Recently watched movies

[Artemis]

Little bit different opinion than mine, but lol.  The War of the Grinches...
 

Quote

2018 Grinch has no edge. He’s got no bite. He’s not even that much of an asshole. He’s just a sassy gay furry with unusually nice teeth despite his famous theme song declaring otherwise.

1966 Grinch? Now that was a mean, scary bastard. He was a crusty old F*** who hated society so much that he only came off his shitty frozen mountain to commit crimes and terrorism out of spite.

Bennyhoo Cumberland Grinch comes down from his mountain to buy groceries.

You can round the edges off a character to make them more “relatable” or whatever, but you also run the risk of losing what defined them in the first place. The end result is bland and generic.

2018 Grinch is a reflection of modern society’s rejection of real character flaws in the interest of being “unproblematic” and in this essay i will

What was your opinion on the Jim Carrey grinch?

Jim Carrey Grinch said bitch, ate glass and threw a whole child in the garbage. He is an absolute champ and the only rightful heir to the throne.

[Link]
 

...

 

[besleybean]

Since when has 'sassy gay furry' been a bad thing?

[Artemis]

I’m not positive I know exactly what they're talking about, but from what I gather, they’re saying it’s not a “bad” thing, and that’s the problem, lol.  Being a “sassy gay furry” is a tame thing, I guess; too tame for the Grinch.

 

[besleybean]

Certainly makes me want to see it even more!

[Arcadia]

Yellowbeard, 1983, with Marty Feldman, most of the Monty Python gang, and other usual suspects. God-awful, but the name caught my attention ( because of TFP) and one of the writers is named David Sherlock. I'd bet good money Moftiss knows this. Minus 10, it's really bad.

[Artemis]

"Sherlock Holmes Faces Death".  "Watson brings in Holmes on a case of ritual murder at the old Musgrave estate."

Very enjoyable, this one.  There have been a few with the ambience of ghost stories, but this one felt that way most of all.  A windy old manor from the 1500's (complete with crypt), a mysterious poem passed down through generations, The Rat and the Raven pub (+ an actual raven that's learned to say 'I'm the devil', for some reason), rumors of ghosts wandering the halls, and murders, of course.

Favorite moments:

I finally get to see Holmes shoot holes in his wall.  I've been seeing those holes for a dozen movies, lol.

Watson is returning from a trip, and Holmes knows the sound of his footsteps coming.  Reminded me a bit of a dog excited to see its owner return home, lol.

"How did you know it was me -- I?"
"'Me' is acceptable Watson, unless of course you're a purist, which I doubt."
Grammar debates are eternal.

"Simple reasoning.  A child could do it."
"Not your child, Watson."

Disinterested Holmes shuts down Watson's anecdote about his dalliance with the widow in Twickenham real quick.

"Ghosts don't stab people in the neck, do they?"
"Not well-bred ghosts, Watson."

Lestrade: [strained smile] "Well if it isn't Dr. Watson..."

Watson is treating men with combat fatigue.  Interesting psychological component.

Poetry.
"Who first shall find it were better dead.
Who next shall find it perils his head.
The last to find it defies dark powers
And brings good fortune to Hurlstone Towers."

Poetry.
"Captain Vickery, here's your tea.
If it's cold, don't blame me."

"Wasn't there an American killer given to verse?"
"Holmes... you don't think that --"
"Excuse me.  I merely stated there was an American killer given to verse."
I relate to this on such a level, lol.  It is an exceeding annoyance when people infer more from my statement than my actual statement.

"Mr. Holmes, if you think Captain Vickery ever murdered anyone then you're no more of a detective than... than Dr. Watson."
Watson: [Offended]

Lestrade thinks he's doing a pretty good job solving this case using "deductive reasoning".

"Just incriminate yourself Captain Vickery, that's all Lestrade wants."

Human chess, set to a riddle, set to a poem.

Lestrade insists on exploring secret passageways, despite warnings that he'll get lost; and of course, ends up lost and stuck between the walls.

"Get me out!  I'm lost!  I'm all turned around!"
"You have been for years!  Get him out of there, will you, and give him a saucer of milk."
Did Holmes just compare Lestrade to a cat stuck in the wall?  Lol.

Death by needle.  (TSo3)

"I couldn't possibly risk sharing my little plot with anybody.  Particularly not with Dr. Watson.  If he'd known what was up tonight, he'd have been so elaborate and mysterious he'd have given the whole show away."

"These egomaniacs are always so much more chatty when they feel they have the upper hand."

 

 

[Fantasy Lover]

Crimes of Grindelwald 6/10

Man, did nobody involved even consulted the canon? There are just so many mistakes I'm genuinely pissed. Spoilers/ranting belong

 
- So apparently McGonagall teaches at Hogwarts in the movie despite being born in 1935
- Dumbledore teaches defence against the dark arts despite the fact that he should teach transfiguration in 1927
- YOU CAN'T APPARATE INSIDE HOGWARTS!!!
- As I said before, Nagini is revealed to be a Asian woman which is just a blatant retcon
- There are so many new characters introduced and the majority of them contribute nothing to the plot
- there is too much exposition
- the "plot twist" at the end is just complete bs and just a ploy of Grindelwald to recruit Credence to use him

 

[Arcadia]

You're not the only one complaining about this. I'm not even very much of a fan and I've seen other rants. It's hard to understand how the filmmakers think the real fans won't go over everything with a fine tooth comb..... *sigh*

[Artemis]

"The Crimes of Grindelwald".  I've been waiting for other people to review this, hoping that someone else will put to words exactly what it is I didn't like about this movie.

It was just so... abstruse?  That's not quite what I'm searching for, but I felt like I spent a lot of the film just trying to keep up with what they were doing or talking about, especially in the beginning.  (It did a bit better as it went on.)  I don't know if it was the pacing, or if there was too much information all at once, or what.  But I felt like the new kid in a group of kids that have all known each other for years.

Some of this might have to do with the fact that I only understood about half of what Newt was saying at any given point.  He doesn't enunciate.  But he was the same in the first movie, and that one didn't suffer the same afflicted clarity, so I don't think he can be blamed.

I'm also less familiar with Potter lore than a die-hard fan, so I didn't notice the inconsistencies and probably missed some meaningful details.  I also agree with Fantasy Lover that some of the characters seemed superfluous.  I remember thinking to myself, "What exactly is the point of this person?"

My other major criticism is that there was no resolution before the end credits rolled, it just ended abruptly in the middle of the story, like Deathly Hallows 1 (which I didn't mind with DH1, because I knew going in it was a part 1 of 2).  I wish I'd been prepared for that, because I left the theater feeling oddly unsatisfied.  I'd thought it would be like the first one (or like Potter 1-6), where you knew the story would continue because the Big Bad is still at large, but it more or less wraps up nicely at the end as an individual film.  How many of these are they planning to make?  Is the next one the last one?  I kind of hope so.

I did like the overall "feel" of the film.  It was darker, like the last few Harry Potter films.  Grindelwald managed to seem like a genuine threat by the end, which is good, because Johnny Depp is known to me for his quirky roles, and I have a hard time taking him seriously as a villain.  But Colin Farrell made a much better Grindelwald, in my opinion.  I wish they’d kept him in the role.

And of course, I liked the fantastic beasts.  Those nifflers, aw man...  But there seemed to be so few of them in this movie.  Which is odd, for a series that’s supposed to be about magical creatures.  It almost seems to be losing its essence.

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

11 hours ago, Fantasy Lover said:

... did nobody involved even consulted the canon?

Wasn't JKR one of the screenwriters?  Or at least a consultant?  She paid such strict attention to detail in the HP movies.... 

 

[Arcadia]

One of the things I read implied that the changes to canon were her doing, or with her blessing, or whatever ... maybe the changes will be explained? Or maybe she's just rethought how she wants things to go. Or maybe what I read was wrong. :-)

[Carol the Dabbler]

1 hour ago, Arcadia said:

One of the things I read implied that the changes to canon were her doing, or with her blessing, or whatever ... maybe the changes will be explained? Or maybe she's just rethought how she wants things to go.

Kinda like Douglas Adams' attitude toward Hitchhiker's Guide, huh?

 

[Arcadia]

9 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

Kinda like Douglas Adams' attitude toward Hitchhiker's Guide, huh?

I don't know, what was his attitude? I know as much about him as I do JK Rowling, which is nothing. 😎

[SherlockedCAMPer]

Douglas wrote all versions of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy starting with a radio version. Each version is different with the Freeman movie being the last with his direct hand on it. I don’t know all of the changes. I just know they exist.

[Carol the Dabbler]

I had thought the Hitchhiker TV show was a good adaptation of the book, but the first time I watched the movie, I was shocked by all the "liberties" they'd taken.  I knew that Adams had died, and assumed that was why they'd gotten away with it.

But then I found out that, as Camper said, those changes had been Adams' ideas.

[Arcadia]

Interesting, I didn't know any of that. I don't remember any of the versions being that divergent from one another plot-wise, and I'm used to stories being changed to fit their format anyway. I only remember that I didn't like the movie version; I didn't find it funny. And the humor in the books got meaner as the series progressed, I thought. But it's all been so long ago that I don't remember specifics. I do remember the theme song, though!

[J.P.]

Have you seen Stranger Than Fiction? I liked it much more than I thought I would. Maybe it's because I wrote that kind of story as I was very young, the theme always sparks my interest.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0420223/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_2

[Carol the Dabbler]

1 hour ago, J.P. said:

Have you seen Stranger Than Fiction? I liked it much more than I thought I would. Maybe it's because I wrote that kind of story as I was very young, the theme always sparks my interest.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0420223/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_2

Yes!  And I liked it very much.  I love those "what if?" stories.

Plus it demonstrates that Will Ferrell isn't just a goofball (though he often plays one in the movies), he's an actor.

[J.P.]

Yes, I was hesitating to watch it because I don't like the art of comedy he's mostly in, but apparently Sky knows me better.

[J.P.]

And I also saw Kingsmen The Golden Circle and enjoyed immensely, even if the "colateral deaths of unimportant characters" was a bit high. For those who know the films - there were several moments when I grinned like an idiot thinking about Mycroft having his own "taylor" and "umbrella maker". Maybe it's time for an spin off

[Hikari]

23 minutes ago, J.P. said:

And I also saw Kingsmen The Golden Circle and enjoyed immensely, even if the "colateral deaths of unimportant characters" was a bit high. For those who know the films - there were several moments when I grinned like an idiot thinking about Mycroft having his own "taylor" and "umbrella maker". Maybe it's time for an spin off

Anything with Colin Firth is a must-see for me, pretty much.  Golden Circle had its moments; my, but doesn't Eggsy clean up well?

Yesterday I had my annual Love, Actually viewing.  It's the #1 grossing British rom-com of all time.  I would have rather had two movies made out of the two best storylines:  A comedy about a young, single newly-elected Prime Minister navigating his first month in office and falling in love with his gorgeous assistant . . .and the other, a comedy about an uptight English author who goes to Provence to write a book and falls in love with his Portuguese non-English speaking  housekeeper.  Colin & Hugh Grant (and Bill Nighy) are the reasons i bought my own copy of this movie.  Bill actually gets more screen time than the other two, and each needed more.  

[Hikari]

Speaking of Colin Firth, as I just was up there . . . Yesterday in addition to Love, Actually, I watched Col as part of the ensemble in Shakespeare in Love.  He plays a (rare) bad guy, the mercenary and cruel aristocratic husband-to-be of Lady Viola, played by Gwyneth Paltrow.   Joseph Fiennes plays Will Shakespeare in this sprightly comic imagining of how the Bard came to write his most famous romantic tragedy, Romeo and Juliet.  It makes a comic companion piece to:

ANONYMOUS (2011) Directed by Roland Emmerich

Starring Rhys ifans, Sebastian Armesto, Rafe Spall, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, David Thewlis, Derek Jacobi

Here's a literary mystery for the ages to sink your teeth into.  Most people in the English-speaking world cannot escape secondary school or university without reading at least one Shakespeare play.  He is the most performed playwright of all time, and his 37 plays, 150+ sonnets and 4 narrative poems capture not only the spirit of his own age, but the universal spirit of the human condition for all time.  Western culture is unthinkable without  the Bard of Stratford.   But for such a prolific and incredibly important figure of letters, almost nothing is known.  He was born in a very humble thatched roof cottage in Stratford, a village some distance from London, the son of an illiterate glove maker.  He attended the village grammar school, and then, having gotten a local woman some 8 years his senior in the family way, got married at 18.  After three kids with her (a daughter, followed by twins Hamnet and Judith a couple of years later), he abandoned his family and ran off to London to be an actor.   He became quite a good 'player' . . and then somewhere along the way, wrote 37 plays, 150 sonnets and more, encompassing the most transcendent verse ever written in the English language.  Then he left London as suddenly as he had arrived, still at the height of his popularity and returned to Stratford, where he lived quietly for the remaining few years of his life, dying at the age of 52, and leaving behind a very modest stockpile of worldly goods, including the second-best bed which he bequeathed to his widow . . but leaving behind no books, no manuscripts, no letters . . no documents at all in his own hand.  The Folios containing his collected works were copied out by others and were not published until 7 years after his death.

The literary output of 'William Shakespeare, leading Elizabethan playwright' is discordantly at odds with the background of 'Will Shakspur (the name he preferred for daily use, at least until the plays started to appear), Actor'.  The movie proposes a theory as to why this should be.  What if 'William Shakespeare' was only a pen name for the actual author of all those plays and verse?  Will Shakspur was a real person, all right--but what if he was actually the frontman for a highborn nobleman who had a poet's soul but could not, owing to his position at Court, be anything so lowly as a scribbler of entertainments for the masses?  What if William Shakespeare had a ghost writer, the real author for whom Will was only 'the face'?  This is not a new idea; as early as the early 1700s, within decades of Shakespeare's death, this rumor was being floated around.  Many candidates were considered, including Shakespeare's contemporaries, Kit Marlowe & Ben Jonson (both of whom appear as characters in this movie).  One candidate stands head and shoulders above the pack and he is Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, heir to the most ancient peerage in England.  de Vere was known in Court circles as an accomplished writer whose works were often performed at court masques (acceptable, whereas writing for the common theatre was not); he'd trained as a lawyer, traveled extensively, living in Italy for two years, and as the son of a nobleman very close to the Queen, received the requisite education for his class in ancient history & literature, classical languages, French, Italian, English history, court manners and rituals and sword fighting, to name some.  The movie suggests that de Vere is even closer to the Queen than previously imagined.

Knowing that such a man as de Vere not only lived during Shakespeare's time but also was an avid theatre goer who would have been known to Shakespeare's circle really gets the synapses firing.  A roustabout actor with a grammar school education has some serious competition from this quarter.  Particularly if, as the movie suggests, he couldn't actually write.  As Sherlock would say, "Hum! A pretty little problem!"

Atmospheric; great music and performances.  A must-see if you like theatrical dramas or Shakespeare.  Definitely the 'anti' Shakespeare in Love.  Grade: A

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

20 minutes ago, Hikari said:

Yesterday I had my annual Love, Actually viewing.  [....]  Colin [Firth] & Hugh Grant (and Bill Nighy) are the reasons i bought my own copy of this movie.

I bought the DVD because Martin Freeman is in the movie, but although I think his part is quite enjoyable, it's small and disconnected from the rest of the stories.  My favorites otherwise were Colin Firth and Liam Neeson -- and Bill Nighy, who is always delightful.

[Artemis]

On 11/20/2018 at 12:59 PM, J.P. said:

Have you seen Stranger Than Fiction?

I saw it when it came out.  I remember thinking it was an interesting theme, very different, but just an okay movie.  I liked seeing Will Ferrell in a less comedic role; I can't stand him normally.

I've also seen the Kingsmen movies.  I normally like Colin Firth, but I hate those movies.  The umbrella was the only part I liked, lol.

 

[Artemis]

I finally saw "Solo".  It was corny and predictable, and I don't see Harrison Ford in Alden Ehrenreich at all.  But as Star Wars movies go, I actually thought it was one of the better ones.  For once I was neither bored nor annoyed by most of the characters.  And I'm saying that as someone who's never liked Han Solo.  Sacrilege, I know.