Movies you've seen recently

[Labadal]

Completed season 1 of The Wired. Watched the 1st episode of season 2, and it feels like there are way too many new characters, but the show is still good.

[Hurlshort]

Wreck It Ralph - I probably enjoyed it more than my daughter, it was a fantastic movie. Watching the lead characters beat up on a car bonus stage with Ryu at the end credits was a great way to end it too

[HoonDing]

Does this series feature Black Canary?

Not familiar with the comic stuff....but no, not yet.

She was his wife/girlfriend. According to imdb she's in.

 

Come to think of it, there was actually a Birds of Prey series around ten years ago, but it flopped spectacularly.

[Raithe]

She was his wife/girlfriend. According to imdb she's in.

 

Come to think of it, there was actually a Birds of Prey series around ten years ago, but it flopped spectacularly.

 

For the comic beek geekasm (as far as I kinda recall) - Dinah Lance aka Black Canary was the daughter of a non-powered costumed heroine from the JLA days. She started out as a brunette who wore a blonde wig, a leather jacket and some fishnet hose as a way of hiding her identity whilst kicking butt with martial arts ability and general "scrappy attitude", then picked up some sonic based scream powers along the way...

 

So far the series just has Dinah Lance as a brunette lawyer with a hardbitten detective for a father, and they've had the throwaway line about some costume she wore for halloween where she hated the fishnets... So potential for things to go somewhere with that in the future.

 

On a sidenote, the old tv show Birds of Prey was a semi-adaption of the highly successful comic run Birds of Prey, which was Oracle, Black Canary and Huntress,

The tv show wasn't too bad in that cheesy comic book show sort of way, but it offended the fans by rewriting a whole heap of stuff, and then projecting it into a pseudo future Gotham where Batman had disapeared and Huntress was the unrecognised daughter of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle (along with some mutant powers).

[Oerwinde]

Saw Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance last night. Ghost Rider's look was better than the first one, that was about all that was better. It wasn't as bad as people were saying, but it wasn't a good movie either. Hopefully those rights revert to marvel and we get a decent flick sans Nick Cage.

[Labadal]

Saw Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance last night. Ghost Rider's look was better than the first one, that was about all that was better. It wasn't as bad as people were saying, but it wasn't a good movie either. Hopefully those rights revert to marvel and we get a decent flick sans Nick Cage.

 

Nicholas Cage, I think Con Air is the only flick I liked that he has a role in.

[Volourn]

Nicholas Cage is awesome in 99% of his rules. Ghost Rider always looked stupid so I haven't bothered with it. The entire concept is lame.

[Labadal]

Nicholas Cage is awesome in 99% of his rules. Ghost Rider always looked stupid so I haven't bothered with it. The entire concept is lame.

 

I have noticed that our tastes differ in many things.

[Volourn]

I have noticed that our tastes are the same in many things.

Edited November 11, 2012 by Volourn

[Labadal]

Hey, I meant no offense, it's just how it is from reading many of your posts.

[Hiro Protagonist]

Watched Twilight and New Moon with the gf on the weekend. Enjoyed both movies. Will have to watch the last ones to find out what happens.

[SophosTheWise]

Watched Mazes & Monsters, an 80s TV movie starring a young Tom Hanks. It's hilarious, really. Portrays the controversies about Dungeons & Dragons with a bat**** insane group. Really, if you want to have a good old fashioned laugh about stupid intentions, watch that movie.

[Kor Qel Droma]

Oh man I remember that tv movie. It was right before the big witch hunt against D&D. As a nine year old I found it both very entertaining and scary.

 

Up until Big came out I always associated Tom Hanks as the 'guy from Mazes and Monsters'.

 

And as much as I hate the character, I kind of enjoyed a second viewing of Wolverine. My first impression wasn't that great. I still wish it was more of an all out battle with Sabertooth for the duration of the movie.

 

I've been watching Arrow as well. I like it so far. I don't even mind that the lead hasn't quite found his stride (yet?). It's not like Tom Welling was all that impressive in the first few episodes of Smallville, either. I hope they have some superpowered baddies thrown in at some point.

[ShadySands]

Not a movie but I just saw the trailer to World War Z and I gotta say that I'm not impressed. I love zombie movies and I was really looking forward to this one but the "zombies" totally put me off. Just not a fan of the change from the more traditional movie zombies to the fast spider monkey zombies

[Raithe]

Watched Twilight and New Moon with the gf on the weekend. Enjoyed both movies. Will have to watch the last ones to find out what happens.

 

An epic love story.. told only in long, lingering stares. And to persuade teenage girls it's really not creepy for an older man to watch you sleep...

Edited November 12, 2012 by Raithe

[HoonDing]

Watched Twilight and New Moon with the gf on the weekend. Enjoyed both movies. Will have to watch the last ones to find out what happens.

An epic love story.. told only in long, lingering stares.

Now I'm reminded of Kindred: the Embraced.

[Amentep]

She was his wife/girlfriend. According to imdb she's in.

 

Come to think of it, there was actually a Birds of Prey series around ten years ago, but it flopped spectacularly.

 

For the comic beek geekasm (as far as I kinda recall) - Dinah Lance aka Black Canary was the daughter of a non-powered costumed heroine from the JLA days. She started out as a brunette who wore a blonde wig, a leather jacket and some fishnet hose as a way of hiding her identity whilst kicking butt with martial arts ability and general "scrappy attitude", then picked up some sonic based scream powers along the way...

 

JSA not JLA; Black Canary actually took over her 1940s strip from Johnny Thunder's strip where she was introduced as a sort of bad girl who eventually reformed.

 

The whole thing with the daughter was really an attempt to justify why the GA Black Canary was still around in the early 1980s adventuring (in her 60s and with no powers), since originally it was the Golden Age Black Canary who moved to Earth 1 from Earth 2. The "Canary Cry" was originally given to BC when she immigrated after the death of her husband due to radiation from fighting the monster that killed him.

 

When it was decided they needed to explain the age of BC, the writers introduced the idea that a curse given by JSA foe The Wizard had given the daughter of BC and Larry Lance the "Canary Cry" which she couldn't control and when no one could cure her, Johnny Thunder used his Thunderbolt to put the daughter in suspended animation (in which she still grew into an adult). Then to explain how this was supposed to work, they revealed that the Thunderbolt and Superman of Earth 1 arranged with GA Black Canary (who was revealed to be dying from the radiation from the above mentioned story) to have her memories of implanted into her daughter(!) so her daughter wouldn't realize anything had happened to her(!!) before sending her to Earth 1 where she initially thought she was her own mother(!!!) in those early adventures with the JLA.

 

Then Crisis on Inifinite Earths happened and they created a much more straight forward continuity (unless you count the bickering caused by Wonder Woman being replaced by Black Canary as a founding member of the JLA).

 

On a sidenote, the old tv show Birds of Prey was a semi-adaption of the highly successful comic run Birds of Prey, which was Oracle, Black Canary and Huntress,

The tv show wasn't too bad in that cheesy comic book show sort of way, but it offended the fans by rewriting a whole heap of stuff, and then projecting it into a pseudo future Gotham where Batman had disapeared and Huntress was the unrecognised daughter of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle (along with some mutant powers).

 

I actually didn't mind the continuity changes, but did think the writing was horrible on that show (the episode with the fast growing assassin baby was pretty much the last straw for me). The good just outweighed the bad, heavily, IMO.

[LadyCrimson]

The Walking Dead

 

 

 

I thought Rick's initial show of sudden grief last week was appropriate, but this last episode ... all right, that's a bit overboard. I mean, a whole episode of Rick wandering dark hallways, losing it. And why was he stabbing that zombies belly? Did he think it ate the wife and he was going to rescue her bits and pieces?

 

The scenes in the Gov's town were good tho.

 

[Amentep]

I watched Skyfall over the weekend (enjoyed it, has more similarity to Casino Royale than Quantum of Solace) and the Star Trek reboot (which I liked again).

[Volourn]

"An epic love story.. told only in long, lingering stares. And to persuade teenage girls it's really not creepy for an older man to watch you sleep..."

 

Buffy (and others) got there first.

[Hiro Protagonist]

An epic love story.. told only in long, lingering stares. And to persuade teenage girls it's really not creepy for an older man to watch you sleep...

 

You're talking about Highlander? That had a really old man going out with a young woman.

Edited November 12, 2012 by Hiro Protagonist

[Raithe]

"An epic love story.. told only in long, lingering stares. And to persuade teenage girls it's really not creepy for an older man to watch you sleep..."

 

Buffy (and others) got there first.

 

That at least got balanced out by some fairly amusing dialogue and storylines. Not monotone voiceovers as if someone were reading a book....

[Raithe]

Caught the Firefly 10th Anniversary Reunion Special.

 

Some interesting bits and pieces, and seeing how Whedon and the cast still get choked up talking about how it all went, when they found out it was cancelled, and when the Browncoat Nation kicked off and kept things flying..

[Raithe]

A somewhat amusing article by iO9 about 9 Reasons to be Grateful for Twilight...

 

For no matter what way your feelings lay about the series, you can't deny the huge impact that Twilight has had on pop culture.

 

1. Vampire Diaries

We're pretty sure The CW only pulled the trigger on this show because they wanted a television version of Twilight — and instead, they got something much stranger and infinitely more wonderful. There is nothing else like TVD on TV, nor will you ever see its like again. A typical episode of Vampire Diaries packs in more "What was that" moments, more insane-but-logical plot twists and more genuine emotion than a dozen episodes of other shows. And this show takes a central conceit of Twilight — "vegetarian" vampires, choosing to feed off only animals — and turns it into a complicated metaphor for repression, and the ways in which denying your desires only gives them more power over you. If The Vampire Diaries was the only thing to have come out of Twilight, we would be Twi-Hards forever.

 

2. A boom in young adult novels

Twilight was arguably the first post-Harry Potter publishing craze and sold gajillions of copies at a time when bookstores were struggling. And before Hunger Games came along, Twilight had already inspired a ton of publishers to pick up more young-adult series. Including tons of books by female authors, such as Richelle Mead. Twilight opened the door for a lot of paranormal romances and YA fantasies that were more complicated and intense than Meyer's saga — and basically created the genre of Teen Paranormal Romance, that exploded for a few years. Of course, Twilight then gave us Fifty Shades of Grey and the ensuing boom in "repackaged Twilight fanfic" novels. So it's perhaps a bit of a wash.

 

3. The way it allows us to talk about pop culture mistakes

The phrase "sparkle vamp" has become the new "jump the shark." And it's come to stand for way, way more than just the concept of vampires who go out in the daylight but get all sparkly when they do so. Twilight has helped to spur a conversation about what happens when paranormal storytelling goes off the rails, including the embarrassing aspects of other stories we love. Even the greatest science fiction and fantasy universes have their WTF aspects, and the "sparkle vamp" conversation has been a great way to let us talk about that

 

4. Unconventional families

Director Bill Condon (who helmed the last two movies) talks about this a lot — Twilight is a highly visible saga about unconventional families of outsiders. When we interviewed Condon last year, he talked about the idea of creating an alternative family of choice, as opposed to your birth family, as something that resonated with him. He added: "Obviously, Bella joins this family that has been completely invented [already]. But even Jacob, the one who is most firmly rooted in that sense of traditional culture, has to break away from that and join this family that is a kind of incredible collection by the end, of vampires and humans, and half vampire-human baby, and wolves."

 

5. More shirtless dudes

Obviously, there were shirtless dudes in pop culture before Twilight — but the books and especially the movies made huge strides towards male objectification, and helped push really beautiful shirtless men into the mainstream of American pop culture. Probably some graduate student somewhere is composing a detailed chart explaining how Twilight leads to Magic Mike

 

6. Melissa Rosenberg became a player

She was already a highly respected writer for her work on Dexter, but after Melissa Rosenberg became the writer of all the Twilight films — and injected the movies with a level of irony and self-awareness that the books mostly lacked — she gained a new level of fame. And she launched Tall Girl Productions, her own production company, which aims to create "great, complex, interesting roles for women," as she told Screen Rant: "I want to see the female Iron Man, the female Tony Soprano." Her first movie production: an adaptation of Pamela Sargent's Earthseed, which Rosenberg describes as "Lord of the Flies in space."

 

7. It sparked a conversation about images of sexuality for teenage girls

And in particular, Twilight sparked a worldwide conversation about the kinds of messages we send teen girls about sexuality and romance. By presenting such an extreme case of a stalkery, controlling guy and a passive, unempowered girl, Twilight created a really clear metaphor. And it opened up a channel for us to talk about the kinds of positive messages we want to send girls in general about relationships and power dynamics. This has been an incredibly valuable conversation about a really difficult topic to confront.

 

8. Summit's teen movie factory

Twilight didn't just help to spur the YA novel boom — it also helped open a space for other movies, some of which might actually be pretty great. Summit Entertainment took their bags of Twilight money and turned around and invested that cash in picking up the rights to a bunch of other quasi-young adult books. Including Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion, which has a trailer that looks pretty decent. And The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, which is technically an adult novel but has a lot of youth appeal. And Veronica Roth's Divergent, the movie version of which is coming in March 2014. And Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi, and If I Stay by Gayle Foreman. Oh, and a book you might have heard of called Ender's Game.

 

9. Women and girls at San Diego Comic Con and other fan spaces

San Diego Comic Con always had a better gender balance than people gave it credit for — but Twilight really launched the whole "women camping out for three days" thing, and made female attendees way more visible. For the past few years, whichever day the Twilight panel was, that day Hall H belonged to the Twi-hards. There won't be any more Twilight panels at Comic Con, but we're guessing the highly visible presence of excited female con-goers is a permanent fixture now — they'll just gravitate towards all the other stuff they love, including TV shows and comics. Just like in books and movies, Twilight has helped kick down the barriers and redefine fandom. And that's probably the number one reason to thank Stephenie Meyer for it.

[Hurlshort]

Interesting stuff on Twilight. Given how difficult it can be to keep young people electively reading, I'm never one to hate on a book that generates excitement.