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Post by Randle-El on Feb 12, 2022 11:22:37 GMT -5
Looks like the next movie on my to-see list will be the original Alien. Hope to get to it sometime this weekend or next.
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Post by Randle-El on Feb 12, 2022 11:19:23 GMT -5
I can't see them pulling those shows off the service (especially now with Daredevil having a resurgence due to No Way Home -- everytime I load up Netflix it says DD is trending) unless there was some deal made that transferred ownership of the shows to someone else. I hope they find a home somewhere else. I consider the Netflix Daredevil show to be the best thing Marvel has done in live action. Considering the runaway success of the Disney+ Marvel shows, I'm confident Disney paid Netflix a handsome sum to surrender the rights to the only streaming Marvel shows that they don't control.
That's my hunch as well. To be honest, I was a little surprised that Disney actually waited the two years for the character licensing rights to revert back to them rather than handing over a pile of cash for Netflix to waive the waiting period. With the way Disney has been buying up franchises and studios left and right over the past ten years, I figured the fee to get those characters back immediately would have been small potatoes compared to buying Lucasfilm or acquiring Fox. I'm still not convinced that Disney doesn't have a plan to buy Sony someday just so they don't have to negotiate with them anymore when it comes to Spider-Man.
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Post by Randle-El on Feb 11, 2022 20:27:07 GMT -5
Whoa, that's a surprise. While I know the rights for the characters have gone back to Marvel, I thought Netflix owned the rights to the shows in full. Usually when shows leave, it's because there was a licensing deal that expired. But since Netflix owns those shows. I had assumed they were staying on Netflix in perpetuity. After all, it doesn't cost them anything to make the shows available. I can't see them pulling those shows off the service (especially now with Daredevil having a resurgence due to No Way Home -- everytime I load up Netflix it says DD is trending) unless there was some deal made that transferred ownership of the shows to someone else.
I hope they find a home somewhere else. I consider the Netflix Daredevil show to be the best thing Marvel has done in live action.
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Post by Randle-El on Feb 11, 2022 10:39:19 GMT -5
but I'm also sure the numbers will be there due to the fifty variant covers each issue will have. It amazes me that variant covers still make for a successful business model. I've bought three variant covers in my life (each more than ten years ago) and yet I'm now in possession of at least ten because folks keep giving them away and tossing them into lots. Seems like most end up totally worthless.
I'm pretty sure that variants are successful because in the short term they do have value. Stores market them as being collectible, folks snap up them, get them signed and slabbed and sell them for a premium on eBay. For retailers and the first wave of buyers, they probably do make some return on investment. But once that first wave fades, that value drops pretty quick. There's also those 1-in-500 exclusive variants that stores sell for huge mark-ups, which usually offsets the costs of buying those 500 other copies in the first place. I see those other "normal" variants all the time in dollar bins at conventions.
To be clear, I'm not totally against variants. I'm partial to the idea of another artist besides the series regular penciller doing a different cover, perhaps in a style not normally seen in the book. I like the idea of letting different artists get work -- maybe artists who don't normally work in comics, or don't normally do interiors. Or maybe a veteran artist who doesn't want to do the monthly grind anymore but still wants to work. I just dislike the way it's employed in the current market -- big event book, usually death of so-and-so, a slew of variant covers to prop up the sales. It just feels like a cheap cash grab.
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Post by Randle-El on Feb 10, 2022 22:26:32 GMT -5
Different motivation, but almost the same story as the current X-Men books I just don't get it, who wants to read that? They wouldn't do it if the numbers weren't there but I just don't see it.
I'm sure there are people reading it, but I'm also sure the numbers will be there due to the fifty variant covers each issue will have.
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Post by Randle-El on Feb 10, 2022 22:24:19 GMT -5
I agree that Wolverine is overexposed, but I have a soft spot for him because he was a childhood favorite of mine. I read the limited series by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller when I was about 12 or 13, and that characterization is the one that is cemented into my brain as the definitive take on Logan. I haven't read much of his solo work past the 90s, but whenever he shows up in more recent stories that I've read, he's portrayed as the token killer among the heroes who's the only one willing to "do what needs to be done". I think the problem is that he works best as a tortured character engaged in a noble-but-doomed-to-fail struggle against his darker nature, and that kind of character needs to have a finite arc. He's not as interesting when he's reduced to a one-note Dirty Harry type of figure.
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Post by Randle-El on Feb 7, 2022 22:49:00 GMT -5
I've seen it reported that filming the Luke Skywalker scenes involved a body double for the physical performance, a CGI face, and audio processing software to provide a younger Luke's voice (all those years playing the Joker has a done a number on Mark Hamill's voice I guess). So given all this... do they even really need to have Mark Hamill on set? Unless it's purely out of respect, but it seems to me that if they are doing all that computer wizardry to provide the face and voice, is he needed for the role at all?
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Post by Randle-El on Feb 3, 2022 23:30:19 GMT -5
I managed to catch Children of the Corn last weekend. In my earlier post I wrote:
I used to see this movie sitting on the shelves of the video store that my family rented from when I was a kid. The box art always unnerved me, but for some reason I had a morbid fascination with it. Some of the kids in my neighborhood had seen it and used to talk about it... I got the sense that some of them had issues with their parents and were living vicariously through the characters of the movie. It was one of those movies that, for a time, I heard a lot about but never got around to seeing.
As a kid I was convinced that this would be a creepy movie. After all these years of buildup... what a disappointment. It feels like a made-for-TV horror film from the 80s. And we all know that made-for-TV movies in the 80s means something very different from made-for-TV today, what with streaming and cable raising the bar substantially compared to what could be aired on broadcast TV. About the best thing that I could say about it is that I appreciated that they tried to do the subtle thing by hinting at the violence rather than showing it full on. No doubt this was also done because showing children committing brutal murders with farming tools in graphic detail would not have gone over well.
Apart from this, there is very little that's watchable about the movie. As an entry in the "creepy children" genre of horror films, I did not find any of the kids to be particularly creepy. The preacher kid character has an unsettling air about him at the beginning, but it disappears from the rest movie. I chalk it up to his voice, as he was creepier when he didn't talk. There wasn't a lot of a special effects in this movie, but what was used (mostly near the end) was incredibly cheesy and low-budget looking.
I found the adult male lead's character to be problematic. He had a number of scenes where he rants to the children about their religious devotion to the deity in the cornfield, and it came off to me as a not-so-subtle example of the sophisticated liberal (he was supposed to be a doctor traveling cross country to a job in a big city) lecturing the hillbillies about their backwards ways. Honestly, I found the basis of the whole movie to be rather condescending. I don't particularly identify with rural or agrarian folks (I'm a life long East Coaster, primarily mid-Atlantic and northeast, who lived in or adjacent to cities my entire life), but neither do I appreciate the condescending ways city people and/or Hollywood often treats that part of the American population.
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Post by Randle-El on Feb 3, 2022 22:49:19 GMT -5
What does it say about the show when the best episodes of the season had nothing to do with the main character? Honestly, they could have made this a season 3 of The Mandalorian. The first four episodes could have been compressed into 1-2 to setup why Mando needs to show up on Tattooine. They could have added a couple of episodes with Mando doing odd jobs and feeling out of sorts without his wingman, and finished with these last few episodes.
Now that I've seen what's under Boba's helmet, I'm not really sure that I needed a story that fleshed him out. I think he worked much better as a character shrouded in mystery.
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Post by Randle-El on Jan 31, 2022 10:40:34 GMT -5
FWIW, I enjoyed all of the Marvel movies I've seen* at least somewhat except Thor The Dark World. I need to give it another shot and try to stay awake this time. *which is all but Black Widow, Eternals, and Spider Man No Way Home which I will get around to. I am just waiting for Spider Man to come onto streaming.
In another thread, I remarked that Eternals was the MCU's The Last Jedi -- i.e., it's the polarizing entry that tried do something different in a franchise that followed some predictable patterns. I understood (and even agreed with) the motivation for going in a different direction, but ultimately felt that TLJ's execution didn't pay off (mostly because it mangled Luke Skywalker's character and revealed the downside of "filmmaking-by-committee"), whereas Eternals was a breath of fresh air. If you think the MCU is repetitive, you should see Eternals.
As for Spider-Man: No Way Home -- I had some reservations about the movie going in, and boy was I wrong. I won't necessarily say it's the best Spidey movie, but it's my personal favorite out of all the Sony-era films. To everyone who criticized MCU Spidey as being Tony Stark's sidekick, being too reliant on tech and fancy suits, deviating too much from the comic book canon... if No Way Home was always the endgame (no pun intended) for this first trilogy of MCU Spidey films, then I congratulate Sony for weathering these criticisms in patient silence. They did it in an unexpected way, but I think they ultimately gave us a Spidey that was very faithful in spirit and heart to the essence of the comic book character.
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Post by Randle-El on Jan 29, 2022 21:11:42 GMT -5
The same stories are indeed often told again and again, which is not necessarily a fault if the retelling is entertaining.
I think this is true of most creative mediums. While pushing the creative boundaries is great, there's a reason why certain artistic formulas are so appealing, and that's why creators go back to them again and again. Given this inevitably, I don't necessarily fault a creator if they do this, so long as it's done well. A well-executed cliche can still be entertaining.
Hit songs work because they follow tried-and-true patterns. There's only only so many things you can do within the confines of pop music -- the chord progressions have all been done before, the beats have all been done before, so it's all about dressing it up in the best production and executing it well with a strong performance. I think a similar logic applies to movies.
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Post by Randle-El on Jan 29, 2022 11:06:01 GMT -5
IMO, none of the MCU films have been horrible, and all of them have had at least a baseline level of entertainment value -- meaning, if I were on a long plane ride with nothing else to do, I'd probably sit through even the worst one to pass the time. There also hasn't been a single movie that I've seen a trailer for where I said "I have absolutely no desire to see that"... unlike, say, the Deadpool movies, the Venom movies, or some of the DCEU movies.
Because of the world building nature of Marvel films, I think the worst judgment I could level against a movie is if it's value lies mainly in its contribution to the bigger picture rather than being a satisfying standalone movie in its own right. In that respect, I'd probably put the Ant-Man films and the second Thor movie on that list. I might have put GotG2 on that list, but then I remembered it gave us this scene :
The first Thor movie also gets a lot of flak as being one of the worst MCU entries. I also remembered it being not that great, but I recently re-watched it with my kids as part of introducing them to the MCU and thought it was actually much better than I remember. While the pivot into action/comedy in Thor: Ragnarok was a good move, I definitely think there was potential had they decided to really lean into the high fantasy/mythology themes of the first two movies.
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Post by Randle-El on Jan 27, 2022 11:00:50 GMT -5
The next movie on my to-see list is going to be another work from the filmography of Linda Hamilton: Children of the Corn.
I used to see this movie sitting on the shelves of the video store that my family rented from when I was a kid. The box art always unnerved me, but for some reason I had a morbid fascination with it. Some of the kids in my neighborhood had seen it and used to talk about it... I got the sense that some of them had issues with their parents and were living vicariously through the characters of the movie. It was one of those movies that, for a time, I heard a lot about but never got around to seeing. Since it's currently available to stream on Amazon Prime, I thought I'd give it a go. Hopefully I'll get to it sometime this weekend.
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Post by Randle-El on Jan 26, 2022 16:54:54 GMT -5
If I recall correctly, in terms of DC continuity the Convergence story was written while the new 52 Superman was still the primary Superman -- i.e., unmarried, not in a relationship with Lois, recently had dated Wonder Woman, both parents are dead, etc. Convergence was their way to bring back the post-crisis, pre-Flashpoint Superman. So Supes the Dad is supposed to be the continuation of post-Crisis Superman.
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Post by Randle-El on Jan 23, 2022 23:51:49 GMT -5
I missed it in the theaters, but managed to catch it recently on Disney+. Going in, I wasn't sure what to expect. Cosmic Marvel is not really my wheelhouse, and I knew next to nothing about the Eternals. I had also heard about the mixed reviews the movie had received. But at the same time, I remembered that I had doubts about Guardians of the Galaxy and that ended up being one of the better MCU films IMO.
So I was pleasantly surprised to discover how much I enjoyed it. I liked that it was different from the standard MCU fare... a sort of palette cleanser from their usual bombastic action comedy. I also really enjoyed the characterization of Sersi and thought it was a nice change of pace from the typical female superhero we've been getting. Every time DC or Marvel gives us a new female superhero, I feel like they are trying to "out-badass" the men by making them stronger, more powerful, more aggressive, whatever. Which is fine and there's a place for that. But I liked that Sersi's heroism and strength is grounded in her compassion and love for humans, rather than being the best fighter or most "powerful". I thought it was a great move to make a character that had a non-aggressive power be the hero of the story.
From a business standpoint, I also think Eternals is what happens when Marvel plays with house money. They know their movies are going to be profitable, and they know people are going to turn out for them. I also think they knew that this movie was not typical for them and might get some pushback -- that this would be the MCU's The Last Jedi. But I think they were willing to spend that money and good will for the long game. My guess is that they see the Eternals as establishing another important puzzle piece for the future of the MCU, so they are willing to go a little into left field to get that piece in place.
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