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Mycelia Board Game Review

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Outback Crossing Review

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

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11 Mar 2018 19:06 #265336 by Sagrilarus

Colorcrayons wrote: 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?


It’s on my list then. Thanks for the rec.

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12 Mar 2018 02:47 #265347 by Colorcrayons
Watched it with the spawnlings who loves star wars today.

The inevitable comments of "Whoah, that looks just like the millennium falcon" were made. So I paused and gave him a brief history lesson. Resumed film.

After film "So if all of this was borrowed from Valerian, why am I watching star wars? When is Valerian 2 coming out?"

Good lad. In a couple years, I shall accidentally leave my Heavy Metal collection from 1979-1992 open so he can read them.
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12 Mar 2018 18:00 - 12 Mar 2018 18:05 #265492 by Michael Barnes
Strangely (maybe not, since I was one of the 18 people that liked Prometheus), I did not hate Alien: Covenant. In some ways, it was closer to the original Alien than any other film in the franchise- it had the whole blue collar/regular folks workin' for the company angle, running into a Xeno imbroglio, and winding up in a survival horror movie after all of the sci-fi trappings. The script wasn't great, and yet again it fell into that overexplaining trap...I liked not having any idea why the alien (before they were Xenos) WAS. I liked that sense that it had no raison d'etre other than biology. The whole
Warning: Spoiler!
explanation was kind of lame and it strained to connect the movie to the events in Prometheus. I almost wish that Scott had just made these science fiction pictures outside of the Alien brand.

The dialogue and character development was poor- too many characters that left zero impression is the main problem. I actually forgot most of them. Then they died and I was like "oh, that guy". And if you want to be sure that a character registers as "bland and with no personality", you cast Katherine Waterson. The pacing was off too- 20+ minutes of the whole solar panel episode would have been more meaningful and engrossing if the characters were there...and what was up with this weird, vague "person of faith" language? What religion? Don't leave us hanging.

The David/Walter thing was interesting initially...but come on, I would have been far more surprised if
Warning: Spoiler!


There are two things that this movie really made realize:

- Aliens ruined this franchise. The reality of it is that Aliens is nothing like Alien, they are such different films with such different ideologies that either could practically stand without the either. And because Aliens was so strong- in fact, one of the best films of the 1980s and one of the best action movies ever made- it set an IMPOSSIBLE bar to clear. I think you could make the case that both of these films could have spawned entirely different franchises that would have BOTH been more successful if NEITHER tried to reconcile the two movies while also expanding on their settings and concepts. I think Cameron could have made Aliens without Alien ever having existed, to be honest. The only thing it would lack is the Giger designs.

- Alien, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant are really very Ridley Scott movies, and they almost set up a different canon. But with that said, I think that once he started bringing in all of this "why are we here, who made us" philosophical stuff that sort of broke from the raw biological, Darwinian themes in the first film. The problem is that Alien is a horror/slasher/gore movie. It's a B-picture with A-level quality. The elevation comes in the superlative direction, production design, and higher grade writing and editing- not in the subtexts or explorations. It is Planet of the Vampires writ large. This kind of story is not the best vessel for quasi-religious ruminations, and this is why the strongest parts of Prometheus and Covenant are the supremely gross and quite surprisingly transgressive body horror elements. You can almost feel both movies going off the rails in the medical pod scene or when that sac pops out of the dude's back. But that is also when they are the best. Note that there are no "hmm..." questions in Aliens...it's all forward momentum and physicality. Scott doesn't want to do that, but he seems to be beholden to delivering the guts per audience expectations. I watched Prometheus right after this, and I have to say, the medical pod scene is one of the most shocking and spectacularly gruesome scenes I've ever seen in a Hollywood film...it actually puts to shame some of the most notorious exploitation movies. It's easily on par with the chestburster- it's just not as iconic.

Anyway, just once I want to see a sci fi film where a ship gets a distress call or mysterious transmission and the captain is like "fuck that shit, we ain't going over there. You know what happens."
Last edit: 12 Mar 2018 18:05 by Michael Barnes.
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12 Mar 2018 18:08 #265495 by ChristopherMD
Aliens did not ruin the franchise. Aliens completed the franchise. The studios ruined it by making more of them.
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12 Mar 2018 18:16 #265498 by Michael Barnes
Good point. I should say “if Alien was to be an ongoing, multigenerational sequel franchise, Aliens ruined it.”

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12 Mar 2018 19:34 - 12 Mar 2018 19:35 #265508 by ChristopherMD
Annihilation - I don't think I'm smart enough to enjoy Alex Garlands movies. Nothing about it seemed interesting or felt original to me. Ex Machina also left me cold but everyone else talks about them both like they just witnessed a miracle on film.
Last edit: 12 Mar 2018 19:35 by ChristopherMD.

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12 Mar 2018 20:14 #265512 by Sevej
Well about Ridley's aliens...

Warning: Spoiler!
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13 Mar 2018 12:58 #265574 by Gregarius

Michael Barnes wrote: - Aliens ruined this franchise. The reality of it is that Aliens is nothing like Alien, they are such different films with such different ideologies that either could practically stand without the either. And because Aliens was so strong- in fact, one of the best films of the 1980s and one of the best action movies ever made- it set an IMPOSSIBLE bar to clear. I think you could make the case that both of these films could have spawned entirely different franchises that would have BOTH been more successful if NEITHER tried to reconcile the two movies while also expanding on their settings and concepts. I think Cameron could have made Aliens without Alien ever having existed, to be honest. The only thing it would lack is the Giger designs.

I totally agree.

The whole concept of the Alien Queen (as cool as it was) completely ruined the Alien mythos. Originally (as can be seen in a deleted scene with Ripley and a cocooned Dallas), the Alien was non-sexual. It laid it's own egg, which "impregnated" other lifeforms. That's why Ash called it a "perfect organism." It didn't need another Alien to procreate, it just needed a host/victim. There's also that cool H.R. Geiger poster that shows the whole Alien life cycle. As soon as you introduce the Queen, suddenly everything is boring and less foreign and less alien.

Don't get me wrong, I think Aliens is a masterpiece of genre film, but it ruined much of what I loved about the Alien itself.
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13 Mar 2018 18:02 #265616 by Michael Barnes
Yeah, it does sort of remove the "otherness" of the alien when you find it...has a mom.

The thing is, all of the Cameron stuff is great so it is hard to really fault it...but I think it's been sort of sublimated that things like exactly that, the queen issue, are just as contrary to what was established in Alien as anything in any of the sequels.

Warning: Spoiler!

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13 Mar 2018 21:25 #265634 by Josh Look
The 90s Gamera movies are the finest kaiju films ever to be produced.

That’s all I got for ya.
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14 Mar 2018 11:06 #265657 by Gregarius
I hated Prometheus, and therefore never bothered with Covenant. I have no plans to see it, so I read all of your spoiler tags. I find Scott's decisions disappointing.

I want to like Fincher's Alien3, but I just can't. However, I did like the concept of the Alien dog. I liked the idea that the Alien evolved by stealing other species' DNA. Every Alien would be different depending on the host it used to spawn. In some ways, they were like a biological version of the Borg (another alien species that was ruined by the addition of a Queen).
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14 Mar 2018 11:38 #265660 by Black Barney
at this point I guess we're in for more of these things over time and I'll totally be happy with one that is at least decent. Problem is I have no idea what that movie would be at this point.

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14 Mar 2018 13:39 - 14 Mar 2018 13:41 #265664 by Sagrilarus
As often as not, clearly defining a villain, be it an alien predator or Darth Vader, ruins them. There is a sinister-ness to the unknown that can't be matched with a clear description, no matter how evil. Perhaps the clearest relatively modern example is the Reavers in Firefly, which went from being stone-cold terrifying to a bunch of guys in sneakers that run after you and make funny noises.

I appreciate that there is a market for sequels and prequels, but it's pretty rare that they don't damage the original concept. Follow-on directors have a much harder row to hoe. Personally, I think Cameron's Aliens was a buddy-cop film that took place on another planet. He makes seamless films, but they're never a stretch, never make you think. Ripley's "Back off Bitch" line was the special sauce in a Big Mac of a movie. Tastes good, but no particular value to the meal.


P.S. Prometheus was the same by the way. The ending was a slog to get through not because it was particularly bad, but because it was particularly predictable. They snapped in Action Movie Ending #6 and rolled credits. There are times where, I swear, they start filming when only the first half of the film has been written. Prometheus struck me that way.
Last edit: 14 Mar 2018 13:41 by Sagrilarus.
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14 Mar 2018 18:02 - 14 Mar 2018 18:06 #265697 by RobertB
Sagrilarus wrote:

P.S. Prometheus was the same by the way. The ending was a slog to get through not because it was particularly bad, but because it was particularly predictable.


My vote is for 'particularly bad'. People were doing stupid shit, starting the moment they landed and ending with the credits.

ETA this quote, backwards:

As often as not, clearly defining a villain, be it an alien predator or Darth Vader, ruins them. There is a sinister-ness to the unknown that can't be matched with a clear description, no matter how evil. Perhaps the clearest relatively modern example is the Reavers in Firefly, which went from being stone-cold terrifying to a bunch of guys in sneakers that run after you and make funny noises.


Stephen King, in Danse Macabre I think, has that same notion with horror movies. You've built up fright, built up fright, then you show the monster and you just blew away all that work. A ten-foot monster? "At least it ain't 20-foot tall!" A 20-foot one? "At least it ain't 100-foot tall!" And so on.
Last edit: 14 Mar 2018 18:06 by RobertB.
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14 Mar 2018 18:09 #265701 by Shellhead

RobertB wrote: Sagrilarus wrote:

P.S. Prometheus was the same by the way. The ending was a slog to get through not because it was particularly bad, but because it was particularly predictable.


My vote is for 'particularly bad'. People were doing stupid shit, starting the moment they landed and ending with the credits.

ETA this quote, backwards:

As often as not, clearly defining a villain, be it an alien predator or Darth Vader, ruins them. There is a sinister-ness to the unknown that can't be matched with a clear description, no matter how evil. Perhaps the clearest relatively modern example is the Reavers in Firefly, which went from being stone-cold terrifying to a bunch of guys in sneakers that run after you and make funny noises.


Stephen King, in Danse Macabre I think, has that same notion with horror movies. You've built up fright, built up fright, then you show the monster and you just blew away all that work. A ten-foot monster? "At least it ain't 20-foot tall!" A 20-foot one? "At least it ain't 100-foot tall!" And so on.


After high-profile writing failures on Lost and Prometheus, I was hoping that Damon Lindelof was washed up in Hollywood. Unfortunately, he went on to turn the second modern Star Trek movie into a bit of a disappointment, and is now poised to ruin the upcoming Watchmen tv show.

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