Film and Episodic Content Discussion Thread

Discussion in 'Random Thoughts' started by purr1n, Jan 8, 2020.

  1. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    Well shucks, I'd given up - was not going to watch it. Might have to rethink...
     
  2. Boops

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    Based on the description of ep 4, we're about to get into Mon Mothra and the senate so I am getting nervous the bullshit will start happening, but we'll see.

    I'd say watch the first two eps and if you don't like it then abandon ship. I'd be interested to hear what you think either way.
     
  3. Pharmaboy

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    Season-3 of the very solid Nordic noir policier, DEADWIND, starts on Netflix tonight. I can't wait to see episode-1. The lead actress is very good. I don't know why Hollywood isn't watching her. She speaks fluent English; nothing except industry contacts and perhaps homesickness would stop her from succeeding in film or TV here.

    I'm very tolerant of subtitles, always have been (not all feel that way). Subtitles let me hear the true strangeness of the Icelandic language, in which nothing at all sounds at familiar.
     
  4. Boops

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    Thanks for the heads up @Pharmaboy. Love that show.

    The wife and I just watched Midsommar last night. Mindblowing, gorgeous, tense, unforgettable movie. If you are looking for a good Halloween watch, check it out.
     
  5. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    Was able to watch all episodes last week when I was stuck at home with my covid sick kids. It's a compelling show, and like you said not just because it avoids the nostalgia trap - it's narrative and characters stand on their own.

    Besides Diego Luna (Cassian) I really liked the actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach playing the character Arvel Skeen - I was disappointed he was killed off. Yet other characters/actors (e.g. the two women who were part of the raid) are surprisingly flat/boring - Woke inserts maybe? In any case overall worth the time IMO.
     
  6. Boops

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    I was going to ask whether you found time to watch it. Glad you are enjoying it. The recent depiction of life in the prison was harrowing. I could hardly believe Disney was allowing this kind of dark, oppressive depiction to exist.

    The show either bodes well for the future potential/narrative range of Disney Star Wars, or they will never let anyone make a show like this again.

    I happen to like the raid ladies. Maybe they will have more to do later…
     
  7. Biodegraded

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    Deadwind is Finnish, not Icelandic; you might be thinking of Trapped, and its followup Entrapped.

    Another good recent Netflix furrin one: Black Butterflies (French) - really twisted.
     
  8. Pharmaboy

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    I know it's Finnish. No idea why I typed Icelandic. Must be losing it.

    Season-3 is a slow cooker. I'm midway through episode-4 and all of a sudden it's firing on all cylinders, with that terrific tension and complex interaction (mostly non-verbal) between the 2 main characters, who are fascinating and are played by very fine actors.

    I'm such a sucker for Nordic noir. It has almost nothing to do with noir as we've come to know it from Hollywood. But that doesn't matter: the cold, geographic & cultural isolation, and unique sounding language make it irresistable to me.
     
  9. crenca

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    Good article on the set and tech design in Andor:

    How ‘Andor’ Designers Took ‘Star Wars’ Back to the Analog Era - WSJ

    I don't think its behind the paywall, but if it is just cancel your $8 twit subscription and spend the same amount on real content like the WSJ digital edition ;)

    I thought we were 8 episodes and done till next year, but #9 of 12 came out yesterday.
     
  10. Biodegraded

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    LOL - first must-see movie of 2023:

     
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  11. Kernel Kurtz

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    I'm gonna watch that! Sharknado eat your heart out.
     
  12. Kernel Kurtz

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    So I don't mind campy movies like the above, but more straight up horror is my fave genre. Saw one last year that was filmed right here in Winnipeg called Hunter Hunter. Just a good all around scary movie. The ending is over the top though, not for the squeamish.

    https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hunter_hunter
     
  13. ColtMrFire

    ColtMrFire Writes better fan fics than you

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    Alright, so this Jennifer Lawrence horseshit has been bothering me the past few days and I keep seeing youtube videos about it so I gotta speak up.

    For those who don't know, she claimed to be the first female lead in an action movie (with Hunger Games), and claimed boys can't identify with female characters.

    Anybody with a working memory would know the first statement is categorically false, as there is a long list of female led action movies that goes back many decades.

    And anybody with a brain bigger than a walnut should find the second claim patently absurd. People identify with emotion and emotions don't change because of gender. As a black male I couldn't be more different than Sarah Conner, but I identified with her completely in Terminator, because she was a well written, fully realized character with relatable emotions and her station in life as a wage slave along with evolution into badassery was inspirational.

    Yes, her statement was profoundly ignorant and shockingly disrespectful to the pioneers of female led action flicks, but deeper than that it speaks to this narcissistic worldview many of the newer generations have (not all of course, I'm speaking generally). It's as if they feel they have nothing to contribute to society (with their cushy lives of smartphones, electric cars and fancy lattes) so they have to steal/take credit for the contributions of real heroes who went through actual hardship to attain what they got. The new generation can just sit back and pretend none of it ever happened while boosting their follower count on social media. History doesn't really exist to them, at least any history prior to their birth, and even if it does exist it doesn't really matter because those people are dead anyway.
     
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  14. Pharmaboy

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    What she said is ridiculous. Her self-regard is too large by 1/2 ... even though she really is a talented actress whose movies I want to see.

    But your post reminds me of a dilemma I find myself in almost daily. As I get older, I try hard to resist attitudinal changes I see in so many aging people:
    • Increasing conservatism
    • Decreasing empathy, particularly for "the other" (people unlike one's self) and those with less wealth/less comfort
    • Increasing dislike, even to the point of hate, of those same people
    • And increasing intolerance for those 1 or 2 generations behind one's self
    When I see Jennifer Lawrence do or say dumbass things, I prefer to focus on her, not her age group. If one pays attention to her history of actions and utterances while in the public eye, the latest foot-in-mouth stuff isn't surprising. So I'd rather conclude that she, not her entire generation, tends towards entitlement, arrogance, and life in a me-bubble.

    Yes, it's hard to handle so many people with their faces glued to cellphones, madly messaging each other, living apart from real life (and even reality) as I understand it. But I really don't want to hate them. Somehow that feels like a wrong turn, a misdirect that could diminish me.

    Speaking of cinema and television, I'd rather keep finding people (of all ages, colors, shapes, sizes) whose work astonishes and lifts me up. People like the actors in NOPE, whose skill and passion rocked me. They're roughly the same age as Jennifer, but seem to share little with her apart from acting skill.

    FWIW, I'm not saying any of this to or about you. I always enjoy your posts and have learned much from your excellent videos. I'm just thinking out loud about how I try to come to terms with the same stuff that made you write this post...
     
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    Last edited: Dec 13, 2022
  15. ColtMrFire

    ColtMrFire Writes better fan fics than you

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    Weirdly I find myself getting more empathetic as I age, because experience brings about clarity and understanding. But I also find myself more intolerant of stupidity, because I see how damaging it is, and just how badly run the planet is because of it.

    Yeah, as I said I was generalizing, of course not everyone in a generation is of the same ilk. But there are definite patterns you can identify with a certain "age group". Part of it is youth, which everyone experiences (every generation has growing pains), part of it is a certain bubble/worldview that has been engrained into large groups of people via generational conditioning. Social media is a huge factor in normalizing certain behavioral patterns, ESPECIALLY if you've been using it as a primary source of information at a young age. I would say that social media and computer internet technology heavily skews impressionable people toward narcissism and a lack of empathy, because the interactions are virtual, not actual. Again, very dangerous for young people. We're already seeing the results of this in increased suicides, burn outs, drug use, more people who are single and can't find a mate, etc...

    I try not to generalize actors too much, because I am friendly with some... but as a whole, especially the younger ones, they are not very intelligent. They are puppets, who pretend to be other people, and there is little incentive to work on educating themselves when they have money, power and fame. Lawrence dropped out of middle school, which probably isn't a surprise to anyone who read/saw her comment.
     
  16. Boops

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    Went to see Avatar 2 in RPX 3D high frame rate. Overall very enjoyable. I took my kids to see Minions 2, but other than that I hadn't been to the movie theater since March 2020. This was definitely worth a masked trip to the movies.

    How did visual effects get so good? Pandora itself still looks fake to me. It's beautiful, but I'm not fooled into thinking it's real. The blue people, on the other hand. Wow. The details in the faces, interactions with light, water, etc. The performance capture. I find it completely believable.

    Some other thoughts:
    • High frame rate sucks. It's ugly. Near the end of the movie there was a scene with the family where the 3D and HFR got close to looking like I was actually there in person. I haven't read any of Cameron's thoughts on it, but I could understand pushing this tech if "presence" is what he's going for. I just find it utterly un-cinematic and counter to what I want out of film. The move closer to reality detracts from the beauty, emotion, art. It's not so bad when they are underwater somehow. Everywhere else, I was glad when the movie dropped down into 24fps.
    • The 3D is very good. I don't love 3D typically and when I was going to movies before the panny would often seek out the non-3D showings, but this 3D was excellent. I don't know what's been done to improve things, but wow. It was immersive at all times.
    • The vehicles! The vehicles! I know from Aliens and T2 behind-the-scenes stuff that Cameron often does the designs for these sorts of things himself. Not sure to what extent he is directly responsible for all the vehicle/equipment designs but holy shit they were great. There's a brief moment near the end where the lead whaling boat reloads the explosive harpoon thing. I almost applauded when I saw it. It was obviously well thought out, designed, executed. Countless details like this in all of the fake human equipment.
    • The blue marines were so fun. One of them chews gum. Another wears shiny Oakleys. Hilarious.
    • Standout performances from everyone blue. Humans Edie Falco and the kid with dreads were not particularly good.

    Overall I enjoyed almost every minute of this over 3 hour movie. I will probably never see it again, but I am glad I went. I will definitely see the next one.
     
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    Last edited: Dec 23, 2022
  17. Pharmaboy

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    These are some of the most interesting comments I've seen in years. I really saw it when theaters stopped projecting film and went digital. Now you see it when they push digital for greater resolution.

    The cinema experience has always been 1/3 technology, 1/3 human perception, and 1/3 voodoo...everything has changed, but nothing has changed.
     
  18. Boops

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    It's not in the image itself. Cameron can make amazing images and does repeatedly in this movie. Plenty of other directors and cinematographers that have made the transition to digital and retained everything they could do on film.

    The high frame rate stuff just doesn't look like film. It looks like footage. That's where the difference lies I think. Somehow for movies, the art is in the gaps between the 24 frames. Something is missing when those gaps get filled in.
     
  19. ColtMrFire

    ColtMrFire Writes better fan fics than you

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    Yep. People go to the movies to escape, not be reminded of reality. Weirdly, Cameron seems to not understand this. He kind of does, because the story and world itself is as far removed from our reality as possible, with just enough familiarity to maintain interest. But Cameron doesn't seem to grasp the basic idea that too much reality is a turn off, and the capture medium is the first line of defense against this.... 24fps immediately signals the brain that what they're watching isn't real, it's a "story". Documentaries use high frame rate because that's what HFR implies... reality.

    What filmmakers want is for audiences to feel like they are "participating" in a reality that is created by the story and acting, but they still want to maintain a "once removed" layer of distance in order to feel safe with their popcorn, soda and candy.

    Cameron actually has a very good philosophy about this "reality" idea imbedded in his filmmaking style. He once said (paraphrasing, can't remember the exact quote) "the more fantastic the situation, the more realistic the world has to be in order to create maximum audience participation". Weirdly, there nothing realistic about a hulking Austrian cyborg, but Terminator works because of this stringent adherence to realism, whether it's the systematic nature in the way the Terminator hunts his victims, the realistic police interactions, the strategies Kyle Reese employs, etc... even the dialogue about Cyberdine's and the T-800's origins feels like it was ripped from a wiki article.

    Same with Aliens, where the machinations of the military machine sent to hunt the xenomorphs feels realistic and lived in... The Abyss features what feels like a realistic, working submersible oil rig, and on and on... but Cameron should've stopped here and realized that's all that's needed. The capture medium is the one thing that gives these films such power, because it allows audiences to witness this realistic spectacle from a "safe" distance. Too much reality shatters the illusion.

    And yes, I loved Avatar 2, but I saw it in 2D. I thought it was a massive improvement over the first film, which felt like too much of an experiment that needed more work. This one felt like Cameron cracked it.
     
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  20. zonto

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    I remember seeing the first Avatar in theaters on one of those old, massive IMAX screens. The ones that felt like you could sit anywhere in the theater and be in the front row. Probably twice the size or more of current IMAX screens. That and the first movie being in 3D is what made it such a memorable experience. I don't remember much about the actual plot or characters at all, just that experience.

    Now that IMAX screens have shrunk over the last 10+ years, I'm not as excited about seeing this new movie. Feels like no matter how good it is, it can't live up the original experience offered by the first.
     

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