SantosHalper
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Posts posted by SantosHalper
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10 hours ago, Leicester Ram said:
He's extremely difficult to write for, particularly when you look at the film version of Superman who is just completely invincible. The more modern superman is different, less powerful and more human.
To wrote a good superman, you have to approach him as a guy from Kansas with these powers who's just trying to do the right thing amongst all the politics/espionage of the modern world. Captain America: Winter Soldier is a perfect superman film. Cap's working for SHIELD who he thought were the good guys but it turns out they're not and its about how he reacts to that.
Unfortunateky, Zach Snyder's a bit clueless with characterisation.
"Clueless" is an understatement, Leicester. I can say that, apart from Watchmen (which was okay), every other film he's made has been superficial junk of the highest order. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that he thinks he's being profound. That, for me, makes him worse than even Michael Bay, who at least doesn't feel the need to apologise for his awful brain-dead and bombastic films.
I am now officially done with superhero films. With a few honourable exceptions, most of them have been *****. The big studios are now taking us for suckers.
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Anyone here ventured into VR yet? The Oculus Rift was released in the last few days, and all the reviews I've read have been very positive. The Vive is coming next week.
I can't afford it, and even if I could my PC couldn't begin to handle it. The specs are really high-end. I might have to wait a few years before I get in on this, but it sounds exciting so far.
Anyone taken the plunge?
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4 hours ago, ketteringram said:
Using your logic, how much is the maximum anyone should ever pay for a car?
I don't think there is a maximum. People can spend what they want, in much the same way that anyone can choose to spend over four grand on a watch. But, using my logic, I'd say that a car is a vehicle for getting you from point A to point B. You may need to spend more to get certain qualities (petrol consumption, comfort, etc), but ultimately a car is a means of conveyance, and people who spend ridiculous amounts of money on a car are doing so in order to display their wealth for the benefit of others. Now, what constitutes a "ridiculous amount" isn't obvious, but I'd suggest that someone driving around in a red Ferrari or a Lambourghini Veneno might be attempting to send some kind of message to the people around him or her.
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4 minutes ago, Cisse said:
With £50 you can get yourself a nice looking quarz watch which has a weak quality caliber inside it. It needs batteries which are not eco friendly if you care about such matters. If you are lucky it works well for twenty years if not it breaks in a year. That might also happen with £150 watch too.
More importantly a high quality watch is high quality. It is hand made. It combines arts and craftmanship. It will hold its value very well and it can be passed on for centuries in your family.
People on the street or in the pub won't have a clue though of its value. Trust.me.
Fair enough. The most expensive watch I ever bought cost me just over a hundred quid. it was a lovely watch. What I'm saying, however, is that sometimes we can overpay, and that for many people the motive is simply to have a fancy watch.
I'm sure that many expensive watches are well-made and display exemplary craftsmanship. But I'm sticking to my original point -- people with watches that cost thousands of pounds are more interested in other people seeing them than they are in telling the time. Expensive watches are a status symbol.
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12 minutes ago, Cisse said:
Oh, how wrong you are on this one.
Care to explain?
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25 minutes ago, StringerBell said:
I saw Firewatch is selling really well and it's got great reviews. I think I'll be giving it a go, looks interesting.
Yeah, you should. I think its about 15 quid on Steam. Go for it. And if you do, get back to me, I'd love to hear what you thought of it.
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22 minutes ago, Cisse said:
Don't waste your money on a car. Cars lose all their value in 10-15 years. With £4000 you can buy a watch that keeps it value and might even increase in value in 10-15 years.
4000 pounds for a watch?! Four grand?!
I wear a Casio F-91W. It tells the time and -- AND -- it has an alarm and a light.
Its a classic watch:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F-91W
A watch is a device used for telling the time. Any watch that costs over 50 quid is an ostentatious show of personal wealth, intended only for other people to look at.
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A fair amount of the discussion on this thread focuses on tripple-A games. If anyone has any comments on some of the more "indie" games listed below, I'd love to hear. Here's what I've been playing recently:
Stardew Valley (lovely and relaxing farming game, a lot like Harvest Moon but with more heart)
Her Story (brilliant FMV game in which you piece together a murder mystery. Sam Barlow's underlying mechanic is genius)
80 Days (basically a text adventure, but has a really great sense of personality)
Cibele (charts a love story through a JRPG mechanic and a desktop)
Firewatch (not a walking simulator. A really great story, including a potential love story that is morally problematic to the player)
Papers, Please (you play as the guard at a border station/passport control, and must decide who comes through and who is turned away)
Proteus (a serene and beautiful game in which you just... wander around)
Undertale (pure genius RPG)
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Bone Tomahawk. 8/10.
Interesting spin on the western -- could be described as a horror-western.
DO NOT WATCH if you're of a delicate disposition. There is a scene towards the end that is perhaps the most shocking thing I have seen in an extremely long time.
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On 07/03/2016 at 13:13, Carl Sagan said:
Anomalisa - 8/10
Charlie Kaufman who wrote Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovitch, and wrote and directed Synecdoche NY, is my favourite writer. He wrote and co-directed this stop-motion animation based on a "play for voices" he'd done a few years ago. It was Oscar-nominated for best animated film.
Kaufman introduced the screening I went to, which obviously makes you even more keen to like it.
One of the review quotes was something like "The most human film you'll see this year, and it doesn't feature a single human".
The animation is superb and innovative. It took a kickstarter campaign to get this off the ground, and the animators had to produce 48 frames (or 2 seconds) a day. If you like Kaufman's earlier ventures you'll like this, in that it's one of those movies you will spend months pondering what it's really about. For clay models, there's quite a lot of sex, exquisitely and painfully done.
Main voices from David Thewlis and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Only 8/10 because I don't think it quite has the extraordinary depth of imagination that the other three films I've mentioned brought to the table. This wasn't written intended to become a feature film. Kaufman said that part of the attraction was for it to only be performed live a couple of times and never heard again, and that was part of the artistic process behind it.
I agree Charlie Kaufman is a great writer, but one who needs a controlling influence on him. For example, Synechdoche, New York, which I think he wrote and directed, is a fascinating film that is at least half an hour too long and over-burdened by the weight of Kaufman's ideas, whereas the Gondry-directed Sunshine is wonderful.
Anomalisa is much tighter and more focussed on its key themes, and I enjoyed it, but I have a couple of problems with it. I've seen it described as deeply misogynistic, and I can understand that. Michael is a dick, and he sexually exploits Lisa. That wouldn't be an issue if the film commented on that fact and critiqued it, but I don't think it does.
Otherwise, its very impressive. The animation is amazing, and the attention to detail is mind-blowing. Its interesting to consider it in relation to existentialism, with its themes of alienation and anxiety.
7.5 for me.
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3 hours ago, Cisse said:
It's a big problem at least here in Finland that media keeps doing bits about celebrities who are "depressed" but after a week vacation in France or Spain they are fine. The people who have the disease called depression however have no hope of getting better like that. Those who are lucky enough not to know the difference seem very eager to make judgements on the matter though. And it ain't helping anybody. Collymore was just one of the many victims in that category.
The idea that having loads of money and adoring fans means that you're unlikely or less likely to suffer from depression is part of a wider problem, although I must admit that even I'm sometimes led to think, "Oh, poor guy, he must be so unhappy in his massive mansion and model girlfriend". It's really terrible of me to think that.
A year or so ago I dated a girl who flat-out denied that depression even existed, and that people "just feeling sad" should pull their socks up and get themselves sorted out. No amount of arguing or pointing to solid evidence would convince her otherwise -- she just saw my condition as a moral failing on my part, and that's what people who are lucky enough not to suffer from it need to be encouraged to realise. I wasn't so upset when that relationship ended!
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On 15/02/2016 at 13:10, Mostyn6 said:
I was close to reviving this thread last week. Not sure why I didn't.
I confided in an aunt a few weeks ago, she was a bit upset that I'd gone through a rough period alone, and very upset with my mother, who I have no relationship with whatsoever.
A few days passed and my aunt's daughter (my cousin) sent me a lengthy text about her husband, who I really admire, but haven't seen for a while, going through a really really rough period. She echoed a lot of the advice given in here, and that thankfully, her husband is getting better.
I'd like to think I'd come through the roughest part with the introduction of more regular exercise, and knowing I can vent on here without criticism for it.
Hope you do find the first step again @SaintRam, your contribution to this thread has been noted and appreciated I can assure you.
Just heard Mostyn talking about this towards the end of the most recent podcast and thought what he said on footballers' depression was interesting. Wasn't it our former boss John Gregory who absolutely laid into Stan Collymore once because he was depressed?
Anyway, just thought I might also bump this back up after discussion on the pod.
Hope everyone who posted on this thread is doing well!
Rate the last film you saw partie deux
in The Jim Smith Room
Posted
Yeah, I think I can agree with much of what you say there. Aside from Snyder, GotG was good, and the first Iron Man was really good. I also quite enjoyed the first Thor film, and the first Captain America film. I will see how long my boycott of superhero films goes, and will wait until I hear more about Suicide Squad and Justice League.
Just before I continue, a disclaimer -- I have not seen Ant Man or Winter Soldier.
But with many of these franchises, they get worse really quickly. The Iron Man films went downhill, and the second Thor film was utterly terrible. I also thought that the Avengers films were hugely over-rated and got worse too. I like Joss Whedon, and every review told me how smart and witty the films were. But I just couldn't see it. Perhaps this is my failing, as I've never been a massive fanboy of the comics or the "universe".
This is my problem -- the "universe". We can expect endless films based around these franchises from both the DC and Marvel universes, and it just seems like its a never-ending stream of films designed purely to exploit the fans. BvS is an awful mess, and from what I gather so was Ant Man after Wright was pushed off the project. (By the way, how great would it have been with a Joe Cornish script and directed by Wright?)
I'm posting you a link of Robbie Collin's review of BvS, which is really worth reading. But scroll down to the bottom and you'll see the list of DC films in the pipeline. There are 9 (nine) new films taking us up to 2020. Add that to the Marvel universe and we'll see at least a couple a year for the next decade.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/batman-v-superman-dawn-of-justice/review/
You're right that some good directors are trying to do interesting things with some of these films. But most of them are dross, and we're being inundated with this stuff. And we also know that Disney is planning loads of Star Wars spin-offs too. Where is this going to end? Even flipping Ghostbusters has more films planned after the next reboot. And Spiderman -- how many Spiderman reboots do you think we'll see? We've already had two! In the last decade! And now we have two Superman reboots to add to the seemingly never-ending list. Next up is Doctor Strange, with Benedict Cumberbatch. One of our finest actors has succumbed to the urge.
These major studios know they have a captive audience that will lap up any dross they serve up. It just goes to show that the mainstream film industry has given up any last vestige of creativity or originality. They have a stock of existing characters that will be mined for decades to come, and I find that sad.
Rant. Over.