stand child actors, and the supporting cast really lived up to my expectations. The main guy was ok though, and the girl was grand. Really i only watched it because there was no way i was getting out of bed and i also had just downloaded this new game to my phone, and the game is really good.

 

 

So, maybe tomorrow.

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There was a lot I liked about Arrest Development Season 4, like the slow season long burn to make a name pun joke referencing a news story from the 70s.

 

Also, The long awaited return of Tommy Wisseau! http://www.hulu.com/the-neighbors-2015

 

Good for him. Is it totally self aware? It's too raw to be totally self aware right? It's way too bad not to be right? 

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My opinion of Drive improved vastly the more time went on after I saw it. I still have trouble rewatching it because of the elevator scene, though. I'm generally not bothered by violence but something about the sheer, gleeful aggression in that scene really makes me queasy.

 

So, I finally watched Whiplash. Gosh... I really want to like this film but, as a drummer, there are so many things about this that just annoyed the crap out of me. If it were just inaccuracies then I'd be more willing to look past it (like, for instance, every scene of drumming being ADR'd over in the worst way, meaning that basically nothing matched the performance on screen), but the way it seeped into the message of the film really rubbed me the wrong way. The biggest issue I have is that the way he's shown practicing is fucking horrible and counter-productive, and yet the film consistently shows him getting results from it. And then (ending spoilers)

 

it peaks with his final solo, which is obviously meant to be a moment of triumph for him, not just as a way of getting back at his teacher but on a personal level. Except the whole time he's ripping out those speedy chops he looks like he's physically in pain. That is not the sign of a good drummer. That's the sign of a drummer who's gonna have fucking tendinitis by the time he's 25 and ruin his life.

 

Basically, the way it's treated as a sports movie where he just has to "push past his limits!" is kind of gross when that is literally the last thing you want to be doing as a drummer who actually cares about technique and doesn't want to fuck themselves up for life. But hey... good acting!

 

That's how they always do it for feature-film dubs. I love that they turn into time capsules for what people were considered the hotness in a given year. Steamboy is the one that always comes to mind: Patrick Stewart, Anna Paquin, and Alfred Molina; but I think that Princess Mononoke is the best example: Billy Crudup (a strangely subdued presence, often nearly inaudible), Billy Bob Thornton (what is he even doing), Minnie Driver (probably the best performance, but out of place among the rest), Claire Danes (yells every single line), Jada Pinkett Smith (appears to have decided that she will just say the lines without coming up with a character first), Gillian Anderson (growls every single line, but then she's playing a wolf god), and Keith David (tries to do a Brian Blessed impersonation). It's a bizarre dub, even without them all delivering a fairly slapdash rewrite of the script by Neil Gaiman.

 

Mononoke is a weird one for me. It was my first Miyazaki film, so naturally my favourite, but I saw the dubbed version before knowing anything about the cast, or about Ghibli in general (I'd seen Grave of the Fireflies year earlier but didn't know it was them). The only cast member I actually recognised at the time was Billy Bob, so it actually seemed kind of... appropriate to me? I've watched the original dub since and prefer it, but I still have a soft spot for the english dub, even though I think it's kind of weird in retrospect.

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Basically, the way it's treated as a sports movie where he just has to "push past his limits!" is kind of gross when that is literally the last thing you want to be doing as a drummer who actually cares about technique and doesn't want to fuck themselves up for life. But hey... good acting!

 

I've heard a bit from drummers talking about the film and the ways in which Neyman's progress and technique are all just wrong, but it doesn't complicate the narrative here so much as reinforce it.  It is doing the Sports Movie thing of just "pushing past your limit", but the whole thing is about questioning if trying to do that is worthwhile.

 

It's not about the actual technical fundamentals of drumming, because the message has to be more general, but it's why

his big moment of triumph features only one real shot of any sort of audience, and it's that one lone shot of Paul Reiser with awestruck horror on his face.  Neyman is lost in this moment, but his dad realizes this isn't a positive thing for his son.  He's watching the triumph of this obsession that was brought out in his assocation with Fletcher, the same obsession that consumed everything in his life that wasn't drumming.  If you consider what his obession has cost him in his personal life and add to that how Neyman's training has all been just so that he could do some super technical drumming with such poor technique that he's doing long-term physical damage to himself, it just reinforces the message I think the film settles on.  The movie rather openly compares him with Fletcher's former student, the one who appeared to go and and succeed but who was actually hurting so much that he took his own life.

 

So much of this movie is about playing off the Sports Movie playbook while subverting that genre.  The movie even outright plays with the idea of how you really just can't "push past your limits".  He gets T-Boned by that truck and runs off to go play, which is right out of the Sports Movie playbook, except this time we don't get the scene where he pushes through his limits and succeeds.  It's not because he's weak, it's because he just got hit by a goddamned truck and his body physically can't handle it. 

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The biggest issue I have is that the way he's shown practicing is fucking horrible and counter-productive

 

I always read this as deliberate: we're only shown him practising in that way after Fletcher's been established as a real piece of work. I'm honestly a little confused how many people read the movie as approving of what's going on - I'd almost say it was too subtle about its opinion of the consequences of Fletcher's beliefs, except that we get to hear Fletcher's beliefs after:

we see Neiman stumble out of a fucking car crash, racing to the competition, and Fletcher's only reaction being that he's not going to play looking like he crawled out of a car crash. This is not exactly subtle.

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Just saw the Duke of Burgundy. Incredible film, definitely the best I've seen this year. For a film about a kinky lesbian relationship directed by a man it's amazingly tasteful. Intesy sexual, but it's all psychological and there's no nudity and very little male gaze. I think even if you're completely foreign to kink the film has a lot to say about expectations and power dynamics in relationships.

 

Also it's drop-dead gorgeous and weird and lightly surreal and really heartfelt. 

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Ughhhh I've been wanting to see Duke of Burgundy for months but there is straight up no way for me to legally see it. Immensely frustrating.

In less garbage news I'm going to see It Follows this weekend!

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The new season of Community has started on – get this – Yahoo Screen. So if you love to watch television in shitty region-blocked Flash players, you can do so at https://screen.yahoo.com/

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Uh what how is that even a thing and how did no one else want to pick it up over fucking Yahoo.

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yahoo screen seems to have really glitchy ad breaks, which sucks.

 

but i did like the first two episodes.

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