skooma512 posted:

Been watching Strange New Worlds and holy poo poo this show is good. I had low expectations going in but they knocked it out of the park. The finest Trek I've seen in years, and probably pound for pound will be the best series of them all. All killer no filler, but I've only just started S2.

Yeah, I'm fairly cynical myself but I still found it hard to believe two escaping human ships would immediately just start firing on each other as soon as they learned what game theory was.

Justin Tyme posted:

I'll say it's good for different reasons TNG and DS9 are good and as a star trek show it's perfectly fine. Something about the old shows just has something that has since never really been replicated and I dunno how to articulate it. It certainly does nail exactly what a Star Trek show should be.

Justin Tyme posted:

I'll say it's good for different reasons TNG and DS9 are good and as a star trek show it's perfectly fine. Something about the old shows just has something that has since never really been replicated and I dunno how to articulate it. It certainly does nail exactly what a Star Trek show should be.

Some Guy TT posted:

Echo Chamber posted:

you don't have to do this

Some Guy TT posted:

Hollywood’s love affair with China has been well documented. But Hollywood actors’ love affair with China has not.

In recent years, American actors including Michael Douglas, Michael Pitt, Frank Grillo (who played a starring role in "Wolf Warrior 2," the highest-grossing Chinese film in history), Bruce Willis, and Adrien Brody have all contributed to the pro-China narrative.

Of course, one cannot discuss actors and pro-China narratives without discussing John Cena, a man who had the audacity to call Taiwan a country. For that “faux pas,” he apologized to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Profusely. In fluent Mandarin. There are apologies, and then there are apologies. Cena’s performance was Oscar-worthy.

Thankfully, there's one actor who’s not interested in apologizing to the CCP. That man is Keanu Reeves. When it comes to China, unlike the above-mentioned actors, "The Matrix" star has clearly chosen the red pill over the blue.

Born in Beirut, Reeves, 57, isn't just an accomplished actor. He also happens to be an accomplished musician. On March 3, he will perform at the 35th annual Tibet House U.S. Benefit Concert, alongside the likes of Patti Smith, Trey Anastasio, and Jason Isbell.

Founded at the request of the Dalai Lama in 1987, Tibet House is a New York-based educational nonprofit committed to the preservation and protection of Tibet's ancient traditions of philosophy, art, and culture.

As I've shown before, the CCP is interested in Tibet for one very specific reason—its natural resources. The Tibetan plateau, home to more than 46,000 glaciers, has one of the largest reserves of fresh water in the world. Known as the “water tower” of Asia, close to a quarter of a billion people in 10 different countries across Asia—Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Laos, Burma (Myanmar), Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand, and Vietnam—rely on this “tower” for water. Make no mistake about it, the CCP wants to control the continent’s water supply, hence its obsession with controlling Tibet.

The people of Tibet are desperate. While most of the world sits idly by, Reeves, to his credit, is prepared to take a stand. Not surprisingly, the Chinese are far from happy.

As The Hollywood Reporter recently reported, the actor has “incurred the wrath” of millions of Chinese nationalists. The “Little Pinks,” a group of young, hyper-aggressive, overly jingoistic digital warriors are now suggesting that Reeves, and all of his future work, should be banned from China. The movie star is fast becoming a “de facto persona non grata in the Chinese entertainment landscape”—which makes his willingness to defend Tibet all the more impressive.

Worth somewhere in the region of $380 million, Reeves doesn’t need to perform. He doesn't need to do anything. But he has offered to. And that’s something worth celebrating.

After all, it's been a long time since a genuine Hollywood heavyweight stood up to China. In fact, it has been the best part of 30 years.

In 1993, Richard Gere, then one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, made headlines around the world–especially in China. At the Oscars, Gere took the stage to present the award for best art director. Before announcing the winner, however, Gere, a practicing Buddhist and long-time friend of the Dalai Lama, went totally off script, criticizing the CCP’s occupation of Tibet as well as its "horrendous, horrendous human rights situation." For telling the truth, Gere was punished severely. The committee chose to ban him from future Oscars, a ban that still exists to this day.

It's clear to see that Gere has paid a heavy price for his honesty. In 2017, the actor told The Hollywood Reporter that there were (and still are) “movies that I can’t be in because the Chinese will say, ‘Not with him.’” He said, “I recently had an episode where someone said they could not finance a film with me because it would upset the Chinese.”

A year before this rather depressing interview, the musician Lady Gaga, a formidable actor in her own right, met with the Dalai Lama. Because of this, she finds herself in a similar boat to Mr. Gere. The artist is now banned from touring or selling merchandise in China.
Which brings us back to Mr. Reeves. Why take a stand? Why jeopardize his acting career?

When it comes to movies, the Chinese market, lest we forget, is by far the biggest in the world. For Reeves, there appears to be more important things than money. In 2019, The New Yorker published an interesting piece titled “Keanu Reeves Is Too Good for This World.” After reading the piece, it’s difficult not to agree. He certainly appears to be too good for Hollywood, a place full of moral grandstanding and superficial concerns.

While many actors pretend to stand for something, Reeves actually does. For this, he deserves a great deal of credit.

Echo Chamber posted:

you don't have to do this

Oglethorpe posted:

watching the Invincible special, lance reddick probably had a major role in season 2

Pepe Silvia Browne posted:

The Other Two is very good

Miss Lonelyhearts posted:

I just watched house of the dragon and liked it more than I thought, the 2nd half of the season is well done and far better than GoT.

Popy posted:

i hated most of gots but house of dragon was dope it helps i have no idea if im suppose to know the plot since its a prequel im just along for the ride.

loquacius posted:

The whole thing where no side is fully good nor evil feels kind of centrist in concept but it makes for better television imo, plus this way nobody is gonna be burning all their Hot D merch after a character they had decided was their wish-fulfillment vehicle does a war crime

Ironically enough, in real politics the centrists are the ones saying one of the two main factions is pure good and the other is pure evil, so the idea of nuanced conflict being a centrist concept doesn't really hold up anyway

Oglethorpe posted:

watching the Invincible special, lance reddick probably had a major role in season 2

Broadlybrowsing posted:

I almost forgot about how much Once Upon a time really hammered home just how much Tarantino loves feet.

Oglethorpe posted:

TNG and DS9 were free of homeland security editing their narratives. the writers were more or less free to explore the realm of "what if our future selves were more pure and tried their best to understand other cultures"


you see it in a lot shows pre-9/11

Popy posted:

i hated most of gots but house of dragon was dope it helps i have no idea if im suppose to know the plot since its a prequel im just along for the ride.

Jazerus posted:

there was never good and evil in nobles saddling up to stab each other's peasants. just a bunch of wreckers. it's not centrist to depict feudalism as it was, or at least the closest approximation that people's attention spans will accommodate

Popy posted:

So, I watched all of The Foundation and its uhh.. well Lee Pace and the genetic dynasty story owns.

netizen posted:

I checked out the novel from the library today and got a little chuckle when I noticed the cover has a picture of Margot Robbie with her feet propped up on a stool. I don't even think it's a scene in the movie. He knows everybody knows about his foot fetish and I think he's just playing into it for laughs at this point.

quote:

Tarantino goes on to discuss Dalton's roles, read from a book supposedly written about the actor, and even recite chunks from a Q&A the director claims to have conducted with Dalton in 1999. Along the way, we learn that Dalton wanted to play the role of the doomed Garry in John Carpenter's The Thing and that the actor's stunt double Cliff Booth (played by Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) directed The Fireman Part 2 after The Warriors filmmaker Walter Hill passed on the project. Tarantino also explores how Dalton enjoyed something of a comeback during following an incident (depicted in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) when he incinerated one of Charles Manson's followers with a working prop from one of his movies.

"He also had a thing that happened with him in the late '60s where three hippies were bursting into his house, and they were tripping, and they had a gun with them, and his stunt double basically beat the brains in of two of them, and Rick set the other one on fire with the flamethrower from The 14 Fists of McCluskey," explains Tarantino. "So he got invited to, like, the Republican Convention, alright, because it became this thing for, like, Nixon's Silent Majority. And he's a lifelong Democrat but he went and they f---ing dug him. Rick was very happy being dug. But they put him on Johnny Carson after that and he was a big hit on the Johnny Carson show, and then all of a sudden, because of the notoriety, he started doing better TV shows. He went from, like, doing Land of the Giants and Green Hornet to doing Mission: Impossible."

indigi posted:

if I were an mvp quarterback I'd have definitely tried to be like racist hick #3 on Reservation Dogs who gets called a poo poo rear end

Atrocious Joe posted:

Lol Tarantio made a whole Rick Dalton Expanded Universe?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Films_of_Rick_Dalton

https://twitter.com/VideoArchives/status/1659643499527151616?s=20
https://twitter.com/VideoArchives/status/1661050864122085377?s=20

https://ew.com/movies/quentin-tarantino-pays-tribute-to-fictional-character-rick-dalton-video-archives-podcast/

ArmZ posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5xCqYLVzXc

Nonsense posted:

https://twitter.com/ComplexPop/status/1689670348197830664?s=20

rip

Nonsense posted:

https://twitter.com/ComplexPop/status/1689670348197830664?s=20

rip

Xaris posted:

yeah the sexual assault scene is really rough on rewatch these days. i guess you could say thats typical 80s poo poo, even stuff like Thief has some pretty cringe.

the dialogue is indeed a little strange but i also think that's part of it's charm. it's kinda like Drive and Refn stuff. but yeah it looks really good and it's such a wonderful slow burning night-time experience to watch. BR2049 is much better imo.

i think it's perfectly fine to have movies that standout on the technicals, like we were just talking about star wars and the technicals are really so incredible it overshadows any other deficiencies. like anh is kind a dumb movie but it does not matter at all because the fim making is such an incredible treat.

Eric Cantonese posted:

I was watching the Verdict with some younger relatives recently and there's a scene where Paul Newman's character slaps Charlotte Rampling's character and completely lays her out and these relatives were really shocked and appalled. It made me feel really old because I remember when protagonists slapped women all the time.