Remember to post spoiler warnings, please!
Continued from Movies, v. 20012.
Patience, Please
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Remember to post spoiler warnings, please!
Continued from Movies, v. 20012.
I liked Oz the Great and Powerful a lot and can’t wait to see Monsters University and the Lone Ranger. Whoo!!!
Just from having seen the trailer when I saw Star Trek, I am unsure about how I feel about the Lone Ranger. Having a movie where the main character’s identity depends very heavily on his racial/ethnic background, and writing/casting the part for a white actor in what is essentially blackface (namely, Johnny Depp as Tonto) seems kind of squicky to me.
Tonto means Fool in Spanish. It’s simply horrid.
As someone who applied to college last fall and therefore spent way too much time on actual university websites, I absolutely love the Monsters University website. I’ll definitely go see the movie if I can.
pie.
Yes! Pie is magnificent!
Let’s see, will HTML work here?
Did it work?
Oh come on!
Monsters University ID Card… Testing, testing… I hope I can post this here…
I give up. How the drub do you post pictures?
You can’t; only the GAPAs can.
Only the GAPAs can post pictures
Don’cha mean how the cake? I looked up drub and it means
Verb
Hit or beat (someone) repeatedly.
Defeat thoroughly in a match or contest.
Synonyms
beat – thrash – belabor – flog – trounce – belabour
Hey! I did not make this post! This is undoubtebly my sister, Eggy Rice, again forgetting to replace my name with hers! Eggy, remember to post under your own name, understood?
Indeed I did. but thats what drub means.
You made one, too? I don’t really think my monster looks that much like me, but I can send it to the GAPAs.
I also took the Greek Life test, I got put in the house for female athletes, which I guess fits me better than the popular girls (who are caking speciesist– every one of their members is a tall three-eyed humanoid, just different skin and hair colors!) or goth girls, but it’s a shame there isn’t a sorority for nerd girls.
Yes, I made one. I got mad at the Admins of the Cricket Chatterbox because when I tried to post it there they got rid of it since Disney put their marks on it. (I’m Joe Dosie Doe over there, by the way.)
Who are the GAPAs and how can I send a picture to them for posting?
Mine should be here: http://24 . media . tumblr . com/21c8ea7126279d4cf87bc618b3f07e7c/tumblr_mo3q6vekAh1qdosgyo1_400.jpg
test of italic text
Did it work???
I see from the preview that using the font of Comic Sans MS by employing HTML is not possible. Hm.
Please move any future experiments onto the new HTML Practice & Typographic Tricks thread.
Thank you, most excellent Administrator!
Great And Powerful Administrator is what GAPA stands for, and is used on the Museblog.
I loved the movie Hanna!NOT! IT WAS A HORRIBLE MOVIE. And this post is a test of the HTML possibilities here.I love the movie Hanna ! how dare you insult me!!!
Is anyone interested in seeing Turbo? It comes out July 17. I saw the trailer just about a half hour ago. It looks great, and if the reviews are good I’ll see it!
no. maybe.
I have been spending much of summer break catching up on all the pop culture I’ve missed growing up without a TV. So far I’ve seen Mean Girls, Legally Blonde (the movie and the musical), The Breakfast Club, and now I’m watching Ghostbusters (the 1984 movie).
It’s something to do with my time. Also, because I knit while watching them, I have made a great deal of progress on the knit blanket/quilt that I have been working on since 11th grade. Perhaps this summer I’ll actually finish it.
I saw Monsters University yesterday. It was pretty fun.
My review will eventually appear at http://www.cricketmagkids.com/chatterbox/puddingsplace/node/113189. As of this writing, the Admins there have to approve it first.
I really enjoyed it! It was very sweet and entertaining, and I now feel the need to watch the original again because I haven’t seen it in at least six years.
It was really cool to see the progress CGI animation has made in the (holy cake, twelve) years since Monsters, Inc came out. It was a nice decision to keep most of it in the heavily stylized monster world, so the difference was less jarring. And then the brief shots of the human world are absolutely gorgeous.
Also Dean Hardscrabble has one of my favorite character designs ever and I need to draw her.
SPOILERS ENDER’S GAME THE MOVIE SPOILERS SPOILERS SERIOUSLY THERE ARE SPOILERS HERE, DON’T READ IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE OR AT LEAST READ THE BOOK OR SOMETHING. OR DON’T CARE. BUT SPOILERS FOR ENDER’S GAME THE MOVIE AHEAD. SERIOUSLY. I’M WARNING YOU. I DID WARN YOU. IF YOU KEEP READING IT’S NOT MY FAULT
So. Ender’s Game. I have no idea how similar it is to the book, if at all. I may read the book in the near future, because on general principle i don’t like watching movies based on books without reading the books, so…yeah. so not necessarily looking for a detailed account of how it differs, either. I’m guessing lots, but yeah.
anyway. So I hate Graff. Ender’s whole story broke my heart. Especially when I (being ridiculously slow, what can I say. I’m gonna use “my bladder was about to burst so I wasn’t functioning at my highest level plus I”d been up since 6:45 in the morning” as an excuse) realized that that final simulation wasn’t a simulation and that Ender had jsut been tricked into genocide. Yeah. That about did me in, especially when he realized it as well (about the same time I did, unfortunately). I only realized it right about when they switched back to the vid of the planet burning, and the look on Ender’s face, and then I was like, wait, oh cake, oh no, oh no you didn’t, oh god oh my god you bastards you did didn’t you oh my god you ^(*&(*^()^s. So yeah.
And then of course cue “good” ole scifi twist thingy that scifi seems to always have to throw in (which was I think part of the reason I didnt’ care for scifi as a kid was all these complicated plot twist thingies they felt the need to throw in at the end of the story? of course there was also the fact that as a kid any scifi i tried always seemed to be either really kind of boring, or just too darn complicated to enjoy). But anyway, yeah. Had to throw in the “oh my god the aliens ahve been inside my head communicating with me this whole time” twist. I don’t even. I mean, say what? now there’s just a cake ton of unanswered questions. How? How are they communicating with you, and no one else? Why you? What’s so special about you? I mean, yeah, obviously you’re a genius, and you’re leading these peeps, but how? Why you in particular, why not any of these budding geniuses? And maybe these are things answered in the book, but the movie jsut left me with a bunch of confusion and unanswered questions on this point.
But re: communication. That’s the other thing. The whole darn movie, I’m just like, okay, so you ahd a war/battle/whatever. But you haven’t had one since. Why the bleeding cakity cake don’t you try negotiation? I realize they’re bug thingies, but hello, why don’t you at least try to make an attempt and figuring out some kind of truce, why is this scumbag jerkwad Graff all “OMG must kill must kill genocide is the only answer must kill must kill and oh hey kid i’m gonna steal all your innocence and make you do it.” Yeah. I don’t like him. And I don’t get why negotiation was never even considered, except by Ender. Who unfortunately didn’t get a chance to try and implement this thought until it was too late, but yeah.
I dunno.
Really seriously a downer kind of plot. I mean, I didn’t necessarily expect otherwise, but yeah.
(DOES THIS EVEN COUNT AS SPOILERS ENDER’S GAME) Good questions. They’re all much, much clearer in the book.
That was where I felt the movie fell down most, really. It did a good job adapting the book, but not such a good job answering the questions raised by the book.
Good to know. A reason I should read the book, I suppose.
You should. You’ll also get to discover all the minor changes they made for the movie, most of which I didn’t think were for the better. Plus, at least one really pretty cool subplot which they totally left out of the movie.
DON’T GO SEE ENDER’S GAME IN THEATERS
like, no offense to you, Luna, Errata, or others, since you don’t seem to know. but.
Orson Scott Card, author of the books/person who’s profiting directly from them being adapted to a movie, is an awful person who thinks gay people should be chemically castrated, and who has served on the board of the National Organization for Marriage (aka the group that’s pouring money into keeping gay marriage illegal in the US).
Which is to say: if you pay money to see this movie, a portion of what you pay goes DIRECTLY to oppressing people.
so please don’t.
(not to mention the problems I have with the books, for example that they glorify/normalize sociopathic behavior, or the incest plotline in one of the sequels which was somehow not even the worst part of that sequel)
Orson Scott Card makes no money off the film, and had no virtually involvement in its production beyond writing the book, which contains no homophobia.
I should amend that; he’ll make money off the book sales that result from the movie and such, but profit from a ticket sale alone does not go to him.
Idea Channel, a very muserly youtube channel I highly recommend, just did a video on this.
I’ll agree with you to a certain extent, but two things:
1. Not endorsing something because the maker is a bad person discounts a great deal of entertainment. For example, would you be against seeing Milk (which, funnily enough, is directly against the homophobia you oppose in OSC) because Sean Penn hospitalized his wife after assaulting her with a baseball bat? Or would you boycott the rerelease of The Velvet Underground and Nico because Nico was a professed neo-Nazi and racist? (Disregarding the fact that she’s dead, of course. And actually I don’t know how you’d feel about that second example, so just go off the first one.) In my own humble opinion, the art someone makes should, in most cases, be separated from the actual artist. They’re going to make money off it anyway; if the art is good, I don’t see any reason not to partake in it.
That said, I’m probably not going to see Ender’s Game either way, specifically because it and its first sequel are two of my favorite novels of all time and I don’t want my memory of them spoiled.
2. If you’re referring to Children of the Mind in your last sentence, that was suggested by Fake Peter and immediately shot down by Fake Ender and Fake Valentine. I’ll concede that the book was bad, though.
Vendaval — I’ll admit that my interest in movies is for the most part casual and I could be getting the details wrong in a way that invalidates my point. I can’t check out the video now, but I’ll look at it later.
muselover —
1. I’d have serious second thoughts about paying to see Milk if I heard about Sean Penn assaulting women. If it was really important to me to see it, I’d wait until it came out on DVD and rent it from the library.
Here’s a more borderline example which I think helps illustrate my point:
Wagner was a great composer who was also anti-semitic, and I am OK with appreciating his music, in most cases. Here’s where the difference lies, to me: I would NOT be okay with going to see a performance of one of his works if profits went to a group which advocated the mass extermination of Jewish people. If it was a free concert being sponsored by such a group, I would go only if I could make it clear in some way to the sponsors that their beliefs were repugnant. When my high school orchestra played Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, I was happy to play my part, though.
Appreciating art is something entirely different to endorsing/supporting its creators, I think. The first is OK, the second in my view depends on whether its creators are doing anything to disenfranchise me or those I love.
2. No, I was thinking of Speaker for the Dead.
SPOILERS FOLLOW:
as I recall from having read the book five or so years ago this is what happens:
it takes place on a planet with a human colony and an intelligent nonhuman life form (so aliens I guess). The father of one of the main characters was discovered to have had an affair, so the unrelated characters were actually half-siblings. It was treated as dramatic and sad.
the part that I found more disturbing than that was the part where a stage in the aliens’ life cycle involved them disemboweling respected members of society so they could be reborn as trees. Which worked great for the aliens, who actually became trees, but not so great for the humans they tried it on.
Ah, yes, I can see why you say that now. M’kay. I can concede that.
And this may be bias because Speaker For The Dead is probably my second-favorite sci-fi novel of all time, but I didn’t have much problem with its content. Partially because, as you said, both elements of the novel are given their necessary weight.
Wait, where did she say that both elements of the novel were given there necessary weight? She mentioned that the incest reveal was treated as dramatic and sad, but I’m not sure if that was a concession or if that was the aspect she objected to; I actually assumed it was the latter. Even if it’s the former, I can’t find anything indicating that she thought the former was given its proper weight… Did I miss something?
Er, the second ‘the former’ meant the other element in the book she objected to. Sorry for any confusion.
How many sci-fi novels have you read? Because if Ender’s Game is your favorite, and Speaker for the Dead is your second favorite, it makes me wonder if you’ve really read a wide enough variety of science fiction to have a basis for comparison.
I think that, when there are so many great science fiction novels that don’t involve themes which range from problematic to disgusting, why would you waste your time on ones that are?
*What I find problematic about Ender’s Game: The sociopathic main character, who commits genocide, is treated as more sympathetic than the entire species which he murders. In later books, his attempts to absolve his sins by telling people about the alien species come off to me as him being the white male savior, coming to solve the problems of the natives who didn’t want or need his help in the first place.
Bibliophile – I didn’t say that, he was saying it based on his reading of the books.
Ender’s Game isn’t my favorite, William Gibson’s Neuromancer is.
And I dunno. I’m usually easily offended by books and that series didn’t do so for me. I suppose it’s a matter of personal taste at that point.
SPOILERS ENDERS GAME BOOK/MOVIE/WHATEVER
I haven’t read the book (well, I’ve read the first few chapters, now, and will probably finish the book at some point, the writing style just isn’t one that really pulls me in), but, at least in the movie, Ender is a pretty sympathetic character. Did he commit genocide? Yes, he did, but–and I can’t say this is how it went down in the book–he didn’t know it was real life. When he killed of the aliens and destoryed their planet, he thought it was still a simulation, still a “game” if you will. And at least in the movie, he was pretty damn devastated to find out that he’d just been used and manipulated into committing genocide, and set out to right that wrong when he discovered that there was still at least one alien queen baby egg thing left alive.
So did he commit genocide? yes, but in a way that actually maeks him sympathetic, because he didnt’ know he was doing it, wouldn’t have done it if he’d known.
Now, maybe the book spins it completely differently, i really don’t know. The books is certainly quite different when it comes to how old these children are, which honestly just makes the whole thing more disgusting, and makes the kids that much mroe sympathetic. I mean, in the movie Ender is about 12ish, which is still just a kid, but in the book he’s 6 years old when they ship him off to battle school? Six.
Now that would ahve made for a and even more sickening, horrifyng movie and made me want a few minutes alone with Ford’s character to enact soem violence of my own that much more.
I don’t think the way the book/movie spins it is the problem, exactly. I think the decisions and choices made by OSC which lead to this portrayal of Ender as sympathetic/aliens as less so are poor, and should be criticized.
In the book he’s 12 by the end, and acutely aware of the loss of his innocence.
However, I’m aware of the point Dodecahedron’s making here. If Ender’s character had a. been a different person or b. not been as deified, the series probably would’ve been better. I’m fine with it the way it is, but I can see why other people aren’t.
He said, “as you said,” though. I guess he just made a mistake.
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I am really impressed by Marvel’s ability to consistently make good movies. Some specific things I liked!
– I thought SHIELD-infiltrated-by-HYDRA was a really fitting villain for this movie, since it forced Steve, a government-created soldier, to go against his own organization for the sake of his principles.
– Tasha. I loved how smart and snarky she was, and how she was willing to release all the secrets of her past if it meant the public could know about HYDRA’s plans.
– Falcon is hella rad. Falcon should find $20 on the ground and always win at Mario Kart. Yay Falcon.
– Mentions of Tony, Bruce, and the magic users who will be in Age of Ultron. The continuity in the MCU is super great.
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I’m impressed as well! They seem to always inject a lot of pathos into films that could in other hands be sort of mindless action.
I really liked the HYDRA thing, especially Project Insight: it had a lot to do with current worries about government surveillance and sacrificing freedom for security, which were well-played without being overdone (and without making the entire movie about Freedom!! in a jingoistic sense).
SPOILERS FOR THE FAULT IN OUR STARS AHEAD, TFIOS SPOILERS TFIOS SPOILERS, TFIOS SPOILERS, I TRUST MOST OF YOU HAVE ALREADY EITHER READ THE BOOK OR HATE IT ON PRINCIPLE OR SOMETHING
I really enjoyed it! I have to say, a lot of the more memorable lines in the book read well on the page but sound awful when spoken out loud; when someone says “That’s the thing about pain. It demands to be felt” in a book, it’s alright. When a character says it onscreen (twice), it sounds pretentious and forced. As do the frequent speeches about metaphors and oblivion and all that; I realize that the characters are meant to be pretentious, but the more that’s accented, the less easy it is to like them. The movie seems to realize this, though, and lampshades it toward the end.
Also, both Hazel and Augustus seemed believable to me! Actually, they seemed a little too realistic, as they both spoke in a sort of mumbley teenage way (of which I am guilty) that made it hard to understand their lines sometimes. And the movie is shot really well. When they get to Amsterdam, it does a great job capturing rain and fountains, which is good, since water is such a big theme of the book.
I thought the biggest misstep was the cartoon speech bubbles for texts, complete with sound effects and animations. I think they were meant to be quirky and cute, but they were just annoying and took one out of the action- particularly as emails were shown in a perfectly normal way, slightly transparent screenshots on one side of the screen. I don’t know what would have been wrong with showing the screen of Hazel’s phone instead.
This is all to say: a good movie, Mike Birbiglia is extremely funny, and I’m really, really tired with people hating on John Green.
SFTDP, and also SPOILERS FOR TFIOS, MORE SPOILERS, SUCH SPOILERING, TFIOS SPOILERS TFIOS SPOILERS TFIOS SPOILERS
It just occurred to me that they kept emphasizing that Gus was eighteen. I suppose that this was so that they could show him Metaphorically Not Smoking?
OK SO the Age of Ultron trailer was ComicCon-exclusive and isn’t yet available to the public, but a couple websites have articles from people who were at the panel describing the trailer. Thoughts:
– Apparently we get to see the Avengers at a party interacting in a non-fight setting, which I’m really excited about. They all try to pick up Thor’s hammer except Natasha, who says that whether she’s morally worthy isn’t a question she wants answered. I can already tell, Tasha is going to break my heart in this movie.
– TVTropes says Falcon is in the movie, but Anthony Mackie says he isn’t. ??????????????
– This movie seems kind of Tony-centric, with him building the Big Bad, and Rhodey being in it. I think since Joss Whedon made Loki more threatening as a villain by having him (seemingly) kill Coulson, he might have Ultron kill Rhodey or delete JARVIS? I don’t think they’d kill an Avenger because they can get more movies out of them.
– People are worried that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch will be written too much like Simon and River Tam in Firefly. Though to be fair, all we really know they have in common so far is “unstable girl with mind powers and her brother”. Hopefully Joss Whedon will realize the similarity and go out of his way not to write them as Expies.
– ALSO apparently when Ultron turns evil, the trailer plays a slow creepy version of “I Got No Strings” from Pinocchio. This is just a description of a trailer I haven’t seen for a movie nobody has seen but my head is already going to explode from the awesome.
Having Stark build Ultron causes me to wonder even more when or if Henry Pym and Janet Van Dyne will gain a presence in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Has anyone here seen Sin City 2! Man, what a movie. I overall enjoyed it, though there was a little too much ripping out of eyeballs for my liking (and breaking of fingers, which made me shudder).
Wow, okay. I’ve been scatterbrained all day. The ! was supposed to be a ?
I finally saw “The Lost World: Jurassic Park”! Somebody talk about it with me, please!
Which one is that again? I’ve seen all three Jurassic parks so I could potentially converse about it….
It’s the second one — the sequel to the original movie.
Yes, it’s the second one, where Ian Malcolm is the protagonist, and I really liked that they were able to show him caring for his daughter and girlfriend while still maintaining the rock-star snarky guy aura that made him so popular in the first film.