Last movie watched...

[Zenith 666]

Another toy story is in preproduction.

[I, Cosh]

A couple of quite different films. Both have strange, almost metaphysical connections at their heart. In one, that works really well; it was a bit more of a problem for me in the other. I didn't know a great deal about either of them before watching and I'd recommend doing the same if you can.

Upstream Colour was fantastic, but I'm not quite sure what to say about it. A film about people spiked with a psycho-active parasite which creates  an empathetic bond between its hosts and others. The main thing it shares with Primer, the director's previous film, is a disdain for explanations. The viewer is expected to keep up and try and make sense of some fairly bizarre connections.

Where Primer was cold and intent on making a virtue of its intricate timeline, this is more concerned with mood and feeling. Consciousnesses begin to merge in strange ways, not just between people, and trying to find the source of this becomes the key. You can't go back and look at a complicated diagram to figure out what was happening when but that actually seems to make thinking about it all the better.


Maybe I've not been paying enough attention to the trailers lately. It was really refreshing seeing a big effects heavy film, Interstellar in this case, which hadn't had every sequence spoiled by the internet. There were entire actors I had no idea were even in it.

It's a film of three halves: the post-crash Earth I'd seen in the trailer, the space porn that hinted at and the third bit. It's a long film (there was even a fifteen minute intermission) and while it could have been edited down, I didn't ever feel it dragged. It has the typical Nolan serious, some might say po-faced, tone which I find quite endearing for the most part but some might disagree. Even the cool robots manage to be light relief without ever being anything so crude as funny. So, two thirds or more are really enjoyable spectacle. That final part has a pretty big flaw running through it, unfortunately.

That love can save the day is all well and good but it doesn't sit well with the big speeches about scientific enquiry and proof at the start. I have to confess that the aforementioned seriousness is severely undermined by an ending which I couldn't help compare to [spoiler]Bill telling Ted to remember to go back in time, steal his dad's spare keys and then leave them ... right behind this sign, dude![/spoiler] Still nice to see on the big screen. Kind of wish I'd seen it on IMAX.

[Theblazeuk]

Finally caught Godzilla.

S'alright! Agree with most comments already made - though not too bothered about the lack of the big G himself so much as the short life span of [spoiler]Bryan Cranston[/spoiler].

[ThryllSeekyr]

I saw The Birdman with Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Emma Stone and a barely recognisable Zach Galifianakis yesterday evening at my local cinema.

I have a lot to say about this film, but just for now I will only say that after I was treated to this visual of the interior of this small apartment in New York with a mostly unclothed Michael Keaton with his back to the audience floating about a foot or two above the floor in crouched lotus like position. Obviously meditating and there are the first words of his internal monologue.....

HOW DID WE END UP HERE.....

THIS PLACE IS HORRIBLE.....

SMELLS LIKE BALLS!

(In a almost familiar sound byts of his old Batman voice!)

I could almost imagine that voice being used for saying stuff like....

EYES WITHOUT LIFE.....

SUNDERED HEADS....

PILES OF CARCASSES....

THESE ARE PLEASING THINGS TO ME!

Then get up and gets dressed and goes to work, his apartment appears to be part of the broad way theatre where he works as a thespian who was once the  star of television sho or series of films about a costumed superhero called the Birdman and it isn't until I see him in the film later on following his other self obviously the source of his Batman voice dressed in his Birdman suit and imaginary. That I start thinking of a character I had created for the City of Heros/Champions Online game. It was some flying mutant hero that could do martial arts  and was wearing a costume that complete covered his body and gave him the appearance of a golden feathered Eagle shaped like a man. I really tried to pass this hero off as this raptorial bird of prey that had been mutated into taking on a more human shape and called it Rara-Avis a name stolen from the Garou term for the hybrid birdman shape a Corax takes. (One of the other animal shape-shifters from Werewolf : The Apocalypse!) and later dropped. It also happens to be Latin for Strange-Bird.

Really, this online role-playing-character was really based on a old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles role playing game character who was also a mutant hybrid Eagle-Man who knew martial-arts, firearms and stunt driving. Where I had rolled the dice so well on his financial background that he was robbed by the other player charcte4r in my group after theyhad set him free from the bio-genetics facility where he was tampered with as a hatchling and he escaped with some gear I purchased with his starting money. Some firearms, a flame-thrower, custom made combat-armour and a sports car. (I really wanted a Harrier-Jump-Jet and pilots licence!) and they caught up to him after sending the mutant Cheetah-Man with super-enhanced speed to run after him. He eventually caught up to me and leaped though my car's back window. Now, because how well our game-master could exploit the rules of his own game and how well I didn't know them. I was only able to have a small single shot weapon sitting next to my character while all the other stuff was locked in the boot. He told me I had to nominate what he had sitting right next to him and also added that it would ne much as my character rushing to escape.

He also rushed me, during character generation and while I was spending all
the money. Which didn't all get spent. So, my character was carrying more money that the other players could split between themselves after he was robbed.

Yes, this mutant Mink-Man shot him right in the face after a successful sneak roll. Apparently Mutant-Eagles don't hear very well, as.............

CONTINUED LATER....HOPEFULLY BEFORE THE DAY IS DONE.....

[Keef Monkey]

Upstream Colour was fantastic, but I'm not quite sure what to say about it. A film about people spiked with a psycho-active parasite which creates  an empathetic bond between its hosts and others. The main thing it shares with Primer, the director's previous film, is a disdain for explanations. The viewer is expected to keep up and try and make sense of some fairly bizarre connections.

Love this movie, has a really hypnotic rhythm to it and a brilliant score to boot which I listen to quite often.

[Tiplodocus]

OUTPOST III - Rise of the Spetznaz
Despite never having seen any other OUTPOSTS, this was on my Watchlist for some reason. Nazis and Zombies sounds like a winning combination so I gave it a watch.

It's unpleasantly, and not particularly inventively, gory but it does have a sense of kinetic energy (it's basically just a chase and then a bloke fighting his way out of a series of corridors). There's not much colour to the script - a lot of the characters (especially the spitting villain) seem to have been given lines and beats similar to those in other better movies.

I never figured out why it was called Rise of the Spetznaz but I did figure out why it was on my watch list when I got to the end credits.  Comic strip panels by, and a credit for concept art for, one Alex Ronald of this parish.  (He's the real "Our Alex", not this garland chap). I must have heard about it backaways and added it to the list.

And that connection immediately made me realise what a humourless exercise the whole thing was.  Surely, if you are going to open a can of stupid by having zombies and nazis together in a movie, then why not go the whole hog and make it funny.

[Tiplodocus]

FAST AND FURIOUS
(no "THE"s)
I think this is number four in the series that has become my new guilty pleasure (ousting Resident Evil films).

These are actually about a thousand times better than RESI films; there are characters, people have arcs, you occassionally get "emotion" displayed by the leads and the production values are miles better.  But like a RESI film, you could take clips from one movie and easily slot it in another and nobody would notice.

Anyway, jolly good fun; a nice opening stunt/heist before the plot proper kicks in, a couple of racing sequences that are cleverly integrated into the plot and a riciculous mine cart chase finale.  The "twist" [spoiler]about the villain[/spoiler] isn't much of a twist but Diesel and the very handsome Walker make the most of what they've got.

I've also not watched them in order or, indeed all of them, (Five, Six and now four) so what I think is economical story telling and trusting the viewer to fill in the gaps reagrding Lettie's character may have been explained to death in previous installments. 

Looking forward to SEVEN now. Shame about Paul Walker though,

[Goaty]

The Pact
As watch it on Netflix last night, at start I did thought, looks slow and not much... then [spoiler]where that girl gone?? [/spoiler]And for final twist,[spoiler] that I didn't expect! [/spoiler]

[radiator]

Also watched Sightseers, which was certainly not uplifting. Not sure what I expected, and I have a lot of love for darkly comic tales but we were just looking for something funny to watch and it was in the comedy section of Netflix. Sooooo we were a bit taken aback when it turned out to be grim as hell. There's humor in there, but the darker stuff got under our skin more than expected so we didn't find much to chuckle about. It was all just a bit upsetting really. It feels weird saying that, because as I say, nasty horror comedies are a thing I seek out generally, so not sure why this one was so unsettling. Maybe the approach to the violence was just a little too real and felt grimy and horrible...I don't know.

Really? It's been a while since I saw it, but I thought it was hilarious from start to finish, didn't think it was depressing in the slightest.

Went to see Wild over the weekend, I think mainly because of the local interest factor (it was largely  filmed in Oregon where I live). It's based on the autobiography of Cheryl Strayed, a young woman who decides to get over her many personal problems by walking 1000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail.

Wasn't sure of what to expect but I was really impressed with it - quite blown away in fact. Certain aspects of the plot really hit me quite hard due to some parallels with my own life, but it's also got plenty of moments that made me laugh out loud. Was particularly impressed with the editing and sound editing (which isn't the kind of thing I normally notice), and even at 110 minutes it didn't feel overlong (in truth it ended just as I was starting to want it to wrap up, which is pretty perfect). It reminded me a little of 127 Hours, but I thought it was far better than that film. Reese Witherspoon is amazing in it as the lead - it's a pretty transparent Oscar bid, but is none the less effective for it.

And the wince-inducing opening scene is one for the ages.

5/5.

[ThryllSeekyr]

I saw The Birdman with Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Emma Stone and a barely recognisable Zach Galifianakis yesterday evening at my local cinema.

I have a lot to say about this film, but just for now I will only say that after I was treated to this visual of the interior of this small apartment in New York with a mostly unclothed Michael Keaton with his back to the audience floating about a foot or two above the floor in crouched lotus like position. Obviously meditating and there are the first words of his internal monologue.....

HOW DID WE END UP HERE.....

THIS PLACE IS HORRIBLE.....

SMELLS LIKE BALLS!

(In a almost familiar sound byts of his old Batman voice!)

I could almost imagine that voice being used for saying stuff like....

EYES WITHOUT LIFE.....

SUNDERED HEADS....

PILES OF CARCASSES....

THESE ARE PLEASING THINGS TO ME!

Then get up and gets dressed and goes to work, his apartment appears to be part of the broad way theatre where he works as a thespian who was once the  star of television sho or series of films about a costumed superhero called the Birdman and it isn't until I see him in the film later on following his other self obviously the source of his Batman voice dressed in his Birdman suit and imaginary. That I started thinking of a character I had created for the City of Heros/Champions Online game. It was some flying mutant hero that could do martial arts  and was wearing a costume that complete covered his body and gave him the appearance of a golden feathered Eagle shaped like a man. I really tried to pass this hero off as this raptorial bird of prey that had been mutated into taking on a more human shape and called it Rara-Avis a name stolen from the Garou term for the hybrid birdman shape a Corax takes. (One of the other animal shape-shifters from Werewolf : The Apocalypse!) and later dropped. It also happens to be Latin for Strange-Bird.

Really, this online role-playing-character was really based on a old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles role playing game character who was also a mutant hybrid Eagle-Man who knew martial-arts, firearms and stunt driving. Where I had rolled the dice so well on his financial background that he was robbed by the other player charcte4r in my group after theyhad set him free from the bio-genetics facility where he was tampered with as a hatchling and he escaped with some gear I purchased with his starting money. Some firearms, a flame-thrower, custom made combat-armour and a sports car. (I really wanted a Harrier-Jump-Jet and pilots licence!) and they caught up to him after sending the mutant Cheetah-Man with super-enhanced speed to run after him. He eventually caught up to me and leaped though my car's back window. Now, because how well our game-master could exploit the rules of his own game and how well I didn't know them. I was only able to have a small single shot weapon sitting next to my character while all the other stuff was locked in the boot. He told me I had to nominate what he had sitting right next to him and also added that it would ne much as my character rushing to escape.

He also rushed me, during character generation and while I was spending all
the money. Which didn't all get spent. So, my character was carrying more money that the other players could split between themselves after he was robbed.

Yes, this mutant Mink-Man shot him right in the face after a successful sneak roll. Apparently Mutant-Eagles don't hear very well, as.............

CONTINUED LATER....HOPEFULLY BEFORE THE DAY IS DONE.....

CONTINUEING.......

He also rushed me, during character generation and while I was spending all
the money. Which didn't all get spent. So, my character was carrying more money that the other players could split between themselves after he was robbed.

Kind of like when Booga swaps out Takashi's high cards with low ones before he can play them :/ from Revenge of the Nerds

My mutant Eagle-Man was still alive, but I guess his beak was either shot-off or broken looking. Most possibly cracked. The Mink-Man's pulled stunt similar to George Berger's (Treat Williams) from the film Hair the musical. As he did sneak around a car they had stopped to make off with Sheila (Beverly D'Angelo) the rich debutante. Totally fooling the poor driver.  (I would have liked the scene if I could have found it on You-Tube. Otherwise find a copy of the film version of Hair. Never as good as any for the stage versions. Especially the one, I went and saw with some friends ages ago. )

and he considering his options when shadow of this very ominous Mutant-Elephant from the sliding door of the van that was following me. His face was as large and as elephantine as the rest of his body. Despite the lack of a trunk, which allowed it to pass for a oversized human. There was also another Mutant-Cheetah (They were both twins!) and Mutant-Ant-Eater (Or Porcupine). All of them had some sort of ordinance with melee weapons. While the latter carried a lap top with related computer para-phenalia.

They took all my stuff after I surrended (Dumb move on my part...should have put up a fight...might have won! As I was still finding out stuff about my character......huge combat modifiers for flying!)  and left him with a small faulty hand gun and hand-axe. (I then drew a picture of my Mutant-Eagle holding this hand axe (Drawn to look almost exactly like Slaine's aloft with the  small hand gun in the other hand.)

Then we went on a raid......Although, I forget most of details, I do recall getting the drop on a security guard  with the axe.  I (My character has a something like A natural  +15 while flying at full speed with the axe!). He didn't know what hit him.....that was the only game of that we played.

Wonder why?

I was thinking of getting my character's stuff back, but otherwise didn't know why he would try. It's just a personal thing more to do with me as a player......

I had given that Mutant-Eagle the real name of a some now expired lead singer of a local rock band.

Getting back to what I talking about...

He was following himself while dressed as this Birdman superhero he used to be in his younger days.

The movie is pretty slow at the beginning as I began to regret forking out for ticket to see this one. Not really my kind of film....Emma Stone character was his daughter, Edward Norton a friendly rival who I thought might have ben his son (Until I saw him and Emma's character engaged in some friendly small talk that got to the stage where their trist might have got more interesting. (Yeah, I've lead a sheltered existence!) Actaully, seeing them all in the same scenes together had me thinking what really goes on between actors/actress's working so close to each other behind the scenes!)

Now, you may know about stuff I've said about this other role playing game called Werewolf: The Apocalypse. About these natural born werewolves called Garou who can sometimes communicate with the spirits and even cross over into the sprit world. It's basically because they are really beings that are part spirit themselves. (If you believe that aside from regular mortals having a weaker connection with the spirit world themselves.)

Anyway, Garou can cross over into this neighbouring plane of existence as they disappear from the so called real world without having to die in the process. This place is a reflection of the so called real world referred to as the Penumbra. While the spirit world in it's entirety is known as the Umbra which connects the local Penumbra to other alternative foreign planes of existence and short cuts to other places that would normally take along time tor travel to in the so called real word.

Everything in the Penumbra the same as it is on our side of the world. Although, things little or no spiritual significance don't exist there.

I keep using the term So-called real world, because the Penumbra in some ways is more real because it's kind of like a backstage for this so called real world which would be the theatre stage it self. That's how the sprit world works, and it's responsible for keeping reality real in this game world based on our own.

That's what I thought when I saw actors/actress's in this film sometimes as thespian's on stage and then moving to back stage or off the stage to walk or perform amongst the audience within the theatre or go out side to walk up or down the street or cross the road.

See this film, if you like that sort of stuff, and they're is really crazy shit happening towards the end of it as well.

If I say anything more, I would be just spoiling it for you.

[radiator]

Apropos of nothing, here's a clip from one of my favourite films: Planes, Trains and Automobiles:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU0CuPH7akM

[I, Cosh]

Saw Fury tonight and found it absolutely gripping. I had some initial misgivings that it was going to be all horrors of war. In the end, it managed to tread a pretty fine line between being quite matter of fact about some brutal things while also embracing all that great camaraderie stuff which war films are all about and some pretty intense battle scenes.

One thing I really liked was that the final battle wasn't some massive assault or key operation but just an accidental, almost inconsequential engagement. To be honest, I had thought there was still a good third of the film to go and only realised this was it as the waves of Nazis kept rolling in.

FURY..... it's very brutal retelling of one of our world wars fought in northern Europe between American's and Germans on French soil
...stuff about lasers....
Then this guy ... walks up behind the film's main protagonist (Retelling the story as he remembered) and pats him on the back congradulating his very first kiss with a French woman.....

Let me see if I've got this straight.

The film is set in Germany; all the civilians they meet speak German; they talk about having killed Germans in Africa, France, Belgium and now Germany; the intro text talks about Hitler ordering every man, woman and child to fight to defend the Fatherland (which is Germany) and we later see the consequences of not doing so for some Germans. On top of this emphasis is placed on Brad Pitt's character being able to speak German, which we see him doing to various prisoners, soldiers and civilians, including an extended scene in a German woman's home in a German town where he speaks German to her and her daughter/niece (who also sings in German while the rookie plays piano) because they are German.

But it's in France.

[ThryllSeekyr]

Saw Fury tonight and found it absolutely gripping. I had some initial misgivings that it was going to be all horrors of war. In the end, it managed to tread a pretty fine line between being quite matter of fact about some brutal things while also embracing all that great camaraderie stuff which war films are all about and some pretty intense battle scenes.

One thing I really liked was that the final battle wasn't some massive assault or key operation but just an accidental, almost inconsequential engagement. To be honest, I had thought there was still a good third of the film to go and only realised this was it as the waves of Nazis kept rolling in.

FURY..... it's very brutal retelling of one of our world wars fought in northern Europe between American's and Germans on French soil
...stuff about lasers....
Then this guy ... walks up behind the film's main protagonist (Retelling the story as he remembered) and pats him on the back congradulating his very first kiss with a French woman.....

Let me see if I've got this straight.

The film is set in Germany; all the civilians they meet speak German; they talk about having killed Germans in Africa, France, Belgium and now Germany; the intro text talks about Hitler ordering every man, woman and child to fight to defend the Fatherland (which is Germany) and we later see the consequences of not doing so for some Germans. On top of this emphasis is placed on Brad Pitt's character being able to speak German, which we see him doing to various prisoners, soldiers and civilians, including an extended scene in a German woman's home in a German town where he speaks German to her and her daughter/niece (who also sings in German while the rookie plays piano) because they are German.

But it's in France.

I'm might be just guessing, but the lines between both places might have been a little blurred during the war.......

[Keef Monkey]

Also watched Sightseers, which was certainly not uplifting. Not sure what I expected, and I have a lot of love for darkly comic tales but we were just looking for something funny to watch and it was in the comedy section of Netflix. Sooooo we were a bit taken aback when it turned out to be grim as hell. There's humor in there, but the darker stuff got under our skin more than expected so we didn't find much to chuckle about. It was all just a bit upsetting really. It feels weird saying that, because as I say, nasty horror comedies are a thing I seek out generally, so not sure why this one was so unsettling. Maybe the approach to the violence was just a little too real and felt grimy and horrible...I don't know.

Really? It's been a while since I saw it, but I thought it was hilarious from start to finish, didn't think it was depressing in the slightest.

The more I think about it the more I think it was just the wrong film on the wrong night really. Probably more to do with the mood of the room than the actual movie perhaps! We were both pretty knackered and stressed and decided to stick something light and funny on to lift our spirits and it wasn't what we were after. Hard to explain, think we just didn't tune into the humor or click with it that night, so it just wasn't sitting right. Will definitely give it another go at some point.

It didn't help that early on [spoiler]a dog dies.[/spoiler] Amy has no problem with gore or violence and we watch a lot of horror together but that's the one single thing that upsets her, I think because her [spoiler]family dog was really badly injured when she was young.[/spoiler] It's the one thing that changes the mood of the room like that when we're watching something so I felt pretty bad for picking it. The only time we've ever had to switch a horror film off was actually V/H/S/2, because of the [spoiler]segment shot from the dog's perspective.[/spoiler]

Sounds silly probably, but I guess we've all got our buttons and triggers, was a bit hard to get into the film after that I guess.

[Jim_Campbell]

I'm might be just guessing, but the lines between both places might have been a little blurred during the war.......

Everyone speaking German would usually be a pretty clear indication as to which side of the French/German border you were on.