Haha! I almost went to see it tonight just for the goof. Now I gotta see it.

Yeah. Cats is a hoot and I dont care who knows it.

Apart from anything else, the mindmelting AUDACITY of the bad taste required for Spielberg and Dante to prominently feature a poster for their Twilight Zone movie in the main character's room, the year after it fucking killed Vic Morrow and two children, is... something

Frozen II feels almost like a satire on the first Frozen. Every flaw of the original movie is amped up to nearly comical proportions - there's very little plot and everything revolves around emotional bullshit that could nauseate even Deanna Troi.

and it still made over $1,200,000,000 (as of now).

Seriously though, it's one of 2019's worst productions. It's up there with Zombieland: Double Tap, MIB International, Jumanji: The Next Level and Cats.

My point being it's no wonder it makes a lot of money. Kids will see it over and over again.

I think some people should just Let It Go! *rimshot*

I'll show myself out.

Just finished Cats.  The CatPeople weren’t creepy, just really poorly executed. Storywise, it made more sense than TROS did.  Despite those two nonfactors which the papers have made such hay over it was still an utter disaster.  Our audience was there to poke the bear, which might have been pathetic if it weren’t for the constant barrage of bizarre choices that seemed calculated to amp up the weird as much as possible.  Also not helping:  the volume level of the woofers in theater 5. Anytime there was a break in the music you could hear a pin drop... and the sub component of every single explosion in Avengers: Endgame.

The cat effect was so poorly executed. Jim Carey looked better as The Grinch than any single character in this.  Although also, the more effect there was the better it looked.  My theory: they tested it without a green screen or CG backgrounds and tested it on a more or less live plate instead. And it probably looked OK. The main problem, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with matting or tracking or the fantastic shader they’ve got themselves to do all that fur (how much of that body fur was real?) and everything to do with the light and shadow on the human face that is all that’s left of the original plate, not interacting with any of the digital assets, giving the effect that the actors are standing behind the screen poking their faces out of a “face in the hole” cutout at the pumpkin patch

The whole cat world/human world being different scales made sense from a story perspective, but again the execution was terrible. The scale changes so erratically it just kind mashes the whole thing into a distorted Alice in Wonderland kind of disorientation thing instead.

Had a very good laugh, zero stars would not recommend, but go see it.

Last edited by Beeg (2020-01-12 19:30:31)

I want to get drunk and see this flick.

Adam Cramer, a D.C.-based white supremacist gone South to stoke anger at integration to a fever pitch, is the role Shatner was born to play. One of the reasons his nice-guy act as Captain Kirk never quite washes is that he's unable to cover up the self-satisfied sense of superiority nestled beneath his skin, the smug disdain for others hiding in his smirks and condescending delivery. Here that smarmy self-worship is put to perfect use, in a performance that's not necessarily "good" but has an arresting ring of truth. His racist screeds aren't lies—he really does want to see a white America, free of the filth of minorities—but it's obvious from his very first interaction with the townsfolk of Caxton that he loathes the hicks he preaches to as much as he does the black people he seeks to drive out from their midst. He gets off on manipulating them, on their unthinking hero worship, but in his Anglo-Saxon empire they would be second-class citizens at best, casting their eyes toward the Great Man and begging to kiss his ring.

But of course he's really no great man at all, and where Mirror Universe Kirk is pure, makeup-slathered id, Cramer crumbles at the first sign of resistance. He's a B-movie Harry Powell, intimidating through sheer force of charisma until someone dares to poke him, reduced to hysterical appeals to the mob's intelligence only after his opinion of them as sheep has become obvious to them. If only Shatner had been born several decades later, he would have played a perfect Richard Spencer.

As for the rest of the movie? It walks a fine line between brutal honesty and reassurance, which unfortunately lessens the impact of its social critique. Even pulled punches, however, can shock—the film's climactic portrayal of phony rape charges by a white woman against a black man is blunt and horrifyingly accurate, even if it quickly dials back its fury by hollowly allowing the white lynch mob to reconsider when presented with reasoned argument. That the creative forces behind the camera were white men clearly shows—the black "characters" are passive, saintly, there to serve as a moral but not to exist as people (save for a quick, biting "I don't know about you, but I can't tell 'em apart" from one black student to another as they eye two white jocks walking down the hall)—but that anger, even if it still doesn't go far enough, has aged far better than mealy-mouthed attempts to find the common humanity in both sides of segregation.

Under ninety minutes and available for free on YouTube!

Last edited by Abbie (2020-01-18 05:22:07)

Somehow missed this—thanks, Beeg!

Blackkklansman was quite good, yeah, although I agree with the general criticism that it's rather too friendly to the cops than they deserve. For another movie in a similar but far more cynical vein, Deep Cover with Lawrence Fishburne and Jeff Goldblum is a really scathing look at racial politics and the war on drugs from the perspective of Fishburne's undercover cop character.

Last edited by Abbie (2020-02-06 05:07:28)

Lol, even in the performance of Fascist pageantry, Trump can’t help but be the shitty actor he is.  The Republican Party was so ready for someone to say the lines they didn’t/don't care about the delivery.

By coincidence, I just watched Moulin Rouge this weekend!
I should say rewatched. I've seen this film a good six or seven times by now, and basically agree with everything you said, except that it took me maybe 60 seconds for me to realize I was going to love this one. I'm so pleased that you enjoyed it.

The music! The beauty of it! The excess! I swoon.
And I am very curious about the recent Broadway adaptation. I certainly loved hearing some Beyonce in the new Sparkling Diamond mashup. Never had the chance to see Moulin Rouge with an audience, but dang, I think it'd be fun.