Last Movie You Watched

[bluebell]

13 hours ago, bsjkki said:

Finally watched Midnight Mass. Suspence with horror elements. Enjoyed it. Liked the themes. Liked the free will and agency/choices elements. Interesting story telling. Will never hear/sing Nearer to God and not think of this show. My husband loved the music and use of hymns. Not sure how I would feel about it if I was Catholic.

I've read some articles from Catholics about it and some have praised it and some have not.  

[bsjkki]

Watched Dune the second time in IMAX. Enjoyed it more. It’s loud. The screen was huge. No anxiety about whether they pulled it off. It’s an intense experience.

[Amulek]

The Eternals

Two words: totally skippable.

Not to mention that 'eternal' is how long it's going to have felt like you have spent in the theater by the time you get to the final post-credits scene.

Don't get me wrong. It's still a Marvel movie, so there's plenty of action and CGI wizardry to enjoy, but there was just a lot about the film that never really came together for me. YMMV.

[Calm]

24 minutes ago, Amulek said:

and CGI wizardry to enjoy,

This has been done well enough long enough movies can’t survive on its “Wow” factor alone. They keep having to top themselves in each succeeeding movie it seems, so bigger and/or more complicated fight scenes.

I kind of feel bad for kids who grew up when it was already relatively well done. They missed out on seeing it as ‘magical’, so to speak. 

Edited November 9, 2021 by Calm

[bluebell]

8 minutes ago, Calm said:

This has been done well enough long enough movies can’t survive on its “Wow” factor alone. They keep having to top themselves in each succeeeding movie it seems, so bigger and/or more complicated fight scenes.

I kind of feel bad for kids who grew up when it was already relatively well done. They missed out on seeing it as ‘magical’, so to speak. 

It just feels so fake to me anymore.  No different than a cartoon.

[bsjkki]

10 hours ago, Amulek said:

The Eternals

Two words: totally skippable.

Not to mention that 'eternal' is how long it's going to have felt like you have spent in the theater by the time you get to the final post-credits scene.

Don't get me wrong. It's still a Marvel movie, so there's plenty of action and CGI wizardry to enjoy, but there was just a lot about the film that never really came together for me. YMMV.

How does it compare to Dune? I enjoy Marvel movies a lot but I get tired of the endless action scenes. Loved Black Widow but they had the endless action scene at the end. I kind of get bored. 
 

Dune was a long film but the action scenes were not. 

Edited November 10, 2021 by bsjkki

[Amulek]

On 11/9/2021 at 7:08 PM, bsjkki said:

How does it compare to Dune?

Almost identical in terms of run time. Only, at the end of Dune I was ready for another 2.5+ hours of sci-fi goodness.

By the end of the Eternals I was just thinking how this was so not worth pushing my son's bedtime over.

 

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I enjoy Marvel movies a lot but I get tired of the endless action scenes.

The action scenes aren't endless - though they are certainly present.

Personally, I thought it could have used a bit more action to help keep me distracted from the plot holes.

 

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Loved Black Widow [...]

We can still be friends.

 

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[Black Widow] had the endless action scene at the end. I kind of get bored. 

Dune was a long film but the action scenes were not. 

The Eternals is a bit like Black Widow in the sense that a lot of stuff gets crammed in during the final big action scene. I don't know that I would say it was as protracted as the ending of BW. It didn't feel like that to me, but YMMV.

 

 

[Mark Beesley]

Watched Once I was a Beehive with my wife.  It is hilarious.

[bluebell]

Watched Love Hard on Netflix.  It's kind of a Hallmark Christmas movie but less Hallmark.  It's rated MA because it does talk about sex a little bit (Nothing vulgar that I caught, just sexual terms once that I remember) and there is an F word in writing at the end.

I'm not a Hallmark Christmas type of girl but this show was actually really funny and had a sweet ending.  If you like quirky love stories this might be the movie for you, but not one to watch with the kids.

Oh and it has Nina Dobrev (of The Vampire Diaries) and Jimmy Yang (of Crazy Rich Asians) as the two main characters.  And a former actor from Glee (Harry Shum Jr.) has a funny supporting actor role as well.

[bluebell]

17 hours ago, Mark Beesley said:

Watched Once I was a Beehive with my wife.  It is hilarious.

I hear they have a sequel to that out now.  Once I Was Engaged, I think it's called.

[Chum]

I've read Wheel of Time 3 times so far. The first time while Jordon was still alive. It's what led me to Brandon Sanderson.

Zero guesses what I was watching last night.  Amazon said it wasn't out until today but I set my time zone to Africa and refreshed the page. Unless Amazon allowed it early and I didn't have to do that.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Chum said:

I've read Wheel of Time 3 times so far. The first time while Jordon was still alive. It's what led me to Brandon Sanderson.

Zero guesses what I was watching last night.  Amazon said it wasn't out until today but I set my time zone to Africa and refreshed the page. Unless Amazon allowed it early and I didn't have to do that.

How was it?  Haven’t read the series, so from the POV of being clueless

[Chum]

3 hours ago, Calm said:

How was it?  Haven’t read the series, so from the POV of being clueless

Lots of deviation from the books but not awfully so. I was disappointed the producers didn't go to the same (sometimes comedic) lengths that Robert Jordan did to keep it clean. It's still better than most modern content.

Scenery was worth the cost of admission. I'd live there. They did a good job with the locations. Shadar Logoth is a favorite of mine and the city looked like I expected. I wish it had more screen time.

Past that it was hurried but at least the spacing of events was proportional to the books. The characters could have used more time to develop. Accepting the pace, it was about as good as it could be. Otherwise they could fill a dozen 24 episode seasons with all there is.

Can't complain about the casting for Moiraine; she's pretty close to what I had in my head. I'm getting used to everyone else. I don't think they got Mat right tho. For starters book-Mat can't stand a beard and is way more flip than vid-Mat. And where is his Ta'veren luck? I guess it'll work out.

[bsjkki]

On 11/19/2021 at 5:29 PM, Chum said:

Lots of deviation from the books but not awfully so. I was disappointed the producers didn't go to the same (sometimes comedic) lengths that Robert Jordan did to keep it clean. It's still better than most modern content.

Scenery was worth the cost of admission. I'd live there. They did a good job with the locations. Shadar Logoth is a favorite of mine and the city looked like I expected. I wish it had more screen time.

Past that it was hurried but at least the spacing of events was proportional to the books. The characters could have used more time to develop. Accepting the pace, it was about as good as it could be. Otherwise they could fill a dozen 24 episode seasons with all there is.

Can't complain about the casting for Moiraine; she's pretty close to what I had in my head. I'm getting used to everyone else. I don't think they got Mat right tho. For starters book-Mat can't stand a beard and is way more flip than vid-Mat. And where is his Ta'veren luck? I guess it'll work out.

I need to try it. Read most of the books. Started before the series was finished and never got to the end. 
 

The details of the books fuzzy memories so changes in the adaptation will not be caught. 

[Mark Beesley]

On 11/19/2021 at 10:30 AM, bluebell said:

I hear they have a sequel to that out now.  Once I Was Engaged, I think it's called.

It's unavailable for streaming. 😢

[Amulek]

On 11/19/2021 at 2:39 PM, Calm said:

How was it?  Haven’t read the series, so from the POV of being clueless

Fairly solid. Not a 10 out of 10, sadly, but I would give it a solid 8+ at least.

As mentioned previously, the production values are actually pretty great. I was pleasantly surprised by that.

I talked to a couple of guys at work this morning - neither of whom have read the books - and they both thought the first two episodes were pretty good. There are definitely a few things that they had questions about, which is completely understandable, but they all seemed to be the kinds of questions that I think will get sorted out as the world building starts to get fleshed out over the remainder of the season.

In terms of content (parental advisory related), there is a bit of gore - mostly during the fight sequences though. And there was a bit of brief male nudity (backside only) as well.

Surprisingly, my wife has agreed to watch it to give me another 'outsiders' point of view, so I may have more to add from that perspective after the break.

 

[Amulek]

On 11/19/2021 at 6:29 PM, Chum said:

Past that it was hurried but at least the spacing of events was proportional to the books. The characters could have used more time to develop. Accepting the pace, it was about as good as it could be. Otherwise they could fill a dozen 24 episode seasons with all there is.

I agree that it would have been nice to get more character development early on, but the pacing is one of the things that my friends both commented on as liking - particularly with respect to the flight sequence. One of my friends said that he and his wife were almost constantly on the edge of their seats during that episode and that the threat felt really pressing / imminent.

 

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Can't complain about the casting for Moiraine; she's pretty close to what I had in my head. I'm getting used to everyone else. I don't think they got Mat right tho. For starters book-Mat can't stand a beard and is way more flip than vid-Mat. And where is his Ta'veren luck? I guess it'll work out.

I actually like the guy they cast as Mat. In fact, I'm pretty pleased with all of the 'main' cast - though, admittedly, I'm still warming up to Egwene. And Tam - I think they could have done better there, but I guess we'll see.

 

[Chum]

41 minutes ago, Amulek said:

I actually like the guy they cast as Mat.

I like him too, he's well written.

Excepting Rand and Moraine, I felt all of the chars differed from the book (Moraine is dead on and Rand starts out as kind of a blank slate anyway).

However, with Mat that I feel the differences might affect the plot.  For other chars like Lan and Tam, I figure they'll get better filled in over time. Thom might be even better than the orig.

I'm curious to see how Min turns out. She's wholly independent but eventually plays supportive roles. That can be hard to get right.

52 minutes ago, Amulek said:

the pacing is one of the things that my friends both commented on as liking - particularly with respect to the flight sequence. One of my friends said that he and his wife were almost constantly on the edge of their seats during that episode and that the threat felt really pressing / imminent.

If it works for the audience, it works for me.

1 hour ago, Amulek said:

I'm still warming up to Egwene.

If they do her justice, she'll be someone that the audience remembers.

[Chum]

On 11/22/2021 at 12:30 AM, bsjkki said:

I need to try it. Read most of the books. Started before the series was finished and never got to the end.

I read thru the first pass and did audiobooks for later reads. The audiobooks created an abiding love for anything read by Kate Reading and Michael Kramer.

[bsjkki]

On 11/23/2021 at 9:11 AM, Chum said:

I read thru the first pass and did audiobooks for later reads. The audiobooks created an abiding love for anything read by Kate Reading and Michael Kramer.

The first episode threw me off since they aged them up and added the tragic back story for Perrin. Cognitive dissonance with my faded book memories. I will keep going though. 

Edited November 25, 2021 by bsjkki

[Chum]

2 minutes ago, bsjkki said:

The first episode through me off since they aged them up and added the tragic back story for Perrin. Cognitive dissonance with my faded book memories. I will keep going though. 

Seems like you remember pretty well. Not sure why Perrin got a bonus tragedy. Mopey was already his nature.

[Rivers]

I finally got around to seeing The Witnesses. I really liked it.  My biggest complaint was that it felt too short.  I don’t remember the actual runtime but I was left wanting to spend a lot more time with the characters.  I would probably like to see a church history TV series similar to The Chosen.  There’s so much more story to tell about the witnesses.  

[Rivers]

On 11/19/2021 at 12:17 PM, Chum said:

I've read Wheel of Time 3 times so far. The first time while Jordon was still alive. It's what led me to Brandon Sanderson.

Zero guesses what I was watching last night.  Amazon said it wasn't out until today but I set my time zone to Africa and refreshed the page. Unless Amazon allowed it early and I didn't have to do that.

I read the first five books of Wheel of Time.   I then got sidetracked by Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive.  I think I like that series better.

[Chum]

7 minutes ago, Rivers said:

I read the first five books of Wheel of Time.   I then got sidetracked by Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive.  I think I like that series better.

Jordan was a supreme author. Sanderson is arguably an even better one. Stormlight is rich and complete in ways I never experienced before.

[Peacefully]

Hubby and I watched Finch on Apple+ but I couldn’t get into it. Hubby liked it, and watched to the end.