TV/Movies Megathread

[Duque de Bragança]

I'd rather watch the original and then a remake, specially if it's Nolan. I liked Memento though and I have not yet watched Following, Nolan's debut.

[Ideologue]

I dunno.  Nolan's Insomnia is better on pretty much every possible level.  It's also the one time he wasn't working from his (or his bro's, or David Goyer's) script.

[Sophie Scholl]

Binge watching

Hell on Wheels.

They shouldn't have killed off [spoiler]Elam[/spoiler].

They didn't have a choice.  [spoiler]He decided he wanted to focus on his musical career again and leave the show.  So instead of dragging it out, they just finished his storyline so they could move on.[/spoiler]

[Eddie Teach]

Ah, well.

[Neil]

It's not because of the authors but because of the sale of the cinema and merchandising rights in the recent past. As Marvel's editor put it, "when we make Avengers stuff, we get 100% of the profits, when we make FF stuff we get something like 30-40% back, so it makes sense for us to devote our efforts to franchises and characters that will give us a better financial return."

It's also one of the reasons why the X Men are also an afterthought for Marvel nowadays, having put them in disarray in the "Avengers Vs. X Men" series in 2012, ater which they cancelled lots of their collections and relaunched them afterwards after being rebranded. They have even killed off Wolverine for real last month, although death is rarely final in comic books.

The difference between FF and X-Men is that the X-Men books are what supports Marvel's comic book business.  There's a million of them, and they're typically Marvel's second best franchise on a sales basis (behind Spiderman but ahead of the Avengers).  And the X-Men have been the darling of the fanboy set, which Marvel uses to market their movies.  Spiderman sells more books, but he attracts a younger crowd.

[celedhring]

So, somebody had the chance of making a film called "Robot Overlords" with Gillian Anderson of all people, and sadly produced what looks like an absolutely cliché YA crap.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcevyVngeMc

Only bonus point is using a Spitfire to destroy giant killing robots.

[Malthus]

Interstellar. I wanted to like this movie, but I didn't.

The acting was fine and the effects great eye-candy, but the plot could not pass muster with me, for a bunch of reasons.

[spoiler]

1. Heavy-handed homages to 2001. It is like the filmmakers thought 'let's set up some of the plot elements from 2001, but with a twist'. The mission is sabotaged from within - but by a human, not by HAL. The 'need to get in through the airlock' sequence - only this time, instead of success, near-disaster; and by the bad guy, not the good guy.

2. The humans are *shown* making extensive use of unmanned drones *on Earth*, but never once think of doing so on their all-important missions *in space* (even though we are shown them having advanced robots and, indeed, drones). Thus, the necessity for self-sacrificial one-way human missions (setting up the plot) AND they are continually suprised by the planets they encounter (OMG this place has continuous miles-high waves! OMG this place is all frozen clouds!). They never thought to look before they lept?

3. The film-makers did not come up with a convincing peril that was going to destroy humanity if it stayed on Earth. It is hard to buy that it would be easier to invent some fundamental principles of physics (antigravity?) and move the entire population of Earth, rather than engineer some counter to the Blight. What if the Blight follows them to their new planet?

4. In 2001, having the aliens not communicate directly to humans made sense - they were (apparently) only interested in helping along the evolution of sentient beings, and were, as far as we know, compeletely alien otherwise. Here, we have "us" in some future era, able to communicate with the past. Why not do so directly? No reason is given why they can't.

5. That 'love transcends the dimentions' stuff was just painful.

That's just the basics - not even getting into the odd physics of time-travel and black holes (let's just assume all of that makes sense). [/spoiler]

[Syt]

21 Things in Interstellar That Don't Make Sense.

I will still watch it once it's out on blu ray, to form my own opinion, though chances are that at that point it'll be positive surprise.

[Malthus]

21 Things in Interstellar That Don't Make Sense.

I will still watch it once it's out on blu ray, to form my own opinion, though chances are that at that point it'll be positive surprise.

I really wanted to like this movie. I'm a sucker for big, self-important, serious SF (as opposed to Star Wars style space opera), of which the leading exemplar is and remains 2001.

Sadly, while of course not set in the same fictional universe, in some ways Interstellar is to 2001 as Prometheus was to Alien.

[Ideologue]

A B's worth of the B+ I gave it was "it's pretty and things explode." The + was for the fun robots.

[lustindarkness]

Fury, very good veterans day movie after participating in today's parade.

A little more on Fury. Very well acted, shows the brutality and horrors of war, humanity vs realities of war, only one tank on tank battle but it sure was a nice one. I will watch again.

[crazy canuck]

Watched Sand Pebbles on Netflix.  Steve McQueen was awesome.  I watched it when I was young and didnt fully appreciate just how good he was in that movie.

[garbon]

21 Things in Interstellar That Don't Make Sense.

I will still watch it once it's out on blu ray, to form my own opinion, though chances are that at that point it'll be positive surprise.

I really wanted to like this movie. I'm a sucker for big, self-important, serious SF (as opposed to Star Wars style space opera), of which the leading exemplar is and remains 2001.

Sadly, while of course not set in the same fictional universe, in some ways Interstellar is to 2001 as Prometheus was to Alien.

I saw 2001 in a theater this past weekend.

[Malthus]

Watched Sand Pebbles on Netflix.  Steve McQueen was awesome.  I watched it when I was young and didnt fully appreciate just how good he was in that movie.

Here's a connection for the CdM Files: the Eurasian actress that plays "Maily", the Chinese woman saved from prostitution in that film, is also the authour credited with writing the BDSM classic Emanuelle (though wikipedia has it it was actually written by her husband). 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuelle_Arsan

[Malthus]

21 Things in Interstellar That Don't Make Sense.

I will still watch it once it's out on blu ray, to form my own opinion, though chances are that at that point it'll be positive surprise.

I really wanted to like this movie. I'm a sucker for big, self-important, serious SF (as opposed to Star Wars style space opera), of which the leading exemplar is and remains 2001.

Sadly, while of course not set in the same fictional universe, in some ways Interstellar is to 2001 as Prometheus was to Alien.

I saw 2001 in a theater this past weekend.

You made better use of your movie-going time than I did, then.