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feedmyleg
Dec 25, 2004
Ah, excellent. Thanks folks, Upgrade it is. And gettin' on that new GenChat.

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Alan Smithee
Jan 4, 2005


A man becomes preeminent, he's expected to have enthusiasms.

Enthusiasms, enthusiasms...

feedmyleg posted:

GenChat is still closed, so, what's more essential, Upgrade or Hardcore Henry?

I didn’t see HH but

Upgrade. It’s a movie that definitely could have done a lot more with even a little extra budget but it’s a simple movie with heart

Femur
Jan 10, 2004
I REALLY NEED TO SHUT THE FUCK UP

Tars Tarkas posted:

I can't wait for the discussion to change from "Who is waiting for Avatar 2?" to "Why is everyone on the planet seeing Avatar 2?"

The only narrative avatar has right now is how little impact it had - > no one asked for 3 sequels.

That's a strange lament, since it kinda implies they unconsciously want more, because they feel there was something missing.

Cameron is brilliant bastard.

Chairman Capone
Dec 17, 2008

Isn't Avatar 3 already filming?

Alan Smithee
Jan 4, 2005


A man becomes preeminent, he's expected to have enthusiasms.

Enthusiasms, enthusiasms...
Lukewarm take: avatar sequels will go the way of terminator sequels just with Cameron in charge

Sleeveless
Dec 25, 2014

by Pragmatica
The dudes who swore that Avengers, Avengers 2, Avengers 3, and Avengers 4 would all be bombs don't hold a candle to the dudes who swore Terminator 2, Titanic, Avatar, and Avatar 2 would all be bombs in terms of being hilariously wrong and on the wrong side of history.

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

here's my problem with this reading: in the subtext of the movie, the inherited trauma you're dismissing physically manifests as the cult that causes all these spectacularly violent events. the latter is a metaphor for the former. the movie is essentially saying that it's fundamentally impossible to break the cycle of abuse, and that if you're in a family with a history of it you should just embrace your inevitable death at the hands of your abusers rather than trying to break free or fight it.

this is why i really, really don't loving like Hereditary and why i've been kind of colored negatively on Aster's other stuff: because that's actively malicious messaging targeted at vulnerable people.

The coven isn’t manifested by the violent events, it already exists and Annie’s mom was a member of it. We are given discrete references to this throughout the first half of the movie, they don’t just suddenly start happening once Annie goes to group therapy. We see them at the funeral- they’re right there! All of them witches! There is no ‘subtext’ there, it’s very straightforward foreshadowing.

The point of the film is not that ‘resistance is futile,’ as it were; that the family can’t escape its fate - anymore than it was inevitable that Peter lies to his mom so he can go get high at a party. Again, think about the film in terms of a black comic farce: What is the coven doing to advance their plans before this horrific event? Are we to understand that they magically influenced this? How? Where is the evidence that they, like, planted the teenager who gave Charlie the cake?

Don’t overwhelm yourself trying to read ‘beneath’ the film. The coven is literally just hanging around using, at best, granny’s ghost to draw out Charlie. But that doesn’t happen! The irresponsible teen son did a better job than all the powers of Hell! Win win!

Annie isn’t susceptible because her mother was abusive. She’s susceptible because the universe is vast, cruel, and absurd, and she herself, all in her own, literally doesn’t know how to deal with that. She spends all day in an attic in her beautiful home making microcosmic little worlds, where everything has its place... even her family’s history of mental illness.

But let’s take this a step further... what if Annie’s mom WASN’T actually particularly abusive? What if she really did just really want to hold and feed her granddaughter, and not this grotesque image of baring her own breast to be suckled? What if her family was already just falling apart internally, all on its own, with no black magic needed?

Remember the lesson of Heracles? He literally REFUSED to read the signs. It’s not his fate because Hera, his evil stepmom, has it out for him. He has agency, there is no ‘subtextual’ coven controlling you.

WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747

feedmyleg posted:

GenChat is still closed, so, what's more essential, Upgrade or Hardcore Henry?

Upgrade, very very easily

I've come around on Hardcore Henry over the years but it's... kind of barely a movie and more a loose collection of cool POV action scenes, padded by jokes that almost never land.

muscles like this!
Jan 17, 2005


You get pretty much everything you need from the film by just watching the pitch video they put together for crowdfunding.

Cacator
Aug 6, 2005

You're quite good at turning me on.

Chairman Capone posted:

Isn't Avatar 3 already filming?

They filmed 2 and 3 at the same time and are doing the same for 4 and 5.

Gatts
Jan 2, 2001

Goodnight Moon

Nap Ghost

Chairman Capone posted:

Isn't Avatar 3 already filming?

I think we are a filming Avatar 8...

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.
Okay, get this, it's Avatar, but Alita shows up halfway through.

Turns out Avatar is set in the future dystopia of Gunnm.

got any sevens
Feb 9, 2013

by Cyrano4747

Tars Tarkas posted:

The truth is different effects look better in different environments for different reasons, but the best effect is hiring twin actors.

Danny devito should be in every film as a twin brother

mycot
Oct 23, 2014

"It's okay. There are other Terminators! Just give us this one!"
Hell Gem

Alan Smithee posted:

Lukewarm take: avatar sequels will go the way of terminator sequels just with Cameron in charge

Avatar 2 will own, and then Avatars 3/4/5 will be awful?

WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747

MonsieurChoc posted:

Okay, get this, it's Avatar, but Alita shows up halfway through.

Turns out Avatar is set in the future dystopia of Gunnm.

The funny thing is this is 100% plausible based on what we see of Earth in Avatar

Basically the only thing missing is a space elevator to Zalem, otherwise it pretty much already looks like the Scrapyard/Iron City anyways

WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747

K. Waste posted:

The coven isn’t manifested by the violent events, it already exists and Annie’s mom was a member of it. We are given discrete references to this throughout the first half of the movie, they don’t just suddenly start happening once Annie goes to group therapy. We see them at the funeral- they’re right there! All of them witches! There is no ‘subtext’ there, it’s very straightforward foreshadowing.

The point of the film is not that ‘resistance is futile,’ as it were; that the family can’t escape its fate - anymore than it was inevitable that Peter lies to his mom so he can go get high at a party. Again, think about the film in terms of a black comic farce: What is the coven doing to advance their plans before this horrific event? Are we to understand that they magically influenced this? How? Where is the evidence that they, like, planted the teenager who gave Charlie the cake?

Don’t overwhelm yourself trying to read ‘beneath’ the film. The coven is literally just hanging around using, at best, granny’s ghost to draw out Charlie. But that doesn’t happen! The irresponsible teen son did a better job than all the powers of Hell! Win win!

Annie isn’t susceptible because her mother was abusive. She’s susceptible because the universe is vast, cruel, and absurd, and she herself, all in her own, literally doesn’t know how to deal with that. She spends all day in an attic in her beautiful home making microcosmic little worlds, where everything has its place... even her family’s history of mental illness.

But let’s take this a step further... what if Annie’s mom WASN’T actually particularly abusive? What if she really did just really want to hold and feed her granddaughter, and not this grotesque image of baring her own breast to be suckled? What if her family was already just falling apart internally, all on its own, with no black magic needed?

Remember the lesson of Heracles? He literally REFUSED to read the signs. It’s not his fate because Hera, his evil stepmom, has it out for him. He has agency, there is no ‘subtextual’ coven controlling you.

Also while this is an interesting reading I feel like you're being a little obtuse and just deciding that a very obvious fantastical metaphor isn't one because the movie doesn't explicitly tell you "this is a metaphor for that"

It's not that Annie is only susceptible to the cult because of the abuse; it's that the cult is the abuse and the abuse is the cult. It's not exactly some kind of accident that the cult's imagery is constantly juxtaposed with the violence and trauma- hell, you asked where the evidence for them influencing the decapitation is, and there's actually a major smoking gun, in that the movie goes out of its way to show you the cult's symbol etched into the telephone pole that decapitates Charlie well prior to the event actually occurring. And while there's no explicit evidence that they planted the teenager, almost everyone around the family is eventually revealed to be part of the cult, so... it's a fairly tiny leap.

If Annie's mom were not abusive, there would be no cult, because one is the other.

(Also, you should reread Edith Hamilton, because that's kind of a strange interpretation of the myth of Heracles. Heracles has agency, yes, but Hera explicitly strips this agency from him and sends him into a blind, violent fugue, that he then uses his agency- once returned- to try and atone for. Unless you're specifically trying to find an angle where the Greek gods do not actually exist within the diegesis of that mythology, you can't really say that about the dude, because him having his agency stripped from him is a pretty huge part of why anything noteworthy happens to him at all; even reading them from the perspective of the gods being used to explain the unknown, it seems more obvious that he would have had some sort of dissociative episode, which we don't generally speaking hold people's actions during against them.)

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

The funny thing is this is 100% plausible based on what we see of Earth in Avatar

Basically the only thing missing is a space elevator to Zalem, otherwise it pretty much already looks like the Scrapyard/Iron City anyways

Well, it's also missing the Venusians and Jupiterians and the crazy transhumanism stuff, but we can just was offscreen all along.

Alan Smithee
Jan 4, 2005


A man becomes preeminent, he's expected to have enthusiasms.

Enthusiasms, enthusiasms...
The wachowskis are gonna write Jupiter ascending into the matrix universe aren’t they

Gonz
Dec 22, 2009

"Jesus, did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me?"
Neo fights the Bee People?

Alan Smithee
Jan 4, 2005


A man becomes preeminent, he's expected to have enthusiasms.

Enthusiasms, enthusiasms...
My local amc has iP man 4

Good good or good bad

Len
Jan 21, 2008

Pouches, bandages, shoulderpad, cyber-eye...

Bitchin'!


MonsieurChoc posted:

Okay, get this, it's Avatar, but Alita shows up halfway through.

Turns out Avatar is set in the future dystopia of Gunnm.

Why would anyone want that? Alita was unwatchable trash because of Her Eyes

feedmyleg
Dec 25, 2004
but her eyemails

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

MonsieurChoc posted:

Okay, get this, it's Avatar, but Alita shows up halfway through.

Turns out Avatar is set in the future dystopia of Gunnm.

Also the Prawns show up and it's District 9 as well.

Grendels Dad
Mar 5, 2011

Popular culture has passed you by.
The humans in Avatar are the victorious survivors of the machine wars, BOOM Terminator sequel.

feedmyleg
Dec 25, 2004
Why transfer your brain to a goofy blue cat alien body when you can transfer it to a sick chrome robot skeleton body? Twist: the Terminators have been humans the entire time. Someone get Cameron on the phone!!

Time Cowboy
Nov 4, 2007

But Tarzan... The strangest thing has happened! I'm as bare... as the day I was born!
Transfer your brain to a Jellicle cat body instead!

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
One of these days I'll break into a Hollywood producer's office with some legendary super-cocaine...

The Klowner
Apr 20, 2019

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Alan Smithee posted:

My local amc has iP man 4

Good good or good bad

I'm also curious about this

The Klowner
Apr 20, 2019

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

feedmyleg posted:

GenChat is still closed, so, what's more essential, Upgrade or Hardcore Henry?

Watch the music video made by the same people who shot HH:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgox84KE7iY

then go watch Upgrade

Enos Cabell
Nov 3, 2004


Alan Smithee posted:

My local amc has iP man 4

Good good or good bad

Haven't seen it yet, but from what I hear the action is a slight step back, but the plot/story is a big step forward.

Babysitter Super Sleuth
Apr 26, 2012

my posts are as bad the Current Releases review of Gone Girl

Time Cowboy posted:

Transfer your brain to a Jellicle cat body instead!

Skimbleshanks, the railway cat (the cat is a railway train)

AccountSupervisor
Aug 3, 2004

I am greatful for my loop pedal

Beachcomber posted:

Imagine having to plan your shots out.

Knowing the limits of the medium leads to superior filmmaking. This is the same reason that Jurassic Park still looks good, while Jurassic Park 3 looks terrible. Same reason practical effects look better. They decided what they wanted before filming.

While I agree with you on principal what Im referring to is entirely different. In this case, the limits of the medium in production are unrelated to the presentation of the medium. The existence of post conversion as a possibility proves this as does the ability to make any CGI animated film in 3D easily. That "conversion" is pretty much done with a button and animated films usually have the best use of 3D out there. In the end, its the DP and directors choice to plan a movie to be presented in 3D, shooting it natively doesnt really matter anymore. You can plan to shoot in 3D and it can still be a lovely 3D presentation. Native 3D introduces unnecessary phsycial problems with your camera rig not normally present and has nothing to do with the aesthetic possibilities of the format. I.E. making sure your stereographic allignment is always perfect and that the IPD between the lenses is always correct and never off or else youre gunna have to post convert the hosed up shots anyways.

Anthony Dodd Mantle had a lot of issues shooting Dredd in 3D because of this.They designed an entire customized 3D rig to shoot in small spaces but the shots were so bad stereography wise they ended up having to convert those shots in post anyways. Theres a reason Ridley Scott didnt shoot native 3D for The Martian after shooting Prometheus in it. He didnt like the cumbersome camera rigs and how it limited what he could do and how he could place and move the camera.

You can still "plan" for a movie being presented in 3D and craft your composition and movement in a way that benefits from the format without actually having to shoot in it. Shooting in 3D didnt stop Peter Jackson from going completely overboard with his Tin Tin style "impossible shots" in The Hobbit trilogy. The big thing 3D changed about how he made those movies was you pretty much cannot shoot miniatures at all and that is a big reason why those movies have none. Thats also why they couldn't do any forced perspective shots either. It completely ruined the illusion forced by a 2D capture and you would have to "undo" the depth and essentially post convert the further plane back on the Z-axis to make that illusion work. Funny enough this is specifically the technical scenario that led to McKellans breakdown on set.

Alita and Gemini Man are the only 3D films Ive seen in recent memory that were shot natively and Id argue almost every well done post conversion made in the past few years looks better. Alita used the Fusion Camera System though, which is pretty much only used for mocap reasons, so it allows for way more control over the 3D in post than a traditional stereographic rig.

AccountSupervisor fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Jan 8, 2020

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.

Len posted:

Why would anyone want that? Alita was unwatchable trash because of Her Eyes

The movie was good and it'S based on an amazing comic.

WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747

Len posted:

Why would anyone want that? Alita was unwatchable trash because of Her Eyes

Because Alita actually owned, in spite of your garbage opinion

Sleeveless
Dec 25, 2014

by Pragmatica
I've never seen anybody articulate why Alita owns other than the fact that there's a giant hammer in it, people just emerge the moment you criticize it to repeat that it owns as if its quality is entirely self-evident.

Cacator
Aug 6, 2005

You're quite good at turning me on.

Alita has heart and a noticeable passion that went into making it compared to, for example, the glossy but vapid and dull Ghost in the Shell adaptation. As someone who doesn't really watch anime it felt like the best anime adaptation I've seen without having all the baggage of being an anime adaptation.

Cacator fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Jan 8, 2020

Iron Crowned
May 6, 2003

by Hand Knit
Alita has some flaws, but it's overall is good, I got it on a whim over Black Friday and it did not disappoint.

Maxwell Lord
Dec 12, 2008

I am drowning.
There is no sign of land.
You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand.

And I hope you die.

I hope we both die.


:smith:

Grimey Drawer
Alita also benefits a lot from Rosa Salazar in the lead role; she's very lively and enthusiastic and charming. There's a strong contrast between her loving her life and wanting to experience things and the cynical world around her. It's a pretty strong cast overall but she carries it. The film has some structural issues owing to it being a fairly faithful adaptation of a much longer manga, it lacks a really strong climax, but Alita's charm and the cool worldbuilding make up for it.

duz
Jul 11, 2005

Come on Ilhan, lets go bag us a shitpost


Sleeveless posted:

I've never seen anybody articulate why Alita owns other than the fact that there's a giant hammer in it, people just emerge the moment you criticize it to repeat that it owns as if its quality is entirely self-evident.

OK Ted Rall.

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RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

Len posted:

Why would anyone want that? Alita was unwatchable trash because of Her Eyes

I didn't watch it because of how lovely the tell-tale eyes looked

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