What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

Black Barney wrote: Quick question on the Oscars last night: Was Icarus ever released to theatres? I hear it's a Netflix movie but it must have had a theatrical release, right? TV movies aren't eligible for the Oscars so I'm wondering what the story on Icarus is.

In 2016 the rules were changed to seven consecutive days with three screenings (from one screening/day) each in an LA country theater. I don't know if the rules have changed since, but they certainly aren't required to have even what would be considered a limited release. As long as it shows 21 times around LA, you can qualify.

Disgustipater wrote:

charlest wrote: This film isn't dumb at all, in fact, it may be too smart for its own good. I think Paramount wanted the director to dumb it down, but they managed to keep it unaltered.

Paramount felt the movie was "too intellectual" and "too complicated," and since they lost the fight to change it, they decided to cut their losses and sold the international distribution rights to Netflix. So all you non-North Americans can watch this on Netflix in a couple of weeks.

I happen to live in LA and have a friend who works for Paramount. It's being sold off to Netflix had nothing to do with how anyone at the studio "felt" it was too intellectual or complicated. They have test screenings around the country and get numbers and reaction from that. They knew it wasn't going to have the box office they wanted from the screenings. There is some science behind their reasoning to "dump" it. Of course they just want to at least break even on it.

The sad but true fact is that all the Marvel blockbusters and Star Wars, Star Trek kinda franchise movies are making all the money. Studios have a hard time if they spend much on the production of anything that doesn't have a built in audience. Bladerunner didn't do so well either. It's a sad state of movie business math we have come into. I heard a conversation on NPR that Kramer vs Kramer which had box office success and won the best picture oscar would likely be an HBO movie if it were made today.

For what it's worth, the original Blade Runner didn't do well in the theater either. Probably bad word of mouth due to people saying "I didn't get it." Modern studios tend to dumb down their expensive movies to make sure that they are accessible to a large audience.

The fact that Kramer vs. Kramer won Best Picture over Apocalypse Now is tragedy enough...it should have been an HBO movie.

I saw Game Night last night and it was very good. Great characters. We had a good audience too that added a few laughs when there wasn't a lot of noise on the screen. I thought they did a good job of balancing the comedy and the excitement.

Not so much as the slightest call out to hobby games. Naddah. Nothing. A big slice of don't-care-pie for what we all think is this raging new industry. Apparently not enough for Hollywood to notice!

There was a preview before it for a film called "Unsane" (I think) and the trailer was nasty enough that I was looking to the entrance to see if I could leave, just to avoid the trailer. It was really long. Someone in the back of the theater yelled "make it stop!" about 3/4 of the way through it. That broke the ice. Really looked awful. Someone in Hollywood greenlighted a story about mental illness and stalkers! A shame they couldn't work cancer into the picture somehow.

S.

I saw Black Panther at the weekend. While I very much enjoyed it as a film, I found its politics confusing. On the one hand, it's clearly sending a message of positivity about minorities. On the other, it seems to be saying that if you want equality, the worst way to get it is to fight for it, that you should wait for paternalistic handouts from the great and the good instead.

There's a good exploration of it here, from a guy I later found out is a boardgamer:
bostonreview.net/race/christopher-lebron-black-panther

Politics aside, Black Panther is a welcome deviation from the standard MCU template. It seemed to have less action, although the relevant sequences were stunning, and instead used special effects to boost the impressive cinematography. And the plot and characters were interesting enough to carry the film without the spectacle.

A couple of days later I was discussing the MCU films with a guy in the office, and he managed to convince me that all my favourites are, like Black Panther, character-driven pieces. I've long felt that there's a distinct quality gap in the franchise between those at the top and the mediocre rest of the pack, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was that elevated those few above the rest.

His nailing argument was Captain America: The First Avenger, which is one of my (and his) favourites. Cap has a really strong character arc in that film from scrawny army reject to uncertain superhuman to modern misfit struggling to come to terms with being young and special while the woman he loves is old and ordinary. It's compelling stuff, but in the later films - including the much-lauded, but inferior IMO, Winter Solider - he's just a dull, square-jawed all American action hero like so many hundreds before him.

Interesting article.

I didn't see Black Panther in the theater. Not that I'm against the film by any means, I just don't tend to go out for MCU flicks.

My only thought on the whole cultural matter is my confusion on the hoopla. I get we live in an unfortunate, socially poor time, but in many ways the first great Marvel film starred an african-american superhero...Blade. On top of that, it's not like Black Panther is some Spike Lee or Tyler Perry joint built up from scratch...it's just another cog in the white owned Marvel machine. Have we regressed as a movie going audience where the only thing 'relevant' is the MCU and film history only goes back as far as Iron Man?

Don't get me wrong...I hope it's a great film. I want to see good ones. I just fail to see how this raises above most other current Marvel films. Maybe I'll be wrong when I check it out...

It’s more that what drives production of movies is money. Superhero movies and rom coms are the only things that print their own money and get green lit easily. Because something like Black Panther is making serious bank, it opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities for scripts that might actually get produced now.

Whatever political content Black Panther has isn’t important. Whether it is good or bad isn’t even important. It is making insane money and , for the movie industry , that’s all that matters. That in itself will cause change.

Right. Studios of all sizes right now are struggling because theater attendance is declining with so much good stuff on TV/Netflix, plus the option to see first-run movies on various TV services. This is why MoviePass has become a thing, where it seems economically infeasible, since it actively encourages people to go to actual theaters rather than sit in their home theater.

FWIW, here's my take on Black Panther: dichotomouspurity.blogspot.com/2018/02/aiming-high.html

I enjoyed it, but not as much as everyone else. I thought it actually would have been better as a Netflix series than a one-off (barring inevitable sequels) film. I'm also kind of affected by the fact that, as I no longer read superhero comics, I'm not really interested in superhero movies anymore, either. I've seen them. They were cool. I'm kinda done with all that, since none of them are really saying anything different from the comics I gave up reading 25 years ago because those weren't saying anything different.

MattDP wrote: A couple of days later I was discussing the MCU films with a guy in the office, and he managed to convince me that all my favourites are, like Black Panther, character-driven pieces. I've long felt that there's a distinct quality gap in the franchise between those at the top and the mediocre rest of the pack, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was that elevated those few above the rest.

I disagree. I think Marvel is providing a more rich film overall, something I had a discussion about last night after watching Winter Soldier again. At one point Winter Soldier is attacking an automobile that's driving down the road, and rather than grabbing the driver's arm or their jacket or whatever, he reaches down through the windshield and takes the steering wheel out of the car. That puts you in the driver's seat of that car instantly. That's the kind of detail that Marvel understands that other production houses don't. Little details (ones that fit in a single comic book frame) make a difference in the narrative. I'll grant you that they're presenting great characters (hard not to since most have been decades in the making), but they're paying attention to details that other producers aren't. That one-comic-book-frame-at-a-time mindset is an asset on the big screen.

fwiw, my beef with the marvel movies is that they are good comic book movies and I don't like comic books all that much. Even the pacing and storytelling style that is most common. That's why I like the character pieces or the slapstick ones (GoG) better; they touch on media styles I like a lot better. So it's hard for me to hate on people who like the big ones like the Avengers mainline which bore the fucking *shit* out of me---it's because I legit generally don't like comics, esp marvel style and they do.

Gary Sax wrote: fwiw, my beef with the marvel movies is that they are good comic book movies and I don't like comic books all that much. Even the pacing and storytelling style that is most common. That's why I like the character pieces or the slapstick ones (GoG) better; they touch on media styles I like a lot better. So it's hard for me to hate on people who like the big ones like the Avengers mainline which bore the fucking *shit* out of me---it's because I legit generally don't like comics, esp marvel style and they do.

I don't like Marvel movies at all, except for when I'm watching them. They're kind of like Cheetos.

I finally saw Black Panther last night, with my long-term girlfriend who is half-Kenyan. Her mother is an immigrant from Kenya, and several of her cousins from Kenya also live in our metro area. Unlike me, she doesn't like to analyze and talk about movies much after seeing them, so I sometimes glance at her during a movie to see her reactions as they happen.

She enjoyed the movie, though she got a bit fidgety after the first 90 minutes. She laughed at all the funny parts, especially a couple involving the Dora Milaj bodyguard who had to wear a wig while they were preparing to ambush Klaw. She appreciated the political issues raised by the movie, and she loved that there were so many strong female characters in Black Panther. It may not have actually passed the Bechdel Test so much as flew miles away from it in glorious style.

I also enjoyed the movie greatly. I've been a Black Panther fan since 1973, thanks to childhood exposure to the excellent Panther's Rage storyline and his long run with the Avengers. This movie was inspired in roughly equal parts by both the McGregor run of the '70s and the Priest run of the '90s/'00s, but also brought a lot of fresh energy and visuals. Although the acting was decent overall, Martin Freeman was disappointing as a non-comic relief version of Everett K. Ross. The villains were really great. Michael B. Jordan played a brutal killer who somehow also a tragic and sympathetic figure, while Andy Serkis played a cartoonishly evil sociopath.

The politics were necessary and unavoidable. Even in the Marvel Universe, you can't have a high-tech utopia in Africa without at least asking about the poverty of the rest of the continent. This movie dares to wrestle with that question repeatedly, even allowing the hero to change his mind about it. Another obvious question raised is whether a monarch chosen through trial by combat is necessarily a good leader.

The wardrobe for the cast was amazing, and I wish Jack Kirby had lived to see it. I was expecting more from the soundtrack, and I wish they had gotten somebody more experimental (like RZA) to do it. The final battle ended in a sad and surprising way, with the hero and villain holding a calm conversation while watching the sun rise. The closing scene and the post-credit scenes offered both closure and new beginnings to be addressed in the inevitable sequel(s).

One jarring note for me: A fifty-ish couple got up and walked out after the first 20 minutes of the movie. I guess they weren't ready for a black superhero movie with such a black cast.

I rarely remember my dreams, and when I do, they are often variant takes on scenes from my past, in oddly unfamiliar locations. Entertainment only filters into my dreams when I have been binge-watching a tv show. And yet, last night I dreamed of Wakanda and the Black Panther, and it was glorious. Despite a mere six hours of sleep, I woke up with energy and enthusiasm to face the world.

Jackwraith wrote: Right. Studios of all sizes right now are struggling because theater attendance is declining with so much good stuff on TV/Netflix, plus the option to see first-run movies on various TV services.

That's just the usual Hollywood and MPAA bullshit:-
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/201...unprofitable/245134/
And the music industry:-
www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/recording-...bigger-threat-piracy
Also check out The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) as another means of extorting money.

The entertainment industry has so much rampant greed that no matter how much money it makes. it will never be satisfied and will always claim to be hard done by so it can keep all those wonderful tax breaks.

So I'm laaaate to the party, but just watched Valerian on Amazon prime.

To those who panned this... I dunno what to say.

I've read a lot of early Valerian, and I think it not only was pretty loyal to it's source material, but it was a really fun sci fi. We seriously need more of this type of entertainment.

Sure, it's not high cinema, and I can see how some would be disappointed because of high expectations.

But damn, there were quite a few moments I felt I was reading my dad's old 70's era heavy metal magazines again.

There was a couple scenes I genuinely laughed out loud about. I'm pretty excited to watch this with the spawnlings in fact.

But then again, I am a heretic who accepted John Carter for what it was too. So what the hell do I know?