_Bear said:

thats a shame it's really good.

In an post-irony, ironic way.

Saw the final episode of Alias, bit of a let down and an inconsistent last episode. I watched the JJ Abrams interview and he sort of brushed over Rambaldi's real significance. It's just a McGuffin and he never thought past that it seems.

travo said:

Alias was awesome for two seasons, then lost focus.

Which two seasons? Cause the first one was hotch potch and the last one was comprimised by Garners pregnancy. For me, seasons 2,3,4 were the best.

I saw John Carter, good fun movie. It did not deserve such a shitty ad campaign, there is a good movie there. It hits all the sci-fi themes mainly cause as I hear this book started the sci-fi we know and love. The film has a great adventure spirit to it, almost like a Indiana Jones but in space (no where near as good as Jones of course). One day if you can rent it go ahead and do so if you enjoy sci-fi flicks.

I watched Dark Water this week - the Japanese original (takes me more than one sitting nowadays to watch an entire movie).  By some or all of the people who made "the Ring" movies, and kind of similar in theme, except a lot more depressing.  I thought it was a really good film (better than the Ring in my opinion) and the little Japanese girl is the sweetest child in any movie ever.  It's an unsettling experience, but recommended for fans of the genre in case they missed it.

bugsonglass said:

I watched Dark Water this week - the Japanese original (takes me more than one sitting nowadays to watch an entire movie).  By some or all of the people who made "the Ring" movies, and kind of similar in theme, except a lot more depressing.  I thought it was a really good film (better than the Ring in my opinion) and the little Japanese girl is the sweetest child in any movie ever.  It's an unsettling experience, but recommended for fans of the genre in case they missed it.

I saw that many years ago. By the same director of Ringu. It's very good, but sad.

Have you read any of the Ring books? They are insane and very different from the films, they start to become about a virus.

Foolz said:

Garth Marenghi is awesome. They need to make more.

It was funny as fuck way back when. I should really buy it on dvd.

I saw the new Tintin Spielburg movie. It was okay, nothing great.

The first half the movie was a little blah but it got better in the second half. However it has one of those blatant outright - do you want a sequel hints at the end. Yeah that is sort of true to the original story but in films it feels kinda cheap.

So the movie is like a CGI Indiana Jones only with ridiculous coincidences and even more preposturousness in the action scenes. This film, well, Tintin to me isn't about over elaborate action setpieces and it just seems faaaar too much in this film. There is this one scene near the end which is bloody ridiculous where Tintin chases a hawk and his motorbike is indestructable and if it merely touches a building, the building starts crumbling like a house of cards.

Nevermind that you just destroyed someones house Tintin, with him inside, you really need that bit of paper right? Douche.

The CGi is good......... sort of. Some of the character models are too realistic but then you have wildly stylised character models like Thompson and Thompson and they don't sit next to each other well.

Overall its a decent watch but somewhat disappointing for me as someone who grew up with the animated show, incidentelly the Last Unicorn was made as an animated movie back in the early 90s.

Foolz said:

The whole book is in present tense? And that excerpt is as it literally is in the book?

Yes, and the entire book is written in first person.

Yes, that's exactly how it is in the book. Well, the Kindle version anyway. I don't own a print copy.

Ravenprose said:

I saw The Hunger Games movie this morning. The 10:40am showing, and it was damn near sold out. I had to sit on the third row, lol!

The movie was good, but not nearly as good as the book. As I expected, the film is like the Cliffs Notes version of the book; it gets the major plot points right, but loses a lot of detail, character development, and the overall sense of fear and brutality leading up to and during the games that the book conveyed so well.

In my opinion, going for the PG-13 rating was a bad idea; not financially, of course (it's going to make massive $$$$), but from a storytelling standpoint. I am not one who believes gore is always necessary to properly tell a violent story, but sometimes it is necessary to shock the audience for believability sake. Here is an excerpt from the book (no spoiler) that did just that for me. It takes place seconds after the killings begin:

A boy, I think from District 9, reaches the pack at the same time I do and for a brief time we grapple for it and then he coughs, splattering my face with blood. I stagger back, repulsed by the warm, sticky spray. Then the boy slips to the ground. That's when I see the knife in his back. --The Hunger Games, chapter 11.

In the film, this part was reduced to a two second shaky-cam scene where all we see is the Katniss (the main character) and the boy grabbing the pack, and then the boy falling down with a knife in his back. No blood, and barely any visible violence at all. And the intended emotional impact was lost. Sadly, the entire movie feels very downplayed in this way.

I'd give it a 7/10. It's a good movie, but lacks much of the needed emotional impact for it to be great.

BTW, the book would receive a 9/10 from me easily.

--

Shaky-cam filming needs to die. It's not too bad in The Hunger Games, but it is annoying at times.

That's a shame. If you hadn't have read the book, what would you give the film out of 10 and would your opinion have been different? I read Tales of Earthsea which is a good book and the Ghibli film was a totally bastard version. But it was a short film covering a massive book, on reflection, as a standalone film its decent, but because I read the book I hated it when I first saw it.