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Crispy78 wrote:
I only saw Dune part 1 for the first time recently. It might well end up being for the only time. I really wanted to like it, theoretically it should be right up my street. But I was just bored. My wife is less inclined towards epic sci-fi than I am, and she was more bored. My eldest son was bored. My youngest son was confused and bored. It was not a successful screening for us!

You're not alone. I found it utterly soulless so shall not be bothering with the sequel.

I've been quiet on here because I don't think I've watched anything worth talking about recently. Tried watching Oppenheimer but the first 15 minutes was so abysmally Nolan that I couldn't bear to carry on.
Oh dear, I think I've entered another one of my "everything is crap" stages.

It is super stylised. Possibly to its detriment.

 Henry wrote:

Crispy78 wrote:
I only saw Dune part 1 for the first time recently. It might well end up being for the only time. I really wanted to like it, theoretically it should be right up my street. But I was just bored. My wife is less inclined towards epic sci-fi than I am, and she was more bored. My eldest son was bored. My youngest son was confused and bored. It was not a successful screening for us!

You're not alone. I found it utterly soulless so shall not be bothering with the sequel.

I've been quiet on here because I don't think I've watched anything worth talking about recently. Tried watching Oppenheimer but the first 15 minutes was so abysmally Nolan that I couldn't bear to carry on.
Oh dear, I think I've entered another one of my "everything is crap" stages.

For the best. When I said something similar in the Oppenheimer thread, it didn’t go well.

As for the new Dune movies, they feel more serious and Oscar-baity than a Sci Fi epic should. The style was too grounded, too ponderous, too interested in the very personal to include a lot of the fun stuff that makes Dune memorable for me. I wouldn’t call it bad, but certainly more bland and off putting than Lynch’s version.

The dialogue delivery certainly felt more melodrama than sci-fi epic.

Also my previous observation of the combat being all slow and plodding, and rationalising “because of shields”?

Remembered in Part 2, we see a Harkonnen Ornithopter absolutely shredding Fremen during an attack on a Harvester, using a sci-fi gun which I think is shooting flechettes.

Yet we still see the infantry just sort of…plodding along. No rush. No urgency. No blood up.

Smoking Causes Coughing

A weird, French comedy that starts off about a team of Power Rangers style heroes going on a team building retreat, but focuses mostly on weird. meandering, unconnected side stories.
I watched the whole thing out of pure morbid curiosity, but I wouldn't recommend anyone else do that, unless you're into weird, French comedies.

Porco Rosso.

This is my favorite John Wayne film.

Ok, you got me.

Seriously though, I think this movie fits the John Wayne template quite well. I love that it ends in a big knock down drag out fist fight.
I just gave a copy of this to my Dad and am trying to convince him to actually watch it.
He enjoys John Wayne movies, he's of that age, so I figure this would be right up his ally.
I know he will enjoy it.

Movies like this gave me the tho8ught that it would have been really cool for aging actors that we all like to move on to voice acting when the demands of acting in things like action movies get too much as they age out.

Imagine how many Indiana Jones animations or audio dramas we could have had, for example.

Really in this day and age it could be done very well.


I really love this little movie.

All the Ghibli films make me sad that the western market all but abandoned animation (at least non-CGI/3D stuff) as a "kids only" market. Even a good many anime get chopped and changed when they are "adapted" by the US hollywood machine to be more child-friendly versions.

there's no range between "anime" (Japanese animation made for a variety of demographics) and "cartoons" (non-Japanese animation made for children). this has been expanding slightly in recent years but because of this disparity, you have any animation that isn't for kids labeled as anime (even if it's not Japanese), because there just isn't a commonly used term to otherwise define it

not sure where this went wrong but i'm going to blame, as always, ronald reagan (deregulation of advertisements towards children in the 1980s created a boon of cheaply made animation that was just toy ads which went on to dominate the medium and become the only profitable way to make animation in the US)

Yup, it's weird. I assume that Hollywood consider anime being too niche and too hard to get into from an industry perspective. Or people just don't wanna see US-made anime. Funny thing is that even with kids cartoons they seem to move away from animation, with disney doing all these entirely unnecessary CGI remakes of their older cartoon films and Netflix doing all these unnecessary adaptations of cartoon shows featuring people dressing up in front of green/LED screens.

You know who I'd trust to get that stuff right? France. Just the other day I heard of a supposedly great sci-fi film named "Mars Express" in Germany (really bad name). Animated film which doesn't look too horribly 'new', and it's said to be really, really good. Not to mention that they got a whole different approach to filmmaking and creating cultural products in-country in France. I mean they've been doing their own animated stuff for many, many decades, from kids tv shows to proper films for grown-ups.

But elsewhere it's not much better either. This past weekend I spent sitting at a con. The lady on the next table is working on an animated feature film; just got some public funding after fighting tooth and nail for it since animated films for young adults aren't considered a thing. Now she's struggling with the fact that a.) due to public funding she can't (and wouldn't want to) go to a foreign studio to do the animatin') and b.) there just is NO infrastructure for animation in Austria. The chamber of commere's department she's part of (anybody running a company in Austria has to be part of the chamber of commerce, pay them for ..... I'm not quite sure what exactly, but GOD HELP YOU IF YOU'RE LATE ON YOUR PAYMENT!! . And there's a ton of different departments for each sort of job. Fun fact: I'm officially a 'toy maker' and thus part of the department of woodworkers and carpenters. So you see how up to date that whole organization is.) were completely staggered with when she did a presentation for getting funding and instantly gave her some official (unpaid) function, because nobody else even in the head of that department knows squat about animation.

This of course is vastly difference to the experience in the US I'm sure, but it shows what level we're at here when it comes to animated films. In recent years, Austria gave birth to one animated film, which in the end had to be sent to Spain to have it fixed.

Honestly those cartoons were decently made and considerably more mature (and better animated) than many we get today.

I do think its a very USA/Hollywood thing that pushed animations more and more toward only being for kids until all they did was make them for kids and at some point that latched into the minds of adults at the time.

It's probably more than just the deregulation of ads for kids in cartoons. There's also the huge market of Disney and Warner creating masses of kids cartoons. Even though at the time, and now, adults still enjoyed them too; they were a "kids product".


And from the USA it spilled out ovre a lot of the west. A little like how DC and Marvel dominated comics to make them all about super-heroes.


OF course once you look past the top items you can see more variety - I know France produces a lot more mature animations and comics and there's many mature comic series (often gaining the title graphic novel to sound more - mature).



But yeah I think its a huge shame, especially for the fantasy and sci-fi markets where animation can really do wonders with those whilst for live-action you've got to reach huge budgets and honestly had to wait for CGI tech to advance to be good enough to actually do big battles or complex monsters and scenes and such.

It doesn’t help that a lot of “adult” animated movies in the west are just plain crap.

I agree with all of you.
These movies, to me, just have way more soul than newer animations. Like they really cared a lot about their work and the final product.

I'm looking for Mars express right now, found a trailer to check out. @Sigur Thank you for mentioning it.

I'd love to see remakes of classic movies animated by Studio Ghibli. I know it would still be a hard sell but there are some movies out there that are just wonderful stories but younger audiences will never even hear about them or bother to watch them. From what I have gathered over the last, going on 10 years now, Younger people seem to think anything before like 2010 or even 200 is just too old and there for dumb or bad. I gather that mostly from OP's and jurnos making silly claims only to go back and actually watch something like Alien, for example, and then write a about how much they enjoyed it.

I need to get the full Studio Ghibily set to gift to my nephews.

Oh, cool, Mars Express looks like it's following the lines of Automata (2014) staring Antonio Banderas*. It was interesting if not a new concept for a story.
His character* is a bit like a blade runner in that ,if I remember, he polices robots and robot crimes.
Worth at least one viewing.

I’d also point out that Ghibli are of noticeably high quality all round. And sadly, are by no means representative of Anime as a whole.

I don’t mean to denigrate the genre and industry as a whole. But there is an awful, awful lot of crap related to it.

I mean it says something where it seems the only time Hollywood will get involved with anime is to try and make a terrible live action adaptation of it. Which usually leads to bad casting and missing the point of why anime works is because a lot of the action sequences can't be replicated well with live actors or without an absurd amount of CGI.

The dumb part is there's plenty of good Western animations that are more geared towards older audiences like Venture Bros., Archer, Primal, Bojack Horseman, Robot Chicken, and more recently Smiling Friends. I personally think South Park still holds up but unfortunately stuff like Family Guy and Simpsons have become the template for what is considered "adult animation" which really hinders it from exploring into things that don't follow their sitcom type format.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’d also point out that Ghibli are of noticeably high quality all round. And sadly, are by no means representative of Anime as a whole.

I don’t mean to denigrate the genre and industry as a whole. But there is an awful, awful lot of crap related to it.

Oh yes, if only the best of the anime stuff is what gets to us / is talked about 'round here I shudder to think how much generic rubbish there must be.



@Grimskul: Yup, these cartoon shows which are aimed at an adult audience very much seem to be bascially aimed at 12 year olds or so. Last weekend wifi at the hotel didn't work and I realized that - probably by accident - I had downloaded 10 episodes of Archer some time ago. So I gave Archer another whirl. It's really not for me; not even after 3 episodes or so. I love Bob's Burgers, maybe that doesn't help with me getting into Archer. But that' that's a family show through and through I'd say. There's something for everybody.

By chance I saw a new Simpsons episode recently. A halloween one called "Not It", which was a thing about the new IT films. Deary me, how the Simpsons have fallen.
South Park is a rare gem really, which I think never lost much of its appeal. Only reason I don't watch it any more since a few years is how depressing it got. But that's more because of the world rather than the show itself.

 Sigur wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’d also point out that Ghibli are of noticeably high quality all round. And sadly, are by no means representative of Anime as a whole.

I don’t mean to denigrate the genre and industry as a whole. But there is an awful, awful lot of crap related to it.

Oh yes, if only the best of the anime stuff is what gets to us / is talked about 'round here I shudder to think how much generic rubbish there must be.



@Grimskul: Yup, these cartoon shows which are aimed at an adult audience very much seem to be bascially aimed at 12 year olds or so. Last weekend wifi at the hotel didn't work and I realized that - probably by accident - I had downloaded 10 episodes of Archer some time ago. So I gave Archer another whirl. It's really not for me; not even after 3 episodes or so. I love Bob's Burgers, maybe that doesn't help with me getting into Archer. But that' that's a family show through and through I'd say. There's something for everybody.

By chance I saw a new Simpsons episode recently. A halloween one called "Not It", which was a thing about the new IT films. Deary me, how the Simpsons have fallen.
South Park is a rare gem really, which I think never lost much of its appeal. Only reason I don't watch it any more since a few years is how depressing it got. But that's more because of the world rather than the show itself.

Archer takes until the second season to really start taking off and honestly seasonal rot has kicked in like for many shows that go past 5-6 seasons, I think Archer was good up until Archer wakes up from his coma. It's funny you mention Bob's Burgers, there's actually a crossover episode with Bob's Burgers where Archer has amnesia and become's Bob with Linda and the kids in one of the opening credits of the episodes for the season.

Bob's Burgers is another good show I forgot to mention, always love Mr. Fischoeder's episodes!

south park really has not aged well. the "let's insult everyone" approach doesn't really work when not everyone is equally privileged, and ultimately a lot of it is just peddling bigotries, which encouraged younger viewers to continue sharing those bigoted beliefs (i'm fairly certain that my high school bullies took notes on antisemitism from the show)

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
south park really has not aged well. the "let's insult everyone" approach doesn't really work when not everyone is equally privileged, and ultimately a lot of it is just peddling bigotries, which encouraged younger viewers to continue sharing those bigoted beliefs (i'm fairly certain that my high school bullies took notes on antisemitism from the show)

I have a strong feeling that you see humour in a way where you only like comedy when its perceived as "punching up". Unfortunately, we'll have to agree to disagree here, I think South Park has done a fantastic job of staying relevant and not having any sacred cows in terms of what they make fun of, for both sides of the culture war as well as general pop culture. The recent one regarding streaming wars definitely hits the nail on the head.

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
south park really has not aged well. the "let's insult everyone" approach doesn't really work when not everyone is equally privileged, and ultimately a lot of it is just peddling bigotries, which encouraged younger viewers to continue sharing those bigoted beliefs (i'm fairly certain that my high school bullies took notes on antisemitism from the show)

I was in college when South Park started, and it was also around the time that offensive humor and “ironic racism” were all the rage. I saw Cartman as a character designed to be unlikeable so that the creators of South Oark could make all the offensive jokes they wanted while not appearing to approve of the bigotry since the character making those comments was a jerk. In addition, the other characters could spew fat jokes to give him a taste of his own medicine without the audience turning against them. I don’t believe they ever intended for the bigotry to be cool or for Cartman to be seen as an inspirational character, at least not the first season.

I’ll never forget how many people I had thought were normal, decent people started quoting Cartman because “Cartman is my hero” or “Cartman says what we’re all thinking”. It disillusioned me about that kind of humor. For example, I loved (and for the most part still love) Norm MacDonald, but I always assumed his misogyny jokes were funny because he was being ridiculous and saying things he obviously didn’t mean; finding out a large chunk of people enjoyed those jokes because they thought Norm was spitting truth and did mean everything he said made them less funny and more uncomfortable for me.

I also don’t think it’s as simple or easy to dismiss as “you only like humor when it punches up”. For one thing, most people don’t like bullies, and taking the extra layer of irony out of a joke that is just someone saying something bigoted transforms it from a comment on bigotry into bullying the targets of bigotry. For another thing, it makes it less complex, less clever. For example the difference between a successful “roast” joke and an unsuccessful one is the craft in that it has to be a joke first and an insult second. Starting with an insult and using funny words or puns might get a laugh, but not everyone’s having fun and they weren’t meant to. Everyone laughing at the (lower status) victim is bullying.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here is a video that I think captures the difference. This is a roast battle where the guy starts out fine, but once he moves into insults he quickly loses the crowd. He attacks her appearance, religion, that kind of thing, aiming to land devastating insults rather than crafting a set of jokes. The woman, on the other hand, chooses to go after his ego almost entirely, letting him hang himself and set himself up for a show stopper that probably would have been too cruel for the audience if she hadn’t set it up and used his own lack of craft against him. I feel like it demonstrates the difference between bullying g dressed up as shock comedy and actual shock comedy.

The language is not at all safe for work.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
south park really has not aged well. the "let's insult everyone" approach doesn't really work when not everyone is equally privileged, and ultimately a lot of it is just peddling bigotries, which encouraged younger viewers to continue sharing those bigoted beliefs (i'm fairly certain that my high school bullies took notes on antisemitism from the show)

I was in college when South Park started, and it was also around the time that offensive humor and “ironic racism” were all the rage. I saw Cartman as a character designed to be unlikeable so that the creators of South Oark could make all the offensive jokes they wanted while not appearing to approve of the bigotry since the character making those comments was a jerk. In addition, the other characters could spew fat jokes to give him a taste of his own medicine without the audience turning against them. I don’t believe they ever intended for the bigotry to be cool or for Cartman to be seen as an inspirational character, at least not the first season.

I’ll never forget how many people I had thought were normal, decent people started quoting Cartman because “Cartman is my hero” or “Cartman says what we’re all thinking”. It disillusioned me about that kind of humor. For example, I loved (and for the most part still love) Norm MacDonald, but I always assumed his misogyny jokes were funny because he was being ridiculous and saying things he obviously didn’t mean; finding out a large chunk of people enjoyed those jokes because they thought Norm was spitting truth and did mean everything he said made them less funny and more uncomfortable for me.

I also don’t think it’s as simple or easy to dismiss as “you only like humor when it punches up”. For one thing, most people don’t like bullies, and taking the extra layer of irony out of a joke that is just someone saying something bigoted transforms it from a comment on bigotry into bullying the targets of bigotry. For another thing, it makes it less complex, less clever. For example the difference between a successful “roast” joke and an unsuccessful one is the craft in that it has to be a joke first and an insult second. Starting with an insult and using funny words or puns might get a laugh, but not everyone’s having fun and they weren’t meant to. Everyone laughing at the (lower status) victim is bullying.

It really shows the post-modernist framework for people who view comedy this way, because it feels like the lens for everything are ALWAYS about power dynamics and some sort of oppression olympics on who's on what level on the ladder of "privilege". Are you people even able to go to the grocery store without being wracked with indecision over how you're supporting the supposed capitalist patriarchy you live in with every purchase?

Can comedy aimed at the disadvantaged be funny? Is comedy aimed at the disadvantaged permissible?

What's the relationship between funniness and permissibility, if any?

If I don't find it funny, is it ok for me to say it isn't funny simpliciter, or is there an acceptable plurality of humor? Does everyone have to agree about what's funny?

Is there a convincing argument for the idea that art must reflect moral values we wish to live by? Is there no room for art which expresses counter-values? If it's true that we don't all agree about the terms of morality (value theory, etc), then what are the possibilities for disagreement about comedic content?

What the best response to humor in bad taste? Can we reasonably compel people to ignore comedy they find funny if we believe it is impermissible?

Generally the punching up vs punching down distinction seems, at best, like a limited heuristic for comedic craft and, at worst, a misguided principle about the phenomenology of comedy.

Furthermore, the position you seem to be taking is that the premise that jokes are necessarily harmful, and that people or groups are diminished by them in some tangible way. It implies that there is no such thing as an innocent joke; you can't joke about race because those jokes "embolden" racists; you can't joke about gender because it "reinforces negative female stereotypes/toxic masculinity; you can't joke about trans people at all, even if their gender isn't part of the joke, because you're "putting a vulnerable group in danger."

And that's all complete hogwash, but it's not the worst of it: This also changes the context of what "punching up" actually means. It's okay to punch up not because it doesn't harm the target -- remember, jokes cannot avoid doing harm -- but because it's okay to harm some groups.

The entire concept of "punching down" in comedy only exists if you view yourself as being "above" other groups.

"I'm white so I can't make jokes about black people because they're lesser than me."

I think the problem at the end of the day is that ultimately the criticism doesn't go into the delivery of the joke or actual content that's being satirized (despite claims to the contrary), you guys are fundamentally talking about activism and nothing is less funnier than that.

That’s a lot of word salad that doesn’t really apply. I was giving my experience, where there’s a difference between jokes meant to get laughs and meant to offend.

Perhaps a clearer example: since elementary school, I have heard a lot of Holocaust jokes. There’s no solid law for who should or shouldn’t tell them, and yet I can always tell when the people are telling the jokes because they appreciate bleak humor and people who are laughing because Jews died. I guess I’ve met enough of them to be sensitive to the intent in that kind of humor.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
That’s a lot of word salad that doesn’t really apply. I was giving my experience, where there’s a difference between jokes meant to get laughs and meant to offend.

Perhaps a clearer example: since elementary school, I have heard a lot of Holocaust jokes. There’s no solid law for who should or shouldn’t tell them, and yet I can always tell when the people are telling the jokes because they appreciate bleak humor and people who are laughing because Jews died. I guess I’ve met enough of them to be sensitive to the intent in that kind of humor.

to be honest i don't think holocaust jokes are amusing, no matter who is telling them. there's plenty of dark jewish humor i like, but some things should be off-limits

for example, Mel Brooks does this great. he makes a lot of nazi jokes in his films, but, importantly, he doesn't really touch upon the holocaust directly that often. instead, he makes nazis look lame. Springtime for Hitler is how you do nazi jokes right. compare that to cartman and the general south park ethos of repeating bigoted things as a joke. you can laugh at the characters for being bigots, but just as much you can laugh at the people being made fun of. the authorial lens isn't saying that making the bigoted jokes is bad, it's saying that those jokes are funny. cartman is someone that people can laugh with and aspire towards. no bigot wants to be on stage in Springtime for Hitler

damn, now i wanna rewatch The Producers

*record screech*

Humour and comedy is inherently subjective.

I prefer my comedy to punch upwards. To skewer and take the piss out those on the top of the pile. But I still expect some level of wit.

I do not expect or predict individuals, groups, society, nations or worlds to ever find comedy objective.

Unless it’s Bernard Manning, or Jimmy Carr. Both of whom are in fact objectively awful.

Justice League:- Crisis On Infinite Earths - Part Two

Spent quite a bit of the run-time on set-up, although not as bad as Part One, and now it's past the timeline jumping shenanigans it feels like a more cohesive movie.
Still kinda meh though, it's fun to do some character spotting, but overall it just feels a bit off.
Not sure if the studio thought it would have more time getting all the pieces into place and is now rushing to cobble something together, or it's a story that just doesn't work as a movie (Even as a trilogy), or a bit of both.

Looking forward to seeing how it all wraps up in Part 3 though.

I've not seen the films but Crisis on Infinite Earths the comic had gorgeous art, an amazing swath of characters and...

Was not a great story.

Audacious for what it tried to do and very memorable for the walls of white literally erasing worlds, but no just too too much stuff and too many characters. Like We Are the World but as a 6 hour opera.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
....
Unless it’s Bernard Manning, or Jimmy Carr. Both of whom are in fact objectively awful.

*puts the needle on the record again*

I like Jimmy Carr. There very, very much is a schtick to what he does and no depth, but he's a joke-teller. Het gets on stage and then tells one joke after another. I kinda like that approach for the craft itself.

Of course I also prefer for humour to punch upwards, because that's less easy than it used to be I think because very, very rich people we're aware of behave like absurd men-children and are caricatures already and all of us (especially so stage performers) made themselves so dependant on the powers that be and those powers got so ubiquitous that they barely work as a target without falling for the allure of going with the really cheap and boring targets (Weinsteins/Trumps/dictators, the catholic church, ....).


Btw, speaking of stand-up comedians, a few weeks ago I watched an old stage thing by Janeane Garofalo from the early/mid 90s. It was very nice. Making fun of people because of something they were born with is boring, but making fun of people for the music they like is good. And making fun of consumerism, brands, etc will always work. We need more of that I'm sure.

I prefer Red Fox and Sam Kinison.


Can we get back to the movies please.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Purge 4-The First Purge

I always liked the reviewer who challenged the audience to name one character in the purge films. I know who they are, I know their real names, I still can't remember their character names.

Mad Max: The Road Warrior

The good one.

A classic of the post apocalyptic genre, and an engrossing action film. The stunts and the design work are timeless. A must watch film.

Although it could have done with fewer buttless chaps.

Abigail

A kidnap caper where a bunch of likeable rogues are hired to snatch a young girl.



Bloody fun mayhem ensues.

Well-paced and well-acted. Highly recommended.