ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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Sounds like my most recent break-up, except mine was a year and a half. (Mind you, it was a dense year and a half. More happened in it than happened in any other relationship I've been in.) But anyway, movie sounds excellent. Thanks for the recommendation, miffy.

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I watched MI4, and really enjoyed the first half (up to the

sandstorm chase

) but then it just really lost momentum for me, and like someone said above just repeats itself a few more times. Still very efficient but by then I was acclimatised.

Also watched Ides Of March, and for me that was more of a different role for Gosling than (iirc) Drive and Lars And The Real Girl. Still quite restrained but not as soft. The film was well-executed but felt about as substantial as an episode of The West Wing. It didn't really have an ending either, it felt like a very good first and second act of a film.

Finally, Girl With Dragon Tattoo was about as good an effort as they could have made with such dreadful source material. They should have cut the

guardian

stuff though. I know it's setting stuff up for the next film, but you shouldn't fuck up your first film's structure in service of the second.

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Great to see The Ides of March getting a lot of love here.

Yesterday I went to see Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Gadzooks, it was miles better than the first one! It had a lot more poise and refinement and had some really gripping moments. Gonna see that one again.

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Finally, Girl With Dragon Tattoo was about as good an effort as they could have made with such dreadful source material. They should have cut the

guardian

stuff though. I know it's setting stuff up for the next film, but you shouldn't fuck up your first film's structure in service of the second.

I wouldn't say that. It works in the Swedish film, at least, because it explains Salander a bit. But I've heard the character is a less vulnerable (emotionally) in the American film, so maybe it isn't needed. It's really weird the American film exists. I quit reading the book after about 50 pages...

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Well, I also thought it should have been cut out of the book. Either that or make it relevant to the narrative in some way.

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Yesterday I went to see Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Gadzooks, it was miles better than the first one! It had a lot more poise and refinement and had some really gripping moments. Gonna see that one again.

Really? I thought it was mostly more of the same, with a little of the shine off the apple simply due to its not being novel anymore. Moriarty was played well, but apart from that the only thing that I really enjoyed beyond a general level of entertainment was Stephen Fry (and yes, I mean that scene as well).

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Sure, it was thoroughly entertaining. Nothing more, but I didn't expect more. The main point is that I thought it was better than the first, which lacked some clarity.

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Here's been my experience with the Sherlock Holmes movies: I was super-surprised and delighted at how much I enjoyed the first one. Then I decided to watch it again and found it to be nowhere near as good as my first experience. The second one genuinely seemed to reach the heights I remembered the first one reaching (as I had much higher expectations this time around, and so wasn't going to be won over by mere surprise), and so (to me) was the better film.

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The most important issue: was the film joking that Holmes invented the motor car, or just showing him to be an early adopter of it? (Thunderpeel, don't say what you think yet, you might sway the others.)

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On an actual critical note (I'm assuming the motor car invention topic is a joke here),

I was a bit disappointed at the matter-of-fact reveal at the end that Holmes had survived his classic, and completely breathtaking, waterfall dive with Moriarty. It was such a great moment, so it felt a little poor to write it away with a joke (surprise, Holmes is alive and back in camouflage costume). Takes the sting right out of it. Studio interference or poor judgement on Ritchie's end?

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I agree, Rodi, but as I thought about it on the way home I can't see it having been done any other way.

You can very rarely actually end a film with a protagonist's death if you want to make another sequel. I can pretty much guarantee they want to make another sequel. Unless you're just concerned about how it was revealed that he survived - in which case, eh. I dunno. It sort of made the whole sacrifice meaningless either way, so I didn't mind that it was done in a silly way - the camouflage bit was actually somewhat funny at least.

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(I'm assuming the motor car invention topic is a joke here)

No. I want to know what your readings of this were, please.

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I don't see Sherlock Holmes as an inventor per se, so I certainly didn't read the motorcar as being his invention.

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Did I point out the logical flaw in Holmes here? There's no way Holmes could have

written a "fish" pun

because he was

being soundly beaten

by Moriarty at the time he was supposed to have switched

Macguffins

.

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You mean the flipbook animation of the fish? Holmes must have created that way in advance. Leave it to his overweening sense of superiority that he'd gamble on his own victory. Later in the film he also explains that he knew he had to put himself in harm's way to switch the notebooks (though his miraculous escape was by no means planned or assured, but hey).

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What Thunderpeel forgot to say is that

Moriarty only brought up the fish/hook metaphor when he was torturing Holmes, so Holmes' reference to it in the flipbook - which he must have made before the torture scene in preparation for swapping it - doesn't make sense. (Unless Moriarty has brought this up before, it was a massive coincidence, or Holmes knew his nemesis SO well that he predicted exactly which simile and method of torture he would pick!)

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Continuing my look at Ryan Gosling: The Man, the Myth, the Icon, I watched the recommended Blue Valentine. I concur with its recommendation, and it was definitely an intriguing and complex film. To see characters with such depth at two different points in their lives, and how their relationship differed between the two, was genuinely interesting.

I also think I understand a little bit more of the praise Gosling has been receiving now. It was absolutely a different role to the ones he played in Drive and the Ides of March, so I can now see that he has some range. It's also fascinating to watch these three films close to each other because of how his characters portray the physical, intellectual and emotional reactions to their attendant crises respectively.

Also, damn, I just looked at Ryan Gosling's IMDB page. That guy is working recently.

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Yes, I forgot to mention that the pun was a reference to the very scene, giving Holmes no time to prepare any animations or puns.

Also, can I say that I didn't make the connection that Holmes was supposed to have invented the car?

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Forgive me because I'm not sure of this, but didn't Holmes and Moriarty discuss favorite composers during their first meeting, with a shout-out to Schubert?

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So I started rewatching the Die Hard movies. Had a lot of fun watching them... until I reached Die Hard 4. Besides that this is one of those recent Hollywood movies that only has 2 color tones (Teal and Orange), my god what is it a terrible movie.

The first 3 die hard movies were borderline realistic. But #4 contains super human people that can jump ridiculous distances. etc. It's really annoys the shit out of me. And I'm not even that bothered by the dumb "hacker" stuff.

At this moment I'm 25 minutes in. And still not a single drop of blood on Willis' character.

Terrible terrible movie.

Edited by elmuerte

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Only thing more monotonous than the Hollywood color palette is your continuous ranting about orange and teal.

:)

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? I believe so.

I thought maybe the topic of the fish could have come up at that time. I'll look for it when I see the movie again because I will.

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