What I've Been Watching: The Catch-All Film Thread

He had to make the shortest of the books into a trilogy somehow, right? Actually, it was that move that sent the movie from 'theater' to 'digital rental' for me … I knew it would be loaded with ponderous exposition and crap filler.

Yeah, and I was actually ready to give him a pass on that. I thought, ok, maybe he can get some really interesting and new stuff in there - but it's mostly just endless CGI with no tension. The Mirkwood scene was somewhat interesting, even if Radaghast was turned into yet another joke by Jackson.

It was obvious padding and cheap thrills - like a bad Lucas movie.

I think the worst part of the movie is what happens with the demise of the Goblin King. I can't think of a worse way to turn the whole thing into a farce.

Anyway, I don't know what's happening with IMDB and the majority opinion. I know I can be grumpy and harsh - but there's just no way every single extra expensive blockbuster can be an 8+ movie without fail.

Used to be that after a few weeks - you could get a reasonably accurate idea of the quality of a movie, but that hasn't been true for a few years. I think it started with Avatar - or am I imagining that?

LotR was a great trilogy - and I consider FotR to be a masterpiece. But it's clear that the magic is gone and Jackson has no passion for staying even remotely true to the material left. He's back in complete camp mode with heavy emphasis on crass humor and how monsters can look extreme.

Sometimes I like crass humor, but it has NO PLACE in Tolkien - damn it!
 
Used to be that after a few weeks - you could get a reasonably accurate idea of the quality of a movie, but that hasn't been true for a few years. I think it started with Avatar - or am I imagining that?

It all depends on the movie and the hype ... Titanic is a great example. It went from 'bestest movie EVAR' to 'fetid pile of rubbish' to 'solid but overrated' over the course of years. The Matrix sequels were also over-hyped based on the first movie, and I think THAT one has suffered by the moderation of opinion on the sequels (i.e. they weren't that bad ... but the first wasn't as good either).

But I think that in movies like everything else, the death of print media and the need for clicks and some ways to generate online revenue have led to 'bought' reviews, and with public opinion you have too much 'political' stuff where some people will be giving Hobbit 10/10 based purely on it being Tolkein and Jackson ... and so on. THAT sort of stuff has definitely gotten worse. Also, as shown on Facebook, Amazon and Twitter ... opinions are for sale, and there are people making money selling '50 genuine 5 star reviews for $10' or whatever.
 
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It all depends on the movie and the hype … Titanic is a great example. It went from 'bestest movie EVAR' to 'fetid pile of rubbish' to 'solid but overrated' over the course of years. The Matrix sequels were also over-hyped based on the first movie, and I think THAT one has suffered by the moderation of opinion on the sequels (i.e. they weren't that bad … but the first wasn't as good either).

Well, I guess it has always been true to an extent. I never thought Titanic was particularly bad, I just felt the love story was nauseating :)

As for The Matrix - I think the first one was a true masterpiece - and I really like the second one. I don't like the third movie, however.

But I think that in movies like everything else, the death of print media and the need for clicks and some ways to generate online revenue have led to 'bought' reviews, and with public opinion you have too much 'political' stuff where some people will be giving Hobbit 10/10 based purely on it being Tolkein and Jackson … and so on. THAT sort of stuff has definitely gotten worse. Also, as shown on Facebook, Amazon and Twitter … opinions are for sale, and there are people making money selling '50 genuine 5 star reviews for $10' or whatever.

Sometimes, I do feel like a conspiracy nut for thinking that reviews are bought - and I sometimes feel like I'm a really old grumpy bastard for being negative when others are so positive - but my (hopefully) rational mind is ultimately what gets me to my opinions.

So, I can but stare in wonder at so many extremely overbloated scores for what I think are really, really bad movies - or average movies at best. I know some of that has to do with my age - but it can't just be that. Something IS definitely off, but I wouldn't quite know what.

Maybe I really am from another planet....
 
No. It's the reason #1. You don't want to abuse human stupidity? You'll never get rich. Even if you do win a lottery or something, the fortune will melt soon.

Another reason, but not that important as it's not as easy as the first one, is that you don't know how to cash in illegal stuff.
 
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No. It's the reason #1. You don't want to abuse human stupidity? You'll never get rich. Even if you do win a lottery or something, the fortune will melt soon.

Another reason, but not that important as it's not as easy as the first one, is that you don't know how to cash in illegal stuff.

No, the number one reason is that I have no interest in earning billions.

How about we get back on topic? You can PM me - if you have more theories about how I work as a person.
 
We are on topic. It's still about Hobbit.
Only we're not discussing CGI in the movie but direction, screenplay and sales.
 
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As for The Matrix - I think the first one was a true masterpiece - and I really like the second one. I don't like the third movie, however.

It's also a matter of taste. And taste can hardly be argued. Case in point: I liked the Hobbit a lot. And thought the second Matrix movie was awful. (similar to the second and third transformers movies. for some reason, I liked the first one for the CGI alone).
 
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It's also a matter of taste. And taste can hardly be argued. Case in point: I liked the Hobbit a lot. And thought the second Matrix movie was awful. (similar to the second and third transformers movies. for some reason, I liked the first one for the CGI alone).

Of course it's a matter of taste, what else would it be?

But unless we all just agree that every single movie in the world is equally good because of subjective tastes - there's room for debate about ratings.

Now, I can fully accept that if you don't care about certain things that I care about - like staying true to Tolkien (especially in terms of tone) and not stretching things with padding like butter over too much bread and so on - then you might like The Hobbit. That's fine.

But I'll have a harder time accepting people who claim it does justice to the writing, though even justice can be very subjective.
 
Of course it's a matter of taste, what else would it be?

But unless we all just agree that every single movie in the world is equally good because of subjective tastes - there's room for debate about ratings.

Now, I can fully accept that if you don't care about certain things that I care about - like staying true to Tolkien (especially in terms of tone) and not stretching things with padding like butter over too much bread and so on - then you might like The Hobbit. That's fine.

But I'll have a harder time accepting people who claim it does justice to the writing, though even justice can be very subjective.

I've read the book a few years ago, and the only thing that I noticed being changed was:
they made Azog the main villain, and yeah, that was a bit disappointing. And they kind of simplified the explanation as to the whole dwarves and elves distrusting each other.

But that didn't really bother me all that bad. I was just ecstatic about being back in Middle-Earth. And imo they captured the same authentic Middle-Earth feeling that the LOTR trilogy had.
 
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The Hobbit was somewhere around 6.5/10 for me.
I was mostly satisfied with the portrayal of stuff from the book, liked all three main actors in their roles and liked the environmental side of things.
Highlights would probably be the dwarves singing Lonely Mountain and the Gollum sequence.

With few in my book minor exceptions (stone giants, overused main theme), most of the film´s problems stem from the additional material.
I liked the Rivendell part of the necromancer storyline, but the rest of the setup blew due to plodding tempo and prominently featured over the top character.
The orc storyline I´ve found pretty much disposable altogether as it didn´t add much depth to a concerned character anyway and it din´t fit either stylistically or tonally.
The way both storylines were implemented resulted in a film with 4 beginnings and generally scattered/unfocused feel of its first 2/3 or so, aka rather substantial pacing problems.

I´ve seen it in 24 fps, so no comments on 48 or 3D from me (I´ve noticed few camera takes obviously directed with 3D in mind, but nothing too distracting).

I´m not sure what to expect from the next part, but, positively speaking, I think that after the sloppy beginnings the necromancer storyline might be potentially a neat addition and the generally slower tempo might prove beneficial to the depiction of the core stuff from the book. I´m really unconvinced by the worthiness of the orc story though.

All in all, I´m glad the book´s material found its way to the silver screen at least in this form, but so far this is not shaping up quite as well as the LotR trilogy (I think FotR is quite by far the best LotR film though, so there´s still some chance Jackson will surprise and even the score with the other two Hobbit films).
 
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Except the problems have to do with more than the changes, and especially the tone and handling of the material.

That said, I don't remember burping competitions or the Goblin King joking about being killed. I doubt that's Tolkien. I also don't remember Bilbo turning action hero and assaulting orcs in the first half of the book.

I read The Hobbit about once every year or two - and I like it just as much today as I did when I was ten years old.

The movie, however, was utterly awful and no amount of articles will change how I felt when I watched it.
 
Right.
I can re-watch any of the Lord of the Rings movies but I don't think I will ever feel like seeing The Hobbit again. To me the other movies were epic. The Hobbit was a snoozer until Gollum showed up but very unsatisfying as a whole.

I will watch the rest of the series just because I am a LOTR fan but I am extremely dissapointed by this one.
 
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I've seen the Hobbit twice now so I guess I really liked it.

I see no problem with the lighter, humorous tone appearing at times, the book always did have a lighter tone than the rest of Tolkien's work. It was meant to be a children's story right? But the comical death of the Goblin King almost went too far for me I'll admit.

No, it's not a straight adaptation of the book and I don't see why people were even expecting that (Jackson's LOTR trilogy wasn't either).

An important thing to remember though - we are all evaluating this movie as a singular movie right now, but really it's just one third of a movie.
 
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Lighter tone is fine and fits The Hobbit. Crass and juvenile burp competitions, however, clashes heavily with Tolkien - and is something Jackson just can't help himself with. There's an aspect of poor taste that he must have in his movies - and I don't appreciate it in Tolkien material. It would have been fine in some random fantasy romp - but keep it out of where it doesn't belong.

Then there are the core changes to a lot of the more important stuff, like making most of the dwarves into bad caricatures - and turning Thorin into a super action hero like they did with Aragorn, and Bilbo into a lesser action hero towards the end of the film. This clashes just as heavily with the material - and takes away a lot of the interesting issues with the Thorin character who was much more reserved and snobby in the book.

I was never a big fan of the forced perspective solution to making actors appear short - and I think it's worse in this film. The dwarves hardly ever look like dwarves - and Thorin looks like a very tall human 90% of the time. It just doesn't fit with my vision of the story or the characters - as they all need to be much more stocky, especially Bilbo. They made the same mistake in LotR - where only Samwise looked like an actual hobbit.

The only character that seemed to be treated properly was Balin, and they might even have improved upon him. I liked that - but unfortunately it was the exception.
 
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I see what you mean about the taste thing DArtagnan, Jackson does have a particular spin to his humor which might not appeal to some.

I was never a big fan of the forced perspective solution to making actors appear short - and I think it's worse in this film. The dwarves hardly ever look like dwarves - and Thorin looks like a very tall human 90% of the time. It just doesn't fit with my vision of the story or the characters - as they all need to be much more stocky, especially Bilbo. They made the same mistake in LotR - where only Samwise looked like an actual hobbit.

The only character that seemed to be treated properly was Balin, and they might even have improved upon him. I liked that - but unfortunately it was the exception.
I agree with you there - but I guess I've come to accept it as a limitation with using live actors. The only way I could see them having truly "dwarfy" dwarfs as I've always imagined them would be to use full CGI or actually employ real dwarves (a la Time Bandits). The technology to shrink full-size humans down with special effects is still not convincing. Balin was decent though, yeah.

I think the Rankin & Bass animated vision of the dwarves worked better.
 
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I agree with you there - but I guess I've come to accept it as a limitation with using live actors. The only way I could see them having truly "dwarfy" dwarfs as I've always imagined them would be to use full CGI or actually employ real dwarves (a la Time Bandits). The technology to shrink full-size humans down with special effects is still not convincing. Balin was decent though, yeah.

I think the Rankin & Bass animated vision of the dwarves worked better.

Yeah, I'm not sure how else they should do it - and it's probably really hard to pull off. But they could at least have the actors made up stocky like they're supposed to be. Hobbits, in particular, are supposed to be fat as a result of their complacency - and they come off more like children than adults because of the actors used to portray them in LotR.

But it's not a big deal - I just found it odd that they went with this look for Thorin, as he literally looks like a very tall man - just like the actor portraying him. It's like they're not even trying.
 
Django Unchained

Hmm, well… Hmm…

First half of the film was pretty good - though Tarantino is having a hard time re-inventing himself. Too much was too familiar to me - especially the Cristoph Waltz character - which was almost like a carbon copy of Landa from Inglorious Basterds - only not a baddie this time.

I won't spoil the ending - but it was an overblown mess and overall the movie was quite disappointing.

6/10
 
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