TV/Movies Megathread

[CountDeMoney]

Rock of Ages.

Wanted to see Catherine Zeta-Jones in churchgoing MILF attire, but I couldn't make it past the opening credits.  The only thing worse than bad music from the 80's is bad music from the 80's covered badly.

[Viking]

Interesting 

I'm pretty sure we've already established that Rotten Tomatoes doesn't know shit and is full of hipster wannabe reviewers who follow the pack.

[11B4V]

Interesting 

Despicable Me and UP FTW, Timmay.

[Syt]

[Tonitrus]

Interesting 

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/06/the_best_pixar_movies_as_chosen_by_children_critics_say_they_re_on_the_decline.html

What explains the difference? Critics often judge whether the movies are also good for adults, but not a single child we spoke to expressed any concern for whether their parents enjoyed the movie.

Kids are selfish bastards...film at 11.

[dps]

Some interesting stuff there.  One thing I noticed is that the Narnia movies were considered disappointing financially, yet the 3 of them took in more money than the 4 Lethal Weapon movies, which are generally considered to have been financially successful.

[Eddie Teach]

I think they probably spent too much money making the Narnia movies. They don't need awe-inspiring effects to draw in their core viewers(people who loved the books) and would have a hard time drawing a mega-wide audience regardless.

[CountDeMoney]

They don't need awe-inspiring effects to draw in their core viewers(people who loved the books) and would have a hard time drawing a mega-wide audience regardless.

Yeah, fancy special effects aside, people still know who C.S. Lewis is.  The Left Behind series would do just as poorly.

[Eddie Teach]

Yeah, fancy special effects aside, people still know who C.S. Lewis is.  The Left Behind series would do just as poorly.

Nah, the Left Behind series would be a colossal failure if they tried to megaplex it. Narnia wasn't, as the 1.8 billion in revenue shows.

Think I'm gonna see if they've got Prince Caspian up on NetFlix. 

Not even on dvd. Bah. 

Results for Chronicles of Narnia-
Top result: Sexual Chronicles of a French Family  

[Neil]

Netflix are bigots?  Who knew?

[Josquius]

Iron Man 3- Interesting film. It seems to recognise the usual third film in superhero franchise problems but instead of trying to avoid them just puts its head down and charges right at them.
The way Stark happens to be in the middle of testing a crappy suit when shit goes down is a bit coincidental and that the suits can control themselves now is a bit too convenient.
I wonder what comic fans make of the original take on the main villain. All seems rather Bane in Batman and Robin.

[Darth Wagtaros]

I think Prince Caspian sucked.  The movie that is.

[Eddie Teach]

Watched some flick last night in which Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, that fat guy that was in Money Ball, and a totally random British black guy form a neighborhood watch and end up fighting aliens that invade their neighborhood.

The fat guy has some good lines about the dick size of the high school stud [spoiler]who's actually an alien and[/spoiler] who's trying to tap Vince Vaughn's daughter's ass, but otherwise the dialogue is barren.  Sounds at times like the cast just got really stoned and ad-libbed their lines.

The jailbait daughter and Stiller's wife, played by the chick who was the fuckup sister in Weeds, are oases of visual delight in a lost cause.

I enjoyed it. The humor didn't feel forced and it had plenty of sci-fi actiony-ness to take the pressure off. That puts it ahead of 80% of the big Hollywood comedies out there.

B+

[11B4V]

Lawless: Not to shabby, B-

[Ideologue]

Dark Skies (2013).

When I first saw the trailer for Dark Skies, I experienced about thirty seconds of pure joy because I thought they were making a movie of the Garfield Reeves-Stevens novel of the same name.  Then the trailer went on, and I realized this was not the same story.  Then I looked it up later, and I realized that the novel is called Nighteyes.  Maybe they should look into making fewer Scott Stewart scripts (e.g., Legion), and more adaptations of books whose names I can't remember and that I had nightmares about when I was thirteen.

Instead of being awesome, then, Dark Skies is a speculative fiction piece about a dystopia in which Steven Spielberg drowned during the filming of Jaws and The X-Files did not have a nine year run on national television.

...An hour and many barely-metaphorical sharpied penises on their heads later, Lacy suggests the possibility that maybe, just maybe, their troubles are not of this world. For context, Daniel has just, moments earlier, blacked out, walked outside, gushed blood like a geyser out his nose, and returned to consciousness unaware of how he got where he is. When she tells him what she thinks, he calls her insane. It's at this point that the movie just broke me, I paused it, and I laughed and laughed and laughed. Nobody is this unemployed.

...If you are a screenwriter wanting to put a cosmic twist on the formula, you must adapt the formula to meet the requirements of your twist. The rule of escalation that works so well in a haunted house qua haunted house movie just does not function at all here. I believe you when you say that Toby, Bagul, or a Sith Lord must husband their forces before breaking through into our reality. I don't believe that an alien needs to steal your salad mix first when it has a functioning teleporter.

There's a moment very, very late in the game where Stewart seemed poised to turn everything around, with a a reveal worthy of early-era Shyamalan, that threatens to undermine the entire reality of the world around this family and calls into question where, and what, this house, may really be. Unfortunately, this mind-twisting scene turns out to be in only one character's head, and is wasted on nearly-actionable allusions to The Shining.  You know, and I'm just saying here: Nighteyes had a pretty cool twist.

C

Well, I wanted to believe

***

Oh, yeah, I also managed while bargain bin diving to find a Man With No Name Duology (Fistfull and Few) for $8.  This is in addition to GBU, which I own.  So the upshot is I was able to get the whole trilogy for, prorated, slightly less than $12.