BadAtGender

"She" is a fictional character and can't pick anything. What she does and how she looks is entirely at the whim of the creators. And they've chosen terribly. The whitewashed casting (which apparently is the case for every major character except Aramaki) is racist as fuck. No in-story or real world explanation for it can avoid that.

Who was doing the inflation adjusted WW box office list? Was that @peludo? What were his latest numbers. (IIRC, that's the most accurate anyone has been for comparing across eras.)

I'd say show your math, but I'll go with what Tele says and not demand that.

I... don't see how Trump will have any effect on the exchange rate.

Man, I hope you look forward to repeating this bit about how Avatar doesn't fit into normal production cycles for the next two years, because people really aren't going to get it. Well, you can do that rapid production cycle if you don't care about quality.

And George Clooney. It'll be directed by the Coen Brothers.

In five years we'll bemoan Mark Rylance doing the Mark Rylance schtick again. He'll be the next Christoph Waltz.

Actually, it could be that they realize that the teaser trailer was big mistake marketing-wise. It continued the action-sci-fi vibe of the Abrams films, which they thought would work, but instead gave them a lot of backlash, especially from the fans. However, if they know (and are cool with) the actual tone of the film being much more Trek-like, they may not want to risk dropping a trailer that has vastly different feel. It might appease fans, but it would also seem confusing to general viewers. The fan event gives them an out, though. By premiering it there, they already have a ready-made and theoretically enthusiastic audience. If it does click with them, they have a group that is set to evangelize the film from the get-go. And that could be far more effective than the standard, release on youtube just prior to a tentpole release and hope for the best. It's basically like they're putting their sales fuel in one place before setting it off. (There's also a possibility that the entire landscape of how to market films is changing. Because tentpoles are spreading across the calendar, it may behoove studios to actually wait to market until later than in the past in order to get the most impact. The "dead zones" of the year when you could get more conversation about distantly upcoming films are turning out to be not so dead.)

Jungle Book - 71m Barbarshop - 21m Criminal - 5m

Unfortunately, yes, and it can extend beyond CBMs. Really, anything where people have internalized their "brand" and so they take on an "us vs. them" position. (i.e. DC/Marvel, Fox/MCU, SW/Avatar, Tele/Baumer) Ban early and often. Curate the forum you want to moderate.

If you mean "only good thing" then, yeah.

As a technical exercise, this is an interesting film. It has a concept of presentation, and it embraces that wholeheartedly. The film promises to be a first-person perspective endeavor, and it delivers on that. Taken on that level, it's a film that can be appreciated. It is quite unlike anything that's come before, except for small sequences here and there. To be so dedicated to a concept is something that can be praised. Oftentimes, a creator will not be fully committed to their concept and will pull back, which delivers weaker experience. Not so, with Hardcore Henry. It is was it is, from start to finish. The problem, really, is that as a film, it isn't very good. It has some entertaining parts, but as a whole it's lackluster, derivative, and threadbare. Except for the gimmick, it has little to stand on that suggests it as a worthy experience. Really, the problems, are twofold. The first is technical. Or rather, it's biological. See, our human perspective on how we see and experience the world is not entirely visual. It's not something that can be broken down into a single sense. If you move about, flicking your view to different things, you aren't just seeing those things, you're also getting information from your other senses that affect how you perceive everything. Most importantly, you have an inherent sense of balance which your brain processes along with what you're seeing. If you look at something straight on, it looks right. If you tilt your head so that it's sideways, you have all this extra information so that it still looks correct. Movies are a presentation that's generally reduced to two senses. You get the visual, you get the audio. And that's it. THere's no feeling or smell. There's no balance. Even if the image on screen shifts so that the view is presented askew, you don't have that internal adjustment to tell you this. It looks odd. This isn't inherently a bad thing. An adept filmmaker can use that difference to heighten the effect of the film. But the filmmaker needs to be adept. They need to understand what the limitations and advantages of their presentation will be when contrasted to the actual human experience of watching the film. If they aren't doing that, then the experience becomes a burden on the viewer. In many cases, this isn't so much of an issue. Movies (and other experiences) are pretty culturally embedded. We start seeing moving pictures at a very early age, often before we can even talk. The standard TV viewing is so normal that we have learned and take it as a given about how it will work. So this gives some leeway But for newer tech, that's less of the case. We haven't learned and internalized how to process such things. And so a filmmaker could easily misstep. During the 3D boom you could see this a lot. Some filmmakers took the tech into account. They realized that some things you can do in traditional 2D presentations aren't always going to work for a 3D presentation and would make adjustments. Others wouldn't. They would film as they always had and you'd get a jumbled mess of rapid cuts which undermined the depth of field and led to a jarring amount of perspective shifts that left the eyes (and brain) tired from the viewer. The makes of Hardcore Henry have done the same. They haven't accounted for the lack of balance. They haven't really done anything to allow the viewer extra time needed to process the images. As with 3D, it's somewhat necessary to slow it down. Do away with the rapid cuts. Or at the very least, take into account the perspective lines so that when there is a cut, the viewer's eye won't need to rapidly shift to account for what's being seen. (The latter, of course, what done masterfully in MMFR, which does have many, many rapid cuts, but also isn't a burden, even in 3D, because they account for where the viewer is looking.) Because of all this, I didn't find that the film was something that took a little bit to get used to and then it was fine. In fact, it was the opposite. The early parts of the film were easy enough to take in, but as my eyes and brain became tired and strained, that was less of the case. About halfway through I was more disoriented, and by the end I even felt a bit queasy. Mostly I was struck by how lackluster an effort had been made to account for possible issues. If you need to avoid rapid cuts, for instance, why not tell a story that can mostly be told in the timeframe of your film runtime? (Another gimmick, but also one that's been done several times before.) Instead what we're left with is a film that repeatedly cuts out "boring bits" to speed things along, which mostly just gives the viewer visual confusion. Still, if that was the only sin of Hardcore Henry, it could perhaps be forgiven. New tech and all, so it's possible that the creators aren't completely clear on what needs to be accounted for. But the story. Oh, god, the story. Characters are paper thin. Motivations are absent and unexplained. Plot developments just happen without rhyme or reason. This isn't to say that the film needs to be layered and complex. Thin, simple stories that exist as the vehicle for the action are perfectly fine, but this is mostly non-sensical. Almost every development raised questions that aren't answered. So as the film went on, I began to just wonder about things that were never given an explanation. Why did the bad guy care about making a cyborg army when he had super telekinetic powers? Why did he have telekinetic powers in the first place? When would the love interest backstab Henry, because it was an obvious "twist" from the beginning? Actually, I'll come back to that last one in a moment. Mostly, if you are doing a thin story as a vehicle for the action, make sure your action is really top-notch. And other than the FPS gimmick, there isn't really much here to recommend the action besides the volume of violence. Henry fights guys and kills guys and the ways he does so aren't particularly novel or interesting, except we're seeing it from his perspective. After a while, there isn't a whole lot of wow factor. After more of a while, I was just confused about what was going on? Did Henry start to rip the bad guy's hand in two? I don't know, it wasn't clear enough to tell. But more than that, I just didn't care anymore. But going back to an earlier point. The love interest. Or rather, women in general. This film is terrible for its portrayal of women. Beyond the early realization that the love interest would backstab Henry at some point (and that such a twist wouldn't be a satisfying character development for anyone), there was also a sense of deep misogyny about the film. Women were objects. They exist entirely for the consumption and use of men, both the characters and the assumed viewer. None of them have depth. None of them have agency. (Why is love interest lady really with the big bad guy? We never know.) One standout moment came in the middle of a car chase sequence. Henry blows up a van with a grenade and is thrown into the air. He lands on the back of a motorcycle being driven by one of the femme fatale characters who just shows up for no explained reason. As he settles down, his hands run along her sides and then rest on her hips. Then he reaches forward and down, between her legs. It's a moment that purely exists for titillation. And then he grabs a gun that's there, pulls back and starts shooting. It's a little twist, but the entire framing was unnecessary. Why is the gun between her legs and not, say, on her hip? Because they wanted that possessive, sexual grab. Soon after, Henry leaps from the motorcycle. The femme fatale is discarded as a character. Whether she died or just disappeared isn't really clear, but it makes little difference either way. She existed for the adolescent pleasure of the creators and the viewer in her skintight catsuit. Once she served her purpose, there was no reason to keep her around. Mostly, the film as a whole felt like a video game. It had a video game plot, video game characters, video game fetch quests with maps and goals. It had a final boss who just exists for no reason except to be a final boss. Hardcore Henry is a low-grade sci-fi first person shooter that you'd expect to find in the bargain bin in three months. The only notable thing about it is it's a video game that was shot as a movie and projected on a movie screen. And when it did that, it removed the one thing that makes even poor video games palatable: the mechanics. Without the ability to control Henry, the viewer is just a passive observer. Which isn't very interesting. 2/5, but mostly because they did try had on the gimmick. And Sharlto Copley is entertaining when he hams it up.

The BFG is probably Dahl's most popular story that hasn't yet gotten a film adaptation. Also, it looks good from the trailer.

Well, after two weeks of preamble response gearing me up, I was pretty much sitting in the theater for the entire time asking myself "Am I enjoying this? How about this? What about this part? Is this enjoyable?" etc. And then answering "Maybe? But I can't tell because I think they fucked up the projector."

Now that I've had a night to think about it, I'm not actually sure if I liked the movie or not. And I don't think it's a case of really disliking it and being in denial. I really, honestly don't know. To be fair, though, after I saw Man of Steel the first time, I was unsure about the movie. Part of this, I think, is the presentation seemed to be very poor. The theater house lights never dimmed entirely. The sound mix seemed off. I think they had the aperture on the projector on incorrectly, which slightly cut off the top and bottom of the screen. (Noticeable in the scenes of news shows, where the bottom of the text was cut off.) And maybe they had the 3D grate down or something, because it seemed dim, especially compared to trailers I'd seen previously. So, fighting against a sub-par movie experience. And I don't want to hold that against the film itself. Still, this was an acknowledged mess. I came away mostly thinking that they did have a pretty strong idea of what they wanted their characters to present as... but had no real clue how to get those ideas across the best. Many of the scenes felt like they were sketched out without a clear beginning and end, and we're left with a feeling of a larger whole where we're only seeing a few random middle bits. It's not that the character motivations are lacking, just that the elements shown aren't what drive those points across. In a way, this is confusing, because when you strip it down, the plot of BvS is pretty great: Lex Luthor has a problem with Superman, so he sets up a Xanatos Gambit to put him in conflict with Batman. Eventually, they realize their error and team up. Unfortunately, in order to get this across, you need a strong bifurcated storyline: Superman's heroics need to progress in contrast with Batman's investigations. The two should advance in a way that feels like they're converging on the same point. Then you get the twist: instead of working separately against a common goal, they're actually at odds against each other. This is how you get the fight that feels both surprising and organic. Also, this should come to head at the end of Act 2. Act 3 is the team-up. The problem arises rather early. The entire Africa plotline feels needlessly busy and extraneous, especially since MoS already presented a very good reason for people to question Superman already. Then as the movie progresses, it seems to be too early when we're seeing Lex's gambit in action. Thus it isn't a surprise about what happens. Thus we get a confusing selection of character actions that are clearly leading somewhere, but the film itself doesn't seem clear on what that goal actually is. So here's what I think happened. I think David Goyer wrote a Man of Steel sequel. It was a Superman plot through and through. You can look at the throughline of Supes and Lex and see that it's pretty clear that exists. In this context, Lex's plan is entirely put public doubt in Superman, make him the blame of things going wrong (that are Lex's doing), and then when that doesn't work, bring out his ace in the hole, Doomsday, to kill Superman. Then WB got nervous and decided to add Batman into the mix. And all hell broke loose. Because by adding Batman, you need to account for his motivations. And while there is a disagreement plot to be had, it wasn't in the original script. So Goyer (and later Terrio) were doing the best they could with the plot at hand, but it was a confusing, tacked-on selection of motivations and character impetus that ultimately sets the original plot on a wobbly course. In fact, if you look at the film, the interactions between the two characters is pretty sketchy prior to the final fight. They meet at Lex's party (and in Batman's dream), but that's about it. It really feels like two different movies that more or less are happening at the same time. Or, perhaps more appropriately, this is a Superman movie that seems to star Batman for reasons that are not entirely clear from the film itself. It's entirely possible that the director's cut, with ample time to explore the motivations and plots, will clear up the confusion. It's not that they necessarily needed that extra time, but if they didn't have a clear plan from the get-go, it could help work through all the excess they were dealing with. We'll have to wait and see. Unfortunately, even if the DC is a vast improvement, it's not going to help. Most of the audience will see it in the theaters, and their opinions will be pretty firm. I doubt many are going to give it a second chance, especially if it's longer. With all that, what did I like? Well, I do like the cast. They're all pretty great, especially given the weirdly limited material they have to work with. Affleck makes a great Batman. Irons a great Alfred (in fact, he had most of the best lines in the film). Eisenberg is weirdly compelling at Lex. Adams as Lois continues to give me heart eyes. And Cavill continues to sell what is a difficult role. And, of course, Gal Gadot is amazing as Wonder Woman. Messy as the film is, it isn't confused at all when she's on screen. When she shows up for the final fight, everything just sort of clarifies. Even the entire tone of the music changes, as if to say, "This is what we are here for." And it is. The criticism of the DC films is that they're afraid of letting their heroes enjoy themselves. That's entirely absent with Wonder Woman. She fights and has fun at it. She alone is enough reason to be excited about what the DC films will bring in the future. I doubt I'll see BvS again theatrically. That's mostly for financial reasons, though. I really would like to give it a second shot in a presentation that isn't marred by the theater itself. I wonder if, like Man of Steel, it's something that I warm up to over time and begin to love. I'd also like to see the director's cut to see if that smooths out some of the story issues. Maybe if there's another $10 blu-ray at Best Buy. Still, I honestly don't know if I like it or not. ?/5

Hmm...

He might not be good, but he's pretty entertaining when he hams it up. Which is always.

I am here for gravity defiance.

Crap. Missed again. >_< Con recovery has not been going well this week.

Just because of the nature of production, I wouldn't be surprised if we have a whole new level of secrecy for this. It could make TFA look positively open in comparison.

Define "actors", "set", and "film".

Whoops. I was totally busy all day and missed doing my entries. Congrats whoever just beat me in the tourney.

Huh. So it's looking like BvS under Zootopia in China. Did anyone predict that a month ago?

Ugh. This weekend. This. Weekend. BvS - 165 MBFGW2 - 15

I didn't ask for it, but I'm happy to have it.