[QuickTidal]

JLV, on 23 November 2011 - 08:25 PM, said:

Step Siblings are home from college. Watching Harry Potter 7 (part 1) right now. Seems like a lot of woods sitting But we're preparing for part 2 tonight, because my brother has never seen it or something.

Part 2 is....Reall, Really impressive.

[JLV]

Emo Ron pisses me off. It's such fake tension, imo.

And yeah, I like part 2! Lots of explosions. BOOM!

[QuickTidal]

Watched Joe Cornish's ATTACK OF THE BLOCK on the weekend.

I liked it, a lot.... which I honestly didn't think I was going to at first. It's a brave move to take a band of douchy, street thugs who rob and steal and talk like morons and do boneheaded shit all night and make them main characters and ask the audience to cheer for them. I mean aside from the girl (victim of robbery by said thugs), the nerdy college guy (who is scared of the thugs, but likes his drugs enough to come to the block for his dealer), and Nick Frost (the Drug Dealer who doesn't leave his flat), everyone else is nearly past redeemable when the film starts. My girlfriend actually asked me if we were meant to identify with them, and I said I think that Sam (the above mentioned victim played by Jody Whitaker) is who we are meant to side with at first. We are meant to feel as victimized as Sam does when she is robbed in the opening sequence. We are meant to be as aghast, frightened and annoyed by the thugs as the narrative goes on, and in slow, juddering increments we are supposed to see the good in them, just as they see it in themselves.

The growth of the thugs is really good when things go south with the aliens, they start to rise up to the occasion and the REALLY bad ones eat it anyways. By the end of the movie, Cornish really does make you get on side with the remaining thugs (just like Sam does) as you find the balance between street thug (victim of his situation and place in life), and hero (which they could be when given the chance). So in the end I was quite pleased.

Spoiler

Moses' hail mary run with the pheromones on his jacket and samurai sword through the aliens in slo motion to that beat....fucking total win.

Oh, and the aliens. Unlike anything out there in movies currently...really fucked up...and almost entirely practical in the effects dept. and super awesome. Loved every aspect of that.

Oh and score by Basement Jaxx = Pure excellence.

[McLovin]

Finally saw THE KING'S SPEECH. Great movie. The scene where Mrs. Logue comes home to find Her Majesty sitting in her kitchen while Lionel and Bertie hide in the other room was genius.

[QuickTidal]

McLovin, on 28 November 2011 - 07:44 PM, said:

Finally saw THE KING'S SPEECH. Great movie. The scene where Mrs. Logue comes home to find Her Majesty sitting in her kitchen while Lionel and Bertie hide in the other room was genius.

Yeah, I loved that scene! Rush's reaction as he hides was hilarious!

[worry]

QuickTidal, on 28 November 2011 - 06:16 PM, said:

Watched Joe Cornish's ATTACK OF THE BLOCK on the weekend.

I liked it, a lot.... which I honestly didn't think I was going to at first. It's a brave move to take a band of douchy, street thugs who rob and steal and talk like morons and do boneheaded shit all night and make them main characters and ask the audience to cheer for them. I mean aside from the girl (victim of robbery by said thugs), the nerdy college guy (who is scared of the thugs, but likes his drugs enough to come to the block for his dealer), and Nick Frost (the Drug Dealer who doesn't leave his flat), everyone else is nearly past redeemable when the film starts. My girlfriend actually asked me if we were meant to identify with them, and I said I think that Sam (the above mentioned victim played by Jody Whitaker) is who we are meant to side with at first. We are meant to feel as victimized as Sam does when she is robbed in the opening sequence. We are meant to be as aghast, frightened and annoyed by the thugs as the narrative goes on, and in slow, juddering increments we are supposed to see the good in them, just as they see it in themselves.

The growth of the thugs is really good when things go south with the aliens, they start to rise up to the occasion and the REALLY bad ones eat it anyways. By the end of the movie, Cornish really does make you get on side with the remaining thugs (just like Sam does) as you find the balance between street thug (victim of his situation and place in life), and hero (which they could be when given the chance). So in the end I was quite pleased.

Spoiler

Moses' hail mary run with the pheromones on his jacket and samurai sword through the aliens in slo motion to that beat....fucking total win.

Oh, and the aliens. Unlike anything out there in movies currently...really fucked up...and almost entirely practical in the effects dept. and super awesome. Loved every aspect of that.

Oh and score by Basement Jaxx = Pure excellence.

Full agreement. I can't believe how awesome the aliens were, either. I didn't realize they were mostly practical effects with digital touch-ups. The idea to keep them solidly, shadelessly black was the best possible idea, as it added an eeriness to them that otherwise wasn't there. And they were just a pleasure to look at.

This post has been edited by worrywort: 28 November 2011 - 10:38 PM

[polishgenius]

It's an interesting thing about Attack the Block. Because while it's a comedy action film, it also makes a pretty strong statement about the way these youth live their lives.

Spoiler

Like, I don't think we're meant to sympathise with their actions, but we are meant to get a sense of the desperation and feeling that they've no other way out of drudgery that leads them to be that way. And we do.

This film came out a few months before the London riots. It's a remarkably good insight into why those happened.

I'm not saying it's London's The Wire... but it's a lot closer than any film with glow-in-the-dark aliens has any right to be.

[worry]

London's The Wire is obviously Hotel Babylon.

[QuickTidal]

Saw THE MUPPETS yesterday. Man how nostalgically awesome! Great, great return to form for my fave Henson-creations. Had a blast, even bought the addictive soundtrack.

Well, well worth your time if you are even a passing Muppets fan.

[McLovin]

Saw GASLAND, a documentary about hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas in shale deposits.

That anyone could think exempting an industry from environmental legislation and there would be no environmental health consequences has to be either monumentally stupid or callously indifferent. My vote is the latter.

American corporate welfare "capitalism" - taking you back to the 1890s since 2005.

[worry]

Dude, the current R candidates absolutely loooooooove "fracking". So your vote for the latter is correct, but you could have gone either way and been safe. Including the supposedly sane-on-science Huntsman.

[Abyss]

HANGOVER 2 - i'm glad i watched this from home, on a couch, for $4.99. if i had spent big screen prices to see it i would have felt ripped. As a home view, totally fun.

DESPICABLE ME - as an animated movie in an era of brilliant animated movies, this was just okay. But there are certain scenes that made me laugh to the point of falling off the couch, in tears, getting up long enough to rewind and watch them again. Notably, all the Mad Scientist fights, and the Minions' shopping trip. I could have paid big screen prices and been happy with this film. Gloriously recommended.


MEGA SHARK VS GIANT OCTOPUS/CROCOSAURUS - Wow these were bad. not just bad but awful bad terrible bad bad bad. By the end i was ffwding just to see the monster fights and even those were bad. complete garbage. the people who made, starred in and distributed these things should be fed to sharks. small sharks that eat them slowly over a long period of time and are then fed to bigger sharks.

[McLovin]

Abyss, on 12 December 2011 - 06:22 PM, said:

MEGA SHARK VS GIANT OCTOPUS/CROCOSAURUS - Wow these were bad.

But really, does anyone with an IQ over that of say, celery, go in expecting otherwise?

[Abyss]

McLovin, on 12 December 2011 - 06:54 PM, said:

Abyss, on 12 December 2011 - 06:22 PM, said:

MEGA SHARK VS GIANT OCTOPUS/CROCOSAURUS - Wow these were bad.

But really, does anyone with an IQ over that of say, celery, go in expecting otherwise?

You might expect 'so bad it's good', which is a certain category of bad that is still entertaining for all it's badiousity.
This failed to reach that level.

[worry]

I didn't watch it except for the commercial, but BSG's Colonel Tigh was just in a syfy original called Snowpacalypse. Very sad to see.

[amphibian]

Abyss, on 12 December 2011 - 07:50 PM, said:

You might expect 'so bad it's good', which is a certain category of bad that is still entertaining for all it's badiousity.

Otherwise known as the Tommy Wiseau Zone.

[JLV]

Just watched Red State. I thought it was actually quite entertaining.

[Macros]

My cousin Vinny

can't belive I havent seenth is before, its a great film, pesci at his best

[Morgoth]

Macros, on 18 December 2011 - 10:51 AM, said:

My cousin Vinny

can't belive I havent seenth is before, its a great film, pesci at his best

Marissa Tomei (spelling?) won an Oscar for that movie I believe.

I really enjoyed the movie, particularly because it functions as a good criticism of the structure of a legal degree.

[QuickTidal]

Saw MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE GHOST PROTOCOL yesterday, and it was decent. A little long and the villain isn't even a shade of what Hoffman did in the 3rd film, but still a servicable action spy flick. It suffered from the fact that they showed us the DARK KNIGHT RISES prologue before it, and that was so unbelievably tense and stellar that nothing I watched over the next two hours after it was going to be as good.

But yeah, if you liked the 3rd one, you'll like this one. Good stuff, but overlong.