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What Have You Watched Recently?


Susano

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Jurassic Park 3. Simple and fun. Sam Neill is just a joy to watch.

 

Just took the younglings to see Jurassic World.  Really well made, incredibly predictable action/monster movie.  Oddly, while the body count was higher than in JP1, the intensity was lower--more action than suspense.  As for the writing... let's just say that the dinosaurs have more character development than the humans in this one.  Still, I guess it was worth the ridiculous cost.

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How ridiculous was it?

It would have to be ridiculous enough that billionaire entertainment magnates would think that it's a great idea to clone carnivorous dinosaurs after what happened to John Hammond, and then build a huge theme park around them.

 

Even Jurassic Park had a enormous logic hole. In between research, development, and simply getting the dinos to adulthood, ir would have taken ten to fifteen years to build Jurassic Park. Yet the Disney-inspired head of one of the largest entertainment corporations on the planet was able to keep it secret all those years -- despite having to answer to the shareholders, who would not have appreciated the huge budget hole and would have wanted it accounted for. Plus nobody can keep it secret for ten to fifteen years even if they paid for it all out of their own pocket (something not even Bill Gates could do). It would be like the head of Enron deciding he wanted to emulate a James Bond villain.

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It would have to be ridiculous enough that billionaire entertainment magnates would think that it's a great idea to clone carnivorous dinosaurs after what happened to John Hammond, and then build a huge theme park around them.

 

 

Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same... ;)

You mean people thinking they should continue to milk more cash out of a franchise created by Michael Crichton?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Fortitude. Season 1.

On a Norwegian Island, two kids find something interesting and take it in to their parents who try and identify it. The governor of the Island is trying to make the place more profitable by building a hotel in the glacier. A scientist who needed to write off the proposal from the governor is starting to change their mind when he is killed.

Consequently a police officer comes from Britain to look into the crime as the scientist is a British national.

Stanley Tucci plays the cop and was great in the part. See it for what he does if nothing else.

There is one thing that really could freak you out later on.

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watched Season 11 of NCIS. Liked the non arc stories better than the arc ones. For all of his oddities, DiNozzo shows how good a detective he can be when he has a chance to shine.

One Question stands out above all others, how did Fornell marry Gibbs's ex and not realize what kind of shrew he was getting?

 

CES 

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Inside Out in the theater.

 

Brilliant. Absolutely bloody brilliant.

 

As you probably know by now, it's as fantasy about the five core "feelings" that live in a little girl named Riley's head and control her emotional life. (Every other person in the movie has variations of the same feelings.) When an accident sucks the girl's "core memories" and two of the feelings (Joy and Sadness) out of headquarters and into the wider world of her mind, the girl's emotional life spirals out of control and Joy and Sadness struggle to get back to Headquarters while the three remaining feelings (Anger, Fear and Disgust) try to hold things together while they're gone and make matters much, much worse.

 

Joy wants Riley to be happy. The problem is she wants Riley to always be happy, regardless of what happens to her. The very existence of Sadness is an open annoyance to her, and behind her exuberant exterior she only tolerates the other feelings. She and Riley have one thing in common -- they both have some growing up to do.

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Once Upon a Time in the West- I don't ever recall seeing this movie before tonight and I have to say what a wonderful surprise it was to watch. The scene where Henry Fonda's character is introduced was chilling. Keep in mind when I say that, that I am very hard to impress. Turned out far more suspenseful than almost every modern movie I have watched. I hereby proclaim it my second favorite Western, after Unforgiven.

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I've "binged" Bosch, the Amazon-funded police procedural where someone made the insane casting decision of letting Titus Welliver play a good guy (the horrendously named Hieronymous "Harry" Bosch, LAPD detective).

 

Didn't even hear of the novels, but liked the series, especially how they took their time and solved a crime in 10 40-minute episodes, something that a CSI metastasis might've handled in one.

More time for creating a modern, yet noir-ish point of view.

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I've "binged" Bosch, the Amazon-funded police procedural where someone made the insane casting decision of letting Titus Welliver play a good guy (the horrendously named Hieronymous "Harry" Bosch, LAPD detective).

 

Didn't even hear of the novels, but liked the series, especially how they took their time and solved a crime in 10 40-minute episodes, something that a CSI metastasis might've handled in one.

More time for creating a modern, yet noir-ish point of view.

Nifty!  I started reading the series recently.  Good present day (1980s when he started out, but who's counting?) LA Noir.   I'll check it out!  Thanks!

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Arn: The Knight Templar - Talk about a simplistic title. I highly recommend finding this and sitting down for an absolutely awesome movie that Hollywood studios could never even dream of making so well. Arn tells the story of the titular character getting into mischief and essentially condemning himself and another person to a pretty severe punishment by the Church. But wait, there is more. Political intrigue, the Knights Templar in the Crusades, and a fight to bring peace and unification to Sweden. The acting far exceeded my expectations. Good set pieces. Good battles. The best part is that there are few stereotypical roles. I won't say that it is one of those confusing whodunnits, but it treats every character as an individual. The movie is based on a series of fictional history novels written by Jan Guillou. I have not read them. This was one of the treasure you find when you skim over the Netflix catalog and say "What the hell? I like Knight Templar stories."

 

Gladiator - A good movie that moves along well. It is the battle in the beginning of the movie, in Germania, that makes me want to create an Imperial character for Skyrim and fight the Stormcloaks. :)

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Chappie, by Neill Blokamp. Better than Elysium, worse than District 9 -- as visually striking as both. I'm regarding Blokamp as a director sort of in the mold of Lucas -- great at the visuals and the story, but one who needs someone else to write the actual scripts. If there are scripts -- with D9, much of the dialogue was improvised, and I get the same feeling here.

 

Though Sharlto Copley did an amazing job as a Serkis Folk new-born gangsta AI robot.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have been watching a lot of Iyashikei shows lately. Iyashikei is an anime/manga subgenre about stress relief. You watch the shows and you step into a world where even troubles are not all that important. So one of my friends who came over thought I should see School Live.

 

 

I mean, if a show has an OP like that, what could possibly be more cheerful?

 

School Live tells the story of four Japanese high school girls who actually live in the school building as part of their club duties. The viewpoint character is Yuki -- cheerful, not that bright, and enthusiastic about everything -- and blissfully unaware that the four girls in the club and their faculty adviser are the only five local survivors of the zombie apocalypse that has swept their city and possibly the rest of the world.

 

I guess that's not Iyashikei after all.

 

The other girls do what they have to do to survive, barricaded on the upper floor of the school. All the while they humor Yuki's delusion of normality while struggling with dwindling supplies, limited access to electricity (the school is partially solar-powered), and the infected former students wandering the campus. There's a sense of tragic desperation, and the girls who are still sane cling to the probably forlorn hope of rescue. Yuki is off in her own little world, where classes continue, summer vacation offers the chance for adventure, and nothing is more important than the the upcoming Exam Hell faced by all high school seniors in Japan.

EDIT: As it turns out we don;t really seem to know that the teacher is still alive. She could be part of Yuki's fantasy world, which is pretty sophisticated.

 

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Edited by Michael Hopcroft
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Watched Gift of the Night Fury. It's a short set in the how to train your dragon verse. All the dragons have migrated off Berk. When Hiccup discovers one leashed so it cant fly away, it shows him the answer to the problem. Too bad it left its eggs behind because they explode.

 

Watched the Transporter Season two- Less T and A except for the episode set at the procurer's castle. The agent is replaced with someone who takes part in the mystery of the episode. The comic relief mechanic is killed off, so his b plots have been eliminated. The mysteries have branched away from transporting goods and people to more of a bodyguard/detective type deal like the HUman Target. Ends on a cliffhanger.

CES       

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