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Nope, haven't seen Stan & Ollie.  Have seen some TV ads for it, but either they don't give me much of a feel for the movie, or it's a pretty thin movie.  I'm assuming the former.

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Here's a shout-out to Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee Richard E Grant, for his nomination, but even more for his attitude toward same.  Richard first came to my attention in 1986 in the film 'Withnail & I'.  It was his first starring role.  He was 29 years old, as was his co-star, 8th Doctor Paul McGann (playing 'I').  I was 21 at the time, and therefore these were dangerous older man types . . and 'European'.  Americans regard the English as Europeans even if they themselves don't.  Richard has worked steadily since, often playing psychos, because he's just so good at it.  But he seems like a nice guy in real life.

For any that are interested, 'Withnail' is a sort of prototype of B. Cumberbatch's Sherlock, with the hapless 'I' as sort of a comic Dr. Watson figure.  If you like off-kilter British movies, give this one a spin.

Neither Richard nor I are 20-somethings any more, but I daresay we are holding up pretty good.  Me better than he . . but then he is 8 years older and has had a more exciting life than me . .:)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/richard-grant-absolutely-overwhelmed-at-oscar-nomination/vi-BBSBhSx

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'The Kid Who Would Be King'.  I had virtually zero interest in this movie (although I enjoy Arthurian legend), but my dad really wanted to see it.  It's a kids' movie for sure, very simplistic, but it was cute.  And it had some nice traditional messages about honor and nobility of character that I don't see in movies much these days.  A nice way to spend a foggy afternoon.

 

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On 1/26/2019 at 4:20 PM, Hikari said:

Here's a shout-out to Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee Richard E Grant, for his nomination, but even more for his attitude toward same.  Richard first came to my attention in 1986 in the film 'Withnail & I'.  It was his first starring role.  He was 29 years old, as was his co-star, 8th Doctor Paul McGann (playing 'I').  I was 21 at the time, and therefore these were dangerous older man types . . and 'European'.  Americans regard the English as Europeans even if they themselves don't.  Richard has worked steadily since, often playing psychos, because he's just so good at it.  But he seems like a nice guy in real life.

For any that are interested, 'Withnail' is a sort of prototype of B. Cumberbatch's Sherlock, with the hapless 'I' as sort of a comic Dr. Watson figure.  If you like off-kilter British movies, give this one a spin.

Neither Richard nor I are 20-somethings any more, but I daresay we are holding up pretty good.  Me better than he . . but then he is 8 years older and has had a more exciting life than me . .:)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/richard-grant-absolutely-overwhelmed-at-oscar-nomination/vi-BBSBhSx

A long overdue honour in my opinion. Grant was marvellous in Withnail & I. I don't think he's received the credit he deserves either at home or in America. I think his portrayal of The Scarlet Pimpernel is the prototypical Cumberbatch Sherlock. If' you've not seen it I highly recommend tracking it down. He's brilliant.

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Today I got my pre-ordered copy of Der Hund Von Baskerville which had been missing for years. It was filmed in 1929 and was the last silent Holmes movie. It was a touch expensive at £35 (around $45) but worth it (to me at least😃) Carlyle Blackwell’s Holmes is described in the movie as the genial detective. Has Holmes ever been called genial before? There are some pretty atmospheric scenes and I believe that they spent more money on the Dartmoor scenery than they did for the brilliant Rathbone Bruce version. There’s also a 1914 short Holmes Hound to watch which I’ll watch tomorrow along with the extras. A day of Holmes collecting utopia for me.

Id recommend this to anyone but I can’t see anyone dashing out to buy it😃

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“Alita: Battle Angel”.  Another film my dad wanted to see that didn’t interest me.  The trailer seemed generic, and all the cyborg stuff and disproportionately large CGI eyes looked slightly creepy.  But it was much better than I expected and I actually really liked it.  My only real complaint is that I wasn’t aware it was going to end unresolved.  I haven’t looked it up but I’m assuming there are sequels planned to continue to the story.  I hope there aren’t too many, I hate waiting years for an ending.

 

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I thought about seeing that, but Alita was never one of my favorites to begin with, so I'll probably pass. 😞 But if the movie is anything like the manga it was based on, it will never have a definitive ending. I love manga, but that is one of its drawbacks. 

I should modify that … Rumiko Takahashi actually did draw Maisson Ikkoku to a final and rather satisfying close. But that's the only one I can think of, offhand. The Japanese are masters of open-ended stories. Curses.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Had watched a couple of movies and actually like quite a number of them, the rest are forgotten as soon as I finish watching.

The Green Book:  Viggo Mortersen did an excellent job. He seems like totally different person. I like the overall slow burn and the revelation of the plot (knew nothing about it prior to watching).

The Upside: There are lol moments and I actually enjoyed every minutes of it. Bryan Cranston is brilliant with only his face and I find appreciation for Kevin Hart.

Searching: I like the layer by layer story through unusual way of telling which brings me also to

Unfriended, The Dark web: I enjoy good thriller and actually like this one eventhough there are things to nitpick.

Isle of Dogs: weird animation, but I like it. It's weird but I like it. It's weird but I like it. There are jagged repetitive jumpy scenes just like my review.

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I wanted to see "The Upside".  It looked funny and I like Bryan Cranston.  Guess it'll be one I have to rent sometime.

 

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On 3/7/2019 at 7:55 PM, Artemis said:

I wanted to see "The Upside".  It looked funny and I like Bryan Cranston.  Guess it'll be one I have to rent sometime.

 

It is funny for me, do you know it's a remake of French's The Intouchables? I didn't know until after I had watched it.

Yes, been liking Bryan Cranston's work since he was just a a goofy dad in Malcolm In The Middle.

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"Captain Marvel".

Most of this was newish material for me (the Kree-Skrull war and so on), so it took me 20 or 30 minutes to orient myself to the world-building.  The war was briefly mentioned in "Guardians of the Galaxy", and there was a connection to Ronan, the primary villain of that movie, which I thought was neat.  :smile:  I always look forward to seeing how they're going to connect things in the MCU.  Anyway, once I'd situated myself, I felt it got better as it went on.
 

Things I loved (without being too spoilery):

1.  The cat, and Nick Fury with the cat.

2.  Seriously, the cat scenes were the best scenes, lol.

3.  The opening Marvel logo was a tribute to Stan Lee.  I loved that they did that.  His cameo also made me wistful.

4.  90's tech jokes.  Ahh, the good old days of dial-up.

5.  No romantic relationship.

6.  "Ugly aliens have feelings too."  :P  An underused concept in film.  "Ugly" aliens are usually portrayed as purely evil, violent, animalistic beings, sometimes with subhuman intelligence.  You don't care if they die, 'cause they're like bugs and you just wait for the heroes to squash them like bugs.  You will rarely see the ugly alien expressing emotion, protecting their family, displaying reason or a desire for peace.  (Granted, it's not like these are the ugliest aliens you've ever seen, either: they're still largely humanoid.  But still.)

7.  A cast full of characters that, to me, felt rich and rounded-out; or at least made a good start of it.  I even liked the villains.
 

Things I loved less:

1.  Stylistic choices: too much desert, too much brown.  This is entirely subjective, but my brain craves color; it just does.  After awhile I start to get bored with films that are too brown, gray, dark, or generally monochromatic (characteristic of war movies and post-apocalyptic movies).  The majority of this film was set in either the desert or inside sterile buildings and ships, and after awhile I just felt like I needed some green or something.  The most color came from her glowy superpowers.  Maybe that was intentional, maybe it wasn't.  But I would have enjoyed it more with more color.

To be clear, though, it wasn't terribly monochromatic.  Just a bit too much for me personally.  Most people probably wouldn't even notice or care.

2.  There's something else I can't put my finger on... but I think it has to do with Brie Larson.  I don't know if her acting was just "meh" for me, or if her on-screen presence is domineered by the likes of Samuel L. Jackson and Jude Law... but next to the other characters, she seemed just a little bland.  I didn't dislike her, but I liked every other character more than her, and I don't know why.  :bemused:

But I suppose it should be noted that I'm probably predisposed to be a bit extra critical of her.  An era of the MCU is ending, and this film marks the beginning of "old" characters being replaced by "new" characters; a prospect which, while perhaps a necessary evil, doesn't exactly thrill me.


There really isn't much bad to say about this movie, and my complaints are barely even complaints.  But honestly, I don't know if that's because the movie was good, or because it was a little bit mediocre.  I did like it, and it's worth seeing, but it won't go down in my personal list of MCU top favorites.

So... I'm not very good at number ratings, I never really know what number would accurately represent a film.  But all told, I guess I'd put this at a 7/10?  Right about on par with "Black Panther".  Goose, however, gets a 10/10.  :happy:

tumblr_po63pzMTsy1qf5hjqo6_500.gif


P.S.  As with most Marvel films these days, there are two scenes in the credits: one in the middle, and one at the very end.  The first is connected to Avengers: Endgame/the post-credits scene of Infinity War, and the second is more cat.  🐈 

 

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11 hours ago, Artemis said:

6.  "Ugly aliens have feelings too."  [....]  (Granted, it's not like these are the ugliest aliens you've ever seen, either: they're still largely humanoid.  But still.)

I haven't seen this movie, and I'm not sure what your definition of "humanoid" is, but it's my impression that it's generally easier to make an alien ugly if they're humanoid.  That's because the ugliest ones are usually those who strike us as looking "wrong" -- which means they're close to looking human, but not quite.  I don't go to the movies frequently, but for example there's Voldemort, who looks pretty normal except that his nose is missing.  I dunno if that makes him ugly, exactly, but I find him hard to look at.

I think that we're generally more turned off by someone who's *almost* like us than we are by someone who's totally different, whether the difference is in looks or beliefs.  We (perhaps subconsciously) feel like they got it almost right (i.e., almost like me), so why can't they just shape up?

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^ I agree on that point, although in those cases, such as Voldemort, I’d probably use “disturbing” rather than “ugly”, which is a bit different to me.  Another example in that same vein would be in horror movies, where there is a mostly human-looking entity, but maybe it’s walking backwards, or its hair is covering its face, or it’s missing a mouth, or its eyes are black, etc.  It’s not that it’s ugly, per se; it’s creepy.

But I think it depends on other factors as well, because Star Trek features a lot of humanoid aliens with mostly human features, aside from one different thing, and I don't feel any kind of revulsion.  Ensign Ro Laren, for one example, is almost entirely human-looking except for some wrinkles on her nose that indicate her Bajoran heritage, and I don’t find her ugly, creepy, or hard to look at it.  The only aliens I really find hideous are the Ferengi.

My loose definition of humanoid is basically “human-shaped”.  But another way I look at it is on a spectrum of more and less humanoid, with more human-like features being closer to “humanoid”, and more differences being further from it.  So for example, a bipedal alien with four arms is still humanoid, but maybe less humanoid than a bipedal alien with two arms but pointy ears and green skin.  And the alien with pointy ears and green skin is less humanoid than an alien with pointy ears but human-colored skin.  So that was the context for my use of the word “humanoid” in that last post, anyway.  I hope that makes sense.

 

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Yeah, I agree.  In fact, I think "humanoid" translates as literally "human-shaped" "human-like" or something along those lines.  OK, checked with Wikipedia, and they agree too.  Oddly enough, it says that the term was first applied (in 1870) to "indiginous peoples in areas colonized by Europeans."  Interesting.  That seems an awfully late date for that attitude to have been used in, presumably, a scientific publication (the article cites, but does not quote, the OED Online).

They illustrate that article with a photo of a humanoid robot named ASIMO, which they claim (with a straight face) stands for Advanced Steps in Innovative MObility.  So it's a mere coincidence that some guy who wrote a bunch of stories about robots just happened to have a vaguely similar name.  But when they come out with the fifth rev of the robot, maybe they could call it ASIMO-V, huh?

You've got a good point about the distinctions between ugly, scary, creepy, disturbing, etc.  I do think those concepts are all related, but have no immediate idea what the umbrella term might be.

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Life. A dreadfully lazy homage to Alien and other sci-fi horror films. Never truly engaging and never building in any sort of tension. Utterly predictable and the only people I could see enjoying this film are people that love overly graphic scenes of violence. I'm not one of them.

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On ‎3‎/‎12‎/‎2019 at 5:42 AM, Artemis said:

"Captain Marvel".

Most of this was newish material for me (the Kree-Skrull war and so on), so it took me 20 or 30 minutes to orient myself to the world-building.  The war was briefly mentioned in "Guardians of the Galaxy", and there was a connect to Ronan, the primary villain of that movie, which I thought was neat.  :smile:  I always look forward to seeing how they're going to connect things in the MCU.  Anyway, once I'd situated myself, I felt it got better as it went on.
 

Things I loved (without being too spoilery):

1.  The cat, and Nick Fury with the cat.

2.  Seriously, the cat scenes were the best scenes, lol.

3.  The opening Marvel logo was a tribute to Stan Lee.  I loved that they did that.  His cameo also made me wistful.

4.  90's tech jokes.  Ahh, the good old days of dial-up.

5.  No romantic relationship.

6.  "Ugly aliens have feelings too."  :P  An underused concept in film.  "Ugly" aliens are usually portrayed as purely evil, violent, animalistic beings, sometimes with subhuman intelligence.  You don't care if they die, 'cause they're like bugs and you just wait for the heroes to squash them like bugs.  You will rarely see the ugly alien expressing emotion, protecting their family, displaying reason or a desire for peace.  (Granted, it's not like these are the ugliest aliens you've ever seen, either: they're still largely humanoid.  But still.)

7.  A cast full of characters that, to me, felt rich and rounded-out; or at least made a good start of it.  I even liked the villains.
 

Things I loved less:

1.  Stylistic choices: too much desert, too much brown.  This is entirely subjective, but my brain craves color; it just does.  After awhile I start to get bored with films that are too brown, gray, dark, or generally monochromatic (characteristic of war movies and post-apocalyptic movies).  The majority of this film was set in either the desert or inside sterile buildings and ships, and after awhile I just felt like I needed some green or something.  The most color came from her glowy superpowers.  Maybe that was intentional, maybe it wasn't.  But I would have enjoyed it more with more color.

To be clear, though, it wasn't terribly monochromatic.  Just a bit too much for me personally.  Most people probably wouldn't even notice or care.

2.  There's something else I can't put my finger on... but I think it has to do with Brie Larson.  I don't know if her acting was just "meh" for me, or if her on-screen presence is domineered by the likes of Samuel L. Jackson and Jude Law... but next to the other characters, she seemed just a little bland.  I didn't dislike her, but I liked every other character more than her, and I don't know why.  :bemused:

But I suppose it should be noted that I'm probably predisposed to be a bit extra critical of her.  An era of the MCU is ending, and this film marks the beginning of "old" characters being replaced by "new" characters; a prospect which, while perhaps a necessary evil, doesn't exactly thrill me.


There really isn't much bad to say about this movie, and my complaints are barely even complaints.  But honestly, I don't know if that's because the movie was good, or because it was a little bit mediocre.  I did like it, and it's worth seeing, but it won't go down in my personal list of MCU top favorites.

So... I'm not very good at number ratings, I never really know what number would accurately represent a film.  But all told, I guess I'd put this at a 7/10?  Right about on par with "Black Panther".  Goose, however, gets a 10/10.  :happy:

tumblr_po63pzMTsy1qf5hjqo6_500.gif


P.S.  As with most Marvel films these days, there are two scenes in the credits: one in the middle, and one at the very end.  The first is connected to Avengers: Endgame/the post-credits scene of Infinity War, and the second is more cat.  🐈 

 

Wow. I agree with every word of this review. Goose was a marvel, Brie Larson was not, and I noticed the lack of color too. Fun enough movie but it doesn't rank too highly in the MCU, for me. 

And I had trouble getting into it too, and I used to read the comic! So I think it just had a rather awkward beginning. I do like the slow way they revealed her true origin, though. I think I'd give it a 6/10.

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Could someone please explain just how a cat named Goose fits into the MCU?  :huh:  Is Goose a cat that changes into a superhero goose?  And if not, why is a cat named Goose?

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