You're funny.

I don't think you can expect a particular movie to be all things to all people - for example, I like The Avengers and The Help, but neither would be very good if it tried to be like the other at the same time.   The Help is about real-world race and gender issues, while Avengers isn't about real-world anything. 

If we level the playing field and compare one escapist explody movie to another -  the positive/neutral depiction of Black Widow in Avengers is preferable to the purely exploitative existence of Megan Fox's character in Transformers, isn't it?     Neither movie was made to address gender issues, but of the two at least Avengers isn't promoting negative stereotypes.

Begun, the Disney Star Wars onslaught has.

I expect sometime next week they'll announce the new direct-to-video "Ewok Buddies" series.

That's why I like this one the best so far...

My reaction to Cloud Atlas is the same as Ebert's - I think I said almost exactly the same thing in our Best/Worst episode.  And I'm more often the nitpicky "hey, this doesn't make sense" guy than not.  For example, obviously I have issues with Looper for "not making sense" - so what the hell, right?   

From what little I knew about Cloud Atlas going in, I assumed I wouldn't like it.  And on first viewing I was right.  I was expecting it to "make sense" and it doesn't.   By which I mean, not everything fits together into a neat little completed puzzle by the end.    I think I assumed it would be like Memento - at the end there would be a grand "a-HA!" that pulled everything together.   Except... that never happens.

But once I knew that... on my second viewing (just like Ebert) I didn't try to "figure out" all the story connections, and I just watched the movie.    And then it did make sense - it's a movie about how our lives are connected in all sorts of ways we may never realize, and what we do can have unexpected and profound repercussions.   

Turns out Cloud Atlas tells that story beautifully - it was my fault for expecting it to hard-connect all the dots for me the first time.   Instead, it's full of echoes and loops and connections that go all over the place in all sorts of ways.   It's not linear, and if you expect it to be, then no - it doesn't "make sense".

I absolutely understand why that's not everyone's cup of tea - hell, it's usually not mine - and yet Cloud Atlas falls into that rare category of "I should hate this, but somehow I don't".   So I'm not surprised it bombed.  It was just luck that I had it on DVD, so I was able to say "meh, maybe I'll watch that again" when I'd never have made the effort to see it in a theater twice.

So- sorry Matthew, but my advice is to be like Ebert and me.   If you haven't seen Cloud Atlas yet, or are willing to give it another shot - don't try to "figure it out" as you watch it.   Just roll with what's actually happening onscreen from minute to minute.  You still might hate it, but at least you won't be distracted by looking for something the movie isn't trying to deliver.

Me too, or at least 7 minutes of it.    I've heard of this guy a few times, so i figured I'd see what the deal was.    So - he didn't like the movie.  I gave him seven minutes to elaborate on why, but he didn't have anything.   

One of the very few specifics he gave was that that CA didn't make any attempt to tell you "when or where you are".   Considering every new segment in CA is introduced with a title that says exactly when and where you are, I'm not swayed by that argument.

To be fair, I only listened to seven minutes - so if he delivered any actual content afterward then I missed it.   But then he posted his piece after walking out on CA, so I say we're even.    

It's okay to not like Cloud Atlas, and it's okay to post a content-free 11 minute rant to say so.  He says it's not a movie review, so fair enough.  I don't see the point of listening when there's no actual insight being offered, but hey, free country.

I liked Under the Dome until the (surprise!) unsatisfying ending.   But up until then it was a solid example of King's "small town gets hit by a supernatural whatsis and everybody goes batshit" sub-genre. 

What can I say, that's my favorite King genre - see also Salem's Lot and Needful Things and many of the Derry stories.

Now I feel like reading it again myself...

We have a thread about Gary Busey.  It's a big tent here at DiF.

*takes a random leap at google to see what the above might be referring to*

*pretty sure I found it*

Well, okay. 

Buck up, man.  There's a damn war on.

This is true - there don't seem to be many examples of the "guy sets out to conquer an enemy, then joins with them to fight back against his own people" plotline, outside the modern era.   Other movies with similar elements that I can think of are Little Big Man, Quigley Down Under and Enemy Mine (I give Enemy Mine special props for putting a rather unique spin on the "falling in love with the native girl" subplot. :-)   

Supposedly the earliest example of "Wait a sec - Indians are people, too" was Broken Arrow in 1950, which also has a number of elements in common with the Ferngully plotline.    From the '50's onward, fighting Indians gradually became less of a thing in Westerns, the genre became more about gunslingers and shootouts.   

Even so, there were still occasional throwbacks like Zulu, which was a good old fashioned "let's kill the indigenous for the crime of being here when we invaded" yarn, but those are extremely rare now that empire-building is seen as a mostly negative thing.

Hmm.  My posts usually have the opposite effect.  I dunno what happened there.

Also:

We've said often that you need to learn the rules of an art form before you go about breaking them - so at least you know when you're breaking them.   Johnson clearly knows the "rules", I gather he believes they aren't always that critical, or at least shouldn't take precedence above all else.   

Again, I say okay, if that's how you want to play it.   I can see the same sensibility in Brick and Brothers Bloom too.  Those stories aren't disjointed or incomprehensible by any means, but they do color outside the approved Syd Field guidelines at times.  Yes, that can work - and I hate formulaic movies as much as the next person - but there's also a risk of losing the audience if you bend things too far. 

My bottom line with Brick, Bloom, and Looper is exactly the same - there was a point in all three movies where I found myself thinking, wait - what's happening now?   What's this movie about, again?   Are we getting near an ending or what?    Bloom was especially odd for me - I mostly liked it, and thought the ending was pretty good.  The only problem was the movie kept going for another thirty minutes afterward.   Swear to god, I checked the DVD case to make sure it wasn't some kinda special edition double feature and I'd somehow missed the transition to Bloom II.

It still comes out to the same place - Johnson doesn't have to follow the "rules" if he doesn't want to, and if that means the Stokes kid isn't going to love the result, then that's just how it is.