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Post by nucleusofswarm on Jan 18, 2020 2:15:06 GMT
Inspired by the man Aztec, I decided to do a spin on this thread, so as to share and discuss all your odd, unpopular or controversialfilm/TV opinions and theories. (Also as aztec said in the original, please keep things civil. This is just a place to shoot off, not at.)
Three Amigos does not hold up all that well: it's some fun scenes and gags, but pales compared to Blazing Saddles for great Western comedies. Chase, Martin and Short are trying, but it seems like Landis can't decide what styling and speed the comedy should be.
Jekyll & Hyde should've gotten another series - it was finding its voice in the last third and had some potentially fun directions to go with the mythos. However, Higson should've stepped back more as head writer, and it needed to commit harder to its Universal Monster superhero angle and have Hyde actually fight some recognisable monsters.
Tim Burton's Wonka is better than originally given credit for: yes, Wilder will always be king, but I do think this version has some genuine strengths (the songs, the production design and direction, the kids) and, more importantly, it doesn't just blindly copy the first film or try to shove in cutesy nods and references.
I kinda liked Primeval better in its first season, even though the writing and production value was better in 2 and 3 - that kind of scrapiness and lack of polish gave it a personality that the following seasons didn't have. It made the show feel more grounded, like the dinos felt like they could appear within your everyday surroundings, rather than more elaborate setpieces.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 18, 2020 10:19:32 GMT
Inspired by the man Aztec, I decided to do a spin on this thread, so as to share and discuss all your odd, unpopular or controversialfilm/TV opinions and theories. (Also as aztec said in the original, please keep things civil. This is just a place to shoot off, not at.)
Three Amigos does not hold up all that well: it's some fun scenes and gags, but pales compared to Blazing Saddles for great Western comedies. Chase, Martin and Short are trying, but it seems like Landis can't decide what styling and speed the comedy should be.
Jekyll & Hyde should've gotten another series - it was finding its voice in the last third and had some potentially fun directions to go with the mythos. However, Higson should've stepped back more as head writer, and it needed to commit harder to its Universal Monster superhero angle and have Hyde actually fight some recognisable monsters.
Tim Burton's Wonka is better than originally given credit for: yes, Wilder will always be king, but I do think this version has some genuine strengths (the songs, the production design and direction, the kids) and, more importantly, it doesn't just blindly copy the first film or try to shove in cutesy nods and references.
I kinda liked Primeval better in its first season, even though the writing and production value was better in 2 and 3 - that kind of scrapiness and lack of polish gave it a personality that the following seasons didn't have. It made the show feel more grounded, like the dinos felt like they could appear within your everyday surroundings, rather than more elaborate setpieces.
I was always thought the trailer for Three Amigos was trying too hard with the quick editing to sell it as funnier/more slapstick than it was, reminiscent to the opening titles of 'The Monkees'. It reminds me of the notorious misselling of that other Steve Martin film 'Parenthood', which made a great play of Steve Martin fooling around with the balloons, whereas the film was actually a drama about the family as a whole, with some comic relief from Martin. A good film, but not the one the trailer sold it to people as. Tim Burton's Wonka earns some Who related kudos for the presence of Deep Roy playing all of the Oompa Loompas - like his Mini Hoff advert, I enjoyed pointing out to family that it was 'Mr Sin' from Talons.
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Post by timegirl on Jan 25, 2020 21:58:16 GMT
While the tv series adaptation of Good Omens is mostly brilliant and I love a lot of it😊, the one major glaring flaw with it that annoys me so much is that they had an American narrator 😕 I know some of the other roles were played by Americans like Anathema( she didn’t fit my image of her being a quirky Northern witch but I thought she did well with the character despite this) and Shadwell ( who I thought was a good portrayal with hardly a hint of Americanisms), but it just felt extremely wrong to have something as British as Good Omens have an American narrator😕I have a massive pet peeve of when ever British stories or characters get Americanized ( I know this may sound hypocritical since I myself am American) but I think it waters down the personality of the work. The humor in the narrative of Good Omens is of such an intrinsically British breed ( similar to the humor in Hitchicker’s Guide) that it just falls flat out of the mouth of an American. It’s just wrong like casting an American to play the Doctor in Doctor Who or Americanizing half the cast of a movie adaptation of Hitchicker’s Guide( yes, that’s another one I have issues with) I feel bad hating her performance because I know Neil Gaiman picked that actress (I can’t remeber her name at the moment) personally to play God/narrator and I know she has given good performances in other things but I can’t help but thinking I would have preferred if they got say any of these options: Emma Thompson, Johanna Lumley, Judy Dench, Helen Mirren, Hugh Grant, Stephen Fry, Tom Baker, Paul McGann, Nick Briggs( who narrated the Radio drama adaptation) or Martin Jarvis ( who narrates the audiobook) or really any available British actor with a sense of humor and a good narrator voice!
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Post by Digi on Jan 25, 2020 22:20:35 GMT
My unpopular/odd takes:
1) I thought the series finale of the Ron Moore Battlestar Galactica was perfectly in line with the themes introduced at the very beginning of the show, and to this day I feel like people who hate on the ending weren't actually paying attention at the beginning.
2) I thought Game of Thrones started losing the plot in season 5, as they approached the end of the book material, and that it went completely off the rails in season 6 (I bailed at the end of season 6 and never watched it again). I felt more than a little bit of vindication when I started seeing all the complaints about season 8, but am baffled to have found a lot of those people still thinking there was nothing wrong with seasons 6 and 7.
3) Not that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a good movie (it really, really wasn't), but I roll my eyes at people whose chief criticism of it is that there were aliens. Hello? The movie that kicked off this franchise took it as read that the fictional Ark of the Covenant not only was real, but that it melts people's faces if you open it--and aliens are your biggest problem here?
4) There seem to be a lot of people who find The Hateful Eight boring. I am not one of those people. I love the heck out of that movie.
5) The Jedi of the PT era were tax-dodging, public-coffer-pilfering, baby-stealing, warmongerers who voluntarily chose to command a slave army, so they had Order 66 coming.
Crazy theories I like:
1) Skyfall kind of blew this idea away, but I always really dug the 'fan theory' that "James Bond" isn't their real name, it's just the identity that's assigned to MI6's 007 operative, and this is how/why they can do 20-odd films across decades and carry some actors across Bonds without remarking on the difference.
2) Ferris Bueller isn't real, he's Cameron imagining how he wishes he could be, as he lays in bed miserable about his life.
3) That "Future Guy" in Star Trek Enterprise was actually a future Captain Archer.
4) Tom Hardy's Max in Fury Road isn't actually Mel Gibson's Max, he's actually the feral kid from The Road Warrior.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2020 22:26:05 GMT
1) Skyfall kind of blew this idea away, but I always really dug the 'fan theory' that "James Bond" isn't their real name, it's just the identity that's assigned to MI6's 007 operative, and this is how/why they can do 20-odd films across decades and carry some actors across Bonds without remarking on the difference. Yes I've heard that fan theory. But it was actually discredited earlier, in For Your Eyes Only where we see Sir Roger Moore's Bond visit his wife's grave, it even has her year of death as 1969.
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Post by Digi on Jan 25, 2020 22:37:05 GMT
1) Skyfall kind of blew this idea away, but I always really dug the 'fan theory' that "James Bond" isn't their real name, it's just the identity that's assigned to MI6's 007 operative, and this is how/why they can do 20-odd films across decades and carry some actors across Bonds without remarking on the difference. Yes I've heard that fan theory. But it was actually discredited earlier, in For Your Eyes Only where we see Sir Roger Moore's Bond visit his wife's grave, it even has her year of death as 1969. A good point, I'd forgotten that.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2020 23:05:04 GMT
Yes I've heard that fan theory. But it was actually discredited earlier, in For Your Eyes Only where we see Sir Roger Moore's Bond visit his wife's grave, it even has her year of death as 1969. A good point, I'd forgotten that. Anya also mentions it in The Spy Who Loved Me as well, while they're in Egypt hunting down the microfilm ("Many lady friends, but married only once."). It's not my personal preference, but maybe the Moore Bond and Lazenby Bonds were actually rather close before he assumed the codename? It wouldn't be out of keeping with Moore's more gentlemanly version of the character to memorialise the sad events that, in part, gave him 00-status. Another theory I've heard is that, after Thunderball, the series separates into two continuities. One following You Only Live Twice and the other following On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The former being for more extravagant Bond films like Diamonds are Forever or Moonraker and the latter being for more down-to-earth entries like For Your Eyes Only or Licence to Kill.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2020 23:39:14 GMT
1) Skyfall kind of blew this idea away, but I always really dug the 'fan theory' that "James Bond" isn't their real name, it's just the identity that's assigned to MI6's 007 operative, and this is how/why they can do 20-odd films across decades and carry some actors across Bonds without remarking on the difference. Yes I've heard that fan theory. But it was actually discredited earlier, in For Your Eyes Only where we see Sir Roger Moore's Bond visit his wife's grave, it even has her year of death as 1969. Even before that, in Diamonds Are Forever, Connery's taken Tracy's death awfully badly if it happened to someone else called James Bond! I've always disliked the codename theory and really like that Skyfall just said "no...just no" by showing us Bond's family home and his parent's graves. I wonder what happened to Craig's Scottish accent? It was especially welcome after Quantum Of Solace where Bond throws a bone to the code name theorists by having Bond asking the dying Mathis if that was his real name, while holding him. It made it seem that pseudonyms were the basis of spies like they both were.
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Post by tuigirl on Jan 25, 2020 23:57:23 GMT
While the tv series adaptation of Good Omens is mostly brilliant and I love a lot of it😊, the one major glaring flaw with it that annoys me so much is that they had an American narrator 😕 I know some of the other roles were played by Americans like Anathema( she didn’t fit my image of her being a quirky Northern witch but I thought she did well with the character despite this) and Shadwell ( who I thought was a good portrayal with hardly a hint of Americanisms), but it just felt extremely wrong to have something as British as Good Omens have an American narrator😕I have a massive pet peeve of when ever British stories or characters get Americanized ( I know this may sound hypocritical since I myself am American) but I think it waters down the personality of the work. The humor in the narrative of Good Omens is of such an intrinsically British breed ( similar to the humor in Hitchicker’s Guide) that it just falls flat out of the mouth of an American. It’s just wrong like casting an American to play the Doctor in Doctor Who or Americanizing half the cast of a movie adaptation of Hitchicker’s Guide( yes, that’s another one I have issues with) I feel bad hating her performance because I know Neil Gaiman picked that actress (I can’t remeber her name at the moment) personally to play God/narrator and I know she has given good performances in other things but I can’t help but thinking I would have preferred if they got say any of these options: Emma Thompson, Johanna Lumley, Judy Dench, Helen Mirren, Hugh Grant, Stephen Fry, Tom Baker, Paul McGann, Nick Briggs( who narrated the Radio drama adaptation) or Martin Jarvis ( who narrates the audiobook) or really any available British actor with a sense of humor and a good narrator voice! Haha, great minds think alike- just started re-watching the series.
Well... I am also a huge fan of the book and also got the various audio versions. Since I am not a native speaker, I do not have too much of a problem with the American performers (at least I am not going to commit the cardinal sin and watch this in the dubbed German version... Real menace this, that they dub absolutely everything over here ). I think the American actors are doing a decent job. Yes, of course you are right and they could have gotten in more British talent, but honestly, I was already really happy seeing all these Doctor Who alumni popping up and playing a scene or two. I thought it was great. Also, Gaiman will have put some thought in his choice...
I think what is worse, and what is my only real critisism to this adaptation, is the decision to have Tennant play Crowley basically EXACTLY like the 10th Doctor. Down to the accent and verbal ticks. Crowley is a great character in his own right, and I think this portrayal does not do the character the justice he deserves. I can understand why they decided to do it this way (since the Doctor was Tennant's break-out role and he remains very popular), but I personally would have hoped for something different.
Otherwise this is a wonderful faithful adaptation. I like it.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 26, 2020 2:43:24 GMT
Yes I've heard that fan theory. But it was actually discredited earlier, in For Your Eyes Only where we see Sir Roger Moore's Bond visit his wife's grave, it even has her year of death as 1969. Even before that, in Diamonds Are Forever, Connery's taken Tracy's death awfully badly if it happened to someone else called James Bond! I've always disliked the codename theory and really like that Skyfall just said "no...just no" by showing us Bond's family home and his parent's graves. I wonder what happened to Craig's Scottish accent? It was especially welcome after Quantum Of Solace where Bond throws a bone to the code name theorists by having Bond asking the dying Mathis if that was his real name, while holding him. It made it seem that pseudonyms were the basis of spies like they both were. Well, he was raised by an Austrian climbing instructor before the Service. Even before that, his mother was Swiss and he studied in Germany and Switzerland. He probably picked up his current accent from there (or likely Eton before he was kicked out). Likely one of the assets which considered him for MI6, the less someone can tell where you come from the better.
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Post by nucleusofswarm on Jan 29, 2021 17:33:03 GMT
Revival!
I actually liked Three Stooges film the Farrellys made in 2012. Yes it's lowbrow, but then again, the Stooges weren't exactly renowned for being on the same playing field as the Marx Brothers when it came to wit - they were masters of big belly laughs. I think the three guys did spot on impressions and I think the slapstick works fine. Even what should be the worst part with the Jersey Shore is kind of amusing - seeing Moe whale on them was satisfying.
Out of Disney's Alice in Wonderland films, I think the best was Through The Looking Glass - I think it finds the best balance of weirdness and adventure (though by no means a great film, as it is otherwise very standard). The first Burton Alice was dull and a poor attempt to merge to fundamentally different authors (Carroll and Tolkien), while the original animated films is more a film of great moments and is more of an animation achievement, rather than being a great whole. It can't reconcile the oddity of the original's structure with the demands of a feature, and it's weirdly harsh and dismissive of Alice as a character.
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Post by whiskeybrewer on Jan 30, 2021 12:32:09 GMT
That Prometheus and Alien Covenant dont actually wipe AVP and AVPR from the continuity. Its David repeating the Engineers works and Peter Weyland rewrote his companies history
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Post by timegirl on Feb 1, 2021 22:18:35 GMT
1. I find the Matrix scarier than some horror movies I have watched. I had to watch the Matrix for a film class I was taking back at university and I thought it would just be a cool sci-fi movie with martial arts but then the beginning scared me so much I actually felt dizzy, vomited, and nearly passed out. Ever since then I am scared to try to rewatch that movie! I think some of the disturbing imagery caught me off guard because I wasn’t expecting it.
2. There are certain movies I usually only like to watch when I am by myself. Some of these include Labyrinth, Rocky Horror, Lair of the White Worm, and Beauty and the Beast. I have a lot more but it’s a long list. I don’t know why I am about certain movies but some movies I just like to be a completely private experience with no one walking in on me. Sometimes I make exceptions but these feel private to me. Does anyone else have this where their are certain movies they only like to watch by themselves and don’t like people walk in on them?
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Post by Deleted on Feb 2, 2021 7:57:33 GMT
Binge-watching and serialisation has kind of trained us more towards looking at television in the form of a continuous sequence. Seasons that have a throughline with a definitive beginning, middle and end. A lot of earlier shows don't have this, opting instead for standalone episodes, but I've found myself inadvertantly picking up informal finales. Stories that could've been picked at the time as grand farewells to their cast of characters and settings.
The Professionals -- Discovered in a Graveyard -- Gutshot by an assassin in his home, Doyle grapples with whether to live or die...
The Equalizer -- Prisoners of Conscience -- To save an abducted poet, McCall struggles against the man who killed his father...
The New Avengers -- Dead Men are Dangerous -- Steed becomes the focal point of a campaign of terror for something out of his past...
Return of the Saint -- the Collision Course two-parter -- The Saint sets his sights on stolen bullion somehow linked to a yacht known as the Brave Goose...
Star Trek: TOS -- Day of the Dove -- Tensions boil over as the Klingons lay siege to a divided Enterprise in a bloodthirsty fight to the death...
Star Trek: Voyager -- Living Witness1 -- The survivor of a repainted history may be the Voyager crew's only chance for vindication...
1 - Okay, Voyager does have an official finale, but "Living Witness" is honestly too good an episode to pass up as an epilogue to the seven years.
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Post by grinch on Feb 8, 2021 10:28:00 GMT
Personally, I find Black Mirror on the whole rather overrated and not at all groundbreaking like some claim.
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Post by mark687 on Feb 8, 2021 11:09:04 GMT
Personally, I find Black Mirror on the whole rather overrated and not at all groundbreaking like some claim. I Cant Stand Charlie Brooker Regards mark687
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Post by grinch on Feb 8, 2021 11:12:18 GMT
Personally, I find Black Mirror on the whole rather overrated and not at all groundbreaking like some claim. I Cant Stand Charlie Brooker Regards mark687 I’m sure he’s a lovely bloke in his personal life but I could never call him a visionary. Just all too heavy handed and grim in my opinion.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 8, 2021 12:09:46 GMT
I Cant Stand Charlie Brooker Regards mark687 I’m sure he’s a lovely bloke in his personal life but I could never call him a visionary. Just all too heavy handed and grim in my opinion. The comparison at the time, back in its heyday, between Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone rubbed me the wrong way for that reason. Both are unusual anthology series, true, but more than a few episodes of Twilight Zone were actually quite hopeful tales. Little moments of personal discovery for people down on their luck or otherwise wounded. "I Sing the Body Electric" comes to mind as a classic example.
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Post by grinch on Feb 8, 2021 12:24:16 GMT
I’m sure he’s a lovely bloke in his personal life but I could never call him a visionary. Just all too heavy handed and grim in my opinion. The comparison at the time, back in its heyday, between Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone rubbed me the wrong way for that reason. Both are unusual anthology series, true, but more than a few episodes of Twilight Zone were actually quite hopeful tales. Little moments of personal discovery for people down on their luck or otherwise wounded. "I Sing the Body Electric" comes to mind as a classic example. Something like Walking Distance would also be a good example. Black Mirror, despite what Mr Brooker might say, is just extremely cynical towards its approach regarding technology and those who use it. I’m not sure what the future holds for it as a programme (mainly because I’m not sure the new series was revived well) but I wonder how we will look back on it in years to come. Will we consider it as timeless and thought provoking as The Twilight Zone? Somehow I doubt it.
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Post by timegirl on Feb 8, 2021 21:03:19 GMT
Even though The Bride of Frankenstein is a masterpiece and I love it, I feel like they underused the bride. She’s an iconic character who appears for such a short amount of time. I am surprised there has never been a movie where she is the main character.
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