“It’s [...] about a cat and a robot [...] there’s not one human being in this movie. I think it’s one of the reasons why the game was incredibly popular [...]”
Verdict on Monarch/Titan/Godzilla series as it stands:
GODZILLA (2014)- still a blast and a really good reintroduction of the classic creature feature.
KONG: SKULL ISLAND - This is the best of the 4 films out...it's got the goods for giant monsters, but the human stories work in spades too.
GODZILLA: KING OF MONSTERS - Wayyyyyyyyy too much chatting in underground bases, WAY too many dark night time fights, not enough overall monsters bashing the shit out of each other. The nadir of the series, worst of the lot by a long stretch
GODZILLA VS KONG - a great return to form, probably ranks about halfway between KONG SKULL ISLAND and the first film. Mostly a blast, and the human stories while not GREAT, are WAY more entertaining than KoM was.
Next up MONARCH tv show on AppleTV+, and then next year GODZILLA X KONG: NEW EMPIRE which I assume will come off the back of them finding a way into the Hollow Earth where the titans come from in the last film.
"When the last tree has fallen, and the rivers are poisoned, you cannot eat money, oh no." ~Aurora
"Someone will always try to sell you despair, just so they don't feel alone." ~Ursula Vernon
"Fortune favors the bold, though statistics favor the cautious." - Indomitable Courteous (Icy) Fist, The Palace Job - Patrick Weekes
"Well well well ... if it ain't The Invisible C**t." - Billy Butcher, The Boys
"I have strong views about not tempting providence and, as a wise man once said, the difference between luck and a wheelbarrow is, luck doesn’t work if you push it." - Colonel Orhan, Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City - KJ Parker
Re-watched SAHARA (2005) since I'm reading some Cussler, in the hopes it was not as bad as I recall it being when I saw it in the theatre.
It's as bad as I recalled.
And considering that SINCE then I've actually READ the SAHARA novel...the screenplay is INEXPLICABLE. The changes they make are super inexplicable.
Spoilers for both novel and movie...
Spoiler
The novel basically sets up a situation where NUMA (who are shipwreck divers and whatnot, and treasure hunters I guess) is witness to a dangerous red algae bloom that threatens the oceans and sets out to find its source. They find that it's from a Warlord and a french billionaire taking and discarding Toxic Waste in the desert, and the warlord is keeping a cavern filled with his ill-gotten gold from the actions. On top of this is a lost 1930's pilot and plane, and a civil war ironclad, and the WHO investigating some illness in the local population (tied to the red algae bloom obvs). Now the book doesn't have Dirk and Al doing anything in Africa beyond the request that they go up the Niger river and attempt to find the source of what's causing the Red Algae Bloom...and they find it, shut it down. After destroying the waste plant and making sure the red algae bloom is discontinued, stranded in the desert they stumble across the 30's pilot's downed plane and her diary which talks about a strange ship half buried in the desert nearby she took shelter in. They follow that diary direction and come across the ship, which is a civil war ironclad that seemingly made the journey across the atlantic, but got stranded after the water receded in the desert on the river they sailed it up. There is a short firefight in the nearby French Legion base with the remnants of the warlord's thugs. We find out in the last few chapters that the ironclad had Lincoln on it and the South was trying to extort the north with him at the end of the war, having staged the Lincoln Assassination themselves as a cover story, they took him and kept him in the ironclad, but the new president refused to bend to those demands and they ship vanished from record. At the end of the book Pitt makes sure that both the Ironclad, and the 1930's plane end up in museums in the States.
Seems decent enough for an airport thriller right? a Tad outlandish, and a tad over the top, but a decent mix of Bond and Indiana Jones, yeah?
The movie fucks that story nine ways to Sunday. First issue is that it has Dirk Pitt OBSESSED with finding this fabled Ironclad (The Texas)...remember in the book he doesn't even know it exists till they find it by accident)...and figures in some specifically minted gold coins that Southern Generals gave to 5 people, and he of course finds one in the desert. So right off the hop they've basically forcefully connected the Ironclad plotline to non-existent gold, to Pitt and Co. Add in the WHO plotline of the plague in the region to bring in the love interest Eva, and tie them up into a bow. It's super ridiculous. So now you have a plotline that includes a mysterious sickness, a civil war ironclad, a gold coin...and then they add in the Warlord, and French billionaire and the toxic waste too. And then the plotline LEANS on that toxic waste aspect for the vast majority of the runtime. Like you are talking about a huge 3rd act sequence about the warlord and the billionaire wanting to inexplicably blow up the toxic waste to try to "hide their involvement"....brother, blowing it up will do absolutely nothing but make things infinitely worse. So Dirk and Co have to avoid that, and it's on their escape through the desert as they use the dynamite they stole from the blow up attempt to obscure their trail from the helicopter chasing them that DUN DUN DUN reveals the ironclad in the sands...oi fucking vey...they then get inside and get fired on and use a ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEAR OLD CANON WITH WORKING FUSES (I'm sorry, WHAT?) to launch a canonball at the helicopter...it does not take it out but lands inside and then BLOWS UP like a cartoon bomb. Let's start with the notion that any canon fired out of a 1860's gun is also somehow a BOMB...this is not a thing. That they thought the audience was stupid enough to believe this shows such disdain...I mean if you HAD to do this stupid sequence then AT LEAST just have the ball take out the rotor and have the helicopter crash...The Lincoln portion is ignored entirely, as is the idea that the South had to move their gear to another country and set up shop again, which explains the ironclad being in the desert in Algiers in the first place...none of that is present. It's just never touched on WHY the ironclad from the American Civil War is in Africa...on land...I can't. Oh, and the Ironclad is filled with gold from the confederacy...you get that? People who could not pay their own soldiers, had a ship of gold....at least in the novel the gold is from the warlord hiding his stash from dumping toxic waste...this was terrible.
What blows my mind is that the actual novel, while being a bit cliched, and over the top is a perfectly FINE novel to adapt into a film (albeit a long one). But the liberties they took with the plot is insane, and the concentration of the toxic waste dump as a long ass action sequence...just arg.
And worse still? Matthew Mcconaughey is a DAMNED good Dirk Pitt. He embodies what I feel Pitt would be like in live action...and while he's the wrong ancestry and hair colour, Steve Zahn is nonetheless an EXCELLENT Al Giordino...and frankly their chemistry and banter is SPOT ON to the books. William H. Macy is an admirable Sandusky too....hell even Penelope Cruz is solid....but beyond the script badness....the fucking Direction is ABYSMAL. It's staid, and often too stunted. There is nothing organic about it, and for a film in the desert the shots worthy of noting are few and far between. You could have grand sweeping vistas...but no, he'd rather stay at medium shots throughout and never stay anywhere long. The edits are dizzying. Even the action for hand to hand combat and gunfights are poorly done. The blocking is a mess. At no point do you get anything really resembling hero moments for Dirk or Al..because the shots are so tight, and cuts happen so fast that you can't really enjoy them. It's just hard to sit through. One look at the directors name and you understand why. Breck Eisner. Son of fabled former CEO of Disney Michael Eisner. The same Breck Eisner who has a total of 4 movies to his name, and at that point had only shot one, which was a TV film for a backdoor pilot that never went to series....and they gave him 145million to shoot a huge production they intended to kick off a series...and you wonder how is that possible even considering he is a Nepo baby whose father ran Disney for 20 years...the financier of this whole boondoggle was a billionaire POS who threw his weight around and called in a favor for Michael Eisner...a Jesus thumping right winger named Phillip Anschultz who was trying to make his production company (which largely makes biblical themed stuff) take off, and from what I understand listens to absolutely no one and basically just says "It's my money, fuck you."
It's no wonder this thing flopped. It's also no wonder that Clive Cussler sued Anschultz's production company for contract shit and script changes ect...Cussler lost initially (due to Cussler (rightly) shitting publicly on the movie before it came out because he knew it was a turd and not worthy of his name, but the judge decided those actions broke his contractual obligations of 'good faith' or some shit), but he refuted this initial court result and had it reversed by a normal judge a few years later who saw Cussler's POV.
TL;DR: This movie is shit, the director was a nepo-baby hack who has a nothing filmography of 4 films, the editor was a shitshow, the financier was a right wing billionaire jesus freak who made sure the film was how he wanted it to be, the script is a mess from start to finish and anything that resembles the plot of the book is either removed or changed for inexplicable reasons making it a cliched nightmare. Saving grace is that Matthew Mcconaughey, Steve Zahn, Penelope Cruz, William H. Macy, and Rainn Wilson are all really excellent in it and play the book characters very well.
EDIT: I doubt Dirk Cussler (Clive's son and frequently co-author) would EVER let Hollywood near his fathers work again after not one but two failed bom films that adapted his books poorly...but these books would make for a decent mid-budget Disney+ series to stand away from the Marvel/Star Wars glut of their TV content. But Disney isn't that smart.
"Fortune favors the bold, though statistics favor the cautious." - Indomitable Courteous (Icy) Fist, The Palace Job - Patrick Weekes
"Well well well ... if it ain't The Invisible C**t." - Billy Butcher, The Boys
"I have strong views about not tempting providence and, as a wise man once said, the difference between luck and a wheelbarrow is, luck doesn’t work if you push it." - Colonel Orhan, Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City - KJ Parker
why would you go out of your way to cut down a fucking tree?
like what a complete and utter wanker
As I understand it, you actually have to literally go out of your way to even get to that tree, so of several possible reasons, I honestly think it's a misguided attempt at clout on social media, probably tiktok.
I don't know this for sure, but other than that, I can't see why anyone would even bother.
"Fortune favors the bold, though statistics favor the cautious." - Indomitable Courteous (Icy) Fist, The Palace Job - Patrick Weekes
"Well well well ... if it ain't The Invisible C**t." - Billy Butcher, The Boys
"I have strong views about not tempting providence and, as a wise man once said, the difference between luck and a wheelbarrow is, luck doesn’t work if you push it." - Colonel Orhan, Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City - KJ Parker
So this one is angry apiarist Jason Stathom Jason Stathaming the hell out of a bunch of baddies.
Looks like the usual fun, but be warned: the trailer pretty much gives the entire movie away.
"Fortune favors the bold, though statistics favor the cautious." - Indomitable Courteous (Icy) Fist, The Palace Job - Patrick Weekes
"Well well well ... if it ain't The Invisible C**t." - Billy Butcher, The Boys
"I have strong views about not tempting providence and, as a wise man once said, the difference between luck and a wheelbarrow is, luck doesn’t work if you push it." - Colonel Orhan, Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City - KJ Parker
Location:The call is coming from inside the house!!!!
Interests:Interesting.
Posted 07 October 2023 - 04:20 AM
QuickTidal, on 06 October 2023 - 12:38 PM, said:
Kevin Costner, starring and directing in a multi-part Western epic?
Count me ALL the way the fuck in. This is reportedly his passion project and one of the main reasons he walked away from YELLOWSTONE.
Oh please, he's just still angry that TOMBSTONE - a movie he passed on - was so so much better than WYATT EARP and a few decades later he wants another shot.
Pun intended.
THIS IS YOUR REMINDER THAT THERE IS A 'VIEW NEW CONTENT' BUTTON THAT ALLOWS YOU TO VIEW NEW CONTENT
So apparently John Woo is back. Nothing says "Christmas" like "Extremely Bloody Revenge".
This one doesn't give away the entire plot, but there's a fair bit in there.
"Fortune favors the bold, though statistics favor the cautious." - Indomitable Courteous (Icy) Fist, The Palace Job - Patrick Weekes
"Well well well ... if it ain't The Invisible C**t." - Billy Butcher, The Boys
"I have strong views about not tempting providence and, as a wise man once said, the difference between luck and a wheelbarrow is, luck doesn’t work if you push it." - Colonel Orhan, Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City - KJ Parker
In my continuing quest to fully understand the things happening in the Middle East and the struggles of the Palestinian people, I watched BORN IN GAZA on Netflix, a 2018 documentary by a Spanish director who shot within the Gaza Strip during and after the 2014 conflict there....it's heart-wrenching, and at times very hard to watch, but important and should be seen. I follow a bunch of people on TikTok who are on the ground in Gaza and one of the girls from this Doc who was about 8-10 at the time and suffered multiple injuries from bombing during that conflict is thankfully still alive and is now a health care worker there and is one of the main voices on social media right now about this subject.
Anyways, a great documentary. One of my favourite types that rejects the idea that we need talking heads or narration, and instead just lets the kids tell their stories themselves with their stark world around them.
Well worth your time, and only about 1hr9min long.
"When the last tree has fallen, and the rivers are poisoned, you cannot eat money, oh no." ~Aurora
"Someone will always try to sell you despair, just so they don't feel alone." ~Ursula Vernon
Abyss 
stone monkey, on 29 August 2023 - 08:09 PM, said:
Help
