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HBOs Rome Season 2

Slips a bit from the epic level of Season 1, mostly because they killed off that Julius Caesar dude, but also because halfway through they found they'd been cut from 5 seasons to 2...

But still awesome.

I saw this on my fb feed. I'm not sure i'll ever fully recover.




I showed it to my game group, one of the guys is a former marine who was in iraq and some worse places. He was still traumatized a week later.

I get it's part of a movie, maybe when i really feel like undergoing total brain death i'll watch the whole thing.

It looks like its extremely obscene, or at least looks like it has to be extremely obscene, but it's not, which oddly makes it worse somehow.

For Ash Wednesday, I dug out my old copy of Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness and watched it over the weekend. I had recently finished watching the series Ash vs The Evil Dead as well.

Here are some general thoughts:
1. Not as funny as I recalled it being
2. I forgot that Dino De Laurentis was the money behind this.
3. The army of skeletons is still pretty cool as an effect.
4. Danny Elfman did the music!
5. Ted Raimi is in it..... twice, perhaps more!
6. Not as gory as I recalled it being either

This was like a live-action cartoon......

Damn, dfor ash Wednesday i just watched "Alien"...

 Matt Swain wrote:
I saw this on my fb feed. I'm not sure i'll ever fully recover.




I showed it to my game group, one of the guys is a former marine who was in iraq and some worse places. He was still traumatized a week later.

I get it's part of a movie, maybe when i really feel like undergoing total brain death i'll watch the whole thing.

It looks like its extremely obscene, or at least looks like it has to be extremely obscene, but it's not, which oddly makes it worse somehow.

Man, I feel like I saw this somewhere and was actually underwhelmed by it.

Well, the video won't load for me.


Either way, I watched some films!


Drunken Master (1978)

The Jackie Chan classic. Young man, ousted by his family and threatened to be put under the tutelage of his sadistic uncle, flees the house, learns street wisdom, finds inner strength and embraces all aspects of his personality. Becomes whole. Also becomes addicted to alcohol and gets into some fights.

Amazing. It's just amazing what these guys do. Of course it's trickery and all of that, but fake fighting's way cooler than actual fighting anyway for several reasons, but the creativity and skill that goes into those choreographies is just incredible. Jackie Chan's the greatest of all time and this film is a complete classic.

Watch It.



Rocky III (1982)

Only caught the second half, so I missed the initial build-up of Clubber Lang and I missed Thunderlips and all of that, but still. It's bloody Rocky 3, so it stayed on. No need to summarize, right? It's bloody Rocky 3.

If you're not familiar with the franchise, here's the order you should watch it in: 1, 2, 3, 4, Balboa. Creed films are optional. 5 is very, very,very optional. Simple, right? Right.
Here's the Rocky films in order of my own preference (meaning how willing I'll be to watch them at any point): 3, 4, Balboa, 1, 2.
Not to say that 1 and 2 are bad. They're probably the best (along with Balboa).

Anyway, Watch It.




Desperado (1995)

Antonio Banderas is the guitar playing pistolero hero. You know the plot, right? If not - no more to know really. Not because there isn't any plot, but because it unfolds and you should watch that film!

Just a really good action film, isn't it. Sure, there's some slightly clunky things, but oh well. Banderas is so good in that role, so is selma Hayek and so is Joaquim de Almeida. At first he's a bit underhwelming looking as a bad guy, but the look really grows on you, because he just acts as such a bastard.

Sure, the action scenes are grander in the sequel (Once Upon a time in Mexico, which I also really like), but Desperado is more Western-y and the 'smaller' look makes it more personal.

Watch It.




Then I ran across a film last night on tv (because this is where the good stuff happens) called Bushwick, starring Dave Bautista and a lady. I turned it off, because I had enough of that stuff on the news already.

It is interesting to see how El Mariachi, evolves in Desperado, which evolves into Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

I think I liked Desperado the best even though I do not like the ending that much.

Yes, I'd totally forgotten about the end. It looked a bit like they've run out of squibs, time or money. But it's a fine film. I agree with you, it's probably the best out of the three, but I got a soft spot for Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

Argoman.

An italian movie that tries to be a super spy/superhero crossover and ended up being...
bizarre, cheap, ridiculous and so bad you laughed up internal organs.


Here's the poster.




Here's the pre credit scene.




Argoman's weakness is he loses his powers for like 6 hours after having sex. Oh, as to his powers, don't expect them to be defined. He uses his 'mind control' to force a stone column to levitate by telling it to levitate over and over. He can blow up planes apparently, and for some reason his powers don't work when he's not in costume.

Hellraiser Judgement.

10th in the series (blimey!) Pinhead (yay!) but not Doug Bradley (boo!)

It’s another “keep the rights” effort, but is actually fairly good. Some interesting ideas being explored any rate.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Hellraiser Judgement.

10th in the series (blimey!) Pinhead (yay!) but not Doug Bradley (boo!)

It’s another “keep the rights” effort, but is actually fairly good. Some interesting ideas being explored any rate.

I saw some of that, I liked it when pinhead

HBO Rome Season 2

Rome season 2 was initially planned to be season 2 of 5 but about halfway through the producers learned it would be the last one so plans intended to play out over four years were compressed into a handful of episodes. With this in mind the show is much, much better than it should have been and almost as good as the first season. It's sad to think about what might have been if they'd continue the show.

Historically it covers the period from the assassination of Caesar (um spoilers?) to the civil war between his heir Octavian and his friend Mark Antony. Because of the abrupt change in plans, things set up in the first half of the season never play out. No sooner can you say "This King Herod fellow seems interesting" than he's gone from the main story.

As with the first season some major events are deliberately set off camera. A sea battle is portrayed but a conversation between two friends with some burning ships in the background. Mark Antony's famous eulogy for Caesar happens off screen but is recapped by a drunken onlooker. Some of this may have been a question of time and money, but other times I think it was to avoid comparisons to other renditions, Shakespeare's being the most obvious.

There's one or two missteps. Octavian is recast early on, but I really can't say why since both actors are fairly young and the character is only supposed to be 19 or 20 at the beginning of the season. I think the loss of Max Pirkis really hurt things, he portrayed Octavian as a brilliant young man and borderline psychopath. Simon Woods doesn't look much older and never seems to bring much to the part other than standing around and looking noble.

Still it is a wonderful series, and does wrap things up well. And if you're still wondering what ever happened to that King Herod fellow, well there's lots of way to find out.

I was sad to see they came down on the wrong side of this debate though...

Huh. I wonder if the bracer thing is an aesthetic thing? Like, the armor with nothing else is kind of unbalanced visually to me. Armored chest and bare arms feels off. So, slap a wrist band there so it balances out a bit.

Never really thought about it.

Aesthetic balance sounds right to me, its a visual thing for modern eyes in a visual medium.

That said, the video is amusing, since the guy seems unaware of his own bias in this regard. There could be quite a few reasons why public statues wouldn't feature those kind of adornments, whether its a class issue (patrician vs plebian), a beauty issue (bare arms being more appealing to Roman sensibilities), or something else.

He's making _a lot_ of assumptions about historical accuracy which is just kind of funny. Especially when he starts to say 'well, no one wears a watch anymore' and sort of walks it back realizing he might be making the same kind of generalization.

What's really weird to me is I've seen some of these statues and pieces of art before. And I've never once noticed or thought much about the bracers XD

Feels weird.

Personally I think the watch theory works, but also leather wrist bands thicken the forearm and make a guy look more muscular, which is a benefit in a visual medium.

But yeah, I found that video because I started to notice everyone was wearing them and went to look up the history. There's a few forum pages debating the history, if any, of them.

Yeah, Roman Bracer is a favorite film feature, but not really supported by what we know about the periods in question.

Always good for a rant.

I watched a lot of movies this weekend...

Outlaw King

I really liked Hell or High Water which was directed by the same guy. However, this one just did not grab me at all.

Interstellar

A lot of hard sci-fi and almost felt like a modern look at 2001. Not as clever as it thinks it is.

Lots of talk about the relativity of time, and it must have gotten to the film's editors, director, and screen writer. Way too long to get where it goes with lots of pointless side plots.

Homefront

Have you seen a Jason Statham movie before? The most interesting thing was that it was written by Sly Stallone, and have a GREAT cast. Winona Ryder, James Franco, Kate Bosworth, and others.....

Enjoyable for what it it is.

The Big Lebowski

Lot's of quick jokes with no real nods to them can leave the first time viewer off balance! A modern neo-Noir with a heavy dose of theatre of the absurd thrown in.

My daughter was not impressed......

My theory is that The Big Lebowski is more fun to quote than it is to watch.

The only scene that actually made me laugh out loud was John Goodman with a baseball bat screaming “This is what happens when you [find] a stranger in the [Alps]!”


It reminds me of Oh Brother Where Art Thou, in that the film is enjoyable and witty without ever becoming my first or second choice for a rewatch.

It was a series of memes before the concept of memes, so the 'cultural' 'cutting edge' folks got attached.

Voss wrote:
It was a series of memes before the concept of memes, so the 'cultural' 'cutting edge' folks got attached.

Then my daughter should have loved it...... she did not.

 Easy E wrote:

Voss wrote:
It was a series of memes before the concept of memes, so the 'cultural' 'cutting edge' folks got attached.

Then my daughter should have loved it...... she did not.

Memes have a short shelf-life.

 Easy E wrote:

Voss wrote:
It was a series of memes before the concept of memes, so the 'cultural' 'cutting edge' folks got attached.

Then my daughter should have loved it...... she did not.

Would you say that she’s out of her element?

 Easy E wrote:


Interstellar

A lot of hard sci-fi and almost felt like a modern look at 2001. Not as clever as it thinks it is.

Lots of talk about the relativity of time, and it must have gotten to the film's editors, director, and screen writer. Way too long to get where it goes with lots of pointless side plots.

[

I always interpreted interstellar as basically whatever humanity evolves into in the distant future needing humanity as it is in our near future to survive for it to exist, so it basically reached back in time to make sure it's ancestors survived. Maybe whatever humanity evolved into was limited in affecting the past or just did a minimal possible intervention.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

Voss wrote:
It was a series of memes before the concept of memes, so the 'cultural' 'cutting edge' folks got attached.

Then my daughter should have loved it...... she did not.

Would you say that she’s out of her element?

May have been over the line?

 Easy E wrote:

Voss wrote:
It was a series of memes before the concept of memes, so the 'cultural' 'cutting edge' folks got attached.

Then my daughter should have loved it...... she did not.

Well that's just, like, her opinion man...

Clerks

Going for a Kevin Smith season so best start at the beginning, and well it's of its time and way clunkier than I remember, not sure I can be bothered with the rest, even Ms Dushku in spray on pvc isn't enoughand

American Gods[b]

Time to let Czernobog give this the mercy tap of the cancellation hammer, it's getting worse week by week, and CGI'ing over Brian (as his mum calls him) was odd as his general dreadfullness was know long before the current wave, heck ill save the nonbook fans now

 Matt Swain wrote:

 Easy E wrote:


Interstellar

A lot of hard sci-fi and almost felt like a modern look at 2001. Not as clever as it thinks it is.

Lots of talk about the relativity of time, and it must have gotten to the film's editors, director, and screen writer. Way too long to get where it goes with lots of pointless side plots.

[

I always interpreted interstellar as basically whatever humanity evolves into in the distant future needing humanity as it is in our near future to survive for it to exist, so it basically reached back in time to make sure it's ancestors survived. Maybe whatever humanity evolved into was limited in affecting the past or just did a minimal possible intervention.

Pretty much.

I did hope that when we go to.....

Zaat. (not a typo.)

Question: What do you do if you're a former nazi scientist who's on the run and dreams of conquering the world?

Answer: Turn yourself into a nazi/catfish hybrid, of course!

And that, friends, is the premise of the movie Zaat. A nazi scientist decides the best way to conquer the world is to turn himself into a creature that's half nazi and half an animal that humans kill and eat regularly.



Interesting enough a human can be killed by a pistol, a knife, a good whack on the head with a club, etc. A catfish can be killed with a y of the above. But apparently when you combine the two you end up with a creature only an atom bomb can kill. Quick! Someone call the adeptus biologis! We've got a new supersoldier project for them!

By now you're either saying you have to see this one or swearing never to.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
well it's of its time

Kudos for correct use of It's and Its in the same sentence!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Matt Swain wrote:
Zaat. (not a typo.)

You had me at "filmed on location in Florida"

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
well it's of its time

Kudos for correct use of It's and Its in the same sentence!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Matt Swain wrote:
Zaat. (not a typo.)

You had me at "filmed on location in Florida"

Yes, this movie has "Florida man" written all over it. It is definitely a "Florida man" production.

Wait, isn't that Blood Waters of Dr.Z?




As for The Big Lebowski: I think we're doing the film a big disservice if we link it to memes (especially from a 2021 perspective). It's rock-solid comedy (not having "laugh out loud" moments often is a seal of quality, because there's lots of ways to make people laugh without being funny. It's a tension release thing or something like that.) with a big absurdist bent of course and pretty colourful characters. When I first watched it, I wasn't too impressed either. Each time since then (must have been the late 1990s) I enjoyed it more and more. Maybe it's an age thing. It does have these oft-quoted bits, but overall it's a film you're in for the characters and the world these people exist in I think. And that is the very opposite of memes, youtube clips, gifs, and all these snippets.

Maybe your daughter will appreciate the film more later on. Maybe not. Who knows. Memes (again, especially from a 2021 perspective) certainly don't help with appreciating anything.



I watched Clerks back when I got Netflix for the first time. I enjoyed it. I guess it was a good mix of time, place and influences that made this happen. But then again I'm very biased. If there's something 'of its time' from the 80s or early 1990s I'm all for it, if someone brings up the greatness of something made in 2004 and says "it's of its time" I'll probably shoo them away with a rolled-up newspaper (from 1993). To be fair though, if it's of the 90s time it's probably light-hearted, slightly offensive and of little consequence. If it's from 2004 it's probably about how everything's a bit crap except for 'our core values' and how torture is pretty much okay.