Movies You've Seen Recently

[Blarghagh]

Doctor Strange had no boss battle. It completely avoided that.

[Amentep]

 

 

I thought it was OK. Can't remember too many good superhero movies.

Blade

 

More like 'so bad it's good'. Did he have a comic before the movies. Blade 2 or 3, the one with Ron Pearlman and Ryan Renolds is my fave.

 

 

The character had been around since 1973, mostly in Marvel's TOMB OF DRACULA, but had solo stories in some anthology titles - VAMPIRE TALES (#8 & 9), MARVEL PREVIEW (#3 & 8.)  He was in the Nightstalkers team series in the early 1990s.  His first stand alone solo titles (some one-shots and a miniseries) I think came in 1998 in the lead-up to the first film.

[Lexx]

 

I am unsure about the trailer / movie. Hope it won't be disappointing.

Edited May 3, 2017 by Lexx

[Hurlshort]

I pretty much love all the new superhero movies. Given that I grew up watching some pretty bad ones, it's a great time to be a fan of the characters. Marvel (and Disney) has done an amazing job of bringing their extended universe to life on the big screen and the small. DC is also doing pretty well, although it hasn't quite been my cup of tea.

[algroth]

I am unsure about the trailer / movie. Hope it won't be disappointing.

 

That felt very pedestrian, yeah.

Edited May 3, 2017 by algroth

[Maedhros]

I understand The Dark Tower film is supposed to be a sequel to the book series, but man that didn't capture the feeling of the books at all. Hopefully it's just the trailer being bad.

[Amentep]

This article is committing the mistake of running along with a provocateur's take on his own art and methods. The "rape" scene described by Jodorowsky wasn't a rape since it was, after all, consensual, no matter how aggressive it was according to his (questionable, I'll add) anecdote

Well to be fair to the author, even if she'd included his caveat from the interview (that he'd explained the scene to the actress, including what he planned to do) and the inference (that she'd agreed to it), it still raises a couple of questions - ie as he was in a position of authority over her, did she really have the ability to disagree with what he did; did her reaction indicate that what he did and what he explained not the same, and did any of it happen at all since AFAIK we only have Jodorowsky's statements on it - and we know that he wants to provoke people and shake the establishment and again AFAIK wouldn't be above doing it in an interview. The important thing would be to have the actress' view of it, but its not there leaving what happened legitimately open for debate I think.

 

I find it distracting that the author seems to mistakenly attributes the scene to Fando y Lis (it wasn't) and that they question El Topo as an early midnight movie (it was), but that doesn't invalidate her argument which, honestly, is a fair position.  Not everyone is going to try to figure out whether Jordorowsky's statements are performance or real, or what he might mean when he uses loaded language.

[algroth]

 

This article is committing the mistake of running along with a provocateur's take on his own art and methods. The "rape" scene described by Jodorowsky wasn't a rape since it was, after all, consensual, no matter how aggressive it was according to his (questionable, I'll add) anecdote

Well to be fair to the author, even if she'd included his caveat from the interview (that he'd explained the scene to the actress, including what he planned to do) and the inference (that she'd agreed to it), it still raises a couple of questions - ie as he was in a position of authority over her, did she really have the ability to disagree with what he did; did her reaction indicate that what he did and what he explained not the same, and did any of it happen at all since AFAIK we only have Jodorowsky's statements on it - and we know that he wants to provoke people and shake the establishment and again AFAIK wouldn't be above doing it in an interview. The important thing would be to have the actress' view of it, but its not there leaving what happened legitimately open for debate I think.

 

I find it distracting that the author seems to mistakenly attributes the scene to Fando y Lis (it wasn't) and that they question El Topo as an early midnight movie (it was), but that doesn't invalidate her argument which, honestly, is a fair position.  Not everyone is going to try to figure out whether Jordorowsky's statements are performance or real, or what he might mean when he uses loaded language.

 

I do agree with this, of course, though I am inclined to think that, if it did happen as Jodorowsky tells it, he had by that time developed a name and standing within the world of performance art and film where more extreme methods of his craft were already assumed by those he worked with. In a similar way you wouldn't cast Klaus Kinski in a film expecting him to be nice and agreeable to work with (just to make sure, I'm not saying a woman would expect to be raped by Jodorowsky if she were to work with him, I'm just saying she'd expect to take part in a style of filmmaking that is deeply involved with performance art and may thus assume a more physical and 'real' approach to performance and production, and would probably have been in the same page when working on these films - of course, if this wasn't the case then I can also see how it would be problematic). Regardless I am also inclined to think that Jodorowsky was being deliberately provocative here.

 

With regards to her argument my problem is that I don't think she follows the kind of code and language Jodorowsky works with at all, and is assuming the things he says at face value. Jodorowsky's philosophy, practices and art has long been influenced by many hermetic and esoteric disciplines and by consequence the literal interpretation to his words is a dicey thing to deal with when one wants to extract actual meaning from them. Jodorowsky is no stranger to this either and certainly loves to play up this disparity between the "aurum nostrum" and "aurum vulgi", to paraphrase the classic alchemist saying (The Jodorowsky Constellation is a good watch in this regard too), and I think that the article doesn't seem too aware of this. Moreover I do think it derrails its points of interest somewhat with the stabs at gender politics, all of which reminds me a tad too much of the usual Oscar season articles that accuse the nominees of following dicey or discriminatory ideologies all for the sake of sparking up more controversy.

Edited May 3, 2017 by algroth

[majestic]

Mostly they are boring products. They are Pirates of the Caribbean 9, Guardians of the Galaxy 14. Nothing even remotely interesting going on because you need that PG13 rating. There are so many good graphic novels to chose from and we get Marvel paste used to make the same cookies with slightly different taste. 

 

There's no one stopping anyone from making graphic novel adaptations (well maybe licencing issues but that's not really the point here) - there's 300, Watchmen and Sin City for instance. I'd argue strongly against PG13 precluding a movie being interesting, nor are all MCU films cookies with a slightly different taste. The first batch were, yeah, mostly due to the origin story problematic where one most often runs in to the seemingly inevitable boss battle Lexx mentioned (also known as "giant laser shooting in the sky" effect).

 

Marvel's "Phase 2" has seen some shifts and tried new things. Some films got darker and edgier (The Winter Soldier was really, really good, Civil War less so, but both were much different from the straightforward The First Avenger) and some tried new things.

 

While there's no accounting for taste and all that jazz I think it's demonstrably wrong to brush them all with one stroke. The Guardians of the Galaxy you mentioned as a deviation from the typical comic book superhero movie coming before. As was Deadpool. I mean look at what these movies have done to Suicide Squad - panicked executives littered the movie with pop music and forced extensive reshoots to move it more towards what Marvel was doing.

[majestic]

I understand The Dark Tower film is supposed to be a sequel to the book series, but man that didn't capture the feeling of the books at all. Hopefully it's just the trailer being bad.

 

Yeah, the movie is supposed to play in a version of the events where Roland kept the Horn of Eld.

 

Still, it really looks rather compressed, given the amount of source material. While much of it is simply unsuitable for adaptation - Wizard and Glass is one giant 800 page flashback and Wolves of the Calla is simply The Magnificent Seven set in Roland's world (never mind the parts where King shows up) it's still jarring to see Susannah and Eddie apparently dropped completely and all the villains fused into The Man in Black.

 

The trailer also tried way too hard in showing how much of an awesome badass Roland is.

[Gorgon]

 

Mostly they are boring products. They are Pirates of the Caribbean 9, Guardians of the Galaxy 14. Nothing even remotely interesting going on because you need that PG13 rating. There are so many good graphic novels to chose from and we get Marvel paste used to make the same cookies with slightly different taste. 

 

There's no one stopping anyone from making graphic novel adaptations (well maybe licencing issues but that's not really the point here) - there's 300, Watchmen and Sin City for instance. I'd argue strongly against PG13 precluding a movie being interesting, nor are all MCU films cookies with a slightly different taste. The first batch were, yeah, mostly due to the origin story problematic where one most often runs in to the seemingly inevitable boss battle Lexx mentioned (also known as "giant laser shooting in the sky" effect).

 

Marvel's "Phase 2" has seen some shifts and tried new things. Some films got darker and edgier (The Winter Soldier was really, really good, Civil War less so, but both were much different from the straightforward The First Avenger) and some tried new things.

 

While there's no accounting for taste and all that jazz I think it's demonstrably wrong to brush them all with one stroke. The Guardians of the Galaxy you mentioned as a deviation from the typical comic book superhero movie coming before. As was Deadpool. I mean look at what these movies have done to Suicide Squad - panicked executives littered the movie with pop music and forced extensive reshoots to move it more towards what Marvel was doing.

 

What they all have in common, a few examples aside, Deadpool and Guardians perhaps is the pathological fear of failing to meet earnings expectation. Take Batman vs Superman and

Suicide Squad as some of the worst examples. So you get lots of fake awesome crammed into segments in the hope that something will stick. The story is butchered in the process.

 

The winter soldier had good progression I tend to agree, but it's an anomaly.  But hey, I never liked superhero stuff that much back in the day either.  If it's not elevated to be something else as well, take Watchmen and The Dark Knight as examples, it doesn't interest me that much.  From the perspective of what I like in a superhero movie the success rate is about 1 in 10, same as comics back in the day really. 

[Amentep]

I do agree with this, of course, though I am inclined to think that, if it did happen as Jodorowsky tells it, he had by that time developed a name and standing within the world of performance art and film where more extreme methods of his craft were already assumed by those he worked with. In a similar way you wouldn't cast Klaus Kinski in a film expecting him to be nice and agreeable to work with (just to make sure, I'm not saying a woman would expect to be raped by Jodorowsky if she were to work with him, I'm just saying she'd expect to take part in a style of filmmaking that is deeply involved with performance art and may thus assume a more physical and 'real' approach to performance and production, and would probably have been in the same page when working on these films - of course, if this wasn't the case then I can also see how it would be problematic). Regardless I am also inclined to think that Jodorowsky was being deliberately provocative here.

 

With regards to her argument my problem is that I don't think she follows the kind of code and language Jodorowsky works with at all, and is assuming the things he says at face value. Jodorowsky's philosophy, practices and art has long been influenced by many hermetic and esoteric disciplines and by consequence the literal interpretation to his words is a dicey thing to deal with when one wants to extract actual meaning from them. Jodorowsky is no stranger to this either and certainly loves to play up this disparity between the "aurum nostrum" and "aurum vulgi", to paraphrase the classic alchemist saying (The Jodorowsky Constellation is a good watch in this regard too), and I think that the article doesn't seem too aware of this. Moreover I do think it derrails its points of interest somewhat with the stabs at gender politics, all of which reminds me a tad too much of the usual Oscar season articles that accuse the nominees of following dicey or discriminatory ideologies all for the sake of sparking up more controversy.

 

I think that's one of the big questions really, is whether Jodorowsky is being literal or if he's trying to shock the audience (something that fits into the era of El Topo,as within the decade on either side of that film we get things like Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising, John Waters' Pink Flamingos and Armando Bo's Fuego and dozens more films that break taboos and try their best to move the viewer out of their comfort zone).

 

I don't blame her for taking Jodorowsky's statements literally though; without him (or the actress) providing additional context all she really has to go on is his words.  I also don't blame his defenders who'll argue that Jodorowsky's interviews include a lot of posturing and postulating and aren't always sincere as they're part of a broader performance.

[Lexx]

 

I understand The Dark Tower film is supposed to be a sequel to the book series, but man that didn't capture the feeling of the books at all. Hopefully it's just the trailer being bad.

 

Yeah, the movie is supposed to play in a version of the events where Roland kept the Horn of Eld.

 

Still, it really looks rather compressed, given the amount of source material. While much of it is simply unsuitable for adaptation - Wizard and Glass is one giant 800 page flashback and Wolves of the Calla is simply The Magnificent Seven set in Roland's world (never mind the parts where King shows up) it's still jarring to see Susannah and Eddie apparently dropped completely and all the villains fused into The Man in Black.

 

The trailer also tried way too hard in showing how much of an awesome badass Roland is.

 

 

I really think they should have turned this into a tv show instead. That would have given them more time to un-crowd the movie (and I bet the movie will feel crowded as hell, because there is only so much you can do in ~2 hours).

[LadyCrimson]

I could never get into the Dark Tower books, back when they started. Maybe now that one can read all (I think?) of them at once, I might get more into them. Between real-life, gaming, Twitch etc. + worsening close-up vision I almost never read anymore, however.

 

At any rate, I wonder if this movie will be accessible to those who haven't read the books. Because I don't care if he doesn't seem like "Roland" - Idris Elba is fantastic and the trailer looks fun. But if I can't understand anything in the movie because it assumes I know every original book reference it'll make or something, that would be no good for me.

[Blarghagh]

I think it'd be wise to keep the expectations low on The Dark Tower. It was, after all, scripted by the same person who scripted The Da Vinci Code, I Am Legend, Lost In Space and Batman & Robin.

[Amentep]

I think it'd be wise to keep the expectations low on The Dark Tower. It was, after all, scripted by the same person who scripted The Da Vinci Code, I Am Legend, Lost In Space and Batman & Robin.

 

And The Client, A Time to Kill, A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man...

 

Also its my understanding a TV show set in the Dark Tower universe is forthcoming; essentially (again as I understand it), the TV show fills in the back story (ie stuff from the books).

[Gfted1]

Check out these killer facts about the ultraviolent John Wick.

[Blarghagh]

- The last of which was more than 10 years ago and he hasn't produced anything that wasn't horrific since. They were also all "based on true story biopic" type deals. Nothing he has ever made that was purely fiction, as the Dark Tower is, has ever been good. Even his Fringe episodes are regarded as the worst of the series.

 

- Fun fact, those films you listed are directed 50/50 Joel Schumacher and Ron Howard. He's done more bad films than good with both directors (Batman Forever, Batman & Robin and the Da Vinci films respectively). If that was all he did, AND if he was working with either of those two directors who are the only people who've ever made something out of his awful writing, there'd still be odds of over 50% that Dark Tower is going to be awful. But he's not working with either of them, and without them his track record slows to zero.

 

- In addition to the films I mentioned, one of which is widely regarded as one of the worst films of all time and single-handidly would balance out against every movie you've mentioned (the only one of which I actually thought was okay was A Beautiful Mind), he also did uncredited rewrites on Charlie's Angels, The Rundown, The 5th Wave, and Jonah Hex.

 

- Then Dark Tower has the downside of him also serving as Producer, which served him well on Deep Blue Sea, the Keanu Reeves version of Constantine, the Ben Stiller version of Starsky & Hutch and the Paranormal Activity sequels (not even the original). The man is, overall, poison to good cinema and there's a reason that when he gets his hands on a franchise, fans of said franchise generally let out a collective groan. Even the people who watch those godawful Transformers movies got a chill when they announced Mr Goldsman was going to write the next few films. That is how bad he is.

 

I've never read the dark tower, so I don't care much if it's good or not, but Akiva Goldsman getting involved is pretty much a death's kiss for that (or any) project.

 

(YES SNARKY RESPONDERS AKIVA GOLDSMAN KILLED MY PARENTS AND I'M HIS NEMESIS, DONT JUDGE ME)

Edited May 4, 2017 by TrueNeutral

[Amentep]

I was only trying to say the man is hit or miss; when he's good he's usually really good when he's bad he's usually really bad.

 

I make no claims The Dark Tower will be any good.  But then I actually tried to read the first one a few times and gave up; it wasn't for me.

[algroth]

Oh, I didn't notice Akiva Goldsman penned the screenplay for that. Well... That explains some things.

[Hurlshort]

Hey, I liked Charlie's Angels!

[Chilloutman]

Hey, I liked Charlie's Angels!

yeah i bet its not because it was good movie tho xD

[Raithe]

Hm, okay, is it me or is there a distinct lack of promotion of Wonder Woman compared to the other superhero films? I've had a few people mention it but hadn't realised that it's to be released in a months time.

 

Compared to how constant the hammering for Suicide Squad, Batman Vs Superman, and the assorted Marvel films that occurs in the several months run up to their release, it does seem a weird thing.

[Blarghagh]

Not just you. Local theater has massive Justice League poster already, but no WW posters on the premises.

[Amentep]

Its been reported that WW has a bigger ad budget than Suicide Squad, but I'm not seeing it so far.

 

That said, they may be planning a media blitz before it opens or something