I don't see this going anywhere but in circles, so let's move on.
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Friends In Your Head | Forums → Posts by Dorkman
I don't see this going anywhere but in circles, so let's move on.
I think it goes without saying that this show is an expression of opinion about what works and what doesn't in a movie, and what a movie should or should not do in reference to whether we find it satisfying. In fact while I think it goes without saying we have nonetheless taken care to say so on quite a few occasions. You are welcome to disagree but I don't much care for being told how or whether we should express our tastes on our show.
It's not that the magic bean principle "doesn't count" in fantasy stories, it's that the scope of the bean tends to be broader. There is still an upper limit to what the audience will generally accept. If the Fellowship arrived at Gondor to find them packing laser guns and speeder bikes, or the example we often give of aliens invading Hogwarts, those would be unacceptable because they are not reasonable extensions of the established "magic bean." As it is, Harry Potter comes dangerously close to violating its magic bean in Azkaban with the introduction of the Time Turner. A LOT of people find that objectionable even given the blank check of the existence of magic, because the magical world should be COMPLETELY different if time travel is a thing.
I personally, as I'm pretty sure I made clear during the episode, don't think introducing the TK suddenly in the third act would be more acceptable. But it might as well be introduced in the third act for all the use it serves to the story in the first two. Johnson using his screenwriter powers to go back to an earlier page and have someone mention it is not the same as integrating it into the story. He wants to have his cake and eat it too -- to have a villain with telekinetic powers without actually having telekinetic powers affecting the story or the world in general. That's lazy worldbuilding, and lazy storytelling. It would have been possible to make the two magic beans both aspects of the same overarching magic bean, but that would have entailed making TK part of the story instead of just a magical gun the kid can wave around for a few minutes at the end.
I want to -- I dunno, apologize? Acknowledge? -- my total failure to respect the moment of silence for Mr. Ramis' cameo. After five years doing the show it was an automatic response to dead air to QUICK SAY SOMETHING
For a show whose apologists have decided was "never interested" in being a procedural/mystery, it sure spent a goddamn lot of time focusing on the procedure and mystery.
I like how everyone's (not just here) wondering why the internet decided there must be some significance to the clues, as if every episode they didn't keep harping on the clues, adding a new one, stepping back and inviting us to try to suss out the big picture with them. Still, I wonder how much it sucked to be the filmmakers and see the internet hyping themselves up in a way you knew you weren't going to pay off.
At any rate, I thought it was fine since it did lead to a solved case, albeit an ultimately fairly straightforward one. I'm a little disappointed they didn't push the weird tales aspect more (and/or that they introduced it at all if they didn't care to actually do it), but maybe the next season will explore that more. And maybe not. I thought it was well made and I liked the performances and their relationship, and I didn't really think about it in the intervening weeks so I hadn't built up too much expectation, so, meh. I'll watch season two.
EDIT: Honestly, it's the Yellow King business that screwed things up. Take that out and you've got a show that lives up to its title -- true detective work is messy, can take decades to solve a case if you manage to solve it at all, and it often doesn't give all the answers or give you what you need to take down all the bad guys. On that level, I like it a lot. It was just the ill-advised introduction of a very particular type of occultism that confused the issue, and got the audience thinking (and excited) about what else the show could be doing instead of enjoying it for what it was.
I honestly do agree with the Dorkman's 'insulting garbage' standpoint, as far as the sense of humor is concerned. The Bad Boys grotesque, racist slapstick is out of place here, and the major downside I've had to tolerate with Bay being at the helm, but I've been willing to because omg, ILM. Part of what's got me interested for #4 is that Bay has said he was dialing back the humor this time around.
Then again, the guy also said he was done after 3, so grain of salt.
He also said he recognized the problems with 2 and promised 3 would be better. He's got no qualms about shitting on his last film if he thinks it'll trick you into paying for his next, which he will happily lie about.
Just because I love watching film enthusiasts get all mad that a series based on toy robot cars isn't a high art masterpiece.
There's a pretty big gradient between "high art masterpiece" and "fucking insulting garbage." I don't expect it to hit the one extreme, but it doesn't have to wallow so happily at the other.
Anyway, unless the Rotten Tomatoes score by some miracle comes in above 70%, I'm not going to see this thing in theatres and probably not at all. DARK OF THE MOON wasn't even enjoyable drunk.
Ya, I think people seemed to have missed the meaning of the title, "Speed", which has mothing at
all to do the the speed of the bus, it means [...] a fast bus.
um wat
There've been a couple of occasions in interviews and those HBO GO featurettes that have me half convinced he listens to WAYDM.
Ah, the score was Zimmer. Somehow I missed that. Explains why I felt like I'd heard the score before, even though I knew I hadn't.
Now that I've seen 12YAS, I hope it wins BP. As much as I loved GRAVITY, it already has a place secured in cinema history. Best Picture also-rans are usually forgotten to the ages and 12YAS deserves (needs, IMO) to be remembered.
One of my best friends from high school finally recorded a demo of a song he wrote and performed. I say finally because the last time he wrote a song was probably back when he was 17, and I've been hoping he'd pursue it ever since. This one he did after nearly a decade of touring full time as a drummer with various rock and pop stars, so it's considerably better produced. I don't know what his conscious influences were, but to me it sounds like a cross between Maroon 5 and Eric Hutchinson. I wasn't involved with this in any way, I'm just proud of him and dig the track.
EDIT: Download the track itself here.
Some of the shots in there, particularly the ones of Godzilla underwater and such, are...kinda bad, VFX-wise.
Unless this is still Gareth doing shit in his bedroom all alone, in which case I quit.
Jimbo: this thread is not actually about GHOSTBUSTERS 3. That was just a snappy title. It's about the loss of Harold Ramis.
I was a Cinefantastique baby myself, but I was aware of Starlog -- not sure how, I must have tracked down back issues for movies I enjoyed. I think it came up a lot as reference material in the replica props community too. Definitely plan to check this out -- thanks also for the Cinefantastique podcast heads up!
I wouldn't be who I am without GHOSTBUSTERS, and GHOSTBUSTERS wouldn't be what it is without Harold Ramis. I'm way more upset about this than I would have expected to be.
I'd add another qualification to the "Perfect Movie" - one that it would be sacrilegious to remake. If it were announced that classics like Terminator 1&2, Alien & Aliens, Star Wars OT, BTTF, LOTR, Indiana Jones were going to be remade, the backlash would be palpable.
They're rebooting TERMINATOR.
Finished the season. My pithy soundbite: Season 1 was a drama, Season 2 was a melodrama. It all got very silly very quickly and the occasional
Still:
The only reason I don't hate ELYSIUM is that it's more effort than the stupid thing is worth. I hated it for the two hours I was subjected to it and I'm cutting my losses.
Ok so I was confused by one comment you guys did. In the movie *I* saw, Jodie Foster DID have a very thick (and not terribly authentic) French accent.... do you Ammurrcans get a re-dubbed version where she speaks all yankee-doodly-like!?
Yes, the U.S. release has her speaking with a "neutral" but weirdly-cadenced accent.
HAHA I WAS RIGHT
Q: How many Screenwriters does it take to change a light bulb?
A: THE LIGHT BULB??? But that's the best part!!!
FTFY
I love that this is turning out to be a sneakily Lovecraftian (Chambers, but still) story. It's VERY much in the vein of those kinds of stories, which often take the form of a first person narrative relaying a brush with the supernatural, though they might not realize it at the time. They're often straightforward suspense stories that suddenly take a turn for the eldritch. The Call of Cthulhu, for example, is actually three stories about the Cthulhu cult, one of which is a pure detective story about a detective who disrupts an occult ritual in the bayou -- it's only when put together with the other stories that the supernatural, cosmic import of that event becomes clear.
My guess is that there will be a supernatural incident, but it will be just oblique enough that the audience can choose to accept it or not based on what they prefer -- just as, it would seem, Cohle and Marty chose to accept it or not, respectively. Cohle accepted the truth and pretty much went nuts, devoting his life to drowning the knowledge in alcohol, unwilling to kill himself because of what he now knows waits on the other side; Marty chose to quail away from the cosmic revelation and live a life of "sanity" -- which in weird fiction is basically synonymous with denial of reality's true shape.
$10 says this is the basis of their oft-referenced falling out -- we've seen that they're already fundamentally different people and can barely stand each other as it is, and yet we know as of ep5 that they remained an effective team for 7 years. It seems to me the only thing that could finally force them to part ways would be an irrevocable, concrete split in what they choose to accept as reality.
EDIT: The one bummer is that they only get to play that hand once. From season 2 onward everyone will know that it's a weird tales show, not just a police procedural.
Why are we tagging these threads [BOAT] again? I see no difference between them and other "off topic" threads.
OMG the full seasons are out on DVD. For a long time it was just handfuls of episodes on a common theme put out in collections. I'm gonna have to start picking these up.
That intro was a great update from the original 60s version:
But it's also super 90s. There've been so many great title sequences since then I'd love to see a new update. I'm tempted to try to come up with a modern version just for shits. REDXAVIER WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME
Friends In Your Head | Forums → Posts by Dorkman
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