I was all of three years, one month and two days old when this originally aired. Yikes.
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Has anyone seen that film The Wonder with Florence Pugh on Netflix?
Thoughts? I feel a bit conflicted about it. Itās well-done, but is it justifying colonially backed kidnapping, too?
I definitely want to read the book now, too, which is by Emma Donoghue (who wrote the book Room).
Spoilers in these videos:
Yeah, thatās pretty on the nose. Such a missed opportunity. I got into an argument recently with some people who thought it was great. Then one of them mentioned something about how most stuff coming from Disney the last few years has been awful because they went all political, and I replied with an eyeroll gif, and then things went to hell.
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Secret Invasion, although itās pretty clear that they seem ill-equipped to handle something like Secret Wars either, at least as a TV show. They spent $200M on this and had effectively no super heroes, and Secret Wars had all of them.
That said, I agree thatās a pretty apt assessment of Secret Invasion in general. There are some good aspects:
- When they (rarely) werenāt making Nick Fury look like a complete dumbass.
- Several of the scenes between Fury and Talos are solid.
- Pretty much every scene Olivia Colman is in.
- Some of the scenes between Fury and Priscilla.
- Gravik, before they turn him into a 1-dimensional, mustache-twirling villain.
I think the cast is generally good, but theyāre given so little to work with. Itās weird how this show feels somehow both too big and too small, too long and too short, and somehow low-budget despite it being a nine-digit number.
The number of unforced errors throughout are remarkable.
Thatās hilarious. This is literally a political thriller (though not a very good one) where one of the core ideas is about an undocumented immigrant population. Itās not even subtextā¦
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I started watching this quirky weirdness, and I dig it.
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Finished watching Rolling Thunder (currently available on Tubi and Pluto).
I really enjoyed it. Some serious intensity there. Great 70s style too.
I loved how cool, calm, and focused the main character was. And how when he called on his buddy, Johnny was just like āOk, Iāll just get my gear. Letās go clean 'em up.ā No questions asked, he was ready and raring to go.
Also Linda the groupie, who had no idea what she was in for, but went along for the ride anyway. At the drop of a hat (or rather, a tray of drinks). Despite her uncertainty and discomfort with it, stuck with it and held the line.
People respond to danger and bad stuff differently and this movie does a good job depicting a few different charactersā reactions. A little unusual, each of them, but put them together and itās a good story.
The pacing is a bit unlike a modern movie, it feels more comfortable. Less hectic, more deliberate.
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Tonight I watched the Barbie movie with my wife. Of course, I didnāt feel the nostalgia about the toys, and some of the bits that were clearly aimed at women the same as she did. But it was a fun movie and I liked the premise of the toy world and real world affecting each other. The surreal office building was great. And there were some really funny bits.
The guys playing guitars (badly) at the women while staring them in the eyes. The women distracting the men by acting dumb and asking them to explain something. Seizing power while the kens were off fighting a pointless war. The executives at Mattel basically being cartoon characters in human bodies. All of that had us laughing.
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This was surprisingly moving.
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Iāve been watching through Andor lately (after binging Ahsoka). On Disney+, being Star Wars, but Iāve pulled from elsewhere because Disney has an annoying habit of freezing playback out of nowhere for me for no apparent reason.
Iām liking it so far, which probably means itāll be cancelled out of the blue if trends hold.
Not sure how much can be said about it while avoiding spoilers of one kind or another, but one strange effect: the music for some reason has gotten the themes from the old Superman movies into my head, despite not really having a lot of resemblance. May just be the rhythms and instruments used, Iām not sure.
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donāt worry ā it will be back. Season 2 is a certainty (but itās the only remaining season).
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Just wrapped up this crazy thing on Netflixā¦
Itās long, convoluted, and kind of weird. It ends up involving a deep mystery involving the Cold War and psyops involving childrenā¦ justā¦ crazy stuff. But worth it, if you want to invest the time in 74 episodesā¦
And the closing theme song is by David Sylvian, who was a fan of the mangaā¦
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Iām old enough that I saw the original Star Wars (Episode IV) in the theater in 1977. Iām a big Star Wars fan. In my opinion, Andor is the best Star Wars content ever produced. It was a little slow getting started, but from the third or fourth episode on, itās just outstanding. I donāt know how far youāre in yet, but Andy Serkis is just outstanding in it.
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same! every word. and i agree.
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Andor was great. Slow burn (interns saving the galaxy again?) but it is a show for the olds and the misfits.
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In Halloween mode, Iāve been watching old horror movies. Tonight a new one showed up. Totally Killer, on Amazon Prime.
(Tech tip - watch in Chrome, not Firefox, because Amazon Prime totally butchers video in Firefox. They claim that theyāre reducing it to SD instead of HD, because of DRM and hardware, but it isnāt even near SD quality. They give HD quality to Chrome on the same hardware with no problems though.)
Anyway, the movie was a combo of a Back To The Future scenario with a serial killer. Back in the ā80s, a serial killer killed three out of four of the girls in the popular girlsā clique, and wrote a note promising to get the fourth one some day. Now, decades later, the killer has come back, and killed the fourth member. Her teen-aged daughter, running from the killer, accidentally triggers a time machine that sends her back to the 80s, just before the murders happened.
Now she has to try to stop the murders, and find the murderer, before her mom gets killed in the future. But she has trouble fitting into the 80s, getting along with her teen-aged parents and their friends, etc., and screws it up a lot.
Itās a fun movie. Time travel shenanigans, 80s teen shenanigans, and a serial killer mystery all mixed together. It was better than I expected.
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I saw the trailer for that recently, and it does look like fun!
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Weāre watching lotsa old horror movies. Weāve watched The Mummy (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), Arnold (1973). The latter is so bad, I must recco avoiding it. Donāt be seduced by the presence of Roddy McDowell and Elsa Lanchester, itās mind-numbingly wretched.
Weāve been watching The Fall of the House of Usher on netflix, and itās creepy cool, but pretty gross in places.
Weāre in discussions re: other flicks, and have talked about Burnt Offerings (1976), and The Sentinel (1977), and a few others weāve not seen in many moons.
Typing of moons, sheāll be full on Halloweāen this year!
AAAAARRRROOOOWWWWWOOOOOOOOOO!!!
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Have you seen The Abominable Dr. Phibes? I loved it, but it was a bit scary for my taste. (The sequel isnāt nearly as good.)
My limit is probably movies like Ghostbusters and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (both of which have great theme music, btw).
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