Film Club thread 2.0

Stormtroper

I know there's a Russian company with that name but they're more into opera theatres and more into theatres of war.

lrdgck

I watched The Woman King and to those who may be concerned I want to say, I have not been transformed into a strong blax womynz. It's a decent movie, if less than cold have been done with source material, and set in an underutilized setting with some quite gorgeous costuming.

fourteenwings

Well I didn't mind the existence of that movie, I kind of don't mind a lot of stuff, but I do know of an intense alt-right guy who was like "This movie will be successful" and I was like ?????

Anyways I haven't seen a movie since M3GAN, despite wanting to. Conversely, I have read a lot.

Stormtroper

glennmagusharvey

Relatedly: I've found myself occasionally (in anime-related conversations) arguing that CGI isn't inherently bad, too.

Stormtroper

One of the benefits I've gotten from being into 3DCG is an appreciation for CGI, that it's not magic and a lot of effort goes into it, and that if I don't like what I'm seeing I can at least try and figure out how it was done.

glennmagusharvey

Honestly I feel that CGI gets an unfairly bad rap.

Meanwhile, that which we see in a fictional production is a part of the in-universe events no matter whether it's CGI or "real". The only way the latter is more impressive is if we are evaluating based on the skill (or perhaps the daring) of the actors and stunt crew. That is an evaluation of a performance, which I guess is a thing but is just not quite the same thing.

Meanwhile, if the overuse of CGI makes it look less spectacular in comparison, such desensitization to spectacle only exists as a meta-textual interpretation.

On the other hand if CGI looks awkward, let's not forget the various quirks of live action and hand-drawn animation, where they aren't necessarily fully realistic either -- just that we've gotten used to them.

Anyway that's my personal take.

Stormtroper

I know I posted the first one, like, four posts ago, but I wanted to post this because the part at 5:30 about faking behind-the-scene shots is wild.

fourteenwings

a) I had a top 10 favorite movies list saved to a txt file that I have now somehow lost. I should have posted it here.

b) I will never see the Barbie movie because the hype was too much and also all the stuff I found out about the plot made it clear the America Ferrera character wasn't the central part of the point and Ryan Gosling eats up too much screen-time.

c) Darn, I still haven't watched that video.

Stormtroper

TIL the Wilhelm Scream recording has been found:

fourteenwings

I watched a movie for the first time in who even knows how long!

It was Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsen's New York Minute.

I don't have a whole bunch of time to discuss it, but basically it's a "we need to traverse New York" type movie, with a small emotional core to drive the characters (they haven't really communicated properly since their mother died).

Notes:

• Ashley's character, Jane, is implied to be a Republican (despite being like, 16), which is interesting because she's not evil or extremely stupid (but in fact, the smart one). She's meant to contrast with her sister, who is a rock rebel/presumed future Democrat.
• This movie prominently features a plot where Mary-Kate's character, Roxy, is trying to get to a Simple Plan music video shoot. I'd never heard this song before, but it's pretty good.
• A plot where a Chinese salon is a front for a music/movie piracy ring is very spot on for like, 2004, considering this is when people still cared about pirated DVDs I guess.
• The plotline where a dog eats an important computer microchip seems to be more Disney Channel episode than big-budget-ish movie.
• I was surprised at how much physical comedy this movie included, considering it stars two petite blond twins.
• Nobody ever mentions how the main characters are about 17/18 but their love interests are a college student guy and a guy who clearly looks like he's already at least 23ish.
• At one point, you can see pirated copies of a non-existent sequel to one of yet another Mary-Kate and Ashley movie, Holiday in the Sun, being sold on the street.
• The thing with Mary-Kate and Ashley constantly accidentally tormenting Darrell Hammond's character was funny.
• There were dolls based on this movie, but later in the movie they get so many cool looks that I wish there were doll of those too. Of course, these would be dolls from 2004 that were exclusive to America that I could never get, but at least they'd exist.
• I am 100% amazed that I have never read a Vox article about this scene.

lrdgck

Been re-watching old The X-Files episodes and it got me thinking about a few things.

Like, obviously that old "heroic conspiracy theorist" angle is just not the same thing in the age of post-truth, but it made me wonder about the default bogeyman of the time. Back in the day, in post-Cold War USA, the big bogeyman was their own government. Right now it would probably be over-entitled big baby billionaires or something like that. And conversely, Mulder and Scully were fighting the system, but at the same time, they were a part of the system as FBI agents, and it wasn't really much addressed. Today, in the age of All Cops Are Children Born Of Liaisons Considered Illegitimate By Dominant Patriarchal Society, that'd probably not pass. At least, not pass if the showmakers were really out to depict them as against the system.

Also, when the top TV series are the likes of Game of Thrones and House of Cards, it looks to me like that there's a lot more captivating idea for a show in the amoral global conspiracy trying to out-smart the aliens out to invade Earth so that at least they, personally, won't be affected, than in Mulder and Scully struggling against them.

lrdgck

Writing prompt: a slasher movie set on Labor Day in which a group of young leftists trying to establish a squat in some (temporarily?) hard-to-reach location are menaced by a Vladimir Lenin lookalike armed with a hammer and sickle.

(Doesn't have a bearing on anything - I just saw the TVT entry for "Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday" and noticed the lack of Labor Day. Figured I post before I forget it.)

lrdgck

So, I had this thought that had the 80's era sport movie continued to the present day, we'd sooner or later see a movie about an American gamer going to Korea to compete in a pro Starcraft tournament.

In the climax, when our underdog protagonist is down to a single marine or something like that, he recalls the words of his Korean-American/retired Blizzard employee mentor, catches the heroic second wind and out-microes the Korean pro contending him for the championship. Our dude wins the match, the Korean tearfully admits his superiority, his ex-girlfriend finally understands what she gave up, end stage left.

fourteenwings

In order to ensure I probably absolutely never see these movies, I guess I'll mention that I suddenly had the feeling to watch some animated movies, including Disney's Chicken Little and the Trolls movie series. I might also watch the Tinker Bell movies and maybe the live-action Ben 10 movies.