Jumbie

A fun action flick, but forgettable. Whatever its faults, TFA had numerous lines and moments that stick with you for both new and old charcters. This, I think the onlly three moments that stay are

With R1 I felt like they took away character time to have longer explosion scenes. Take the pilot who gets his brain scrambled...I like him. He had potential. But he gets like three lines to fill in his backstory and then he just does zany faces. Or the badguy. He had potential too, but I still don't know what his motiviation was. He just seems ambitious and evil for the sake of being ambitious and evil, especially the scene at the research station. If you think back to Ep IV ANH, it's always clear why Tarkin is doing what he's doing, and Vader too for that matter.

But I'm being harsh because I was hoping for a lot with this movie.

It still delivered my money's wirth. Spectacle of course. Lots of swoopy panoramic space combat. Lots of good action as far as the staging of the action goes, especially the street fighting. Some good humor with the droid. I liked the nod to politics with the imperial officers rivalries as well as the idea of extremist rebels.

Any word on what the setting is (Desert, jungle, urban?) The kid in the yellow jacket is making it hard to not expect a more civilized locale.

Saw the first Lego movie. Fun and inventive for sure.

The only problem I had was some of the writing.

Oh well, still good stuff. Especially the visuals. When they do some of the 'height' shots, they really create a sense of height I found.

Saw Deep in the Heart of Texas.

It's a much looser show than the Age of Spin with more of a rambling quality. It felt much less polished but the last quarter is funny as hell.

There were a few places where the trademark Chappelle approach of building up with a deeper and larger political point that ends in a body fluid joke was used and kind of missed the mark. Unlike Age of Spin, these contrasts didn't seem to deepen your appreciation of the larger point. Like there's a story about a hate crime snowball attack that had a lot of potential and then closed on a cheap (but funny) joke that just left the politically charged setup hanging with no impact.

Still very fun.

Dave Chappelle's Age of Spin is top notch.

I've seen him get flack for alleged homophobia in the show, but having seen it, I don't agree with that accusation.

The whole show is a tightly themed examination of how a man grows up and changes his opinions under tension from his upbringing and what he learns from his experiences. Part of that is being honest about those inner thoughts everyone has but never reveals to the public.

He's talking about the conflict between his clear thinking head and his mixed up heart, or as he phrases it at one point, "That's what I think as an American. On the other hand, what I think as a black Ameican..."

(The gay stuff he got in trouble for is nothing more offensive than your average drunk uncle. Probably the only actually prejudiced thing he does is equating masculinity with heterosexuality as a setup for his jokes, but the reason I minded that the most is because it made the humor seem dated.

Also he botches a nuanced point about how sponsors try to steer behaviour and ends up comparing MLK to Manny Pacqiao in a way that could seem on the surface as saying Pacqiao was being persecuted unjustly for saying bad things about gays.)

He lays out his internal tension for every topic, from his childhood heroes and how his perception of them changes, to his relationship with his son, to the way people consume news, to the way he relates to show business.

And he does it while placing crass humor alongside deep insight.

And by doing so, he creates these sly setups to make you analyze a situation. Like at one point he creates humor from how he bailed on a fundraiser for Flint Michigan's water problems to go party and to justify himself to the audience, he says, "Hey, I'm not the one who messed up their water." Which automatically forces you to think on some level about who DID mess it up.

To sum up, I have to again praise this show for how tightly themed it was. Everything fit together around the idea of why some people are heroes to person A and not heroes to person B and why sometimes the difference between A and B is growing up.

Good point, Pancho,

Good Marvel movie with all it entails.

Better soundtrack. I've seen mentions recently that Strange was a bit of a mascot of the hippy movement and even featured on a Pink Floyd album cover, so the trippy music vibe might be an homage to that? Or else just designed to fit with the whole Kathmandu spiritualist theme.

I liked the fight scenes. One of the first Superhero movies in a while where I felt like they weren't overdone.

Complaint 1: Didn't like Strange's personality, especially his humor, being basically Tony Stark 2.0

In all seriousness, you could recast this movie with a surgeon version of Downey's Tony and it would play the same. That's not a good sign for the character being his own man. I'd have preferred him to be a bit more explicitly haughty and disdainful as DOCTOR Strange and not so quippy. There's humor in that too if it's done right. Maybe they wanted to avoid House MD comparisons?

Complaint 2:

Special praise 1: Special effects, as amazing as they were, felt natural. A lot of it was subtle, like the mirror effects and a lot of it was in service to the fight scene or story.

Special praise 2: Clever, unusual ending that was still superheroic. Because of it, I'm hoping Strange gets to tangle with Mephisto now. I feel like some of what they showed in the multiverse sequence was a setup for Mephisto. Something about the way parts of the voice over were paired with certain images....

Like Pancho, I liked WWZ as a popcorn movie. I especially found the crawling ants scene fun and noteworthy.

Haven't read the book, so I'm not mad about misadaptation.

I have to reiterate though, that the main reason Romero is wrong is that WWZ just didn't impact the public consciousness. If I say Twilight killed off vampires, you can get behind that idea, even as a Twilight fan because Twilight had an impact on how people saw the beast.

Also, yes, Mr. Romero, zombies can be a cute way to spread your anti-consumerist message etc. It's not all it has to be.

Yes, there does need too be some substance underneath, but it could be a simple love story or family story rather than a political thing

But, was WWZ impactful enough to deserve the credit/blame for killing zombies, even if you accept that it was a mess of a movie (which I don't)

I'd argue Resident Evil movies have a broader fan base worldwide and have steered the perception of Zombies far more than WWZ.

And on top of that you have the impact of zombies in other media like TV, Video games etc.

I'm happy to accept that George doesn't like WWZ and it's not his thing and not up to his standard of horror movie, fine.

But zombies like all horror monsters can't take the light and overexposure kills off a monster faster than anything.

You guys just wait until he revitalizes the Catwoman franchise with a Jewish Selina Kyle who messes up constantly as she earns her skills in a 90 minute origin story set in the city that she loves...literally, she loves it, because she's a whore.

I can confirm mid and post coital scenes.

Well, it wouldn't be a proper Trump parody unless I was speaking bigly.

Gawd the anti DC media bias is outrageous I tell you. The system is rigged, folks. They've got dead people buying tickets to some of these Marvel movies. How does that happen, huh? You tell me. It's terrible what the MCU is doing to our democracy.

There's also a good chance Doctor Strange opens here in Guyana before I get to the US. For some reason the US date is a week behind most of the world on this movie.

Nah, that'll be my first night there and I'll be at my cousin/aunt. It'd be rude to bail on them to go see a movie.

I assume this is an opening night show for you guys?

I'm arriving in Miami Nov 5th, but will be in North Miami initially. If you're not doing opening weekend, then I can hopefully join a group outing.

Looking at the endgame of the series, couldn't Jon and Dany be the final power couple in a restoration?

Targaryans married each other, right?

 

I'm pretty sure Arya is going to fuck something up before the end. She's gonna mean well, but royaly throw the monkey wrench in someone's plans for the throne. I'm predicting she kills Tyrion, not knowing/caring dude is actually one of the good guys. Followed quickly by the internet melting.

 

My feeling too.

Anton Yelchin, The new Chekov, has died in an auto accident.

The new Trek movie he's in will be released in one month.

Man, now I wish I'd seen Abomination with the ears even more. LET Hulk tear em off! I'm not spotting the objectin here unless it was a PG-13 thing.

Trevor the Mandarin was AMAZING. It's hard to get a twist over on me AND make it logical. It was a good commentary on the way perception and reality shape politics and all 3 iron man movie were deliberately played as Tom Clancy style techno-political thrillers.

And the story didn't suffer because the real villain had been present from the start. (heard a rumor that originally the girl (Maya?) was supposed to be the villain and then the script got changed. I think it worked out either way because the villain wouldn't have come out of left field.

Been reading recaps to decide if I want to take the trouble of trying it out and it seems like they did exactly what I was hoping the would NOT do.

They are making things more messy before they make them clean, with no indication it will be cleaner in the end anyway.

I never got into New 52 because they decided to do the '5 years in the future' thing with some titles and not with others and it just felt like I was being forced to read everything to understand anything and I quit. Pretty much for good. I don;t begrudge them the attempt to do what crossovers usually do and make you buy books, but I'm too old for that crap. I even respect that they tried to launch a universe with history. But it didn't work for me.

When I heard about Rebirth I figured they had realized the New52 did lose too many people like me and everything I heard was that they understood the need to make things inviting for us to come back so I figured they'd do their shake up and present a clean jumping in point.

But nope. Take this stuff going on with Superman or Wonderwoman's origins. They're actively readjusting the timeline on the fly in the relaunched books which is like trying to make a bridge with only one riverbank. New readers like me are lost immediately not knowing what's changing into what. The whole thing is demanding too much knowledge that a lapsed reader like me doesn't have.

Again, the NUMBER 1 Books are supposed to be the 'easy' books where the new readers get oriented and DC's not providing it. So, I'm staying out again.

The early days of JLE/I and the funny JLA were cool. Ended right before Superman died.

But the first couple years were so good with finally giving Guy Gardner a personality and having him feud with Batman and taking some genuine C list characters and making the best of them.

I hear Max Lord is the villain in the new Supergirl show, but TV DC isn't movie DC.

I'm gonna take a wild guess on Dafoe's 'good' guy being Maxwell Lord.

In a lot of versions, Lord is tied up with the origin of the team.

That's my point. There's no one. So it means it can't happen.

Then again, 'no one' is a character in that storyline isn't he? I swear I didn't intend that pun.