Really? I thought we were the ones getting screwed on internet pricing, $70-90/month if you aren't on a cable plan and you want 20-30 mb/s

Also, looking over their pricing, it seems pretty goddamn reasonable.
If I only care about video editing with premiere for instance, that's 20/month, which is like nothing.

Well, honestly don't blame them, they've been selling $1000 software that largely is just pirated by everyone not working professionally.

That being said, CS6 does everything I need, and is probably the first version of Premiere that's stable enough to do all the things I need smoothly in HD, so I'm happy sticking with what I have.

For what its worth, I'd rewatch Battleship before I rewatched Van Helsing, at least Battleship has a goofy fun 30 minute climax to payoff the shitty rest of the movie, Van Helsing mostly operates at the same level of incoherent but boring WTF

I cannot fathom someone walking away with that viewpoint. Iron Man 2 is literally one of the most boring blockbusters I've ever seen, and a terrible action movie. Whether 3 is better than 1 is certainly up for debate (though I personally think 3 blows it out of the water in terms of fun factor, and I'm way more psyched to re-watch it than 1).

Ya, it makes perfect sense that he would make his suits autonomously powered, how the hell else would the auto-assembling suit pieces work.

If you really wanna nit-pick plot stuff, the big oversight is the fact that he's sitting on 30 suits in cold storage, that he doesn't bring out in the middle of the movie when he's in some dangerous situations and they could really be of use. You know, like saving the president. I think they sorta justify it by Jarvis being off-line and the excavation diggers at the house not having unearthed the bunker yet, but I'd need to see the movie again to see if they explain it adequately.

But again, tone is everything, and I think the movie's blatant "fuck it" tone lets it get away with a lot of this more ridiculous stuff that would feel out of place in Iron Man 1.

The thing I really like is that the action beats all have a kick to them. It's not just loose explosions, people get brutally hurt, people get shot (the air force one sequence is a lot more hard-core than I expect for a Marvel movie). You really can feel Black's comic/violent tone cracking through the boring comic-book sameness that these movies usually have. That's the thing that redeems it big time, it's got an identity and it's memorable.

As someone who doesn't give a fuck about these comic book movies, I can enjoy this as a cool/weird Shane Black movie.

Just got out of it. I find it hilarious that you guys are trying to nitpick science-level plausibility of things in this movie, given it clearly exists in a ridiculous, heightened comic-book universe, with a playful comic tone.

I'll say up-front, the first 30 minutes are a frickin mess tonally and plot-wise, and I was getting real worried, but I think everything from the helicopter attack forward feels like a kickass Shane Black movie. The movie really settles into its mystery groove, consistently pays off on numerous setups, and most importantly, delivers some outstanding action set-pieces.

I'll say it right now, this has the best action of any of the Marvel films, and trounces the Avengers in that category (which has an hour of action, of which I can remember at best maybe 3-4 moments, and the bad-guys are completely boring and throwaway). I LOVE the villains in this movie, I love that they said FUCK IT, and just went with crazy mutant super-powers. This is a great choice because it allows the bad-guy henchmen to both be credible threats, and have a personality, instead of all the boring robot villains from the last movies.
They follow that up with the auto-assembling suit, which I think is a brialliant master-stroke. It lets them have Tony constantly either out of his suit, or partially out of his suit, which immediately fixes all the issues this series has had with stakes. You never fear for Tony in these movies typically because he's wearing indestructible power armor, but this time out, not only is he vulnerable, but the bad guys chasing him are super-powered. The movie really won me over with the Mutant chick chasing him sequence, which plays like something from a Terminator movie, and then the action just gets better and better from then on out. Shane Black understands the importance of building tension and escalation within a set-piece, and how to layer on multiple levels of stakes.
I think the final 20 minute sequence is pretty goddamned amazing, and easily the best stuff from any of these movies action-wise.

So ya, not perfect, there's lots of problems early on as you're trying to get adjusted to the universe/tone of this movie, but once it gets going, it's so good that other stuff doesn't matter.

Sounds good to me

Faldor, check your PMs, I sent you my audio

As it happens, I'm sick and home from work, so I can join in.
Are we doing google hangout? Is each person still recording their own stream, and what do we need for that?

Ehhh, it'll be cool, but it seems like an utter waste of Del Toro's talent. He's at his best when he gets to mix incredible practical sets/costumes with creative CGI action, throwing him at a project that looks like 90% of it will be computer generated bums me out. Maybe they've done the impossible and made it all look photo-real, but the stuff in the trailer still stands out as noticeably fake to me. I wish he either scaled back the scope of the film and shot more of the action with real practical destruction (Independence Day or hell even large chunks of the 1st Transformers), or went the other way and just made the whole movie animated, so it would all fit together aesthetically.

But we'll see, Del Toro has my trust forever after Blade 2, and if nothing else, I hope this makes a gajillion dollars so At the Mountains of Madness gets made.