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tl;dr: liked it okay, didn't love
( I might have been the last person in fandom to see it, but cut for spoilers nonetheless )
( I might have been the last person in fandom to see it, but cut for spoilers nonetheless )
Gosh, I wanted to love this. I really did -- a documentary on the Soviet Red Army hockey team with Slava Fetisov as the main focus. If you know anything about the sport, what could be better?
( A lot, sadly. )
( A lot, sadly. )
Let me preface this by saying that Noah was not a movie I was eager to see or one that I would have paid money to see. But I did pay for a membership a MoMA and, through them, there was a ticket to see the movie with a Q-and-A with director Darren Aronofsky afterward. I figured I'd see the movie and then slip out before the Q-and-A because I didn't care that much.
Turns out I needed to slip out before the Q-and-A because my only question to the director would have been "Were you drunk?"
This movie is terrible. Really, really terrible. And not in the enjoyable Bad Movie way. Brotherhood of the Wolf is one of my all-time favorite flicks; I enjoy a good B movie. This is not a good B movie. This is a movie with an A-list cast, an A-list director, and the CGI budget of Avatar that somehow turned out to be what would happen if Tommy Wiseau decided to rewrite the screenplays of the Lord of the Rings movies after falling asleep watching Waterworld.
( details, mostly ridiculous, some serious )
Turns out I needed to slip out before the Q-and-A because my only question to the director would have been "Were you drunk?"
This movie is terrible. Really, really terrible. And not in the enjoyable Bad Movie way. Brotherhood of the Wolf is one of my all-time favorite flicks; I enjoy a good B movie. This is not a good B movie. This is a movie with an A-list cast, an A-list director, and the CGI budget of Avatar that somehow turned out to be what would happen if Tommy Wiseau decided to rewrite the screenplays of the Lord of the Rings movies after falling asleep watching Waterworld.
( details, mostly ridiculous, some serious )
it's not all art
5 Aug 2014 21:42* I might have watched the first episode of Outlander, which Starz is letting US residents do for free for now. I think I should be vaguely embarrassed for having read the book, which is not exactly high literature, but I've read worse fanfic. I began it under misleading pretenses -- NYPL assured me it was historical fiction -- but it's all on me for finishing it. The show was both very faithful to the book and managed to improve upon it a little, at least in the beginning. Mostly by making Frank far less of a boring drip, but also by giving Claire both a bit more gumption and some restlessness, making her excursion that starts off her adventure less of a flight from tedious Frank and more of a flight from herself and how the war had changed her. We only see Scotland for about twenty minutes, entirely in darkness or in woods or in dark woods, and Jamie is just The Hot Dirt-Encrusted Guy Who Keeps Getting Wounded. But overall, it begins as it means to go on and there are two sex scenes in the first half-hour, so I suppose that can serve as either warning or promise depending.
* Apparently they are going to try to make the Dragonriders of Pern series into a movie franchise, which surprised me because you'd have thought someone would have moved faster there. I think it would work better as a television series because most of it is small stuff, but I suppose one pre-industrial society with dragons is enough on cable and Game of Thrones is much meatier fare. No word on which books they're considering.
* A Wrinkle In Time is about to become a movie, too.
* I am still waiting for someone to try turning the Aubrey/Maturin Master and Commander series into a cable show. Yes, it was a movie -- and an excellent one at that -- but there are 20.5 books and plenty to work with. Stephen's spycraft, dropped entirely from the movie, could get a chance to shine.
* The demographics of the opening weekend of Guardians of the Galaxy are interesting in two respects: (1) a plurality of the audience were women, 44%, which is stratospheric for a Marvel movie, and (2) the audience as a whole skewed older, with 55% being over-twenty-five. (source).
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ileliberte drew me Bucky Barnes with a porcupine over on Tumblr for a birthday present.
* Apparently they are going to try to make the Dragonriders of Pern series into a movie franchise, which surprised me because you'd have thought someone would have moved faster there. I think it would work better as a television series because most of it is small stuff, but I suppose one pre-industrial society with dragons is enough on cable and Game of Thrones is much meatier fare. No word on which books they're considering.
* A Wrinkle In Time is about to become a movie, too.
* I am still waiting for someone to try turning the Aubrey/Maturin Master and Commander series into a cable show. Yes, it was a movie -- and an excellent one at that -- but there are 20.5 books and plenty to work with. Stephen's spycraft, dropped entirely from the movie, could get a chance to shine.
* The demographics of the opening weekend of Guardians of the Galaxy are interesting in two respects: (1) a plurality of the audience were women, 44%, which is stratospheric for a Marvel movie, and (2) the audience as a whole skewed older, with 55% being over-twenty-five. (source).
*
ileliberte drew me Bucky Barnes with a porcupine over on Tumblr for a birthday present.Snowpiercer
27 Jun 2014 11:19Snowpiercer, uncut and unlobotomized, is finally hitting US theaters in the first phase of the platform release that was part of the compromise between director and distributor.
Snowpiercer showtimes at Fandango
If your city’s not listed, bug your friends in the cities that are to go see it because the nature of platform releases is such that if it does well in the first round, the second one will be bigger. And so forth.
(You don’t have to bug me, I'm hopefully going this weekend.)
Also, now's a good a time as any to remind folks that the long-awaited English translations of the original French graphic novel (Le Transperceneige) are available. I think it might be just the first two volumes (of three), but I'm also pretty sure the film is only taken from the first volume, and quite loosely at that. I haven't checked out the translations -- I read it in the original -- but the story is sharp and the art is striking and it's definitely worth the read.
Jason Momoa is apparently going to be Aquaman in the DC Movie Universe.
On the one hand, congrats for thinking outside the box and not hunting down the first twenty-something hunky blond dude whose chest you can wax. On the other... how do I put this... there's a reason he's typecast as grunting, partially inaudible barbarian types and it's not the hair. Regal grunting, partially inaudible barbarian types, granted. And beach dudes.
Maybe they saw Baywatch and got inspired.
On the one hand, congrats for thinking outside the box and not hunting down the first twenty-something hunky blond dude whose chest you can wax. On the other... how do I put this... there's a reason he's typecast as grunting, partially inaudible barbarian types and it's not the hair. Regal grunting, partially inaudible barbarian types, granted. And beach dudes.
Maybe they saw Baywatch and got inspired.
... I'm not sure "Wolverine as Danny Ocean" excludes the possibility that this is All About Wolverine's Manpain, but... it's better than the last one?
Quicksilver is not looking any better now that we hear him speak and do his thing. Which is why the director of the porn parody got in a pretty good shot (worksafe).
My immediate post-film reaction was thus: Oh. My. God.
I came into this movie with sky-high expectations I knew I should temper but never quite got around to doing so. I have loved Brubaker's source material since its release -- I own the entire run in TPB format -- and I have been living with 'my' versions of the MCU characters for more than a year because I've dedicated close to half a million words on them. Whether I wanted to or not, I was going into the theater with very fixed ideas of who the characters were and what they should be doing. Which meant that the first time someone diverged from those fixed ideas, I should have been jarred... but I wasn't. There was no let-down, no point at which I was thrown out of the movie by being jossed on characterization (much harder to take than being jossed on plot points), no moment where I said to myself "why did they do that?" or "how could they screw this up?" They were faithful to Brubaker's story in the best ways possible considering all of the changes they had to make.
Before I'd even seen the movie, I'd gotten a few comments via Tumblr from folks who'd said that they thought of my Freezer Burn series during the movie because of the characterization and relationship dynamics. And I thought that was very nice and made a joke about the Russo brothers already stealing my title. But you know what? They are using my characters, or, at least, we have a very similar view on how those characters should act and sound. Because this Steve and Natasha? Are my Steve and Natasha. And you cannot imagine how satisfying and gratifying that was. (And also a relief because I sulk a lot when I get jossed on characterization.)
( the spoilery part of the program )
I came into this movie with sky-high expectations I knew I should temper but never quite got around to doing so. I have loved Brubaker's source material since its release -- I own the entire run in TPB format -- and I have been living with 'my' versions of the MCU characters for more than a year because I've dedicated close to half a million words on them. Whether I wanted to or not, I was going into the theater with very fixed ideas of who the characters were and what they should be doing. Which meant that the first time someone diverged from those fixed ideas, I should have been jarred... but I wasn't. There was no let-down, no point at which I was thrown out of the movie by being jossed on characterization (much harder to take than being jossed on plot points), no moment where I said to myself "why did they do that?" or "how could they screw this up?" They were faithful to Brubaker's story in the best ways possible considering all of the changes they had to make.
Before I'd even seen the movie, I'd gotten a few comments via Tumblr from folks who'd said that they thought of my Freezer Burn series during the movie because of the characterization and relationship dynamics. And I thought that was very nice and made a joke about the Russo brothers already stealing my title. But you know what? They are using my characters, or, at least, we have a very similar view on how those characters should act and sound. Because this Steve and Natasha? Are my Steve and Natasha. And you cannot imagine how satisfying and gratifying that was. (And also a relief because I sulk a lot when I get jossed on characterization.)
( the spoilery part of the program )
... I like it better than the first one, that's for sure. And not just because Storm looks to get impaled fifteen seconds in. (I love Storm. I could do without Halle Berry playing her.)
I really, really loved parts of XMFC -- the Charles and Erik show. The kids were boring, thinly drawn, and a general waste of screen time better devoted to the two leads. (Moira was a pretty prop and Mystique waxed and waned depending on whether she was with the kids or the grown-ups.) What I'm afraid of with the sequel is that the same thing is going to happen here: two great Charleses and two great Eriks, but now a cast of thousands led by Hugh Jackman's hairy chest to take away from what is essentially still a two-man play with good special effects. I suppose we'll see.
1) Paul Bettany has been added to the cast of Avengers: Age of Ultron as Vision, which makes sense both with respect to the comics version of that storyline and Bettany's prior role as the voice of JARVIS, since presumably Ultron will be a descendant of JARVIS (Hank Pym's not showing up until Ant Man) and Vision is the 'child' of Ultron. Also, Wanda's going to be in the movie and don't you wanna see Joss try to explain that relationship... It'll be like Her, except with much more death and destruction and pretend children.
2) According to Deadline Hollywood, the saga of Snowpiercer has been resolved. The movie will not be lobotomized in the Anglosphere, meaning the full 2.5 hour film that has been doing well in Europe and ate the Korean box office alive will be intact. However, it will no longer be a wide-release. It will be a platform release, which means that it will come out in places like LA and NY and London and Sydney first and, depending on how well it does, get more theaters if warranted by ticket sales. So, basically, people like me (in NYC) have to pay money to see it so that people who are not in "select cities" or near "select theaters" can see it on the big screen.
I've said all along that even if this was a ploy by The Weinstein Company to drum up attention and sales, I'd reward them if they offered the real thing on the screen. They are, so I will cough up my $15.
2) According to Deadline Hollywood, the saga of Snowpiercer has been resolved. The movie will not be lobotomized in the Anglosphere, meaning the full 2.5 hour film that has been doing well in Europe and ate the Korean box office alive will be intact. However, it will no longer be a wide-release. It will be a platform release, which means that it will come out in places like LA and NY and London and Sydney first and, depending on how well it does, get more theaters if warranted by ticket sales. So, basically, people like me (in NYC) have to pay money to see it so that people who are not in "select cities" or near "select theaters" can see it on the big screen.
I've said all along that even if this was a ploy by The Weinstein Company to drum up attention and sales, I'd reward them if they offered the real thing on the screen. They are, so I will cough up my $15.
Thoughts on the Captain America: the Winter Soldier trailer:
This trailer was highly manipulative with respect to creating a false narrative, as all trailers are. Dialogue that seems to go together was spliced from several conversations or used as voiceover for scenes in which they do not occur. We can watch this, read all the Brubaker, and still not know what's going on. That said....
( spoilers, comments, speculation, and flat-out wild guessing ahoy. Also, squee. )
This trailer was highly manipulative with respect to creating a false narrative, as all trailers are. Dialogue that seems to go together was spliced from several conversations or used as voiceover for scenes in which they do not occur. We can watch this, read all the Brubaker, and still not know what's going on. That said....
( spoilers, comments, speculation, and flat-out wild guessing ahoy. Also, squee. )
Blood Mountain, the next picture from Mongol director Sergei Bodrov, has attached Sherlock‘s Benedict Cumberbatch to star in the tale of a private military contractor whose Special Forces team is ambushed and killed during a covert raid, forcing him to personally escort one of the world’s most wanted terrorists over hostile terrain in order to bring him to justice.
.... rilly?
I reserve my right to change my mind, and, yes, Hugh Jackman was coming from further afield to play Wolverine, but... This just seems like a role for someone a bit rougher 'round the edges. Less posh.
Cumberbatch was very good in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and I suppose he's fine in Sherlock, but I dislike the show too much to use that as a metric. I don't think I've seen him in anything else.
Reshoots for Captain America: The Winter Soldier are going on now, which means Chris Evans has shaved off his beard, put on his wig, and...
( image be spoilery, although I honestly can't tell you for what precisely )
( image be spoilery, although I honestly can't tell you for what precisely )
timekiller
27 Dec 2013 12:35Okay, folks, I'm stuck at work with little to do and less supervision and require your assistance:
1) Rec me a book, movie, TV show, comic book, tumblr, blog, fanfic. Nothing with zombies.
2) AMA, for values of A that don't require personal information in response. Includes questions about fic.
3) Three sentence fic challenge. Y'all know what I can do to a "drabble." :)
4) Open Mic Afternoon! Say what you gotta say...
Movies watched over Christmas, in order:
Mulan (the "special edition," according to Netflix, but I never saw the original, so I can't tell you what was special about it). Pleasant and I had one of the songs stuck in my head for a couple of days, so I suppose that qualifies as a Disney success.
The Iceman. Michael Shannon was riveting, as usual, and it was extremely well-cast as a whole, a great mix of expected actors doing new things with old roles (Ray Liotta, Robert Davi, arguably James Franco) and casting you didn't think would work and did (Chris Evans, David Schwimmer). The look of it was pretty brilliant for a period piece on a tight budget, but... but. It was good and I enjoyed it. But it wasn't great. Michael Shannon was great, though.
Blancanieves. Lovely, inventive silent black and while film that presumably owes its existence to the success of The Artist. It's an update on Snow White, wonderfully done, especially with the acting. I'd recommend it heartily and without reservation except I do have a giant, honking reservation, which is the very last frames of the very last scene, which disturbed me so profoundly it almost ruined the movie for me.
Alice in Wonderland. The original Disney cartoon, which still puts every single live-action version to shame.
The Place Beyond the Pines... I got maybe a half-hour into this before I realized that (a) I was bored silly and (b) I really can't stand watching Ryan Gosling act. He's so inert. He underplays everything so much he makes Keanu Reeves look like Jim Carrey. It's like watching wallpaper and I don't find him attractive in the slightest, so it's not even pretty wallpaper.
1) Rec me a book, movie, TV show, comic book, tumblr, blog, fanfic. Nothing with zombies.
2) AMA, for values of A that don't require personal information in response. Includes questions about fic.
3) Three sentence fic challenge. Y'all know what I can do to a "drabble." :)
4) Open Mic Afternoon! Say what you gotta say...
Movies watched over Christmas, in order:
Mulan (the "special edition," according to Netflix, but I never saw the original, so I can't tell you what was special about it). Pleasant and I had one of the songs stuck in my head for a couple of days, so I suppose that qualifies as a Disney success.
The Iceman. Michael Shannon was riveting, as usual, and it was extremely well-cast as a whole, a great mix of expected actors doing new things with old roles (Ray Liotta, Robert Davi, arguably James Franco) and casting you didn't think would work and did (Chris Evans, David Schwimmer). The look of it was pretty brilliant for a period piece on a tight budget, but... but. It was good and I enjoyed it. But it wasn't great. Michael Shannon was great, though.
Blancanieves. Lovely, inventive silent black and while film that presumably owes its existence to the success of The Artist. It's an update on Snow White, wonderfully done, especially with the acting. I'd recommend it heartily and without reservation except I do have a giant, honking reservation, which is the very last frames of the very last scene, which disturbed me so profoundly it almost ruined the movie for me.
Alice in Wonderland. The original Disney cartoon, which still puts every single live-action version to shame.
The Place Beyond the Pines... I got maybe a half-hour into this before I realized that (a) I was bored silly and (b) I really can't stand watching Ryan Gosling act. He's so inert. He underplays everything so much he makes Keanu Reeves look like Jim Carrey. It's like watching wallpaper and I don't find him attractive in the slightest, so it's not even pretty wallpaper.
Bottom line up top: brutal, but worth it.
I read Lone Survivor shortly after it came out. It's a Janus of a book: the first half is a funny, honest, informative, and proud explanation of what it takes to become a SEAL; the second half is the dreadful (as in full of dread), horrifying, blow-by-blow of a man watching his friends die as he himself is sure he will die, but somehow doesn't. The first half will make you laugh, the second half will make you cry.
I was... skeptical when they optioned it as a movie. Even for Peter Berg, who generally has his heart in the right place. Berg sold his soul to make this movie -- he directed Battleship to get this done -- and Mark Wahlberg's producing and starring in a role he's not really suited for, but is probably the real reason the film got made.
(He does fine, despite that he looks nothing like Marcus Luttrell, who dwarfs him. Taylor Kitsch is pretty eye-opening, Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster are also very good.)
What I most wanted was for the film to be respectful, and it is. What it isn't is Marcus Luttrell's griefstricken and guilt-ridden eulogy for his friends, and you know what, that's fine. This is much closer to Black Hawk Down than, say, any of the other more mawkish tales of war based on true stories. There are no flashbacks to wives left behind, no angels sing, no one, as Luttrell himself joked in the post-film Q&A, falls in love with the village elder's daughter. There's a lot of gore (all of it the good guys'), there's a lot of bravery, and there is a the very firm statement that these men died -- and Operation Red Wings was a multi-phase tragedy of staggering proportion -- if not at the time of their choosing, then also not as victims. In that sense, it was very well done. It's perhaps more dramatization than drama, but it's a compelling one.
I read Lone Survivor shortly after it came out. It's a Janus of a book: the first half is a funny, honest, informative, and proud explanation of what it takes to become a SEAL; the second half is the dreadful (as in full of dread), horrifying, blow-by-blow of a man watching his friends die as he himself is sure he will die, but somehow doesn't. The first half will make you laugh, the second half will make you cry.
I was... skeptical when they optioned it as a movie. Even for Peter Berg, who generally has his heart in the right place. Berg sold his soul to make this movie -- he directed Battleship to get this done -- and Mark Wahlberg's producing and starring in a role he's not really suited for, but is probably the real reason the film got made.
(He does fine, despite that he looks nothing like Marcus Luttrell, who dwarfs him. Taylor Kitsch is pretty eye-opening, Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster are also very good.)
What I most wanted was for the film to be respectful, and it is. What it isn't is Marcus Luttrell's griefstricken and guilt-ridden eulogy for his friends, and you know what, that's fine. This is much closer to Black Hawk Down than, say, any of the other more mawkish tales of war based on true stories. There are no flashbacks to wives left behind, no angels sing, no one, as Luttrell himself joked in the post-film Q&A, falls in love with the village elder's daughter. There's a lot of gore (all of it the good guys'), there's a lot of bravery, and there is a the very firm statement that these men died -- and Operation Red Wings was a multi-phase tragedy of staggering proportion -- if not at the time of their choosing, then also not as victims. In that sense, it was very well done. It's perhaps more dramatization than drama, but it's a compelling one.
stuff about stuff
9 Nov 2013 22:08* Captain America: the Winter Soldier stuff: there was a cam video clip -- apparently since deleted -- of the extended trailer (that's running before the 3D version of Thor: the Dark World, I believe), which in turn is actually just the footage shown in Hall H back in July during SDCC. ( There's very little new material, but what there is is mostly great. )
* I'll probably post the next chapter of Revenant here tomorrow; it's already up at AO3, since that's where most of the readers are. I've been noticing a pretty massive word count discrepancy between my document and what AO3 has; through seven chapters, Evernote says it's 40,611 words, but AO3 is only ringing up 34,778. That's a big difference, enough to initially worry me that I had deleted text or was missing a chapter on AO3, but I'm not. I can't explain it, either. I double-checked and my document word count is correct. Ah, well. Nobody is coming to that story for its brevity, so it's not like it's a bait-and-switch.
* It's very rare that I get really pissed off at a book. If it's bad, I stop reading it. But I just finished Henning Markell's last Wallander mystery, The Troubled Man, and I am pissed off. ( In case you're gonna read. )
* I'll probably post the next chapter of Revenant here tomorrow; it's already up at AO3, since that's where most of the readers are. I've been noticing a pretty massive word count discrepancy between my document and what AO3 has; through seven chapters, Evernote says it's 40,611 words, but AO3 is only ringing up 34,778. That's a big difference, enough to initially worry me that I had deleted text or was missing a chapter on AO3, but I'm not. I can't explain it, either. I double-checked and my document word count is correct. Ah, well. Nobody is coming to that story for its brevity, so it's not like it's a bait-and-switch.
* It's very rare that I get really pissed off at a book. If it's bad, I stop reading it. But I just finished Henning Markell's last Wallander mystery, The Troubled Man, and I am pissed off. ( In case you're gonna read. )
Indiewire went to France to see the unaltered, unlobotomized version of Snowpiercer and fell in love.
(The review is unspoilery, so feel free to read it in its entirety.)
We're sure Harvey Weinstein has his reasons for wanting to cut the film, but we hope it's more than wanting a better CinemaScore and more showtimes during the day. Because he has a visionary, thrilling work on his hands, a crystallization of Bong's status as one of our most exciting filmmakers, and to alter it would be something close to vandalism. [A]
(The review is unspoilery, so feel free to read it in its entirety.)
... It looks okay?
I just can't get too squeeful about the X-Men stuff anymore. I thought XMFC was wonderful, mostly through casting, but the first three X-flicks and then the Wolverine movies just burned me too badly. I'm interested here, but I am not capering in glee. And not just because they seem to be using the "everything is better with more Wolverine" recipe that the comics use when they're desperate. (And they seem to be taking Piotr Rasputin's small part of the story out and I loved Kitty and Piotr.) We'll see what they do in the Seventies and with Sentinels and Trask.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier teaser trailer.
.... I'm just gonna be over there seal-clapping and figuring out how many days until April. You are more than welcome to join me in the comments. :)
.... I'm just gonna be over there seal-clapping and figuring out how many days until April. You are more than welcome to join me in the comments. :)
Previously, we lamented that The Weinstein Company has apparently decided to strip all of the character development and worldbuilding out of Snowpiercer's North American cut because landlocked Americans (and, presumably, Canadians) can't figure that stuff out and would be better served with a more straightforward traditional action narrative that didn't require them to think.
Other countries get to choose whether they take the full version, which has gotten excellent reviews, or go for the lobotomized edition. As the movie travels from East (it debuted in Korea, since it has a Korean director and stars) to West, the reports are coming in about which one they're choosing. France, the native land of the original graphic novel (Le Transperceniege, which has never been translated into English), has gone for the full version and released a new trailer that has enough new footage in it to be worthwhile.
The Anglophone countries are another story, however, so we look still to the UK to hold the line so that we can at least buy their DVDs. :)
Other countries get to choose whether they take the full version, which has gotten excellent reviews, or go for the lobotomized edition. As the movie travels from East (it debuted in Korea, since it has a Korean director and stars) to West, the reports are coming in about which one they're choosing. France, the native land of the original graphic novel (Le Transperceniege, which has never been translated into English), has gone for the full version and released a new trailer that has enough new footage in it to be worthwhile.
The Anglophone countries are another story, however, so we look still to the UK to hold the line so that we can at least buy their DVDs. :)
funny(book) business
23 Aug 2013 08:59If you'd said that Ben Affleck was directing the Batman/Superman movie, there would have been an overwhelmingly positive reaction. Instead, we've got news that he's playing Batman and, well, the internet exploded last night.
Affleck's not a terrible actor, he really isn't. He's made spectacularly awful choices as an actor and we tend to remember those, but he's also done some finer work in smaller movies, even during the period when Gigli happened. Like Jude Law, once he stopped trying to be a matinee idol lead actor, things improved. He just tends to work better when playing off stronger actors and, to be kind, Henry Cavill may be capable of that, but he hasn't shown it to us yet.
Also, Affleck is going to be coming in after Christian Bale and, really, if there was ever an actor meant to play a handsome, too-intense man driven to his current vocation from childhood, it's Bale. Who had Christopher Nolan's vision to work with.
For the record, I think Affleck is going to end up like George Clooney's Batman. Whether that includes the franchise-killing part, we'll see.
In other depressing comic book to movie news, there are more details for the... mauling that Snowpiercer is going to get for its US distribution: The Weinstein Company, which owns the English language distribution rights, wants to take out at least 20 minutes of footage. Not because the movie is too long (it's 126 minutes as shown in Korea, where it got rave reviews), but because Weinstein wants all of the character-development scenes stripped out to make it a less-nuanced, more traditional action movie, with voiceovers added to make sure nothing is left for the viewer to discover on their own. Entirely because he doesn't think Americans -- specifically landlocked Americans -- would be able to understand or appreciate things like character development or worldbuilding.
This, people, is why we can't have nice things.
If this goes through, which it probably will, the only chance to see a proper version of the movie will be on DVD if there's a director's cut or a non-Anglophone version that's subtitled and not dubbed. There is apparently a chance that the UK will fight the cuts, so if that happens, Hail Britannia and we buy your DVD.
Affleck's not a terrible actor, he really isn't. He's made spectacularly awful choices as an actor and we tend to remember those, but he's also done some finer work in smaller movies, even during the period when Gigli happened. Like Jude Law, once he stopped trying to be a matinee idol lead actor, things improved. He just tends to work better when playing off stronger actors and, to be kind, Henry Cavill may be capable of that, but he hasn't shown it to us yet.
Also, Affleck is going to be coming in after Christian Bale and, really, if there was ever an actor meant to play a handsome, too-intense man driven to his current vocation from childhood, it's Bale. Who had Christopher Nolan's vision to work with.
For the record, I think Affleck is going to end up like George Clooney's Batman. Whether that includes the franchise-killing part, we'll see.
In other depressing comic book to movie news, there are more details for the... mauling that Snowpiercer is going to get for its US distribution: The Weinstein Company, which owns the English language distribution rights, wants to take out at least 20 minutes of footage. Not because the movie is too long (it's 126 minutes as shown in Korea, where it got rave reviews), but because Weinstein wants all of the character-development scenes stripped out to make it a less-nuanced, more traditional action movie, with voiceovers added to make sure nothing is left for the viewer to discover on their own. Entirely because he doesn't think Americans -- specifically landlocked Americans -- would be able to understand or appreciate things like character development or worldbuilding.
This, people, is why we can't have nice things.
If this goes through, which it probably will, the only chance to see a proper version of the movie will be on DVD if there's a director's cut or a non-Anglophone version that's subtitled and not dubbed. There is apparently a chance that the UK will fight the cuts, so if that happens, Hail Britannia and we buy your DVD.
stuff about stuff
20 Aug 2013 12:34* I think I'm prepared to call the cross-posting a success and commit to it. I've only had one mixup that got cleared up quickly and I've certainly been posting enough. So, if you are interested in the LJ-flist trimming, feel free to go ahead. Actually, you never need my blessings for that, but you know what I mean.
Also, if I am supposed to be following you at DW, let me know. My LJ flist is tiny because of permissions and my privacy twitchiness, but DW is far more flexible with that, so if you're interesting and you know it, clap your hands. :)
* Thaw is done and I'm at a bit of loose ends. I still want to write, but now there is nothing to write. I can't really ask for timestamps or missing scenes or POV shifts or questions or whatnots like I used to do in SGA because the bulk of the reading audience is on AO3, which isn't geared for that.
Not unrelated, I went back and made some tweaks to the story, since there are downsides to writing it as a posted WIP. Most of the corrections are stylistic and/or simple booboo fixes, but I did make one substantive change, which was go to back and make Clint's... sense of deja vu about the brain co-opting a little less understated, since I think I underplayed it too much before the last chapter. Anyway, the changes came out to less than a hundred words, but I think it's a subtle improvement.
* Watched The Losers the other week because Netflix won't give me what I really wanted -- what's up with the new releases and big releases suddenly being "very long wait"? -- and I really wish they'd done a better job there. I think I only ever read the first TPB of the comics, although I wonder why that was because the premise is totally up my alley, and I'm all for most of the changes they made with respect to the characters (especially everything to do with Roque, although turning him into a three-dimensional character without also updating his heel turn motivation made it worse), but the material itself didn't translate very well from one medium to the next. I've read some fic -- holy carp and other fish, there's a lot of it! -- and I've found a few good ones. I'll take recs there, though, because there is so much of it and I just dipped toes. And yes, I read the slash.
* The baseball team is in its working-for-next-season phase, which is why Travis d'Arnaud is now the starting catcher despite being oh-fer-MLB, and I am giddy that hockey players are now skating in organized groups large enough to merit reports from bored beat writers.
* RIP Elmore Leonard and thanks for all the fish.
Also, if I am supposed to be following you at DW, let me know. My LJ flist is tiny because of permissions and my privacy twitchiness, but DW is far more flexible with that, so if you're interesting and you know it, clap your hands. :)
* Thaw is done and I'm at a bit of loose ends. I still want to write, but now there is nothing to write. I can't really ask for timestamps or missing scenes or POV shifts or questions or whatnots like I used to do in SGA because the bulk of the reading audience is on AO3, which isn't geared for that.
Not unrelated, I went back and made some tweaks to the story, since there are downsides to writing it as a posted WIP. Most of the corrections are stylistic and/or simple booboo fixes, but I did make one substantive change, which was go to back and make Clint's... sense of deja vu about the brain co-opting a little less understated, since I think I underplayed it too much before the last chapter. Anyway, the changes came out to less than a hundred words, but I think it's a subtle improvement.
* Watched The Losers the other week because Netflix won't give me what I really wanted -- what's up with the new releases and big releases suddenly being "very long wait"? -- and I really wish they'd done a better job there. I think I only ever read the first TPB of the comics, although I wonder why that was because the premise is totally up my alley, and I'm all for most of the changes they made with respect to the characters (especially everything to do with Roque, although turning him into a three-dimensional character without also updating his heel turn motivation made it worse), but the material itself didn't translate very well from one medium to the next. I've read some fic -- holy carp and other fish, there's a lot of it! -- and I've found a few good ones. I'll take recs there, though, because there is so much of it and I just dipped toes. And yes, I read the slash.
* The baseball team is in its working-for-next-season phase, which is why Travis d'Arnaud is now the starting catcher despite being oh-fer-MLB, and I am giddy that hockey players are now skating in organized groups large enough to merit reports from bored beat writers.
* RIP Elmore Leonard and thanks for all the fish.
* Watched the 'Richard Donner edition' of Superman II last night. It's a better movie than I remember the original being, mostly for the improved narrative and cutting of a bit of the slapstick. The gap in time between shoot and reshoot is still completely glaring -- Christopher Reeve got buffer, Margot Kidder got more unhealthy-looking -- but, overall, still so much fun. Also, Christopher Reeve, gracefully and gently reminding us who is the original and best.
With all due respect to Terence Stamp and his obvious joy in the role, I would kill for a Superman versus Zod movie that was Reeve versus Michael Shannon. We have the technology, people!
* They're murmuring about casting for a new Batman in the announced Superman-Batman movie and... Ryan Gosling? Really?!? He's totally not my cuppa as far as male attractiveness goes and I guess that's part of why I'm boggling. Also, I think I've only ever seen him in Drive, where he's about as blank and inert as a wall and I can't envision where Bruce's inner intensity would come from. The other names being mentioned are Josh Brolin and then Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the latter presumably because of The Dark Knight Rises.
With all due respect to Terence Stamp and his obvious joy in the role, I would kill for a Superman versus Zod movie that was Reeve versus Michael Shannon. We have the technology, people!
* They're murmuring about casting for a new Batman in the announced Superman-Batman movie and... Ryan Gosling? Really?!? He's totally not my cuppa as far as male attractiveness goes and I guess that's part of why I'm boggling. Also, I think I've only ever seen him in Drive, where he's about as blank and inert as a wall and I can't envision where Bruce's inner intensity would come from. The other names being mentioned are Josh Brolin and then Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the latter presumably because of The Dark Knight Rises.
