What movie did you see today?

[Khendraja'aro]

So, I wanted to see Prometheus. Only to find out that it will be released in Germany in August.

Why? Because of the stupid-ass European Soccer Championship for which I have absolutely zero interest. Germany and the German part of Switzerland are the only countries doing this.

At least they're not moving the release date of Batman.

[Nessus]

I hear it isn't very good

[Timbuk2]

Reviews are indeed a bit ... underwhelming.

Still wanna see it tho. Trying for this friday.

[Ominous Gamer]

Trailer for Wreck It Ralph


A movie made for kids, that includes characters that likely only the adults are going to recongize. Expect it to be 90 minutes of Where's Waldo.

[Timbuk2]

Prometheus, on friday.
Underwhelming indeed. Didn't care for the characters in the slightest, disbelief was far from suspended, many parts were just silly and plainly unbelievable, CGI was relatively unimpressive. Plot wasn't the worst though, did tie in adequately with Alien and didn't have too many holes.
Overall a huge disappointment from the master storyteller that brought us Alien, Bladerunner, and Gladiator.

5.5/10

~

The Blind Side. Sandra Bullock's Oscar winning performance telling the true story of poor black kid Michael Oher who eventually comes good when taken in by rich white folk.
Enjoyable, and not nearly as saccharine American as I was expecting. Bullock was very convincing. She isn't my favourite actress but I liked her in this. The rest of the chars were good too. Lily Collins, Phil's daughter, looks like she will grow into a gorgeous young lady.

7/10

[Aimless]

Saw Prometheus the other day

Don't pay to see it

[Ominous Gamer]

I was half hoping you were going to post about being dragged into a Magic Mike showing.

[Kazuha Vinland]

I for one liked it.

[Aimless]

I for one liked it.

You should definitely go into the humanities

[Kazuha Vinland]

Say what? There were just multiple parts that stuck to my brain. The opening scene was breathtaking. Noomi Rapace played really convincingly, and appeared like how a groundbreaking scientist should, in my eyes. She was curious, tough and at the same time fragile and humble. It actually had some depth to it (read: contrast) despite not being a very eventful movie.

[Ominous Gamer]

Mirror Mirror.

Interesting mix of cgi, acting, humor, and little people. It works well enough, but it doesn't top Disney's animated take.

[Catgrrl]

Finally saw Transformers: Dark of the Moon on Netflix last night. I don't know why I keep torturing myself with this franchise. Thank you, Michael Bay, for ruining my childhood TV show. It wouldn't have been half-bad if the human characters weren't in it, or at least had very limited focus on them. I liked the military guys; it's Shia LeBeouf's character and the parents/girlfriend issues that NO ONE CARES ABOUT. We just want to see robots tearing each other apart. And there's going to be a 4th one! ARRRGH!

Also, last week I watched Battle Royale. Kind of like the Hunger Games, but this movie came out in early 2000s. It's a Japanese film, where the government picks a random high school class each year to have a 3day battle to the death on an abandoned island (because of a bad economy, teenagers have become unruly and disrespectful of authority, prompting this action to make an example out of them). Very bloody, but some real cheesy moments too. I think for me, watching a lot of anime lessened the shock of it. And some of the high schoolers were very stereotypical so it made it comical at times. This movie too was based off a book, and it seems that some parts that may have been expanded on in the book were left out in the film, leaving some questions as to why certain events happen in the manner they do. Still, a very messed up film but an interesting watch, at least to me.

[GGT]

Thanks for the reminder, Cat. Is Hunger Games worth watching? It's on my "list" but the more time passes, the easier it is to forget.

I spent the weekend watching all sorts of movies. Mostly while trying to bore myself to sleep. Then Children of Men came on ....and midnight turned into 3am. Ended up at TCM watching a compelling black and white 1950's movie titled Goodbye, My Lady with Walter Brennan. One of those boy and his dog type movies, with cultural conflicts, that I'd never seen (or read the book it was based on) but it sucked me right in to The End. Made me wish that Old Yeller would be next on their queue, or the original Incredible Journey, or perhaps Three Lives of Thomasina. But they weren't. *sigh*

[Veldan Rath]

I enjoyed Prometheus, and we watched Brave with the boys.

Enjoyed that too, not what I expected, but still fun.

[Catgrrl]

I haven't had a chance to see (or read) the Hunger Games just yet, GGT. It will probably be another that I have to wait for Netflix to pick up. I haven't been to the movies since K was born. I've heard from other friends it was "okay" but they didn't elaborate.

[Khendraja'aro]

Hunger Games was actually quite nice. I recommend that one.

[Aimless]

Spider-Man!

It was good

Well-cast, although I can't help but feel Emma Stone woulda been a better Mary-Jane and I reckon Peter was a bit too cool and well-adjusted for being an outcast nerd. But they were ridiculously cute together! Competent direction, solid dialogue, a good plot with almost no cringe-worthy elements, most natural use of 3D I've seen yet. And also the first time I've heard someone say "macular degeneration" in a movie!

[Ominous Gamer]

[Catgrrl]

Yes, Bing is not welcome in the world of nerds. I can confirm this!

[Wraith]

Spider-Man!

It was good

Well-cast, although I can't help but feel Emma Stone woulda been a better Mary-Jane and I reckon Peter was a bit too cool and well-adjusted for being an outcast nerd. But they were ridiculously cute together! Competent direction, solid dialogue, a good plot with almost no cringe-worthy elements, most natural use of 3D I've seen yet. And also the first time I've heard someone say "macular degeneration" in a movie!

I saw it too. It wasn't great, but I did like it more than the first movie of the first trilogy (but I didn't really like that one). I thought the lizard stuff got a bit too cheesy, but overall it was decent. I liked Garfield as Parker more than Maguire.

When they bring Jameson into this new series, they really need to get J. K. Simmons to do it again. He was all the best parts of the previous trilogy.

Side note: it really bothers me when conservation of mass is violated in movies.

[littlelolligagged]

Tobey Maguire is adorable, though.

It's like why Clooney was the best Batman ever.

[Nessus]

You are wrong and your opinions are wrong

[littlelolligagged]

Are you implying that there is a better judge of what to watch than my lust?

[Kazuha Vinland]

Obviously Christian Bale has the best batman role...

[wiggin]

So, after many years of putting it off, I finally got around to seeing Transformers 2. It was even worse than I expected - and this was knowing it was nearly universally panned, that it was a monument to Michael Bayishness, and that the first movie was pretty terrible as well.

But you know what really got to me? It wasn't the hackneyed script, amateur acting, wandering plot, or overlong action scenes of indistinguishable machines bashing into each other and shit blowing up. After all, this was a Michael Bay movie, so I knew what I was getting into. And Megan Fox goes a long way towards distracting me from such frippery. No, what really bothered me was the ridiculously unrealistic final action scene (spoilers to follow).

I mean, I get you have to suspend disbelief about the whole 'Transformers' technology, but Earthly geography cannot change. I fail to see how the Gulf of Aqaba, Petra, and the goddamn pyramids of Giza can possibly be considered to be in the same place. I also fail to see how a US air strike could possibly get there from any aircraft carrier in time, let alone an amphibious landing by Marines. At Petra. For that matter, where the hell would the B-1 have taken off from? The closest US airbase that could handle B-1s is probably somewhere in Saudi (or maybe Incirlik?) but there's no way we'd just have forward-deployed B-1s hanging around on the off chance that we'd need to bomb Jordan. And don't even get me started on the foolishness of not using stand-off weapons on the pyramid. For that matter, what's with the military's weapons? Are they all duds or extremely low yield? I saw them lobbing salvoes from what looked like M270s at the Great Pyramid. The M270 is called - with some justice - the 'grid square removal system', because of its ability to more or less flatten a square kilometer of territory. Yet all they did was shift some masonry.

Look, I'm not picky when it comes to flashy action films. Give me a hot girl, some explosions, and some unrealistically lucky heroes, and I'll happily watch. But at least give lip service to having a coherent battle scene.

[Timbuk2]

The movie had B-1s?

Fuck everything else, movie is worth it just for that.

My favourite of all aircraft ...

[wiggin]

They had one B-1 or B-1B, I couldn't really tell. Are you sure you're not thinking of a B-2, though? That's certainly more stereotypically 'cool'. The variable sweep wing is certainly an interesting idea, though.

Michael Bay movies are known for using large amounts of US military hardware and US cars. Just off the top of my head, this one used F-16s, C-17s, B-1s, some Blackhawks, maybe an Apache or two (it was hard to tell the helicopter types from the shots), some larger transport helicopter (Chinooks?), probably some F/A-18s (the carrier shots were tough to make out), some AWACS (probably an E-3?) and some variant of a Predator/Reaper. One of the bots is disguised as an SR-71; another looks like an F-22. Their ground vehicles included Abrams tanks and some kind of MLRS (I think it was the M270), along with a bunch of smaller vehicles. They had a CGI-modified destroyer (or battleship?), a couple of Nimitz-class carriers, and some hovercraft. The cars were all Chevy or GMC.

It's kinda his thing.

[Timbuk2]

I have seen both, flying. And this last weekend I saw the B2 static, for the first time.

RIAT at Fairford, which I go to most years.

The B2 does indeed send a chill down the spine when you see it fly past, escorted as it was by an F15 on each wing tip for added security when I saw it.

But the B1 is just so impressive. A huuuge bomber, with the power to go supersonic. Taking off it makes the ground vibrate and shatters your eardrums. I love it.

2 years ago they had the F22 Lightning in a flying display, the first time in Europe, which I saw. Came with a very enthusiastic American commentator. Everything was "awesome".

One aircraft I have not seen, either flying or static, is the SR-71.

[wiggin]

Uh, FYI the F-22 is the Raptor. The F-35 is the Lightning II. The big difference is that the wing design is very different, and the F-22 is much larger (it's a two-engined air superiority fighter, while the F-35 is a multirole fighter). You probably saw a Raptor, since the F-35 is still in flight testing. It is awesome, from the perspective of technology, though it's a little less awesome in that it seems to be suffocating its pilots at the moment. Oops.

I've seen B-2s before as well as a bunch of older bombers (B-52s, F117As, etc.) but never a B-1 in person. I understand they're differently proportioned than the B-2 but much faster. Definitely seen a static SR-71 before, but it's not surprising you haven't. If you're interested in this kinda thing, you definitely should visit the Air & Space part of the Smithsonian (and their annex) next time you're in the States - definitely the best static displays of famous aircraft, ever.

I used to enjoy watching the practice for the Air & Water Show when I was growing up. They'd use Wrigley Field as a waypoint and come screaming past the stadium every few minutes all week/weekend long. It wasn't a real 'air show', though, in the sense of having lots of different kinds of aircraft - just some acrobatics, stunts, and a few flybys. Last real flyby I saw was pathetic - a pair of F-15s for the 4th of July in Boston. Budget cuts.

[Timbuk2]

Sorry, was indeed the Raptor.

Yep budget cuts means these airshows aren't quite the spectacle they used to be.

Miss the big Russian aircraft mainly, they don't visit much anymore. Had a Polish airforce Mig-29 this weekend tho - not seen one of those for a while.

~

You ever seen the Vulcan fly?

It's spectacular - 50s technology long-range British-built bomber, powered by 4 huge Rolls-Royce Olympus jets, same as powered the Concord.

Millions of pounds were spent recently, refitting this one last remaining flying example, which appears at shows across the UK, but not sure about abroad. Relies almost entirely on charitable donations.

Lovely aircraft.







Last flew in anger at the start of the Falklands campaign, bombing the runway at Port Stanley in 1982. Flew all the way from the UK refuelled by a fleet of damn VC-10 tankers.