How did you like that movie / TV show / book?

Pretty cool card tricks!
LOL the F U trophy at end of video tops it off!
 
xenonph said:
Pretty cool card tricks!
LOL the F U trophy at end of video tops it off!
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It's extra-funny the times that Penn tries to guess a trick, is wrong, and angrily concedes that the magician has earned the trophy.
 
I saw "Avatar: The Way of Water" today. It is a great movie that you should see in 3D in an XD or true IMax theater. I have read it will have to make 2 billion to break even. It runs pretty long at 3 1/4 hours.
 
GeorgeH said:
I have read it will have to make 2 billion to break even. It runs pretty long at 3 1/4 hours.
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That's insane, and sounds very much like a prime example of ye infamous "Hollywood Accounting." They're almost certainly trying to game the system somehow in saying that, for example by influencing public perception and coercing pricing across distribution networks, resellers, etc.

Honestly, I don't know how the theatre down the road stays in business. When a movie lets out I might see a dozen people leave, or just as often two, and this is in a fairly popular city square, easy to get to.

Evidently though, a large share of theatres showing first-run stuff don't actually make money from the gate, but from the concession stands. It might actually be worth it for the chain and distributors to take a mild loss on this location if it keeps indie theatres out of their territory, I don't know.
 
Maybe because of the water scenes?
Remember Waterworld with Kevin Costner was way above budget, because of the water scenes and such.
 
xenonph said:
Maybe because of the water scenes?
Remember Waterworld with Kevin Costner was way above budget, because of the water scenes and such.
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Definitely had a big budget, at US$350–460m (as per WP), but at the same time, WaterWorld was infamous for being a costly, water-based financial boondoggle, so for sure the execs would have had various safeguards & strategies for avoiding any similar mistake, right from day one.

This behind-the-scene stuff frankly kind of fascinates me, not unlike how I actually preferred the 'making of' LotR videos to the actual films. Anyway, it's been a while since I've read about Hollywood Accounting, but besides the obvious cost of mass-marketing, which certainly pumps up the price tag, another typical strategy is to add the cost of corollary stuff to the film in question.

For example, knowing this film was almost certainly going to be a major hit, it's quite possible the studio strategised this one absorbing costs of other projects within the same time frame, or even used it as a sort of 'faux-loss leader' to balance the books. I'm hardly an expert on this stuff, so I'm sure some industry folks across Reddit or Quora or whatever could break it down much better than that.
 
Isaac Sauvage said:
Definitely had a big budget, at US$350–460m (as per WP), but at the same time, WaterWorld was infamous for being a costly, water-based financial boondoggle, so for sure the execs would have had various safeguards & strategies for avoiding any similar mistake, right from day one.

This behind-the-scene stuff frankly kind of fascinates me, not unlike how I actually preferred the 'making of' LotR videos to the actual films. Anyway, it's been a while since I've read about Hollywood Accounting, but besides the obvious cost of mass-marketing, which certainly pumps up the price tag, another typical strategy is to add the cost of corollary stuff to the film in question.

For example, knowing this film was almost certainly going to be a major hit, it's quite possible the studio strategised this one absorbing costs of other projects within the same time frame, or even used it as a sort of 'faux-loss leader' to balance the books. I'm hardly an expert on this stuff, so I'm sure some industry folks across Reddit or Quora or whatever could break it down much better than that.
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I actually liked Waterworld!
It was like Mad Max on water!! lol
I don't care what the critics said.

The first Avatar movie I consider one of the best for original story, and the special effects has to be best I have ever seen.
(I rate first Avatar movie number 1 for special effects alone.)

So if new Avatar movie is anything like the first movie in terms of special effects, I know it will be great!!

One thing that bothered me in first movie...
Why in the hell couldn't they come up with a better name for the mineral they were mining?
All that money and people coming up with ideas, and they settled with "Unobtainium"! lol
Has to be the worst made up name for a mineral in the history of making up names for minerals!!
 
Haha, if it was up to me they would have called it "crystite" from the classic M.U.L.E..

That said, I must sadly confess that the last Cameron film I watched was... T2, I think.

Anyway, I liked WaterWorld too! I love post-apoc and water-based movies in general, so it wasn't a hard sell for me at all. Either way I found it a fun, creative story, and will probably watch it for a 3rd-4th time one of these days.

I also liked how Gottlieb back in the day was kinda zigging where Williams zagged in terms of pinball machines. I don't know if Gottlieb's Waterworld, Stargate & Rescue 911 were absolute classics, but I enjoyed how they departed from 'standard convention' in so many little ways. Not that I didn't love Williams-Bally 90's classics, but..

My buddy and I used to like playing doubles on machines like that, each person with a flipper, with one standing sideways alongside the machine while the guy with the apron would be in charge of nudging. Unfortunately, that wasn't always possible for two reasons-- 1) there simply wasn't room, and 2) sometimes the next machine over would be improperly grounded, and you could get a hefty shock from simply touching a metal part on one machine and backing in to another metal part on the other.

Ouch! XD
 
xenonph said:
I actually liked Waterworld!
It was like Mad Max on water!! lol
I don't care what the critics said.

The first Avatar movie I consider one of the best for original story, and the special effects has to be best I have ever seen.
(I rate first Avatar movie number 1 for special effects alone.)

So if new Avatar movie is anything like the first movie in terms of special effects, I know it will be great!!

One thing that bothered me in first movie...
Why in the hell couldn't they come up with a better name for the mineral they were mining?
All that money and people coming up with ideas, and they settled with "Unobtainium"! lol
Has to be the worst made up name for a mineral in the history of making up names for minerals!!
Click to expand...

I think I saw Waterworld but don't remember it but I am probably the only one that liked "John Carter" which was Disney's flop.

I would say that the new Avatar movie has effects as good as the original. The water scenes were probably expensive but I am guessing post production is where the costs rose because water is difficult to animate.

My understanding is that "Unobtainium" is actually a term used by some engineers to describe a material that has characteristics the engineers want but does not exist.
 
GeorgeH said:
I think I saw Waterworld but don't remember it but I am probably the only one that liked "John Carter" which was Disney's flop.
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John Carter of Mars was such a badass series!

Do you remember reading those?
They were by the same author of the Tarzan stories (Edgar Rich Burroughs)

Not saying I didn't like stupendously awesome half-naked girls, of course. :s
 
Isaac Sauvage said:
John Carter of Mars was such a badass series!

Do you remember reading those?
They were by the same author of the Tarzan stories (Edgar Rich Burroughs)

Not saying I didn't like stupendously awesome half-naked girls, of course. :s
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I read the first book and saw the movie. The book wasn't bad but not my favorite.
 
I never read the book series, but I do remember reading the comic books, and I also loved the John Carter movie @GeorgeH !
@Isaac Sauvage didn't he also write those Conan books?
I love those Conan books. And comics.
Alot of people say they didn't like the new Star Wars movies.
Well I love them!
And all the new series like Mandalorian, Kenobi, Book of Boba Fett, Andor.
Love them all!!
If I just went by what critics say, I would miss alot of good movies!!

Another great Sci-Fi movie is Valerian - City of 1000 planets.
Great special effects and great original storyline.
 
xenonph said:
I never read the book series, but I do remember reading the comic books, and I also loved the John Carter movie @GeorgeH !
@Isaac Sauvage didn't he also write those Conan books?
I love those Conan books. And comics.
Alot of people say they didn't like the new Star Wars movies.
Well I love them!
And all the new series like Mandalorian, Kenobi, Book of Boba Fett, Andor.
Love them all!!
If I just went by what critics say, I would miss alot of good movies!!

Another great Sci-Fi movie is Valerian - City of 1000 planets.
Great special effects and great original storyline.
Click to expand...

I liked the Conan movies, all thing Star Wars and Valerian with the hot girl in it.
 
Here is a beach you would not want to wash up on.
I never knew snakes acted like this, until I saw this video.

Frankly it is frickin scary!!
If animals ever figure out, that they could just gang up on us to wipe out humanity, we would be doomed.
Never heard of snakes hunting in packs!!
 
Christmas got me in to a "Peanuts" kind of mood, but I've seen the Xmas special so many times that I went looking for something different this time, and settled on A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969, 79min). It's about the eternally-humiliated Charlie Brown trying to find redemption in becoming a spelling bee champ, and like the better Peanuts specials, is directly based on the comic strips.

Both the critics and filmgoers gave this unusually high marks, and... I'd say it delivered! It's got more great backing music by Vince Guaraldi, studiously avoids getting schmaltzy, avoids overdoing it with theatre-type songs, and has some really interesting jazz-inspired, psychedelic visual sequences. Best of all is Charles Schultz' preternatural ability to write fascinating, almost-philosophical dialogue out of the mouths of children. These are all things which to me pretty much set the classic, authentic Peanuts fare apart from the rest of the specials and movies.

For example, right after viewing this one, I was hungry for more, and decided to try watching The Peanuts Movie (2015, Blue Sky, who also did Ice Age, Rio, and Robots).


Frankly, it was better than I expected, and nicely recreated a lot of the classic 'Peanut-isms.' At the same time it was predictably frenetic and formulaic, tailored for modern audiences. Not that it was bad (and it's surely one of the better cartoon remakes), but most of the 'Schultzian magic' was missing, including those classic introspective moments.

What I'm really trying to say is not so much that the modern CGI film was bad, but that I found it remarkable how entertaining and even fascinating the 1969 film was, which worked on more levels and therefore stands up to time surprisingly well.

Of course, since this is a Peanuts-themed post, I feel duty-bound to share one of the most outrageous, brilliant, NSFL cartoon hacks of all time, A Charlie Brown Kwanzaa. By no means should anyone watch it who finds stuff like South Park offensive, because this 7-minute movie is like South Park on steroids. You've been warned.

 
"They Live" is great movie!!
Reminds me of another movie called "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension", which was made 4 years earlier than They Live.
Basically same plot.
 
They Live and Buckaroos Banzai were some pretty cool movies IMO.

The first one was basically a Kafka message, and the second was like a giant bunch of tropes, plot devices & random silliness thrown in to a bubbling stew, which worked surprisingly well for the most part! (I thought so, anyway)

In any case, it had some great moments & performances, starting with Jon Lithgow and Christopher Lloyd. Indeed, one of my favorite short sequences is when Lithgow's right-hand man Christopher Lloyd had had absolutely enough of Lithgow chronically mispronouncing his rightful surname Bigbooté as "Big-booty!"

 
So, as much as I 'kvetch-und-whine' upon superhero / Hollywood films, there are for sure a couple superhero series that I absolutely adore. Yes, just in case you thought otherwise.

For example--
I don't believe any Superman movie series has ever come close to Christopher Reeve's, Gene Hackman's, and Richard Donner's Superman (1978) excellence. For example:


NOT so much because I'm stuck in my belief systems (at least, I'd hope not), but because it was such a goldurn *great* series with *great* performances, and is simply better than any of the reboots I've seen. (and TBH there are some good reboots, for sure!)

Just look at the amazing Jim Carrey in this classic Batman sequence:


TBH, I did really like the original Batman movie series. Jim Carrey is like bonus pts upon "Colonel Hathi the elephant" right there, which totally cracked me up, considering that my all-time favorite Disney movie is The Jungle Book (1966).

 
Itchigo said:
"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... And I'm all out of bubblegum."
Click to expand...

@Itchigo Speaking of which, you do know your namesake is back, it's very good so far...

myanimelist.net

Bleach: Sennen Kessen-hen

Substitute Soul Reaper Ichigo Kurosaki spends his days fighting against Hollows, dangerous evil spirits that threaten Karakura Town. Ichigo carries out his quest with his closest allies: Orihime Inoue, his childhood friend with a talent for healing; Yasutora Sado, his high school classmate with...
myanimelist.net myanimelist.net
 
My favorite Batman movie is definitely "The Dark Knight" (2008). Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker is amazing. It is too bad he died so young. Christopher Nolan is a good director as well.
 
GeorgeH said:
My favorite Batman movie is definitely "The Dark Knight" (2008). Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker is amazing. It is too bad he died so young. Christopher Nolan is a good director as well.
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Yeah, he was AMAZING in that role.
WTF happened to him?!

Kinda reminds me of Phillip Seymore Hoffman, who passed away around the same timeframe, I think?
 
Here is a movie you guys probably never heard of.
Megaforce made in 1982. (I was 11 years old.)
This movie came out in my GI JOE collecting years!
It is about a specialized fighting force that battles evil. (Sounds like GI JOE! lol)
They have all of these specialized vehicles, like motorcycles with rocket launchers!
Funny thing is, the costumes were all created by Mattel, a toy company. (Maybe to compete with Hasbro's GI JOE franchise?)
It is kind of corny, but this was cool when I was 11 years old!!
www.imdb.com

Megaforce (1982) ⭐ 3.6 | Action, Sci-Fi

1h 39m | PG
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com
 
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