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Ace_Spade's Replies
I don't think you're supposed to like Washington being manhandled by DiCaprio. The movie is trying to get across how ugly these attitudes and actions were.
You should definitely see the movie sound-on for the full force of Jackson's performance as Stephen. It's amazing. It's one of his best performances. It's nuanced with the ways Stephen has no official power, yet grasps and clutches little bits and pieces of power in ways he can. He's spiteful, downtrodden, and angry. The performances is so good.
Nope.
"His fascination with people is annoying, redundant, unnecessary."
A fascination with people is one of the things that makes artists make great art. Tarantino's characters are intriguing and fresh, his worlds are wonderful because you can feel the depth of stories here. We happen to follow Butch, but that taxi cab driver is so interesting that I would happily watch her story, too.
If every character in a movie is interesting, that's a great movie.
That line is a good line, but it's weird that Yoda seemed like he was on a sugar high, pretending to be kooky Yoda again? Why? And then the fact that he can summon lightning as a Force ghost? Much like the hyperspeed kamikaze attack, it was an amazing moment and a great visual, but it raises so many questions about everything else in Star Wars.
There's a lot of good moments in The Last Jedi - some neat wisdom from Luke during two training scenes, Luke and R2, Luke and... ah...most of them are just what Hamill did as Luke - but they last for so little time and as often as not they create more problems than they solve.
I'm not a hater (I don't just knee-jerk dislike everything about the whole movie), but I don't like the film, and I don't have to admit that another bad-mediocre scene is very good.
Thank you for remembering Manhattan. That's one of the finest films ever committed to celluloid - B&W or colour.
Peggy, Don, and Pete all change remarkably from season one, as far as I can see.
Don has ups and downs, constantly struggling against his nature, being forced as the years go on to deal with his insecurities, his selfishness, and his inability to find peace and happiness. As the series goes on, he takes steps forwards and backwards, but by the end, he is definitely a different man than he was. Season one, he's still navigating the bureaucratic waters of the cutthroat corporate world. By the time of "Shut the Door, Take a Seat," he's rip-roaring and in total control of his surroundings, but not his personal self - that's almost regressing as he gets more worldly power. The final season sees Don confront all the baggage he's built up over the years and jettison much of that narcissistic, controlling a-hole behaviour. Could Season 1 Don have hugged that guy at the hippy commune? Nope.
Peggy definitely changes. She shows up naive, sweet, and mostly innocent. She gets corrupted to an extent, but also comes into her own as a person. She's never perfect, but she certainly changes.
Pete starts out an entitled brat. By the end of the show, he's falling on a sword for Don (with the government thing) and fighting to keep his family together. He's never a "great guy", but he's changed dramatically by the end.
It's a show that shows a lot of humans with our human problems. So, yeah, they're a-holes, or they can be. But, they change, grow, and have nuance to them.
In twelve years, Donald Glover could be Walter.
So hard to pick just one... I love the way Mickey interacts with Kramer, though. Larry David as Steinbrenner was gold, too.
The article is trying to find offense.
First: it describes Susan as a "feminist man hating lesbian", but she never comes off that way. She doesn't really get along with Ross, but Susan and Carol were always portrayed as a loving couple. Ross usually came off looking worse compared to them. While the show takes a couple cheap shots at Chandler's dad, the whole storyline where we finally meet him, the point is that Chandler should get over it and stop pushing his father away. It's super positive and accepting.
The show wasn't very diverse for NYC. Sure. But that doesn't affect it as a show.
The show isn't sexist. There are six main characters. Three are men, three are women. There's an episode where Ross keeps trying to mansplain martial arts/ self-defense to Phoebe and Rachel, and they repeatedly kick his butt. Rachel's character is sexist? She starts off as a spoiled rich girl and progresses into a self-made woman. The article highlights a joke made by Jack Gellar about Steffi Graf, but the joke (as I understand it) is that Jack is coming off as ridiculous. The joke is at Jack's expense, not Graf's.
Next, the article doesn't think it's relatable anymore. Maybe that's true, maybe it doesn't mesh with the modern mindset, but that's okay. Shows won't always be eternally, universally relatable; not every work of art is Shakespeare. Some people relate to it, some people don't. The article writer also misses the fact that, for a generation, Friends *did* speak to them. It was one of the most relatable things in the 90s. Things being made today won't be relatable in twenty-five years, either. That doesn't affect the show's quality, only its longevity.
I'll end by pointing out that the article also claims the show is "shallow", but doesn't even drum up a straw man for that argument. The writer just throws it in there.
Bottom line? This is a poorly-written article, looking for offense, attacking a well-known, well-loved property for clicks. It's tripe.
There was a lot of missing stuff there, I thought. Like they wanted to wrap up the storyline really quickly so they just glossed over it.
Do you need all of her blood? How often? How much? So many questions... They definitely should have pursued that.
Yeah, they should definitely do something to wrap it up. One more season, a feature film, or an extra episode or two.
Thanks for the clarification.
What do you mean by "zero tolerance stance with respect to MeToo allegations"? Are you suggesting prosecution or conviction based on accusation?
I can't agree with that. The first two Star Wars films are the most mature. The prequels certainly aren't aimed at adults. They're trying to be "all ages" by appealing to everybody. This pull in several directions (young Anakin in a movie about intergalactic taxes) was a contributing factor to their poor quality, and were one of many reasons they were not well received.
Adult sci-fi looks like 2001, Brazil, or Children of Men. Even the original Star Wars films weren't meant for "adults" in that sense - they're adventure films for teenagers which somehow managed to have mass-appeal; but that isn't how they were aimed.
I'm not saying adult sci-fi is better, mind. One of my favourite sci-fi films of all time? WALL-E. That's aimed squarely at children, but it's sooooo good on every level. Target demographic and quality level or actual appeal are different things.
For stuff I did really like:
The opening credit sequence is one of the most masterfully-created I've seen. It delivers everything we need to know about the backstory of the alternate-history world of Watchmen in minimal time. It's well shot and exciting.
The music choices of Snyder always thrill me. His use of music in Sucker Punch is great. It's great in Watchmen, too. Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Simon and Garfunkel - the soundtrack is great stuff.
The look of the film is superb. The costumes and cinematography is all great. I'm not a huge fan of Snyder as a director, but as an art director, I am absolutely on board.
The elements of the comic book shine through in places, too. Great moments like the reveal at the ending (I did it thirty-five minutes ago), or Rorschach's craziness, or the world itself are all there on screen. Snyder might not have plumbed the depths of meaning and symoblism here, but there's enough on the surface to make for a great story with wonderful characters.
The performances of the cast are really standout as well. A lot of people loved Haley as Rorschach, and so did I, but my favourite performance was Morgan as The Comedian. But, that said, I loved everybody. A lot of people gave Ackermann flack for her performance as Silk Spectre, but I even liked her. Every member of the cast does their part extremely well, and as far as that and casting goes, it's on-par with the accuracy of The Lord of the Rings. Jackson did a great job of finding people who looked and sounded like those characters from Middle Earth. Snyder found the perfect looking, sounding, and acting cast for Watchmen.
I liked Alan Moore's bits...
I have very mixed feelings on Watchmen. I think Snyder did a reasonably good adaptation, but it's pretty flawed. I'll try to be brief.
I don't like the changed ending. The alien let Earth perceive it as "Earth v. Aliens". Switched to Dr. Manhattan, the Soviets would've said, "You faked his "leaving Earth" to justify blowing us up," and used it as leverage in international negotiations. It would add tension, not alleviate it.
They also look too cool. Snyder is a super-cool director, but the characters in Watchmen are losers, weirdos, outcasts, and perverts. They shouldn't look "cool". Dan should have a visible paunch in his tights. Rorschach should make us cringe and grimace. I think Snyder tried to make a really great superhero movie like Dark Knight or Avengers, but that's not what Watchmen is about. There are other things like this that make me think Snyder understood all the plot points, but none of the themes of the comic.
Also: they seem to have superpowers. The Comedian punches through a concrete wall. With the exception of Adrian, the characters should just be normal people who happen to have particular skills and experiences that make them better at fighting and crime solving. I think this is another clue that Snyder wanted to make a great superhero movie, which is different than adapting Watchmen.
Snyder got the pages right, panel-by-panel, but failed to understand what made Watchmen work. He had to find out what made Watchmen work as a comic, and I don't think he did. He did make a pretty great superhero comic with hints at something better - that dark, satirical, deconstructionist stream that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons put in there.
So, ultimately: is Watchmen a refreshing, original, slick superhero movie that stands out from others in the genre? Yeah, it is. But, is it the best movie it could be? No - it doesn't live up to its potential and falls short of the comic's brilliance.
So, you want to see a slight variation on The Book Store combined with a slight variation on The Race?
I hadn't watched the interview until reading this. I have now. Honestly, it just looks like Renner is exhausted. They're doing an interview with an Indian TV show (he asks if they're coming to India); I'm guessing that means it was pretty late in the press tour, since they'd probably do US, European, and Chinese markets first - those being the biggest. I would guess that Renner's just really, really, really tired and maybe partied too much the night before or something. He doesn't look ticked off with Larson, he just looks like he can't keep his eyelids open.
Snyder's 300 worked because the story is simple. Snyder is less a great director and more a great production designer. He'd cut together a mean movie trailer, but he can't seem to sustain his specific "slick 'n' cool" style with any satisfaction for longer than a sequence or two. 300 still works because it uses simplicity for its power - and it works. But when he tried Watchmen, he failed. He didn't seem to understand the depths of Watchmen. He could only use the comic book as a kind of storyboard and then add his trademark coolness to the soundtrack, costumes, and sets and shoot it all like an MTV music video.
This explains it better than I am:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38Cy_Qlh7VM
Height only matters for specific tasks. If you're a spelunker or a jockey, you would probably prefer a smaller build and frame. If you're an athlete, tall is probably good. But in terms of life, happiness, meaning in your life, satisfaction, etc. - I don't think height is important at all. Ignore teasers.
6' is above average. You're only small if your social circle is all abnormally tall.