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Jingus

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Everything posted by Jingus

  1. Vince saying "The leg thing? Oh... that was a work!" got a very peculiar laugh out of me. It was one of those gasp-laughs you do when you're reacting in shock to something you genuinely never expected to hear, but it was also mixed with a falsetto shrieking of the word "what?!" and followed by that sort of wheezing you do when you're laughing so hard that your breath fails and the laugh turns silent. Immediately after watching the whole thing, I'm still not sure I didn't overdose on cough syrup while in the midst of a fever dream and just hallucinate the whole thing. Holy shit, this was WEIRD. It's literally a cross between Brickleberry and Rock & Wrestling, which is just the weirdest goddamn mix one could possibly imagine. Crazy Vince was hilarious, it was basically the Lapsed Fan caricature of him except actually played by the real guy, but the rest of the show was hit-or-miss at best. Most of the Lil' Superstars toddler versions of the wrestlers were pretty bad.
  2. Although it's further proof of my This Show Deliberately Avoids Badass Heroic Deaths theory. "Hey guys, remember that legendary swordfight we've all dreamed about for years? Turns out it was a glorified squash that Ned only won because his buddy stabbed the world's greatest warrior in the back. And it didn't even happen IN the tower, it was just in the tower's back yard." Guys, quit fantasy booking your "Jon is gonna chop Ramsey's head off in a moment of epic badassery!" stuff, because this show does not do that. A heel getting a death they "deserved" looks more like a bunch of guys horribly strangling to death on the gallows and it's not even remotely fulfilling or cathartic for the viewer. Above all else, this show is deliberately designed to make you feel like cold dead shit even on the rare occasions that the babyfaces "win".
  3. For unwanted-quote-box removal, use the Undo button, it's the left-pointing arrow on the second row of buttons. Others have phrased it perhaps more eloquently, but what bugs me the most about Zemo is that there was no reason to even call that guy Zemo in the first place. He's not the comic character, he's not even halfway close to remotely resembling the comic character. He's been altered more heavily than any other villain I can think of in the MCU. Why even bother claiming that he's Zemo? Save the real Zemo for a future movie or for a guest shot on one of the TV shows or something. Call this guy by some other name. I'm sure there's probably dozens of villain-of-the-week characters in the deep cuts of the Marvel archives who fit this person's backstory so much closer than Baron Not-This-Guy.
  4. Insert some overused gif of someone expressing extreme displeasure, Here. That book was actively bad, and I am legitimately bummed out that it sold THAT well. It was lame enough to make its own prequels read like some deep Victor Hugo life-changing shit in comparison.
  5. I can't believe any of you guys are actually defending this. That character is not Zemo. He's not even close to Zemo. They share practically zero connections, with only the most tenuous and circumstantial of "well they both kinda sorta blame Cap for killing their family" motivations and "they're both Machiavellian planners" being literally all that they have in common. They should have given him a different name, period, because he's less like the comic Zemo than Ben Kingsley was like the comic Mandarin.
  6. Seriously? They're making ANOTHER one of these fuckin' things? Okay, the other two made money; but still, it's not like there's much love left for Dan Brown out there anymore, his zeitgeist is dead and gone. I hope they at least do a total rewrite on the novel's ending, Inferno anticlimaxes with one of the weakest cop-outs that I've ever seen in my life. And I find it hilarious that they skipped trying to adapt The Lost Symbol, I guess making one of these conspiracy thrillers about American history would just be too controversial in the current GOD BLESS 'MURCA jingoistic era, so they just ignored it and went to the next one about exotic European shit again.
  7. In theory, sure, but Movie Crossbones was SO much closer to Comic Crossbones than Movie Zemo was to Comic Zemo that it's nearly impossible. Especially since the original Baron Zemo's character is based so heavily upon his backstory and his inherited legacy, none of which exists in the movie version.
  8. He's not German. He's not a Nazi. He's not the son of Heinrich Zemo. He's not a legacy supervillain in a long inherited line of the same. He's not a member of Hydra. He's not a scientist. He's not a world-class master of weapons. He has no personal history with Captain America. His face isn't disfigured. He doesn't wear a mask. He doesn't call himself "baron". Absolutely nothing about this guy says that he's Zemo in any way whatsoever. The Wolverine Origins version of Deadpool took fewer liberties with the character than Civil War takes with "Baron Zemo". They should have just called him another name, period, because the name is literally the only thing linking him to the classic villain.
  9. It's tough to judge a character from only two scenes, but Holland already made a tremendous impression. He does nerdy-teenage-outcast Peter Parker much better than Andrew Garfield did, and he does quippy-carefree-motormouth Spider-man much better than Tobey Maguire did. And it certainly doesn't hurt that I think his costume, special effects, and fight choreography all looked better here than they ever have before (that perfect sound effect for the web shooters!). So.. yeah, it MIGHT be the single best live-action portrayal of Spider-man we've ever seen. If nothing else, they didn't fuck anything up.
  10. For real. I mean, looking at the list, this is the same studio which has made: Jem and the Holograms 50 Shades of Grey A Million Ways to Die in the West Identity Thief "Dr. Seuss's" The Lorax The Thing remake Hop Little Fockers The Fourth Kind Land of the Lost Death Race I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry Doom The Chronicles of Riddick Van Helsing "Dr. Seuss's" Cat in the Hat Hulk The Life of David Gale The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas Patch Adams the Psycho remake Blues Brothers 2000 Waterworld Street Fighter Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot Cool as Ice Howard the Duck Dune The Sting 2 Xanadu 1941 The Concorde: Airport '79 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and finally Jaws 4: The Revenge (this time it's personal!) AND THEY HAVE THE BALLS TO CLAIM THAT THE GODDAMN WOLFMAN IS WHERE THEY SOLD OUT?!
  11. Because I live in fucking Texas, aka "Ayn Rand's wet-dream paradise of the government not giving you a single goddamn thing", my library access is pretty limited. We've got one here in my town, but it's so tiny (literally one room inside a strip mall on the town square) that I don't even bother going there, it's so small that it's just pathetic and depressing. In the next town over there's a much bigger and better one... which only allows people from outside that town to become members if they pay a hefty membership fee, even if you live in the same county. They justify said fee by saying "hey, you've got libraries in your own towns, you don't NEED to come here" when most of the local small-town libraries are similar to the glorified closet that I just mentioned. The only one I bother patronizing is one in the next county, where some kindly saint bent the rules and let me join up even though technically I shouldn't be allowed to go there. Back to movies: on the Things I'm Glad I Missed In The 90s, boy howdy is fucking Disturbing Behavior now very high on the list. It's like the douchebags who made the What You Did Last Summer movies decided to do a Stepford Wives remake, only it's actually much much worse than that (still-shitty) actual Stepford Wives remake. The first scene alone is some of the worst bullshit I've ever seen, when a guy murders a girl by breaking her neck while she's in the middle of blowing him. And it gets worse from there, and I don't even have the energy to go into all the ways it sucks, but godDAMN does it suck.
  12. I actually do think CW and BvS suffered from some of the same problems: too many characters to juggle, the trumped-up conflict between the feuding heroes feeling overly contrived, a lame villain who fooled more people than he really should have, and Wonder Woman/Spider Man making you wish you were watching their standalone movie instead of the flick we've actually got. Difference is, CW didn't suffer nearly as MUCH from those problems. It actually gave each and every one of its characters (aside from poor Agent 13) some stuff to do and individual moments to shine, while half of BvS's guest appearances only showed up in Youtube teasers. And except for T'Challa and Zemo, every single one of these people have been featured in previous movies which have already established who they are and what they do. The setup to make the heroes fight each other felt forced, but it was based on events from previous movies and nowhere near AS forced as BvS's ridiculous "he's very powerful... I MUST DESTROY HIM" so-called motivation (and CW's method of ENDING the fight was so incredibly better that it's not even worth discussing). The script's interpretation of Zemo sucked, but the actor was good enough in the part as written; meanwhile Eisenberg's Luthor was the single worst comic-book villain I've seen since Sam Jackson's ludicrous in-name-only version of The Octopus in Frank Miller's wretched The Spirit. And the sheer amount of personality that this movie managed to get out of Spider-man in what felt like less screen time than Wonder Woman got, just shows the different level of artistic talent in the different filmmakers' ability to impart information to the audience in an efficient manner. In literally just two scenes, we know who Peter is, what kind of person he is, what his powers are, why he does what he does; all kinds of things we still don't know about Wonder Woman at the end of her movie. And one BIG difference: the action is totally, incomparably, infinitely better in Civil War. Even the stairway fight that Matt mentioned was easily superior to any fight scene in Batman v Superman, and said stairway fight was only like the FIFTH-best action scene in its own movie.
  13. I saw it, and I'm in the "it's good but not great" category. I liked the first two Cap movies better. It leans a lot harder on fight scenes than the previous installments; and while the one at the airport is admittedly perfect and glorious, the action scenes are so frequent that they started feeling repetitive. Too many of the philosophical ideas it brought up were just abandoned by the need to show Cap hitting even more guys in the face with his shield. And "Baron Zemo" was bullshit, through and through. Exactly what the fuck about this character WAS supposed to be Zemo in the first place? Aside from "he's a white guy who schemes to take down Steve Rogers", there's literally not one single goddamn similarity between Frederich Zoller here and the character in the comics. He's not Helmut Zemo, period. Shit, the Mandarin (as presented in the first half of IM3 anyway) had more in common with the comic book villain than this guy had in common with any version of Baron Zemo. They shouldn't have even used that name, it's simply not the same character at all. AND his plan was nonsense, a ridiculously contrived method involving way too many variables to predict the things he predicted, all in service of showing Tony a video which he could've just uploaded to fuckin' Youtube instead. And SERIOUSLY, we're fighting ANOTHER villain which Tony Stark managed to create through his own careless actions in the past? How many fucking times do we have to reuse this same cliche?
  14. I've also never even heard of Hesher, but it looks interesting. Dogtooth is... well, it's SOMETHING alright. Fearlessly acted, and with a premise that I don't think I've ever seen before. Awfully hard to watch at certain points, though.
  15. I liked that one too. Hardly the greatest film ever made, but it was a perfectly acceptable werewolf flick. Nicely R-rated too, it really got across the "unstoppable murder train" aspect of werewolves in a graphic manner. And the HEAVILY overqualified cast of damn fine character actors certainly didn't hurt; this is one of the rare times I've ever seen Anthony Hopkins actually looking like he wanted to be there in any movie after the turn of the century. Werewolf makeup by Rick Baker, music by Danny Elfman, and no less a living legend than Walter Murch as the editor. Aside from a bit too much obvious CGI, I thought it all worked pretty well. Yet the reception was insanely negative when the movie came out, everyone just buried the living shit out of this movie as if it was The Howling part 9 or An American Werewolf in Amsterdam or Team Jacob: The Motion Picture or some damn thing like that.
  16. The words "starring John Cusack" are all I needed to hear to file it under shitty. I can count on one hand the number of movies I've seen where that guy actually impressed me at all, I've never understood his appeal. Although Cell might still be good, because it was made by... oh... aw, fuck. Directed by the guy who did Paranormal Activity 2, written by the guy who did the Last House on the Left remake. Nevermind. As for Mummy/Dracula comparisons, it's important to remember just how much those two were practically made by the exact same people. Same producers, same writer, same editor, same costume designer, same makeup designer, same matte painter... hell, same assistant cameraman. And the exact same actors playing "the whitebread hero guy" and "the elderly mentor dude". AND depending on who you believe about whether Karl Freund was actually in charge on the set of Dracula, maybe even the same director. So of course the two films are gonna look remarkably similar. For the record, I probably like The Mummy better; it's a bit less memorable than Dracula was, but it's missing the various embarrassing low points which really weighed down the vampire picture.
  17. Yeah, that old "if it's for kids, then it can't be fun for adults nor can it be Serious Art" is a stigma which is programmed deep into our brains by the way our society has worked for the past century or more. Despite being a childless bachelor, I seem to remain fortunately immune and can easily kill an entire happy afternoon with a Teen Titans Go! marathon. YEAH. One of the most visually gorgeous things I've ever seen in my life. In fact (...checks IMDB...), why haven't I watched the director's next movie, Song of the Sea? It's brilliant, impeccably crafted and hilariously funny. You know how when you saw the movies Ben Affleck directed, and you're all like "damn, he was an okay actor, but he's a great filmmaker"? Same thing with Lake Bell here. It's a crying shame that she's never made anything else besides short films and a few episodes of Children's Hospital, but she is finally in production now on another movie she's writing/directing. They're both worthwhile. I've seen all the major movie versions of Jane Eyre and a couple of TV adaptations as well, and Fukunaga easily did the best job with the material. Fassbender provides a much more human and accessible version of Mr. Rochester than is the norm, and Mia Wasikowska shocked me with a performance which is way above her usual par. The score is pretty hauntingly beautiful as well It's certainly easier to watch than ANY version of Wuthering Heights, which is just one of the most suffocatingly nihilistic stories I've ever encountered in my entire life. Yet even so, I'd eagerly recommend the Andrea Arnold version; she does an even better job than Fukunaga at handling the material in a jarringly personal, contemporary-feeling manner where they come across as living breathing bleeding human beings rather than historical waxworks. It feels more like you're watching 12 Years a Slave than the sort of stuffy corseted diorama that you usually imagine when you hear "Victorian-era period piece". Agreed that Anchorman 2 wasn't as good as the first one, but, well, "it made me laugh more frequently and with greater force and volume than any other movie I saw that year" is pretty much my whole defense there. As for Expendables 2, I'd argue that it's better than the first one. Better-choreographed action sequences, less jerky handheld camerawork, less reliance on obvious CGI, less time wasted on extraneous subplots, better use of the special guest cameos, and a much better villain. It juuuuuuust missed my list too, partly because of "I liked the first one better", but also partly because it was just all over the goddamn map. The tense dramatic stuff involving the intricate gangland intrigue felt like I was watching Infernal Affairs IV, but then it would suddenly spring Baseball Boy and Hammer Girl on you as if this were a Stephen Chow flick. I liked both parts, I'm just not sure I liked 'em in the same movie. Felt like filet mignon topped with neapolitan ice cream.
  18. That reeks of "different librarians are in charge of those two different shelves". But really the only surprise is that your library actually has enough Blurays to need separate genre sections. The entire Bluray selection at my local lenders takes up a grand total of one or two shelves apiece.
  19. I dunno how I missed John Wick or Iron Man 3. Kinda surprised I'm the only one who voted for Bridesmaids, Tangled, and Frozen. Sadly less surprised that I was the sole vote for Tusk, Machete Kills, The Village of Shadows, The Expendables 2, Your Highness, Texas Chainsaw 3D, Anchorman 2, Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever, Hatchet II, and Hobo with a Shotgun. I do really wish more people had seen Cropsey, The To-Do List, Labor Day, The Dead, Peep World, The Homesman, In a World, and The Secret of Kells. Ah well, at least one lone soul apiece had my back with Melancholia and How to Train your Dragon.
  20. Yeah, it's weird. That scene was shot and edited in such an odd way that I expected there was some kind of swerve coming. Stannis seemed distracted, appeared to be looking at something behind Brienne, and then we didn't actually see the coup de grace. Everything about that said "they were interrupted at the last second". But afterwards Brienne hasn't even mentioned it, and the Boltons seem to think Stannis is dead (although they don't know who killed him), so I guess they just made it weird and swervy for no fucking reason whatsoever.
  21. I'd send one if I had seen more movies. As it is, I couldn't even come up with 10 that I'd want to rank on any kind of list.
  22. Not really a spoiler. The show has pulled far ahead of the books now, in almost every storyline (Arya's training, the Ironborn choosing a new leader, and a few smaller C-level subplots are the only place where the books still have more material). A Dance With Dragons ended with Jon getting assassinated in the exact same way that last season ended with it. We don't know him... but the producers and writers who run Game of Thrones certainly know him. I'm sure they've had countless talks over the direction of the show, they've even publicly said that GRRM has told them the entire ending of the story just in case he dies suddenly before completing the books. And I gotta laugh at all this "I'm sure now that Hero X will now subject Villain Y to Satisfying Death Z!" talk. Come on, guys. Have you SEEN this show? They don't do big heroic comeuppances. Even the had-it-coming deaths like those of Tywin and Joffrey were still calculated to leave you feeling cold and empty and almost sympathetic for the dying villain. Sheeyit, even Brienne finally getting her long-wished-for revenge on Stannis was handled in such a way that it didn't feel victorious or cathartic in the least. Every single time that the "heroes" rarely manage to "win", it's always deliberately undercut in some fashion to make us still feel like shit.
  23. There's one big problem with White Walkers being the super-dominant heel force to rule the land forevermore. Simply put, can they even exist in warm climates? It seems like they need winter weather to operate, and couldn't infest the southern lands during the long summer years. Of course, that's ignoring the fact that Westeros's version of winter has never made any damn sense at all. Aside from being physically improbable from an astronomy standpoint (which you could technically explain with "well, this world has magic, so... shit happens"), the books never make it clear exactly how human beings are supposed to be able to survive living in such a frozen wasteland for years on end. I don't care how much food they store away during the summer times, they could never preserve enough supplies to make it through that long a winter. Especially since the very beginning of the season has already brung such vicious snowstorms to Winterfell that the snowdrifts are literally ten or twenty feet deep outside the castle. Presumably it would get even worse over time. How could people live like that, buried under mountains of snow for years on end with all the plants dead and probably all the animals soon following suit? Even in severe northern cultures from the Vikings to the Eskimos to the various people who've lived in Siberia, they never survived anywhere that STAYED frozen all year long. Even in Antarctica, you only get indigenous animal life on the outer coast, where fauna have mostly adapted to live off whatever they can fish out of the ocean. Further inland, where it stays appropriately Beyond-The-Wall-ish on a permanent basis, there's pretty much no life whatsoever.
  24. You would think Piper might remember that the WWF didn't even do any pinfalls at all in their cage matches. I'm pretty sure they used the Escape To Win rules for literally the entire time Piper worked there. (Although Snuka did lose the match, albeit in a screwy fashion.)
  25. What happened is Chyna/Chono turned out to be a horrible match at a Tokyo Dome where poor Joanie put on maybe the worst performance of her life. She just was not remotely a good fit for NJPW, she needed to be able to script most of her match beforehand and obviously that's pretty hard to do with someone who doesn't speak the same first language as you.
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