faetal on 22/6/2021 at 08:32
I always go original language + subs.
Overdubs are usually nowhere near as good.
It's weird that anyone would prefer no audio to the original language.
fett on 22/6/2021 at 15:52
Gray -{SPOILER-ISH] I'd recommend using a Wookiepedia guide for the "essential" Clone Wars episodes since there are some that tie into the movies heavily. Especially the last 4-5 episodes of the final season. Rebels is a bit better, especially the longer it goes, but by the end of all that it feels like they should have just set a show ABOUT Ahsoka and Darth Maul in the Clone Wars era. She figures in prominently in Rebels. All of this is supposed to lend weight to her appearance in Mando, but I think Filoni and co. overestimated how many people knew who she was from the cartoons. I was fortunate enough to have time to watch all this in the right order because in Rey's "get up" scene in Rise of Skywalker, it was pretty chilling to hear her voice most prominently among other characters from the movies, but also these animated series. IMO, Ahsoka is pretty much the embodiment of what Star Wars was and should be - she's a skeptic/heretic that sees the entire light/dark Jedi/Sith thing objectively and looks for a more practical way.
Gray on 22/6/2021 at 17:57
fett, you may be right. Some episodes of Clone Wars are actually quite good, the really cringe-worthy bad ones seem fewer now in seasons 4, 5, 6, more of the backstory development I was longing for, suffering through all that godawful Jag Jar nonsense. If there is one thing that the whole Star Wars franchise do NOT do well, it's comedy, be it by Lucas or his devotees. Not funny, never funny, painful to endure. How bloody difficult can it be to just make a quick joke and not make it seem to struggled and laboured? Sheesh. Comic relief? No, painful endurance. Comedy is all in the...
I have watched Rebels. Initially, I hated it, because all the characters were quite annoying, but over time, the writing got better and I actually started to care. I think I still have one season to go. I tend to switch to that whenever there's a terrible episode of Clone Wars I just can not endure at that particular time.
And, because I'm gullible and naive, and easily swayed by heavy advertising, I started watching The Bad Batch. In fact, that's the whole reason I started with Clone Wars, to get their backstory. I find it generally less annoying than Clone Wars, but not a big fan of Omega yet.
[Edit]
Timing.
henke on 2/7/2021 at 20:30
So I just watched Amazon Prime-exclusive The Tomorrow War. Sci-fi-action movie starring Chris Pratt, with a quite Edge of Tomorrow-esque story of aliens and time travel and whatnot. I mostly liked it, until the final act. First off, the in medias res opening sucks a lot of tension out of the early scenes, but once we get over that hump the movie is pretty good until we get to the part that feels like it should be the ending. But then I guess the producers or whoever felt that it was too bleak so the movie keeps on going for another act where it feels like the actors and writers have been told to "lighten things up" because there's a bunch of stupid quips all of a sudden and also the story gets really fucking dumb. Y'know, if it'd just ended with Muri making a heroic sacrifice to make sure lil Muri and her family could live on that would've been a perfect bittersweet ending, but nope. They almost had a good sci-fi movie here, but then they fucked it up.
Oh yeah, Rebels is pretty good, I'm watching that now as well. Feels more consistently solid than Clone Wars. Bad Batch didn't grab me.
Gray on 2/7/2021 at 20:44
(Oh, come on, that "timing" joke was pure perfection, probably the funniest thing I've written in five years. No? Heathens!)
Cipheron on 7/7/2021 at 14:37
Been working on a backlog of old movies that I never saw the first time.
Currently watching 16 Candles, because Molly Ringwald is awesome.
Got to a bit with a really egregious caricature of 'nerds'. Typical John Hughes bullshit. The nerds are geeks but they're also completely slimy little girl-obsessed dudes, unlike the jocks, who are portrayed as cool and upstanding dudes. This bit I'm watching right now has one 'nerd' betting another one a stack of 'floppy disks' if he can score with a girl, who's clearly not interested.
Story of my life ... Me and my buddies were always wagering blank floppy disks on how much pussy each of us could score. Typical nerd behavior /s
However it's probably typical for the era. After all, any reference to D&D in a movie of that time period was probably about how the players were sucked into a satanic sex cult. It's kind of ironic though: John Hughes having "computer geeks" in his movie and making them these despicable little sex-obsessed dudes trying to bang all the teenage girls probably says more about his obsessions than anything he gleaned from observing actual nerd culture.
faetal on 7/7/2021 at 15:23
That was back when owning a personal computer was about as niche as owning a theremin.
WingedKagouti on 7/7/2021 at 15:42
Quote Posted by Cipheron
Got to a bit with a really egregious caricature of 'nerds'. Typical John Hughes bullshit.
Sounds like typical '80s Hollywood stereotyping going on, which seems appropriate since the movie is from 1984. Mainstream culture has shifted a ton since then.
Cipheron on 8/7/2021 at 08:08
Yeah a bit torn on Sixteen Candles. (had to sleep and watched it in two goes. For this movie, it's so disjointed that this didn't affect enjoyment at all).
While it had a lot of wasted potential with stupid teen comedy BS, it also had a pretty great soundtrack. Although I'm totally not buying that average teens in 1984 would be listening to Patti Smith, The Specials and The Revillos at a party. That shit is pretty underground punk or punk-adjacent type of stuff in that movie.
It has a strong opening and closing, with romantic comedy tropes done well. But then it has a meandering mess of cringey teen comedy plotlines in the middle done as a day-in-the-life type of stream of consciousness thing, and these plotlines do not actually contribute to the main story whatsoever. They're time filler.
I guess it really was a product of the time. Looking into it, at the time it was praised as being a more realistic and sympathetic portrayal of teens compared to other contemporary fare (think Porky's). But today it comes off as cringey bullshit. I found a review that sums up my feelings on it.
(
https://thespool.net/features/sixteen-candles/)