TV/Movies Megathread

[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.

[katmai]

White House Down. Pure Summer silliness.
Jamie Foxx as POTUS, and after This is the End hard to see Channing Tatum as any kind of action hero

C+

[CountDeMoney]

I thought this was amusing.
10 years ago, #10 would've been Tom Cruise.

9 Actors Who Play the Same Character in Every Movie

Hang in Hollywood long enough, and you're bound to be typecast every now and then.

But for some actors, playing to type isn't just laziness or the final tremors of a fading career. Keeping their characters close to home is just what they do best, or at least what keeps the money flowing. And anyway, would you really want to see Jason Statham falling head-over-heels for Katherine Heigl in some lame romantic comedy? Neither would we.

Indeed, for some actors, staying in their comfort zone is really for the best. Here are nine of them.

1. Jason Statham
The Character: Bald, badass protagonist who's not afraid to get his hands dirty.

The perpetually stone-faced Statham got his start starring in twinsie Guy Ritchie gangster movies "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch" and eventually elevated to full-on action stardom with the "Transporter" and "Crank" series. In every one of these movies he spends at least three quarters of his screen time holding a gun, furrowing his brow and laying the smack down on a bad guy that's just a bit more ruthless than he is (and, occasionally, doing whatever's going on in the picture above). We're looking forward to his courageous turn as a wronged criminal out for revenge in "Redemption."

2. Adam Sandler
The Character: Man-child with more or less good intentions.

Sandler made the tough jump from SNL standout to ridiculously profitable movie star playing well-intentioned arrested development cases in "Billy Madison," "Happy Gilmore" and "The Wedding Singer." Since those early days, he's branched out with some meatier roles, but even when he got artsy (relatively) in Paul Thomas Anderon's "Punch-Drunk Love," there was still a general lack of maturity and a whole lot of loud noises. He also played a lady in "Jack and Jill", but an Oscar-worthy gender-bending performance that was not, containing a lot more poop humor than, say, "Albert Nobbs" and "I'm Not There."

3. Morgan Freeman
The Character: Wise confidante with grandfatherly wisdom to spare.

We love Morgan Freeman. We want Morgan Freeman to narrate our life story. And we enjoy hearing him lecture us on alternate dimensions and quantum physics on "Through the Wormhole." And when it comes to acting choices, the man who's been God (twice!) tends to stick with what he knows best — playing people we really wish were our uncle. In "Lucky Number Slevin," Freeman switched gears and took on a role as an evil mob boss, but we still kind of wanted to give him a hug and ask him for some sage advice.

4. Woody Allen
The Character: Neurotic, intellectual misanthrope.

Not only does Woody play a therapist's dream (or nightmare, perhaps) in the form of a nervous, sex-obsessed bookish type in every acting role, but even when he decides to stay behind the camera, someone else almost always fills in as a Woody surrogate. Everyone from Owen Wilson to Larry David has taken their shot at playing the Woody character, with varying degrees of success. ("Whatever Works" was a chore to sit through, but we'll forgive you if you get on that new season of "Curb," LD.)

5. Kate Hudson
The Character: The perky mess of a love interest.

If Kate Hudson is the leading lady in a movie, you can pretty much count on two things: 1) she'll be completely adorable 2) she won't quite have her s**t together. From her iconic role as a tossed-around groupie in "Almost Famous" to her more standard rom-com fare where she was involved in a series of escalating, mildly amusing wedding-themed hijinks and discovered a delightful Ginnifer Goodwin was sleeping with her fiance, Hudson, it seems, is perpetually awful at love. Hey, we're terrible at bocci ball. It's cool. Some things just aren't your forte.

6. Jennifer Aniston
The Character: Rachel Green.

Jennifer Aniston was the only actor to escape from "Friends" with an A-list film career, but she's never gotten too far from the vain, lovelorn shackles of her Rachel Green character. To be fair, Hollywood writers seem to be lacking in originality when it comes to mainstream romantic comedies (Will these two desperate, mismatched souls ever fall for one another? Only 90 minutes of you-almost-saw-me-naked jokes will tell!), and Aniston did branch out quite successfully with "Horrible Bosses," but she'd be well-served by avoiding scripts with titles that drip cheese before the opening credits even run. ("Rumor Has It," "Love Happens," "Just Go With It").

7. Vince Vaughn
The Character: Cocky, fast-talking, frat-boy-love inspiring everyman.

Vince Vaughn established his Vince Vaughn-ness early on, playing an exaggerated version of himself in his buddy John Favreau's directorial debut "Swingers." Following roles in Steven Spielberg's "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" and Gus Van Sant's extraordinarily unnecessary shot-by-shot remake of "Psycho," Vaughn seemed poised for superstardom. But it wasn't until he resurrected his lovable broseph persona in "Old School" and continued doing his best Vince Vaughn impressions in "Wedding Crashers," "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story" and "The Break-Up" that he took on leading man status.

8. John Wayne
The Character: John Wayne.

John Wayne didn't act. John Wayne was John Wayne, and that was almost always enough. From "Stagecoach" to "True Grit," film history is littered with the Duke playing quintessential take-no-nonsense red, white and blue badasses. Even in the extraordinarily ill-fated, Howard Hughes-produced historical epic "The Conquerer," which had Wayne starring as Genghis Khan, the Duke still seemed to have no interest in being anyone other than himself, making the bold choice to not even attempt an accent.

9. Katherine Heigl
Character: Quirky romantic who's in over her head.

You don't have to look too far past Katherine Heigl's film posters to realize the common thread here. "27 Dresses"? That's too many dresses! "The Big Wedding"? That's too big of a wedding! "Killers"? That's too many good-looking people holding guns! "New Year's Eve"? That's too many talented actors wasting their time! Oh, Katherine Heigl, will you ever learn from your zany romantic adventures? Considering your next role is playing the domineering, mentally ill wife of a deliciously handsome Patrick Wilson, I guess the answer is ... maybe?