Mark Riley • Gary Riley • Dave Riley. June 1963.
Sunday, June 19, 2016
Thursday, June 16, 2016
The Visit
Combines everything that's wrong with M. Night Shyamalan movies with everything that's wrong with found footage movies. Surely there's some twist to this movie getting 64% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
The Hodor Reveal
I have a bad feeling about this.
During season 6 of Lost, my doubts started growing that the writers could bring the series to a satisfying conclusion. And they didn't.
The show was nonetheless fantastic, but that's part of the reason that the mediocre conclusion in season 7 was all the more disappointing.
We're now in season 6 of Game of Thrones and this weekend's revelation of the origin of Hodor's name has given me that same bad feeling—I seriously doubt the series is going to have a satisfying conclusion.
The problem I've concluded is the series' split personality. On the one hand it's a character driven story in a medieval setting with political intrigue, subterfuge, alliances, and betrayals. On the other hand, it's epic fantasy with magic, dragons, ice zombies, and prophecies. In previous seasons the former has worked much better than the latter, but as season 6 has progressed we're getting more of the latter much to the detriment of the former.
The Hodor reveal is clever and poignant, but I suspect in the end will be completely irrelevant to the overall story.
And it involves time travel.
Seriously. Time travel.
And unless your story is actually about time travel, it's usually a bad idea to casually toss it in.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope at the end of the series I'm writing a blog post about the brilliance of the Hodor reveal and how it laid the groundwork for a satisfying conclusion.
But I have a bad feeling about this.
During season 6 of Lost, my doubts started growing that the writers could bring the series to a satisfying conclusion. And they didn't.
The show was nonetheless fantastic, but that's part of the reason that the mediocre conclusion in season 7 was all the more disappointing.
We're now in season 6 of Game of Thrones and this weekend's revelation of the origin of Hodor's name has given me that same bad feeling—I seriously doubt the series is going to have a satisfying conclusion.
The problem I've concluded is the series' split personality. On the one hand it's a character driven story in a medieval setting with political intrigue, subterfuge, alliances, and betrayals. On the other hand, it's epic fantasy with magic, dragons, ice zombies, and prophecies. In previous seasons the former has worked much better than the latter, but as season 6 has progressed we're getting more of the latter much to the detriment of the former.
The Hodor reveal is clever and poignant, but I suspect in the end will be completely irrelevant to the overall story.
And it involves time travel.
Seriously. Time travel.
And unless your story is actually about time travel, it's usually a bad idea to casually toss it in.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope at the end of the series I'm writing a blog post about the brilliance of the Hodor reveal and how it laid the groundwork for a satisfying conclusion.
But I have a bad feeling about this.
Wednesday, May 18, 2016
Whatever
Starting with the "Michael the 3th" incident, we decided just to take whatever they gave us on their first attempt.
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Captain America V. (Batman V. Superman)
Not even close: Captain America: Civil War.
It's hard to understand how Warner Brothers turns out fantastic animation based on the DC source material, but has no clue how to make a live action adaptation.
It's hard to understand how Warner Brothers turns out fantastic animation based on the DC source material, but has no clue how to make a live action adaptation.
Friday, April 22, 2016
Superhero Realism
The Rawness on Why I Hated the Dark Knight:
There are two problems with this movie’s “realistic” angle. First, Christopher Nolan seems to think “realistic” is simply another word for “boring.” Almost everything that makes the Batman character fantastic and larger than life is excised, probably because Nolan finds these elements silly and unrealistic. Batman’s fighting style is toned down so that he’s not doing any high-flying gymnastics or flashy martial arts, just a visually dull fight style consisting of extreme, incomprehensible close-ups on repetitive body blows, elbows and arm grabs. And even worse, these fights are all shot in the dark with lots of quick cuts, which I guess is somehow supposed to increase the realism through incoherency.
We have a boring Batmobile with no bat insignias, oversized scallops or anything that indicates it’s supposed to have a Bat-theme. Because driving a cool-looking bat-shaped car would just be too ridiculous. Joker can’t have permawhite skin like the comics because that’s also unrealistic, so he just wears sloppy face paint.
When I bring up how dark, dreary and joylessly boring this movie is, people respond “it’s supposed to be realistic.” Why’s the fighting and action so badly shot and dull? “It’s supposed to be realistic.” Why’s Gotham City so bland and generic now and no longer has a unique character and design like in other Batman adaptations? “Realism.” And so on and so on.
Which leads to my second problem with all this realism: IT’S A MOVIE ABOUT A BILLIONAIRE WHO TRAVELS THE WORLD IN ORDER TO BECOME THE WORLD’S SMARTEST, MOST HIGH-TECH CRIMEFIGHTING NINJA THAT EVER EXISTED, THEN RETURNS TO HIS HOMETOWN TO DRESS AS A GIANT BAT, DRIVE A WEAPONS-LOADED MINITANK, AND CLEAN UP ALL THE CRIME IN THE CITY BY ESSENTIALLY SINGLEHANDEDLY PUNCHING IT IN THE FACE EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. AND NOW HE’S GOING TO FIGHT AN EVIL CLOWN. So please tell me…what type of mental case creates or watches a movie with a premise so clearly meant to be inherently ridiculous and then turns around DEMANDS REALISM?
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