I’ve seen some amazing movies lately, as well as two complete turds.
First the turds:
Ted - I watched this even though it looked to be bad from the trailers because a friend described it as a silly and absurd humor like in The Other Guys. He also said it was like early Family Guy. Well, it wasn’t. The attempt at humor is Family Guy-ish, but even if Family Guy were funny, which it isn’t, it does not translate well. Everything from the half-dimensional characters, to the soundtrack, to the simple-minded story is painfully sub-par. I did not laugh once, and if it wasn’t for the fact that the theater was full and I would have had to walk past a lot of people, I would have walked out 30 minutes in. I blame my social anxiety for having to suffer through it.
Savages - Good God, even my 15 year old cousin thought it was corny, and she’s into Beiber.
The amazing movies:
Amelie - Nauseatingly quirky.
The Fall - If you download or buy, make sure it’s in high definition because the visuals will blow you away.
Pan’s Labyrinth - I watched this again, and I can only unimaginatively describe it is as perfect.
American Reunion - Pretty bad. 5/10 Duo luo tian shi ( Fallen Angels) - Fucking awful, could not watch the whole thing. 3/10 Oslo, 31. august - Norwegian film about a depressed drug addict with suicidal tendencies. Very good but also very minimal. 7/10 Shaun of the Dead - Fucking awful, could not watch the whole thing. 3/10 Annie Hall - One of the funniest films I have seen in a long time. 7/10 Tony Takitani - Really bad. Could not watch the whole thing. 4/10 Lockout - Pretty bad action flick. 5/10 Honk Kong Confidential ( Amaya) - Great Latvian - Hong Kong co-production. Also VERY minimal. Beautiful but it will bore the masses. 7/10
Recently saw “Salmon Fishing In The Yemen” and was thoroughly entertained!! Wasn’t expecting to be but its really funny and quite a touching story i found.
Coriolanus – glad to hear you enjoyed Amelie it really is a gem of a film
As for entertaining but ultimately meaningless movies, I do like Go. Not very well acted, but very well written, really tight storyline told at a high pace without ever becoming confusing.
Wait till you see the flowchart for it. lol I’ve seen Primer like 6 times. The only scene I don’t get anymore is right in the middle, and it involves them at the fountain, in the dark, talking about the missing cat. I think it’s a Schrodinger’s paradox thing reworked slightly, or something to be taken entirely metaphorically, because that one scene just doesn’t fit into the movie.
So I started watching ‘Continuum’ - it’s a Canadian show. The entire thing is social conditioning. From the very beginning it’s just… FULL of it. I wondered how a Canadian show got such a nice budget but now I understand. They were given nice funding by the big boys to get this going.
Check it out if you want to see how the future will look like, or thereabouts.
I am giving serious thought to trying to write exactly what ‘they’ want, and like try and get sucked into into the system where I can act as an infiltrator. Continuum took like all my ideas, though. Someone beat me to the punch, lol.
Usually on TV & in films the ‘villainy’ of politics / corporations is represented by an individual, like the CEO or the campaign manager usually.
So although Continuum is ultimately rubbish and only enjoyable if, like me, you love time travel stuff, I still think it’s refreshing to see corporations painted out as ‘the bad guys’ in the name of balance if nothing else.
People will watch the show who aren’t particularly political and stop & compare the stories with news reports over the last 12 months or so and hopefully make some kind of connection so they might perhaps see the direction the world is headed in
A nice healthy dose of ‘anti-propaganda’ lol
(as i said… in the name of balance)
My god. That show is so so bad. It’s beyond bad.
The acting is absolutely atrocious and the actors have no charisma at all.
I do love Rachel Nicholson, she’s gorgeous but other then that…
The plot had some potential but it needed to be done right.
I should do a post on tv/movie social conditioning, and revelation of the method, I keep forgetting this audience has no idea what I’m talking about when I say that.
Imho ‘anti-propaganda’ is proganda. Sorry for not making this clearer. What i mean is that if something goes against what the vast majority of propaganda encourages (eg. praises left-wing view instead of right-wing view) that adds a little balance and so i call it -anti-propaganda’ - but if the subject is not encouraged to think for themselves on the matter then it is propaganda (either regular or ‘anti-propaganda’ depending on the above)
Apologies for the confusion over definitional interpretation.
I don’t see how a show that depicts a world government where there are no freedoms and hegemonic control over everything - something in like every show that depicts any sort of future that isn’t zombies or some otherwise post-civilization thing - is going against any sort of mainstream. That is the mainstream to a T.
Perhaps you’ve missed the key difference then in Contiinuum: the future is run by corporations and their ascent to power is chrnoicled further with each episode.
In Continuum the Goverments are at the wayside, ultimately powerless to do anything about the much greater power of the corporations who now run all police/military etc…
The mainstream is usually about greater oppression in the future, granted, but this is about corporate power over government; currently many of us think that governments will always be able to keep corporations in check through law. So Continuum is the first mainstream show (most likely sponsored by corporations like most others) to seize upon the recent shift in consciousness helped by the ‘Arab spring’ and the notorious “1%” headlines we’ve all been influenced by over the last 18 months or so.
The Dark Knight Rises - 1.5 out of 5 stars. Too much lame, over-egged dialogue. Too much music. Too much CGI. Too long, even though it is supposed to depict about 5 months of story time. Could barely understand a word the villain was saying. Two female supporting characters, neither of which got their kit off. Literally the most underwhelming movie I’ve seen in years.
Basically, if you took Waterworld and turned it into a Batman movie, you’d get The Dark Knight Rises. Do NOT pay to see this movie. I didn’t.
