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Re: Godzilla 2014, eh, the human plot was dumb dumb dumb, but the monster plot was pretty great. I'd place it firmly in the middle of the pack as a perfectly average film. There are some in the series with less monster time. meanwhile, wow has the look of Godzilla in the new one grown on me. The poster gives him googly eye and that bugs me, but the rotting flesh is pretty great. Are we dealing with the zombie corpse of the first Godzilla? Also am I remembering early press correctly and the costume is, for the first time, a mixture of suitmation and CGI?
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# ¿ Apr 14, 2016 04:30 |
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# ¿ May 10, 2024 11:38 |
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Elfgames posted:Godzilla is not a force of nature Godamnit! he is very explicitly a manmade force! the 2014 movie isn't a godzilla movie (it's a fine film but not a godzilla movie) it's a natural disaster flick where a lizard shaped hurricane comes in and kills some monsters. ...so what you're telling us is that you've never seen the Heisei series. Gotcha.
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# ¿ Apr 14, 2016 05:32 |
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Godzilla is the villain in both GxMG and Tokyo SOS as well. I'm always fascinated by all the films that Toho ALMOST made with Kaiju. Like, how in the early stages of Godzilla Vs Space Godzilla, it was instead Godzilla vs Bagan, to the point where Toho Studios has a fully built Bagan suit sitting on display, and the Super Nintendo Godzilla game that came out around then still has Bagan as the final baddie.
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# ¿ Apr 14, 2016 23:18 |
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Violator posted:Out of curiosity, I checked and found he appears to be the villain or one of the bad guys in these movies: Making the Godzilla scholar in me come out now: There's three periods of Godzilla films--The "Showa" period, being from the first one through Terror of MechaGodzilla (75) when they stopped for a while, then they start things up again with Godzilla (84) kicking off the "Heisei" period as they call it (despite the Emperor changeover not happening for another year) and that goes through Godzilla vs Destroyah (95) where Godzilla "dies" at the end, and they were symbolically handing off the baton to America for their upcoming film. When that proved...unwise, they then made Godzilla 2000, kicking off the "Millennium" series of films, ending with Godzilla: Final Wars (04) on Goji's 50th year. That said, Godzilla's morality has gone up and down. In his first four films, Gojira, Godzilla Raids Again, King Kong vs Godzilla, and Godzilla vs Mothra, there's a loose continuity and he is definitely the bad guy in three of them, with it being hazy in King Kong. In fact, in the next film, Ghidorah the 3 Headed Monster, Mothra actively has to debate with him to defend the human race. Also apparently Godzilla has a foul mouth according to the translators. You list the first four Heisei films as him being bad in, I'd argue the fifth, Godzilla vs Super MechaGodzilla he's still the villain too, and doesn't become more on the side of good til the next one, Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla. Even then, in the entire Heisei series, it's much more ambivalent, where he's treated less as "good" or "evil" and more as a force of nature to contend with. In fact, a major theme of the Space Godzilla film is that trying to control that force of nature is wrong. The fights in the next (and final) film, vs Destroyah seem less to do with humanity and more to do with Godzilla being drawn to this creature made out of the weapon that once destroyed him. This concept is made all the more concrete in Godzilla 2000, where after defeating the alien Orga, instead of the stereotypical "return to the sea" that usually happens after a beat-down, he just starts trashing the city again. In the four Millennium films that GMK and Final Wars are not part of the continuity or design of, Godzilla fights monsters yes, sometimes ones that are more malevolent like Orga or Megaguirus, but he doesn't do it to defend the Earth or humanity, he just does it because that's what giant monsters do. They also trash cities. There is no right or wrong to it. This is underscored in the latter two where that continuity's Mechagodzilla is a cyborg revenant of the Godzilla that rampaged in 54. When it encounters the modern Godzilla, its instincts take over and all it wants to do is trash cities and fight monsters, not be logical or careful or listen to its pilot. In GMK, it's pretty black and white that Godzilla is the villain, being a vengeful ghost of all the soldiers, on both sides, that fought and died in the Pacific Front in WW2. Final Wars is a little more tricky. I think it's intentionally ambiguous. On the one hand, Godzilla gets treated kinda like an animal, fighting through scores of giant monsters because he can. On the other, there's the ending where Minya and the boy kinda make a stand that it's time for the humans and the kaiju to start getting along, suggesting high intelligence and deliberate actions. It's up in the air.
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# ¿ Apr 16, 2016 18:14 |
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Maxwell Lord posted:The first and third are okay, the second is hideous. There's this weird orange and green color scheme (though the Toho Kingdom review says it's partly a problem with the BR transfer, I don't recall it looking any better on video), most of the running time is given over to really cheap and uninteresting Indiana Jones stuff, there's an orange fluffy furby thing whose urine has magic healing powers, it's very unpleasant. I completely agree with this review 100%
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# ¿ May 2, 2016 06:01 |
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Keeping things 'in continuity' is a good way of narrowing things down. For example: Using the Millennium costume for the MG films makes me think they were trying to tie it into the earlier two films' continuity (whatever there is of it). Also, regarding the Mothra through Astro Monsters continuity, I always felt like Destroy All Monsters was a capper to that. It's placed right in between films in the "island" trilogy which are arguably the low-point of the Showa series yet has all the feel of the Ghidorah saga (including 3G himself). You could argue also that the first three films share continuity at least in that Raids Again is a direct sequel, obviously, but at the end of it, they trap Godzilla in a glacier, and sure enough that's where he pops out of in King Kong Vs. I'd like in my head to think that vs. M follows directly too, but they clearly gave zero fucks about explaining Godzilla's return, and we're all the better for it, as it's probably one of his best entrances.
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# ¿ May 4, 2016 20:52 |
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Detective Dog Dick posted:The scenes they accidentally speed-ramped are pretty cool, but yeah. From what I remember, the director had his newbie assistant (they used to use an apprentice ladder system for jobs in mainstream Japanese cinema) crank the camera for the scene, and in his excitement, the lad forgot his instructions and cranked too fast, that's why they look like they're really going fast in that fight. The Frankenstein films also seem to be sped up a lot too, perhaps because the more human looking monsters move more naturally at regular pace? Also, regarding my continuity talk, I never tried to suggest King Kong killed Godzilla, just that in M vs G he suddenly pops out of the ground from literally out of nowhere. It's an incredibly awesome shot, one of the best in the entire Showa series. Looking up on Wikipedia, it sounds like the Japanese version does a lot less hand-waving about all of that and makes it a lot more explicit that yes, the typhoon did was a resting Godzilla ashore, so I guess it is connected in with the Ghidorah Saga, which as I said ends with Destroy All Monsters, despite that being made in the middle of Jun Fukuda's Island Trilogy of films. It's funny, the whole Ghidorah saga, when seen as a whole, kinda is built the same as the Marvel movies are, starting out giving individual characters their spotlight and backstory, then bringing them all together for big fights against a major villain...
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# ¿ May 8, 2016 19:26 |
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Random question...does anyone know if there's a subtitled version of Godzilla Island, that crappy showmercial Toho made in the late 90s to sell toys? There are DVDs kicking around, and the daily alternative to youtube has unsubbed episodes. Please disregard if this question is to much into territory.
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# ¿ Jul 20, 2016 18:06 |
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Glamorama26 posted:Gigan is my favorite from that era outside of Ghidorah maybe. Intergalactic cyborg space chickens are cool. I dunno, Guilala is a little too goofy to count as "cool". Then again, I don't think he's all that cyborg ish.
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# ¿ Jul 21, 2016 21:28 |
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That may be, but it's still a well polished turd. The original version is slow and plodding, and the US reedit does nothing to change this, adding patriotism, Raymond Burr, and Dr Pepper product placement, while not actually doing anything. As said, the only interesting bit changed is dubbing over the Soviets so that the missile launch is deliberate.
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# ¿ Jul 26, 2016 18:23 |
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I just read a spoiler article over at skreeonk that revealed some images from the press book. I must say, my eyebrows are quite raised at some of the new ideas thrown into this one...
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# ¿ Jul 29, 2016 22:39 |
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Glamorama26 posted:American Godzilla being a hero and demon from hell Japanese Godzilla being a villain works for me because at some point, they will fight god dammit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKdJ6DnPhzk
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# ¿ Jul 30, 2016 06:19 |
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Mechafunkzilla posted:This is real dumb.
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# ¿ Jul 31, 2016 05:21 |
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Terrible Opinions posted:Maybe this is colored weird because I've recently been marathoning the Heisei movies, but the human bits are an absolutely necessary break from constant monster fighting. It's all really goofy 80s/90s action comedy stuff, but it keeps the fights from getting monotonous and are usually genuinely funny or charming. It's not like the human bits are "deeper" than the monster bits, but they're definitely a part of the whole experience. Watching Godzilla without the humans would be like ignoring the comedy in Last Action Hero. It's funny, I'd say the Heisei period has oddly both some of the best and the worst human plots. For every time traveling android or hatching of baby dinosaurs, there's scene after scene of dudes just sitting in a control room not really doing anything and being all out of ideas.
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# ¿ Jul 31, 2016 18:18 |
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Terrible Opinions posted:
Destroyah gets the smart rear end grandson of Emiko, and has the prolonged not-space-marines fighting not-xenomorphs in a warehouse sequence, not to mention the jaded Miki Saegusa totally going Training Day on her protege, teaching her what assholes she has to work with before she gets a chance to really get committed to the job. So I'd say Destroyah has a pretty good human plot.
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# ¿ Aug 1, 2016 05:33 |
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Did I hear right and the porn knockoff was better?
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# ¿ Aug 5, 2016 01:13 |
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From what I understand, that was, after decades of trying, the only way Banno could get reattached to Godzilla. Previously, Tomoyuki Tanaka, as executive producer on the series, would heavily oversee the films as they were being made. During the early shooting of Hedorah, he had to be hospitalized for several weeks. Banno was all "Don't worry about it, I got this." When Tanaka saw the rocket jet flight scene, his first words were "they've ruined my Godzilla." and Banno was all but blacklisted in the Japanese film industry.
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# ¿ Aug 11, 2016 05:38 |
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RBX posted:Imagine a modern hedorah design
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# ¿ Aug 11, 2016 06:03 |
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Apparently just looking things up, some US theaters/fandango listings have spilled the beans and listed a premiere date for Tuesday, October 11th. I can't confirm the fandango one, but the first hit on Google for that date is an indie theater in New Mexico. And I'm seeing rumors all over the net from theater managers in the last 24 hours saying the same date.
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# ¿ Aug 16, 2016 18:54 |
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From everything I've seen, yeah it's this October. And subtitled, which would certainly speed up the translation effort.
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# ¿ Aug 16, 2016 19:21 |
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Yeah but for every one of those there's a subplot with Kumi Mizuno as an alien who gets executed for having emotions. Someone doesn't know the difference between Showa and Heisei
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# ¿ Aug 20, 2016 21:06 |
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I'm not seeing anything in Michigan so far.
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# ¿ Sep 1, 2016 02:45 |
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Fandango has listed a bunch more theaters now with advance ticket sales. One of my local theaters is now on the list!!!
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# ¿ Sep 3, 2016 01:20 |
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How does the mirror skyscraper effect hold up?
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# ¿ Sep 17, 2016 07:50 |
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I, Butthole posted:That'd kinda defeat the point though - no one's going into a pre-96 Godzilla movie expecting to not see a dude in a rubber suit. Those things really drive home that they created tangible FX stuff, like a whole tiny tiny town and just went to fuckin' town on it. I like that. Funny enough, the cities get even worse treatment from the "make fun of you for liking it" crowd, yet they're often a goddamn masterpiece, especially the early ones. Tsubaraya did some AMAZINGLY detailed work at recreating Japanese cities to look exactly like the real thing. Rodan especially has some impressive photo-realistic stuff. The big problem is most of these were in the 60s, when most architecture was just "plain square buildings" for the most part, so it's easy to overlook the detail level. Tsubaraya once got in trouble with the US military, because his aircraft carrier overhead shot (of a model, natch) was close enough to the real deal, that they thought he was actually doing illegal flyovers of their ships for the footage.
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# ¿ Sep 18, 2016 06:15 |
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I would love it if other kaiju concept art got posted in the thread.
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# ¿ Sep 18, 2016 23:59 |
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Cemetry Gator posted:The only one that comes to mind is Raiders of the Lost Ark, in that they got rid of Harrison Ford's reflection in the snake pit when they did the 4k restoration back for the Blu-ray release. But it's usually smaller things like that when it works well. I'll be seeing JJ Abrams' crazy big remaster of Phantasm on Saturday, I'll be sure to let you know if there's any scenes that suffer for it.
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# ¿ Sep 19, 2016 05:42 |
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Seriously. The movie might be a little mean in a couple scenes, but I think we see more of him than we do in say, vs the Sea Monster.
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# ¿ Sep 24, 2016 08:48 |
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K. Waste posted:Ah, but does he ever quip?! I still remember those rumors that circulated the net in like, 99-00, about a sequel to Deanzilla where they were going to have Godzilla able to talk and be sassy. Looking back, I highly doubt it was real, but I was a pretty dumb 19 year old.
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# ¿ Sep 25, 2016 15:06 |
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Bimmi posted:e: there were actually two of these suits. One was made after the fact and shipped overseas to the studio doing the American localization that became "Gigantis the Fire Monster." Don't know offhand whether that suit was actually used or even if photographs exist (the guy who was supposed to wear it claims it was made to fit someone about two-thirds his size.) They didn't end up using the suits shipped for Gigantis, but years ago, G-Fan did an article about them, with a photo from a wearhouse when they got shipped. They definitely looked different than in Raids Again, especially Anguirus who had far more spikes. They're one of the great legends of Kaiju film, in that nobody knows what happened to the suits, they just kinda disappeared.
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# ¿ Sep 26, 2016 03:02 |
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It's the black and white one under the Zone Fighter picture. Another legend that's less confirmable that G-Fan had an article on is that there are pictures that suggest a brand new Baragon suit was actually made for Destroy All Monsters and just not used for some reason.
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# ¿ Sep 26, 2016 04:00 |
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Half Century War is so loving good. My son and I are both big Godzilla fans, but he lives most of the year with his mother. When the collected book came out, I got it for him for xmas, thinking I'd read through it once to find out the story before it became his. As I read it it dawned on me "welp, I guess I'm buying a second copy of this." It really is the perfect valentine to the entire first fifty years of the series, despite being its own story in its own universe. They even give a jab at the 1998 film. Pay attention to the human villain's name.
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# ¿ Oct 4, 2016 15:27 |
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The thing is, I think even making it a Godzilla film in the first place was the source of a lot of bad will. If someone said in 1998 that the big summer movie was going to be about a giant iguana wreaking havoc on New York, and didn't mention Big G, it'd probably be noticeably more popular. Instead, they called it Godzilla, and overlooked the fact that people had been kinda watching the series for decades and had a set expectation with that name, which was not at all met.
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# ¿ Oct 5, 2016 21:16 |
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From what I recall, Tri Star hired Devlin and Emmerich because they quoted the lowest proposed budget for the film over everyone else who wanted to make it. They actually didn't even have a plan or anything, they just said "hey, we're the guys who made Independence Day. We hear you want to make a Godzilla film. We don't care about what others have proposed, we'll beat their lowest price." I want to say it ended up way surpassing that budget proposal too.
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# ¿ Oct 6, 2016 00:28 |
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This is true. I remember rumors floating around late 99 or so that they were going to make a sequel and have Godzilla talk...and be voiced by Will Smith. These were the early days of the net when things like that weren't so confirmable, so who knows if this was a real story or just some viral troll.
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# ¿ Oct 6, 2016 00:37 |
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Pyswagoras posted:Do I see hooves and claws on those feet? Huh. Looks like they're on the model too.
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# ¿ Oct 7, 2016 00:52 |
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BattleTech posted:Just got back from seeing Shin Godzilla, I kind of hated it. If you want just a grade and is Godzilla cool in it; D+/C- and YES. There are cool things in it but it is not a good movie, I do recommend seeing it for having some really neat miniature filming tricks. Eh, I just saw it tonight and I'd say the bureaucracy scenes are more like 70% of the movie. The whole film seems like it's a sharpened arrow pointed directly at the overbloated and useless Japanese Government, ie how it takes a chain of communication within a SINGLE ROOM just to accomplish the smallest task, how different types of conversations with the same people requires different rooms, how all the big UN countries can easily throw their weight around with Japan, etc etc. Like, the Godzilla aspect of the film was merely the vehicle the criticism rode in on. Godzilla himself, hoooly gently caress was that some crazy rear end destruction. It was wild. Would anyone like to weigh in on the final shot? I think As they say at one point, Godzilla appears to be reproducing by molting, where the lumps that fall off can grow into their own Godzilla, but not only that, they make comments that his spontaneous evolution can work any way he chooses, including changing into smaller creatures. We see bipedal, humanoid creatures, frozen in seemingly mid-emerging from the tip of G's tail. I think we're supposed to assume that they ARE Godzilla, in his next form as a whole species of creatures, whose size we can't really discern, but I think are a bit bigger than humans, and the freeze/coagulant stopped the change just in time.
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# ¿ Oct 12, 2016 04:32 |
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You might want to spoil stuff there
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# ¿ Oct 12, 2016 05:14 |
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Augus posted:This movie was extremely, extremely good. Anno's directing was brilliant. I might even see it again over the weekend if I can. Yeah, I pretty quickly just started ignoring the top subtitles. They were all just place or people labels anyways, and I could follow the film without knowing precisely who everyone was. It's not like I can't tell faces apart.
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# ¿ Oct 13, 2016 10:54 |
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# ¿ May 10, 2024 11:38 |
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resurgam40 posted:This actually provided the biggest laugh of the night in my theater. The moment the guy said "Aw, my noodles got soggy" it was worth a chuckle on its own, but this girl down the row from me yelled out "Your entire capital city is on fire!" Cue even bigger laugh! That got a laugh in my theater as well, but I'd say the B.O. gag got a bigger laughter.
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# ¿ Oct 16, 2016 22:37 |