I haven't actually seen any movies recently, but I'm guessing others may have. I just wanted an excuse to laugh at translations of domestic movie titles.
Oh, I also heard Breaking Bad is back, so maybe some people want to discuss that. It certainly did well in ratings, breaking its previous high of something with 2.9 million viewers for the opener.
I got it in my head that I hadn't watched Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey in a really long time, so I watched it last week. Man, that movie is much better than I remember it (aside from the awful, awful clothing worn by people in the future.) It was a lot more even the <Excellent Adventure and much higher in concept. Plus, William Sadler as death stole pretty much every single scene he was in.
Also watched <Up again. Amazingly, the same dust, or something, that much have fallen off my ceiling and gotten into my eye the first time did it again, and even miraculously happend at roughly the same spot in the movie. Weird.
Other than, not a ton others of note. I re-watched the first season of Game of Thrones so I could watch it on my actual tv in good quality rather than crappy quality on my laptop. I think I enjoyed it more the second time around. Also watched The Expendable because I was in the mood for explosions. Eh, it had that but was otherwise an action movie and not particularly memorable with the exception that I will always remember that Randy Couture is an atrocious actor, maybe worse than Ludacris who used to be popping up everywhere in the first decade of this century to piss me off with how terrible he was.
Also, I'm still impatiently waiting for season 4 of Parks and Rec and season 3 of The League to hit Netflix.
I loved Bogus a ton when it first came out. Teenaged AMR agrees with you that it was way better than Excellent. Haven't thought much about it since then, though.
I love how Bogus takes a classic Bergman "playing chess with death" scene and parodies it so well.
whoops. Movie day. I should have posted this here.
Kill all the critics! Unless they agree with me!!!
also, thanks for showing me up. I still haven't gotten the First Monday post written, probably because I haven't finished reading my current book, Children of the Sky.
I'll admit that, because it has been so long since I read the totally awesome A Fire Upon the Deep, I've struggled a bit with the current volume. Not because it doesn't stand alone, but because I keep trying to draw connections back to my recollections of its preceding novel(s) to contextualize the current story. I will have to go back and re-read both A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky soon, then read the current one again.
even so, I'm really enjoying Vernor Vinge's latest. Vinge is awesome.
I was going to make a book post actually, but I read the link in the post today and thought it would go well with a movie post. Plus, with only two more weeks until the next book day, it was kind of in limbo.
I'm just about to start A Fire Upon the Deep and then A Deepness in the Sky actually.
read Deepness first. While the two stories completely stand by themselves, there is a somewhat subtle character connection between the two, which is best served by knowing the character's history from Deepness (even though Deepness was written years later).
About Breaking Bad
Anyway, pretty busy movie month for me at the discount theater (good way to unwind after bar studying). I saw 21 Jump Street and enjoyed it way more than I possibly thought I would. Also saw The Five-Year Engagement and thought about 20 minutes could have been eliminated in the middle without any issues at all. Also saw Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and liked it, but the subplot with Emily Blunt's boyfriend was pretty bad.
Finished up Battlestar Gallactica and
Watched most of season one of The Flight of the Conchords and enjoy it and am also into season two of Veronica Mars. Oh, and Sheenie and I decided to start watching Cheers on Netflix beginning at the pilot and have gone about 10 episodes in. Coach was the greatest.
My comments on the BB premiere are below.
I fully agree about Coach. While Cheers remained a good show after he passed away, it lost something after that which it was never quite able to get back.
Two weekends ago I went to Moonrise Kingdom and Brave with J. Moonrise Kingdom was a beautiful film. I loved the cast, I loved the way it was shot, it was just perfect. I can't wait to see it again. It might be my favorite of his films, but I want to watch it again before I make that distinction. Brave was... alright. It's definitely in the bottom tier of Pixar movies for me. If they cut almost the entire first act I would've liked it a lot better. Once the film got going, and the "twist" happened it got a hell of a lot better. Overall it was good, and I'll buy it the day it comes out on home video, but it's no WALL-E or Up.
On Saturday I spent most of the evening working from home and I watched the entire first season of Wilfred while I did. I'm still not sure how I feel about it. There was a handful of rape jokes which I hate, but overall the humor was pretty decent. I am certainly intrigued by the show and I need to catch up on the second season.
I quite dug Brave and will buy it as soon as it's out. Happy to have a princess movie where a primary motivation isn't getting the prince, or even that getting the prince is there at the end. CER has now joined HPR in doing the bow and arrows thing around the yard.
Yeah, I absolutely loved this about it, as did J. I just wish they'd cut a lot of the physical humor junk in the start of the movie. I definitely could've done without all of that.
fart joaks are ALWAYS funny.
Good to hear about Moonrise Kingdom. Philosofette and I want to see that one. I don't love all of his movies, but The Royal Tennenbaums is one of my favorite films.
I love number 8 on that list.
I'm four episodes into season 4 of breaking bad and have to say that it's been pretty intense. I had dreams about the never ending house party at jesse's place. I also immensely enjoyed Ellsworth's cameo.
Heh. In my spoiler above (if you didn't read it - and this isn't spoiling anything), I mentioned Ellsworth (as Ellsworth). Sorry, Jim Beaver, but you're always going to be Ellsworth.
I hadn't read your spoiler. I've always thought Ellsworth was one of the best characters in deadwood.
I watched a lot of movies on the planes to and from Europe.
21 Jump Street was decent.
Haywire was pretty good.
Captain America was stupid.
The Hunger Games was much better than I expected.
The Raid: Redemption was ridiculous in a good way.
The Descendants was good.
I laughed an embarrassing number of times during 21 Jump Street.
I saw 21 Jump Street on my most recent flight. I too laughed more than I expected.
Captain America was stupid
Yea, it was kinda lame. the big lug is, well, a big lug. The super serum doesn't make him any smarter, unfortunately.
and in what universe, besides comic book ones, are years of critical research completely obliterated by one laboratory accident? Nobody writes things down? Nobody keeps lab books or does backups? Nobody writes super-secret reports to the Secretary of War or the (predecessor of) DARPA? Oy!
Still, the Boy and I had fun at it. It's not like it was Green Lantern-awful.
I agree. The 90-lb weakling effects were creepy. I grew up liking Captain America, and the movie didn't embarrass. Plus I watched it free from the library.
I saw Splice. I wouldn't say I hated it, as it did have interesting things to say about parenthood and at times tried to go a little further beyond the standard "people playing god with genetics" bit.
Then...
I don't know how I missed it for so long, but the wife and I finally saw Catch Me If You Can. I enjoyed it - a lot. It felt like the type of movie that doesn't necessarily get made a lot anymore, though exactly why it felt like that was hard for me to pin down. Regardless, great work done by Hanks and DiCaprio.
We saw The Amazing Spiderman a couple weeks ago. It was decent. I like Andrew Garfield, and Emma Stone does a better job of playing the love interest than Kirstin Dunst ever did. Why does reboot have to be an origin story, though? They waste a full hour telling us things we generally already know from every other Spiderman movie. I know it helps to get people caught up, but couldn't a 10 minute refresher of "this is Pete, he can shoot webs from his wrists" work just as well? Also, the Lizard was an unengaging bad guy.
Then, for reasons I'm not entirely sure of, I was talked into seeing Ted. It was actually better than I thought it was going to be. Of course, I thought it was going to be awful, so I was able to settle for "genuinely funny in places" as opposed to "complete humorless waste of time".
Saw Moneyball, and if you thought Art Howe's character was a chauncey in the film, you should see the deleted scene.
Runner daughter finally got me to sit down and watch Tangled. It has its issues, but it was cute.
And an oldie but goodie that came up in conversation got me watching it again: the classic 405: The Movie
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tpx6o4gvmXE
I don't remember what all I've seen lately. I think The Descendants was the big one. I might even have commented on it last time, for all I remember. Either way, it was quite good, but given a dialogue rewrite it could have been genuine best picture material.
Speaking of movies, this one is special for free and other Wire fans.
Ok, the part with Ziggy was LOL funny.
also, get ready:
You'da think that Cowboys v. Aliens' would have moved Hollywood off the X vs. Aliens movie theme. What next? Nazi's vs. Aliens? Obama Vs. Aliens? Lebron vs. Aliens?
I'm pretty sure the sequel to Cowboys vs. Aliens is Ninjas vs. Cyborgs.
Zombie Ninjas vs. Cyborgs
FTFY
I can't express enough how much I love the last line of the quote above. "trying to say something useful about the world we live in" through a trilogy of Dinosaurs v. Aliens flicks. Ahahahaha.
Dude, talk about burying the lead. Nazi Flying Saucers! Let me say that again. Nazi. Flying. Saucers!
I believe that's referring to "Iron Sky". I have been waiting years for this movie to get finished and released.
Heh.
Watched The Artist and it was perhaps done in by my high expectations. It was fine, but I didn't see it as Best Picture-worthy. It's also possible that I just missed what made it so good. That's happened to me before.
I think it was best writ on the big screen.
Sean, I was saving this for Thursday so I could participate...
at 2:18, spoons.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JfMCBh1sJQ
(naughty word alert, but I guess that is redundant, given the source of the material)
Hey, if people are going to be late, have to communicate this!
No reason why we can't have another if you want.
Yeah, I was actually coming over to communicate it when I saw this post was up. No worries...it was a light month for me anyway. I was just looking forward to dropping the Movie of the Month on a truly horrible thing I saw a couple of weeks ago.
Speaking of foreign translations, when I was in Vienna I saw a poster for "The Inbetweeners Movie" advertised as "Sex On The Beach". For Austrians who would have been unfamiliar with the TV show "The Inbetweeners" *, the translation made sense as the lads are off to a party island in Greece to try to hook up with girls.
*12 of the 18 episodes of which are now on Netflix streaming. I find the show hilarious and highly recommend it.