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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 326 responses total. |
edina
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response 133 of 326:
| 
May 31 02:05 UTC 2000 |
It's called Chicken Run and it is from Nick Parks' studio. I am a die-hard
W&G fan. It's all about Shaun the Sheep.
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ric
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response 134 of 326:
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May 31 02:54 UTC 2000 |
I'll be passing on "Chicken Run" :)
I do want to see "Hollow Man".
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tpryan
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response 135 of 326:
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May 31 16:25 UTC 2000 |
I saw the 7 minute trailer for Battlestar Gallatica: The Second Coming
at MarCon this past weekend. If they can get things done, this will be good
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jazz
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response 136 of 326:
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May 31 16:32 UTC 2000 |
Was that "Shaun" or "Shorn"? I'm not that good with British accents.
Does the Second Coming also feature a phallic "mothership"? :)
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aruba
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response 137 of 326:
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May 31 17:30 UTC 2000 |
Good Lord - I had no idea someone was bringing back Battlestar Galactica.
But - I mean - they got to Earth, right? So what gives?
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edina
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response 138 of 326:
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May 31 18:15 UTC 2000 |
It's Shaun the Sheep. I should know - I have tons of Shaun stuff hanging
around.
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otaking
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response 139 of 326:
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May 31 18:52 UTC 2000 |
They're assuming that Galactica 1980 never happened. After all, who would want
to acknowledge that show.
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krj
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response 140 of 326:
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May 31 20:16 UTC 2000 |
Who wants to acknowledge the original Battlestar Galactica?
I saw the theatrical release: it made my head hurt.
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edina
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response 141 of 326:
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May 31 21:26 UTC 2000 |
I LOVED Battlestar Galactica - I still occasionally watch it on sci-fi on the
weekends. I watch it with a Mystery Science Theater mindset.
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otaking
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response 142 of 326:
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May 31 22:09 UTC 2000 |
Battlestar Galactica was a fun show. I still love to watch it at times.
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goose
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response 143 of 326:
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Jun 1 01:39 UTC 2000 |
I fondly remember Space:1999. what the hell happened? Oh yeah, we got to
the moon with the Apollo missions and everyone lost interest.
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mdw
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response 144 of 326:
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Jun 1 01:46 UTC 2000 |
Er, space:1999 was made after most of the apollo missions and definitely
after the excitement had died down.
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goose
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response 145 of 326:
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Jun 1 01:54 UTC 2000 |
I know that, but I figured they were "predicting" the future of Space. :-)
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otaking
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response 146 of 326:
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Jun 1 02:03 UTC 2000 |
Yeah, it's a shame the moon flew out of orbit last year. ^_^
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krj
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response 147 of 326:
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Jun 1 04:02 UTC 2000 |
A friend once crunched through the physics of "Space:1999" and wrote a
funny article about it. The key point was that any expenditure of energy
which would accelerate the moon on its way to another star wasn't
going to leave anybody alive on the moon.
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mcnally
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response 148 of 326:
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Jun 1 05:03 UTC 2000 |
Snuck out of work a little early tonight to make it to the late-matinee
showing of Mission:Implausible.
I suppose it was entertaining in a way, but if there's any justice in the
world it should lead to legislation requiring Hollywood, before releasing
and distributing any action movie, to screen it for a test audience of
ordinarily intelligent 8-year-olds. If the movie doesn't display at least
enough internal consistency for an enthusiastic 8-year-old to describe the
plot in a way that makes sense to someone who hasn't seen the movie, then
it doesn't get released.
Obviously a totally *huge* amount of work, including a phenomenal amount
of meticulous attention to detail, goes into the making of a mega-dollar
action movie. So why is it that when it comes time to make a big-budget
movie, the studios seem to devote far more time to choosing the music
that goes on the soundtrack than they do examining the script for any sort
of logical consistency?
I'm not claiming to want a realistic or true-to-life action film. I'm
totally OK with the idea that the whole genre exists to fulfill a need
for escapist fantasy. I just want to walk out of the theater without
feeling confused and vaguely insulted. Is that *so* much to ask?
Within the peculiar but established logic of the action movie universe,
Mission:Impossible 2 gets off to a fairly decent plot. The bad guys have
stolen something important and the good guys have to resort to highly
unusual methods to get it back. So far so good.. About half-way through,
though, the logical consistency of Mission:Impossible starts completely
disintegrating, even by action-movie standards.
Before the end of the movie, long before you can sort out how things got
so out of hand, the main characters are running around some sort of
bizarre island biotech-storage facilities where white doves flutter
artistically through the underground corridors. By the time people start
pulling off the rubber face masks and voice-modulators that imbue such
magical powers of disguise, you're too bemused to congratulate the hero
for the astonishing foresight which led him to pack all of the masks he
couldn't have anticipated needing for his commando raid on the island
fortress (who'd've known he'd need a mask OF HIMSELF? or does he simply
make them on the spot?)
In the end, the most annoying thing about Mission:Impossible is the
blantantly obvious attention paid to every tiny detail *except* the script.
When the filmmaker is sufficiently in control of his medium to give us a
shot of flames reflected in the iris and pupil of the villains eye, yet no
attempt is made to give the characters an iota of believable motivation,
the viewer has to feel like the target of a fair amount of contempt.
What really bugs me is that it seems that with just a little bit of effort,
an excellent movie could've been made, using the same action sequences,
but obeying at least the laws of action movie logic. Even an attempt would
have been nice..
|
bdh3
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response 149 of 326:
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Jun 1 08:45 UTC 2000 |
Saw the "Director's Cut" (funny notion as the director was 'Alan
Smithey' funny if you know what it means) of _Dune_ on the Sci-fi cable
channel at the Holiday Inn in Muscatine, Iowa this past weekend. It was
campy crap in its theatre debute and at 5 hours long with average of 8
minutes of carefully targeted 'verts per 15 minutes of air time it was
campy crap with voice over naration. I cannot even figure out where to
begin to slam it. Read the book instead, and if you don't know how to
read, go visit the zoo instead or take drugs or slam your head against
the wall. At least I didn't pay anything other than for the hotel room
to view "The Director's Cut". Its pure unadulterated crap with big time
stars -the trailers for the december 2000 remake shown looked much
better - go figure.
Costumes: Figure out if 'House Atreiades' are Nazis or British, or
USMARINE CORPs dress uniforms.
Screen Writers: Read the fucking book all the way through. Or at least
read a little of it, a little bit of it, try maybe the first 5 pages...
Casting: Paul-Muad-dib-Usul is 15 years old in the beginning. THere
are actors of that age that can work even though your actor doesn't.
Special effects - cheasy 'sam wood' intermixed, either decide you are an
A movie or a B movie, don't mix and match.
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danr
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response 150 of 326:
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Jun 1 14:59 UTC 2000 |
re #148: The last James Bond movie was exactly the same. I think it's
that special effects are getting to be too easy to produce, while well-
written scripts are getting harder to write. And on top of that, most
people that go to movies like MI2 don't really care about plot.
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mcnally
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response 151 of 326:
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Jun 1 20:45 UTC 2000 |
I agree that viewers don't demand excellent plots, but I think that
most still appreciate it when at least a little bit of thought is given
to the issue.. Take, for instance, "The Matrix".. Even a little bit
of critical examination reveals the fact that the plot is skeletal
(at best) and the scenario ludicrous (Okay: even if we grant that the
AIs need "bio-energy" to power things, why don't they get it from cows
and save themselves a lot of potential trouble?)
But "The Matrix" was enjoyable because it paid at least enough lip service
to the idea of plot and narrative structure to keep you from being jolted
out of your suspended disbelief while watching the movie. Once you walked
out of the theater it didn't take long before the illusion of plot, so
carefully constructed out of clever pacing and eye candy -- smoke and
mirrors, basically -- began to dissipate. But -- and this is the important
part -- *while* you were watching you didn't start to shift in your seat
or scratch your head at what was going on on-screen..
Mission:Implausible simply asks too much.. Once I've swallowed the
idea that Tom Cruise is a super-sophisticated secret agent with nerves
of steel and superhuman reflexes, and have accepted that germ warfare
researchers are willing to smuggle a deadly virus by injecting it into
themselves and then getting on a plane and *hoping* they'll arrive at
their destination on time to take the cure, it's unfair to further
burden my overtaxed credibility by halfway through the movie having
everyone behave like idiots just because it leads to some cool stunts.
This movie doesn't just want me to suspend my disbelief, it asks me
to vaporize it..
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mooncat
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response 152 of 326:
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Jun 1 21:23 UTC 2000 |
Mike- maybe the bio-energy provided by an occupied mind (occupied by
the Matrix, doncha know) was greater than that provided by cows...
<grins> Just a, yanno, thought...
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jazz
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response 153 of 326:
|
Jun 1 21:54 UTC 2000 |
I'd think they'd do something like what NASA has researched, using very
primitive bacteria for that purpose. It's the most efficient food, and in
all likelihood far better at producing energy as biomass. Of course, there's
that whole fusion and fission thing ...
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mcnally
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response 154 of 326:
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Jun 1 21:59 UTC 2000 |
I'm not trying to poke holes in "The Matrix".. For what it's worth,
my opinion is that the filmmakers of "The Matrix" gave the viewer just
enough expository and explanatory mumbo-jumbo to keep things moving along.
It wasn't tightly written enough to stand up to analysis after the movie
was over, but it was never intended to do so. The point is, that in
"The Matrix", or any other successful action movie, the plot is well
enough constructed to at least last for two hours or so before simply
disintegrating under the weight of its own implausibility.
In my opinion this is definitely not true of Mission:Impossible 2,
which is the primary flaw which ruined my enjoyment of the movie.
|
mooncat
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response 155 of 326:
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Jun 1 22:44 UTC 2000 |
Mike... I'm just teasing. <grins>
One of the things I liked was every time it looked like they were going
to throw in a 'mandatory love scene' they didn't. <grins>
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ric
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response 156 of 326:
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Jun 2 01:26 UTC 2000 |
IMO, plausability does not necessarily a good movie make.
Most of the time, I don't really give a damn about plot flaws. Realism and
plausability has absolutely no meaning to me when I'm watching a movie. I
go purely to be entertained, and neither realism nor plausability of plat
affects that entertainment value for me.
Thus, I enjoyed Mission Impossible 2
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mcnally
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response 157 of 326:
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Jun 2 01:39 UTC 2000 |
Would you enjoy watching a 90-minute reel of stunts with no connecting
plot line? Because that's the way action movies seem to be headed..
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