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While I enjoy The Hobbit and to a slightly lesser degree The Lord of the Rings, I overall am not a fan of Tolkien's kind of melancholy view of the march of history. The entire idea of magic disappearing from the lands, all the "great" races and people leaving the world, and the world falling into mundane dreariness is kind of off-putting to me once you think about it too hard. It really feels like something that's attractive if you are a well-read, educated white dude who feels like some vague concept of "the past" was better and that everything new is worse, but it kind of falls apart if you consider that, no, a lot of stuff is better than it was before. A lot of the big Tolkien fans I know are nice dudes, but they are the kind of guys that just cannot stop reminiscing about some non-existent better time when being able speak in middle-English and wearing a nice hat was signs of great intelligence instead of indications of them just being incels.
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Feb 27, 2023 09:35
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 01:05 |
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galagazombie posted:It’s hilarious that they’ve adapted IT twice now and both times made the exact identical mistake of separate kids and adults chapters despite the adult parts in the book only being a framing device that makes up like a fourth of the book tops. Thank you! This has driven me nuts ever since I read the book. The adult sections are not their own stand-alone story, but are the vehicles to flashback to the more interesting children story.
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Mar 1, 2023 00:23
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Tars Tarkas posted:Seth Rogan's TMNT cast: I was nodding my head for the whole cast but this one is what's going to put my butt in the seat. Cena's been rocking the comedic brute role lately.
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Mar 5, 2023 19:42
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So many dogshit people had such a visceral negative reaction to the announcement of this movie that it actually pains me to say that that clip looks like absolute rear end. The CG just looks really bad, and clashes with the live actress it's passing over or behind. Ouch!
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May 10, 2023 22:56
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None of my daughters had even heard of it. I only know about it because people in this thread posted about it a few weeks ago. I'm not even sure where it advertised, but those places didn't hit my family at all. EDIT: The bigger problem is my kids don't even go to the movies anymore. They stream poo poo on their phones or on the TV with their friends. I don't think they've asked me to take them to a theater since I went to see the D&D movie and my youngest wanted to go with me.
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Jul 3, 2023 08:43
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I actually clicked through and watched that Rebel Moon trailer, and the movie actually looks interesting. The trailer was vague enough that I could not tell you the plot (good) and the visuals look excellent. It's sci-fi not based on an existing property, so it automatically goes into my watch list just for the novelty of that.
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Aug 24, 2023 15:56
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Delaying Dune 2 is going to kill the momentum built from the first movie even more and is probably the death knell on Denis getting to make a final Dune movie to cap off Paul's story from the 2nd book. As for the movie production costs discussion, you guys are hitting on why this year has been so uniquely dire for the studios when it comes to flops. Yes, this started in 2022, but 2023 has been disastrous for every studio (except A24, lol) trying to poop out blockbusters, and production costs are almost squarely to blame. A lot of these 'flops' are not even bad movies, and are pulling in what looks like good amounts of money, but because the production costs are so high, the money they need to break even is astronomical and there isn't enough volume of movie-going audiences to give ALL of these movies the money they need. A lot of these flops are even good movies (Mission Impossible), but the studios have been continuously pumping up production costs so high that it's impossible to break even. Fast X made an estimated $704 million and still is a flop because it's production budget was $340 million!!! Little Mermaid was $250 million plus $140 million marketing! So Snyder spending $70 million on his silly Netflix sci-fi movie seems almost tame in comparison.
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Aug 25, 2023 16:27
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Honestly, if A24 can bring back the mid-budget action movie (formerly the domain of Denzel Washington and Tony Scott), then more power to them. 2022-2023 proved that every studio trying to make the big budget "blockbuster" left most of those movies in the hole since audiences will only watch a few blockbusters a year. A24 could make a killing pumping out good mid-budget stuff.
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Oct 12, 2023 16:58
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:They do make a killing pumping out good mid-budget stuff. I meant specifically the mid-budget action movie that seems to have been missing from theaters for awhile now. Unless I'm missing a few A24 movies, it doesn't seem as if this niche has been exploited recently. EDIT: It is a distinct possibility that I've missed a few A24 movies, it seems like they've made far more than I knew about. Anonymous Zebra fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Oct 12, 2023 |
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Oct 12, 2023 17:31
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Jack B Nimble posted:I read the book this week in anticipation of seeing the movie and I'm really interested to see how the movie renders the narrative because it isn't really a story you can adapt beat by beat; this isn't a situation like "No Country For Old Men", it's a wandering non fiction examination of a historic event, and if you composed the film in a way that aligned with the book it'd be a documentary. The movie adaptation is about the same historical events, but otherwise will not follow the narrative of the book which was much more of a who-dunit vs. the very clear narrative based around the involved characters in the film version. That being said, there is mixed acceptance of this film amongst Native people, with a lot of good opinions on both sides, but this movie is by no means something that was made without the involvement of lots of Native consultants, artists, etc. This BBC article kind of goes into it (https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20231025-killers-of-the-flower-moon-does-it-do-right-by-native-americans) with the general conclusion being that it's a good step forward in Native inclusion in mainstream Hollywood even though it's far from perfect.
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Oct 27, 2023 23:12
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MechanicalTomPetty posted:Someone really, really, really wanted another LOTR trilogy and wasn't going to take "no" for an answer. That's the only explanation that makes any sense at all to me for how those Hobbit movies turned out the way they did. If anyone is really interested in an in-depth autopsy of how these three films were made, Lindsay Ellis's three-part breakdown of the films is pretty much the gold standard (https://youtu.be/uTRUQ-RKfUs?feature=shared). I know YouTube essays are not everyone's thing, but she does an immense amount of research and even flies to New Zealand to interview members of the cast! It's a great description of the inner workings of filmmaking and how everything was stacked against these films ever being good.
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Nov 17, 2023 17:59
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I mentioned this earlier in this same thread, but the problem with many of the "flops" from 2023 wasn't that they didn't draw in audiences and drive ticket sales, but that their budgets were so astronomical that relatively good ticket sales wasn't enough to get them out of the red. The latest Marvel movies haven't been that bad compared to some of the stinkers that came out early on (Thor: Love & Thunder joins Thor 1 & 2 in the dubious distinction of being bad movies), they've just been way too expensive for what they are trying to do. There's no reason an Antman movie needed to as expensive as it was when Antman stories can be a lot simpler and still be funny and good, and both that movie and The Marvels suffered from whatever the gently caress is happening behind the scenes with Marvel not being able to release their movies on time and on budget. The MCU weren't the only ones to eat poo poo this way though, most of the "Blockbusters" in 2023 made good money but still flopped because production costs were out of control. Hopefully we'll see tighter budgets in newer movies, with directors getting more out of their budget. Barbie had a $145 million budget and looked great, Dune had a $165 million budget and had absolutely fantastic visuals, while Little Mermaid's updated budget was (checks notes) $300+ million!
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Jan 5, 2024 08:31
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I love Nolan's movies, and respect his craft even when I think the movie isn't my cup of tea (Dunkirk), so with that said TENET is a goddamn stinker and every one of his worst impulses cranked to 11 and poo poo onto the screen. I am sure that the story makes narrative sense on paper, and yes, the actors are acting their hearts out to try and make that poo poo work, but the actual cinematography decisions made for that movie are baffling and absurd. I felt like he was gaslighting me with that sound mixing until I realized that theaters were having to put up actual signs telling people that it wasn't the theater's fault that no one could understand the dialogue. His "two people sit in a static location to explain the plot" gimmick reached such comical levels that YouTube videos making fun of it are actually less complicated than the film itself (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2FXfFeRtJo). And the climax involves a series of gunfights where Nolan made the specific decision to never show the antagonists or who anyone was actually shooting at. It was such a bizarre movie, and I refuse to be convinced that I was just too dumb to understand it, because I rewound that fucker enough times to follow the plot, but the plot was just shite.
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Jan 7, 2024 09:15
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The original Annihilation novel is absolutely wild, but also completely unfilmable because it depends on the reader being stuck in the first-person POV of The Biologist and thus prevents you from seeing her actions from the perspective of everyone else on her team. Within the first few pages of the book some weird flower sprays her in the face, and from that point on her team starts acting really weird, abandons her, and later is trying to kill her. You're supposed to think she's keeping a rational mind in this alien space as her team goes insane around her, but if you read between the lines you can pick up that 1) She was actually a really lovely biologist, and 2) she's been transforming into a creature for most of the book and the rest of her team is trying to escape her and kill her. EDIT: All of the woman sent on the team in the first novel (except for the team leader) were bad examples of their professions. Endless expeditions had been sent into the zone over the years, so the government ran out of elite minds willing to go in there long ago. EDIT2: Back on topic. I too can not see what is supposed to be interesting about the Civil War movie. Despite it being made by someone whose movies I've enjoyed, and by a studio I tend to give a bit of trust to, not single moment of the trailer, or the countless reviews I've read indicate that it's a good movie. I lived in Europe for some years, and that quote from Garland sounds like the weird out-of-tune poo poo I'd hear from people whose entire experience of America is from pop culture and watching our TV shows. Anonymous Zebra fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Mar 18, 2024 |
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Mar 18, 2024 22:03
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I was watching a video where someone was reviewing the cinematography of Dune: Part 2 and they discussed the movie's budget ($190 million) and why that movie LOOKED like it had lots of money spent on it vs. other movies that have come out the last few years that have cost similar (if not more) and yet look so much shittier. One of the things they pointed out, that I now cannot unsee, is that a lot of movies are being filmed with the same kind of camerawork as you might see on a network TV sitcom, where the camera is not really moving that much and everyone is always lit in this completely even way in every scene. Taking behind-the-scenes information into account, it's fairly obvious this is because the actors are sitting in green screen rooms and the even lighting helps VFX people adjust everything in post. And the camera-work is because directors don't have a clear idea of what's going to be happening in a scene ahead of time, so they can't get too dynamic because that limits what they can add in post. But once you see it, it's really hard to unsee it, especially if you watch something like Dune 2, or Fury Road, where the camera is going absolutely wild through the action scenes that were storyboarded out way ahead of time, and the it's obvious that the actors and sets are really getting blasted with sand or faces are getting lit up by explosions and flames.
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Mar 27, 2024 18:07
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 01:05 |
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There's a totally not missing the point of the movie crowd that also thinks Dune is apparently non-woke as well.
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May 6, 2024 08:57
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