[QuickTidal]

Watching old Shaw Bros movies (and LADY SNOWBLOOD) has ruined whatever enjoyment I used to get out of KILL BILL Volume 1 (the only one of the two parts I really enjoyed) I tried to re-watch it....like LADY SNOWBLOOD he just cribbed outright and stuffed white people into the roles...like whole ass shots and scenes and blocking are the exact same...may as well have just credited Toshiya Fujita for them...

BUT....

While I still dislike Part 2...that Hong Kong film education has given me a MASSIVE appreciation of the whole Pei Mai sequence where Shaw Bros. regular Gordon Liu plays the master teaching her Kung Fu....and I mean it's also copying the Shaw Bros superior work...(the "show me your skills" scene with the sword is really just the merchant tea cup scene from DIRTY HO with weapons)...but at least it tries to be interesting, and getting to watch Liu in one of his last major roles playing an elder statesmen to the young upstart that he started his career as, is super poetic. I realize he's in Part 1 two under a mask as a Crazy 8, but his role in Part 2 is just a love letter to the roles that made him what he was. If I give Tarantino nothing else (and I do NOT like that man)....I'll give him props for giving Liu one last chance to shine for casual western audiences (he was in a few other roles in HK before his 2014 forced retirement) who might not otherwise have seen him and see how brilliant he is. Similar to Ang Lee getting Chang Pei Pei back into a role that hearkened to her COME DRINK WITH ME days in CROUCHING TIGER...

Anyways, the movies didn't change, I did.

[QuickTidal]

Watched the Netflix documentary WHO KILLED THE MONTREAL EXPOS? and it made me freshly angry about it...even as a lifelong Blue Jays fan, it's hard not to see Jeffrey Loria and David (voted off Survivor after 3 days) Samson as the villains they are in stealing the only other MLB team Canada had when monetary opportunity presented itself...you don't buy into a team for 18mil, use a bunch of shitty cash calls to get a 93% stake and then sell for 120mil and come out of it without being the villain.

But the thing that annoyed me most is that they touch on Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard balking at offering up the money to build the new stadium....and claiming "How can I build a stadium and close hospitals"...and the doc leaves it at that.....and while that is a valid reason for the province not to invest...they NEGLECT to mention that Bouchard had pissed away millions on an attempt to seperate Quebec from Canada that had ultimately failed....like THAT'S where all the money went, and WHY hospitals were closing....the documentary leaves that entirely out...I blame Bouchard at least as much as I blame Loria and Samson for taking advantage of the situation to steal the team.

[Tsundoku]

100% will watch.

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Tsundoku, on 30 October 2025 - 11:58 AM, said:

100% will watch.

Hilarious!

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 29 October 2025 - 02:38 PM, said:

Watched the Netflix documentary WHO KILLED THE MONTREAL EXPOS? and it made me freshly angry about it...even as a lifelong Blue Jays fan, it's hard not to see Jeffrey Loria and David (voted off Survivor after 3 days) Samson as the villains they are in stealing the only other MLB team Canada had when monetary opportunity presented itself...you don't buy into a team for 18mil, use a bunch of shitty cash calls to get a 93% stake and then sell for 120mil and come out of it without being the villain.

But the thing that annoyed me most is that they touch on Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard balking at offering up the money to build the new stadium....and claiming "How can I build a stadium and close hospitals"...and the doc leaves it at that.....and while that is a valid reason for the province not to invest...they NEGLECT to mention that Bouchard had pissed away millions on an attempt to seperate Quebec from Canada that had ultimately failed....like THAT'S where all the money went, and WHY hospitals were closing....the documentary leaves that entirely out...I blame Bouchard at least as much as I blame Loria and Samson for taking advantage of the situation to steal the team.

You think what the the doc raises is bad, you should have been there when it was happening.
Probably the closest Montreal ever came to outright seceding from Quebec. ...i am only being semi-sensationalist/sarcastic, people lost their minds. I know at least three who (claim that they) moved to TO because of it.

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 31 October 2025 - 02:02 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 29 October 2025 - 02:38 PM, said:

Watched the Netflix documentary WHO KILLED THE MONTREAL EXPOS? and it made me freshly angry about it...even as a lifelong Blue Jays fan, it's hard not to see Jeffrey Loria and David (voted off Survivor after 3 days) Samson as the villains they are in stealing the only other MLB team Canada had when monetary opportunity presented itself...you don't buy into a team for 18mil, use a bunch of shitty cash calls to get a 93% stake and then sell for 120mil and come out of it without being the villain.

But the thing that annoyed me most is that they touch on Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard balking at offering up the money to build the new stadium....and claiming "How can I build a stadium and close hospitals"...and the doc leaves it at that.....and while that is a valid reason for the province not to invest...they NEGLECT to mention that Bouchard had pissed away millions on an attempt to seperate Quebec from Canada that had ultimately failed....like THAT'S where all the money went, and WHY hospitals were closing....the documentary leaves that entirely out...I blame Bouchard at least as much as I blame Loria and Samson for taking advantage of the situation to steal the team.

You think what the the doc raises is bad, you should have been there when it was happening.
Probably the closest Montreal ever came to outright seceding from Quebec. ...i am only being semi-sensationalist/sarcastic, people lost their minds. I know at least three who (claim that they) moved to TO because of it.

I feel that....the Bouchard days feel so long ago ( I mean they were) but it feels like 3 Quebecs ago...

[QuickTidal]

I sat down and watched Wim Wenders' UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD (1991)...it's criterion directors cut runtime is about 10min short of FIVE hours...I watched all of them.

I have hated some movies in my day for wasting my time, for being too gross or too bizarre, or too PoMo....but this is the first time I've hated a movie for being JUST SO ENTIRELY aimless. Like with a nearly 5hr runtime, it should TRY to be pacey or engaging, and it simply isn't.

It's messy, disjointed, and just slow as hell. And I don't even MIND slow movies if they have goal or a point...this one really doesn't. It's like someone made a road movie (which is Wenders bread and butter), and spent 3+ hours of on that, and then took the broad concept from STRANGE DAYS (addiction to future tech that allows people to live in a sort of dream world of memories...except in this case it's dreams) and mashed that into the end...the beginning has an interesting noirish vibe that it abandons after like hour 2...there is an impending global disaster apparently...but there is ZERO narrative urgency about it...most of the actors (other than William Hurt and Sam Neil) are non-native English speakers forced by Wenders script to speak in English so the acting comes across as stilted and bad..FFS parts of it take place in Beijing and Tokyo and both places feel like a poor mans version of like Chungking Express....it never quite gels. The denouement of the story is deeply stupid.

Man, I hated that.

EDIT: I had heard it was similar to STRANGE DAYS (a movie I love)....it is not...beyond there being an addictive tech device...no....AND I heard it was William Gibson-like...and also no...like you MIGHT be able to sell the first hour with its noirish vibes that way....but the rest of the film, absolutely not. Just ugh...

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 05 November 2025 - 03:57 PM

[Tsundoku]

QuickTidal, on 05 November 2025 - 03:47 PM, said:

I sat down and watched Wim Wenders' UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD (1991)...it's criterion directors cut runtime is about 10min short of FIVE hours...I watched all of them.

I have hated some movies in my day for wasting my time, for being too gross or too bizarre, or too PoMo....but this is the first time I've hated a movie for being JUST SO ENTIRELY aimless. Like with a nearly 5hr runtime, it should TRY to be pacey or engaging, and it simply isn't.

It's messy, disjointed, and just slow as hell. And I don't even MIND slow movies if they have goal or a point...this one really doesn't. It's like someone made a road movie (which is Wenders bread and butter), and spent 3+ hours of on that, and then took the broad concept from STRANGE DAYS (addiction to future tech that allows people to live in a sort of dream world of memories...except in this case it's dreams) and mashed that into the end...the beginning has an interesting noirish vibe that it abandons after like hour 2...there is an impending global disaster apparently...but there is ZERO narrative urgency about it...most of the actors (other than William Hurt and Sam Neil) are non-native English speakers forced by Wenders script to speak in English so the acting comes across as stilted and bad..FFS parts of it take place in Beijing and Tokyo and both places feel like a poor mans version of like Chungking Express....it never quite gels. The denouement of the story is deeply stupid.

Man, I hated that.

EDIT: I had heard it was similar to STRANGE DAYS (a movie I love)....it is not...beyond there being an addictive tech device...no....AND I heard it was William Gibson-like...and also no...like you MIGHT be able to sell the first hour with its noirish vibes that way....but the rest of the film, absolutely not. Just ugh...

Yeah, I think I watched the theatrical cut way back in the early 90s and the only thing I remember is thinking "WTF was the point of that?"

[Macros]

kind of like how I felt after I watched Lost in Translation after you nerds reco'd it

[Tsundoku]

Macros, on 05 November 2025 - 08:19 PM, said:

kind of like how I felt after I watched Lost in Translation after you nerds reco'd it

I can see your point about LiT. I would normally agree since I don't generally tend to like those sorts of films.
But in this case I think I liked it because they played off each other so well, I didn't mind about the ending so much.

[QuickTidal]

Tsundoku, on 06 November 2025 - 11:06 AM, said:

Macros, on 05 November 2025 - 08:19 PM, said:

kind of like how I felt after I watched Lost in Translation after you nerds reco'd it

I can see your point about LiT. I would normally agree since I don't generally tend to like those sorts of films.
But in this case I think I liked it because they played off each other so well, I didn't mind about the ending so much.

Yeah, I think I have always been able to approach that flick like a masterclass of two actors playing incredibly well off each other in a May-December romance that is never fully realized.

[Abyss]

Tsundoku, on 05 November 2025 - 08:13 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 05 November 2025 - 03:47 PM, said:

I sat down and watched Wim Wenders' UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD (1991)...it's criterion directors cut runtime is about 10min short of FIVE hours...I watched all of them.

I have hated some movies in my day for wasting my time, for being too gross or too bizarre, or too PoMo....but this is the first time I've hated a movie for being JUST SO ENTIRELY aimless. Like with a nearly 5hr runtime, it should TRY to be pacey or engaging, and it simply isn't.

It's messy, disjointed, and just slow as hell. And I don't even MIND slow movies if they have goal or a point...this one really doesn't. It's like someone made a road movie (which is Wenders bread and butter), and spent 3+ hours of on that, and then took the broad concept from STRANGE DAYS (addiction to future tech that allows people to live in a sort of dream world of memories...except in this case it's dreams) and mashed that into the end...the beginning has an interesting noirish vibe that it abandons after like hour 2...there is an impending global disaster apparently...but there is ZERO narrative urgency about it...most of the actors (other than William Hurt and Sam Neil) are non-native English speakers forced by Wenders script to speak in English so the acting comes across as stilted and bad..FFS parts of it take place in Beijing and Tokyo and both places feel like a poor mans version of like Chungking Express....it never quite gels. The denouement of the story is deeply stupid.

Man, I hated that.

EDIT: I had heard it was similar to STRANGE DAYS (a movie I love)....it is not...beyond there being an addictive tech device...no....AND I heard it was William Gibson-like...and also no...like you MIGHT be able to sell the first hour with its noirish vibes that way....but the rest of the film, absolutely not. Just ugh...

Yeah, I think I watched the theatrical cut way back in the early 90s and the only thing I remember is thinking "WTF was the point of that?"

Same same. meandering without direction or purpose, occasional moments that suggest it could almost have been a much better film.

[worry]

One wonders why Wim Wenders is so fond of meandering wan wanderers.

[QuickTidal]

worry, on 06 November 2025 - 03:32 PM, said:

One wonders why Wim Wenders is so fond of meandering wan wanderers.

My buddy in the film industry who likes lots of weird or odd films...even he says "Wim Wenders is adept at putting me to sleep, so there's that"

[QuickTidal]

PREDATOR: BADLANDS was excellent. Like really truly awesome. And the trailers don't give a lot away even though they seem to. I don't want to spoil anything, but after PREY and KILLER OF KILLERS and now this...I would be happy if the Predator keys were handed to Trachtenberg for the foreseeable future.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Can't link a trailer as Youtube doesn't work on my work system, but the film adaption of H is for Hawk is coming in January.

I really loved the book when I read it (it's about a woman who deals with the grief of losing her dad by raising a goshawk) and Claire Foy is playing the lead. I'd have watched it regardless but I've yet to see Foy in anything where I didn't think she stole the show, so I'm doubly excited.

Brendan Gleeson is playing her dad too.

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 11 November 2025 - 08:43 AM

[QuickTidal]

TheRetiredBridgeburner, on 11 November 2025 - 08:42 AM, said:

Can't link a trailer as Youtube doesn't work on my work system, but the film adaption of H is for Hawk is coming in January.

I really loved the book when I read it (it's about a woman who deals with the grief of losing her dad by raising a goshawk) and Claire Foy is playing the lead. I'd have watched it regardless but I've yet to see Foy in anything where I didn't think she stole the show, so I'm doubly excited.

Brendan Gleeson is playing her dad too.

I'll link it. Looks lovely. These narratives that are about the passing of a parent hit differently after my moms passing, but I find catharsis in it that I'm not alone and everyone has to deal with grief at some points in their lives.

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 10 November 2025 - 12:41 PM, said:

PREDATOR: BADLANDS was excellent. Like really truly awesome. And the trailers don't give a lot away even though they seem to. I don't want to spoil anything, but after PREY and KILLER OF KILLERS and now this...I would be happy if the Predator keys were handed to Trachtenberg for the foreseeable future.

The critique i keep seeing is that this is Pred as a spunky underdog hero instead of a ruthless thrillkiller that rips skulls and spines out of its prey to take trophies?

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 12 November 2025 - 03:04 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 10 November 2025 - 12:41 PM, said:

PREDATOR: BADLANDS was excellent. Like really truly awesome. And the trailers don't give a lot away even though they seem to. I don't want to spoil anything, but after PREY and KILLER OF KILLERS and now this...I would be happy if the Predator keys were handed to Trachtenberg for the foreseeable future.

The critique i keep seeing is that this is Pred as a spunky underdog hero instead of a ruthless thrillkiller that rips skulls and spines out of its prey to take trophies?

Trachtenberg dives into the Yautja hierarchy to show you what happened to an exiled "weakling" Predator...and yeah it's the hero's journey for said Yautja...but he's an anomaly as most Yautja would be like the other predators you've seen. He's still pulling spines, but out of monsters, as there are no humans whatsoever in this movie. You're watching someone raised a certain way eventually stepping out of that mold. I think my fave part about it is that it takes the Predator we know "a ruthless thrillkiller that rips skulls and spines out of its prey to take trophies" and fleshes out a species hierarchy that makes it so much more viable as a storytelling facet...because there's only so far you can take "a ruthless thrillkiller that rips skulls and spines out of its prey to take trophies" and have it stay interesting. Showing me that their culture has a deeper tone, and there is a possibility that they are not ALL this, but varying shades and tribes, makes for better story fodder. He also gets to fit alongside the three humans from KoK, not to mention Naru, Dutch, and Mike Harrigan respectively...as strong enough folk to defeat Yautja's, and therefore worthy of honour.

I won't say more, but "spunky underdog" is not what I would say....but a Predator on a hero's journey bucking the trend of pretty much his entire species? Yes.

[QuickTidal]

Guillermo Del Toro's FRANKENSTEIN is phenomenal. Possibly my favourite work of his. I loved the framing narrative, and the split of the two tales within on opposing emotional trajectories. Just a stunning achievement for a story that's been made a slew of times.

I don't like Jacob Elordi as an actor much and until now I didn't get the draw of him....but he's a fucking revelation here. Just a stunning performance, amongst a bunch of other thespians who you know are going to deliver.

I feel like it should also be pointed out that while this movie IS on Netflix and free if you have that service, so many shots in this would look so gorgeous on the big screen that I advise if it's playing in your area, go see it there.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: Yesterday, 05:56 PM