Fallout Boy

The Shield gets better. Interestingly, (or not) The Shield and The Wire's pilots and final episodes were both directed by Clark Johnson, which shows the guy has a lot of talent behind the camera for drama.

If you're enjoying The Shield, you should try Sons of Anarchy as well.

I haven't enjoyed Flashforward for the last couple of episodes, the guys behind hide it have a fairly mixed track record, which includes the unforgivable Blade Trinity. I'll see how that one goes.

Normally, it's about

JH Williams III's art just works wonderfully with it's contrasting layouts between Batwoman and Kate Kane. I don't really care for the Kane alter ego other than it giving the artwork for Batwoman more of an impact and adds an extra layer of depth to an already complete package.

I agree with that. Streets of Gotham is pretty good, while I didn't bother reading Sirens past the first issue as it was horrible.

Batman & Robin and Batwoman in Detective Comics have been the best things to come out of the Batman Reborn line.

Yeah, he'd be good as Tyreese. I'd like Lance Henriksen to play Hershel, the farmer owner who later becomes religious. Lance always adds a great presence to whatever he's in, even if it's one of those low budget straight to video films that he occassionally does to play the bills.

Oh, and I'm not sure if I've mentioned it in this thread... Anyone else a fan of Walking Dead? I read the first 4 books a little while back and it's brilliant. Normally my comic reading is just whatever random books I can find in the library but this is the first series in a while that I've been quite excited about.

I have them. I'd recommend them to anyone. If you like Superhero comics, Kirkman's Invincible is his love letter to the genre. If you can track it down, I think you'll enjoy it.

And the TV show will hopefully be just as good.

Apparently, Frank Darabont reads it on a monthly basis and with his proven track record of producing good drama, I don't see how it could be anything less than good.

Who would you like to see cast? I'd go with Six Feet Under's Peter Krause as Rick Grimes, he's a decent enough actor and he looks right for the role.

Sigourney Weaver, 59.

Sharon Stone, 51.

District 9, for me, is the film of the year.

I don't really want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it but it's one of the better takes on social commentary and one of most enjoyable sci-fi films I've had the pleasure to watch.

I watched Jurassic Park on Sci Fi this evening. Havent seen it in an absolute age, used to scare the shit out of me when I was a kid. Still a decent film though, although now Im much older theres no way I'm buying that Raptors can open doors...

 

Yeah I caught the second half of this. I expected it to have aged pretty badly, but the dino's still hold up pretty well.

I still don't understand how the CGI in this, The Abyss and Terminator 2 are still superior to movies made in the last couple of years.

 

Dunno about The Abyss and T2, but IIRC, Jurassic Park wasn't 100% CG - there were model bases, I think.

All three films used a combination of CGI and models.

In reference to the general standard of today's CGI effects it comes down to time, money, talent and politics.

Those 3 films were used to push the benchmark of what effects could do during a time when Lucas's ILM were the main guys to hire. With that, they also had the best talent and time wasn't really an issue because with no Star Wars films in post-production, they didn't have a heavy workload (except for the fact it was taking a week to render a frame of CGI in those early days - now, it's just a day).

A few years later, some of the key ILM staff disbanded and created Digital Domain with James Cameron, before Michael Bay purchased the company. This effectively means that any Michael Bay production will get their top talent, time and attention. Peter Jackson has WETA to do all his films, in the same way.

There are a few other worthwhile effects companies, like Framestore, Rainmarker and Rhythm & Hues, but unless you've got the budget to hire them and they've got the time to actually work on your film, then you've got to go further down the chain with smaller companies that just don't have the same level of talent.

Skweek on the Amiga?

I lost my childhood to Lemmings.

Following my rom-com plunge, I checked out Franklyn. For those who don't know what that is, long story short, it was released earlier this year to fairly average reviews and box office. Anyways, it's essentially about four characters who are lost souls or suffering from some form of loss. Three of these characters live in contemporary London, while the other, a masked vigilante resides in a dystopian future where he intends to assassinate a cult leader. All four are connected somehow.

 

Suffice to say, this film could very easily have been shit. Eva Green plays a tortured art student who makes videos of her suicide attempts. Sam Riley (of Control fame) plays a recently dumped and therefore heartbroken guy who is desperate to connect with his childhood sweetheart, and some other actor whose name I have forgotten is searching for his lost son. Meanwhile, in the nightmarish Meanwhile City, Ryan Phillippe is donning a mask and attempting to fight crime. On paper, it's a potential recipe for disaster, an apparent mix of arthouse drama and sci-fi fantasy, and yet I was completely won over by it. Anyone who has watched more than a few films and has a brain should quickly figure out what is actually going on, but the story remains quite compelling throughout, and the acting is largely impressive, although Green and Riley are slightly iffy at times. The actor whose name I can't remember is very convincing as a tormented father looking for his son, and Ryan Phillippe, who I think is an extremely underrated actor who often gets little credit because he's stupidly good-looking, is excellent in his role, bringing pathos and energy to a role that veers a little bit too close to Rorschach (Watchmen) and V (V For Vendetta) territory, but manages to make it his own.

 

Check it out, as it seems nobody has seen it!

 

I actually will, on that basis. Ryan Philippe is definitely under-rated; I thought he was absolutely perfect and spot-on in Dangerous Liaisons.

I didn't think Ryan Philippe was that noticeable in Dangerous Liaisons to be honest.

I recently watched American Gangster, which I thought was one of the best films I've seen in a long time. Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington were absolutely perfect and spot-on in their roles and they were actually in the film.

There's a new Batman now as Bruce Wayne is no longer around, if you will. The Nightwing and Robin titles ended a while ago.

Batman RIP was set 6 months before The Battle for the Cowl finished, so in terms of it's importance, it was only to tease what Gotham would be like if it lost Batman.

If you've read the trade, then I don't think it includes the tie-in issues from Robin, Nightwing, The Outsiders and Detective Comics. The five issues of Detective Comics in the Batman RIP arc were the 'Heart of Hush' storyline, which got it's own trade release. The problem with these types of story events are that they have too many tie-in issues spread over too many titles and they normally lead towards the next major event. While reading the main storyline should be enough to follow the plot, it's not always the case for getting the entire picture.

The 'RIP' in the title was a shameless attempt to make people buy it, thinking Batman was going to die and it worked. Batman's "death" was in Final Crisis #6, as that was one of the things Final Crisis was actually building too.

It would nice if they did cut down on the number of crossover events and tie-ins to just once a year at the most.

You've just convinced me to watch Rollerball, it sounds like my kind of film.

I watched X-Men 2 earlier, here's my review:

Rebecca Romijn's arse is magnificent.

Zoolander

- saw for 1st time the other day, bloody funny but not quite as good as the other Ben Stiller movie about the ice skating(?)

Can't say I'm familiar with a Ben Stiller ice skating movie. If you mean Blades of Glory and you're saying it's better than Zoolander, then you must be shot.

 

Zoolander's one of my favourite films of all time. One of the main reasons is for Will Ferrel as the awesome Mugatu.

 

^^^This.

 

Also, it had me doing "Blue Steel" at random for the following weeks after I watched it.

 

Maybe it can become your game face/pulling face and you can pick up loads of trannies with it, eh?

Hey, he's no Don Juan!

I agree with gwailofilms, Wolverine is worth avoiding. It was painful to watch at times just trying to work out how they could make something this bad, with that much money.

Schreiber was as good as ever, though.

Currently reading The Last Gunslinger in the Dark Tower Trilogy by Stephen King

A Trilogy of seven books? Interesting...

Ive got Fringe all downloaded. I watched the first few epsidoes, and havent really had a huge desire to watch any more. Does it get much better as it goes on?

I'd say so. Walter is fast becoming one of my favourite characters on TV.