Category: Movies

So, I understand that the Golden Globes are tonight. (Deadpool)

Come, I will conceal nothing from you: any other year I would not have anything remotely resembling an opinion on this.  Then again, any other year Deadpool would not be up for two awards (Best Comedy/Musical, Best Comedy/Musical Actor).  I would find it hysterical if Deadpool won those.  It would make the lead-up to the Academy Awards actually interesting for a change, because snagging a Golden Globe or two in those categories would make people have to seriously talk about Deadpool maybe getting an Oscar nomination, which would then probably lead to making people have to seriously talk about Deadpool maybe winning an Academy Award for something non-technical.

It would horrify some people, in other words.  Including a bunch of people who I kind of enjoy seeing horrified.  Look, I never claimed to be a saint…

Moe Lane

Kenneth Branagh remaking Murder on the Orient Express.

I’ll allow it: “Willem Dafoe is the latest actor to join director Kenneth Branagh’s star-studded remake of Murder on the Orient Express. He will join Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley, Judi Dench, Michelle Pfeiffer, Josh Gad, Hamilton star Leslie Odom Jr., and Branagh.” Mostly because, like the author of the linked piece, I like most of the cast and the director.  This doesn’t have the feel of a ‘Hollywood wants to squeeze more juice out of an intellectual property’ situation; more like ‘a bunch of actors realized that they had the collective juice to go have fun onscreen.’

Although obviously Hollywood wants to make their money back, sure.  The point is… the point is, I want to see Judi Dench as the Princess and Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot.  I think that I can be allowed that indulgence, surely.

Moe Lane

The original Murder on the Orient Express is, of course, one of the best murder mystery movies ever made, with its own ridiculously A-List cast.  If you’ve never seen it, you are missing out on a lot of fun. So go see it.

The Full-of-Regrets Death Race 2050 trailer.

Come, I will conceal nothing from you: I’m disappointed that Roger Corman made Death Race 2050, because Death Race 2000 was perfect (for a certain value of ‘perfect’) and it needed no sequel. However, I will note this. Picking Malcolm McDowell for the President character? Continue reading The Full-of-Regrets Death Race 2050 trailer.

Deadpool… at the OSCARS?

lolwhut: “…[Deadpool] was just nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Writers Guild Awards, which means it could very well end up getting an Oscar nomination! [snip] The WGA nominations frequently predict what the Academy is going to recognize in their Adapted and Original Screenplay nominations.” You know, I would pay money to see that happen, actually.  It won’t happen, mind you, because the people who made Deadpool would naturally Deadpool their way across the entire Oscar proceedings.

Twice.

…And the Academy surely knows this.  Still: my God, but the shtick the Deadpool guys would come up with.  It would be entirely uncontained, not to say uncontainable.  We’d all tune in to watch the red carpet show, at least until the FCC yanked it off the air and then seeded the ground with salt…

How slow is it? *This* slow…

…there’s a trailer for Fifty Shades Darker out and I watched it.  Desperately hoping that there was something to it that could possibly be worth talking about.  …No.  No, there was not.  Oh, somebody had a gun out at the last few frames; but we all know that there’s going to be a third movie, so there’s no hope whatsoever for a mass Righteous Harvesting of the Unclean onscreen.

So there’s that.

Moe Lane

PS: No, I’m not linking the trailer or first movie. I don’t hate any of you. And some Amazon links are a bridge too far.

The Alien: Covenant “Bring in the Fool-Killer!” trailer.

I’m just going to come out and say what I’m thinking, here:  these idiots in Alien: Covenant kind of encapsulate Niven/Pournelle’s old saying “Think of it as evolution in action.”

And I don’t believe I’m the only one thinking it, either.  This entire escapade, from what I can tell, fell off of the stupid tree and hit every door down. You don’t walk onto the surface of a new world without wearing a spacesuit. Doesn’t matter if the air is breathable: in fact, you take double precautions in that case.  Why?  Oh, I don’t know: maybe because there’s a possibility that something in the ecosystem might be eager to take a bite out of you? Continue reading The Alien: Covenant “Bring in the Fool-Killer!” trailer.

Quote of the Day, Must. Not. Talk About. Rogue One Spoilers. edition.

What Tycho is saying here is so maddeningly true:

There is a lot to like about Rogue One, but it’s true; you can’t actually talk about Rogue One.  Not meaningfully; it’s very Fight Club.  Unless you and the person you’re talking to have seen it, virtually everything is a spoiler.  I’ve heard it said that this is the first movie to take the franchise heritage as a document of War seriously, but that’s what you write when you want to “start a conversation.”  In truth, this movie isn’t even in the same genre as the tentpole Star Wars films, which explains practically everything about the change in tone.

I’m shocked by how well people have been managing to keep out the details from this movie; possibly last year’s donnybrook over The Force Awakens spoilers taught some valuable lessons.  Which is frankly bizarre to contemplate, but there you are. I figure that I ought to let people who have scheduled Christmas break to go see the film go see it, but sometime next week there WILL be a spoiler-laden post on the subject.  Fair warning.

Tweet of the Day, …Hold Up A Second edition.

This is a really good point.  Not to mention, a somewhat glaring plot hole.  One you’d think that George Lucas would have tried to fix with twenty minutes of clunky dialog and heavy use of railroading… oh, wait, am I still bitter?

Mayyyyybeeee:

Quote of the Day, Wait. There’s a 4K Restoration Print of Star Wars (A New Hope)? edition.

This seems to be burying the lede a bit, friends.  Rogue One director Gareth Edwards:

On day one, we were in Lucasfilm in San Francisco with Industrial Light and Magic and John Knowles, our supervisor, he said that they’ve got a brand new 4K restoration print of A New Hope – it had literally just been finished. He suggested we sit and watch it. Obviously, I was up for that. Me, the writer, lots of the story people and John all sat down, we all had our little notepads, we were all ready for this. I’ll add that I’ve seen A New Hope hundreds of times. So I was sat there, ready to take notes and really delve under the surface of the film. You have the Fox fanfare, then scrolling text with ‘A long time ago…’, and then the main music begins. Next thing we knew it had ended, and we looked around to one another and just thought – shit, we didn’t take any notes. You can’t watch it without getting carried away. It’s really hard to get into an analytical filmmaker headspace with this film. It just turns you into a child.

Continue reading Quote of the Day, Wait. There’s a 4K Restoration Print of Star Wars (A New Hope)? edition.