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I watched the end of the Peacemaker tv show now. Phew. I'm sure it will be liked by people who like all the superhero films, because it very much follows that formula. The end feels weirdly rushed. I suppose not everythig has to deal with saving the world (it's never about saving people with those superheroes, is it. It's always about 'humanity' and 'the world'. Which not only will work under ANY form of government, but also affirms everything we got in place right now. Even though there's a funky little eco-twist in there in the end, but I'll give it a pass, because it comes across as unfocused as a 90s eco twist rather than an annoying 'twitter call to action' eco twist of the 2020s).



I guess it's kinda alright. The scenes in which John Cena makes an ass out of himself are fun. I hope this doesn't go on for much longer; I fear that 80s pop-rock/metal music may get ruined. The whole ending felt kinda rushed.



In other TV show news - did you know that they made FIVE season of Sliders? Baffling.

Troo story Doc

Imagine the hand wringing these days if a teen lad tumbled dead out of a car after being driven to suicide by Admiral Ozzel, at tea time no less

And Mr Bronson epitomised an Imperial admiral at an inner city high school

Everything Everywhere All At Once.

I really enjoyed it as a weird and interesting inter-dimensional kung-fu movie with a serious point about depression.

Mrs Souleater was not so impressed.

"Unless you can explain what we just watched in a way I can understand, you are not picking the next movie."

Voss wrote:

Lightyear has the same problem as modern Trek: the writers are unfamiliar with and indifferent to the source material, and its just an unrelated brand to stamp on the title.

It's more the studios have found that existing properties outsell new ones. And producers/directors/writers know this.

So my pitch for Johnny Spaceman the Movie will go nowhere, but change the name to Buzz Lightyear and people will at least give it a look.

A lot of tie in films probably started as original projects but were bent, folded and mutilated to fit an existing property. Lightyear probably could have just as easily become Starbuck or Dr. Smith.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Voss wrote:

Lightyear has the same problem as modern Trek: the writers are unfamiliar with and indifferent to the source material, and its just an unrelated brand to stamp on the title.

It's more the studios have found that existing properties outsell new ones. And producers/directors/writers know this.

So my pitch for Johnny Spaceman the Movie will go nowhere, but change the name to Buzz Lightyear and people will at least give it a look.

A lot of tie in films probably started as original projects but were bent, folded and mutilated to fit an existing property. Lightyear probably could have just as easily become Starbuck or Dr. Smith.

This is demonstrated nicely by the Die Hard series. The second, third and fourth film didn't start out as Die Hard sequels but were rewritten to take advantage of the brand recognition of Die Hard.

Also the later Hellraiser films, which were adapted from tales involving demons and stuff, replacing them with Cenobites and applying the Established Rules Of Hell.

Granted there are mixed results (Hellworld is the worst, if you ask me) but it does at least end up with some interesting results.

Spiderman Home Coming and Far From Home, on BBC iPlayer.

While Tom is a good Peter Parker, and Michael and Jake are good villians, the films are sadly a step down from previous efforts to bring our favourite webslinging hero to the big screen. If its not having kept up with other films in the MCU( I think there are now more films than Star Wars, Harry Potter and LOTR combined ), then the supporting cast of annoying witty-go-sarcastic class mates wore me down.

Its a shame because the Vulture has some really mean moments that stand out, while "Mysterio" provides some incredible saturday morning cartoon action we've been sorely missing without knowing it.

 Souleater wrote:
Everything Everywhere All At Once.

I really enjoyed it as a weird and interesting inter-dimensional kung-fu movie with a serious point about depression.

Mrs Souleater was not so impressed.

"Unless you can explain what we just watched in a way I can understand, you are not picking the next movie."

Were you able to?

My wife had a similar problem. She checked out at the first hot dog fingers scene, and we had to pause and talk about it before she was convinced to continue. She was tearing up just like everyone else by the last hot dog fingers scene, though.

I think the movie has a lot more impact with the children of immigrants or people who experience suicidal ideation, generational trauma and depression. Even the Red Letter Media guys missed the point of the ending.

Watched a bit of an oldie last night:-

Escape from LA
Not bad, but it's basically little more than a bigger budget remake of Escape from New York, so much so that I spent the whole film waiting for a twist that never came.

(My initial guess was it was going to turn out the President had somehow engineered LA's current situation, but nope, he really was just a religious nutbar who got lucky.)

 aku-chan wrote:
Watched a bit of an oldie last night:-

Escape from LA
Not bad, but it's basically little more than a bigger budget remake of Escape from New York, so much so that I spent the whole film waiting for a twist that never came.

(My initial guess was it was going to turn out the President had somehow engineered LA's current situation, but nope, he really was just a religious nutbar who got lucky.)

I watched this the other day, its no New York but fun enough and still not sure how my aging grey matter didn't link the end with the first Deus Ex game..

Just enjoyed re watching Red Sonja (1985)

It's both better and worse than I had remembered but it is still good fun. And more humorous when viewed with some modern day attitude's in mind. Good or bad its funny either way imop.

Brigitte Nielsen's acting is a bit wooden in the beginning but once the cast of characters are all in the mix I feel everything improves. Arnold looks like he's having a wonderful vacation where he gets to play with a sword.

To me one of the best parts is that the Evil Queen has an advisor who is actually trying to give her sound advice which is a little refreshing. And her wizard is...defiantly a wizard. You can tell because he seems to have left her viewing crystal on Skin-o-max.

And Brytag... Such a ham, too much fun. I feel like he stole the show, such a fun bad guy for as long as that lasted.
I think he says something like, " I have fought 400 men and only one is alive and he has no legs!" So you know he's legit.

I'd watcha a reboot or a remake or just another red Sonja movie if there ever is one. If the tone is close to this it could be a lot of fun.

The Devil's Wears Prada

The original live action Cruella! Great shoes in the opening montage, and the rest is fairly mundane. Stanley Tucci is great as always.... I think I could watch him in local used car ads and love it!

The rest.... meh.....


Dredd
The third or so time I have seen it. Yup, still entertaining.

Clash of the Titans
The new one. Second time I have seen it.

I had it on as background when I was painting, and it was much more enjoyable that way than actually sitting down and watching it for real.

Dredd is a stone cold classic. I’ve been a Dreddhead since I was absolutely tiny and almost certainly shouldn’t have been reading them, but Mum would take me to Chainsaw Harry’s for haircuts and there were the 2000AD issues…

It just….gets the characters. All of them. Spot on. Luvverly.

I particularly enjoy the negative reviews citing Dredd’s heavy handed approach, shoot first, somewhat fascistic behaviour etc.

Well……yes. That’s what we’re here for?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Troo story Doc

Imagine the hand wringing these days if a teen lad tumbled dead out of a car after being driven to suicide by Admiral Ozzel, at tea time no less

Ahhh…but Danny Kendall wasn’t a suicide. It was his brain tumour that got him. He did nick Admiral Ozzel’s car, that’s true. But as that’s Series 12, and BritBox only goes up to 11, I can’t really remember why. He very much clashed with Bronson early on, but Series 10 & 11 they mostly sort of ignore each other.

I bloody love Grange Hill, me!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
For those too young or old enough but not British? This is the scene we’re talking about.

Yes. This was a kid’s show.

@ Doc, well its been a while so mostly forgot the exact story so just assumed he'd done for himself, although for a show that had folks drowning and fatal falls you can see how I jumped to the worse case, UK 80s kids telly was brutal at times (usually tea time)

The Sandman

Did Episodes 5 and 6 today, 5 is most likely the most jiggled from the book, but not being to able to really go with internal monologs is a tricky thing with medium shifts, I think that's why Matthew is more included in the show more as can play exposition Raven, bit the episode was just as un-nerving as the book with David Thewlis playing a blinder

And 6 was awesome, Ms Howell-Baptiste totally nailed it, was a bit worried, not the silly hater reasons, but id only seen her in The Good Place, where her acting was a tad Sir Picard school of mostly shouting most of the time, and more Jenna is always watchable. and given how the Hob story rolled out Lady Joanna will get at least another half episode in due time

I just finished Sandman and thought it was absolutely brilliant. I haven’t read the comics for ages, but it hit all the main points I remembered. The whole cast did marvellously and the visuals were great on my big screen.

I guess they could ‘t have done anything differently, without massive fan uproar, but I had half hoped they might pull a hitchhikers and have the tv series follow a subtly different line to the book (and the radio, and the record, and the film). A very faithful retelling, with episode 5 Definately being a bit different, but the comic version of the story was probably a bit too extreme even for modern things tastes.

I just hope they do a second series if only for the midsummer nights dream story

Christ, I remember Danny's death like it were only yesterday. Grange Hill...urgh. Always switched it over if it came on because just going to school was bad enough. We'd catch the end of an episode because something else was usually on afterwards.

I watched 13 Lives - the Ron Howard movie about the Thai kids football team trapped in a cave.

It's a shame I knew what the eventual outcome would be (from watching the news) because if I had gone in without knowing anything about the real events this would have been a truly nail biting movie.

But it is very good, and there was a lot of stuff included that wasn't on the news.

The performances, from everybody, were top notch, especially Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell.

Worth a watch. I wouldn't say it's Ron Howard's best movie (felt like too much crammed in with too many story points on the go) and probably would have been better as a limited TV series (maybe 6 episodes) but it is definitely worth watching even if you already know how it ends.

SamusDrake wrote:
Christ, I remember Danny's death like it were only yesterday. Grange Hill...urgh. Always switched it over if it came on because just going to school was bad enough. We'd catch the end of an episode because something else was usually on afterwards.

I was still in Primary School during Grange Hill’s heyday, so my school experience was sufficiently different for it to capture my attention.

Given I can’t have been more than 7 or 8 when Danny Kendall snuffed it, I remember a surprising amount of very specific lines and sequences from that series. Stuff like Mauler McCaul being rubbish at Transformers, the school radio’s horoscope jingle etc.

I don't check in for a while and all of a sudden everybody starts watching interesting things! (Escape from L.A.: lovely. Red Sonya: Perfectly fine.)

Me, I watched A Sound of Thunder (2004).

Based on the Ray Bradbury short story (and basically the Treehouse of Horror episode in which Homer travels back into dinosaur times and changes a little thing). This film kinda got me from the start. It looks cheap as all hell, but it's got a very interesting world design, the acting is decent all around, and it deals with time travel, which is the equivalent of putting your shoes on the wrong way and pulling your pants down before doing a race.

It's bascially about a company in the future offering rich people to lead them back into prehistoric times so they can hunt an Allosaurus. Since you may change NOTHING about the past they use a fixed anti-gravity path, always travel to the same Allosauraus right before it falls victim to an accident, so nothing is changed. Things get complicated as something does get changed one time. So far, so good. That's the short story. What happens then is the film showing us HOW things change and it does so in waves. Which leads to new creatures, and the creature design in this film is something to be seen. Certainly memorable.

But I was on board with the bad CGI, I gave an approving nod when it looked less bad, I like all the world design, the actors were pretty and mostly fine. It's got Sir Ben Kingsley as the head of the time travel company, and he's having the time of his life. Not sure I've ever seen Kingsley (who I'm not a huge fan of due to the film he did mostly since the mid-90s) have so much fun. And it almost shows that there's a good actor in there. Later that night I read up on the film a little and was most surprised to see that it cost EIGHTY MILLION DOLLARS. This film looks like a made-for-tv Asylum film which somehow got lucky and isn't boring as hell. But still, it looks majorly cheap. The backstory about the making of this film is either very interesting or pretty boring and sad and possibly would end up being a financial true crime documentary (and true crime documentaries are crap. Financial ones less so.).

Don't Watch. I would have given a Watch It for the attraction of an ambitioned cheapo film, but not at that budget.

The Giant of Marathon

Steve Reeves plays ..... not Hercules!..... but some Greek guy!

The Tubi version looks really good! That is not always the case with many Peplum films from the era, having been destroyed by time. Yes I am looking at you Seven from Thebes!

That said, this is more historically accurate than 300 but still has some laughable parts.... historically speaking.

That said, it you like movies where sweaty, Italian men wrestle, while big-eyed ladies swoon in half-dresses, and have an obligatory dancing girl scene, and casts of dozens of extras lazily hit each other with prop weapons.... this movie is for you!

I was entertained!

I may have to check this out.


Obligatory: Joey, do you like movies where sweaty, Italian men wrestle?

The Grey Man - an entertaining, pretty but dumb action flick.

Chris Evans seems to be having enormous fun playing the bad guy.

@bobtheinquistor I guess so, as we’re going to see Bullet Train this evening. Assuming it was actually my idea.

New Mutants

You know me. I have a worrying tolerance for movies other say are bad.

I’ve watched Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, and found it at least amusingly bad. I’ve seen Manos, The Hand of Fate. That at least had kind of an interesting premise, sort of.

But this? This……..dreck? It’s just….bad. Not amusingly bad. It’s far too Poe faced to be amusing,

The acting is crap. The pacing is crap. The accents are crap. The effects are cheap and crap. There’s no real tension to it. The plot could’ve made sense? But they blew it.

I mean….I’m going straight into Spoiler Territory because I don’t want anyone else to suffer as I’m suffering.

You’re running a facility to find out the potential of emergent Mutants. OK. That makes sense. But….why just a single staff member? Where’s your security? By definition and purpose of your facility, you don’t know their potential - so surely you’d assume the worst and take sufficient steps. Especially for Mr “you’d think he knows what he’s doing” Sinister (who doesn’t feature, isn’t personally mentioned or named, so why bother as it’ll only confuse people with only a passing knowledge of X-Men) But no.

Five mutants got loose? Things going a bit tits up? Just tell them to go back to their rooms, because that works on every moody teenager, and especially super powered ones.

And don’t forget to film the whole shebang in Gloom-o-vision. Nobody goes to the movies to see what’s going on after all. That’s just crazy talk.

Seems making yourself be on fire also gives you sudden super strength too, which wasn’t mentioned before the big fight against the Nightbear.

Maisie. Oh poor sweet Maisie. I like you, I think you’re a fine actress. But what is that accent my precious? Is it Irish, English or Scottish? Because it seems to vary scene to scene.

What a dull, boring, irritating poo storm of a bad movie this is.

Avoid it. Avoid it like the plague. Wait. The last two years suggest we as a species aren’t all that good at avoiding the plague (little bit of Politics, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been Ben Elton). Avoid it like….well let’s just avoid it like something that should be avoided at all costs.

OH GOD IT KEEPS GETTING WORSE.

Remember that sole member of staff I mentioned? Her ability is force domes. Which she uses to prevent the kids leaving the facility. And does five smaller ones to cage them after it turned out telling moody super powered teenagers to go back to their rooms doesn’t work. She then gets ate off the Nightbear, and we of course see the force domes dissipate when she snuffs it…..and the kids are surprised when the bigger force dome is also gone….

A cinematic turd of such grand proportion, if it was a real turd even David Attenborough would be convinced it was from King Kong himself crimping off a length of dirty spine.

I was dumb to watch this. And I’m even dumber for having watched it.

I watched it because it has Magik/Illyana and I was happy with that.

You know, I was going to sit down to watch it and make a start on my new cross stitch kit.

I’m glad I didn’t get the kit out, as I’m far from convinced I would’ve resisted ramming the needle into my eyes over and over and over and over and over and over.

The Unwilling

A low key, low budget but not low effort horror thriller from 2016. Notable cast include Lance Henrikson and Dina Meyer.

It’s…almost brilliant. Whilst nothing about is original, it’s well put together, and toward the end has the feel of The Evil Dead. It just doesn’t quite go the distance or stick the landing.

It feels like someone’s first post-film school effort. Made with care and enthusiasm, but just missing what it takes to break out. Looked at separately, it’s constituent parts all work well enough, but it just doesn’t come together right.

It’s definitely worth a watch though if you’re looking for something a bit spooky.

Police Story

Teenage Me used to love Jackie Chan films (And martial arts films in general) but Old Man Me just can't get into them anymore and it's time I stopped trying.

Not a bad film just not my kind of film nowadays.

Cops

No sadly not C.O.P.S., one of the relative handful of Saturday morning actioners I’ve only heard of, but the long running Real Life show.

Man. It really goes to show that if you’re stupid, you’re not going to be a good criminal.

Funny all y'all mention police films/shows.

I'm halfway through season 6 of NYPD Blue now.