"This film contains sex, sexual language, swearing and drug-use throughout.
Also, some violence."
shryke on
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
It's one of Scorsese's best movies, so good David O. Russell had to put together that terrible movie American Hustle, in an Asylum type manner, to completely steal it's spotlight.
I know lots of people who hate the old "English with an appropriate accent" thing. I don't mind it, but it is a bit of a silly trope if you think about.
I don't mind it, but a big part of it must be that it's what we all grew up with. Someone joked that tv shows set in ancient Rome should sound more like an Italian restaurant than the Queen's English, and that's what made me realise...that would actually shatter my own immersion even worse. Having said that, there's some use to the sort of cultural cache of the English accent(s). Like in HBO Rome, if you have even a passing familiarity with English accents you can easily tell by ear who's supposed to be cultured (Caesar, Servilia, Atia, etc) who's a lower-class bruiser (like Pullo and most of the gang roughs) and who's somewhere in the middle (Vorenus and family). You can't just make up that kind of viewer shorthand with period-authentic accents and language.
I think like the QWERTY keyboard we're stuck with an obviously less than ideal system but if you ever tried to change it you'd see pitchforks at dawn.
Making the film easy for the audience to understand trumps realism. So you're better off going with accented English. Unless you were aiming for realism.
Gvzbgul on
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
That reminds me, in Ender's Game they didn't have a regular keyboard for e-mails, but this weird palm type touchpad thing where each button had a certain group of letters that seemed to be infinitely worse than just having the keyboard appear right below the screen.
I'm down for the next thing in terms of futurecasting, but it went backwards in that regard. I would think the next step is court reporter shorthand and then that eye-letter-word creation thing paralyzed people use, and then just thought typing. If you can have a tracking device sticking in a kids brain to see his actions and have games react to thought, I would think that might be the next step.
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
"This film contains sex, sexual language, swearing and drug-use throughout.
Also, some violence."
My favorites are the ones that are weirdly specific and randomly equate horrible stuff with who-cares stuff.
"Contains scenes of intense gore and graphic violence throughout, graphic nudity, disturbing sexual images, and a scene of a teen using mildly coarse language against an authority figure."
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Wolf of Wall Street was a long fucking movie. But doesn't feel bloated, which is always a good thing. I was kinda waiting for it to go through it's paces and wind down at the end, but I feel like Sorcese understood this and the film moves at a good clip through that section so it all works.
Still mulling it over, but one of my initial thoughts was that I totally understand the criticisms of the film glorifying the terrible shit it depicts.
The film never moralizes about the shit it depicts, except in a few small subtle instances, and so can really come off as being "Isn't this whole lifestyle awesome!" if you aren't already thinking it's all awful to begin with. And this really isn't helped by the directing being so fantastic and energetic that it's just incredibly FUN to watch the debauchery going on. It's kinda working at cross-purposes with any potential desire to frame the behaviour as problamatic.
I'm still thinking about what the film really wanted to say about it's main character, but ultimately I think that despite the title the film has little to nothing to say about financial crime directly. It seems to have no interest in the actual vagaries of the financial system. It's entirely focused, rather, on the very idea of greed and excess itself and the culture wanton destruction and excess that drives these people. What they actually do is far less important then why they do it. Like the entire film is about this dick-waving macho tough-man philosophy that motivates them.
But I can't figure out where the debauchery really fits into all this in some ways. It's sort of there and it's easily the best part of the movie in that it's so much fucking fun but it's hard to figure out the point of it all. I don't know, maybe it's about the ultimate lack of any redeeming feature to their greed. They wrap this filthy sexualized narrative around themselves and then use the power that gives them for nothing but self indulgence?
I'm only 50 minutes into Wolf of Wallstreet, but it seems pretty clear so far it's not saying anything itself, just telling you what happened. Which is assholes got rich, did awesome/bad/even worse/working on double worse things. But we'll see if it takes a sudden turn into moralizing, I guess. I kinda hope it does, because it's mostly pretty boring so far.
Wolf of Wall Street's strategy is not to point at this and say "look, this is awful!" It's working from a position of trust that the audience can draw their own conclusions about the behaviour on display. And not everyone sees the debauchery and thinks "wow this is awesome", some can feel uncomfortable with all the excess, especially when juxtaposed with the characters' amorality.
Some elements of his life ARE awesome, though. But no one should be able to watch it and not see how he (and everyone else) goes off the deep end. It doesn't need to try for that. It's obvious already.
There's a few points where the horribleness is exposed as such by the film. The biggest one is towards the start when the women is getting her hair cut off for $10k to, supposedly, get breast implants. The contrast of what's going on around her and how Jordan talks about her compared to the look on her face is rather stark.
+3
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Prepping for Killtoberfest (dear God, the list is so very long) had me hankering for horror, but it's not time yet! I decided it was okay to jump the gun with a movie I'd already seen, so I popped in The Descent. The movie has been one of my favorite horror flicks ever since I saw it in theaters--stumbling out of the cinema like I'd been whacked on the head, I came back the next day for a second viewing. Still one of the best serious horror movies of the Aughts (along with The Ring, Let the Right One In, 28 Days Later, [REC], Bug, and The Devil's Backbone), Neil Marshall's masterpiece is a tense, claustrophobic thrill ride, a roller coaster that only goes down (and down, and down...). The script, about six female friends who go on an ill-fated spelunking expedition, is almost as minimalist as a Refn film, with the focus on visual and aural storytelling, particularly in the film's almost wordless final act. The cinematography is incredible, the score by turns grand and pulse-pounding, and the film is perfectly paced. If you haven't seen it and have a strong stomach, definitely check it out (but make sure you see the original ("unrated") ending, a much more powerful conclusion than the truncated American version).
or we could have hoped for some amazing 3d technology space shooter madness!
... designed to make the audience throw up within five minutes.
The video game adaptation of the film should be cool, though.
Only if it turns out it's linked to actual military squadrons who get their orders based on the most popular and successful tactics used in the campaign.
It's one of Scorsese's best movies, so good David O. Russell had to put together that terrible movie American Hustle, in an Asylum type manner, to completely steal it's spotlight.
American Hustle felt like David O Russell's attempt at a Scorcese film. What bothered me most about it was just about every performance felt like a one up on their co-star, with people screaming to the cheap seats. "You have a silly wig and yell, I've got an even sillier wig, and I yell even louder!"
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
I feel kinda bad for American Hustle.
It's like if someone made a pretty good burger on their grill, and told some friends about it, and then a bunch of food critics got into a war over whether or not it was better than the high-end French restaurant downtown. Everyone's all, "This burger is total shit compared to the Coq au Vin! I can think of the perfect pairing with this burger - a box wine! Hey-o!"
And the burger-chef's family is just kinda sitting there, muttering, "I dunno, I thought it was tasty burger."
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
It's like if someone made a pretty good burger on their grill, and told some friends about it, and then a bunch of food critics got into a war over whether or not it was better than the high-end French restaurant downtown. Everyone's all, "This burger is total shit compared to the Coq au Vin! I can think of the perfect pairing with this burger - a box wine! Hey-o!"
And the burger-chef's family is just kinda sitting there, muttering, "I dunno, I thought it was tasty burger."
I liked American Hustle. It was just a period piece, with interesting characters.
I liked American Hustle but remain rather confused about how it was suppossed to be the best film if the year. Definitely thought Wolf was superior.
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
I think Hustle would be a lot better received if it hadn't been nominated. It was a well-made fluff piece that was a ton of fun, and was one of the most enjoyable films of the year, but it was seriously outclassed by everything it was up against.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
Let's not ignore the part where American Hustle insisted it was something far more than it ultimately was. From that first trailer to just the belief that popular music in the background will automatically elevate it to the upper echelon of film because it has a budget to license those songs, and having all these current big names dressing up in 70's attire, it desperately wanted to be seen as something greater than Amy Adams in a bad english accent talking to a british guy in a jersey accent with a bald wig.
It's not that people then compared the American Hustle burger to Vin Diesel's penis, it's that even after it was revealed to be a burger poorly made, despite the people making that burger telling everyone it was the best thing ever, those in the media couldn't admit to being hustled (ha!) and still had to give it unjust awards.
+2
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Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
So guys I watched Black Rain as part of a school assignment and Prometheus is no longer the worst Ridley Scott film I've seen.
Prometheus, despite the script being a dog's mess, is absolutely gorgeous and has some really good acting when the people aren't being Horror Movie Dumb. Black Rain is certainly shot better than it had to be, but still felt pretty uninspiring. And hey, speaking of uninspiring, can we talk about the script? No, wait, let's not, because the script is practically copy-pasted from every dull cop film ever, only they inserted "they go to Japan" as a twist. Outside of a couple scenes with the Japanese yakuza talking to each other, everything feels like a film you've seen a hundred times before. Oh, and the end of the film is impossible according to what we were shown.
I'm kind of ambivalent about David O Russell I guess. I haven't watched American Hustle yet, but I liked Silver Linings Playbook okay despite its silly depiction of mental illness because he got great performances out of the leads, The Fighter was terrific, and I thought I Heart Huckabees was obnoxious. I'll be interested to see how I feel about American Hustle.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Yeah I didn't see that movie but I thought the mental illness thing was a major story detail.
The insulting this is that the first hour of the movie is about a violent mentally-ill young man dealing with his divorce while living at his parents' house with his father, a verbally-abusive and manipulative compulsive gambler, and his mother, an idle enabler.
And then in the last twenty minutes, the movie completely forgets all of this and goes for the most cliched happy ending I've ever seen.
+5
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
edited September 2014
Silver Linings Playbook is basically the wacky comedy version of mental illness played straight, which unfortunately still places it above 90% of Hollywood mental illness depictions. I mean, it's a fuckton better than I Am Sam or Jack.*
It's another movie that was perfectly entertaining and well-made in the context of a popcorn flick, but which was taken seriously and now everyone hates because it was not as good as <other Oscar-nominated movie>.
*edit: Or Nell. Jesus H. Christ, fucking Nell. "I'm a tay-ay in the way-ay," no, shut the fuck up, Jodie Foster.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Amnesia is the one that I hate how Hollywood plays it, hilariously an episode of Castle actually did amnesia like it actually happens. As in the guy suffered a traumatic injury, forgot who he was and at the end of the episode he still had no clue who he was, because when you lose your memory like that sometimes its just gone for good.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Posts
"This film contains sex, sexual language, swearing and drug-use throughout.
Also, some violence."
I don't mind it, but a big part of it must be that it's what we all grew up with. Someone joked that tv shows set in ancient Rome should sound more like an Italian restaurant than the Queen's English, and that's what made me realise...that would actually shatter my own immersion even worse. Having said that, there's some use to the sort of cultural cache of the English accent(s). Like in HBO Rome, if you have even a passing familiarity with English accents you can easily tell by ear who's supposed to be cultured (Caesar, Servilia, Atia, etc) who's a lower-class bruiser (like Pullo and most of the gang roughs) and who's somewhere in the middle (Vorenus and family). You can't just make up that kind of viewer shorthand with period-authentic accents and language.
I think like the QWERTY keyboard we're stuck with an obviously less than ideal system but if you ever tried to change it you'd see pitchforks at dawn.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
I'm down for the next thing in terms of futurecasting, but it went backwards in that regard. I would think the next step is court reporter shorthand and then that eye-letter-word creation thing paralyzed people use, and then just thought typing. If you can have a tracking device sticking in a kids brain to see his actions and have games react to thought, I would think that might be the next step.
My favorites are the ones that are weirdly specific and randomly equate horrible stuff with who-cares stuff.
"Contains scenes of intense gore and graphic violence throughout, graphic nudity, disturbing sexual images, and a scene of a teen using mildly coarse language against an authority figure."
Still mulling it over, but one of my initial thoughts was that I totally understand the criticisms of the film glorifying the terrible shit it depicts.
The film never moralizes about the shit it depicts, except in a few small subtle instances, and so can really come off as being "Isn't this whole lifestyle awesome!" if you aren't already thinking it's all awful to begin with. And this really isn't helped by the directing being so fantastic and energetic that it's just incredibly FUN to watch the debauchery going on. It's kinda working at cross-purposes with any potential desire to frame the behaviour as problamatic.
I'm still thinking about what the film really wanted to say about it's main character, but ultimately I think that despite the title the film has little to nothing to say about financial crime directly. It seems to have no interest in the actual vagaries of the financial system. It's entirely focused, rather, on the very idea of greed and excess itself and the culture wanton destruction and excess that drives these people. What they actually do is far less important then why they do it. Like the entire film is about this dick-waving macho tough-man philosophy that motivates them.
But I can't figure out where the debauchery really fits into all this in some ways. It's sort of there and it's easily the best part of the movie in that it's so much fucking fun but it's hard to figure out the point of it all. I don't know, maybe it's about the ultimate lack of any redeeming feature to their greed. They wrap this filthy sexualized narrative around themselves and then use the power that gives them for nothing but self indulgence?
I was so utterly disappointed by the reality.
The Descent is one of my favorite horror movies ever made.
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
The video game adaptation of the film should be cool, though.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Only if it turns out it's linked to actual military squadrons who get their orders based on the most popular and successful tactics used in the campaign.
American Hustle felt like David O Russell's attempt at a Scorcese film. What bothered me most about it was just about every performance felt like a one up on their co-star, with people screaming to the cheap seats. "You have a silly wig and yell, I've got an even sillier wig, and I yell even louder!"
It's like if someone made a pretty good burger on their grill, and told some friends about it, and then a bunch of food critics got into a war over whether or not it was better than the high-end French restaurant downtown. Everyone's all, "This burger is total shit compared to the Coq au Vin! I can think of the perfect pairing with this burger - a box wine! Hey-o!"
And the burger-chef's family is just kinda sitting there, muttering, "I dunno, I thought it was tasty burger."
It has the advantages of a protagonist you can root for and, ironically, is more believable.
I liked American Hustle. It was just a period piece, with interesting characters.
It's not that people then compared the American Hustle burger to Vin Diesel's penis, it's that even after it was revealed to be a burger poorly made, despite the people making that burger telling everyone it was the best thing ever, those in the media couldn't admit to being hustled (ha!) and still had to give it unjust awards.
This looks really good. If it has even a fraction of the storytelling quality of Wreck It Ralph, I'll be happy.
Nintendo Network ID - Brainiac_8
PSN - Brainiac_8
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Add me!
He's the cargo-cult poster child.
Prometheus, despite the script being a dog's mess, is absolutely gorgeous and has some really good acting when the people aren't being Horror Movie Dumb. Black Rain is certainly shot better than it had to be, but still felt pretty uninspiring. And hey, speaking of uninspiring, can we talk about the script? No, wait, let's not, because the script is practically copy-pasted from every dull cop film ever, only they inserted "they go to Japan" as a twist. Outside of a couple scenes with the Japanese yakuza talking to each other, everything feels like a film you've seen a hundred times before. Oh, and the end of the film is impossible according to what we were shown.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
That's a little . . . problematic, dontcha think?
pleasepaypreacher.net
The insulting this is that the first hour of the movie is about a violent mentally-ill young man dealing with his divorce while living at his parents' house with his father, a verbally-abusive and manipulative compulsive gambler, and his mother, an idle enabler.
And then in the last twenty minutes, the movie completely forgets all of this and goes for the most cliched happy ending I've ever seen.
It's another movie that was perfectly entertaining and well-made in the context of a popcorn flick, but which was taken seriously and now everyone hates because it was not as good as <other Oscar-nominated movie>.
*edit: Or Nell. Jesus H. Christ, fucking Nell. "I'm a tay-ay in the way-ay," no, shut the fuck up, Jodie Foster.
pleasepaypreacher.net
That's like a big old ....wut?
pleasepaypreacher.net