So what have you started reading/watching/listening fully intending to enjoy but never actually made it to the end of... (not stuff that you haven't seen or have no intention of seeing)
Books
ON THE ROAD - Jack Kerouack. "Then we went here and did this. Then we went there. Then we went back here." Yawn.
BLEAK HOUSE - Charles Dickens. "And then the key witness sponataneoulsy combusted". Even a coincidence too far for Dickens.
Film
FROM HELL - I've tried three times now. First time, I stopped at the first scene of Aberline doing drugs and second time it was him having visions (or was it the other way round)
ULTRA VIOLET - Started watching last night with the full intention of lots Mila goodness but just couldn't watch...
Television
HEROES - No, lost it in Season 2.
V (the new one) - Didn't grab me after three episodes.
Book-wise, I didn't get very far at all into The Eiger Sanction, which I enjoyed the Eastwood film of, mainly due to its god awful writing. I'm all for cheesy 70s books (I've all but one of the Shaft books), but I draw the line at vomit-inducing stuff like this (which is paraphrased, but basically how it is).
[Female Special Agent] Dr Hemlock, I'm Special Agent (Whatever her name is). I've been assigned to overlook things.
[Hemlock] Yes. I can tell that you will be good.
[Female Special Agent] At my job? I like to think so.
[Hemlock] No. When we make love.
Cue Special Agent getting angry at his comment then immediately doing an about-face and stepping out of her knickers.
Films - The Nightmare Before Christmas and Chinatown - fall asleep everytime, without fail. They both have a very strange soporific effect on me. Blood Simple used to do the same, but I made it through in the end. It's not even that I dislike any of the above - I'm generally a fan of Tim Burton/stop-motion animation, Jack Nicholson/Polanski/noir and The Coen Brothers. Strange. Like white noise ot something, they just knock me out.
Films I've walked out of the cinema or switched off at home - Transformers (walked out when Bumblebee 'urinated' all over John Turturro), Charlie and the Chocolate factory (just to contradict what I said above), Once (utter garbage), Into the Wild (can't relate to this portrayal of rich american kid burning money then setting off in to the wilderness only to die stupidly on a bus) and Resident Evil: Apocalypse (turned it off after 20 minutes - just terrible).
Books - The Two Towers & American Gods.
TV - yep, Heroes.
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 01 March, 2011, 12:29:05 PM
ULTRA VIOLET - Started watching last night with the full intention of lots Mila goodness but just couldn't watch...
I've made it to the end once upon a time, but tried to give it a rewatch last night too! I adore Milla, she's top of The List for me, and she does look incredible in the movie BUT I still can't watch it. It's truly atrocious, an absolute mess. We were talking last night about how it feels like the 4th in a franchise, it's so laden with backstory and recappery. I can't quite fathom just how much of a dogs dinner it is. I think it's the guy who made Equilibrium, which I know isn't exactly a masterpiece but I did like that movie a lot so looked forward to this. Rotten.
Quote from: Tiplodocus on 01 March, 2011, 12:29:05 PM
BLEAK HOUSE - Charles Dickens. "And then the key witness sponataneoulsy combusted". Even a coincidence too far for Dickens.
But that's the best bit!
TV: Supernatural - gave up a couple of episodes into the current series. Utterly tiresome television.
Heroes - about four or five episodes into the last series I stopped watching. Awful.
Farscape - the one with the team winning a legal argument on a technologically advanced planet of lawyers by setting a stick on fire with lasers like in a fairytale and the lawyers get scared and drop the charges.
Law and Order: Los Angeles - the episode where a woman gets her just desserts for being an adulteress by having her kids burned to death in a drug fire caused by a blonde blue-eyed muslim terrorist lady who only wants to be loved by a man, a man who uses the freedoms America gives him to run it down. I know this is coming from me, but the writers of this show really need to get out more. Maybe feed the ducks, speak to a non-white person now and then - it'll do them good.
Books:
Dunction Wood: I like the story, but the writing is soooooo bad and the language dull. Still, I'm about three quarters of the way through and pick it up now and then - because I'm determined to finish it. So maybe next year this won't apply anymore.
The Bible: Oh, I've read the end. And the beginning. After the Old Testament, God becomes a wuss- and frankly, boring. So I skipped all that New Testament nonsense and got to Revelations, the good stuff. Sadly, I will probably never finish the Bible.
Movies:
Walked out of Transformers as well. Fell asleep during Where the Wild Things are.
Television:
I haven't got much use for television. Struggled through The Walking Dead, but made it through all SIX tedious episodes. I do like the new V series, but apparently I'm in the vast minority.
Most recently: Rama II by arthur clarke and gentry lee. A horrible, boring, rerun of the first book but with all the fun and wonder taken out. Just about the worst sequel ive ever experienced.
more generally, the first lord of the rings. I actually threw this one actoss the room, kicked it about, and put it in the bin rather than risk anyone seeing it on one of my shelves.
Films: the godfather, the second lord of the rings film, wolf creek (godawful, amateur cack). I walked out of gladiator in the cinema when the tigers appeared, to get to an appointment, and have never been interested enough to revisit, and recently turned off the zombie chronicles after three quarters of an hour, after deciding a quid was too much to pay for someone's home movies.
I tried the new V, gave up after two. Ditto true blood, and outcasts after one. The sarah jane adventures i lasted as far as one story of series two, before my desire to slap the entire cast, and everyone involved, grew too strong.
SBT
Observe and Report - I find watching an unfunny comedy excruciating, especially if you're watching with a group, and doubly so if you're the one who recommended it. I had to switch Observe and Report off after twenty minutes it was making me cringe so much. I'd been informed it was an underrated and misunderstood satirical black comedy - it's none of those things.
The Scott Pilgrim graphic novels - borrowed the first two from the library and returned them before finishing book two. Would probably think they were great if I were 15 years old and had never seen the likes of Spaced do the same sort of thing but infinitely better.
Alan Moore's A Small Killing - tried to read it a few times, and never managed to get to the end. I think the biggest stumbling block for me was the ugly, garish and dated artwork.
Robo-Hunter - bought the Droid Files 01, which promptly went on eBay, unfinished. Much as I love Wagner, Grant and Gibson, this series just isn't my cup of tea.
Aliens Vs Predator: Race War - I remember paying the best part of £20 for this about ten years ago, and being unable to slog through it. Turgid, incoherent, pretentious nonsense that bore little resemblance to either of it's source properties.
Heroes and Lost I had enough of after the first series of each.
By far the thing I tend to abandon before the finish line is games, especially long-winded RPGs and the like - I get really addicted to them, spend every waking hour playing them, then very suddenly lose interest right before the last dungeon/boss and never play them again. I've done this with several of the Final Fantasy and Zelda series. I think it's because I enjoy the journey more than reaching the destination.
QuoteAliens Vs Predator: Race War - I remember paying the best part of £20 for this about ten years ago, and being unable to slog through it. Turgid, incoherent, pretentious nonsense that bore little resemblance to either of it's source properties.
Actually a quick check on Amazon confirms that it was called
Deadliest of the Species and was written by Chris Claremont.
Tips' stand up ;)
What about stuff that's meant to be good rather than accepted rubbish? On this list:-
Catch 22.
Apocalypse Now.
Braveheart (We might be Scottish, but the wife and I wanted to leave after the first hour. We sat through the next hour using the logic: "Everyone says it's great. It must get better." It didn't.)
Dead Space Same old meh. I'm going to try again soon as the sequel gets good reviews.
All Superman stuff (apart from Superman 2). Dullest hero ever? Seriously, where's the drama in an all powerful immortal do-gooder?
I have never made it to the end of any Shakespeare work. Not even in English class at school. Even our teacher got bored of getting us through King Lear so he cracked out an old film adaption. We didn't make it to the end of that either, the teacher fell asleep and the class quietly buggered off.
QuoteApocalypse Now.
Me too! Never managed to watch it all the way through - a boring and meandering mess of a film.
Books:
I was going to say that slogging through all six volumes of The Faerie Queen for my degree meant that I could get to the end of anything, and then I remembered that I went to my tutor in my second year and literally begged to be set a different essay so that I didn't have to read the whole of Joyce's Ulysses. I can't honestly think of another work of prose fiction I've abandoned without finishing, although some have been a bitter struggle to the end!
Film:
American Beauty; American Pie. At the point where I realized that I gave not the slightest shit that they had just [spoiler]killed Trinity[/spoiler], I very nearly got up and walked out of Matrix: Revolutions, and kind of wish I had.
TV Series:
Oh, God... Southland; V; BSG*; Stargate: Universe; all the CSIs; 24 when I realized that I just couldn't be bothered to watch the last two episodes of Day 4 that I'd recorded...
Cheers
Jim
*I gave BSG up 2/3 of the way through Series 1, was persuaded to give it another go for, I think, Series 3 and stuck with it to the end, only to conclude that I was right the first time.
Oh, yeah, I forgot about just about every Coen Brother's film. I've started all of the following and given up on them (thans to Rog for the list!)
Blood Simple
Raising Arizona
Barton Fink
The Hudsucker Proxy
The Big Lebowski
O Brother, Where Art Thou
No Country for Old Men
Burn After Reading
In fact, the only one I have sat through was Fargo. And I didn't like it.
I've tried The Big Lebowski half a dozen times. No luck.
Quote from: SmallBlueThing on 01 March, 2011, 01:46:20 PM
recently turned off the zombie chronicles after three quarters of an hour, after deciding a quid was too much to pay for someone's home movies.
SBT, is that the "film" by Mark and John Polonia?
Quote from: The Enigmatic Dr X on 01 March, 2011, 02:17:56 PM
I've tried The Big Lebowski half a dozen times. No luck.
I'm generally kindly disposed towards the Coens, having seen and liked Miller's Crossing, Raising Arizona, Barton Fink and O Brother Where Art Thou, and liked all of them for different reasons.
The Big Lebowksi, however, bored the living shit out of me and I remain utterly mystified as to why so many people whose taste I generally respect speak highly of it. Clearly, I'm missing
something, but whatever it is, I just can't find it. In this category, see also: Quentin Tarantino, whose best film is True Romance, by virtue of his not having directed it and Tony Scott de-too-clever-by-half-ing the narrative. Others' mileage, clearly, may vary.
Cheers!
Jim
Movies:
Apocalypse Now, Once Upon a Time in America, Once upon a Time in the West, Pat Garret and Billy The Kid
because they're always on so late I fall fast asleep. I WILL see them in their entirety someday
Comics:
Maus...just lost interest
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen:The Black Dossier....must try again
TV:
I've given up watching series' ..always end up missing episodes
Quote from: locustsofdeath! on 01 March, 2011, 02:24:34 PM
SBT, is that the "film" by Mark and John Polonia?
No, someone called Brad Sykes. Shot on someone's low-rent video camera, edited with no thought to ambient sounds (putting the camera in a wind tunnel and then inter-cutting to the same scene shot out of the wind, then not redubbing), some people pretending to be actors and zombies from a joke shop.
SBT
Aha! Check out the imdb page - Mark and John Polonia were the editors, and one of them played in the segment with a redneck soldier returning from the grave (?) ...I saw this is a movie theater. The Polonias (John has passed away) are from buttcracksville PA and have made many, many terrible shot on video movies. Almost everyone in the area (NE Pennsylvania) has starred into one of their "films". I was going to shoot one of them as a favor to one of their "stars", a guy named Bob Dennis, but then John died and the project was scrapped - probably for the better of film viewers everywhere. Anyway, small world, ha ha.
Quote from: The Enigmatic Dr X on 01 March, 2011, 02:05:06 PMAll Superman stuff (apart from Superman 2). Dullest hero ever? Seriously, where's the drama in an all powerful immortal do-gooder?
I'm a big Superman fan, but considering the most recent exposure to the character is either the appalling Smallville (a show I compulsively watch because no matter how bad you think it is
it keeps getting worse) and the bizarre gay metaphor of Superman Returns, I understand where you're coming from. Inventive writing and an appreciation for the strengths of the character
can make Superman interesting, but he's published by DC Comics so...
The first movie is awesome, mind. Not so much recent adaptations - the Superman currently appearing Young Justice is almost hilariously bad, for instance. There's a scene where he meets his teenage clone (Connor Kent/Superboy) and the dialogue is one hair away from "how can you be here? I gave her some money and she said she'd take
care of it."
Comics:
Good call on
Maus, JS - I made it through the first book but found it dull and uninteresting.
Ultimate X-Men. I remember giving up on this because until that point I would've read pretty much anything, including Scott Turow novels, but there was some plot about Iceman and Rogue getting it on and I thought "I can't be bothered with this." I wanted to read stuff where Sentinels stomp through Manhattan shooting whoever they want, Wolverine has fisticuffs with a T-Rex and Magneto makes George Bush lick his boots clean on the White House lawn - pack it with incident and set pieces and make old characters interesting, you know? Instead the book became an exercise in fapping off fanboys with new couplings among the principal cast and making Mr Sinister a gothy bloke who hears voices. It also stopped and started to squeeze in these bizarre cliffhangers or soundbite-heavy splash pages near the start of chapters, which really only works if you're watching CSI pre-credits scenes. It got really grating in comic form, however, like someone trying really hard to be Mark Millar (who was long gone from the book at this stage).
Earth X - which just felt like it would never end. Or begin. A slowwwwwwww, wordy and pointless bit of fanboy-masturbation that makes no sense unless you're really, really well-versed in Marvel lore to the point you can recognise ROM without visual aids. I can now, I couldn't when I read Earth X and gave up around some bit where the Red Skull was a little kid or something.
Some
Teen Titans TPB shit. There was a relaunch written by Sean McKeever who did the fun Iron Giant rip-off Sentinel and some Mary Jane books, but around the time Miss Martian wakes up from being mind controlled to find herself in a public toilet giving middle-aged truckers blowjobs I decided this was not the book for me.
Quote from: Professah Byah on 01 March, 2011, 02:49:36 PM
Miss Martian wakes up from being mind controlled to find herself in a public toilet giving middle-aged truckers blowjobs I decided this was not the book for me.
This book sounds like something for me, however! Hur-Hur :D
I've always avoided Maus - it just looks worthy in the extreme and not the sort of thing I read comics for.
I've avoided all Joe Sacco's stuff for the same reason
SOmeone start an 'I've Always Avoided...' thread and I have a big list for that :D.
Quote from: radiator on 01 March, 2011, 02:08:50 PM
QuoteApocalypse Now.
Me too! Never managed to watch it all the way through - a boring and meandering mess of a film.
NOOO! It's one of the finest war films ever made! Up there with The Thin Red Line and Downfall. But then one man's onions is another's broccoli I suppose
Quote from: davethomson on 01 March, 2011, 02:54:15 PM
Quote from: Professah Byah on 01 March, 2011, 02:49:36 PM
Miss Martian wakes up from being mind controlled to find herself in a public toilet giving middle-aged truckers blowjobs I decided this was not the book for me.
This book sounds like something for me, however! Hur-Hur :D
What makes it awesome is that Miss Martian (a centuries-old shape-shifter) makes herself look like a child for the act in question.
Quote from: radiator on 01 March, 2011, 03:23:36 PM
I've always avoided Maus - it just looks worthy in the extreme and not the sort of thing I read comics for.
I made it through A Fax From Sarajevo, Persopolis, Palestine - but Maus just couldn't hold my attention. It's very stodgy, the characters are unmemorable and at times I couldn't tell them apart... honestly, when death camps and Nazi invasions are coming across as dull, it's maybe time to just move on to something else.
QuoteOnce Upon a Time in America, Once upon a Time in the West, Pat Garret and Billy The Kid
Sort yourself out, Stress!
As for me:
Maus has been sitting unfinished by the bed for a couple of years...
On the Road.
A lot of Tom Clancy books.
Blue Mars.And considering I had endured the two books before this one, I really should have struggled to the end, but life is too short.
Like everyone else, I gave up on Heroes in Season 2- and was surprised to see that it had made it to season four!
I read Maus and its sequel while at university, after being told how important it was and how it was the epitome of good graphic storytelling. While I read them both, I can't remember a single thing about them. I'm sure it's a brilliant, worthwhile thing- but it obviously wasn't for me.*
SBT
*I'm not a nazi though.
Gotta come down on the other side of the Maus-indifference fence here. Thought it was a monumental, emotionally shattering story. Read both volumes in a couple of days many years ago and it has stayed with me ever since.
That makes me want to have another go
handy thing with books, they don't go off :)
The problem with Maus is that it's probably the least visually interesting of Spiegelmen's work, possibly because of the weighty subject matter.
With Sacco, the thing to remember is that he's more or less "only" doing actual journalism. There's possibly some ethical issues to the scenes which are essentially conjecture, but I guess that's a problem inherent to all investigative journalism. Personally, I find he really gets inside his stories and his artwork is just incredibly vibrant.
Anyways, let the negativity commence! I should point out that I will gut something out to the bitter end 99 times out of a hundred. I've never walked out of a movie.
Comics-wise, Y: The Last Men. I quite like Ex Machina, but most of the time I just seem to find BKV's writing incredibly irritating and precious. I really enjoyed it at first, but eventually wore super-thin. TBH, once I became a comics snob, I got bored with pretty much all DC Vertigo books.
Haven't read Ex Machina (though the concept sounds awful to me), but I thought Y The Last Man and Pride of Baghdad were both pretty crap.
Quote from: radiator on 01 March, 2011, 03:23:36 PM
I've always avoided Maus - it just looks worthy in the extreme and not the sort of thing I read comics for.
Good point, well made.
Quote from: johnnystress on 01 March, 2011, 04:09:54 PM
That makes me want to have another go
You probably should, it's pretty amazing stuff, and perhaps not as 'worthy' as it appears - it's a seemingly very honest mix of autobiography and biography, and is at least as much about parents and families as it is about the holocaust. Art doesn't spare himself or his father any blushes.
Radiator's point is a good one, though - if you're looking for escapism in your comics, look elsewhere. I bought and read the one-volume edition while en route to Washington DC. I was all set to visit the Holocaust museum/memorial while there (among that city's many incredible sights, I wasn't on some kind of atrocity tour), and got as far as the entrance before literally running away - I just couldn't face any more.
Quote from: TordelBack on 01 March, 2011, 05:05:20 PM
s
Radiator's point is a good one, though - if you're looking for escapism in your comics, look elsewhere.
?
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/99/Batman_Houdini_The_Devils_Workshop_TPB_cover.pg.jpg)
badum...tish
If you read Batman/Houdini, the only thing you're escaping is the possibility of not reading a shitty comic.
Quote from: Roger Godpleton on 01 March, 2011, 04:21:55 PM
most of the time I just seem to find BKV's writing incredibly irritating and precious.
Yeah, I got that from Runaways and Y The Last Man, but the problem I have with BKV's work as a body is that if anything he lacks a distinctive voice in the manner of a Millar, Ennis, Morrison, Aaron, Ellis, Whedon, or Bendis. I find his characters pretty unmemorable, too. Might just be me.
Mervyn Peake's Gormengahst trilogy. I bought them as part of a book-club deal years ago because I'd always been told they're classics, but I just can't get into them. I tried the TV adaptation (how long ago was that?) hoping it would spark my interest, but I found that just as impenetrable.
I tend to lend my copy of Maus out a lot to people who have no interest in capes, robots or zombies (I know, some people huh? ::) ) and who therefore don't think comics could ever interest them. (non-relevant anecdote: I once showed myself up in front of Art Spiegelman by drinking too much free wine and trying to ask a rambling incoherent question at a signing). I'm the opposite of Prof Byeh in this - I didn't find Maus at all 'worthy', I found it an easy gripping read, but I've borrowed and failed to finish a lot of Joe Sacco books for that reason.
A friend got me the first season of True Blood the Christmas before last and keeps asking me whether I've watched them yet. I'm running out of excuses.
I couldn't get to the end of...
too many things to mention as I really have a very low boredom threshold and give up immediately if I am not enjoying something. This includes many of the things people have listed so far like Catch 22, Apocalypse Now and Coen Brothers.
However, some of the things that I have given up on early through actively disliking them quite intensely (rather than just being bored) have stuck in my head such as:
Books
History of the world in 10 and a half chapters - Julian Banks
Great Apes - Will Self
Films
California Man
Soul Man
TV
24 - I actually quite enjoyed the beginning of the first series but about half way through it started to get ridiculous.
All vampire crap my wife watches
Quote from: radiator on 01 March, 2011, 01:57:29 PM
QuoteAliens Vs Predator: Race War - I remember paying the best part of £20 for this about ten years ago, and being unable to slog through it. Turgid, incoherent, pretentious nonsense that bore little resemblance to either of it's source properties.
Actually a quick check on Amazon confirms that it was called Deadliest of the Species and was written by Chris Claremont.
Well I read that piece of shit all the way through and I can tell you - you missed nothing.
I don't expect an Aliens Vs Predator comic to be a work of high art, but to be fair the original comic series that kicked off the whole AvP enterprise was pretty damn good IIRC and I wouldn't mind reading it again. It made clever use of both the creatures and was well thought out and easy to follow story.
All I can remember about Deadliest of the Species was there was some sort of convoluted, nonsensical mystery plot involving a cyborg woman, it was tiresomely overwritten, there were lots of confusing Twin Peaks type dream sequences and there were hardly any aliens or predators in it. I think it betrays a kind of arrogance in a writer to be commisioned to write an Aliens Vs Predator comic and turn out something so self indulgent. What a crock of shit.
Cool story bro.
Comicswise have yet to finish a BKV series. Just don't feel the urge but bear him no ill will. Feel an outright aversion to Geoff John's stuff on the other hand. Ennis' Hitman wasn't for me. A lot of his jokey stuff isn't. Have only read the first three books of Brubaker's Captain America (they were borrowed) and that's pretty much it for me.
I'm pro-Maus. I consider it one of two autobiographical comics worth reading. The other is Campbell's Alec. They have the same things in common: as much about the people they know as themselves and never self inflating or self pitying. Wish Spiegleman had put out more comics or continued RAW.
Books I frequently stop in the middle of, even when I'm enjoying them, and pick up later to wonder why I'd ever put them down. But the one's I'm never returning to are Lord of the Rings, Dune, Operation Shylock, S., Mason/Dixon.
Books:
Trainspotting - I do try and finish every book I start out of sheer bloody mindedness but I'm going to have to tackle this one when someone decides to do a translation into the Queen's English, I'd have an easier time reading this if it was written in French ;)