ChainsawAsh

The Avengers.

My full review:

Holy shit.

5 vintage Captain America trading cards out of 5.

timdiggerm said:

Let's say this, then: Physical media is dying.

Yes, but very slowly.  Blu-Ray will continue to be relevant for at least another 10 years IMO.

But Harvey was in it way more than the Joker, who only got, what, 20 minutes of screentime?  30 max?

Sure, Two-Face only got ~15, but Harvey got waaaaay more than that.  Probably around an hour total.

generalfrevious said:

How about the last episode of seinfeld. The four end up in jail for all their actions in the previous episodes; and apparently we were wrong for laughing at them, as that episode implies. 

What a great way to end an iconic show, am I right?? They should have shown the middle finger for 60 minutes, that would have offended us less. 

I thought the ending to Seinfeld was brilliant and pretty perfect.  I wouldn't have had it any other way.

But in response to your OP:

- Stephen King with the last three Dark Tower novels

- Chris Carter with the last 2-4 seasons of The X Files

And I'm sure more will come to me.

It doesn't come out until next Friday here in the States.

And about BTTF, I think the first one is a perfect, amazing stand-alone story, but the sequels throw in too much contrived B.S. to keep everything moving that it makes less and less sense as it goes on.  The "chicken" thing bothered me the most - a completely crippling personality flaw that Marty never had in the first one is suddenly introduced for no good reason, making his character seem much weaker, for what, the sake of giving him something he could change in the past to improve his future?  There are better ways to do that.

2 was also when they started casting the same people for different generations of characters - Michael J. Fox plays Marty and Marty's two children, for no good reason.  It's distracting, even though the fact that Marty, Jr. looks exactly like his dad is a plot point.  It's just a bit ridiculous.  Of course, 3 makes this even worse by casting the same actors as their century-prior ancestors - but that's to be expected, since 3 is basically a parody of itself.

2 does have one redeeming feature - the time travel mechanics, and the way the multiple timelines work.  I mean, really, it's just an expansion and clarification of the rules set up by 1, but it's very easy to follow for, say, a 6 year old, despite being a very complex topic.

And Marty's attempt at a disguise.  Love the hat.

But yeah ... I could go on and on about why BTTF 2 and 3 don't deserve to sit on the shelf next to the masterpiece that is the original.

Yet I somehow still like Ghostbusters II...

...well, how would that be a fan edit?  It's just un-censoring the extended TV cut.  I don't know who would be interested in watching a censored version.

Finally finished A Dance with Dragons.

Need some time to collect my thoughts on the series as a whole (thus far), then I'll post a more proper review-thingie.

bkev said:

My friend's father actually has a list of movies he's never to see.  It's not required, of course, but said friend seems ok with following it. His father puts Ghostbusters 2 in the same vein as Rocky V.... I understand the latter at least.  For that matter, I'm not sure why BttF pt 3 is on that list. 

BTTF 2 and 3 should both be on that list.

I have a strange soft spot for Ghostbusters II.  I mean, I know it's bad, but the nostalgia's just too strong with me on that one, I guess...

Which is what you'd use the AMC shots for, right?  You could even use the AMC audio, just replace any censored parts with the Blu-Ray audio when necessary.

Well, wouldn't it be best to take the Blu-Ray of I and II and edit it to match the AMC version, only leaving in the AMC shots when they're different?  That way it's uncensored, and in the best possible quality.

The downside would be that the AMC logo, instead of always being there, would only pop up for extended scenes/shots, disappearing for the rest of the movie, which could be distracting.

Fringe has been renewed for a fifth (and final) season of 13 episodes!  Woo-hoo!  I hope a large chunk of the season takes place in 2036...

Bingowings said:

Fans of the books please bear with me, I haven't read them but usually villains (even cruel sadists) have some feature of interest which makes them compelling to watch or read.

Young King Joffrey is just a nasty little git.

There is nothing interesting, redeeming, or entertaining about him at all so far in the series.

He isn't a love to hate character he is just a vile piece of work and I can't see how any death, no matter how imaginative would work as narrative payback for what he is.

He is like one of the monsters from Salo.

This is why I take issue with the scene of him with the prostitutes this week.  It's not in the books, but it's not a necessary addition either - you don't learn anything new about him, except maybe that he's even worse than you thought.  But we already thought he was a monster, so it doesn't significantly enhance our understanding of the character.  It's just unnecessarily off-putting.

Overall, though, this season's been fantastic, even though it's less faithful to the book than season 1 was.  This is really the only non-book thing so far that I don't like.

That might have been interesting, but I think it would have been much easier to go too far off the deep end that way.

Then again, I'm probably just biased because I loved it.

In other words, you wanted it to go full meta?

All of Dollhouse.

Started out kind of slow - the first half of season 1 is pretty much standalone "client-of-the-week" stories.  But once it gets into the serialized story, holy shit does it get awesome.

I wish it hadn't been cancelled, just because the second season is so obviously 4 seasons crammed into one.  Hell, Whiskey's whole second-season arc is crammed into the first episode of the season!  It just feels very rushed in season 2.  I mean, the season 2 stuff is very good ... I just wish we'd gotten to spend some more time with most of it, since it kinds just jumps from BIG EVENT 1 to BIG EVENT 2 without getting time to explore the ramifications of BIG EVENT 1 very much.

Thankfully, because of the cramming, it did get wrapped up pretty nicely.  I still want MORE, but it was nice that season 2 gave us legitimate closure on the story.

Amy Acker needs to be in more things, though.  So does Fran Kranz.  His manic, slightly-mad-scientist vibe throughout the series is good and all, but he really shines in Epitaph One and Two as a broken shell of his former self - heartbreaking, really.

The best thing about the series for me was how much it really made me think about the implications of such a technology - about our identities, and about how much our bodies and our minds are one ... or not.

I mean, I love most of Joss Whedon's stuff, but Dollhouse is the only one of them that I've constantly thought about ever since I finished watching it - which was, at this point, about a week ago.  And I'm still thinking about it.

The post-series comic miniseries (Epitaphs) is pretty good, too - it does a decent job of filling in the gaps between The Hollow Men and Epitaph One/Epitaph Two.  It's much more successful than Buffy Season 8 was, anyway (not up-to-date on Season 9 at all).

Anyway, Dollhouse = 4 artificially-created personalities out of 5.  Would have been 5/5 if it had been given at least another season - some room to breathe instead of cramming 4 seasons into one.

The Cabin in the Woods

Whatever you think you know about this movie, be it from trailers or synopses ... you don't.

The whole thing is a giant middle finger to both the state of modern horror films, and we - the audience - who say we want something new, but shun anything that is new.

It's also pretty legitimately scary at parts ... and dear god is it hilarious.  If you know Joss Whedon's dialogue, you'll have an inkling of what to expect comedy-wise.  There's a hilarious "speakerphone" bit that had everyone in the theater laughing like crazy.

I'm trying to give as little away as possible here, which is why this review is so vague.

In short, I fucking loved it - it reminded me a lot of Evil Dead II, in a very good way.

My only complaint - not enough Amy Acker.

Also, this and Dollhouse have made me an enormous Fran Kranz fan.  He's hilarious, and can be quite touching at times (though that might be me thinking about Dollhouse more than this).

All in all, 5 merman-summoning conch shells out of 5.

VAGUE SPOILERS BELOW - I personally recommend that you don't read the following if you haven't seen the movie yet, but it's not a HUGE spoiler.

AGAIN

VAGUE SPOILERS

BELOW

.

.

.

The movie could easily fit in the Buffyverse, if you assume that Acker's character is Illyria in disguise as Fred using a different name, and that Tom Lenk's character is Andrew working with Illyria, again under a different name.  And if the organization manipulating things is either Wolfram & Hart or the Initiative, or a merging of the two.

.

.

.

END SPOILERS

Also, I'd like to chime in and say that Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is definitely my favorite of the film series, followed by M:I-3, then the first one.

Fuck M:I-2, though.

greenpenguino said:

P.S. Bugsy I get to be Timothy Dalton

So you just get to call dibs on the best Bond, do ya?

I'd pick the worst on purpose, but it's such a toss-up between Lazenby, Moore and Brosnan that I can't choose.

Because that's one of the easiest ways to tell which version you have (V1 and V2 have yellow subs, one of which is in frame while the other is in the letterboxing, and V3 has white subs in the picture, replicating the theatrical subs).

The italics part sounds off to me, though...I don't think any version of Dark_Jedi's GOUT restorations used italicized subtitles...

Are the subtitles during Greedo's/Jabba's scenes white or yellow, and are they in the frame or in the letterboxing?

They're still having server issues - I haven't checked if I have invite codes yet, but I would wait until this has all been resolved.  You don't want your account to vanish once they fix it...

Fringe 4x17 (which I see Johnny has already mentioned).

Loving this season now - I was wary for the first half or so of it, but the last few episodes (pretty much from "Enemy of My Enemy" on) have been a good run.

I disagree with Johnny, though - I loved the Observer episodes.

And SPOILERS AHEAD FOR Fringe 4X17

YOU'VE

BEEN

WARNED

...

I'm very sad at the loss of Red Lincoln.  He was one of my favorite characters, and until the last few episodes of the season, I really wasn't a fan of Blue Lincoln.  Thankfully, I've grown quite fond of him, but I'll still miss (as I call him) Badass Lincoln.

Though I think it's funny that Blue Lincoln gets friendzoned by one Olivia, only to (probably) end up with a hotter Olivia.

I also think that the dynamic of the show will feel less ... weird now that we (presumably) won't have Blue Lincoln and Peter vying for the Top Blueverse Dude role.  (I'm assuming that he's planning on staying Over There.)

...

END SPOILERS

So yeah, I still feel that Fringe has been pretty stellar, and hasn't "jumped the shark" yet.  It's been remarkably consistent, with the exception of the first season (which is probably why the show never found a huge audience - it started out too rocky).

Anyway, Fringe 4x17 = 4 balls out of 5!

Oh, what the hell - I'm in.

I'd give you an invite if I could ... Myspleen's having server issues or something, and invites/registration are turned off ATM...

I'm still quite enjoying Fringe, but overall this season has been about on par with the first season, which to date has been the weakest season of the series.

Game of Thrones premiere was, indeed, amazeballs ... and if you know where to look, episode 2 can be found (minus subtitles for the Dothraki scene) ... based on that episode, it looks like they're starting to deviate more from the books with this season.  I actually kind of like that - it's nice to still have some curveballs thrown at you after you've read the books and think you know what's coming.

Not dead in the water, I'm reviving it; it's still waiting on my proper PAL-to-NTSC conversion of the TV movie itself, though.