TV/Movies Megathread

[Malthus]

Watching a UK police procedural called *Line of Duty*. So odd to see a modern day gritty cop show where the cops do not carry handguns ... I'm so used the US type of show of this sort. Pretty good so far.

Also watching a new take on the superhero genre, *Invincible*. Pretty entertaining if one skips over the teen romantic drama ... I don't always mind teen romantic drama (I liked it in *Star vs. The Forces of Evil*, and in *Gravity Falls*). But here it is somehow un-engaging. The plot is otherwise pretty entertaining, though I feel this particular vein has been mined before, I haven't seen the other shows that do this sort of thing, so I'm not bored.

[Savonarola]

Blade: Trinity (2004)

Vampires have set up Blade!  As he's captured in an FBI raid his mentor, Whistler, is gunned down.  While Blade is broken up by the loss, as in any good Rocky movie the tragic death spurs him on and with the eye of the tiger he... er... no, that didn't happen.  Actually Blade is largely indifferent to his only friend's death. 

No matter, he's soon rescued by a rag-tag lot of vampire hunters who call themselves the Night Stalkers.  At first Blade is dismissive of their abilities, but in time he comes to respect their enthusiasm and he becomes like a father figure to them as they... er, no, that also didn't happen, Blade remains aloof and dismissive to the end. 

Okay, but these Night Stalkers they are amazing, one of them, Jessica Biel, is Whistler's illegitimate daughter; she's a complicated woman having been abandoned by her father but continuing on his line of work she works through both her abandonment issues and Elektra complex by... uh, no, my mistake, her only personality trait is that she makes playlists of darkcore^1. music that she plays when hunting vampires.  Well there's another guy, Ryan Reynolds, who has a dark secret, you see he used to be a vampire and he masks his pain by pretending to be a wisecracking, immature asshole, but as the movie goes on we discover that beneath his bravado he's really a... wisecracking immature asshole. 

Well, okay, but the villain is the man himself, Dracula.  He's the original vampire, a nightmare and terror to behold.  He an Blade go way back, their numerous battles are the stuff of... er... no, I'm wrong again.  He and Blade have never met.

Well he's evil anyway and he and the vampires have a nefarious scheme.  They've kidnapped homeless people, put them in chemical stasis and drain their blood.  Blade discovers this horrible secret, and shuts down the blood farm.  With the vampires cut off from their food supply their forced to a dangerous, reckless gambit as they... uhm... no, this seems to make absolutely no difference and has no consequences.

Well no one went to a Blade movie to see character development, we came to see the ass kicking.  Just as in the past two movies the combat scenes are amazing as Wesley ups the ante by... er... no, Wesley just phones in the fight scenes. 

Jessica Biel did show up to fight, and her bow and arrow scenes are allegedly for real, not the work of a double.  Unfortunately she's only there to show off her fantastic waist^2. and kill the girl vampire (Piper Perabo, although it would have been more believable if Piper had died of over-acting rather than a silver arrow.) 

This is the first Marvel series to make it to three movies; and the first to go off the rails at the third movie (Spiderman and X-Men would soon follow.)  This one isn't good, but it is fascinating.  Everything that worked in the first two movies was dumped to make an ensemble movie with a jokey tone and every rule of narrative logic was abandoned (except that the girl hero has to kill the girl vampire.)  The result is one of a kind; if you like no-rules cinema this is one to see.

1.)  It might have been a different core, like Hardcore, Rapcore, Nerdcore or Reactorcore, but since this is a vampire film I'm going to call it Darkcore.
2.)  It was truly fantastic. I'll bet you could have bounced quarters off it.

[Barrister]

The development of Blade 3 was infamously difficult, with (IIRC) Wesley Snipes and the director reduced to communicating in writing as they hated each other so much.

[Savonarola]

The development of Blade 3 was infamously difficult, with (IIRC) Wesley Snipes and the director reduced to communicating in writing as they hated each other so much.

According to IMDB Wesley only communicated to anyone via post-it notes, only responded when addressed a "Blade" and spent all his time in his trailer smoking marijuana.  (He was also some sort of Sovereign Citizen at the time.)

[Barrister]

I looked it up - a lot of the stories appear to come from Patton Oswalt here:

https://tv.avclub.com/patton-oswalt-on-his-most-memorable-roles-and-giving-li-1798234688

It also mentions Snipes only came to set for close-ups - his body double did everything else.  Which led to a lot of terrible jokes being told, and then them cutting to a stone-faced Blade.

Also Snipes went to choke-out the director one day, so that night he paid for a bunch of bikers to pretend to be his body guards and freak Snipes out.

[Sheilbh]

Watching a UK police procedural called *Line of Duty*. So odd to see a modern day gritty cop show where the cops do not carry handguns ... I'm so used the US type of show of this sort. Pretty good so far.

I enjoy Line of Duty a lot.

There was an article - I think by Chris Orr at the Atlantic - on this about how the lack of guns (and presence of CCTV) changes the style and pace of UK police procedurals. I think he'd been watching Broadchurch and Happy Valley (which are both excellent). Though for a Brit procedural Line of Duty is still quite high-paced and very popular. The latest series had 13-15million people tuning in each week

[The Larch]

The development of Blade 3 was infamously difficult, with (IIRC) Wesley Snipes and the director reduced to communicating in writing as they hated each other so much.

Yeah, apparently he really resented having the characters of Biel and Reynolds feature so heavily in the film, thus eclipsing him, and wouldn't talk to them either during the shooting of the film.

[Valmy]

I wondered why Snipes just vanished from movies after the early 2000s. I guess insanity is the reason why.

[Barrister]

I wondered why Snipes just vanished from movies after the early 2000s. I guess insanity is the reason why.

Going to jail for not paying his taxes probably didn't help...

[The Larch]

I wondered why Snipes just vanished from movies after the early 2000s. I guess insanity is the reason why.

After Blade Trinity he has mostly done direct to video movies only, except for a couple of titles that went to he big screen, like the 3rd Expendables movie. On top of that, as Beeb said, he spent a couple of years in jail for his tax conviction.

[Jacob]

When I was in LA to record game audio back in the day, I heard it said that Wesley Snipes was a total dick to work with. And that was, like, their go-to example without being prompted to bring up the topic. So yeah, he had a bit of a reputation.

[Oexmelin]

There's even footage of a clueless interviewer asking Reynolds how it was to work with Snipes... and Reynolds answers something like: "You're... your're joking, right?".

[Josquius]

I looked it up - a lot of the stories appear to come from Patton Oswalt here:

https://tv.avclub.com/patton-oswalt-on-his-most-memorable-roles-and-giving-li-1798234688

It also mentions Snipes only came to set for close-ups - his body double did everything else.  Which led to a lot of terrible jokes being told, and then them cutting to a stone-faced Blade.

Also Snipes went to choke-out the director one day, so that night he paid for a bunch of bikers to pretend to be his body guards and freak Snipes out.

Huh. So sounds like Blade 3 was originally meant to be a Day Breakers.
That was a good film.

I do love a good tale of disastrous productions

[HVC]

Just watched the trailer for the friends reunion. It was kind of depressing.

[Admiral Yi]

Just watched the trailer for the friends reunion. It was kind of depressing.

Don't ever go back.

Has there ever been a reunion special that didn't suck?  Including the Disney Star Wars.