[Movies] Talk about the last movie you saw 2: Electric Threadaloo

I was gonna ask if there's a kickstarter for that, but apparently it was all ready kick started...last November. Fleh, I can deal animation takes time.

Not to mention just getting a deal from a studio. As much as I love Goon, it's a very twisted and kooky comic that might be a hard sell to some.
 
Not to mention just getting a deal from a studio. As much as I love Goon, it's a very twisted and kooky comic that might be a hard sell to some.
Indeed, I personally haven't met any person other than myself in my town who is a fan. And the reason people give me for not liking it most of the time is that its "too hilarious." I've always thought that was an odd reason not to like a comic.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I'm watching the Hobbit for the first time out of the theater. Do the proportions seem out of whack in Bilbo's house at the beginning of the movie to anyone else? The Dwarves aren't that much bigger than Bilbo, but everything of Bilbos is tiny to them. Even the ones who are the same height as him.
It's exaggerated for comic effect, assuredly, but if I remember the source material correctly, Dwarves were generally larger than Hobbits - 4 feet on average vs 3 feet. Taken to human proportions, that would be like if the average human is, say, 5'6", hosting a 7'4 person in your house. The real "off proportion" is Gandalf, who played by the 5'11" Sir Ian McKellan, was written in the books as actually being rather short for a human, not much taller than a dwarf and the shortest of the wizards.
 
TURBO - We ended up seeing this with the kids because Despicable Me 2 was sold out. Turns out we probably should have just walked away.
Firstly, as much of a kid movie that it is, I'm not really liking that I had to explain to the kids why a running joke is crows grabbing random snails and then never seeing them again.
Secondly, it's pretty much Ratatouille all over again, but with the added misfortune that it centers around the Indy 500 (Sorry. I'm not a car guy.)
A group of animals (snails) show a higher intelligence that allows them to think and act like humans. They cannot actually talk to humans, but they understand human speech and can communicate through their actions. No other animal demonstrates this level of intelligence. At some point a member of this group of intelligent animals will decide that he doesn't like just fitting in with everyone and has a special knack for something. (In this case a snail who wants to race receives super speed after being dosed with Nitrous Oxide.) He comes across a human who's down on his luck (co-owner of a family owned taco restaurant) and who wants to change his life for the better. When he discovers the special skill of the animal they decide on a completely ridiculous plan to exploit it and use it to their advantage (entering the snail into the Indy 500). Much soul searching and a dramatic turn later (Turbo loses his ability) and everything turns out happily ever after for the everyone except the villains.
It just wasn't anywhere as good as Ratatouille. It lacked heart and there are plenty of times where you just want to punch Turbo in the... eyestalk? Cause he's a self obsessed jerk most of the time.
Don't see this movie unless you get boners for things that go Voooom, so at least you have something to distract you from the lack of everything else that defines a decent film.
 
TURBO - We ended up seeing this with the kids because Despicable Me 2 was sold out. Turns out we probably should have just walked away.
Firstly, as much of a kid movie that it is, I'm not really liking that I had to explain to the kids why a running joke is crows grabbing random snails and then never seeing them again.
Secondly, it's pretty much Ratatouille all over again, but with the added misfortune that it centers around the Indy 500 (Sorry. I'm not a car guy.)
A group of animals (snails) show a higher intelligence that allows them to think and act like humans. They cannot actually talk to humans, but they understand human speech and can communicate through their actions. No other animal demonstrates this level of intelligence. At some point a member of this group of intelligent animals will decide that he doesn't like just fitting in with everyone and has a special knack for something. (In this case a snail who wants to race receives super speed after being dosed with Nitrous Oxide.) He comes across a human who's down on his luck (co-owner of a family owned taco restaurant) and who wants to change his life for the better. When he discovers the special skill of the animal they decide on a completely ridiculous plan to exploit it and use it to their advantage (entering the snail into the Indy 500). Much soul searching and a dramatic turn later (Turbo loses his ability) and everything turns out happily ever after for the everyone except the villains.
It just wasn't anywhere as good as Ratatouille. It lacked heart and there are plenty of times where you just want to punch Turbo in the... eyestalk? Cause he's a self obsessed jerk most of the time.
Don't see this movie unless you get boners for things that go Voooom, so at least you have something to distract you from the lack of everything else that defines a decent film.
Well, now I'm glad my cousins are seeing it without us. I have to wonder if Despicable Me 2 would be any better. This seems like a bad year for family films.
 
Not what I've seen but what I'm going to: my wife and I were watching Zero Punctuation yesterday and they kept having ads for R.I.P.D. I told her the gist of the movie and she got excited, so now we're planning to see it. Now reviews are confirming what I initially thought--it's not gonna be good. I'd like to convince her to see The Conjuring instead, but I don't know if she could handle it. Plus, the whole tough cowboy Jeff Bridges thing really makes her giggle, so I think even if R.I.P.D. sucks, she'd still enjoy it. So, I should probably just deal with it and go, since I drag her to movies all the time and she never makes me see shitty romantic comedies or chick flicks since she's not into that crap.

Alternative future, she didn't get home until 1 or 2 AM and might be too tired to go to the movies, so this all becomes moot. We'll see.
 
Not what I've seen but what I'm going to: my wife and I were watching Zero Punctuation yesterday and they kept having ads for R.I.P.D. I told her the gist of the movie and she got excited, so now we're planning to see it. Now reviews are confirming what I initially thought--it's not gonna be good. I'd like to convince her to see The Conjuring instead, but I don't know if she could handle it. Plus, the whole tough cowboy Jeff Bridges thing really makes her giggle, so I think even if R.I.P.D. sucks, she'd still enjoy it. So, I should probably just deal with it and go, since I drag her to movies all the time and she never makes me see shitty romantic comedies or chick flicks since she's not into that crap.

Alternative future, she didn't get home until 1 or 2 AM and might be too tired to go to the movies, so this all becomes moot. We'll see.
I've heard that R.I.P.D is like M.I.B but without any good characters and an insane amount of bathroom humor. I was reading the Aint it Cool News review and he was not very pleased with it. He basically said there was nothing about it that makes it stand out from the action genre, and that it's rather awkward to watch Jeff Bridges act out things that his female avatar would say/do.
I wanted to be interested. But there were aspects from the trailer that I didn't like. I certainly didn't like the avatar element, because nothing makes an action sequence less awesome when you consider that it's actually being done by a sickly looking Chinese guy and not Ryan Reynolds.
 
I've heard that R.I.P.D is like M.I.B but without any good characters and an insane amount of bathroom humor. I was reading the Aint it Cool News review and he was not very pleased with it. He basically said there was nothing about it that makes it stand out from the action genre, and that it's rather awkward to watch Jeff Bridges act out things that his female avatar would say/do.
I wanted to be interested. But there were aspects from the trailer that I didn't like. I certainly didn't like the avatar element, because nothing makes an action sequence less awesome when you consider that it's actually being done by a sickly looking Chinese guy and not Ryan Reynolds.
Toilet humor--that's the ammo I needed. She hates that. Thanks.
 
Not literally. There are plenty of movies that vary from the themes found in that book, although I admit the structure is heavily used. You can't say every movie since 2005 is literally the same.

/nitpick
 
I spent a not insignificant portion of my high school years reading English handbooks for fun, and delighting in things like Lynn Truss' Eats, Shoots and Leaves and while my grammar in my essays was (and is to this day) impeccable, and I was called upon by my friends when they were students to proofread for them, I did eventually realise I had also become a massive jerk when it came to language. It was like I had stopped enjoying language, and starting enjoying finding others' faults with it.

I was the guy on forums, quite likely on older iterations of this group (back in the image days), quoting posts and adding nothing to the conversation but rearranging sentences so they didn't end with prepositions, and changing 'who' to 'whom' and 'me' to 'I' or vice-versa. Worse yet, I'd not only edit these posts and smugly add FTFY as though their message had been unintelligible until I saved it, I'd offer up a little English lesson to go along with it, explaining objects and subjects and so on. God, I think about it with a mixture of guilt and shame and embarrassment. When I reflect on the feedback, I was largely ignored, and even occasionally defended, but also attacked. But I have to think the attacks were seldom or ineffective for I don't remember any specific one. You were all far too patient with me.

At any rate, as I grew up, I learned all sorts of new things about grammar, and also how to appreciate literature and poetry and the power of breaking the rules, and the fact that many 'rules' aren't rules, like that infuriating nonsense about using prepositions to end a sentence with... :awesome:

And while I hardly think our dear acquaintance Tress is guilty of my previous sins as self-proclaimed enforcer of the purity of the English language, and in fact I wholly sympathise with his pet peeve about the word literally used figuratively, I must follow my new path of balance: that grammar and language guide us to a point, but they are there for us to express ourselves and not to chain us to mediocre, twisted sentences reconstructed and reworded such that the joy, glory and power of expression cannot shine through. For should that infernal oxford comma limit your soul, or if you know you are literally alight with glee, then I beg you to tear up your handbooks, spurn the Lynn Truss' of the world

and

write

however the hell

you want.

But god help you if I catch you using 'ironically' incorrectly.
 
Just home from The Lone Ranger. I enjoyed it, fun summer romp with lots of action and some funny moments. Overall, I'm satisfied with seeing this movie. Brought back some good memories of watching the old tv series, and I think that they had an interesting take on telling the story.
 
Just finished watching The Dark Knight Returns, part 1. Now, it's been a long time since I read the graphic novel, and pretty much all I remember about it is the art being terrible, but the movie left me confused about a few things.

Batman only has two rules, right? He doesn't kill, no matter how much he might want to, and he doesn't use guns. So this image was a little striking.


Yes, he only uses the rifle to fire a tether line between two towers, but why the fuck is he using a rifle? One with a scope no less. Doesn't he hate guns? Doesn't he have access to tons of line throwers that don't look like guns?

Later on, he attacks the mutant gang in a goddamn tank. A tank with a huge cannon and machine guns. And we're treated to a close up image of Batman pulling the trigger on the pistol-grip control stick to fire the machine guns to mow down the mutant gang, and lots of scenes of the cannon firing and mutant members blowing up. Now, I know in the very next scene, the mutant leader comments on the fact that he's using rubber bullets, and thus are non-lethal, but why is he using bullets at all? And I'm pretty sure all of those explosions had to have killed someone.
 
Uh. I don't know man. It's considered a real masterpiece by most, including myself. I haven't seen the cartoon but it sounds like they stayed reasonably true to it. I guess it's just not your thing?
 
Uh. I don't know man. It's considered a real masterpiece by most, including myself. I haven't seen the cartoon but it sounds like they stayed reasonably true to it. I guess it's just not your thing?

I still enjoyed it, and I remember enjoying the graphic novel (just not the art... or the terrible sequel) but those little things bugged me.
 
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