EVA

Well, I think another one of the things that makes this the best franchise going right now is that they don't seem all that concerned with hitting the expected plot points or rushing to the next thing that's supposed to happen. I mean, obviously, we know this is all heading toward a planet ruled by talking apes, but they don't seem to be in a tremendous hurry to get there and are instead content to tell whatever story they find interesting along the way. Like, you don't watch DAWN and get the sense that it's just killing time until an astronaut shows up and says get your stinking paws off me yadda yadda yadda. In fact, I bet we never see that story in this franchise. I get the sense this production team would rather tell you a story you don't know than just retell the same old story everyone knows by heart.

Sony has officially been thrown into disarray over the ASM franchise. ASM3 has been bumped to 2018, at which point Andrew Garfield will be staring down the barrel of THIRTY-FIVE. By the time it hits theaters, it will almost be time to recast Peter - and reboot again! Also, the SINISTER SIX movie that nobody wants was bumped up to November of 2016. I'd guess that's why Drew Goddard had to leave the Daredevil show. It almost makes you wonder if they're setting up SIX to fail so they can scrap the series and start over.

Moreover: Next season will be set in 1979 and feature young Lou (!!!!!). (Although I guess young Lou can't be played by Keith Carradine, so...maybe fewer !'s?) But it won't air until Fall of '15.

I'm generally over the meme where you play Jim Ross commentary over a non-wrestling video, but if anything ever deserved it, it's those two kodiaks squaring off.

You know the sound of thunder, don't you? Could you imagine it, if I asked you to? LISTEN TO THE THUNDER.

You're on to DEADWOOD now? Did you only do the first season of HANNIBAL?

The same day I saw DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES in the theater, I came home and watched SNOWPIERCER on demand. So I ended up seeing the two best movies of the summer back to back. What a great day of cinema! Then I immediately ruined it by watching SHITTY OLDBOY. And, boy, was it shitty. I know Spike Lee has pleaded major studio interference on this, but I really don't see where there's a better movie buried in there. Literally every choice this movie makes is wrong.

Well, damn, now I know how Niners felt last weekend. Nobody wants to talk about this awesome movie. Which leads me to believe people haven't seen this awesome movie. More people need to see this awesome movie. Meanwhile, DAWN only dropped a flat 50% in its second weeekend, which is the best hold for one of these types of movies all year. I'll be interested to see how it does against HERCULES and LUCY next week, two movies which could go either way - both look like trash that nobody would give a second thought to if not for the hot stars in the lead.

I've gotten pretty good at turning that one around in my old age and making them feel like the dumbass. If you're at all familiar with their TV viewing habits, asking them if they think whatever bullshit reality show they're into is "real" usually puts an end to that.

Careful. You're on the verge of going from "sympathetic guy whose former friends turned out to be twats" to "twat who used to hang out with other twats."

Seriously, some people just can't wait to get offended by something. I'm sure that little girl had the time of her life. 1) if you have the time of your life at age 9, BUMMER.2) I think I'm entitled to hate on a dude who cost me good, close friendships with his bullshit. I think I'm in the clear to do that. Like, you know how people say "did he kick your dog or something?" He didn't but because of that video I lost the respect of a good man I confided in while my dad was dying, so fuck Kenny Omega. Don't act like "grown man attacks a child" is an easy thing to understand for anyone outside the wrestling bubble. If your friends are abandoning you over a Kenny Omega match, you may need to get a better class of friends, because that is some seriously weak shit. It sucks that you got treated like that, but I think it says more about your friends than it does you, wrestling, or Omega. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with those people?

I finally saw this today, so I thought I'd take it upon myself to start up a thread for spoilery discussion of DAWN and future installments of what is suddenly the most interesting franchise in Hollywood right now. Because DAWN was...excellent, and so unlike most anything else Hollywood churns out this time of year. I mean, if you took out the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of CGI, it could've almost been a play. All the action takes place in basically two locations, and it's all firmly rooted in character. Everything that happens is the result of plausible, sensible character motivations and understandable misperceptions based on limited information. It's classical storytelling in a context where, sadly, you don't see it much anymore. I can't tell you what at breath of fresh air it was to see a big summer blockbuster franchise where the plot wasn't some variation of "We've got to get the Magic Thing from Wherever" or "We've got to stop Evil Man from using some preposterous means to destroy the City/World/Universe." DAWN, at its heart, is a simple story of two disparate groups of people (well, in this case, a group of people and a group of apes) who have to figure out how to live with each other, if they can at all. Things certainly get small-scale apocalyptic for them by the end, but even once the CG has kicked into overdrive and shit is blowing up, it never stops being about people (and apes) making weighty choices regarding how they're going to live. It's a shockingly adult take on monkeys riding horses and firing machine guns. This was probably the best melancholy ending to a summer blockbuster since Batman and Commisioner Gordon agreed to lie about Harvey Dent at the end of THE DARK KNIGHT. Several movies of this sort have tried to pull the "hero has to make a moral compromise" ending in the wake of that, but none have really earned them the way DAWN did. I haven't seen more than 15% of RISE OF...(basically just the rampage at the end), but after this one, I think I'm in for whatever comes next.

Well, season 1 is free if you're a Prime member. Season 2 is $2 an episode or $20-$30 for the season. I recently had to delete my recordings of season 2 for space reasons, and I am *just* crazy enough for this show to pay that insane amount of money to be able to revisit it. Hopefully I can stay strong until it goes free, probably in January. (As if I'm not going to buy the blu-ray set for all the extras, anyway.)

It's definitely coming back. Last week they announced a 24 Comic Con panel. Ostensibly it was a "celebration of LIVE ANOTHER DAY," but come on...Studios don't pay for Con time unless they have something to promote. The cliffhanger basically confirmed that they'll be announcing a new season. Which makes sense. This season didn't set the ratings on fire, but it was a solid hit that helped carry FOX through the early summer, so why wouldn't they do another one. The short schedule makes it much more financially feasible to keep on the air.

I'm skimming over this APES talk, so I don't know what exactly is being said, but I'd appreciate it if we could be mindful of spoilerz in this thread.

More thoughts on THE STRAIN: -The thing that struck me the most was how...disinterested most of Del Toro's direction seemed. Like, 80% of that episode could've been directed by anybody. He only seemed to wake up whenever he was doing a scene that showed off his crazy creature effects and production design. And, as always, that stuff looked incredible*. But I don't know if I can get into a show that seems positively bored with, you know, people stuff. *Except Corey Stoll's wig. We've got 9-foot tall ornately engraved caskets, still-beating disembodied hearts, and all manner of undead in various states of decay and dismemberment...but we can't get the leading man a plausible wig. I appreciated the audacity of Stoll to run his fingers through it a few times. -Have GDT or Hogan ever actually watched a press conference for a mass casualty event? Unfortunately, I, and I presume all of us, have seen a great number of such press conferences over the past several years. They are typically quite orderly, calculated affairs. I can't imagine a tragedy involving 200 deaths where a press conference would be handled by one unprepared guy who was basically tricked into doing it. -They really wasted no time diving right into Eph's wife being the classic disapproving spouse who wants her husband to stop doing the thing he's really good at. Embrace that trope, guys. -I know it's only the pilot, so maybe there will be some development going forward, but damn, you'd expect GDT to do better than the cholo stereotypes that were all over this episode. -"That force...is LOVE."

First name Greatest, last name Ever.

Oh, STRAIN. What a piece of shit you are going to be. I wish Guillermo had better taste in writing partners. Just anybody who could write decent dialogue would be a good start. For instance, someone who wouldn't write an air traffic controller to remark of airplanes, "They're like buildings...with wings!"

I had to give up my Showtime recently, which means I'm out on MASTERS OF SEX for the time being, unfortunately. So I guess that means I'm in on THE STRAIN tonight instead. I don't have high expectations, but hopefully it'll be fun and a little smarter than your average WALKING DEAD episode.

I'm surprised more people haven't seen it yet. I was planning on seeing it Friday, but plans changed and now I have to wait until next weekend.

I like the way Jack's character develops over the course of the series. At first, you assume he's playing the same, straight mentor/authority figure role that Larry Fishburne has played dozens of times over, and then gradually you realize that he's actually kind of a shitty dude. He's a narcissist who will use up and destroy anybody to catch the bad guys, if that's what it takes.

But Molly Shannon's Murder Family. Come on.

I don't know, but I'd wager it's a digital thing. I heard Fuller say once that most of the visual aesthetic of the show is accomplished through extensive post-production work, primarily because the show's budget is so small and it's necessary to dress up the physical production.

You'll have to be patient with the next few episodes. Like most young shows, there's an awkward period where they're trying to figure out how this concept works episodic TV show, and some of the episodes work, and some of them are Molly Shannon's Murder Family. The first season of HANNIBAL reminds me a lot of the first season of JUSTIFIED. Great pilots (I liked it a lot), followed by a rough transitional period, then a killer homestretch after they get everything figured out that sets the table for an incredible 2nd season. Which both also delivered. I really think the HANNIBAL pilot is fucking master class in writing a pilot, though. Fuller does burn through character introductions and whatnot in the early going, and he does lean heavily on easy signifiers to help accomplish that, but when you're selling a network on a show called HANNIBAL, you kinda have to deliver them Hannibal sooner rather than later. I bet Fuller fought a war with executives to keep Hannibal offscreen until the 3rd act. The snippet of him preparing a meal just before the 3rd break reeked of a studio note. "People are going to think they're watching the wrong show if you don't get Hannibal on there sooner!" So the first two acts were kinda the price of doing business. That said, even in a rush, Fuller communicates all the information you need clearly and efficiently. It would have been so easy to fuck it up, but he lands everything.

If HOUSE OF CARDS was a movie, Kevin Spacey wouldn't get so much as a sniff of any kind of nomination. But since it's a TV show, he gets graded on the "Being a Movie Star" scale, so he's going to be blocking a more deserving actor from getting a nomination for as long as that dumb show runs.