The last movie you saw...

[maxpayne2409]

buzzcocks rules, altho it isn't quite as good now simon amstell took over when mark lamarr left

[spudthedestroyer]

hbo is part owned by the bbc, that might be why they are l33t Channel 4 does some good shows sometimes, like Spaced or Father Ted. ITV is just trash.

I'm in favour of shortening american series from 22 down to 15, sometimes it works and they can fill out a series without big deviations in quality, but i think its effecting the arcs of a lot of shows, like Battlestar Gallactica. I think the 13 episode series might be a better way of keeping the show ticking


Speaking of good shows, watched 11x01 of South Park I watched scanners 2 last night, obviously it was going to be better than the original... that was a given


My xfiles dvds arrived today... proper ones this time, not the cheap chinese ones which i've given away. Well most of the series arrived, not S2 and 3 for some reason. I was holding out for chances of being able to pick up the Brazilan box set but that would cost hundreds of hundreds of pounds given the size and weight of importing it, not to mention the markup for it being limited edition.

[maxpayne2409]

yeah ive got 11x01 of sp to watch later, personally id like 45min shows to be cut down to 12 ep seasons, but if i'm honest that's simply so that one season fits a dvdr , which i don't think would go down well at a board meeting

[dinky]

forgot to mention I watched something new</i> yesterday. it's the generic twist on the generic chick flick where a girl has to get over the race issue to date the right man. I guess it's like the ashton kutcher movie guess who?</i> done for drama rather than comedy. I guess it was ok. the lead female was pretty attractive. I didn't think it was worth watching in theaters, but had it on dvr in hd so...no. I can't rationalize this. it was completely forgettable (even as chick flicks go) - although nothing about it was particularly bad.

smallville was a repeat tonight. previews for next week indicate a new ep from what I saw (only saw half the preview). I think Entourage starts up soon - this week or next week, I think.

[MyK]

Watched "The Kovak Box" and I really liked it. Dunno why's not listed as a Sci-Fi on IMDB, though I think it's just as much Sci-Fi as say "The Boys from Brazil". Anyway, it's neat little thriller that I think much of you here would like. Recommended. I'd give it 7/10 ranking, at least 2 points higher than "Stranger than Fiction", that's for sure

[dinky]

300</i>. I don't give away any plot points, but I do describe a few of the visuals. I don't consider it spoilerish, but you've been warned:

no. it's not as cool as it looks. yes. it's as dumb as it looks. I feel appreciably dumber for having watched this movie. it's just fecking stupid. everything is blown out of proportion (the way a comic book is with impossibly broad shoulders and thin torsos - like a he-man action figure or barbie doll). if a person has some kind of disease, he looks and speaks more horrifically than emperor palpatine. if someone is born deformed, he looks like the hunchback of notre dame with an extra hunchback of equal or greater size stacked on his back for good measure. the bad guys take off their masks, and underneath they're literally monsters. the enemy "god-king" stands twice the size of a normal warrior. there are literally giants (like a cyclops but with two eyes - some have their hands cut off and arms fused into huge scyth blades). these impossibly democratic and anti-warrior-like sentiments are championed by the film and you know you're supposed to believe it cuz they queue-up this ridiculous score in the background. a wolf in the wild isn't a wolf but a "giant wolf," with impossible comic booky proportions. none of the spartans or acaidian allies wore armor of any kind on their chests & torsos, but at the end when the allies march off and the spartans remain to fight to the bitter end, the retreating allies are all wearing the same armor that's been missing the entire fecking movie. and the narrator's voice over. my gawd! it was painful.

mostly I laughed. I watched intently during the multiple nude girly scenes, and there were a few cool lines (most of which occur in the trailer). all in all though, the movie was just fecking retarded. it felt like an honest attempt to faithfully render a comic book retelling of an historical battle, but whether or not you know the history, you can't ignore the complete and utter implausibility of it all. it's just...stupid. conan</i> was a much better movie. and tbh, chronicles of riddick</i> does better than 300</i>.

do not, under any circumstances, go in expecting anything remotely resembling the same brilliant comic2film adaptation that frank miller and robert rodriguez produced with sin city</i>

[MyK]

OMFG... Watched trailers for 300 after reading your post Dinky and this movie looks like the greatest rip-off I've seen in ages. Not a single scene I've seen in trailers (all of them and I double-checked) meets criteria it would need to get even 5/10 rating (you could replicate them using "Gladiator", "Kingdom of Heaven", "13th Warrior", "Alexander", "Troy", "Hellboy" and "Two Towers" left-overs quite easily) and it has 8.4/10 at the moment on IMDB that's even statistically impossible unless they bought that 6760 10/10 votes, perhaps even 600 of 9/10 just to look genuine I wouldn't touch this movie with a really long stick , then again, I thought "Sin City" was pretty lame too.

[maxpayne2409]

i haven't even heard of this movie, but if it's not ZGrade pap then that's proobably why

[dinky]

well...I thought sin city</i> felt like a comic, made for grown-ups, but on film instead of paper. I wasn't really wild about the movie when I first saw it, but I've liked it more in subsequent viewings, and I'd always respected the effect and atmosphere it created.

by contrast, 300</i> was like painfully watching someone try to cut panes from a comic book into a movie frame. I just couldn't take it seriously on any level. whereas there was something identifiable and human going on in sin city</i>. 300</i> had a lot of talking about human stuff going on, but the only thing I could identify with was the same feeling of amateurish, cliched stupidity that befouls a michael bay or roland emmrich movie.

ghost rider</i> was more human than this movie. it should have been the easiest comic book ever to render into human terms (cuz it depicts actual history and, more importantly, deals with ordinary humans doing extraordinary things not superheroes), but it was just the opposite. imo, if you'd watch and enjoy this, you'd watch and enjoy everything. the infamous studio writers who butchered blade runner and alien are probably your wet dreams.

[maxpayne2409]

what about the people who butchered Brazil? or are they just too despicable for any mere mortal to comprehend?

[maxpayne2409]

oh i just remembered aswell, last night i watched Storm Catcher (1999) last night, starring the Lundgren, omg it was hilarious, not as hilarious as Detention, but still hilarious, it was one of my own rips as there are no english rips around, so i had to dl a german dvdr of it and rip it myself with the english audio track

respect tho as it seems to be one of the few films where a kid is involved in a shootout against her house with her parents and she almost has a nervous breakdown from fear, or maybe thats just her catching a glimpse of the acting i don't know

[dinky]

V for Vendetta</i> in HD. really liked it. everything about the movie was very good (if not entirely new/original), except for one part of the ending where people dress-up like V. the ending itself was great with the train and so forth. I just think the army of V-people was over-the-top and unnecessary cheese. the whole premise of the movie is preachy/political. but what I really about it this time around were the ruminations on what it means to be someone/somebody. the whole bit about words and how they work. etc.

[MyK]

Yeah, that ending in "V for Vendetta" was really almost over-the-top and, interestingly, I found the special attention to the meaning of words to be one of the better elements of it, too. Dunno how well I'm at that in English, average for a non native English speaker I'd say, but it really annoys me when people are using words whose meaning they don't understand. Even more so when some are quoting others that didn't know what they were saying in the first place, unless they are quoted for the kicks of it, like e.g. "fool me once..." G.B.J.'s that's still hilarious

Anyway, watched "Babel" today and I found it quite difficult to watch (not difficult to follow, it's quite straight-forward and perhaps even a bit too self-explaining). It's hard to dissect it for the sake of giving you my impressions of it. Basically it's an art movie and I think it should be treated as such. A statement of life as a whole in an abstract form and should be left to form itself within every viewer's mind IMO (providing he/she wishes and/or is able to draw own conclusions of it, that is). I was only a bit disappointed that it was more of a story of one riffle with snapshots of lives it affected and not the other way around.

[dinky]

meh. I thought it was disappointing and overhyped, but more good than bad.


anyway...just watched casino</i>. this movie was really big with my high school crowd (mostly football jocks), but I don't think I ever saw it all the way through before - anyway, about half of it felt new. watched the 720p rip. it was pretty good. kinda saddens me to see robert denio so young then and to see him now. I guess it was a little over a decade ago, but it was a rough decade - he looked basically the same in casino as he did in godfather 2. what's with scorcese always casting him as a non-italian? he's irish in goodfellas, jewish in casion. wtf? he's deniro ffs!

speaking of which, this'll prolly get me whacked, but I much prefered the departed</i>.

[MyK]

speaking of which, this'll prolly get me whacked, but I much prefered the departed

With you on that Babel being overhyped It's always like that with movies that leave you to your own conclusions... most people don't get it and so they go with the flow. I mean, just think of how people react when they're leaving the theater when watching such movies. Most wait till someone comments on it and then they all go either "ja, ja,.." or "no, no..." LOL. Which is really funny, cuz with such movies there really is nothing to get in the first place. It's just that it leaves most ppl bewildered, not knowing what to make of it cuz it's emotionally to big to swallow in one go. "Babel" can IMO make that to ppl as it has that constant emotional drive that implodes in the end, when most expected - I guess - it would explode. There's no immediate satisfaction for the masses in it so they overhype it, which in turn self-produces secondary satisfaction. People rather leave theaters in a good mood they saw that movie even if they need to manufacture a reason for it. Sad, but that's how it is. And while we're at it, I'd give "Babel" say 7+/10 and not more. I mean there are many excellent points to it and I second that Oscar for original score, especially if you saw other nominated movies (I saw most of them) but at the end of it all it's somewhere there alongside "Traffic". Good to really good, but not excellent. BTW - I never saw a movie that I'd give 9/10 so 7+ is a must see

EDIT: @Dinky, when you say "football", that's two teams of gay men trying to gang-bang each other or the real stuff? I rather ask than draw my own conclusions based on that you went to see "300"

[dinky]

I see all new action movies and most comedies. the other stuff, I'm less dependable on seeing. and I like ancient history cuz it's close to sci-fi & fantasy.

american football. soccer kids are stereotypically scrawny, get very little respect, and are usually the "butt" of gay jokes (lame pun intended).

[MyK]

Social inhibitors, huh? ROFL One could say quite the opposite on the old cont' cross the pond Just out of curiosity, didn't you find that close-shaved/waxed semi-naked "300" men equipped with nothing but a long blade and a g-string a bit on the gay side?

Watched "American Gun" just now and it fits the theme I started with "Babel" quite nicely. Not that I'd draw any parallels between them except for the obvious - guns & lives they affected. Good cast, and I dunno - I'm not familiar with the background story / real life events, but I'd say that it's basically a drama version of "Bowling for Columbine", just not about Columbine but some other high school. Or was Columbine a primary school Don't remember. Anyway, it's best kept in the past IMO.

[maxpayne2409]

american football. soccer kids are stereotypically scrawny, get very little respect, and are usually the "butt" of gay jokes (lame pun intended).

i refuse to believe outside of hollywood there are any scrawny americans, or by scrawny do you mean 18 stone or less

[dinky]

Just out of curiosity, didn't you find that close-shaved/waxed semi-naked "300" men equipped with nothing but a long blade and a g-string a bit on the gay side?

yeah. it reminded me more of He-Man or Conan than homosexual.

american football. soccer kids are stereotypically scrawny, get very little respect, and are usually the "butt" of gay jokes (lame pun intended).

i refuse to believe outside of hollywood there are any scrawny americans, or by scrawny do you mean 18 stone or less

yeah...well...all those illegal mexican immigrants doing slave work in california balances the scales a bit.

[maxpayne2409]

simply that dinky, , simply that