Wednesday, May 24, 2023

Tuesday, May 23, 2023

Ray Stevenson

Anyone who has seen the series "Rome" would probably be a fan of Ray Stevenson He passed away a couple of days ago at the age of 58 while filming in Italy. He has appeared in other shows and will be in the Star Wars Ahsoka series coming out in August.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Stevenson

Friday, May 19, 2023

WTF Happened to IDIOCRACY?


Idiocracy is a mildly amusing movie about a guy who participates in a suspended animation experiment gone wrong and wakes up 500 years into the future to find that the world has gotten much dumber.

Who among us doesn't think that this is a plausible future?

Wednesday, May 17, 2023

Nope

 Nope is a science fiction horror film.  It is available on Amazon Prime.

A brother and sister struggle to run a Hollywood horse-training farm after the death of their father (Keith David from Cloud Atlas.)  Meanwhile, their neighbor (Steven Yeun from The Walking Dead) is running a nearby Western and UFO themed mini amusement park tourist trap.  They all begin to suspect that something alien and dangerous is moving around in the clouds.  The story plays out like a science fiction version of Jaws.

The film makes good use of sound.  We hear faint sounds in the distance that might be screaming.

The movie has a huge plot hole because the characters suspect that something in the clouds is killing people, but they don't try to contact the authorities.  Instead, they want to film this danger so that they can make money and become famous.  Had they contacted the police and successfully made their case, the issue would have escalated up the hierarchy until it eventually provoked a military response.

The movie starts with a truly bizarre scene where a young version of the Steven Yeun character is playing in a '90s sitcom.  A trained chimpanzee on the show goes berserk and kills most of the people on the set.  This is not far-fetched, since chimpanzees are extremely aggressive and violent.  At first, it is hard to understand why this scene is in the movie, but the film later tries to make the point that trained wild animals can still be dangerous, and this just might have something to do with whatever it is in the clouds.

I have often said that cheap science fiction typically will have only one good idea, and those movies stretch their one good idea out for 90 minutes, or in the case of this film, 2 hours.  The story is rather clever, but the pace of the film is a bit too slow.  Fortunately, unlike most films of this genre, they don't wait till the end of the movie for the big reveal.  We get the big reveal halfway through, and the remainder of the film is about the characters responding to it.  As such, the film is more exciting than films like The Vast of the Night, The Signal, Monsters, and Annihilation.  Even though these movies were entertaining, nobody cares about them anymore because their lack of substance made them forgettable.

Despite the rather slow pace, especially in the first half which spends much time building up the story, Nope made me care about these characters enough to keep me involved.  

Rating:  B.

Hayden Christensen on Playing Anakin Skywalker

Friday, April 7, 2023

What if we are thinking about Lightsabers all wrong?

Pulp Fiction | 'Nobody Ever Robs Restaurants’ Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer

Amanda Plummer does such a fantastic job as the main villain in the 2023 season 3 of Star Trek Picard, where she is truly badass, I tried to look up what else she has played.  This is the opening sequence of the movie Pulp Fiction from 29 years ago.



Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Disney is Killing Pixar And They Need Our Help



I actually like Cars 2, Toy Story 3, Brave, and Monsters University. I especially like The Good Dinosaur. Finding Dory is pretty good. Toy Story 4 feels weak to me. Cars 3 is just bad. I enjoyed Coco but the movie did not feel in any way exceptional. Soul is pretty cool. Lightyear is surprisingly good. It is not critically panned. It has a 74% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Lightyear did poorly because there was a conservative boycott due to a very brief same-sex kiss.

Monday, March 13, 2023

Jerry O'Connell shares a funny and emotional story about filming Stand By Me

Jerry O'Connell is not at all like I expected.  He said that he was hyperactive as a child, and you can see that in his personality.  

Saturday, March 11, 2023

Something Big (1971)

By definition, there has never been a larger discrepancy between the Critic rating and the Audience rating.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/something_big_1971

I remember seeing this movie in what was likely the late 70s on TV. I just rewatched the first 11 minutes and it is hilarious.

On Fri, Mar 10, 2023 at 1:11 PM al wrote:
>
> John, this is the movie I told you about tonight, starring Dean Martin. I thought it was a fun movie to watch. It will make you laugh frequently, although I'm not sure I would call it a true comedy.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63I6sJ89y7k

Saturday, February 11, 2023

Fight Club: The twist that no one noticed

Major spoilers...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHE7oBvOk9U

This is a movie that had mixed reviews upon its release but has gained more appreciation over time.

Sunday, February 5, 2023

Richest Comedians in world 2023💰🙂

Check out the richest one...



John Coffey
0 seconds ago
That's not Mel Brooks. That's Carl Reiner.

Friday, February 3, 2023

Original Anakin Actor Didn't Know Who He Was Playing!

Reportedly, Sebastian Shaw had never seen Star Wars.  He only had 4 or 5 lines as the face of Darth Vader.  When Ian McDermid asked him what he was doing on the set he said, "I don't know, my boy.  It has something to do with science fiction."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=istGHcanD-o&t=14s

Thursday, January 26, 2023

Darth Vader | Behind The Scenes History

I think that this is funny.  Reportedly, the old actor Sebastian Shaw didn't know anything about Star Wars.  He just read a few lines and collected a paycheck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmOG1wg5sVo&t=456s