ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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Just watched Battle Royale. Interesting to see that after the hunger games hype, especially how the latter is basically trying to take Battle Royale and turn it into something serious or at least less over the top and that that seems to sell.

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The original Battle Royale novel attempted a really neat thing where the perspective constantly jumped from character to character to reinforce that nobody was safe from dying. It also had a mentally ill protagonist for one chapter who was interpreting the events completely differently from everyone else.

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I just found out that the Veronica Mars movie is out (they really need better marketing, I found out via a hotel movie selection), and it is what I was hoping for, which is a two hour episode of the show. Maybe my memory isn't giving the show enough credit, but the movie's dialog felt especially witty. I watched it with someone who'd never seen the show before, and they also liked it.

 

Minor spoilers to follow.

I kind of wish that the mystery had been a little more grand somehow. It really did feel like a two hour episode, they passed on the opportunity to do something bigger and just put a few more twists and turns on something that felt like it could have been a 45 minute episode.

 

Also: Damnit Hollywood, stop shoehorning a romance plot into everything. This one was pretty brief, but it still felt like it wouldn't have been there if not for box-checking.

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The original Battle Royale novel attempted a really neat thing where the perspective constantly jumped from character to character to reinforce that nobody was safe from dying. It also had a mentally ill protagonist for one chapter who was interpreting the events completely differently from everyone else.

 

Apart from the designated bad guy with machine guns who just kept NOT DIEING. I wouldn't have cared normally, but the characters in general were pretty good and realised with individual personalities but constant plot fragility... except the main 'bad guy' with massive plot armor.

 

The other thing is, Battle Royale, if I remember right, had essentially the same premise? That the point of the Royale was to teach them pesky kids a lesson and try to keep the unruly ones in line. Not that it seemed to work at all, cause they acted relatively unruly before they found out their class had been chosen.

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This is what Far Cry 3 should have been like:

 

It's on Netflix. Dude buys a diplomatic position so he can smuggle diamonds. It's crazy.

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Saw Edge of Tomorrow. It was okay, but my housemate was really bothered by some of the plot deficiencies and neither of us was really blown away by the action that occupied much of the plot.

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This is what Far Cry 3 should have been like:

 

It's on Netflix. Dude buys a diplomatic position so he can smuggle diamonds. It's crazy.

 

Yeah, that documentary is insane. Well worth watching.

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Yeah, that documentary is insane. Well worth watching.

For me it had a Kurt & Courtney feel by the end, which was an odd juxtaposition considering how real those people were and how serious the situation is. It simultaneously felt like a re-dramatization and an VICE documentary. Maybe this surreality is partially due to the idea that everyone in that world believes that they are legitimate business-men and poiticians while that belief is side-by-side with the absurd charicature of the narrator.

 

It's kind of unsettling that during the course of the documentary, they give more than 10 million francs to a slaver and just some make-your-own-matches set to the pygmies. 

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Edge of Tomorrow was great. My best bit:

 

Tom goes to roll under a truck. I roll my eyes like he is going to fucking succeed. He doesn't \o/

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Edge of Tomorrow was great. My best bit:

 

Tom goes to roll under a truck. I roll my eyes like he is going to fucking succeed. He doesn't \o/

Well that just kinda sold me on the movie. I need to see it now.

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Watched a couple of movies with the fam last night to polish off Father's Day.  Odd Thomas was...meh, entertaining but kind of terrible.  Ripoff of The Frighteners, which is a much better movie.  Supposedly the novels are better, I wouldn't know. 

 

Then watched A Fantastic Fear of Everything, which was pretty fantastic.  It honestly kind of becomes a different, not quite as good, movie in the second half.  But Pegg's performance, the first half, and the high points in general make it worth watching.  Seems like it got a lot of hate from people when it came out.  Might have helped that I knew next to nothing about it going in, and so had no expectations. 

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I liked AFFOE too, a nice big mix of stuff. Did you know it was directed by the lead singer of Kula Shaker? I felt like I would have enjoyed it a lot more if they had cut out the redundant first five minutes completely. If it had started at the lunch with the agent, it would have felt a lot sharper to me.

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I did not know that!  I think you could point to several areas where it could have been tightened up in general to make a better movie.  With any movie where you spend a considerable amount of time watching the protagonist descend into madness, it can be a very fine line between making sure you spend enough time there for the audience to really feel what it happening, but avoid the audience feeling like they are being bludgeoned with it.  I'd guess that they wanted all those minutes with Pegg alone, but then split it up with the restaurant scene to give the audience a breather.   

 

There's a tiny detail at the end I loved, more easter egg than anything.

 

There's a sandwich board just visible in the bottom left corner of the frame that says something like, "Bodies found in basement of SoHo restaurant, waiter suspected." Which has to be referring back to the waiter that scared the crap out of Pegg in the scene with his agent.

 

Also, I just realized that Claire Higgins was in the first two Hellraisers.  Holy crap.  I haven't watched those since I was a kid, kinda makes me want to go back and see them again. 

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neither of us was really blown away

 

- not IGN.com

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Any thoughts on the "Food Chain" episode of Adventure Time? I'm just speechless and had to watch it again.

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I loved it!

 

That's my thoughts. I don't think I have anything meaningful to say about it. It was just really good.

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I was disappointed that Edge of Tomorrow was as smart as it was.  If it had been a lot dumber, it could have been good fun.  If it had been a bit better, and ditched the final-obligatory-stakes-raised-thirty-minute-action-sequence, it could have been a classic.  As it is, it's sort of stuck right there in the middle.

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Any thoughts on the "Food Chain" episode of Adventure Time? I'm just speechless and had to watch it again.

 

Really good episode. One of the most surreal, fun ones in a long time.

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

 

 

Everything about this screams "THIS WILL BE AWESOME", specially the fact that it's being made by my boy Alejandro González Iñárritu. Hoping this will be his Gravity or Pacific Rim, and put him in mainstream recognition along with his two buddies (Del Toro and Cuaron). 

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Wow, Birdman looks absolutely fantastic! Excited already!

 

Then I found out it's showing in Denmark.. in January next year.. BAH! Gotta make room for all those Expendables and Transformers, I guess..

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

 

 

Looks brilliant!

 

I can't remember the last time a trailer alone got me so excited about a movie.

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My sis just linked me this, kinda looks amazing even if it is about sport!

 

 

 

 

I don't know how to embed:(

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Use the short link and just paste it in, thus:

 

 

Not as slick, but The Other Final is kinda similar to Next Goal Wins. It's about a match played between the world's two worst footie teams, Bhutan and Montserrat, on the day of the 2002 FIFA World Cup Final.

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