Loki

Crank was surprisingly entertaining for such a ridiculous film. I particularly liked the ending, very non-Hollywood.

It's rubbish though. Maybe some agencies had wind that something might be in the air, but it's frankly inconceivable that they knew any specifics of the plot, or they would surely have thwarted it.

Woyzeck, I take it you say these bad boys?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDGjz0yY-EY

There seems to be a real appetite for this stuff in Mexico.

So I saw Inglorious Basterds last night, and in the nicest possible way it was a bit rubbish. It was a little bit like watching tv with someone who keeps changing the channel. You get 10 minutes of serious character development and beautiful acting, then a 1 minute flash of gratuitious violence, then a bit of a soft rock video, then some poor comedy, then some more acting.

Tarantino is at his best for me when he chooses a genre and sticks to it. Not to say he can't break out his trademark visual style, but stick to one overall tone. Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown, Death Proof are like this. At his worst, he's like a director with ADT, making clanging great jumps from one thing to another, and ends up not doing any very well. Inglorious Basterds wasn't very funny, there wasn't really enough action or war stuff, and whilst you had some sublime acting and characterisation (Christop Waltz) it then felt wrong to have wafer-thin schlock acting like Pitt was doing. The scenes with the two of them just made Pitt look like a shit actor, which he's not (all the time).

The first scene made me think I was in for the best Tarantino film ever; in the end I think it was the most disappointing. I was hoping for Into The Eagles Nest, men on a mission. What I got was an overlong, indulgent film that wanted you to laugh at Nazis, but take its themes of revenge seriously. Oh, and it was set in an alternative 2nd World War. Riiiight.

I quite liked it. It was basically a feature length episode of the series, rather than a big-ass canonical film, but the relationship between the two characters is so well written that I was drawn in. Having kind of zoned out of the last few seasons, I didn't realise that they were actually in a proper relationship, so that was sweet.

I have to say I don't think it'll revive interest in a new series though, which apparently was the concept behind it.

That's like saying it's pointless to speculate on Bear v Tiger, as one operates in woodland and one on the plains. I know for sure I'd pay to see them fight, and my money's on the bear.

Maybe I'm old fashioned but I've always assumed that a decent heavyweight boxer would totally annihilate a heavyweight MMA fighter. Even in UFC a decent punch often ends a bout. I would imagine Lewise would have won pretty quickly.

 

 

I would think a decent MMA fighter would take a decent boxer.

..However when you go into credentials of the fighters from each disipline it becomes a little more patchy to call.

Good mma fighter verses bad boxer/bad mma fighter verses good boxer/...bad boxer verses bad mma fighter

I'm not an expert on MMA, but didn't former UFC champ Tim Sylia recently get knocked out in 6 seconds by an ageing boxer under MMA rules? That would strongly support my instinct

Maybe I'm old fashioned but I've always assumed that a decent heavyweight boxer would totally annihilate a heavyweight MMA fighter. Even in UFC a decent punch often ends a bout. I would imagine Lewise would have won pretty quickly.

I really don't share the Clarkson hate. Admittedly, I don't ever read his books or his Daily Mail columns, but his style of presenting makes Top Gear good fun to watch. It's not a programme about cars, it's a programme about mates who share an interest in cars. That's why so many women watch the show, for the relationship between the 3 guys. It's like the successor to Men Behaving Badly or something.

I dunno, I really liked Chronicles.. I think I just like that Riddick character, and so both these films appeal to me. Pitch Black is definitely a quality horror film, where Chronicles is quite a geeky scifi film, to be sure.

She's better looking than Caroline Cheese at least.

Reminds me of that terrible Stephen King film with the guy who turns into a cat. The CGI will look as bad in 15 years as that does now.

I was thinking Trott as well. Despite being a dirty Bokker, he's had two decent seasons. Worth a go.

 

They need to move Bopara from 3 as well and get Collingwood up there instead. That just isn't working at all now.

Move Bopara out of the test side altogether, he's been absolute shit all series.

I was hoping that the TMS text team were playing some awful practical joke, but clearly not. It's been a while since we've had one of England's famous batting collapses, but I'm struggling to remember one this bad.

Harmison is bowling ok though, that could be our one saving grace.

Yeah, that was me. She is fucking stunning though, so I forgive you. It just annoys me when people post renowned beauties in this thread, that's all.

Yeah, I liked Flags Of Our Fathers, but it was a bit sprawling and erratic, and reminded me far too much of The Thin Red Line, except not as good. It did also come across as quite jingoistic, so I'm looking forward to seeing Iwo Jima to counteract that.

I just got the impression that Clint realised he'd never made a WW2 film, and so tried to find a story to film, rather than finding a great story and wanting to film it.

Things are always worse the further north you go.

I take it it's no Dust Devil then.

Hush. Absolute garbage. There was nothing you haven't seen better done in Duel, Breakdown, Joyride and so on and so on. The opening ten minutes has the clunkiest exposition I've ever seen, and the dialogue itself was atrocious. I was openly calling everything that happened the entire way through (I'm hard), and I've never seen a more predictable, by-the-numbers film. I've put some plot points in spoilers, but you'd be saving yourself by not watching it.

 

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

A dog shows up, he's obviously going to be killed with an offscreen whimper by the bad guy, to denote that the bad guy is close, and he is.

Someone he runs into for help turns out to be in on it.

Protagonist convinces the police to help him, only to have the policeman killed 2 seconds later.

There are two (!!) scenes of looking for someone in toilets, obviously supposed to be tense and Hitchcockian, but just shit. Quick, lift your feet up! Of course when someone looks under the door - gasp! - they're not actually in there. This same cat & mouse bait and switch is used numerous times.

No cell phone reception, only when it suits the attempts at tension, ditto no fuel.

The villain was a hoody wearing charicature.

 

The whole thing is shockingly pointless without an original thought in its 80 minutes. Two people die instantly from being poked in the eye with a small wrench and a nail respectively, in different scenes. No gurgling, no thrashing about, just "I've got an inch of metal in my eye, I R DEAD"

 

[close spoiler]

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It was also shot with this irritating shakeycam in closeups with a pointless soft focus glow for the external scenes. Surprise surprise, Mark "not a fucking clue" Kermode loved it, and although he is mates with the director, I suspect this specific piece of evidence of him knowing nothing at all was mostly just down to him talking out of his arse.

 

 

Which film are you talking about here, Woyzeck?

I really hate the Hollywood spin cycle. Can't we have some new movies? None of those 3 above interest me in the slightest, indeed they just make me sad.

Although most of their porn involves shitting into each other's mouths or cartoon baby foxes wanking their nippled tit-cocks, so it seems a bit strange.

That's the bit of their culture I like.

I just wished cinemas near me would show films like Rambo and Moon. Odeon are a fucking disgrace.

EDIT: Sun, did you really enjoy Tale Of Two Sisters? I thought it was confused, pretentious wank. Having seen Ringu, the missus and I went on a rampage through similar Japanese horror. It went:

Ringu - wow! Scary pale girl with black hair!

Dark Water - amazing film, reminded me a bit of Ringu with the scary girl with black hair

The Grudge - erm, another scary black haired girl, idea getting a bit boring now

Tale Of Two Sisters - more scary little girls and this one makes as much sense as a Shymalan movie.

I just felt the same trope was carted out in a whole run of Jap horror films that gradually diluted the formula.

I stand by my statement. Besides, Oldboy is the film-nerd pick of choice, which is why it's more perplexing. LOTR is totally mainstream.

 

It's doubly ridiculous when people get all uppity about Hollywood doing a remake and "ruining" it. It's not horrible, it's a *** movie, but it's way too flawed to be anything more. Take out the hallway hammer fight and you'd immediately lose half of the geek love.

Agreed. Once you get past geeking out at a guy killing people WID A HAMMER, there wasn't that much else to distinguish it from the masses of similar violent Korean films. It was alright, and I enjoyed it, but I was very surprised at the love shown to it online. It's certainly not in the league of Takeshi Kitano.

I've seen Con-Air and disagree it's the best action film ever. There's loads better and to name one, Die Hard.

 

Please, Die Hard is nowhere near bombastic enough. The high point of that movie is the Vigo the Carpathian cameo.

He's right. Die Hard is better than Con Air. Technically speaking Predator is better than both of them, but in the sub-genre of action-with-comedy blockbuster movie, Die Hard is king.

Good list that!

Inland Empire I want to see.

Deadwood is of course the fucking business.

13th Warrior I really like, though apparently it's been severely cut from a longer, much more epic version, which I hope they oneday release.

Fist Of The North Star I've never seen, but it sounds like a top Jap porno.

Not a huge loss really, as he was struggling a lot in this series and not really contributing.

Bell's average in county this season is good, so in all honesty he'll probably be more of an asset than a struggling Pietersen.