The Sword and Laser discussion
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What else are you watching?
Jennifer wrote: "I watched the movie Dayshift. It was a fun vampier flick. I liked how the vampiers were done. ."
does it have jump scares? I hate those.
John (Nevets) wrote: "Robin wrote: "I still subscribe to Netflix for DVD's as our tv service out here can be erratic. So, over the course of months, Fred and I ordered in and watched all the James Bond movies in the chr..."It's an interesting experience to watch the 'evolution' of James Bond. It even shows up in the opening title sequence. I experience when I go back and re-read the beloved paperback sf from my teenage years, too.
Jennifer wrote: "I watched the movie Dayshift. It was a fun vampier flick. I liked how the vampiers were done. I am enjoying The Rings of power. People can F*off about the casting, and the casting in House of the..."
Dayshift was fun!
Silvana wrote: "Jennifer wrote: "I watched the movie Dayshift. It was a fun vampier flick. I liked how the vampiers were done. ."
does it have jump scares? I hate those."
Hmm...not really. That one scene in Jaws always gets me ! :) But I would not say Dayshift is scary. It was a fun vampire flick and had a decent story and background .
Robin wrote: "Jennifer wrote: "I watched the movie Dayshift. It was a fun vampier flick. I liked how the vampiers were done. I am enjoying The Rings of power. People can F*off about the casting, and the castin..."
Yeah ! That is the word. It was just a fun movie.
Crosspost! More Troughton Doctor Who. It's gotta be tough to be a fan of the Second Doctor. Only the first serial of his first season was available on Britbox. The other Dalek serial has been recreated but isn't part of the package. Looking around I see it's $2 an episode to rent. Really? The Second Doctor has been called a "cosmic clown" and I wonder if snobs at the BBC arranged for those serials to be lost. And anyway it isn't true. If you watch closely in Power of the Daleks, he's using the flute to distract opponents and in one case to open a prison door. The rest of the act is exactly that, an act to mess with expectations.
So it's on to Tomb of the Cyberman, with an expedition to a Cyberman cryogenic facility with a makeup that matches the cold war of the time. The Russians? Why, of course they're sneaky and backstabbing! The American Captain, brusk and plain talking. The Cybermen themselves looked rather silly but hey, it was the 60s. Blatant allusions to Hitlerian megalomania on the part of the expedition funder altho tbh that would have fit any dictator of the day.
Then two more missing serials, Abominable Snowmen and Ice Warriors. I really would have enjoyed seeing those. Then we skipped The Enemy of the World because we'd seen it a year ago. But if you want any proof Troughton can act, he kills it in that one as Salamander.
Following that The Web Of Fear, including the first appearance of Lethbridge-Stewart, then a Colonel. Regrettably the episode in which he appears has been lost, so it was recreated with stills. Well, better than nothing. Even just in audio you can tell why he became a recurring character. The other military in that episode played stock characters, but his charisma was evident from his first line.
I'm still enjoying She-Hulk. I think it gets better every episode and ep.4 was a lot of fun. I did think there were a few times in this one where the cgi face could have been done a little better but over all it was pretty good.
Caught up on She-Hulk. Loving it! Started Thor 4 - loving it! I finished Godless on Netflix 9/10! Loving LOTR: TROP! Looking forward to watching the new episode of GOT: HOTD.
Tamahome wrote: "Ian likes everything."Ha ha! It's kinda true. I have a good idea what I'm going to enjoy & watch or read those things. I also tend to talk about the things I love & not mention the things I don't. I also want to make the best of what I'm given when it comes to entertainment, so I don't want to focus on the shortcomings or casting or narrative choices I disagree with. It's a bummer when people are negative.
Crosspost...Watched Space Jam, the original. Yet another of the "movies I always meant to see but hadn't gotten around to." Anyhoo, this is a movie that doesn't mind beating you over the head with its point. We start with five minutes of Michael Jordan love as lengthy credits roll, then on to a villainous villain (Danny DeVito.) Lots o' basketball players get short spots. Bill Murray reprising a famous Caddyshack shot, Larry Bird golfing, and a cameo by every Looney Tunes character known. Just right at about 75 minutes of action. Bad people punished, coerced bad guys redeemed. Every wish gets fulfilled along the way and there's a short, frenetic basketball game. Silly fun.
I've tried to watch Love and Thunder but it's too dumb. Taika needs to go away for awhile and re-learn that not everything should be a joke
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Agreed. I love the humour in Thor: Ragnarok. Taika got it right in that film. But Thor: L&T pushed jokes past the point where they were funny, into pure cornball.
TW had been batting a thousand up to this film, so I'm not prepared to write off his directing career yet.
Eh. I remember the original Simonson run on Thor. Among many great dramatic moments he also had Thor turn into a frog. The goat cart featured in that run as well.If anything I found it a spoof of the storytelling technique in 300, which as you may recall was done as a story told a year after the events to a fresh group of soldiers going to defend Greece. In the telling the events got even more grand. For Thor, Korg is a silly person so he tells the tale in a silly fashion.
It's not just Korg (who annoys me on a few levels, primarily that he's literally Taika), but the characterization of Thor is off - his nobility is gone, he's basically an idiot - the dialog is poorly written and the movie (as far as I got, just after the first fight with Gorr) simply isn't good. For example (view spoiler)
The problem I have, aside from the stuff above, is that the Gorr storyline and the Mighty Thor (Jane as Thor) storyline both have comic runs that are simply better done than this waste of streaming bandwidth.
I'm down with lightness and some snarky moments - this is Marvel after all - but Taika doesn't seem to know any other notes than full on silliness and it undermines this movie and makes me a lot less interested in seeing his other stuff.
I liked the movie just for Russell Crowe's Zeus. The walk down the stairs was hilarious.
Stephen wrote: "I liked the movie just for Russell Crowe's Zeus. The walk down the stairs was hilarious."Zeus was fantastic!
Although I've enjoyed both Rings of Power and House of the Dragon, I have to admit my true fantasy love looks best served by the Willow series. I just watched the trailer and became very excited. The great soundtrack alone makes me an eight-year-old boy again.
Rick wrote: "It's not just Korg (who annoys me on a few levels, primarily that he's literally Taika), but the characterization of Thor is off - his nobility is gone, he's basically an idiot - the dialog is poor..."I've drifted off Thor really over two decades. From frothing on the Surtur Saga, chasing every issue even as I went through college and post college turmoil, to a silly time travel storyline. Then Straczynski's puzzling run. Didn't mind missing an issue or two there. Some highlights but overall not compelling. I was not buying comics regularly when the Jane Foster run started, and noped right out when the disco dancing Mjolnir made its debut. Eventually read the run courtesy of my local library. Jane was Mary Sue throughout that run, with every Marvel character she met genuflecting about how great a Thor she was. Bleah. Not much chance for conflict or character growth there.
(it has been noted that I ought to spoiler protect movie elements)(view spoiler)
What annoys me is the lost opportunities. This is more for the comics than the movie, the movie did the best it could with the source material.
What are Thor's aspects? One of them is family protector. How about Jane Foster protecting a family, and becoming worthy that way? Or, even better, what if it's her own child? What if she's bearing Thor's hidden child and protecting him from threats mundane and magical? Now, THAT would be a story!
(frothing ends. Insert picture of crazy person gesticulating in front of a whiteboard showing connections.)
Part of the issue with the movie might be (I've still not watched it) that it tries to cover two relatively full storylines - Jane as Thor and Gorr - in one 2 hour(ish) movie. But really, my objection as far as I got was the tone. Thor has, at this point, legitimately been through A LOT. It makes sense that he's dealing with the fall out of the Infinity War events. But Taika and the writers have turned him into a buffoon here and not the thousands of years old Asgardian who is dealing with the fall out of those events and trying to find purpose again. He's simply not a believable extension of the character we've watched for years and the reason is that Taika seems to be a one note creative. He's not bad at all - but I think he'd be a better choice for any post-Gunn GotG movies where that silly humor is part of the aesthetic of the films.
For quippy humor that flows naturally, see Civil War.
John (Taloni) wrote: "Rick wrote: "It's not just Korg (who annoys me on a few levels, primarily that he's literally Taika), but the characterization of Thor is off - his nobility is gone, he's basically an idiot - the d..."You may wanna tag your spoilers.
Thanks for the insights from someone who read the relevant comics.
^ Oh...sure! I had just assumed that anyone talking about it on this thread had watched it. Going back to edit...
I rented Where the Crawdads Sing for $6. It was alright. If you want to get dates, just live in a marsh. That's not Anne Hathaway.
^ Worked for Swamp Thing, he wound up with Heather Locklear.
The girl in the Swamp Thing TV show is more my type. ha ha
Crosspost with Discord: Watched the 5th Transformer movie, something something knight. I've been thinking they make these up as they go. Well, of course, but I mean that each subsequent movie takes whatever's left from the previous one and shoehorns it into a new plot without any overall arc. This one, a fairly decent tieup of previous plotlines. There's a thoroughly silly inclusion of King Arthur et al, but why not. Anthony Hopkins kills as the polite but profane Brit. Thin plot goes on too long but the FX and actions scenes deliver as per usual for this franchise. Overlong but eh, that's expected.I wanted more of the King Ghidora ersatz Kaiju in the form of the three headed techno dragon. Criminally misused. Other previous Transformers make appearances but are not really the focus.
A peeve: No Brit would issue an invitation to "High Tea" to mean anything classy. A "High Tea" is one eaten at a high table, generally by servants. It is not "high" in any kind of elevated class sense. If you're gonna go to the trouble of recruiting Anthony Hopkins then take the time to get this right. Or maybe the writers knew and decided their audience was misinformed so they'd go along. Things like this are a reason to love Gail Carriger's works as she would never, ever, get a tea wrong. One of her books even had a low tea which was, yep, served on low tables and eaten by upper crusty types.
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You wouldn't rock up to a "High Tea" in shorts and a T-shirt.
It's the sort of event you go to mid-afternoon at the yacht club or a classy restaurant.
Hey is Station Eleven any good? I have not read the novel.
I watched Thor Love & Thunder recently. Not as good as the third one, and a lot of the humor fell flat, but better than I expected. The soundtrack was a lot of fun although heavy on the Guns N Roses (the band that will apparently never die) and there were some beautiful visuals and fun actions scenes. Also some genuinely touching moments, which came as a surprise to me. I also watched Venom, which was about what I expected of a non-MCU-affiliated Marvel film; a bastardization of the origin story which became a color-by-numbers plot with stock characters and 90s-action film catchphrases uttered as the characters beat each other to a pulp. Of course there's a sequel, how could there not be one? Daughter liked it better than Thor 4 though.
We just watched Jurassic World: Dominion. I gave it 8/10 because the dinos were really amazing! It was far from perfect, but I loved it.Catching up on Andor, Cobra Kai, The Boys, GoT: HotD & LotR: RoP.
So I just got caught up on the latest 3 episodes of "The Lower Decks". And these last 2 episodes were absolutely excellent Star Trek. I've always enjoyed the series, but I just think they sometime just tried a little too hard to wedge it into the universe. This season has just been more my style. I think they dialed it back a bit, while leaning into it being more of ensemble, then just being about Mariner.
I watched Season One of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on Paramount Plus. They released ten episodes from May 5, 2022, to July 7, 2022. The show follows the adventures of the Enterprise before the original series when the spaceship was commanded by Captain Pike. It’s a spin-off from Star Trek: Discovery. It was great.I am watching Season Four of Stranger Things on Netflix. I like the show’s mix of nostalgia, sci-fi, and horror. I am also watching Season One House of the Dragon on HBO Max. It is a prequel series to Game of Thrones. The episodes I have seen have the same production values and excellent acting found in the first series.
I’m thinking about watching Season Four of West World on HBO next.
Oh damn. I forgot about the new season of Westworld!
I just finished watching Blonde on Netflix 9/10 NC-17. I'm madly in love with Ana de Armas! I've been a fan since seeing her in Blade Runner 2049.
That’s based on a Joyce Carol Oats novel.
I was highly skeptical of Strange New Worlds but decided to try one. It won me other. Episodes ranged from solid to great. The season finale take on Balance of Terror was amazing. The riff on LeGuin's "Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" heartbreakingly well done.
The only ep of Strange New Worlds that I didn't like was the second (or third) to last, the one where they answer a distress call from a crashed ship and investigate. It did the one thing I can't stand in fiction, it had the characters do things because the story needed them to vs because it would make sense for those characters to do that thing.Aside from that, it's excellent.
I watched both Samaritan (old man ex-superhero) with Sylvester Stallone on Amazon and Day Shift (vampire hunter) with Jamie Foxx on Netflix. They had their moments.
Tamahome wrote: "That’s based on a Joyce Carol Oats novel."I have mixed feelings about the fantastical biopics. I love watching them, but they ring as true & aren't. I saw Walk the Line & Bohemian Rhapsody, still plan to watch Rocket Man & Elvis. I've seen a lot more that I can't think of right now.
Mark Kernode said it's almost like a horror movie.
Tamahome wrote: "Mark Kernode said it's almost like a horror movie."Yeah. Sensitive viewers should check the trigger warnings! Blonde is beautiful, but also disturbing.
I wonder how the Joyce Carol Oats novel compares.
Silvana wrote: "Hey is Station Eleven any good? I have not read the novel."Both the series and the book were great IMHO
John (Taloni) wrote: "I was highly skeptical of Strange New Worlds but decided to try one. It won me other. Episodes ranged from solid to great. The season finale take on Balance of Terror was amazing. The riff on LeGui..."I think SNW had the closest feel to TOS Trek of anything since TOS, and I mean that in a positive sense
Ian (RebelGeek) wrote: I have mixed feelings about the fantastical biopics.
Definitely looking forward to Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, looks like we are just about a month away.
I watched the premiere of Interview With the Vampire last night. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would after watching the trailers. The two actors playing the main characters were compelling.The changes made from the book didn't bother me. They made sense to me.
I’m back, time to catch up. Brain dump… begin. (Yes, that’s a Logan’s Run reference.)Only 5-star things now:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
PREY — (Hulu) The best Predator flick since Predator and OH MY GOD have I had SO MUCH FUN dunking on idiot misogynists and racists over this. 😂🤣😂
STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS — (Paramount+) After the utter garbage that is Disco and Picard, it’s a delight to enjoy a Star Trek series.
These exchanges sum up the series awesomeness:
Ortegas: How close do you want to get? First date? Or third date?
Pike: Blind date.
Ortegas: Copy. Proceeding with caution.
T’pring: Spock, I do not like hijinks.
Spock: We are in agreement. But it appears hijinks are the most logical course of action.
Yes, it ignores canon, but at this point that’s the least of Trek’s issues. We got more Uhura character development in 5 episodes than we had in the previous 5 decades. (RIP Nichelle Nichols.)
I had serious doubts due to using a relative of Khan’s, but they made it work. And changing the Gorn into terrifying xenomorphs doesn’t jibe with TOS or TAS, but I can ignore that. The scene where they riff on the Mutara Nebula battle from Wrath of Khan was worth it. The Enterprise crew is its usual plucky, genius bunch and it doesn’t help. Spoilers in this scene, but day-am: https://youtu.be/DJu3vShULbM
MS. MARVEL - (Disney+) This channels the G. Willow Wilson comic without being beholden to it. It’s aimed at tweens’n’teens, so set your expectations accordingly. It hits the same sweet spot as the classic runs in Amazing Spider-Man. Kamala Kahn *is* Miles Morales *is* Peter Parker, and that’s not just a good thing, that’s the best thing. We need to hear the message that we’re all alike.
EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE - (Theatres) Wow. A multiverse movie that really, truly gets into the concept. And how does Ke Huy Quan (aka Short Round from Indiana Jones, aka Data from The Goonies) come off the bench after 30 years and deliver that performance? Dude better get an Oscar nom.
ARCANE - (Netflix) League of Legends is without equal when it comes to toxic playerbases. Just the most hateful and vile group I’ve ever met in any game ever. So it is with great surprise that this show is so amazing. The writing is sharp, the characters sharper, and the animation is mind-blowingly inventive and beautiful. I’ve not seen anything like it.
SHE-HULK - (Disney+) So far so great. Also doing a good job riffing on the Dan Slott comic run with a bit of the classic John Byrne stuff while also hooking into the MCU. Not a simple task but they’re making it look effortless. Breaking the fourth wall isn’t my favorite cinematic device, but at least it’s minimal here.
FOR ALL MANKIND, season 3 - (Apple TV) This is the best alternate history show I’ve ever seen and its departures from our world are endlessly fascinating. I’m constantly googling when songs came out and I’m often surprised to find they’re older than I remember. The only miss I’ve noticed is “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”, and that’s impressive given how many needle drops there are.
For those unaware, the idea of the show is, “What if America wasn’t the first to land on the moon?” (view spoiler) This changes history and the focus is on the intensifying of the Space Race. Season 3 pulls no punches.
HONOR SOCIETY - (Paramount+) Not SFF but I watched this on a whim and really enjoyed it. It stars Angourie Rice from the Spider-Man movies who gets to actually act here, with Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things co-starring. It’s like Easy A meets Election and it actually the best use of breaking the fourth wall I’ve seen since High Fidelity.
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The Sword and Laser
Books mentioned in this topic
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (other topics)The Thursday Murder Club (other topics)
Ironheart, Vol. 1: Those With Courage (other topics)
For He Can Creep (other topics)
The Shadow Rising (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
George R.R. Martin (other topics)Robert Jordan (other topics)
George R.R. Martin (other topics)
Robert Jordan (other topics)
George R.R. Martin (other topics)
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Now I'm watching some more Swamp Thing which I bought.