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Saw Deadpool & Wolverine last night — I LOL’d. In some ways it was exactly what I expected, and in other ways it was very different. More of a sendoff to all of the non-MCU Marvel movies of yesteryear rather than a grand welcome of Deadpool to the MCU, but it worked well.

Trying to understand who the audience is for Alien: Romulus. Based on the previews it looks like it’s just checking the boxes for yet another Alien movie, but with no apparent narrative ties to the other films, and with teenagers as the main characters. Why? For all the faults of the other post-Aliens films, each of them at least had some kind of new idea to hang their plot on, but so far I haven’t seen any indication of that for Romulus.
 
Watched Furiosa last night. Good, but not great. Made me want to watch Fury Road again, though, which I’ll probably do soon.
 
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Nus & culottés

Est-il possible de repartir de zéro en pleine nature, sans vêtement et sans argent, pour ensuite réaliser un rêve d’enfant grâce à l'échange, au troc et à la générosité des personnes rencontrées sur le chemin ? Munis de leurs deux caméras paluches fixées à un baluchon qu’ils portent à l’épaule...
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Now watching Ørnen - en krimi-odyssé (2004-2006).

Possibly the best Nordic crime drama ever produced. Does not exactly hurt that the title sequence is the single best ever in television...
 
Finished up The Shield — still holds up amazingly well after all these years, minus a couple of peripheral characters with questionable acting chops. Always pushed the envelope, never ran out of steam, even after the major status quo changes later on.
 
So I was watching a youtube video on failed fantasy franchises and where are they now. One of them, which honestly surprises me it didn't take off, was The Golden Compass. According to the youtuber they tried to give it the Narnia treatment, make it more action/adventure than the books were. Also... sanitize it for children (more on that in a bit) and you get a flop instead. I remember watching it and liking it, but I've never read the books (His Dark Materials). The youtuber also mentioned that the books are much darker, more mature and rail against "the church" and authority in general. Then he mentioned that it was rebooted (like a few others on his list) as a TV series. I immediately looked it up to see where I could watch it and thank god it was on MAX (a friend let's me use his account).

So I've been watching it, still on season one and holy crap! WAAAAAY different from the movie. This shit is DARK, and SLOW and HEAVY. It has little to no action, it is very tense and dramatic and the interactions between characters feel like chess matches. I'm loving this shit and highly recommend it. I think it's also streaming on Amazon, but don't recall.
 
Onhell said:
Can't go wrong with the first one. the sequels were rushed and the rewrites obvious. The fourth one was just a big fuck you to the studio who told the Wachowskis they were making a sequel with or without them. So They made it their way and well... it's something, not sure what exactly, but something.
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I saw them more or less as they were coming out and while I don't deny the cultural significance and certain subtlety of 1, I've personally never found it that innovative or groundbreaking (even bullet time was much more intriguing from the filmmaking point of view than from the viewer's) and I enjoyed the sequels much more, being more thematically dense, narratively ... "weird" and having more complex and bigger action set pieces.

It's kinda like Dune 1 vs. Dune 2 (Messiah)-4 (God Emperor) for me - and I am really not a fan of Dune in general (I'd say I hate it with a passion nowadays), but if anything, I find the sequels more interesting and clever and therefore the original more basic and underwhelming.

I haven't had the courage yet to watch the last one, though. If nothing else, a Matrix sequel in 2021 feels weird. I saw the poster and immediately thought how incredibly dated it all feels.
 
JudasMyGuide said:
I saw them more or less as they were coming out and while I don't deny the cultural significance and certain subtlety of 1, I've personally never found it that innovative or groundbreaking (even bullet time was much more intriguing from the filmmaking point of view than from the viewer's) and I enjoyed the sequels much more, being more thematically dense, narratively ... "weird" and having more complex and bigger action set pieces.
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The story kept growing, yes, but the death of the orginal actress that played the Oracle clearly threw them for a loop and tried to get around it with "It's the Matrix! I can look however I want!" the pseudo-philosophy became right down silly and the "bigger action set pieces," were annoying, falling into the classic trap of "let's do it again only more of it and bigger. He fought three agents in the first movie? let's have him fight THOUSANDS!" The CGI, even back then looked awful during those scenes. The only one I remember enjoying was the highway scene when they are chased by the Rastafarian werewolves/vampires/whateverthefuck.
 
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