E.R. Torre's Blog, page 90

I did not see that coming…

Arguably the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi has been one of the, if not the movie most sci-fi fans have been  anxiously awaiting.

Word was this film was very well received, and Disney studios so pleased with the final product, that director Rian Johnson was given free reign to create a new Star Wars trilogy which, according to him, didn’t even require much of a pitch.

Then came the reviews, and they were for the most part ecstatic.  Currently, the film is currently charting an incredibly high 93% positive among critics.  I wrote, however, a couple of days back about the fact that a) Rottentomatoes has a habit of lumping films into a good or bad category with little space for grays, and b) based on at least one review I found (granted, an exceedingly small sampling) I further wondered if maybe the critics were enamored more the Star Wars brand and were perhaps willing to overlook the film’s flaws.

Regarding that later point, I wondered if that was the case that maybe this film, like the Prequel films before it, would over time find people re-assessing their views on it.  I’m old enough to recall that the Prequel films -each and every one of them- were met with near complete adulation but over time people’s opinions of them soured and many now view them as not very good.

So too was the case, for some, with 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens.  People loved the film when it came out and it made a boat load of money but now, two years later, I suspect many see the film in a somewhat harsher light, even if they may not feel it was a complete bust.

Having said all that, what I didn’t expect, not in a million years, was the audience/fan reaction to this film.

As I mentioned above and if you go by rottentomatoes.com, critics loved the film.

Audiences?

Not so much.

Again, click here for the rottentomatoes.com score for Star Wars: The Last Jedi and you’ll find that while critics are 93% positive, audiences are at…

…hang on to your hats…

57%

Let that sink in for a moment.

The Force Awakens currently has an 88% positive rating by audiences over on rottentomatoes.com.

For further comparison, let’s look at the audience reaction to two recently released (and still in theaters in one case) action/adventure/sci-fi films that one could say are in the same general genre field:

Thor: Ragnarock has a 88% positive rating among audiences.

Justice League has an 80% positive rating among audiences.

Whoa.

Also being released this weekend and to little fanfare is Beyond Skyline, a sequel to a barely remembered sci-fi alien invasion film.  Currently, its rottentomatoes.com audience approval rating sits at 55%, just two points below Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

As I said before, I did not see this coming at all.

As you also may know, if you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, I’m not a huge Star Wars fan.  Though I was of the right at at the right time when the original film was released way back in 1977 and had/have a huge interest in all things sci-fi, Star Wars simply didn’t do all that much for me.

Mind you, that doesn’t mean I’m feeling glee at these frankly shocking review numbers.  I’ve always been a “live and let live” type guy and if Star Wars is your sci-fi nirvana, more power to you.

Even if Star Wars doesn’t do it for me personally, being so into sci-fi, I’m intrigued to read about the latest news/reviews on any sci-fi works, including Star Wars films.

Now, we are in only the opening days of the release of this film so perhaps people’s opinions will change in time.

The big question is: Will these opinions mellow over time, or become still more harsh?

We will see.

Oh… my… Part Deux

There’s this tempest (in a teapot?) going on regarding singer Taylor Swift and some statements she made via twitter regarding her 28th Birthday.

Now, before I get a little farther along, let me say: I think I know, like, one song of Ms. Taylor’s.  I vividly recall catching a performance of hers a few years back at some award show -this was when she was still mostly doing country music- and thinking “There’s a reason she’s popular”, even if her music then, and now, doesn’t necessarily appeal to me.

Having said all that…

So what did Ms. Taylor say?

Below a picture of her standing before a filled-to-the-gills stadium performing, she writes:

I love you guys so much. This was a photo @paul_sidoti took at @capitalofficialJingle Bell Ball in London a few days ago. I couldn’t have asked for a better year, all thanks to you. Thanks for all the birthday wishes. Can’t wait to see what 28 will be like. See you on tour

Oh… my…

Reading this story should make everyone think twice about sending something valuable through one of the several parcel services.

The article, written by Maria Perez and presented on Newsweek.com, is about how…

UPS Loses Family’s $846K Inheritance, Offers to Refund $32 Shipping Fee

As with so many of the stories I present links to here, you should read ’em if they intrigue you, but as always, I’ll spoil things a little bit here by going into the article.

So here’s the thing: A Canadian man has a nearly $1 million inheritance.  He agrees to have the money delivered in a bank draft and sent to him via UPS and, well, the bank draft is lost in the proverbial mail… and, hilariously, UPS offers to refund the shipping fee for the loss.

Here’s the thing: A bank draft can be turned in by anyone.  It is not like a check where you can cancel it and issue another.  Someone, somewhere, might get their hands on that check and, viola, get their hands on the money on it.

So far, no one has done this and, it strikes me, the Bank could figure out a way to flag someone illegally trying to cash in that bank draft and issue a new one for the gentleman whose money they’re withholding because of that.

I suspect the gentleman in this article will eventually get his money, but of course he’s gotta go through those idiotic hoops before the bank finally figures out the proper way to do this.

At least I hope he does!

Disney buying up most of Fox Entertainment…

Woke up today to the news that Disney is, as the headline right above states, buying up most of Fox Entertainment’s assets.  The link below is to a CNN article written by Hadas Gold and Charles Riley concerning that big bit of news…

Disney is buying most of 21st Century Fox for $52.4 Billion

To comic book/movie geeks like me, this means that Disney, who owns Marvel Comics and the characters, nonetheless did not have the right to make movies using the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and only until recently, Spider-Man, even though those characters and the ancillary characters around them were part of the Marvel Comics stable.

Why?

Because there was a time, believe it or not, when Marvel Comics wasn’t doing all that well financially and the rights to the movie versions of these properties were sold to what eventually became 21st Century Fox.  These properties, ironically enough, were THE most popular properties in the Marvel stable, so when the Marvel films first started coming out, they were forced to use “lesser” characters at first.

Sure, people knew the Hulk and Captain America, but Iron Man wasn’t a big character.  Thor, also quite well known in comic book circles, was hardly a Marvel “A” lister.  So too the Guardians of the Galaxy.

But the movies were successful beyond anyone’s dreams and, voila, the Marvel films were hot hot hot and when Disney purchased them, lock, stock, and barrel, they continued the success… and even managed to procure the use of Spider-Man.

I suspect that small opening allowed Disney to continue their negotiations with Fox and, today, it looks like we’ve come to the logical conclusion.

So, now what?

Will we see the Fantastic Four and X-Men finally come into the Marvel Universe?

I strongly suspect we will.

And… it kinda depresses me.

Look, its nice that the Marvel properties, both in print and in theaters, are now going to be under one umbrella.  The properties should be together as they always were in print.

However…

Is it me or are we rapidly coming to the point where our entire lives are going to be influenced by only a handful of companies?

Think about it: In entertainment Disney, Warner Brothers, and Sony are a trio of incredibly big and influential companies.  Fox was, too, but now Fox is part of Disney.

I could go on with other companies, such as Amazon and Apple and Samsung and Microsoft and… the list sure seems to get smaller and smaller, no?

One other thing: Fox owns the rights to the original cut of Star Wars (1977).  Now, supposedly George Lucas, when he sold his Star Wars properties, put a clause in there nixing any release of the original cut of the film.

But now Disney actually owns that cut (again, this was like the Marvel deal, while Disney owns the Star Wars properties, Fox had the rights to the original theatrical version of the original film).

The big question: Will they finally release it?

Star Wars: The Last Jedi on Rottentomatoes…

I like looking at the overall ratings of movies on the rottentomatoes.com site and often find the information fascinating.

There has been, however, plenty of criticism leveled at the website and some is very legitimate.

For example, I suspect this site contributed to the overall negative feelings toward the release of Justice League.  By holding back their overall score when two days before that movie’s release reviews were open to the public, rottentomatoes decided to premiere their overall results days later on their own “show”.  This made many speculate/suspect (darkly) that Warner Brothers was somehow holding back reviews and that the film was of course a total bust… this despite the fact that reviews were open -again!- two days before that movie’s release.

(Btw, in my opinion Justice League did about what it should have, box office wise, in the end.  It was a fun film, IMHO, but it was clearly something of a Frankenstein monster.  The fact that it was as good as it was considering all the stuff happening behind the scenes and the -also ridiculous- need to release it when they did (come on, Warners, you’ve had a great year in box office take… you could have delayed the film’s release to get it done “right”) is a tribute to the talent of the people behind -and in front of!- the camera.)

Anyway, Star Wars: The Last Jedi is two days away from being released (Just like Justice League was!) and rottentomatoes.com has the movie current pegged at an impressive 93% positive among critics.

I checked out some of the reviews and, not to sound like too much of a overly detail oriented fuddy-duddy, I’m beginning to think rottentomatoes’ black and white “good or bad” system of scoring could use shades of gray.

Understand: I’ve not come to some startlingly original/new realization here.  There are plenty of others out there who have noted sometimes a film is listed as “fresh” (ie, good) or, conversely, “bad” on rottentomatoes when the review itself is far more nuanced than those two black and white terms would suggest.

As I was going through the reviews (clearly having waaaay too much free time on my hands this A.M.), I stumbled upon this review by Josh Larson and presented on larsononfilm.com as a “fresh”/good review.

What struck me was the quote listed next to his review on rottentomatoes (which had a link to the full review) and the score given to the film.  First, the full quote from Mr. Larson’s review: …a bit of a placeholder.  The reviewer’s score was listed below that: 2.5 out of 4.

Hardly, I felt, an enthusiastic sounding review!

Looking for more information, I clicked on the full review (and you can do the same if you want to with the link a few paragraphs above) and, while I tend to agree that overall Mr. Larson’s view of the film is positive, it is hardly a slam dunk in favor of the film.  Indeed, and I’ll freely admit that maybe I’m reading between the lines, I get the impression from the review that Mr. Larsen is one of those Star Wars fans who is grasping for positives while (perhaps more reluctantly) pointing out the negatives.

There is, alas, reason to believe this might be the case.

Opinions on films -indeed, most art forms- can be very fluid.  What you may like -or detest!- at one moment might become, over time, viewed in the opposite manner.  As I’ve stated before, I’m a HUGE fan of Alfred Hitchcock’s films (though Alfred Hitchcock, the human being, was a very weird individual).  Yet for many years I couldn’t understand why people liked The Birds as much as they did.  I’d seen it and thought it was a bust, a strange film with a very strange plot and even more strange ending.

And then it occurred to me one day, out of the blue, the film was Mr. Hitchcock’s incredibly clever subversion of what was a very popular movie genre to that point: The radioactive/supersized monster films that followed in the wake of the release of Godzilla.  Only Mr. Hitchcock took just about every one of that then-fresh genre’s cliches and subverted them completely.  While in films like Godzilla you have a spectacularly big creature wrecking everything around (and usually taking down famous monuments), in The Birds you had ordinary, everyday creatures attacking a picturesque but essentially no-name place.  In films like Godzilla, you have things like a massive military fighting off the monster, a brilliant scientist usually coming up with a way of taking down the monster, and our heroes ultimately triumphing in the end.  In The Birds, not so much.

Getting back to Star Wars, when the originally trilogy was done and the new, prequel trilogy was announced, the movie’s myriad fans understandably went nuts.  When the first of the films, The Phantom Menace, came out, reviews were generally positive among fans and critics, but over time (and unlike my feelings toward The Birds), those same fans and critics re-assessed the movie and today many view it as mediocre or outright poor.  Feelings regarding the two follow-up prequel films tread the same general pattern, first elation and then reassessment.

Even for 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the first of the “new” Star Wars films being released by Disney, the early reviews by fans and critics were mostly ecstatic but over time, some noted the film’s flaws and once overall fawning reviews has since cooled.

At least somewhat.

While TFA is still viewed mostly positively (I think, anyway), I suspect there are few today who view it as being “up there” with the best of Star Wars… perhaps it falls just shy for some and/or lower for others.

Regardless of all this, I know the latest Star Wars film will do extremely well upon its release two days from today.

As for me, I’ll catch it at some point, perhaps before I catch Rogue One.

Huh…?!

Over on HuffingtonPost.com, Ed Mazza writes about that weird, almost tube shaped interstellar object named Oumuamua…

…which is coming into our solar system from somewhere (gulp) outside and that…

Scientists To Study Mysterious Interstellar Asteroid For Signs Of Alien Technology

Ok, before you fly off the handle (and at the risk of spoiling things in the fascinating article I just linked to above), this from Avi Loeb, professor of astronomy at Harvard University:

Most likely it is of natural origin, but because it is so peculiar, we would like to check if it has any sign of artificial origin, such as radio emissions.  If we do detect a signal that appears artificial in origin, we’ll know immediately.

Then there’s this quote, also found in the article, by Yuri Milner, the Silicon Valley billionaire behind the initiative looking into checking the object out:

We don’t want to be sensational in any way, and we are very realistic about the chances this is artificial.  But because this is a unique situation, we think mankind can afford 10 hours of observing time using the best equipment on the planet to check a low-probability hypothesis.

Again, from the article:

Oumuamua’s unusual cigar shape ― 10 times longer than it is wide ― was also “the most likely architecture for an interstellar spacecraft since this would minimize friction and damage from interstellar gas and dust,” the organization said. However, “a natural origin is more likely.”

So there you go.  While the odds greatly indicate Oumuamua is a “natural” object, because of its weird shape and that its come from outside our solar system, why not check it out and see if any signals come from it?

Have to tell you, I get chills thinking about it.  Kinda/sorta reminds me of some of the stuff I’ve written…!

Louis C.K. and that curious film of his…

Hard to believe but there was a time not so terribly long ago that Louis C. K. was viewed as a daring, cutting edge comedian whose act was considered quite daring and at times “true to life”… except, of course, when it turned out it was a little too close to his “real life”, which consisted of some pretty icky sexual predilections.

Once revealed, Louis C. K. became another of those faces of sexual harassment, a man who had masturbated in front of women, and -at least somewhat to his credit- he admitted to the fact and, like others exposed, issued an apology and to date disappeared from sight.

What was left in the flotsam was the fate of his just about to be released film, I Love You Daddy, which, given the revelations against Mr. C. K., suddenly is a film that took on too strong a “realistic” sheen (Dana Stevens, an admitted now ex-fan of Mr. C. K., reviewed the film here and noted how based on the revelations against him, she has found herself re-assessing the things he did on TV and standup and things that might have been funny before became far more sinister).

Anyway, Mr. C. K. has, according to this article by Anthony D’Alessandro over at Deadline.com, bought back the full rights to that film from the studio that was to release it:

Louis C. K. Buying Back I Love You, Daddy Following Scandal

There is speculation regarding Mr. C. K.’s motives for doing this.  Will he release this movie through his website?  Could there be enough money to be made on this now controversial film?

I wonder if there is an even more intimate reason: As an artist, one wants to “own” one’s work.  They’re your babies and owning them is something every artist wants… for better or worse.

I was never a fan of Louis C. K., but that’s due to ignorance and nothing more: I’ve never seen him either on his TV series, stand-up, or otherwise, and therefore have no opinion on his talent(s).

Yet I’m curious… if he does release the film on his own, how will it do?  Will he ever find redemption among the public?

Or is his career, as it appears at this moment, essentially done?

Sketchin’ 40

Not much to say about this one as I suspect most people already know…

Jeff Bridges’ most famous role… The Dude!

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Sketchin’ 39

Back in 1987 the movie The Lost Boys appeared in theaters.  Featuring a great cast of young (for the most part!) actors, the main draw was easily Kiefer Sutherland as the charismatic -and deadly!- vampire David…

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Loved the film and loved his punkish/new wave look.

And it would seem heresy for me to say this, but I even loved Echo and the Bunnymen’s cover of The Door’s People are Strange, part of the movie’s soundtrack…

It’s that time of year…

…when “Best of 2017” lists start appearing!

One of my favorite topics in that regard are favorite movies of the year nearly past.

Here’s some interesting food for thought:

Esquire Magazine’s 25 Best Movies of 2017

Best Movies of 2017, The New York Times

Rolling Stone Best Movies of 2017

Vulture Best Movies of 2017

Slate Magazine’s 10 Best Movies of 2017

As I find (depressingly) from reading these lists, there are so many films I’ve missed out on… Some I do want to see but there are others where it seems pointless to do so.

For example, I was intrigued with the film Get Out, which made it to many “Best of” lists like those above, yet at this point -darn you, curiosity and internet!- it feels pointless to give up on some of my too precious time (where does it go every day?!) to watch something I kinda/sorta already know everything about.

Dunkirk also made it to plenty of lists but, I have to admit, I’m a little fatigued with war films.  That’s not to say there are plenty of great ones out there and Dunkirk may well rise to their level but, as I said, I’m a little fatigued with that genre.

Then there’s Wonder Woman.  While the movie didn’t make all the lists above, it did appear on several lists and it represents one of the few films on such lists I did catch in theaters and at the time of release.  I liked the film (you can read my review of it here) and would give it a very solid “B” rating, but was it the among the best movies released last year?  To some, it clearly was.  I dunno about that.

Here’s an interesting and somewhat different list, from Esquire magazine:

Esquire’s Best Action Movies of 2017

Now here’s a list that really interests me!

I’m going to spoil things and list the 10 films they feel were the best action films of the year:

Dunkirk
Wonder Woman
Thor: Ragnarock
Logan
War For The Planet of the Apes
Baby Driver
John Wick Chapter 2
Kong: Skull Island
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Atomic Blonde

Certainly the films listed above are among the best known action films of this nearly deceased year.  Of the films listed above, I’ve seen four of them (Wonder Woman, Baby Driver, John Wick 2, Kong) and have another two purchased and waiting for me to see them (Logan, Atomic Blonde).

As for the rest, I’ve already stated my opinion on Dunkirk.  Thor: Ragnarock intrigues me but the comparisons of it to Guardians of the Galaxy, a movie I still don’t understand what others found good in it, have really scared me away.  War for the Planet of Apes I’ve heard so many good things about but, like war films, I feel I’ve had my fill with the first -and original!- round of Ape films (yeah, I’m really old).  Similarly, I feel like I’ve had my fill of Spider-Man films and haven’t been interested in seeing another since Sam Raimi’s last iteration.

So, of the films I’ve seen, I liked Wonder Woman the most and thought Kong: Skull Island (you can read my review of that here) was good, if light, entertainment.

I hated John Wick Chapter 2 (here’s my opinion on that) and thought that while brilliantly directed, Baby Driver was a plot-malnourished bust (here’s my opinion on that film).

So I better get to it and see those two films I have.  Once I do, I’ll have seen a whopping six films on that list!

Incredible!