the official movie thread

Just got home from seeing Hitman. That was quite a disappointment. Lots of bits and pieces from the games -- locations, hit methods, characters, and background details -- but all strung together into a really half-assed excuse for a plot. The action wasn't even that great (although it was quite bloody).

Last night I watched The Bourne Ultimatum; now that was a great action movie. I've loved the whole series so far, and this one was no exception.

Looking forward to I Am Legend, even though it appears from the previews that quite a bit of artistic license has been taken. But if it's half as good as the book, it'll be worth seeing.
 
just bought these for 8euro :D
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Here's one that i am actually interested in: Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight. I had known they were making animated, direct-to-DVD adaptions of the Chronicles trilogy for some time now, but i did NOT know that it was ready to be released. It's coming out this Tuesday, January 15th!

I am thrilled that they are doing it per-novel, rather than trying to lump it all into one movie, and i am hopeful that they aren't going to take many LoTR style shortcuts (for example, they cast for Bupu, who could have been cut from the story, but i'm really glad they left her in). Though, the fact that Berem hasn't been cast is kind of disturbing for the direction they could go. If i recall correctly, he didn't actually *say* anything in Autumn Twilight, so hopefully he will still make his appearance and the story will go on as it should.

These animated adaptions generally tend to suck, but i'm still going to pick it up on day one and hope for the best.
 
^after seeing that second dungeons and dragons movie, I detest any movie that has the word dragon in it.

Heh yeah that D&D Sequel could turn anyone off. I finished watching Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight shortly before this post. There certainly are some major critiques, but overall i think they did a fair job. I suspect it will depend how much of a Dragonlance fan one might be, and how eager someone is to have it in a visual medium/understanding to the fact that books are never translated verbatim.

The spirit was kept alive, and it followed the story more or less accurately, but here are some of my more major gripes (in rough order of appearance. consider this a SPOILER alert) :

News of Takhisis return happens right away.

Silvantesti is destroyed right off the bat. I guess that means we aren't going to have anything to do with Lorac and The Dream?

The way they choose to compress and convey the coming romance with Caramon and Tika is by having her boobs just about slip out of her clothing and Caramon get all flustered (and as she walks away, they make a big deal out of her ass movements, which of course Caramon is watching). Somehow, this takes a bit of the heart away from it all. He could have noticed she was a woman now without all of the gratuitousness. For that matter, they show Onyx in human form with a pan shot from the boobs up. More gratuitous fanservice. Way to treat Chronicles with respect.

Otik is mentioned (by way of his potatoes) but not shown.

Tas is portrayed entirely too trivial, even for a kender. He comes off like some early teenage boy and it just feels off.

They didn't get off the road when the "monks" came.

The scene where the monks are revealed as draconians is not the first scene to use 3D, but it is one of the first where we really get to see 2D and 3D characters mixing it up. It just looks awful. I have NO problem with the 80's 2D style. I just wish they had picked one or the other and went with it. The creators said they thought some of the combat stuff looked better in 3D. They are just wrong. The only use 3D really was, was laziness when coming out of Pax Tharkas they are faced with a whole draconian army. It was easier for them to render it in 3d.

They have flint allergic to horses. I don't remember this. Seems a stupid thing to add.

Xak Tsaroth is SEVERELY abridged. There is no Tas/wicker dragon scene. Everything to do with the Gully Dwarves (with the exception of Bupu) is cut. There is no Highbulp or any of that, and no blessing for Bupu to have a long life (showing a side of Raistlin that is still human). They just meet Bupu, go in and are instantly at the dragon and kill it.

Pax Tharkas also fell heavily under the abridging knife. For example, there is no scene where Tanis gets Wyrmslayer from Kith-Kanan and there was nothing to really show how Laurana starts to grow up.

Also in Pax Tharkas, the children are separated, but you see women in with the men. In the books, they were all kept separate from each other as a means to control them. I understand this had to be done as a time saver, but it brings me to my next point.

The entire pace of the movie feels rushed. They wanted to be sure they hit everything from the books so it was like "ok we hit a bit of this scene, lets get them over here and give them a bit of this next scene and moving on now..". Really, it could have taken a lesson from the LoTR movies and instead of being 90 minutes, been at LEAST 2 hours, if not a bit more so it could have felt paced properly and captured more of the epic feel.

And then my two biggest gripes:

1) The revealed Fizban to be Paladine at the end of this first movie. In the books, we readers figure it out well in advance, but it isn't revealed to the characters until the very end of the trilogy.

2) They revealed Kitiara as a Dragon Highlord at the absolute end. Why was this necessary? It really deflates the suspense leading up to everything in Tarsis.

Obviously there are other inaccuracies, but you have to let some of them go. Still, as a fan, i'd buy it again, and i will buy Dragons of Winter Night if and when it ever comes out, but there is no way i'd ever suggest that someone watch this before reading the books. It does seem that the DVD is selling well. It makes me hope that the powers that be will notice that there is money to be made in Dragonlance, and perhaps at some future point we might be a better treatment (a faithful big budget lotr style live action adaption would be a dream come true)

Heh you know (considering i am posting about this on the OSA), i wonder if Tuomas will ever see this (having been a Dragonlance fan himself). It might be interesting as both a Dragonlance and Nightwish fan to hear his take on this animation project.
 
Had a chance to catch Sweeney Todd at a preview showing on Monday and what can I say? It was excellent. I was a bit worried how it would turn out because vocally it's quite a sing but I was very impressed how they managed. Of course it looked fantastic as well.
 
This thread needs a bit of a bump....
Haven't had much of a chance to watch stuff at work but this is what I've mangaed to catch recently:

Semi Pro - didn't do any business at all at work but I liked it. More of the same Will Ferrell really.

The Other Boleyn Girl- I was really looking forward to this because I am a bit of a Phillipa Gregory fangirl and of this book in particular but...it's not that I was disappointed, but as an adaptation of the novel it left a lot to be desired. Where was at least 3/4 of the novel? The characters were nothing like the book either. Still , a decent way to pass a couple of hours before work.

At home I watched Spartacus (a quality film. I can't believe I had this for years on my DVD shelf and never bothered to see it!) and Sense and Sensibility.
 
I'm starting to think I am the only one who posts in this thread...

It's starting to get well busy at work , lots of new films on the way. Funnily enough nothing that I'm very excited about. Am I getting jaded ?

Iron Man was excellent. Even though I'm not a big comic book fan I really enjoyed it. I must see if I can catch it again before we lose it next week.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal skull.... where do I start with this one? I'm not saying it was a bad film by any means but some of it was best described as random. It really divided opinion that's for sure. Some people were absolutely disgusted with it, others enjoyed it. I think the film makers were definitely trying to set up Shia leBoeuf as the new Indiana Jones, so if that thought sounds like an absolute heresy no you won't be happy with the film. I also think since people were fanboying a lot about the film they were bound to be disappointed.

21 was quite enjoyable but I did get annoyed when the Jim Sturgess character did something so utterly stupid it kind of irritated me. Look, you've spent half the movie setting up what a freaking genius this guy's meant to be why would he do something so dumb?

Forgetting Sarah Marshall was very funny. Even though I am not a big Russell Brand fan by any means he was actually quite tolerable in this.
 
Triple post! Shoot, I was actually semi-jesting when I said I was the only person who posts in this thread y'know!

Watched the 'Sex and the City' film and was quite surprised how much I enjoyed it. I was not a big fan of the TV show and had managed to avoid watching more than one episode for the entire six season run but it was not bad at all .

P.S Can someone else post in here now? Please?
 
I'm not really a big fan of movies. That's why i don't post in this thread much. That said, there are a few that i might have to actually break down and see - for better or worse. I always enjoyed Iron Man comics growing up, so i really should give that movie a go. For that matter, what 80's child can resist an Indiana Jones movie? As you and many others have said, it's a mixed bag. But i'll have to reserve my own judgment for my own experience.

I really don't understand why people make such a big deal over "Sex and the City". I have been a New Yorker all my life and i have yet to ever see anything that remotely resembles the ridiculously flamboyant lifestyle portrayed for that show. It barely did a passable job at examining sexuality of any kind, and now they have a movie exploring the same tired themes they wore out in the series? I suppose it is simply not targeted for someone like myself (a cynical guy who doesn't give a rats patoot about trivial things like involvements), but the way i see it, it seems that if you hype something up enough, people will go to see it; just to not feel left out when everyone else is talking about it.
 
Back again!
Looking forward to seeing Wanted and Prince Caspian on previews next week. I've got to make time to watch The Incredible Hulk as well. Probably after work if I have a day shift or something.
I really need to watch the rest of my DVD collection before buying more films! I was organising my collection the other day (see how exciting my life is, eh!) and I realised that I hadn't actually watched at least 40% of it.
 
Yes, I'm back!

I've been a tool and missed out on the 'Incredible Hulk'! Now I've got a choice of watching 'Hancock' or 'Prince Caspian' this week while I'm off work on holiday.

Watched 'Wanted' and while it was a big silly action romp, I couldn't help but love it. It was very funny as well, which I didn't expect.
It was a bit weird to see Morgan Freeman playing a badass though. I came out and lot of people were saying things like: 'Morgan Freeman doesn't swear, what's that all about?'
Angelina was good although I think she was going through her skinny phase and IMHO she didn't look that great. Poor woman.
James McAvoy was pretty good, but I tend to like him in most of his films. It helps that he's pretty easy on the eyes as well! Considering I wouldn't have put him as an action star , he did a good job.

At work, everyone is discussing dressing up for 'The Dark Knight' opening weekend. I have no idea what to dress as. I can't be Catwoman as I definitely don't have the figure for it. I'm stumped. Anyone got any ideas?
 
Watched Prince Caspian yesterday. It was not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I much preferred Edmund and Lucy to Peter and Susan. Those two were annoying as hell. I'm pretty sure that Susan and Caspian didn't have any kind of romance going on either. That was a bit confusing.

As I'm quite back into Harry Potter at the moment I'm hoping that 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince' is decent as there's a lot of stuff in this book I hope they don't cut out otherwise the ending isn't going to make a lot of sense. I don't hold out much hope though. Please don't leave out 'Spinner's End'!
 
Had a really shitty day at work , so I watched 'Wanted' again and then 'Lars and the real girl' on Directors Chair.
I really enjoyed it. It was quite touching the relationship Lars had even though it was with a sex doll which was weird at first. We didn't get it on general release so I had to wait for months for it to come out. Ryan Gosling did a good job on that one.

'Mamma Mia' is so damn popular at work we can't get in to see it yet. Of course the bosses are happy as it's been a bit quiet at the moment , but that's soon going to change with the summer holidays approaching. I'm dreading it.... lots of grumpy parents and rude kids who don't seem to know how to behave and kick off if you dare to tell them off for talking during the film, throwing things in screen and generally disrupting the showing.

Can't you just tell I lurve my job? No seriously I do, it's just it's frustrating!
 
'Dark Knight' tonight. I'm actually quite excited about this one! I'll let you guys know what I thought of it.

Also bought some new DVDs (Can you tell it's payday yet?) for watching at home when I feel antisocial. Although I still haven't watched last month's haul yet. I know, I'm a sucker for cheap DVDs....

The Magnificent Ambersons
Blowdry
The Four Feathers
Perfume: the story of a murderer
Michael Collins

Bonus point if you can spot the theme here! (Clue: It's an actor)

I really wanted to watch 'Truly Madly Deeply as one of my best friends is a complete fangirl of the movie and raved about it constantly, but my HMV sucks and they had to special order it in. I had to explain what the film was to the guy behind the counter. Honestly if it's not under three years old or an ultra popular comic book movie , they really don't want to know!
Is anyone excited about the 'Twilight' movie? I decided to read the book before the film came out so I don't get caught out again. Has anyone else read them , and what do they think?
 
Back again!
The Dark Knight was brilliant. Everyone did a great job on it. I would watch it again but it's been so busy at work they won't let us yet. Same with 'Mamma Mia'.Every seat sold every single night. The people of Aylesbury are obsessed with Abba, I tell you!
I'm not too fussed about watching' The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor' to be honest. It's really not my kind of movie and I know I'd be fidgeting and lol'ing at just how bad I would find it.
 
I know someone is going to think I am a terrible person, but honestly I liked Batman Begins better. Don't get me wrong I loved Dark Knight the acting was brilliant and I would see it again in a heart beat. But I don't know if it was the hype about it that let me down or if it is just a personal preference that I enjoyed the other more.