Sulphur on 26/5/2023 at 10:52
I also saw John Wick the Fourthening, which was definitely a movie. I think I turned my brain off watching these from the sequel onwards, and consequently can't remember who most of these people are, except that Wick went on a killing spree because a dick killed his wife's dog. That's quite a thing to build a franchise out of, but whatever. Anyway, I had to watch it across three nights, because it was basically wall to wall action for most of its almost three hours, and I felt myself getting numbed to it after a while. But was it a decent movie, with good actors, striking cinematography, and great choreography? I... think so? But you know what I couldn't shake at all for the entirety of it?
That I was watching a video game.
Think about it: Wick seems to have an adamantium skeleton (in just one section alone, he gets crashed into by cars three times, and that's not counting all the previous, separate times), fall damage resistance (he should ideally have had a crushed spine by about 45 minutes in, but the movie keeps going and he keeps falling down, and then there's a very extended stair sequence that just made me giggle with how long it went; all it was missing was a minute-long foley track of snapping vertebrae), very durable damage mitigating armour (he gets shot so many times it's made into a joke when he takes his coat off and rounds keep falling off him), and a regenerating health bar.
He mows down dozens if not hundreds of trash mob villains, has to deal with minibosses of various tiers, and all of this obviously happens in flashy set pieces, but that's something we can say video games owe to cinema. He's also only actually hurt in cut scenes, and that's mostly forgotten and he's invulnerable right until the point the story needs him to not be.
AND, if that wasn't enough, he even gets a special weapon upgrade (a shotgun with incendiary rounds) at which point there's an entire top-down sequence with the camera panning overhead across rooms that feels like it was ripped right out of Hotline Miami. And, fuck me, there's also ridiculous ragdoll positions when enemies die.
By the time the movie wrapped up, it felt like I'd finished seeing a playthrough of a highly competent third person shooter. I'm not entirely sure how to feel about it as a movie, but if I were playing it, this is what I would say at the end: gg nextmap.
Hit Deity on 26/5/2023 at 22:11
Quote Posted by qolelis
I have finally watched Tarkovsky's
Stalker. I haven't played the game, but I've read the Strugatsky book it's loosely based on (long time ago, though).
Stalker the film was amazing; the cinematography was a treat. Have you seen his
Mirror? I enjoyed it as well. There's one scene where wind starts rippling a field of wheat.. it was just so cool. He used a bunch of helicopters to get the effect.
demagogue on 26/5/2023 at 22:28
I originally "read" Roadside Picnic (the book Stalker was based off of) in Japanese when I picked it for my book report in my Japanese class. I think if you ranked every novel ever, it'd be close to one of the worst ones to try to read in Japanese because there are so many neologisms, and it's bewildering even in one's native language. I mean by design; it's a feature when you can at least follow the text. But I was so lost when even parsing the grammar was a challenge. I thought it'd be a cool scifi novel to take on but, yeah, no.
Hit Deity on 27/5/2023 at 01:18
Yeah, in English it was hard enough. Couldn't even imagine trying to read it in a second language.
Sulphur on 27/5/2023 at 07:20
Quote Posted by Sulphur
AND, if that wasn't enough, he even gets a special weapon upgrade
(a shotgun with incendiary rounds) at which point there's an entire top-down sequence with the camera panning overhead across rooms that feels like it was ripped right out of Hotline Miami. And, fuck me, there's also ridiculous ragdoll positions when enemies die.
Heh, I was thinking to myself, '...or if there was enough slo-mo, right out of Hong Kong Massacre', and then they (
https://www.gamesradar.com/a-video-game-inspired-this-excellent-john-wick-4-scene-but-not-the-one-you-think/) go and confirm it.
Anyway, Stalker is a movie I've seen the first 20 minutes approximately 5 times, but have never gone past because I've always put it off for 'when I'm in the right mood'. Guess I don't know when that's ever going to be, but if I could finish Solaris in a sitting or two, I definitely have the patience for this. It'll happen when it happens, I guess.
demagogue on 28/5/2023 at 00:30
Is there a way we could have a TTLG movie night where we could stream a movie and people who can watch can watch together?
I'd propose Stalker since I'm in that stage too.
My first idea is someone just hosts a Google Meet, puts up the link, then all they have to do is play the movie and share screen.
Then all anyone else has to do is click the link and it's playing through the browser.
The nice thing is we could text and even chat while it's playing, or before/after chat.
Would anyone be up for that? Of course we'd have to think about time zones.
henke on 28/5/2023 at 07:20
I haven't seen Stalker, so yeah I might be up for that. :)
As it happens, the whole dang movie is on youtube now.
[video=youtube;Q3hBLv-HLEc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3hBLv-HLEc[/video]
But streaming via Google Meet might still be better to get it synching up properly and avoid ad breaks.
Sulphur on 28/5/2023 at 16:52
I wouldn't mind that, though the time zones might be difficult to co-ordinate. Worth a shot, in my opinion.
MEANWHILE: Mrs. Davis was a fantastic goddamn show. I laughed, I cringed, I gawped, I teared up a bit. I'm slightly aghast at how well it managed to wrap everything up -- as in, while maybe not every single thing is explained (though almost all of it is!), it is a complete and emotionally satisfying journey by the time the credits start fading in*. Great performances (Betty Gilpin just smashes it as a nun who is quite literally married to Jesus, and is out to kill an AI by going on a quest to destroy the holy grail), and magnificent writing from the dude who wrote The Leftovers, Watchmen (and Lost!?), and Tara Hernandez from motherfucking Big Bang Theory of all places... it's the unlikeliest best show of the year so far, and please don't make me the only person in this forum to have watched it.
*A bit like The Leftovers in some respects, and it's even more impressive considering this is co-written by a certain dude who doesn't normally do neat and tidy resolutions to his stories.
Thirith on 29/5/2023 at 10:25
Great to hear that. I was very curious about Mrs. Davis, but comedies are hit-and-miss for me, and the bits and pieces I've seen of Big Bang Theory made me wary.
Sulphur on 29/5/2023 at 12:50
You've got nothing to worry about. This is as far from Big Bang Theory as A Brief History of Time is from a Flat Earth blog. Much of the humour is good-spirited and wry, or subversive and dark, or both (somehow), and when it's calculated to make you cringe, it's not in the usual low hanging fruit way that summons reflexive eye-rolling (though there is one specific scene that does both, and I just laughed instead, because it earned it). And, more importantly, it's not exactly a comedy, more a sort of fantasy/sci-fi/drama/(satire?) shot through with Lindelof's signature weirdness, and tempered with a healthy amount of good to great jokes. Now it's not the deepest story ever (don't expect The Leftovers), but it has real heft where it counts, and it's one of the most thoroughly enjoyable narratives I've seen from a show in a good while.