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Friends In Your Head | Forums → Posts by Zarban
The jazzy Belgian Doctor Who theme was probably my favorite part. 
I didn't understand what I was watching for most of it. Was it a concert Bill Bailey was invited to host? But as it went on it seemed to be a Bill Bailey comedy show WITH AN ENTIRE ORCHESTRA. Who does that?!
For clarity....
Series 1: Christopher Eccleston as the 9th Doctor with Rose
Series 2: David Tennant as the 10th Doctor, starting at the Christmas special, with Rose (and Mickey)
Series 3: 10th Doctor with Martha
Series 4: 10th Doctor with Donna
specials: 10th Doctor with a big finale creating a clean break
Series 5: Matt Smith as 11th Doctor with Amy (and Rory)
Series 6: 11th Doctor with Amy and Rory (and River)
I love Bill Bailey. He be awesome.
Indeed. He's not well-known in the US. I now know him mostly from QI, which is the new awesome.
My close personal friend Tysto posted commentaries for the Pink Five saga yesterday. It's— It's not pretty. I've never heard him gush so much.
how do you get through barb wire real fast?
Just fast forward to Pam's stripping scenes.
I would grant that this movie treats tornadoes more realistically than other movies treat earthquakes, volcanoes, and ice ages. I liked the cast of characters and all, but I was just never invested in their weird competition.
As Teague pointed out that I pointed out, it's a lot like The Abyss (divorcing couple thrust into another mission, rekindling their mutual thrill-seeking romance) but without aliens at the end. It's also essentially the same as His Girl Friday (divorcing couple thrust into another mission, rekindling their mutual thrill-seeking romance). That movie didn't have aliens and but it DID have a crooked mayor and sheriff, and it was better than EITHER of the other movies.
If only Cary Elwes could have turned out to be a crooked weatherman CREATING tornadoes with ALIEN technology, THEN you'd have a movie. Instead, we're just asked to root against the rich kid.
I don't get the "Trooper!" reference on Trey's shirt, tho. Also: "ironically"
"Love & Monsters" runs the gamut from awesome to awful and unfortunately ends on a low note. However, knowing that it was the result of a Blue Peter contest makes me forgive it quite a bit.
No, it's not Q.
Oh! I was totally gonna say Q. That's the movie with the famous "The dreck was my idea" story.
If Trey is right, this should jostle a few apples loose.
I watched The Trouble with Harry the other day. It wasn't my favorite Hitchcock when I saw it 20 years ago, and it's still not doing much for me. Instead of being suspense or a thriller with Hitch's comedic undertones, it tries to be a quirky comedy with the suspense overtones, but it doesn't work.
Despite the wonderful location shots from time to time, it feels like a stage play. And the unlikeliest things happen over and over for no particular reason. I think another director with more of a practiced hand at comedy and a lead with better comedy credentials (bless your heart, John Forsythe) could do a great job with it. But it would still need a significant rewrite to keep the quirkiness and lose the corniness.
Shirley MacClaine and the supporters are mostly wonderful, but it often felt like an English parlor comedy, and might actually work well if it was remade as such, along the lines of Waking Ned Devine and Death at a Funeral (altho I didn't actually like Death at a Funeral).
I knew very little about Hanna (2011) beyond the fact that the title character is a teenage girl who was raised to be the world's greatest assassin. Unfortunately, that education did not include any experience with music, human nature, school, deception, romance, or electricity—just camping and killing. So really she was raised to be the world's greatest Neanderthal.
Luckily, when she kills her way out of an underground American spy complex in the middle of the Moroccan desert(?!), she falls in with a liberal-minded English family who are on a camping vacation. Unfortunately, Hanna then does the one thing that every spy should never, ever do, and all her plans for happiness are ruined by another of Hollywood's least covert CIA operations ever.
Hanna is Saoirse Ronan, who I suppose I saw in Atonement, but who grew up enough that she didn't register. And her papa is Eric Bana, who is exactly like Eric Bana is in every role, including Nero the Romulan in Star Trek. Cate Blanchett is Joan Allen from the Jason Bourne movies.
Speaking of which, the film looks, sounds, and feels exactly like a Bourne movie, which is not really a bad thing; I like the Bourne movies. But Cate Blanchett's accent travels up and down the east coast of the United States, apparently searching for Joan Allen's office.
The acting is solid, and it has a pretty satisfying ending. But in all it feels like it is trying to deliver a message that it is really not sure about. There's a family theme that is kind of mushy, a coming-of-age theme that doesn't quite land, and some half-hearted themes of independence and freedom. It's really mostly about looking cool while killing people. That's okay, but I thought it was going to be more.
The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) is a Roman Polanski version of a Hammer horror film. It stars Polanski and a cartoonish scientist, on the hunt for vampires, and Polanski's soon-to-be-wife Sharon Tate as the object of the local count's desires. It climaxes in a vampire ball with predictable shenanigans.
The film was taken away by MGM, who changed the music and title (from Dance of the Vampires) to make it more farcical. But the movie was already campier than the Hammer stuff, so now it comes off as rather corny at times. Still, it has two things going for it: money and Tate. It looks richer and more beautiful than any Hammer film I've seen, and Sharon Tate is one of the most beautiful women ever filmed. She's great in the role (Polanski was reportedly relentless in getting the right take), and Polanski himself is quite charming as the introverted assistant vampire killer.
The film is nicely moody much of the time and should have been more of a black comedy; Polanski just has an unsophisticated sense of humor. As it is, if you like Hammer horror and Polanski, it's kind of a treat despite some flaws.
I watched the McGann TV movie this past week. It's pretty awful. McGann has little charisma; the companion is so-so; and the Master is Eric Roberts, chewing scenery that hasn't even been invented yet.
The plot is some complete nonsense about the Master plotting to steal the Doctor's remaining lives by opening something that seems to be the heart of the Tardis itself, and merely opening it for a while will destroy the earth. For idiotic reasons, it can only be opened by the retina scan of a human and can only be closed using a circuit board from an atomic clock.
I can't help but imagine that early astronauts—especially those who went to the surface of the moon—figured their chances of returning safely were very slim. Brave, brave men.
This is one of my all-time favorites from The Onion.
Okay. I'm in.
And my second favorite kind of cake.
That is hilarious.
"I'm sure that would hold up in court. 'Your honor, he was sad first.'"
In the particular case of Pink Five, Amy and I had made about fifty short videos of "original content" already
Say no more. 
/begins searching "original content" sites
By using a name people have heard they assume it's easier to market and there is obviously some truth to that as here we are talking about it.
Shame on us
I certainly am in favor of creativity, but I also feel like there's no reason to let a clever idea lie fallow in favor of inventing new ideas that are probably crappy anyway. 20 years from now, someone will reboot Lost, for example, and then maybe it will make sense.
A lot of what happens even when people try to do something fresh is that they create a new property (Warehouse 13, Fringe, etc.) that is 80% a rehash of some older property (X-Files) but loses a lot of the flavor by trying to be different enough to disguise its inspiration. Maybe it finds its own way and ends up good on its own merits, but what's the point if it isn't really new anyway? Would Law & Order be different or worse if it were called Dragnet? Would House be substantively different if it were called Sherlock Holmes, MD?
There's really very little out there that is genuinely new and without a direct predecessor, and I'm not sure why there should be. All you need is three chords and the truth.
DIF has done 150+ commentaries. At best on the House of Commentaries he'll find twice that again that he likes as much.
EDIT: Hey, what happened to signatures? 
I've read the first Tarzan novel as well as Princess of Mars (or, as established previously, had them read to me by my manservant Lyle). PoM was kind of terrible, but Tarzan was pretty good.
I think Burroughs intended the "apes" to be thought of as homo erectus, or something. He says pretty clearly that they aren't gorillas. That's an interesting twist, to be sure.
Oh jeez. Now Travolta is back on my suspect list.
That makes a lot more sense, altho now I'm a little disappointed that he didn't jump out of a plane wearing a bomb vest into the mouth of a great white shark.
/marks Tony Scott off John Travolta conspiracy theory list
I agree that the main difference between John Carter and Avatar's box office was marketing, but Avatar's marketing featured James Freakin' Cameron talking up the New Technology he had invented for the movie. Plus it had Sigourney Weaver and other name actors.
John Carter had the voice of Willem Dafoe and very little else going for it. Nobody is going to see a giant blockbuster action movie based on the tagline "From the director of Finding Nemo", nor is the Disney name going to help an action blockbuster get traction.
Looked at that way, it really is a tragedy. I didn't hate John Carter the way hated Avatar. It was like rooting for the Special Olympics as opposed to watching a champion in the real Olympics when he's just been exposed as a doper.
"Go little blockbuster, go! You can tell a coherent story! Yea you! [applauds, turns to friend with broad smile] Most of that made sense."
Friends In Your Head | Forums → Posts by Zarban
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