majestic

BruceVC and his thoughts about unions and violently breaking up protests. "Unions ruin the economy." "Sometimes governments have no choice but to violently end strikes." "People on strike thought they were impervious to bullets so they got violent." and also "Affected shareholder values, so it was necessary to break up the strike." Nothing hasty about your judgement. Don't let the old posts fool you, just because BruceVC stopped using there and is now typing their all the time, it's still the same poster. I originally made a joke on their being a posessive pronoun. The Agent Smith showed up and asked me why I persist, and I had no real answer. I bet he'll come around the corner and will threaten to terminate this post too.

edit: Note to myself: The hell is wrong with me.

The film is a great example of what it takes for me to enjoy a comedic focus in a film. No or at least limited slapstick, not related to anything supposedly romantic, although we could argue that Nic and Javi have quite the bromance going on, and occasionally absurd, even if they shamelessly stole the joke with the wall from Hot Shots 2. It still works because it has this wonderful interaction attached to it. Plus there's this whole meta level that makes the film generally interesting for me, but it is not the entire movie. Might want to try 7 Psychopaths too if you haven't already. That one's a little more out there though. Not sure, didn't really expect you to enjoy this enough to call it a fun and cute movie, but things have been weird enough recently in this thread. Who knows.

If you mean the talk between Shinji and Gendo at the end in the negative universe, then kind of, yes. There's something I haven't mentioned yet, I never could shake the feeling during the entire film that it is somewhat derivative of other concepts. I felt like I've seen all of that before, or read about it, or played games with such plot points. I can't really give any specifics though.

If that was the intention, then it's actally worse. Would have been a nice concept, but it would have needed to be communicated differently - and with even less action. In fact, more like absolutely not action scenes at all. Would have made for a nice 1:20 minute runtime too. The casting would have been great too, then, because that would have subverted expectations in a good way.

I dreamt I was stuck in a Maniac Mansion'esque point and click adventure. I'm not sure if that is at all related to watching Everything Everywhere All At Once, but probably. I'd post more details about the dream, but what happened in it is curiously out of grasp. I remember dreaming and the topic, but the details are gone. Anyway, I debated with myself whether or not I should post an honest opinion or not, but I will. This will be like the many times my friends dragged me to a movie and then asked how it was, and I usually say fine or okay, with the unsaid implication that fine isn't as good as it sounds, and okay was worse than that. I said it before, but I've been also asked if I like films at all. Which I do. *sigh* So, before getting needlessly verbose, here's a TL;DR: The film was fine, and it's my turn to be the meanie zucchini for a change. Which is fine too, because that's usually my role when talking about films anyway. For this to make sense, I'll have to explain a bit more - and spoil the end of the book series, so take care. In King's The Dark Tower, Ka is a wheel. Ka is a concept of fate, destiny and destination the people in this world have. As such, and even though a whole lot of people were disappointed with the ending of the book series, it makes sense for the protagonist of the series, Roland, to eventually end up exactly where he started. Albeit with the slight variation of having the Horn of Eld, an item of some importance, in this new turn of the wheel. The Horn of Eld in this case is me not hating the film, which makes it different to the last time the forum - back then before Interplay went belly up and some of Black Isle's staff founded Obsidian - agreed that there's a movie of year (or better) to watch. That, back then, it was also a film containing some martial arts, namely Kill Bill Vol. 1. As I said, the difference between this and Kill Bill Vol. 1 was that I hated watching Kill Bill for a myriad of reasons. There's a fine irony here insofar as I've mentioned to someone that I will hold off on watching Everything Everywhere All At Once because I'm afraid that it will be another Kill Bill repeat. Misgivings were overcome by this thread being overwhelmingly positive about the film, and what do you know, the wheel turned. I should have stuck with my initial feeling, really - and that was based simply on the reactions of posters, not even on knowing anything about the film. Alas. I did not hate Everything Everywhere All At Once, but I also don't think it is movie of the year material. For any number of reasons, many of which are spoilers. I'll try to post some general things before marking everything for whoever still wants to watch it. Anyway, the first, and most subjective of it all, is the casting of the film. I like Michelle Yeoh. I also like Jamie Lee Curtis in most of her roles. Even if @Bartimaeus hadn't pointed out that Waymond is Short Round from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, I would have noticed that, because apparently he was directed to simply act like Shorty in the film during the times he wasn't told to act like Jackie Chan. Which is, luckily, most of the time. He also often still sounds like Short Round. Although that last part is an issue that fused with knowing two versions of the film, the original, and the German dub, therefore it is hard to attribute this entirely to, I don't know, either Ke Huy Quan as an actor or the direction. To add some further insult to the injury, he looks like Harry Potter throughout most of the film. Right at the start I was thrown into a film where the main cast consisted of Michelle Yeoh, someone you don't cast simply for a role as small business owner in the US, Chinese Harry Potter and Jamie Lee Curtis as tax auditor, and while the film at least proceeds to show off that Ke Huy Quan is indeed a good actor, the overall impression of the cast was pretty immersion breaking right from the beginning. I can't put this any other way but to say that I think this movie would have benefitted immensely from not having big name actors attached to it.That said, I liked most of the opening, and I enjoyed the film up until the point they had the first action scene that went on for what felt like an hour. That said, let's move the thing that saved the film: The core of it, the message, if you will. Chinese Harry Potter's take on life is wonderful, and the resolution to the character's problems is great. And yet, therein also lies an issue, yet again. There's so much more of that which could have been in the film, instead of, well, protracted action sequences that serve no purpose. If there's one damning thing I can say about it is that I actually sat through the action and contemplated skipping the film ahead to the good scenes. Imagine how much that takes. I don't even skip the really bad episodes in series I sometimes rewatch. Yes, that means watching Shades of Gray from TNG (no relation to the terrible book and equally terrible film), or Move Along Home and Let He Who Is Without Sin... from DS9. And yes, Threshold from Voyager. I ultimately, being who I am, did not skip around on the off-chance that the scenes would contain something necessary for the resolution, or some minor tidbit that would cleverly come back into play, like, I don't know, a raccoon. There were not many of these, and in fact, I would have liked the film better if I just had fast-forwarded through all the nonsense. So, hey guys, reality is saved. I didn't hate it, so unmaking the entire universe isn't going to happen (yet?), and I certainly am not going to cause the fourth trumpet to blow by loving it. It was fine. It could have been so much more. It just wasn't. No need to hold on to your potatoes.

The world's still here, I guess that means that at least I don't have any reality shaping powers. It's 2 am now, and I need a good night's sleep to make sense of what I've just watched. Kinda feel a little like Roland in the Desert, with the Horn of Eld.

The world is doomed either way. We either all agree on something and cause the end times to occur, or reality finally ceases to exist because the mythical space of the Venn-Diagram that violates reality as we know it will open and end everything, everwhere, all at once, like in Dogma.

Okay, guess I'm going to watch that film too.

Quoted for truth. Do yourself a favor and bail out of the Hinterlands the moment you can. You'll be back more often than you'd like anyway.

Paddington 2 is one of Javi's favorite films.

I'm sorry but I can't really alleviate your concerns here. The emotional core of the film, i.e. Nicolas Cage being aimless, his carreer not going where he wants, his problems with his teenage daughter and the part of the film that's just a buddy movie with Pedro Pascal, that might work - but the film basically starts off with assuming the viewer is familiar with Nicolas Cage on some level. That is actually a fair amount of the films 105 minute runtime. Then there's the rest of it. Spoilers: Some of the jokes - well, many of them - require at least a passing knowledge of Cage films. In this way, the film comes with the same downside that Jean-Claude van Johnson came with. It's absolutely brilliant in its meta jokes and how it treads the ground between being fully serious in a ludicrous way and over the top satire. However, unless one is familiar with the subject matter, it might prove to be a little impenetrable and fall short.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022) A ways back when I posted the teaser for this film, I expected it to be a whole lot of things. Fun, stupid, over the top. Nicolas Cage playing himself, what else could it be. Apparently he turned down the role three or four times before taking it. I don't know if that means he should be given the credit I wanted to give him for being able to make fun of himself or not, but that's besides the point. I expected this to be the most fun I had with a film in a while. A longer ways back, my expectations of a film were wildly subverted. The difference is, with The Last Jedi, I expected a bad Empire remake, and I got a movie that made me think Attack Of The Clones was a good idea, and nothing ever should make anyone feel like that. Here I expected good things in a certain way, and expectations were once again subverted. Except in a good way. Out of all the things I expected of this film, it being a legitimately good movie was definitely not among them. Funny that, but somehow, it is. It's well executed, the actors are all delightfully into and great in their roles, particularily Pedro Pascal who is just the best. Hell, there's a digitally de-aged, super creepy Nicolas Cage appearing every now and then who is giving his hammiest performance, and as a bonus, Cage actually says "not the bees" in the film. The film just works in every way. As a silly comedy, as a Nicolas Cage action film, and as an adult character drama. Yes, this is partially a meta joke, but not entirely. It really is all that, in a nice package that's good looking, and it certainly deserved more than not even making its budget back at the box office. Looks like Nicolas Cage's handler was right in the film. There simply is no place for adult character dramas without mass appeal any more. I guess the action at the end was too little, too late, or the film was too much of everything and delightfully meta at the same time for most. I don't know. All I know is that I expected this to be the most fun I had with a live action film in a while, and that was true - and it was also a good deal more. If anyone of you liked 7 Psychopaths, give this a try.

Hate-watching would make for more entertaining posts, I guess, but I think I prefer this non-offensive, somewhat mediocre Komi for the time being.

Fixed.

Komi can't Komi-san. Somewhere, somehow, with the last three episodes, this stopped being terrible and went to being mediocre, so I really didn't post much about it. This week's episode has some really nice moments, which is such a weird contrast compared to the rest of the series. Series toned down Najimi a little and kept the other creeps squared away for the most part. It's done wonders for my, well, don't want to call it enjoyment of the series, but it is making watching these much less of a chore.

"Your honor, I did not lie when I said I did not steal the car, at the time I did not know that cars aren't public properties. I thought it was locked by accident."

Fascist gonna fascist. The Führer can do no wrong, and rules don't apply to them.

True Heirs, do I win the thread now?

Those were Federation colonies awarded to Cardassia. Territorial concessions to end the war. Hence them staying under Cardassian jurdisdiction, which even in TNG is implied to be a little on the arse side of things. The Klingons were a Soviet stand-in TOS and The Undiscovered Country about the fall of the Soviet Union. Reflecting real life events or issues isn't wrong for Star Trek at all, it's a good thing, as long as it's not as badly handled as it is in Picard. The difference is that in The Undiscovered Country, a group of people not capable of letting go of their grudges on both sides conspire to spark conflict, and our heroes are trying to prevent a devastating war. If the Undiscovered Country was set in Star Trek Picard's setting, there'd be a group of heros fighting against the Federation's idea of letting the Klingons die because they all suck and like 2% of their member nations threw a hissy fit about maybe helping them. The difference with the Maquis being that the Federation would give up territory for peace because there's enough territory in space for everyone, just a stubborn group of people not wanting to leave and then being unhappy with how they're governed. The real meat of the story and ideas are then shifted to the Bajorans later in TNG and in DS9 anyway. Star Trek Picard's Federation would run supplies and weaponry to the Maquis to keep the Cardassians off-balance. See the... difference? Yes, more modern Star Trek played with the edges of Gene Roddenberry's vision, poushed it to its limits and maybe even saw it break once or twice (Paradise Lost two parter in DS9) but it never fully crapped on it the way Alex Kurtzman did.

It's by far and large the easiest way to have a fish out of water character that can serve as justification for any and all exposition you want dumped on the viewer. There are ways to make that work within a universe without reincarnation or transporting someone to the alternate reality of course, but that's a good deal more difficult. More difficult, but also more satisfying, especially if the exposition is organic but still followable. Watch 魔法少女リリカルなのは StrikerS (can't believe I managed to type that without any typos on my first try ) for a really decent way to do that. For the most part, at least, somewhere near the end the season falls apart a bit and it just has a regular exposition dump episode for no reason.

Yeah, that doesn't really explain how Spock can try to save everyone with his red matter. If there's enough time for him to come and try save Romulus, then there's enough time to prepare exit strategies as well. Jar Jar just doesn't care about minutiae like that, so in addition to the premise not making a whole lot of sense, we also get a villain who has the hardest hitting, most advanced ship in the quadrant at the time, and he just patiently waits 20+ years for Spock to come through a time portal to take his vengeance, instead of heading back to his people and make sure they conquer the galaxy - or at the very least prevent the supernova in some fashion. Then the film continues to have plasma blast drills that hang perfectly perpendicular to the surface in relative weightlessness even though they emit a stream capable of drilling a hole through the crust of a planet and creating stable tunnles down to the core. Never mind the red matter and how it even works, and yes, that's exactly the sort of nonsense that would not bother me if the film wasn't basically a stupid action film set in the 'Trek verse. Inversely, I know people had similar problems with First Contact, however while First Contact began with the stupid idea that Picard would be of no use in a fight against the Borg and they send the presumably most powerful Federation starship off on patrol instead of temporarily relieving him of command, the rest of the film was fine enough, and in a way the events of the film justify him not being in command of the battle group facing the cube. And, eh, unlike Star Trek: Picard's second season, it references a clearly established traumatic event in Picard's life to justify some rather dark moments, like him killing half-assimilated crewmembers. The film has some other problems, but overall, they don't matter as much for me as the issues of Generations, Insurrection and later Nemesis, all of which were much worse films. Insurrection in particular, what the hell Admiral Dougherty. Well, but the track record of Star Trek's film offerings is spotty at best. There's a big difference here, especially with the Maquis. The colonies forming the Maquis simply aren't a part of the Federation any more after the treaty with the Cardassians, as such it's much easier to justify, and the Starfleet personnel supporting or joining them are individuals, not the entire organisation. One also can't help but notice that you really did not follow DS9 much, because there's much worse than the Maquis going on in DS9. Federation officers condoning an assassination, the Federation having a secret intelligence wing that's arguably on par with the Tal Shiar and the Obsidian Order in efficiency and ruthlessness (by the way, if you keep watching Enterprise, a part of that won't make sense without the frame of reference from DS9) and one of the crew members going off on a Klingon vengeance quest. However, all of that is presented in a way you can accept the drift from the ideals, in particular because the setting and story background of DS9 is kind of unprecedented. The characters are strong, the acting and direction in generally is good, even if Avery Brooks is hilariously hammy at times and it is simply much easier to accept him taking a shortcut after watching the events unfold over several seasons. Rather than just saying "Hey Romulan refugees that aren't an issue in this kind of setting at all cause the Federation's ideals to collapse in on itself, just because we said so"!. Granted, Section 31 is a tough cookie, but there we are again with the actual argument brought forth - DS9 is strong enough to be able to withstand such an element, and the episodes with Section 31 are tightly plotted and interesting, so it is much easier to forgive. I've always assumed that Starfleet Academy gives cadets broad training in every branch and you simply pick a specialisation at some point, in the same way medical school shares a base course with veterinary medicine (well, it does so here, at least) and just branches off before further specialization. Troi was a staff officer who found herself to be the ranking officer during an emergency that saw a complete lack of line officer guidance, and proceeded to eventually take the education necessary to move to said occupation. Well, and to be promoted to a higher rank. Trek's always been a little unclear with how the command structure works, so there's... well... enough leeway. It's not the best setup, but Troi's promotion was a decent follow up to her inability to cut losses and leave during Disaster, which realistically was a nonsense decision and could have killed everyone if the plot hadn't decided to do otherwise. I'm guessing there are way to change between branches and apparently it's possible to take courses like Troi did, however, you're right. It wasn't handled that well, much like a lot of things in season seven. She should have gone through a lot more training than that, really. It clearly detracts from the episode in question. But, again, given TNG's other strenghts, it's less problematic and therefore no real reason to nitpick it to death. Which goes back to @Bartimaeus' post on the subject.

I think it was, and the base point is simply because it ties in to nuTrek. I'm not going to pretend otherwise, Picard lost me directly after the opening scene because it was a load of horse manure, and it only went downhill from there. The first episode wasn't over, and any goodwill I might have mustered because it has Patrick Stewart in it all but evaporated. Not only does it follow the nonsense established in Star Trek 2009, it tried to remake Star Trek's Federation into Trump's America because someone probably told them that Star Trek used to be brainy entertainment, not terribly acted and directed character drama with bad writing and stupid action scenes. Ultimately, nothing good can follow from such a rotten basis, and in the end all I did was nitpick everything about the show, much like @Bartimaeus talked about in the earlier post here. I should have the good sense to just stop watching in any such cases, but I don't. Granted, that's a point I can give you. Star Trek Picard sure was never boring. I wish it would have been, then we'd just have a lower end episode of Star Trek: TNG or one of the lower end episodes of TOS. Alas, it was worse, it was infuriating from start to finish, poorly plotted, terribly paced, and - the worst offense - utterly stupid. I don't entirely know why, but it is what it is: If things don't make sense within an established universe, for me, at least, everything falls apart. I've already said after the first few episodes that Discovery suffered from being tied to the brand name, and Picard does so as well, although of course you can't have Picard without Star Trek, so that's entirely moot. Back then I couldn't have known that the first season of Discovery would end up being its best, and that the show will continue on to be terrible in every which way. You curiously forgot to mention an uppity kid saving the ship ten times over which is about a hundred times more annoying than Worf being bad at his job to demonstrate to the audience how dangerous a situation is, or the writers not really knowing what to do with Deanna other than putting her in revealing clothing. The fact that these points don't bother me speaks to a the strength of the series, even with it's less than stellar (nicely put) opening seasons. Not that it's fair to compare a show that has 178 episodes to one that hopefully won't exceed 30, but who knows how long this will keep on going. Although Patrick Stewart sure looks like he's ready to call it quits. The thing is, even if you just take the first season of TNG, with it's Wesley focused offerings born out of the writing strike or the episodes with the laughably terrible racist subtones, it's still better than anything in Star Trek: Picard. Troi undergoes command training for a promotion, by the way. Just to nitpick a little. That's why she needs to learn the important lesson of being able to send people to death if it saves others. Still, even if we accept the point that TNG had lots of out of character moments, the characters, on average, where somewhat consistent. The Picard characters barely resemble their originals, and yes, while people change, if you want me to accept that change, then it needs to be shown, or at least properly explained. Picard having a sad because the Federation does something the Federation would never in a million years actually do, namely abandon people in need over political quibbling, well, I'm sorry, that might be an explanation, but it is a poor one, and you can't expect me not to be soured on the entire premise just because of it. In particular this one is even worse, because in itself it is based on Jar Jar Abram's utterly stupid idea that the Romulan Empire would be incapable of evacuating Romulus on their own or notice that their sun will go supernova, which just happens to be a stellar event millions of years in the making. It would be a stretch to accept that premise in the dumbest of sci-fi shlock, but there it would be at least appropriate. If Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog can show the proper transformation of Billy from a goofy but entirely misunderstood 'villain' to Dr. Horrible, member of the Evil Leage of Evil in 45 minutes of runtime in a garage project because everyone invovled was bored out of their minds during another writers strike, then for crying out loud, at least do something to justify the god damned premise. Something that's not basically screaming 'WE WANT TO BE RELEVANT TO CURRENT EVENTS SEE HOW INTELLIGENT OUR ENTERTAINMENT IS' in the dumbest way possible. Much like The Last Jedi wanted to yell WE DON'T CARE ABOUT STAR WARS as loudly as possible. Well, mission accomplished. So do I. The themes are there, they're just built on a foundation so rotten that I just don't care what they were trying to do. It's funny because this discussion is a reverse of what I sometimes do, most recently when talking about either Bubble with @Lexx or about In This Corner Of The World with @Bartimaeus. Rafi should not even be a problem in the Star Trek setting, at least not when she's a Federation citizen. We've left that sort of stuff long behind us. That may or may not be a constraint in the setting for the writers, but it's not one that's hard to work around. There's a reason for all those forehead aliens in the Star Trek universe. None of these people should get any sort of command spot like they do in season two, by the way, minor spoiler, sorry. They should be locked away for being dangerous nutjobs, much like Janeway, but we're not complaining about Voyager here. I don't even want to talk about Space Legolas. Nothing about the Borg plot makes sense, so I don't really blame you there. It's an entirely superflous element in a series that already has an issue with tying plot points together in a timely and satisfying manner, and nobody on the writing team and nobody of the producers or editors or whatever else were on set checking what is going on had the good sense to tell them to streamline the storyline into something that's at least not resolved in a serioulsy dumb way in the last second, and what do you know, because it was so great, they get to do exactly that in season two as well. Heh. In season two everyone is working again. They sure earned being back in Star Fleet. Hey, even Space Legolas gets to be in Starfleet because he joined the 1.5 year short course. Oh, by the way, want to guess how relevant Rafi's open issue with her son is to anything? You're allowed one guess with no lifelines. That's putting it mildly, I thought I was going crazy after the first four episodes because I didn't just not hate it, I actually enjoyed watching The Vision of Escaflowne even though Van starts out as the worst sort of dork possible and it has cat girls. The example from Jay is funny because unless I remember wrong, he said that during their Skyfall review, a movie I hated so much I wanted to throw the Blu Ray into the trash. At least I stopped wasting money on theater tickets after A Quantum of Solace, a dumpster fire of a film that rivals Star Trek: Into Derpness. But yeah, it is definitely easier to overlook the less well made parts if the rest is good enough. However, as is the case with pretty much all of nuTrek except for Strange New Worlds (caveat, I haven't watched the most recent episode yet, but it is called Spock Amok, which makes me hate the episode even before watching it, so that one's working from a whole lot of baggage just from the title alone), and Strange New World is only fine for now, and I'm sure if it keeps sticking to the formula of having to have at least 5 minutes of AWESOME COMBAT AKSHUN per episode, I'm eventually going to grow bored of it, and from that, the resentment I harbored for the first episode will creep back in. Regarding nuTrek, it might seem completely silly, but back in 2009 directly after Spock's opening narration, I was sitting in the theater, and looked at the friend I was watching the film with and said: "I already hate this." That was just right after the first two or so minutes, and the rest of the film did nothing to change my mind. It didn't even try. Pretty much. The easiest thing to point out is writing quality from a standpoint that is almost objectively measurable, when character motivations make no sense, plots are left open or resolved in poor, unsatisfying manners, then that's somewhat easy to point out. Even so, and this goes hand in hand with the above points made by @Amentep, TNG had its fair share of bad writing and episodes that did not truly make sense or repeated plot points that came before, or tried to ape the original series for no reason and ended up not working. These episode are, however, weighed against the average quality of the episodes, and that comes out positive for the show. It doesn't for something like Picard, arguably of course also because once a bad TNG episode it is over, it is over. The rotten foundation Picard is built on doesn't go away after an episode. It permeates everything. The actual nitpicking then follows as an extention of being unsatisfied with the series. There's a rushed plot resolution for Allen in The Vision of Escaflowne as well, and the ending could have done with more of a setup, but the series was cut down a third of its runtime. Still, it ended up not mattering too much. Picard on the other hand had this abortive Borg plot, and here I am complaining about it. Discovery worked in a similar way for me to a point where I started complaining every time the writers thought it was a good idea to give distances and they were hilariously inaccurate. Like putting a Klingon fleet at the Federation's doorstep and being close to winning the war, with coordinates somewhere in the Oort cloud. That's the Federation's back yard and the Soviets are storming Berlin. Steiner ain't going to stop that no matter what. Guess someone told them to not always just use light years for some reason, and so they started using astronomical units and got that wrong too. Yay. Forum almost killed my post. Yay!