Michael Cera is great and I don't really get people who don't like him.
But I guess que cera cera
Don't make me stab you.
But nah, I like Cera too. He has a particular niche in which he works, but he does that niche well.
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+6
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Cera was pretty good in Magic Magic where he played an immature twat.
0
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Cera was totally wrong for the part, and yeah, his name is probably why it was made.
Cera is a conundrum. In the right role, or the right amount of an okay role, he's staggeringly good and entertaining. But cast him just a little too far out of his wheelhouse and he becomes something I cannot stand and has ruined entire films through his presence alone.
Cera is a conundrum. In the right role, or the right amount of an okay role, he's staggeringly good and entertaining. But cast him just a little too far out of his wheelhouse and he becomes something I cannot stand and has ruined entire films through his presence alone.
Like Jesse Eisenberg, except occasionally watchable.
Eisenberg was great in Social Network, playing in unsufferable asshole you wanted to punch in the face.
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.
The BFI site has released a video essay on Kore-eda. I haven't yet watched it, but I very much like his films, from Afterlife via Nobody Knows and Still Walking to Like Father Like Son, which I watched yesterday for the first time. He's a beautifully gentle film with a great eye for human interaction, and he does fantastic work with child actors.
This anecdote from the accompanying essay just about killed me:
I once screened Edward Yang’s A One and a Two… (Yi Yi) for a class, and afterwards heard smart, thoughtful students wonder why such a film would even be made.
“It was like watching paint dry,” said one girl.
Yi Yi is absolutely not like watching paint dry – unless you think the experience of human existence is like watching paint dry. And maybe this is the point. Everyday life seems boring and slow to us.
I imagine that I'd have had the same reaction had I watched Yi Yi in my teens or early twenties, but it's still sad as hell to think of experiencing a classroom of students dismissing it in such a way.
On a related note, I bought Still Walking a while back but still haven't watched it.
Eisenberg was great in Social Network, playing in unsufferable asshole you wanted to punch in the face.
He had a cameo in an episode of Modern Family where he plays a completely insufferable neighbor. At the end of the episode he acknowledges that he is really intolerable and has no friends. Really funny meta-humor.
Re-watched Limitless last night and I still think it's a thoroughly enjoyable film that was much better than I expected. It was also a 1000x better at executing the concept that Lucy tried and failed at. I still really enjoyed it's use of color saturation (not totally sure that's the correct effect), gray and dull when B -Coop is his normal self and then vibrant and cheery when on the drug. One thing I picked up on this time around that I missed the first time around was that when Cooper taking too much of the drug and time skipping the film has it's brightness turned way up and the vibrant colors start to get washed out and fuzzy. It's such a good use of those effects that I was a little surprised at how sparse the directors filmography is.
Eisenberg was great in Social Network, playing in unsufferable asshole you wanted to punch in the face.
As big of a dick as Eisenberg was portrayed in The Social Network, I feel he paled in comparison to the two brothers running the Phoenix fraternity.
They were everything Eisenberg was but with movie-star looks, perfect physiques and essentially running the entire campus clicks. Eisenberg seemed relatively tame next to those jerk-offs
TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
edited March 2015
I rewatched Excalibur halfheartedly this weekend, and even though I was forgiving some stuff because I wasn't fully attuned to it man it's very, very rough and my nostalgia is shattered.
On a whole it does a good job of cramming the story into 2.5 hours, and I forgot Liam Neeson was in this, and Helen Mirrin, but man is it edited by a blind man and sets are either really good or really crappy. And Excalibur looks like it's made of tin. Plus it seems like all the dialogue was ADR'd along with the Foley work (and even though I love that old time sound you just don't get anymore, it's everywhere).
Now for all the remakes and shit, redoing Excalibur would be something worthwhile. And then we Americans can take all those jobs, ahahahaha, mwahahahaha!
Eisenberg was great in Social Network, playing in unsufferable asshole you wanted to punch in the face.
As big of a dick as Eisenberg was portrayed in The Social Network, I feel he paled in comparison to the two brothers running the Phoenix fraternity.
They were everything Eisenberg was but with movie-star looks, perfect physiques and essentially running the entire campus clicks. Eisenberg seemed relatively tame next to those jerk-offs
It's a testament to Eisenberg's acting prowess that he was able to out-smug even those two dickwads.
I am going to pretend it's acting prowess.
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.
Mexico’s brutal drug war has left the nation with a tarnished image abroad, but agent 007 is coming to the rescue.
MGM and Sony, the producers behind the new Bond film Spectre, are receiving up to $20 million in incentives for rewrites that depict positive aspects of Mexico, according to a report by Taxanalysts.com, a website that covers tax news and analysis.
Shooting this month in Mexico City, Spectre will receive at least $14 million, and up to $20 million for script rewrites that portray “modern Mexico City buildings” and a generally favorable image of the country. Among Mexican officials requests, the villain cannot be Mexican, according to Taxanalysts.
The report cites a hacked Sony memo titled “Considerations for Cuts” in which Jonathan Glickman, president of MGM’s motion picture group, mentions script changes required to qualify for Mexico film incentives.
Among several changes, Mexico reportedly asked that an international ambassador, rather than a Mexico City mayor, should be replaced as the target of an assassination, and officials also requested that Mexican police should be depicted as a “special force.”
Additionally, Mexico demanded that the production cast a Mexican actress as a Bond girl, which was announced earlier this week. Curiously, Mexican actress Stephanie Sigman is best known for her starring role in Gerardo Naranjo’s crime thriller Miss Bala, which is set in Mexico’s criminal underworld.
The Mexico film incentives were a golden opportunity for a production that was seeking cost-cutting measures to reduce its initial budget of $300 million. The website says the film got $14 million for what amounts to roughly four minutes of footage, and possibly more money for additional shots of the Mexico City skyline.
Taxanalysts quotes Glickman as writing: “By all accounts we can still get the extra $6M by continuing to showcase the modern aspects of the city, and it sounds like we are well on our way based on your last scout. Let’s continue to pursue whatever avenues we have available to maximize this incentive.”
Mexico is battling an image problem due in large part to a war on drugs that has claimed more than 100,000 lives since 2006. Speaking at the Guadalajara film fest this week, Mexican director Guillermo del Toro compared his native Mexico to the “Old West,” saying drug-related violence and corruption have left the country in “social decay.”
Taxanalysts says that permitting Mexican authorities to make casting decisions, dictate characters ethnicities and change the occupation of an unnamed character "goes well beyond" the normal strings attached to qualify for film incentives.
The question now is whether Mexico’s multimillion-dollar PR investment in the Bond shoot will pay off.
Ioan Grillo, an expert on Mexico’s drug war and author of El Narco, believes it won’t help significantly.
“The government has been struggling to change Mexico’s international image to attract more investment and tourism, so these changes it asked for in the movie are not surprising,” Grillo said. “It might help to improve Mexico’s image a little, but if the government really wants a better image, it needs to change the reality and stop mass disappearances and massacres.”
The Mexican daily Reforma had a different take on the film incentives, with a headline that read: “James Bond Bribes Mexico.”
So they are making Stephen King's the Jaunt into a movie (short story about transporting really though nothing happens in the story odd choice for a movie) and yet The Long Walk sits there un filmed! Its almost like hollywood doesn't want to shoot a movie about murdering teenagers for entertainment.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
It'll probably be a movie about the development of the technology and the discovery of what happens to people put in while they are awake, rather than just being a movie about a father giving his dumb kid a history lesson.
Mexico’s brutal drug war has left the nation with a tarnished image abroad, but agent 007 is coming to the rescue.
MGM and Sony, the producers behind the new Bond film Spectre, are receiving up to $20 million in incentives for rewrites that depict positive aspects of Mexico, according to a report by Taxanalysts.com, a website that covers tax news and analysis.
Shooting this month in Mexico City, Spectre will receive at least $14 million, and up to $20 million for script rewrites that portray “modern Mexico City buildings” and a generally favorable image of the country. Among Mexican officials requests, the villain cannot be Mexican, according to Taxanalysts.
The report cites a hacked Sony memo titled “Considerations for Cuts” in which Jonathan Glickman, president of MGM’s motion picture group, mentions script changes required to qualify for Mexico film incentives.
Among several changes, Mexico reportedly asked that an international ambassador, rather than a Mexico City mayor, should be replaced as the target of an assassination, and officials also requested that Mexican police should be depicted as a “special force.”
Additionally, Mexico demanded that the production cast a Mexican actress as a Bond girl, which was announced earlier this week. Curiously, Mexican actress Stephanie Sigman is best known for her starring role in Gerardo Naranjo’s crime thriller Miss Bala, which is set in Mexico’s criminal underworld.
The Mexico film incentives were a golden opportunity for a production that was seeking cost-cutting measures to reduce its initial budget of $300 million. The website says the film got $14 million for what amounts to roughly four minutes of footage, and possibly more money for additional shots of the Mexico City skyline.
Taxanalysts quotes Glickman as writing: “By all accounts we can still get the extra $6M by continuing to showcase the modern aspects of the city, and it sounds like we are well on our way based on your last scout. Let’s continue to pursue whatever avenues we have available to maximize this incentive.”
Mexico is battling an image problem due in large part to a war on drugs that has claimed more than 100,000 lives since 2006. Speaking at the Guadalajara film fest this week, Mexican director Guillermo del Toro compared his native Mexico to the “Old West,” saying drug-related violence and corruption have left the country in “social decay.”
Taxanalysts says that permitting Mexican authorities to make casting decisions, dictate characters ethnicities and change the occupation of an unnamed character "goes well beyond" the normal strings attached to qualify for film incentives.
The question now is whether Mexico’s multimillion-dollar PR investment in the Bond shoot will pay off.
Ioan Grillo, an expert on Mexico’s drug war and author of El Narco, believes it won’t help significantly.
“The government has been struggling to change Mexico’s international image to attract more investment and tourism, so these changes it asked for in the movie are not surprising,” Grillo said. “It might help to improve Mexico’s image a little, but if the government really wants a better image, it needs to change the reality and stop mass disappearances and massacres.”
The Mexican daily Reforma had a different take on the film incentives, with a headline that read: “James Bond Bribes Mexico.”
As a business transaction I think it's a little sleazy but whatever.
I completely understand why Mexico would do this to shore up their tourism industry. Hell, it might even help them deal with the crime problem.
It'll probably be a movie about the development of the technology and the discovery of what happens to people put in while they are awake, rather than just being a movie about a father giving his dumb kid a history lesson.
This is totally unethical of course, but you know what I would do with that story. Do it like one of those gimmicky William Castle movies from the 50s (The Tingler, etc). Have the audience sign waivers about their upcoming Jaunt. Have the movie in 1st person perspective. First part of the movie we get our group of traveller's discussing the back story on the technology and some gory details on the failures. Then as the moment arrives, the character takes a deep breath and holds it, a fog machine releases "the gas" from below the screen, the screen flashes white, and at that instant,
you shut the theater power off. Just leave the audience locked in a pitch black theater. Leave them there as long as it takes to work them into a terrible panic, then play the last seconds of the film: a flash of light, frantic glimpses around the destination room, the character screaming "Longer than you think!" and clawing his own eyes out, so the theater goes black again, and the character continues cackling and repeating that line for an uncomfortable length of time. Silence. House lights come on.
SiliconStew on
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
It'll probably be a movie about the development of the technology and the discovery of what happens to people put in while they are awake, rather than just being a movie about a father giving his dumb kid a history lesson.
This is totally unethical of course, but you know what I would do with that story. Do it like one of those gimmicky William Castle movies from the 50s (The Tingler, etc). Have the audience sign waivers about their upcoming Jaunt. Have the movie in 1st person perspective. First part of the movie we get our group of traveller's discussing the back story on the technology and some gory details on the failures. Then as the moment arrives, a fog machine releases "the gas" from below the screen, the character takes a deep breath and holds it, the screen flashes white, and at that instant,
you shut the theater power off. Just leave the audience locked in a pitch black theater. Leave them there as long as it takes to work them into a terrible panic, then play the last seconds of the film: a flash of light, frantic glimpses around the destination room, the character screaming "Longer than you think!" and clawing his own eyes out, the theater goes black again, and the character continues cackling and repeating that line for an uncomfortable length of time. Silence. House lights come on.
First up was Open Windows, that Elijah Wood and Sasha Grey movie. I had no idea what it was before watching it, which is probably for the best.
It was alright in that very specific ambitious-indie-project way. Like Buried or that one where the dude spends the entire movie in a car (haven't seen it obviously). It has a gimmick that it's going to play the shit out of, and the script is kind of an afterthought--yet they still put a lot of flair into it when it probably didn't need that at all.
First, the basics of the plot: Elijah Wood is in a hotel near a convention (some sort of Comic-Con knock-off, it doesn't really matter). Wait, back up a second. The movie opens with an ever so slightly too-cheesy excerpt from a movie being shown off at this convention. The movie is some sort of sci-fi/horror tripe that, in-universe, is a hugely successful series. Pull out a bit and we see that Elijah Wood is watching the trailer on his laptop in a hotel room near convention. He gets an email asking him to make a video to introduce himself for a contest. So he does, and that's some neat (if really, really obvious) exposition out of the way. He runs a fansite for the lead actress of this sci-fi/horror series (played by Sasha Grey), and he's won a contest to meet her after the convention. He then gets a skype call tell him that the contest has been cancelled by Grey. Meanwhile, she's being asked some fairly awkward questions about a possibly leaked masturbation video by the audience at the convention, and the producer is playing it up for publicity.
It's about this time when the gimmick really takes over. See, Open Windows is not about physical windows, but about the windows on Elijah Wood's laptop. Almost the entire movie takes place on his desktop, with the occasional cut-away to another webcam or phone. He sits there for the first bit of the movie literally opening windows. Clicking on links. All guided by this mysterious skype call.
Of course, things start to get complicated when the voice tricks him into doing some fairly stupid things, and pretty soon he's on the run. Always with his laptop open and his webcam on. A bunch of stuff happens, I'm not going to spoil it except to say that there's a "twist," like every story of this type has to have. And of course everything gets wrapped up super neatly.
It has the same general problems that most found footage movies have. Mainly, why the hell are these characters running around with laptops and webcams and cell phones out while in the middle of car chases and shoot outs. It gets pretty ridiculous by the end. The single screen gimmick can't even sustain the movie to the end, and they jump through so many stupid hoops to keep it going that I could only laugh. Then there's the twist, which is so stupid that I'm not even going to engage with it.
As for Sasha Grey, I can't even tell if she's a good actress or not. There was a whole bunch of really weirdly bad acting in the movie, so she kind of fits in, but maybe she was supposed to be playing a terrible actress all along? In that case, she did a fine job.
Recommended if you want to see Sasha Grey act and can believe that wireless connections in a moving vehicle can stream flawless 720p video.
Next was Nightcrawler. Not sure I have anything to add, as this movie has been talked about plenty. It's very good, though I feel it goes a little too far in the end. The only thing that stops it from being amazing is that it has the soundtrack of a crappy network TV drama. Who the hell thought that was a good idea? I'm pretty sure that is the worst soundtrack to an otherwise excellent movie I have experienced in a long, long while.
Recommended.
Last was Pride, which I had watched a bit of a while back. It's the based on a true story deal about a group of gays and lesbians raising money to help a Welsh mining town during the Thatcher years.
I have to say, I loved it. I usually hate based on a true story stuff, but this one wasn't about sports, so it had that going for it. It also had Bill Nighy, a soundtrack of classic 80s tunes, and a whole bunch of adorable Welsh accents and pretty country vistas.
The movie also has a refreshingly, I don't know, dour? I'm not going to say cynical, because it's anything but. An earnest need to show that things are good despite everything that goes wrong, instead of simply overwhelming with feel-good vibes. It starts out very heartfelt and uplifting, then the middle part is also uplifting, and then by the end it kind of crashes down and falls apart, so that instead of David killing Goliath, it's more like David manages to crawl away from the fight with all of his limbs intact. Which is a victory of sorts. There's an attempt to end on a good note, but even that is immediately turned bittersweet by the captions over the final march, where we learn the fates of some of the main characters.
I will also say that the density of tearjerker moments is about as high as they come. Every 10 minutes there's a newer and greater tug on the heart strings.
Recommended, unless perhaps this is all you know of Wales:
First up was How to Train Your Dragon 2. I really enjoyed it. I'd put it behind Lego Movie and probably behind Big Hero 6, but that's in no way a knock of the movie. If you liked the first one (which I definitely did), you'll like the this one. My 2yo was mesmerized by the scene where you first see the dragon enclave.
Next up was Battle Royal, which I've know about for a really long time but just never got around to watching. Caught it on Netflix after my wife had fallen asleep on the couch. I liked it, but I think my expectations going in probably didn't do it much justice. I had built up the premise of "a bunch of kids are given random weapons and are force to kill each other with them" into much more imaginative action scenes, then when 90% of the deaths are from either guns or blades it was kind of a let down. I had trouble with some of those kids taking a hilarious number of bullets before going down, too. My favorite part of the whole movie was, by far, the teacher. He played it just sarcastic enough to be perfect. All in all, I liked it though.
Well, the kids in the book at least start out with a wider variety of weapons. Boomerangs, dinner forks, grenades... a couple didn't even get weapons but got gear. Like one got a bulletproof vest, and another got a device that tracked the collars.
Scott Pilgrim makes me cringe so much when I watch it.
Painfully niche.
Are video games, teen angst, and indie rock really niche anymore?
The video game portion very specifically references early nineties video games in a way that doesn't make much sense to (or at least won't resonate strongly with) anyone who wasn't gaming during that period. A lot of the sound effects are pulled from A Link to the Past, the Universal logo in the beginning is very 16 bit chic, the whole structure of the film being composed of fighting seven increasingly difficult and crazy bosses, the whole idea of a subspace highway... The anime tropes are still fairly accessible to anyone who's seen much anime, and the Seinfeld reference is probably pretty recognizable, though.
Someone outside that demographic can still follow the movie and understand the plot, but they're not going to appreciate two thirds of what that film is trying to do. Video games today are pretty categorically different from the specific period of video games employed in Scott Pilgrim.
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.
Scott Pilgrim makes me cringe so much when I watch it.
Painfully niche.
Are video games, teen angst, and indie rock really niche anymore?
The video game portion very specifically references early nineties video games in a way that doesn't make much sense to (or at least won't resonate strongly with) anyone who wasn't gaming during that period. A lot of the sound effects are pulled from A Link to the Past, the Universal logo in the beginning is very 16 bit chic, the whole structure of the film being composed of fighting seven increasingly difficult and crazy bosses, the whole idea of a subspace highway... The anime tropes are still fairly accessible to anyone who's seen much anime, and the Seinfeld reference is probably pretty recognizable, though.
Someone outside that demographic can still follow the movie and understand the plot, but they're not going to appreciate two thirds of what that film is trying to do. Video games today are pretty categorically different from the specific period of video games employed in Scott Pilgrim.
I'm not sure this is true. Or if it is, I need an annotated version of this movie like whoah. I don't get every reference the movie lays down, but those I do get are more allusion than metatextual--ie the point of the reference is "this is from a video game", rather than "in the original video game, this meant X, and so here it implies Y".
I get that boss fights are a video game thing, even if I've never played River City Ransom; and I can definitely still get the broad metaphor of the emotional baggage both parties bring to a relationship.
The surface of SP is niche, maybe, but what's underneath is universal.
+5
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Most people don't believe in anything but the surface level.
Posts
Don't make me stab you.
But nah, I like Cera too. He has a particular niche in which he works, but he does that niche well.
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@TaramoorPlays
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Like Jesse Eisenberg, except occasionally watchable.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
You're thinking about Woody Harrelson.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
This anecdote from the accompanying essay just about killed me:
I imagine that I'd have had the same reaction had I watched Yi Yi in my teens or early twenties, but it's still sad as hell to think of experiencing a classroom of students dismissing it in such a way.
On a related note, I bought Still Walking a while back but still haven't watched it.
Oh man, It Follows is going to expand its limited release to my little college town on Friday for some reason.
We never get limited release stuff at our little art house joint, at least not for months.
Pumped.
dat soundtrack
He had a cameo in an episode of Modern Family where he plays a completely insufferable neighbor. At the end of the episode he acknowledges that he is really intolerable and has no friends. Really funny meta-humor.
As big of a dick as Eisenberg was portrayed in The Social Network, I feel he paled in comparison to the two brothers running the Phoenix fraternity.
They were everything Eisenberg was but with movie-star looks, perfect physiques and essentially running the entire campus clicks. Eisenberg seemed relatively tame next to those jerk-offs
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
On a whole it does a good job of cramming the story into 2.5 hours, and I forgot Liam Neeson was in this, and Helen Mirrin, but man is it edited by a blind man and sets are either really good or really crappy. And Excalibur looks like it's made of tin. Plus it seems like all the dialogue was ADR'd along with the Foley work (and even though I love that old time sound you just don't get anymore, it's everywhere).
Now for all the remakes and shit, redoing Excalibur would be something worthwhile. And then we Americans can take all those jobs, ahahahaha, mwahahahaha!
It actually was. Didn't wow me, was just a solid flick.
Felt simple but I liked it
It's a testament to Eisenberg's acting prowess that he was able to out-smug even those two dickwads.
I am going to pretend it's acting prowess.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/spectre-james-bond-film-reportedly-781497
MGM and Sony, the producers behind the new Bond film Spectre, are receiving up to $20 million in incentives for rewrites that depict positive aspects of Mexico, according to a report by Taxanalysts.com, a website that covers tax news and analysis.
Shooting this month in Mexico City, Spectre will receive at least $14 million, and up to $20 million for script rewrites that portray “modern Mexico City buildings” and a generally favorable image of the country. Among Mexican officials requests, the villain cannot be Mexican, according to Taxanalysts.
The report cites a hacked Sony memo titled “Considerations for Cuts” in which Jonathan Glickman, president of MGM’s motion picture group, mentions script changes required to qualify for Mexico film incentives.
Among several changes, Mexico reportedly asked that an international ambassador, rather than a Mexico City mayor, should be replaced as the target of an assassination, and officials also requested that Mexican police should be depicted as a “special force.”
Additionally, Mexico demanded that the production cast a Mexican actress as a Bond girl, which was announced earlier this week. Curiously, Mexican actress Stephanie Sigman is best known for her starring role in Gerardo Naranjo’s crime thriller Miss Bala, which is set in Mexico’s criminal underworld.
The Mexico film incentives were a golden opportunity for a production that was seeking cost-cutting measures to reduce its initial budget of $300 million. The website says the film got $14 million for what amounts to roughly four minutes of footage, and possibly more money for additional shots of the Mexico City skyline.
Taxanalysts quotes Glickman as writing: “By all accounts we can still get the extra $6M by continuing to showcase the modern aspects of the city, and it sounds like we are well on our way based on your last scout. Let’s continue to pursue whatever avenues we have available to maximize this incentive.”
Mexico is battling an image problem due in large part to a war on drugs that has claimed more than 100,000 lives since 2006. Speaking at the Guadalajara film fest this week, Mexican director Guillermo del Toro compared his native Mexico to the “Old West,” saying drug-related violence and corruption have left the country in “social decay.”
Taxanalysts says that permitting Mexican authorities to make casting decisions, dictate characters ethnicities and change the occupation of an unnamed character "goes well beyond" the normal strings attached to qualify for film incentives.
The question now is whether Mexico’s multimillion-dollar PR investment in the Bond shoot will pay off.
Ioan Grillo, an expert on Mexico’s drug war and author of El Narco, believes it won’t help significantly.
“The government has been struggling to change Mexico’s international image to attract more investment and tourism, so these changes it asked for in the movie are not surprising,” Grillo said. “It might help to improve Mexico’s image a little, but if the government really wants a better image, it needs to change the reality and stop mass disappearances and massacres.”
The Mexican daily Reforma had a different take on the film incentives, with a headline that read: “James Bond Bribes Mexico.”
pleasepaypreacher.net
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
As a business transaction I think it's a little sleazy but whatever.
I completely understand why Mexico would do this to shore up their tourism industry. Hell, it might even help them deal with the crime problem.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Tourism puts more money into the economy, and poverty is the main driving force behind crime.
No, it probably won't do anything to hurt the cartels, organized crime is a different beast.
They killed a bunch of dudes, who exploded into coins.
This is totally unethical of course, but you know what I would do with that story. Do it like one of those gimmicky William Castle movies from the 50s (The Tingler, etc). Have the audience sign waivers about their upcoming Jaunt. Have the movie in 1st person perspective. First part of the movie we get our group of traveller's discussing the back story on the technology and some gory details on the failures. Then as the moment arrives, the character takes a deep breath and holds it, a fog machine releases "the gas" from below the screen, the screen flashes white, and at that instant,
The sequel:
First up was Open Windows, that Elijah Wood and Sasha Grey movie. I had no idea what it was before watching it, which is probably for the best.
It was alright in that very specific ambitious-indie-project way. Like Buried or that one where the dude spends the entire movie in a car (haven't seen it obviously). It has a gimmick that it's going to play the shit out of, and the script is kind of an afterthought--yet they still put a lot of flair into it when it probably didn't need that at all.
First, the basics of the plot: Elijah Wood is in a hotel near a convention (some sort of Comic-Con knock-off, it doesn't really matter). Wait, back up a second. The movie opens with an ever so slightly too-cheesy excerpt from a movie being shown off at this convention. The movie is some sort of sci-fi/horror tripe that, in-universe, is a hugely successful series. Pull out a bit and we see that Elijah Wood is watching the trailer on his laptop in a hotel room near convention. He gets an email asking him to make a video to introduce himself for a contest. So he does, and that's some neat (if really, really obvious) exposition out of the way. He runs a fansite for the lead actress of this sci-fi/horror series (played by Sasha Grey), and he's won a contest to meet her after the convention. He then gets a skype call tell him that the contest has been cancelled by Grey. Meanwhile, she's being asked some fairly awkward questions about a possibly leaked masturbation video by the audience at the convention, and the producer is playing it up for publicity.
It's about this time when the gimmick really takes over. See, Open Windows is not about physical windows, but about the windows on Elijah Wood's laptop. Almost the entire movie takes place on his desktop, with the occasional cut-away to another webcam or phone. He sits there for the first bit of the movie literally opening windows. Clicking on links. All guided by this mysterious skype call.
Of course, things start to get complicated when the voice tricks him into doing some fairly stupid things, and pretty soon he's on the run. Always with his laptop open and his webcam on. A bunch of stuff happens, I'm not going to spoil it except to say that there's a "twist," like every story of this type has to have. And of course everything gets wrapped up super neatly.
It has the same general problems that most found footage movies have. Mainly, why the hell are these characters running around with laptops and webcams and cell phones out while in the middle of car chases and shoot outs. It gets pretty ridiculous by the end. The single screen gimmick can't even sustain the movie to the end, and they jump through so many stupid hoops to keep it going that I could only laugh. Then there's the twist, which is so stupid that I'm not even going to engage with it.
As for Sasha Grey, I can't even tell if she's a good actress or not. There was a whole bunch of really weirdly bad acting in the movie, so she kind of fits in, but maybe she was supposed to be playing a terrible actress all along? In that case, she did a fine job.
Recommended if you want to see Sasha Grey act and can believe that wireless connections in a moving vehicle can stream flawless 720p video.
Next was Nightcrawler. Not sure I have anything to add, as this movie has been talked about plenty. It's very good, though I feel it goes a little too far in the end. The only thing that stops it from being amazing is that it has the soundtrack of a crappy network TV drama. Who the hell thought that was a good idea? I'm pretty sure that is the worst soundtrack to an otherwise excellent movie I have experienced in a long, long while.
Recommended.
Last was Pride, which I had watched a bit of a while back. It's the based on a true story deal about a group of gays and lesbians raising money to help a Welsh mining town during the Thatcher years.
I have to say, I loved it. I usually hate based on a true story stuff, but this one wasn't about sports, so it had that going for it. It also had Bill Nighy, a soundtrack of classic 80s tunes, and a whole bunch of adorable Welsh accents and pretty country vistas.
The movie also has a refreshingly, I don't know, dour? I'm not going to say cynical, because it's anything but. An earnest need to show that things are good despite everything that goes wrong, instead of simply overwhelming with feel-good vibes. It starts out very heartfelt and uplifting, then the middle part is also uplifting, and then by the end it kind of crashes down and falls apart, so that instead of David killing Goliath, it's more like David manages to crawl away from the fight with all of his limbs intact. Which is a victory of sorts. There's an attempt to end on a good note, but even that is immediately turned bittersweet by the captions over the final march, where we learn the fates of some of the main characters.
I will also say that the density of tearjerker moments is about as high as they come. Every 10 minutes there's a newer and greater tug on the heart strings.
Recommended, unless perhaps this is all you know of Wales:
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
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It's one thing to give tax credits for filming there, and even using local talent, that's fine. Canada does it, Australia too.
But the whole "no villains can be our people" or positive portrayal in light of overwhelming evidence is BS and retards storytelling.
This is where you pull a Fast Five and film in Puerto Rico and say it's Brazil Mexico.
First up was How to Train Your Dragon 2. I really enjoyed it. I'd put it behind Lego Movie and probably behind Big Hero 6, but that's in no way a knock of the movie. If you liked the first one (which I definitely did), you'll like the this one. My 2yo was mesmerized by the scene where you first see the dragon enclave.
Next up was Battle Royal, which I've know about for a really long time but just never got around to watching. Caught it on Netflix after my wife had fallen asleep on the couch. I liked it, but I think my expectations going in probably didn't do it much justice. I had built up the premise of "a bunch of kids are given random weapons and are force to kill each other with them" into much more imaginative action scenes, then when 90% of the deaths are from either guns or blades it was kind of a let down. I had trouble with some of those kids taking a hilarious number of bullets before going down, too. My favorite part of the whole movie was, by far, the teacher. He played it just sarcastic enough to be perfect. All in all, I liked it though.
Are video games, teen angst, and indie rock really niche anymore?
The video game portion very specifically references early nineties video games in a way that doesn't make much sense to (or at least won't resonate strongly with) anyone who wasn't gaming during that period. A lot of the sound effects are pulled from A Link to the Past, the Universal logo in the beginning is very 16 bit chic, the whole structure of the film being composed of fighting seven increasingly difficult and crazy bosses, the whole idea of a subspace highway... The anime tropes are still fairly accessible to anyone who's seen much anime, and the Seinfeld reference is probably pretty recognizable, though.
Someone outside that demographic can still follow the movie and understand the plot, but they're not going to appreciate two thirds of what that film is trying to do. Video games today are pretty categorically different from the specific period of video games employed in Scott Pilgrim.
It is not pretty.
I'm not sure this is true. Or if it is, I need an annotated version of this movie like whoah. I don't get every reference the movie lays down, but those I do get are more allusion than metatextual--ie the point of the reference is "this is from a video game", rather than "in the original video game, this meant X, and so here it implies Y".
I get that boss fights are a video game thing, even if I've never played River City Ransom; and I can definitely still get the broad metaphor of the emotional baggage both parties bring to a relationship.
The surface of SP is niche, maybe, but what's underneath is universal.