EVA

I figured this one would separate the men from the boys. I'm not going to be able to finish it tonight, but I do intend to finish it at some point in the next week or so.

I'm bummed because I'm not going to be able to see it this weekend due to travel. Granted, I'm traveling to visit my newborn nephew, so...not the worst reason to miss a movie, I guess.

No, I'm saying the way the field used to look with nothing on it but the lines and hashes looked like the sort of shitty field you'd find in "the bad part of town," that, like, a youth league would play on or something.

The new turf and the logo isn't going anywhere as long as Kelly is there. This is another example of him dragging Notre Dame football into the new millennium. Their turf has been sub-par by the standards of modern college football for years now. If they couldn't keep it in good condition, there was no excuse for not going to field turf. Can't be a first-class program with shitty grass. They'll be able to play faster now, which is what Kelly wants. The logo is a selling point for recruits, so the field looks like an actual big-time college field and not a decrepit high school field in the bad part of town. Kelly will get those diagonal lines out of the endzone before he's done. These traditional programs often need an outsider to come in and point out ingrained stupidity. "Why are we doing this?" If they don't have a better answer than "Because it's tradition!," then it probably needs to go. Saban junked all kinds of stuff when he got to Alabama.

I think you've already wasted more words on TYRANT than most actual TV critics have bothered to.

Broken Record Time: I had to give up my Showtime, so I'm missing it, and it's killing me inside. Fun Fact I Learned Today About MASTERS OF SEX: Paul Bettany was originally signed on as William Masters but quit when Lizzy Caplan was cast as Virginia. Apparently he didn't think she was a good enough actress for the part. LOL

We thought it would be shit!

He was just like, "Well, I can scratch that appointment with the urologist off my to-do list."

Recap of THE STRAIN, episode 3: A man's cock and balls fell into the toilet while he was taking a piss.

1st season of RECTIFY is excellent. It's kind of a throwback to early-era MAD MEN/BREAKING BAD. Very methodically paced, often times more poetic than narrative. I haven't watched an episode of the 2nd season yet, which is airing now, I think. Guess I'm just going to wait to stream it.

There was an interesting little note from the Marvel TV presentation where they said they were lining up the Russo Brothers and Joe Johnston to direct early episodes of AGENT CARTER. I'm not sure why they didn't get Johnston to shoot the pilot, since he created the palette for the movie that spawned the series, but it's all pretty cool nonetheless. Also makes you wonder why they didn't put similar heft behind the SHIELD show, though. Lord knows it needed it.

Finally finished WATCH DOGS today. It was alright. A much better first effort than the original ASSASSIN'S CREED, but far, far below the best games of that series. Chapter 2 (out of 5) is a total slog, though, with 15 tedious fucking missions. No other chapter had more than 8 or 9. I imagine most people who quit on the game did so at some point during that chapter, because I was certainly tempted to. But I persevered, and I found the last 3 chapters were much brisker and had more interesting missions. Still not great, but definitely enjoyable in a way the first half of the game isn't.

That looks way better than what I was expecting, honestly.

Yep. Bullock is a long, tall drink of self-loathing and barely-contained rage. Olyphant is such a terrific actor. He played basically the same part in DEADWOOD and JUSTIFIED (violently angry lawman who is far less righteous than he'd like people to think), yet comes up with two distinctly different people.

Seriously, I think Zeidler is worse in this thread than FSW ever was in the Marvel thread. At the very least, I can't recall FSW ever complaining that people were talking about Marvel movies in the Marvel thread. ("Could we get a separate thread for BLADE so I don't have to look at this bullshit anymore?")

They're stuck in a weird place. They definitely need more time than their original date next summer...but they really don't need another whole year. But you can't put this movie out at any other time of year, so...We're stuck with the longest promotional build-up in the history of cinema. Or so it will feel like.

Bryan Mills

TWO DAMN YEARS UNTIL THIS MOVIE?

Yeah, the guy was basically immobilized by his gout, if I recall correctly. I imagine him being a bit more stout. But it's not that important.

Hey!...Looks like Wonder Woman. I'm sure some will bemoan the lack of star-spangled knickers, but it's unmistakably, unapologetically Wonder Woman.

So the hot rumor out of SDCC is that Maisie Williams will be playing Ellie in the adaptation THE LAST OF US. I really don't see the point of adapting this video game (besides $$$, I know). It's a highly cinematic telling of a very specific story. It's not like ASSASSIN's CREED, where you could take the general premise as a jumping off point to tell new stories. I see no need to watch the same story again with humans in place of animation.

"Goodbye, yellow brick road..."

Is it just me, or does the AoU Quicksilver costume look kinda...low rent? It basically just looks like a guy wearing an Under Armor shirt and some black pants. Not the most inspired design. I thought maybe the early spy shots from the set were a precursor look to whatever his actual costume would be, but now that same look is turning up in the promo materials. Granted, the other Quicksilver turned out to be a lesson in not judging these things until you see them in the context of the movie, so...we'll see, I guess.

Season 3 Nuggets from the SDCC panel: -Next season begins 1 year after the finale. -The episode titles will be Italian. -Francis Dollarhyde will pop up midway through, similar to the Vergers last season. -It's official that Chilton is alive, but I feel like Fuller wasn't even trying to keep that a secret.

Okay, let's talk about some of this, at last. I'm not sure when anyone was supposed to be doing this. After Ceaser was shot, the village was set on fire, the apes were in a panic and the women and children were immediately sent into hiding while Koba hustled all the males off to war, and the humans were running for their lives. Even if someone had a thought to spare for Ceasar's body in the aftermath, they would have to assume it had burned up with the rest of the village. Okay, first, on the subject of apes learning to shoot guns in general: This is what folks in the screenwriting biz call a "buy-in." It's just something you have to be willing to accept within the context of the story, and either you can or you can't. They're not going to waste time trying to convince you of something preposterous. Buy it and come along on the story, or don't. For me, I was so invested in the story they were telling at that point, I was more than willing to go along with monkeys shooting guns while riding horses (and I was NOT AT ALL beforehand). As implausible as it was, "apes with guns" seemed necessary to the themes of the story. Secondly, I don't think there was any implication that the apes were instantly as effective with guns as the humans. In fact, they didn't seem all that accurate with them at all. They really only seemed capable of pointing them in a general direction and spraying. Which was lethal up close, but not all that effective from a distance. The humans were lighting their asses up (recall the brutal scene where Blue Eyes looks on in horror as Ceasar's promise that many apes would die in a war comes true) and winning the battle handily until the apes took down the tank and breached the wall. Koba definitely turned into Super Ape at the end, there's no question. Maybe it could've been toned down in spots, but I don't think it was a dealbreaker for the movie or anything. This is just wrong, though. Ceasar was shot with a gun. We're given no indication up to that point that the apes have ever seen another ape use a gun. Who else would they suspect but the humans, whom they are generally distrustful of and have done some sketchy things of late, including smuggling a gun into their territory? And again, it was a mass panic situation being orchestrated by Koba. Even if Maurice or Rocket had been like, "Hold up, y'all, Koba been acting crazy lately," nobody was in the mindset to listen to them and parse out the evidence (not that they would've had any evidence as powerful as the gun anway). I disagree with "worthless," but I would say there was a dropoff in characterization after Malcolm and Dreyfus. Kirk Acevada's character was just an asshole with no redeeming qualities, and Malcolm's family were just there to be saintly. Although I did appreciate that his son wasn't written to be an obnoxious brat or an idiot who constantly fell into danger. He didn't really have a plan beyond giving Ceasar a chance to take down Koba and get the apes under control. Which is exactly what he said to Dreyfus. Really, the bad thing about that situation was that the explosion didn't actually take down the tower and kill all the apes. It was not very effective at all. So it kinda made him look bad that he almost ruined everything with a half-assed plan.