401

(20 replies, posted in Episodes)

There should never be a Calvin & Hobbes film, but there's a way to get there without really pissing people off, I think. Start out doing shorts that are about 5 minutes or less. Animated equivalents of the C&H strips. Follow that up with some kind of C&H half-hour special that would represent one of the longer-format storylines in the strip that lasted for a week or two. After you've got one or two of those under your belt and have gotten people used to the voices and the format, then you could make a movie.

2D, animated in the Watterson style. That is the only way.

Howard the duck isn't a good movie, but there's a good movie in everything I think. If this had been darker, R-rated (for cursing and gore, not for duck porn... eww...), and violent as shit, then it could have been cool. Plot-wise, maybe set it a long time after he shows up on earth. have him get sucked here and then spend a year or two in the spotlight with a comic and movies and shit made about him and starring him, then after a few years he's played out and no one gives a shit anymore. Flash forward another 5 or ten years and he's now a middle-age, jaded, alcoholic jerk that no one likes, when suddenly some other creature gets sucked here the same way and opens up the possibility that Howard can get back home to his family and friends. Then he meets some girl and falls in love and that creates his personal dilemma of 'should I go back home where I fit in, or should I stay here where I'm a joke but love this chick'. Then have the other alien turn out to be some overlord that must be stopped, etc. Plot is kinda the same as the current film but darker and more violent. More gore. Less joking. Same run-time, but less padding.

OR get Terry Gilliam to write and direct and just get really stoned before you go to the theater.

402

(21 replies, posted in Episodes)

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/p … don-240192

and women become infertile in 3... 2... 1...

403

(12 replies, posted in Off Topic)

For those who, like me, were initially confused by this post:
Neutrinos may have traveled faster than light at CERN

404

(102 replies, posted in Off Topic)

You reminded me of Alvin and the Chipmunks. When I heard they were making that flick, I was horrified, but then I thought about it and you could have made such a fucked up and awesome chipmunk movie. Forget that they're chipmunks for a moment and you've got three abandoned brothers who can sing really well. They're eventually taken in by a guy who only took them in because they can sing and wants to exploit them. That movie could have gotten really dark, and it's too bad they didn't go that route at least a little bit. I mean, yeah, they get kidnapped for five minutes, but that movie could have had some seriously great character stuff if they had given a shit.

First off, did they forget about youtube? Internet videos of singing chipmunks sparks meteoric rise to fame and an inability from Dave and the chipmunks to cope with that, with the exception of Alvin who would obviously dig that kind of thing. Have tension between the characters drive the plot. Drop the whole "ALVIN!!!" thing Dave does, barring some alternate way to reference it like yelling over a loud stereo or something. Have the chipmunks behave like siblings and not like the bestest friends ever. Make Alvin's ego the villain, and give him the main character arc. Why was Dave the main character in the movie they made? It's not called "Dave and Alvin and the Chipmunks". But I guess it's hard to shoot a movie where the only guy on set the whole time isn't the main character. Also, pick a genre. The trailer had clips from early beatles performances, ended with a funk song, the poster had them looking like a mid 90's hip-hop group and the music they sang in the movie was the sort of pop music you hear coming out of Disney's teen singers.

I would love to see the chipmunks cover Tool's "Undertow" or NIN's "Closer" totally a cappella, complete with video reminiscent of the originals but with cartoon chipmunks. That would be awesome.

405

(50 replies, posted in Episodes)

One can only hope to aspire to that level of correctness.

Hey! I never said anything about this movie!

All three of these movies drove me insane, purely from a special effects point of view. When they'd come out, people would say "oh, those movies suck, but they have really neat special effects" to which I would scream "NOOOOOOO!" while thrusting my arms upward and crushing the surrounding scenery with my brain powers. They don't have really neat special effects. They have horrible awful special effects. Granted, the artists put in a lot of work and the resulting shots look, I'm sure, exactly the way Lucas wanted them to look, but none of the effects are really successful at all. And when you're entire film is basically a nonstop string of effects shots, that lack of success is going to drag the movie down a lot.

Yoda looked like crap, the lighting was off, there was no fine detail, there was little to no depth of field going on in a shot, just foreground and background plates with different blur settings, the CG camera moved too much and too often while the real camera was apparently bolted to the floor, the lighting was bad, the specular was blown out on just about everything, the models didn't deform properly at all - AT ALL, the lighting was just flat and even and dull in most scenes, the color pallets were muted and nasty looking, everything looked like plastic.

The movies looked the way those shitty FMV games used to look back in the early 90's. You know, the ones where they'd shoot their actors on a green screen saying cheesy, poorly written dialogue, and then they'd add extremely fake looking CG backgrounds that never matched. The prequel trilogy is like a bad FMV videogame knock-off of Star Wars. I could never stop thinking about how bad the entirety of every one of the prequels looked every time I saw them. I don't honestly think there's one single successful shot in any of those films. Not even the live-action stuff on location. Even those shots fail in some way. Maybe a coupe of the Tatooine shots in Episode 2.

406

(102 replies, posted in Off Topic)

We can get 3D Realms to work on the tie-in games.

407

(11 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Trey wrote:

I'm sure you meant to say http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Goes_There%3F

And although The Thing From Another World may look like just another run-of-the-mill '50s monster flick NOW, it wasn't - for its time it was one of the best of the genre, which is why it's still remembered.   But the fact that it looks shoddy to modern eyes is exactly the argument for the Carpenter remake, which is also now a classic.   

As to whether the latest remake was worth doing, well... doesn't seem like it, but I haven't seen it yet.

WOW. Hah, I had no idea they were based on a book. I read ATMOM back in the day, and the similarities between it and The Thing got me to assume that it was loosely based on it. It's got a lot of the same elements. Scientists in Antarctica that discover some kind of alien creatures that flip out and go on a rampage and kill everyone, it's got the antsy dogs, The creatures are so strange that the characters basically lose their minds just by seeing them... I kinda figured they couldn't get the rights or couldn't afford to make that particular film, so they just took the basic idea and did their own thing.

Now I know...

And, yeah, I just don't have the context for the film. I saw The Thing first, and have yet to fully sit through Thing From Another World.

I'll have to see the prequel as well, tho all it has to do to not piss me off is to not do the same stuff they did in the original. No spider-heads, no mutant dog monsters, no blood-testing-thing-attack scene, etc. I think the problem with most reboots / sequels / prequels / etc is that they keep referencing the originals. The Star Wars prequels, for instance. The new Planet of the Apes flick. Was there anyone who didn't groan when that stupid "damn dirty ape" line popped up in there? I mean, yeah, we all think the original was good, we know you're making a sequel to that movie, but we're watching this movie now. Give me a new line for this movie.

408

(14 replies, posted in Episodes)

This show was a really good idea.

I think the awesome thing about web shows in general is that a lot of them target a specific niche or do one thing and then do it as well as they can. DiF is a perfect example. It's a show that does one thing. People who want that one thing will love it furiously. TV and movies can't really do that. They have to appeal to as wide an audience as possible if they want to make money. In that sense, web shows have a lot more freedom to narrow their view and focus on something specific.

The same thing that makes them great limits their audience.

And there are some really interesting ways lately to make money with a web show, or with little garage production films.

409

(11 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Would you consider Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans a remake / reboot? Because it's awesome.

The Thing is barely a remake, really. It's got the same basic idea going on, but the original flick was just another dime a dozen campy monster movie with a few interesting twists thrown in. Carpenter took the idea and actually made it scary. Both of them are kinda sorta based on At The Mountains Of Madness. The Thing prequel actually has me really pissed off, because Universal axed Del Toro's ATMOM project, but went ahead with the Thing prequel, which is basically a variation on ATMOM. I guess the budget is a lot lower, but still. Annoying.

What about Airplane? It's a comedy remake of a dramatic film. A lot of the dialogue is word for word from the original. I liked Airplane, too.

Also, I kinda liked the new Karate Kid flick. It should have been called "Kung Fu Kid" and it could have been darker than it was, but as a family film it was pretty damn good. Way better than I had expected it to be.

410

(102 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Metropolis.

I just think it would be neat.

Hey, look at these tracks! I think I'll put this thread onto them.

411

(37 replies, posted in Episodes)

You were talking about the way Snyder may have been saying "Well, if you don't like movies where the plot is ridiculous and the movie is just an excuse to objectify women and have huge crazy action and shit like that, then stop demanding these movies. Stop giving movies like this all your money."

I think you guys are right, that the movie is an attempt to take what nerds want to see, and then lay that on top of a story about something horrible and depressing and sad and serious. Unfortunately, like you guys say, the metaphor kinda breaks down. If the script had been run through a few more times just to make sure all the weird metaphor crap made sense and that everything had tied together well it probably would have been a fantastic flick that would have provoked some interesting talk about film. Take this really dark story, distract people from it with the CGI dance numbers, then slap the audience in the face at the end with the lobotomy scene. I think if it had worked it would have sparked some interesting talk about films and it would be something you could point at and say "you see? you don't have to make fucking transformers! you can make these movies fun and smart!"

Unfortunately it didn't quite work out that way. I'd never seen it before until now, tho. I didn't dislike it, but yeah, it's not really rewatchable.

I wanna see Iron Sky as well.

There's a documentary called "Like A Hole In The Head" about trepanation.
Beware that even this trailer has some very graphic moments in it. I'm talking people with their scalps peeled back and trepanation in progress. You have been warned.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoU_-ru8yEc

I watched it about half way through a while back. I can't deal with real blood and stuff in documentaries. Anyway, they talk to some modern people who are apparently going out and getting trepanated even today. According to them it's like being high all the time, or like being on a higher plane of existence and all this other new-agey BS. There's even a guy in the doc who trepanated himself and describes what it was like.

412

(1,649 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I can't embed this, so here's a link.
http://www.wimp.com/realityshow/
Watch till the end. I can't breathe right now.

413

(83 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I dunno about Shyamalan anymore. His blocking is great, he chooses some nice angles to shoot from, he's good at longer shots, so he's got that going for him. The way he directs his actors, tho, is his weakest skill, and second to that would be his ability to choose the proper way to shoot a scene.

Example: The action sequences in Airbender are often done in long, single shots. These are often in slow motion, or slow down in parts. That's not a good way to shoot an action sequence. It made the action in that movie boring. It looked really staged and planned out and also quite a bit silly.

Example 2: The Happening had a number of shots that I couldn't help but laugh at. He was trying to shoot a horror movie, but instead made a really dark dead-pan comedy. The lawnmower shot, the old woman at the end of the film, the shots of people who start walking backwards. It's all shot in this really flat way that has no tension and really betrays his normally well-thought-out staging. The part with the cop who shoots himself and a few other shots are staged really well and are pretty chilling, but half the time his shots in that flick have the opposite effect on me.

His writing does suck, tho.

Joe Pesci as every pissed off gangster ever. And Vinny.

414

(83 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Shyamalan should not direct, either.

I think the LOTR films pretty much nailed everyone, aside from maybe Frodo, but it's hard to see too many other people who could have pulled off a good Frodo anyway. Gandalf was perfectly cast, at least.

But what about movies that are in production right now? QT has cast Jamie Foxx as Django, and was trying to get Will Smith. I dunno if you guys have seen the original Django, but neither of those two really fit the role at all in my opinion. I was kinda hoping he'd have gone with someone less well known, like Issac de Bankole or Omar Epps or something.

415

(22 replies, posted in Episodes)

Ian Hubert makes awesome stuff. I've been waiting for Project London to get released ever since he posted on a few forums looking for artists. I wanted to get in on that, but there's no way in hell I would have been up to snuff. I wasn't even aware of TFN until recently.

Show was awesome as always. It's not really redundant at all and I was kinda hoping you guys would start doing a non-commentary podcast about movies and fandom and VFX and random stuff.

416

(83 replies, posted in Off Topic)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/Squiggly_P/IndianaSelick.png
totally works

417

(1,649 replies, posted in Off Topic)


The best of the Muppets parody trailers thus far in my opinion.

418

(83 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Yeah, snakes on a plane is basically 80 minutes of waiting for that one line and then being disappointed after he says it. But Sam Jackson as Jules? That's a perfect character / actor combination.

419

(83 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Mark Hamill as the Joker.
Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter.

And yeah, Robert Downey Jr doesn't even have to try to be Tony Stark. He already was Tony, right down to the substance / alcohol abuse. It's like he was preparing for the role.

420

(4 replies, posted in Episodes)

Streaming on Netflix this very instant:
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/UHF/60023887

EDIT:

There was a reference to AMV Hell. They have a youtube channel now, but this isn't it. Instead, this is a link to AMV Hell 3: The Motion Picture, which, as you may have guess by the title, is a feature-length compilation of AMVs that are only about ten to twenty second long each.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aTgINExt2w

Just be sure to skip past the bad "Highway to hell" intro sequence, which is not good at all. Not that the rest of it is that good, either. I just hate that song.

But yeah, if you didn't know what it was before, you will now know what it is and be sick of it in about five minutes. I have this on DVD. (There's a hentai bonus episode on the DVD...)

But UHF...  yeah... I remember seeing that.

My 80's guilty pleasure is "Meet The Feebles", which barely qualifies at 1989.

421

(25 replies, posted in Episodes)

Do you guys think that maybe the expectations for Basterds is why some people hate it, the same as Volume 2? Cause you guys talk about that as well, where you were expecting this to be like the first one and didn't like it as much, but you've warmed up to it. Do you think maybe Basterds suffers from the same thing, or is the general dislike for it due to something else?

I liked it a lot, myself, but I also knew going in that the two stories were going to be pretty evenly weighted. But hell, I thought Shoshana's story was one of the best things Tarantino's ever written / shot.

I would vote for Jackie Brown as the next commentary, tho. I love it more.

422

(8 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I'll probably watch it. I started watching it a couple hours ago when I saw that you recorded it, but then I got distracted by your other videos, and then some other videos. I caught the tail end of the live thingy, tho. I was interested in the discussion you guys were having about youtube and internet video in general, but I had to go get food for people, so I missed everything.

It looks cool, tho. I'll probably watch it when I get a free couple of hours.

423

(1,019 replies, posted in Episodes)

I think it might be neat to see the intermissions between the recording sometimes. I know there have been a few times where some truly classic DiF moments happened after the recording was done.

Doesn't Justin.tv save your recordings? I swear there was a guy who used to do a painting show on there and I was able to go back through and watch their older shows. Maybe I'm thinking of some other service, tho. Or maybe they stopped doing that. It's been a few years, I think.

424

(111 replies, posted in Episodes)

What are you talking about!? That looks amazing! Did that guy just punch a helicopter?! Hell, it looks like it'll be more fun (and more believable) than the official 3 Musketeers film their making:

425

(25 replies, posted in Episodes)

K, just started watching, but I'm at the part where you guys are talking about the subtitles being different...  you say there's a difference between the two with the word "baby", where one of them says "ba..."

This is something that I noticed on the DVD version... I dunno about the bluray cause I don't have that, but on the DVD she says the whole word and the gun goes off right after.

When I saw this movie in the theater, I distinctly remember that she doesn't finish that word. She says "ba-" and then gets shot. I remember this because the first time I saw it in the theater I almost had a heart attack and lost like $4.00 worth of popcorn all over the floor of the theater.

The DVD version is cut slightly different there. I swear to god. I have to see this on bluray to see if that's different from the DVD or not. I saw this flick three times in the theater and that part always made me cringe. When I got the DVD it stuck out to me. Anyway, back to the movie.

EDIT:

OK, you guys all need to watch both Buried and Jackie Brown. Seriously.

As far as the buried alive conversation, Buried doesn't have a scene where he gets sealed in and buried, he just wakes up buried. The only thing you ever see is him in a box, but he's got some stuff on him and he's pretty clever about dealing with his situation. There are also some really really neat shots, which is saying a lot considering that the whole movie happens inside a box. Movie ups the ante pretty consistently throughout. Go watch it now.

Jackie Brown is Tarantino's best movie, but it's probably only like that for two reasons: It's based on a book, and he originally wrote it with the intention that someone else would direct it. That other person (I forget who it was going to be...) ended up unable to do it or QT decided he liked the script too much and asked to make it himself. That flick more than any of his others is really well put together and smart. I'm sure it has a lot to do with the book being smart, but I dunno how much of it is QT and how much of it is from the book. I like to imagine that a lot of the dialogue is QT's... I don't expect the phrase "When you absolutely, positively gotta kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes" works as well on the page as when Sam Jackson says it. QT definitely has his own way of making movies.

You guys also talk about the fact that a lot of young film people end up going through a Tarantino phase now where they try to write like him or shoot like him or do the music thing or whatever in an attempt to copy the style, and it never works. QT's movies feel like QT movies, but they also feel natural, like he's just making the movie the best way he knows how. I would compare that to someone like Tim Burton, who lately seems to always be trying to make Tim Burton movies and failing. Sweeny Todd was the first Tim Burton movie I'd seen in forever where I wasn't constantly thinking "yup, there's some more spirals and oddly skewed architecture and weird abstract sculptures...  this is definitely a Tim Burton movie!" QT's stuff never feels like that to me. Even though he does do a lot of the same stuff in his movies, it never feels forced or like it would have been better if he had done it normally. The Pai Mei sequence is a good example. He could have shown that before, but you would have lost the tension of the burial sequence, and then he could have shown her succeeding at the board breaking during training, but it would have weakened the next bit where she uses it to get out of the coffin. He could have done it in a more typical fashion, but it would have made the movie less tense and fun. He's still thinking about making a really good movie first. He just cheats a lot, and the cheats have basically become his style, only people apparently don't get that he's cheating for a reason and not just to do cool stuff with the sequential order of the film. He usually does it because you only need a certain bit of the story before you watch this other one, or he doesn't want to show you this bit before this other bit cause it'll ruin the surprise, etc. This paragraph is really long and I'm not sure if there's a good place to break it up. Sorry.

But yeah, when I think about it I guess I'm one of those people who liked Part Two a bit more than Part One. They're both fucking awesome, tho. It's hard to pick a favorite. It's like choosing between Alien and Aliens. They're both really good at what they do, but they're doing very different things.

EDIT AGAIN:

What I said before about QT's style... obviously there's more to it than just shuffling the order of the film around, but that's something he does in all of his movies. Even stuff where characters just walk into a room in a really cool way... only certain characters do that sort of stuff, but a lot of younger film people just do that stuff with all the characters. Watch "Shoot first and pray you live". It's like Lance Doty watched Kill Bill volume one and thought "I'm gonna make a western and it's gonna have cool stuff like that in it, and it'll only cost me $10K to make and it'll be awesome!!" He's copying the kind of stuff that happens, but not putting that stuff into a context where it's useful to the story or character development. QT has reasons and stuff.

Eddie, I hope you're not related to that Lance Doty fella cause I'd feel kinda awkward...