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I think the sequels make everyone forget how important the first Matrix was - it pretty much set the benchmark for actions films after the 1990s, and still holds up. Just ignore the sequels. I saw American Sniper today - I don't think it's massively pro-war. It's not a balantly anti-war film like, say Full Metal Jacket, but a major point seemed to be "these guys are in way over their heads". It's like The Hurt Locker, where its not so much a political statement on the war as it is showing what horrible effects this kind of trauma has on the indivduals who for whatever reason, signed up. That, and it seemed like Clint Eastwood was taking pointers from Kathryn Bigelow's style. It definatly shows that combat is a bad thing - the controversy is more how true to the real story the film is. When you depict something as controversial and dividing as the war on terror, people are going to have issues - The War on Terror is a pretty popular topic in film academica for that reason alone. If you do want to see a balant HOO-RAH unbashed jingoism movie, watch Acts of Valour. Or rather, don't because that film is terrible and is literal advertising for the US Army. American Sniper is much better. I think a bit sticking point is the title - "American" Sniper has certain connotations. But the people coming out of it going "WAR IS AWESOME!!!" are missing the point. It's largely about PTSD, even though it doesn't cover the subject as indepth as it could. It's a different kind of controvers to Zero Dark Thirty, where people accused that film of glorifying torture (the whole point of that film is TORTURE IS BAD), whereas American Sniper is more about the behaviour of an indidvual, rather than an adminstration. Eastwood isn't massively political - he's conserative, yes, but not Republican iirc, so it's not a film thats apologising for Bush and what happened under his watch. Contorversy aside, Bradley Cooper is excellent in it though, it's worth seeing it for his performance. And to tie it all back, I really like Lupa's new set. It has a cool neo-80s feel to it. OldMemes fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Jan 22, 2015 |
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Jan 22, 2015 02:36
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Mars4523 posted:Ven Gethenien (Kyle's former title card artist and occasional supporting cast member) recounts the time the Channel Awesome leadership passive aggressively kicked her out the CA delegation lobbying against SOPA way back when for not being a producer. Or being from DC, or something. Joe went to Congress in costume? I like the guy for his goofball charm, that's pretty unprofessional. Are members of the public just allowed to go to congress, or do you have to be invited/jump through loads of hoops?
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Jan 23, 2015 13:05
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Joe seems like a chill guy, but acting professional doesn't seem like its one of his strong suits.
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Jan 23, 2015 14:15
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Yeah, in the 90s, the Simpsons characters felt more like actual people, living in a crazy place. Now they feel like cartoon characters living in a crazzzzzy cartoon world. Homer is pretty much an entirely different character now.
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Jan 27, 2015 20:27
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After watching the first movie nights, I've found mysellf humming "you got arrested!, you got arrested! because you're an alcoholic! " a few times. I liked the first episode. Maybe it needs to be a little more scripted to tighten up the pacing a little, but I thought it was a fun relaunch of Lupa's show. OldMemes fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Feb 3, 2015 |
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Feb 3, 2015 21:14
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I really liked the Movie Nights with Phelan, it seems the style works really well with someone to talk to? I assume that Phelous isn't going to be in every episode though? I did like the more scripted and polished style of Obscurus Lupa Presents, but Movie Nights is growing on me. Mainly because of the theme song - it's rather good.
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Feb 19, 2015 02:41
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Channel Awesome's comments and forums have always been full of terrible. Go for the videos, just don't scroll down on them.
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Mar 29, 2015 00:58
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I actually feel really bad for Brad, Tamara and Malcom watching this. There's a lot of potenial in the idea of an Internet gameshow, especially with Brad hosting, but this is awful. Why are the contestants not introduced? Why is Tamara doing a really unfunny skit? Why is there no real structure to the rounds or questions? Why is the editing so bad? Why aren't there any sound effects to get the feel of a game show? Why is it 30 mintues long?! Brad hosting a game show should be gold, but this is just incompetant. It's just Brad reading out cards in an empty silent room, and just feels bad. At least I laughed at a few of Brad's zingers, I guess?
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Apr 1, 2015 01:28
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Cyron posted:I hope brad taken a page from the good book and nic cage his way though the filming of this. I get the feeling he's making fun of the questions at times, at least. So is this meant to be a real game show, or a skit? Brad and Tamara are playing it like its a sketch, but it seems to ping pong between the two wildly. Why is it done in shaky cam? Wouldn't you need one of those big tripods with the wheels for smooth movements and panning shots, like they use in real game shows? Everything about this is like some kind of wierd fever dream. Its like Lynch-esque pardoy of gameshows, it's so odd and disjointed. OldMemes fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Apr 1, 2015 |
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Apr 1, 2015 01:35
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Holly Christine's bisection of the game on twitter is pretty interesting. Apparently there are five more episodes rready to go.  That...was an APril's Fool's gag, right? And the real show will be coming soon. Right? 
OldMemes fucked around with this message at 11:07 on Apr 1, 2015 |
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Apr 1, 2015 11:04
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Lordkat's show is worth a listen to for Holly's take on the gameshow, but you just kinda have to tune out Lordkat being awful and meanspirited. He has valid complaints, but he's so so angry and petty about them - and I used to be a big fan, in his chat most nights. I get him wanting to make fun of Channel Awesome's policies and failings, but when he starts doing things like picking at Brad for his marriage not working out, Spoony for having mental health issues, or Linkara for having a trans person as an ex-girlfriend, it just comes across as mean rather than funny. I guess he's trying to do the shock jock DJ thing, but he's way too close to the stuff he's talking about to do that. Plus, he always goes on and on about how he;s trolling and in it for the lulz etc, then is suprised when real companies and businesses don't want to be associated with him after he's used his brand name for stuff like that. Lordkat's lifestream used to be really chill and fun to have on as background noise and pop in to.
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Apr 2, 2015 18:53
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Phelous's acapella version of Hulk Hogan's theme song is pretty great.
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Apr 18, 2015 19:52
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Linkara's current waistcoat look suits him much better than his old outfit. Yes, he's still got the fedora, and fedoras are largely awful, but at least he acknowledges that he's rather dorky/nerdy, which puts him ahead of the  "my fedora gives me class not swag" types.
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May 6, 2015 22:14
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Wheat Loaf posted:Kenny Loggins Don't be hating on K-Log  He made a really good theme song for Caddyshack 2. You can actually enjoy it more than the movie!
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May 12, 2015 22:22
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The villians are the best part of those movies! Max is a really passive proganist - he's broken by his trauma, and it isn't until Thunderdome that he relearns how to be human again. Thunderdome is great because how wierd and eccentric it is. Sure, it never hits the highs of Mad Max 2, but tt's meant to be set 15 years after Road Warrior, and how odd Bartertown is really captures the feel of how people would go "Well, we've had our fill of riding around and bickering over petrol, lets start to rebulid". Thunderdome is pretty great - it's inventive, the kids bring Max's character arc full circle, and Tina Turner is pretty fun - and the theme song really works. That, and its the most quotable of the films. I like the idea that all of the movies are people's retellings of the half remembered stories of Max the Road Warrior. It explains why all of them are so different, and how Fury Road fits it (I'd say it happens between Road Warrior and Thunderdome, but that's just my guess). Sometimes Max had a daughter, sometimes he had a son - sometimes he's a young man, sometimes he's older with greying hair - it all depends on who is telling the story. The endings of 2, 3 and the ending title card of Fury Road back this up. People are in the Outback after the war going "Did you hear about Max's time in Bartertown?" "Nah mate, you're getting it wrong, he fought Immortan Joe first! And he had hair like a wild man, not a buzz cut...." That's my take on the films anyway. All are varying degrees of good, though the first one suffers from a low bugdet, the limitations of the grindhouse style, and the fact that the DVD I own has a redub with American accents (luckily the other two are untouched). OldMemes fucked around with this message at 01:16 on May 22, 2015 |
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May 22, 2015 00:47
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PassTheRemote posted:^^All copies of Mad Max have the American redub. If a print with the original dub exists, I would love to see it. Apparently, some DVDs have the original dub. The American dub kinda hurt the atmosphere and took me out of the film, honestly. But then again, I only have a pretty cheap DVD set of the three films...
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May 22, 2015 01:11
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Infamous Sphere posted:Oh god I forgot that the film was dubbed for American audiences! How embarrassing. I was honestly suprised that my (UK) copy was redubbed, since here we're pretty used to the Aussie accent and slang. Neighbours used to be a HUGE thing over here, for example.
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May 22, 2015 01:17
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Max is wearing leather because he's still wearing the scraps of his cop outfit. Why his cop outift leather? Because MFP weren't cops per say, they were the government's desperate attempt to try and control the gangs and social decay before the war - black leather is imposing, and you need to be imposing if guys like the Toecutter are the norm. Things are so bad in the first film that it seems that Max barely noticed the nuking of the world - Austrialia is in a pretty bad shape in these movies.
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May 22, 2015 13:40
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George Miller stated that Fury Road is the "word burgers of the History Men" of the future. That explains any errors in the canon of the films, the History Men made mistakes in their oral history, so they have a bunch of stories about Max, but don't know all the right facts. Also: "word burgers". Oh, George Miller. 
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May 22, 2015 13:52
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Star Trek Into Darkness honestly rides a lot on Beneditch Cumberbatch's performance. He doesn't nail Khan, but he's fun as the bad guy. Honestly, it's ok as a "sci fic action film that uses the Star Trek mythos". The biggest issues with it are Peter Weller's awakard War on Terror analogy character, the GET IT?! GET IT?! reference/inversion to Star Trek 2. Oh, and the fact that the final showdown with the bad guy happens OFF SCREEN. They've got a fine set-up for the last action scene - Kirk is seriously injured, and needs Khan's blood. Fair enough. Khan and Spock are having an exciting fight! How will Spock overpower this superman? The suspense! And then the film cuts, and we're told that Spock won, Kirk got better, and Khan just got sealed back into his pod. Ok? Did they lose a few pages of the script? JJ Abrams did pretty good with those two movies, honestly, but Into Darkness has issues. I'm looking forward to what he's going to do with Star Wars.
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May 24, 2015 23:25
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Mraagvpeine posted:On another note, I've been curious to watch Quantum Leap, but I wanted to know a few things about it. Is it an episodic series? If so, can you just jump in with any episode without missing anything important? Watch the pilot first, but aside from that, it's pretty loose - there are some episodes that callback to things from earlier episodes, and there are a few that invert the show's formula, but the main connection between episodes is the cliffhangers. Every episode ends with Sam leaping. He's in danger or some situtation, but doesn't know where, when or who he is. He says "oh boy!". Roll credits. The next episodes carries on from that cliffhanger, but that's the limit of inter-episode coniniuty normally. You might as well watch them in order anyway.
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May 27, 2015 02:07
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Fury Road is based on the "word burgers" (which might be books?), implying that its based on a written account, whereas Road Warrior and Thunderdome are oral accounts. That's more of the subtext, rather than the actual point of the movies. You can see them as movies about Max which have soft reboots between each sequel. I like the "its a bunch of stories people have passed on about Max after the war" explaination. It suits the mythic, larger than life tone of the sequels.
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May 27, 2015 19:59
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Linkara's retrospectives are actually pretty good, where he goes over a run of comics, gives the history and his thoughts. I really liked his videos on ROM the Spaceknight, and it made me want to read ROM (but Marvel can't reprint the issues because of rights disputes....). It's a shame he doesn't do more videos like that.
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Jun 4, 2015 14:27
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George Miller wanted to make Fury Road in the early 90s with Mel Gibson, but it got stuck in development hell for one reason or another. Pretty much the only reason Tom Hardy is the lead is that Gibson is too old/racist now (most films that Gibson has been in post outburst have underperformed or outright flopped at the box office).It's literally the same director/writer as the first three films, uncompromised by studio mandate. Aside from not literally saying where in the canon it takes place (see earlier debates about Mad Max being an oral history, told by unreliable narrators) it's literally as good as Mad Max 2, with the same guy in charge. I remember way back in his Robowar that there are movies you have to see, regardless of if they're good, because they're "going to be awesome". I guess Spoony forgot how to have fun since then. 
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Jun 10, 2015 11:00
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The main issue with The Lost World is that the script needed anoter draft. There are some wierd plotholes and continuity errors that should have been patched up - that bit where the same POV shot runs at the merc twice always confused me, for example. The new characters aren't that interesting, but it has some fun set pieces, and Jeff Goldblum knocks out of the (ahem) park. And Eli Roth has his first acting credit as "Unlucky Bastard", which is amusing. It doesn't have the same sense of awe or spectacle as the original. Three is a by the numbers quick and cheap B-movie, pretty forgettable aside from having the Jurassic Park name attached, and Sam Neil looks half asleep for a lot of it. I did always find it funny that Igen's plan for the new attraction was to parade the dinosaurs around a hilariously tiny stadium on the mainland. Dinosaur safari is one thing, putting them all in a tiny paddock on que just sounds like an awful idea. Look at the model they have of the stadium they plan to bulid - how would the dinosaurs even fit in a buliding that cramped? OldMemes fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Jun 11, 2015 |
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Jun 11, 2015 21:02
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So why did Baywatch take off so much anyway. I'm still not sure how a drama about lifeguards that got cancelled after one season, then just got more and more insane and silly managed to get nearly a billion viewers worldwide each week. Was it just a "right place, right time" thing? I'm not sure how anyone took this seriously when it first aired, let alone a billion (!) people each week.
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Jun 16, 2015 23:25
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The LP of The Bureau that a Goon did has a developer doing co-commentary, and he's pretty frank about production issues. He doesn't mention Spoony at all. It's a good LP if you're interested in game design - I watched it even though I'd finished the game myself.
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Jun 28, 2015 18:32
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Robert Denby posted:You have a link to that? I've always wanted more about the actual production of non-indie games since the industry seems so closed off to anything except super-polished behind the scenes stuff that basically tells you nothing. Here it is.
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Jun 28, 2015 18:51
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Mraagvpeine posted:That's not true. My dad decided to watch Fury Road with me and while I liked the movie he didn't. He said that he didn't like how ridiculous and over-the-top the movie was and that it reminded him of Waterworld (he never saw the other Mad Max movies). I am 100% certain that he isn't a PUA/MRA. Waterworld is a pretty bad rip-off of Mad Max. It's only notable because of how expensive a rip-off of Mad Max it was.
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Jun 28, 2015 22:31
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Robert Denby posted:What's ironic is that when "Waterworld" was being pitched in the early 80s (right around when "Road Warrior" came out) it was planned to be a relatively low-to-mid-budget movie. Then the script kept changing hands over the course of a decade til Kevin Costner got it, then it became the $170 million+ behometh everyone knows it as. I've got a book that claims that the script was given to Roger Corman in the 80s. He decided not to produce it - when asked why, he said that it would cost around five million to make, whwich was way too expensive. 
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Jun 29, 2015 11:54
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Lloyd was pretty good, but I'm not sure how much anyone whose never heard of Nukie would get out of it. I did like the opening scene with the date, it felt very Bojack Horseman, which is a good thing imo.
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Jul 30, 2015 18:05
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I picked up So Bad, It's Good 2: Electric Bookaloo for holiday reading, and rather enjoyed it. The writer seems more confident this time, and there's a good vairety of obscure material in there. Lupa, did you write the Baywatch Nights entry, or just the Baywatch one? The formatting confused me a bit there. I was suprised to learn that Baywatch Nights ran AT THE SAME TIME as the the main show. I thought it was a spin-off made after the show ended, but nope, Mitch apparently goes from being a lifeguard in the day to fighting vampires at night. Have you ever considered writing a book about bad movies, I like your writing style. Speaking of Internet Critics and books, does anyone know if Todd has said when his book is coming out? Pat the NES Punk is doing one too, which should be interesting.
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Sep 2, 2015 23:36
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Beyond Thunderdome isn't a bad movie. It's got a different tone, and its uneven, but its not a bad movie at all.
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Sep 19, 2015 01:05
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Tracula posted:But hnnghhh. I can't watch Fury Road. I AM SPOONY. THIS MOVIE WILL ONLY BE OBJECTIVELY BAD Weirdly, Spoony seems convinced that Fury Road is a remake, rather than a sequel by the same director as the other films. Shame, because golden age SPoony would have loved the movie. Remember when he got excited over things, and made videos where he talked about stuff he liked?
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Sep 20, 2015 15:00
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watho posted:Is it just me or is Phelous really quiet in unscripted videos? I think Phelan is pretty funny in unscripted stuff, when he has someone to bounce off. When he cuts in with a one liner, it can be gold, like when he goes into the acallepa version of Hulk Hogan's theme in the Thunder in Paradise video. He's like Diabeetus in Retsupurae, where Slowbeef is the more talkative, but Diabeetus has great timing and one liners. Actually, should we talk about retsupurae in this thread? I guess they're not really "critics", when though they critique things on the Internet?
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Oct 28, 2015 02:26
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Is anyone else having audio problems with the new Board James episode? All the other videos on Cinemassacre play fine, but there's a buzzing sound on that one.
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Nov 1, 2015 14:41
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The Jurassic World review wasn't bad when you got past the long ramble about how he couldn't use footage from a film that was STILL IN CINEMAS. Tara and Malcom re-enacting scenes from movies has comedy potenial.
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Nov 5, 2015 01:00
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I just checked the Spoony Experiment - did you know it's been a year since Spoony has made a scripted video review? Compared to the output of Brad Jones or even Linkara, that's...underwhelming. Linkara's videos may wildlyy vary in quality, but the guy puts out at least one every week. Is Spoony ever going to make a non-vlog video ever again? He's shown us he can still produce funny reviews, it's a shame he doesn't do it more.
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Nov 16, 2015 00:57
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I'm hoping the Baywatch movie will be a really funny, post-modern spoof of the 90s, like something Phil Lord and Christopher Miller would do. It probably won't, but Dwayne Johnson is at least fun to watch in most things he's in, even bad movies, so even if its a compelety unironic lifeguard movie called Baywatch for branding reasons, the Rock should make it at least tolerable.
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Nov 20, 2015 19:41
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The George Woods videos are wierd, because the guy sounds like he's really into what he's saying, even when it makes no sense. It's oddly endearing? Diabetus's Clinton impression is rather wonderful.
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Nov 24, 2015 22:13
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