TV/Movies Megathread

[CountDeMoney]

It's decided, the villain of the next script I write will be an engineer.

Don't see how you can do this and still have a happy ending.

Anyone can devise a mad plan. Engineers carry those out for a living.

With two words, they can destroy mankind: Change Order

[Josephus]

John Oliver.

He has an annoying voice.

His latest episode had me on the floor laughing. He was in good form. "The last time the Europeans went this far right, they went far right into Belgium"

[Admiral Yi]

You guys have to check out "Assault on Wall Street."  Every single Occupy trope is in there.

[Ideologue]

Is there a violent resolution to class conflict?  If I wanted cowardice and disorganized grabassing, I could just pretend it's 2011 again.

[CountDeMoney]

Because Wall Street never assaulted anyone, ever.

[Admiral Yi]

Is there a violent resolution to class conflict?  If I wanted cowardice and disorganized grabassing, I could just pretend it's 2011 again.

Not sure.  I turned it off right after his ARM reset.

[Ed Anger]

Because Wall Street never assaulted anyone, ever.

You dress provocatively.

#YesAllCash

[Ideologue]

The new Wachowski sibling joint, Jupiter Ascending, got pushed from July 2014 to next February.

On the plus side, Scott Derrickson (Sinister) will be directing Marvel's Dr. Strange feature.   This somewhat makes up for Edgar Wright walking off of Ant-Man.

[celedhring]

I gotta say that I love Marvel's out of the box directing choices.

[Ideologue]

I did when they were still doing it; I'm hoping this means, Wright notwithstanding, that they're backing away from the "any TV hack will do" mentality that informed their last two movies.

[celedhring]

The guys that did the Cap movie were hardly "any TV hack". They did Arrested Development and Community before that - again a leftfield choice that paid off.

Have you seen the paintball-themed Community eps? Not the work of "any TV hack".

[Ideologue]

I saw their Captain America movie.  Which aspect of their work on Arrested Development prepared the Russos to direct a $200mm action film?

I guess I can't disagree that it paid off--everyone loves the failed genre mash-up apparently--but as far as I'm concerned, it was not just the least successful superhero movie of the year (it's been all of them, right?), and that by a huge margin.  I'm pretty comfortable saying it was the least successful Disney Marvel movie of the nine.  Even worse than Iron Man 3, which at least was pretty well-directed and had some great scenes, only fundamentally misconceived and hamstrung with a shitty ending set-piece.

As Thor 2, at least you can say the Game of Thrones guy had some applicable experience--even if far too much of it looked boring, at least it didn't look like crap.

[Kleves]

Godzilla. Liked it, but there wasn't really much of a chance I wouldn't. Could have used more humanity futily struggling against fate.

X-Men. It was alright. The movies take a strange view of the world. Mutants are extraordinarily powerful and nearly unstoppable; Xavier can probably wipe out much of humanity with a thought, and Magneto can easily destroy an entire city. Yet any effort at all to make some sort of counter-measure to mutant rampages is seen as the first step toward genocide. 

Captain America. It was alright. The big Hydra reveal was pretty stupid.

[Ideologue]

X-Men. It was alright. The movies take a strange view of the world. Mutants are extraordinarily powerful and nearly unstoppable; Xavier can probably wipe out much of humanity with a thought, and Magneto can easily destroy an entire city. Yet any effort at all to make some sort of counter-measure to mutant rampages is seen as the first step toward genocide. 

Yeah, it's one of those things where the details of the allegory comes close to overwhelming the point it's trying to make.  I find it unlikely that anyone would conflate the Beast, or Angel, or even Wolverine, whose powers are not (innately) dangerous, with Professor X or Magneto, who are the equivalent of walking atom bombs, or Cyclops and Havok, who can barely control whether they endanger people.  I wonder if all the people who support gun control would be okay with unregistered living weapons?

[derspiess]

Watching The Ides of March.  As a Cincinnatian I'm embarrassed to say I have never seen it before.