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I was looking for something so-bad-its-good and ended up getting Kevin Costner's The Postman. Turns out it's actually just good. Yes it is occasionally a little long, a little self indulgent, and Tom Petty turns up as himself for literally no reason, but I found it all good fun. Maybe the DVD is a completely different cut to the theatrical release, I don't know, but there's no way this film deserves the reputation it has.

Plus you see Olivia Williams' boob.

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So I guess AMC are making Preacher into a show. I don't really have high hopes for it, but if at the very least it gets people to check out the comic, which Imo is one of the best series there is, then that's cool.

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I actually got a copy of one of the Preacher paperbacks used from my local library for 10 cents.

It was much much better than I was expecting for something I bought for 10 cents, and I really want to read more of it.

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What did people make of The Lego Movie?

 

The internet seems to have gotten rather in a tizzy over this thing. Currently 95% positive on Rotten Tomatoes. 

 

For me, it kinda missed the mark. The editing and timing of the jokes felt completely off to me, edited and delivered so frantically that any comedic timing got lost. It was just so relentless, and this seemed to have a bad effect on the kids in the audience. They started talking to each other and getting agitated. My girlfriend dozed off. Nobody seemed to be laughing all that much. 

 

I liked the story, though. And the few times that the move just slowed the fuck down a bit were really charming. The Lego nostalgia was nice. But I wanted to like it more. 

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About to watch these two films:

 


And I got done watching Un Prophete & Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion last night. Brillian, brilliant films with front men who know how to act.

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Is anyone else watching True Detective? It's probably the most powerful thing HBO's put out in almost a decade, by my reckoning, and it's only halfway done.

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The first three episodes were good, but the fourth episode sealed the deal for me. The final fifteen minutes of that episode were incredible. I believe it was all one continuous shot, too.

 

Is anyone else watching True Detective? It's probably the most powerful thing HBO's put out in almost a decade, by my reckoning, and it's only halfway done.

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Sweet, I've got this saved of my TiVo. I've been planning on saving it until it's all finished before I watch it. I'm going to try and do this more in the future so 1) you can actually find out if something is worth watching before you waste a month on it and 2) i just find it far more enjoyable to consume when you have all the episodes at your disposal

Maybe I'll try it with the new series on Hannibal, see if I have the patiences to hold out

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What did people make of The Lego Movie?

 

The internet seems to have gotten rather in a tizzy over this thing. Currently 95% positive on Rotten Tomatoes. 

 

For me, it kinda missed the mark. The editing and timing of the jokes felt completely off to me, edited and delivered so frantically that any comedic timing got lost. It was just so relentless, and this seemed to have a bad effect on the kids in the audience. They started talking to each other and getting agitated. My girlfriend dozed off. Nobody seemed to be laughing all that much. 

 

I liked the story, though. And the few times that the move just slowed the fuck down a bit were really charming. The Lego nostalgia was nice. But I wanted to like it more. 

 

I just came out of the cinema, and we had the opposite experience. I agree that it was incredibly frantic, but a lot of the little moments hit home with me and a girlfriend, so we were laughing through the whole movie, making the non-relentingness a positive thing. The writers must have grown up on exactly the same things I did, because a lot of the references felt tailor-made for me.

 

Not to mention, every single casting choice felt spot on, especially Will Arnett as Batman.

 

It helped we were the only two people in the whole cinema, of course. Everyone either wants to watch it with their kids in Swedish, is at home watching Eurovision part-finals, or out drinking.

We had to see it in 3D, which made some scenes look pretty cool, but I felt I was missing a lot of the background moments because I couldn't focus on them. I'm also very interested how they made the stop-motion aestethic and all, so I'm definitely getting it on bluray when the time comes. 

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Lying in bed last night I flicked to a random movie in XBMC and landed on Young Adult, which I meant to watch when it came out because Patton Oswalt but then forgot. It's alright. 10/10 for Patton Oswalt. Not a massive fan of Diablo Cody but it was much less nauseating than Juno, so points for that.

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My housemate has been on a Girl with the Dragon Tattoo kick because he now has time to read the books, so I watched the Swedish version and then the American version within about a week of each other.

 

Yep, Fincher's version is pretty fucking fabulous. I like it more than the Swedish version, which I think mishandles Lisbeth a bit. The American version has Lisbeth interact with people more so her social inabilities come across better on screen, and the introductions to the characters are handled better. I also liked a couple of the Fincher additions, some of the smoothing out of the mystery and the cat they they added for Blomkvist, but rewatching it I was struck by how they handled Lisbeth's guardian and the old racist Vanger. They're both played as amicable people with monstrous expectations, who see their worldview as reasonable and honest.

 

I understand Fincher is interested in doing the sequel if they work out what to do with the second one; the second book gets lost and ends poorly, and it sounds like they want to go a little further afield for their adaptation to try and make it better, which would be great.

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I also enjoyed the Fincher version so much more, even though most people will say it's inferior. I am a Fincher fanboy, although I don't necessarily like all of his movies. I feel it's a much sharper movie and more pulse pounding overall. I felt freaked out and relieved over and over in a good way, the rhythm was just right.

 

I read that if the sequels happened, Fincher would only be involved as a producer, not a director.

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Also, that fantastic opening sequence. You know the one.

 

The only one in the movie, that one?

 

Yeah, it's so, so good. I love the 'oh god what's going on here' feeling it's going for, like someone's lifted up a rock and all the beetles are scuttling. Fincher's version just pushes everything just a little further, everything's just a little tighter (even though it is a 2 1/2 hour long film). Everything's set up just a little better - Blomkvist is promised Wennerstrom to entice him to go to Hedestad, and the way Wennerstrom is dispatched and how Salander empties his accounts is handled much cleaner. (Though I preferred him committing suicide to being executed, I can imagine a sequel tying Zala to Wennerstrom's death.)

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g2xrk7m.jpg

This is Karen Gillan

From the guardians of the galaxy teaser trailer of a trailer coming out later today...

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Watched Rumble in the Bronx for the first time in a age & it was actually kinda awesome. Honestly how Jackie Chan nailed the Everyman doing superhuman stunts thing quite so well I'll never know.

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Oh yeah, I went to school with the woman who did a lot of the 3D modeling for that opening sequence. I never spoke to her and don't remember her at all despite people saying she was in some of my classes.


This is really a useless post of nothing.

 

Also my significant other loves the movie but feels the opening sequence is seriously out of place. I can sort of see where she's coming from, but I think it's a nice set up and pretty much lets you know you need to brace yourself for the rest of the movie.

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Haha, that Guardians of the Galaxy trailer. I like it! Now there's a superhero movie I want to see.

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Huh. Yeah. I haven't even heard of that IP. Kinda wary of Marvel movies but I do want to see that.

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I learnt something from that trailer, actually: the bit where they have the epic explosions and speedramping and serious faces set to Hooked on a Feeling takes basically all the sting out of the epic explosions and serious faces while still showing it.

 

Apparently Guardians of the Galaxy isn't a big IP; if you wanted to make a movie about a big villain, though, you'd go to Thanos, and they're the ones who make the most sense as the heroes. This is kind of a sign that Marvel are running out of IP to turn into mostly-competent action films, while DC are struggling with Wonder Woman. (On the plus side, this does mean we might see a Deadpool movie. Having Deadpool assemble a team to steal Avengers 2 would be the most delightful thing.)

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Lego Movie - very disappointed. No story or characters (which fits with later developments but still doesn't make for a good movie), and the humour feels more like a bunch of Youtube videos stitched together than a feature comedy. It has a lot of muddled themes and descends into mawkishness at the end. It reminded me of the equally-mawkish Toy Story 2: that film tells us that a rare toy should not be displayed in a museum; this one (after a lot of confusion) tells us that if you want to enjoy Lego in a less imaginative way, you are doing it wrong.

 

It generally looked nice, though the 3D was barely existent, and the action was messily directed. It did look gorgeous when they were doing big water or explosion effects.

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