So Logan finally came up in a thread. It's one of a few movies we've seen in the theater recently. Pretty rare, actually, for me to see so many so close to each other.

I appreciated Logan but to me it just served as a bitter reminder to all of the seriously good X-Men stories that could have made it to film. Logan was almost an anti-X-Men film and necessarily brought a violent, gut wrenching, and heartfelt end to Jackman's Wolverine.

Beauty and the Beast was pretty boring to me overall. What's-her-name just doesn't come across as the belle that would have everyone falling all over themselves. I actually preferred Disney's live action Cinderella to this but my wife and son really enjoyed it and that's all that mattered to me.

I took my son to Kong Skull Island and was actually pleasantly surprised. I'm a huge fan of Peter Jackson's version. So much so that I rank it as the ultimate monster movie and I was somewhat concerned with this new version. You get your first look at the ape just a few minutes in and then the action really kicks in about twenty minutes later. Most Kong movies take quite awhile to get to the action. I just really enjoyed the movie. The stinger after the credits was a little over the top but, whatever.

So I'm always looking for some good TV shows or movies to expose my son to and a little while back I played The Karate Kid on Hulu. Growing up in the 80s I never thought too much about the movie. Back then we were all into ninjas and Rambo and The Karate Kid just came across as a bland teenage-barely-even-a-martial-arts-movie movie. Watching the film today and, wow, it is seriously one of the best films ever made. Even doing a little bit of googling and I find that I'm definitely not alone in my assessment. Phenomenal movie and one to watch if you've never seen it. We went on to watch the two sequels which aren't nearly as good but I haven't found the forth and the remake available without purchase yet.

I was also a big fan of martial arts films growing up. Bruce Lee, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Sho Kosugi, etc. I did enjoy The Karate Kid at the time, but as a practicing martial artist, obviously understood that it was a bit corny, & just didn't care. I think my parents still have a file cabinet packed with VHS recordings that I made of hundreds of films in said genre. I was obsessed with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I've recently been introducing my daughter to the more recent versions of said show, as well as The Clones Wars (series), & the new Voltron. It's nice to balance out all of the princess bull**** that society force feeds her.

My daughter likes some of that princess bull****, but at the same time loves horror films. Doesn't matter if it's going to give her nightmares after the fact, but she loves getting creeped out.

Watching a lot of "Top 10" lists on YouTube we happen to catch some that showed creature effects from The Thing (80s version) so my boy has no desire to watch it. I have gotten him through some horror movies though and we're going to get through the Thing movies one of these days! I remember getting pretty deep into the Xbox game but not finishing it. It's still on the list.

So I'd been wanting to watch The Net with Sandra Bullock but didn't feel like shelling out eight bucks for the DVD. It hit Hulu now and we watched it last night. Surprisingly better than I would have expected. I did see it back in the day but figured it wouldn't have aged well. There's something about 90s thriller-suspense movies that, when done well, had a pretty realistic tone and feel to them.

Playstation Store had a couple of fifty cent rentals. Watched Assassins Creed last night. Wasn't expecting much but the movie seemed well put together. I just didn't care for some reason, though. Not bad but not good. Fantastic Beasts was on there too. We'll probably watch that tonight.

Watched Ben Hur again a couple weeks ago. Yes, some of the acting from that period is a little over the top but damn it must have been something to see that on the big screen. For years I've wanted a projector setup and I can definitely see watching that again on the "big screen". I don't remember if it was said in the special features for TPM but there is no way the podrace scene was not inspired by the chariot race sequence in Ben Hur. Really amazing to see a huge movie with huge sets, huge number of extras, and huge practical effects. Most films today can't pull off epic all in CG like Ben Hur pulled off epic.

Forgot to add that I finally ordered Thor. I was never too impressed with the movie but I still wanted to pick it up. This morning I looked in my cart on Amazon and saw it dropped from its usual $20+ price to $6.50. I thought that was worth it. Back up to $15 last I checked. So that leaves Dr. Strange as the sole MCU movie I don't have and I see it's a little under $20 now. Hmm.

I had heard this rumor about the chariot scene, pre-web mind you, & you bringing it up reminded me to look it up. It turns out that it's false.

I remember hearing that too but I don't remember if I knew it was false. I notice there was a remake last year but I heard virtually nothing about it and nothing good that I can recall. Hollywood seems to struggle with the biblical epic now.

Fixed

Well, that's certainly true but the three biblical epics that come to mind are Noah, the Bale Moses film, and Ben-Hur and all of them pretty bad apparently.

Well, I picked up Doctor Strange finally. We had already seen the film but we watched it again last night. I think it's an excellent movie. Also picked up X-Men Apocalypse at the same time. I think I might go watch that now. I remember it not being a great movie but I still thought it was fun. I think it has the best Wolverine cameo of all his cameos and his scene in the movie is far better than virtually the entire X-Men Origins film.

^ That was supposed to go out last night. Anyway, watched it again, thought it was fine although I was talking to someone in a retro/used game/movie store today and I realized that I still don't know exactly what it is Apocalypse was trying to accomplish. While I was there I found Rogue One, Gamer, and Escape Plan used on bluray.

Escape Plan was quite entertaining. It was unpredictably predictable. Certain things that they knew you would figure out they led you right to right before you would probably get it on your own. I did not foresee the reveal of who Arnold was. Of course there were some silly things as well but I definitely recommend this one. I thought it was funny that we finally got to see a couple sixty plus year old men fight.

So I don't know if anybody here remembers but I've always had a thing for Pontiac Firebirds and Trans Ams, among others. Most likely this dates back to the fact that my mother had a 1967 Firebird. Also, there were pop culture references in Smokey and the Bandit and Knight Rider, among many others. As a Star Wars fan I always found it interesting that Smokey and the Bandit was number two to Star Wars in 1977. Well, Smokey and the Bandit is making the rounds this month for the 40th Anniversary. I never even got to see it in theaters. That will change this month.

New Blade Runner trailer. That "birthing" scene seems as subtle as a grapefruit being shoved through a juicer.

oh no there's some jared leto in my he say you brade runnah

Rogue One came in the mail today, let's see how this goes.

Watched it. Enjoyed it while it was going, but afterword felt kind of dirty and unsatisfied. Went back and played some DF and JK to try to get rid of the feeling, but it didn't work. Now trying to just forget about the whole experience.

Disney raped my childhood.... :-/

Did you like the TODOA moment?

No idea, since I lost my JK disks before TODOA came out, but I would be willing to find out and pay the $6 to buy JK on Steam or GoG if somebody can vouch for it running on Wine.

Even so, after all these years I expected that you had already figured out that since TODOA is about Darth Vader killing people, Rogue One's TODOA moment would be the one where Darth Vader's killing people!

. V .

*obligatory "Play TODOA, TODAY-A!" post*

Rewatched A New Hope last night for the first time in about 10 years. It really is an impressive film, much better than I remembered it.

It made me pine for the days when a high-tension scene amounts to swinging over a small chasm, rather than fast-paced explosions and ****.

It was an honest question. The JK demo runs on wine, but multiplayer seems to be choking on some codepath, because JK says I don't have any network protocols available. I could just be misconfiguring wine networking, but regardless, I was serious when I offered to give FGR's TC a go. Mad props to him for actually doing something imaginative with SW, and I would be more than happy to take the time to sop up the bloody mess that is my attempt to revivisit the magic of the EU games / books by watching the abominable Rogue One.

Ugh.

The part in Rogue One where Vader was killing people was all prequel Vader in my mind. More embarrassing stuff from the "Noooooooo!!!!" department.

It also ****ed up the setup of ANH (consular ship??).

Speaking of which, while I've never really cared for the Special Edition changes to ANH (mainly because I saw ESB and ROTJ first, thus making ANH my first prequel), I really cherish the Despecialized Edition versions of ESB and ROTJ that I acquired in 2012 (sure, I guess they've been updated a lot since then, but these are already pretty good).

And during one of those moments of cherish, I realized that Vader's line "Bring my shuttle." in the Bespin corridor after the fight with Luke is actually 100% in character to the prequel Anakin/Vader. There's no way the poster boy for ANGARY emotions, in such an emotional situation for him, would have come up with whatever the long and boring replacement line of "CLEAN MY BOOTS AND BRING ME A LOLLIPOP AND ORDER MY STAR DESTROYER TO DO A DANCE AND I WANT THEM ALIVE AND BLAH BLEH BLOH" was. So for me, the original line is retroactively a moment of apt canon-welding.

So instead of moaning about Han shooting greedy fists - which I care nothing about - I'm gonna moan about that Vader's simple yet effective line having been changed to some long abomination (the reused-from-unused-RotJ-footage-where-you-can-actually-see-Jerjerrod-approaching-Vader that comes after doesn't impress-a-me-much either) in the ESB Special Edition and post-SE editions.

For me, it really is quite the...

OUTRAGE. SHOCK and OUTRAGE.

I see what you did there... >_>

Yeah I watched a version of Harmy's Despecialized Edition. The version I had as a child was a VHS taping of the 1993 remaster, which was before all of the special edition bullcrap, so the theatrical release is close enough to be basically the same as my memory.

One thing that struck me was how different Darth Vader, and the state of the Empire/universe more generally came across to me in ANH than he does in my memory of the prequels. The prequels make no sense in regards to Vader, why he's bequeathed the title of Lord, and so on. ANH gve me the impression that Darth Vader was always a member of royalty. Like in the conference room with Grand Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader, he comes across like a spoiled trust fund kid at his dad's lawyer firm, and the organization just puts up with him because the emperor likes him and he controls parts of the universe (hence the title Lord) so he's good to have around.

Then when he gets in his custom TIE fighter, I don't remember the exact dialogue but he came across like he was about to go hunting for sport. As though he was hunting foxes. Which is a very "royalty" ethos to have.

In other words, I feel like ANH was suggesting that Anakin came from a relatively privileged family, or a royal one. It doesn't jive at all with the "slave boy" thing from TPM.

Like, it's pretty common throughout history that, when wealthier/privileged people go to war, they buy their own equipment that's better than the standard issue crap. You might remember the boots in All Quiet on the Western Front.

The custom TIE fighter that Vader has suggests the same thing to me.

Woww. He's a person, and his name's Anakin.

Post ingredients: 99% Organic Reid. Contains less than 1% Star Wars.

(Allergy Warning: Made in a factory which manufactures political philosophy.)

Heh, one day I'll be famous for writing essays on topics that nobody cares about.

I wouldn't say raped. Just drained, maybe.

I thought R1 had a satisfying space battle tho, probably because it centered around an objective and had a sense of escalation (clear beginning, middle and end). The space battles from the Prequels sucked, and the one from FA was just bland. I think ESB did it best with how the desperate circumstances reflected the character's plights, but that was more of a chase than a battle.

I'm curious if R1 would have been a lot more interesting before the rewrites and reshoots piled on. And I wonder if monk-guy and his pal served a real purpose to the story or were just throw-ins...

They'd be more satisfying if I could control one of the ships with a joystick, because then there'd be some actual stakes for the images being beamed into my mind (and speaking of being "beamed", that airlock gate was straight outta SpaceBalls!). I am done with passively watching shoot-em-ups, and it's not the main reason I want to see Star Wars.

I mean, I used to watch the Death Star II space battle from RotJ over and over again when I was 9, but even when I skipped the other scenes with Luke and Han, there was latent memory that the battle was for something.

If that something is as lame as it has been in the last 5 SW movies, it honestly doesn't beat playing, say, a TIE Fighter mission.

The something is the exchange of money for a bunch of animators' output of a Star Wars cargo cult of graven images.

It is an abomination before the Force, a commercial debasement of sacred memories. Star Wars has always been about inspiring the imagination (A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away), and the movement of culture that Postman laments, from a textual to a visual medium, is incredibly hostile to the imagination.

Worst of all, not only does watching a canned sequence of images leave nothing to be imagined, but WE ALREADY KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN in the story. This is the whole flaw in the idea of doing a prequel.

Have you played NEO-TODOA yet

Ofc that's not as sad as TFW, which, despite taking place after OT, still managed to feel constrained by it enough that the movie came out as a copy of ANH. LOL

Nope.