f13.net

Wachowski duo's latest due out in July:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoCyL_Pqzu8&noredirect=1

Definitely some cool stuff in there but their recent track record is a bit sketchy.

lol, space elves.

Actually a human-wolf hybrid which is either less dumb or more dumb I suppose.

Did I also catch some sort of vampire vibe off the bad guy? I was wrong, space twilight is much worse.

If it weren't for d-bag stripper guy being in this I'd be an instant fanboy.  Also, Mila Kunis??  Really?  As a space princess? Fail.   I just... who the fuck does the castings for these films?

Was apparently supposed to be Portman but she dropped out.

The bad dude reminded me almost perfectly of a Goa'uld from Stargate.

This doesn't really look very good but I'm curious, what exactly is wrong with Mila Kunis as a space princess?

I dunno. I think she's out of this world myself. :why_so_serious:

To quote one of the comments from io9,


Still, it certainly looks pretty.

Saying this reminds them of Battlefield Earth is straight up cynical (insert "where are we posting again") bullshit.

I'm not entirely sure I know what the fuck I just watched.  :headscratch:

Good.  I thought it was just me.

She's annoying (does she have any other voice besides the valley-girl 70's show one)?  Cant act?  Only that.   :oh_i_see:

Movies like this need up-and-comers, not next-gen b-listers only there to make the poster look good.

Pretty much, yeah.

Doesn't look entertaining to me, other than to see how quickly/ violently Sean Bean dies.

... and Sean Bean doesn't make a very good "Han Solo" either

Don't worry. The character will die in the first 20-30 minutes. It IS Sean Bean after all.

Ok, this delayed/dumped film is finally coming out this weekend. I may have to see it just to witness the glorious train wreck with these influences (from AV Club review, which actually said it was decent, running against the grain of most reviewers):

I'm cautiously optimistic it'll be a similar situation as was with Tron.  Amazing movie, deceptively deep, yet poorly reviewed/watched.  It is indeed a bit of a kitchen sink movie, akin to Cloud Atlas, but there's a niche crowd in there that appreciates that.  We'll see. 

Either way, I'm gonna geek out this weekend on sci-fi and fantasy (7th Son).

Do you mean the new Tron or the old Tron ?

Just want to know before I leap down your throat.

(Why, yes, I have aged.)

Jesus, did you lose a bet or something?

I want to see them both, too. 7th looks dreadful but fun in a campy way and Jupiter looks like it could have potential and would be worth it just for the visuals. Ab's AV review gives me even more hope.

7th son was also delayed for years wasn't it?

The teen horror/fantasy books that 7th son are based on are totally awesome, btw.  This movie looks to have nothing to do with the books in any way, it doesn't look anything like what is portrayed in the books.

The books are the The Last Apprentice in the states, The Spook's Apprentice in most other regions.

This Jupiter Ascending movie looks pretty, so I'll see it on Netflix or something.  Not expecting a lot though.

I actually liked Cloud Atlas and Speed Racer in quite a few ways, against the common sentiment, so I'm willing to give the Wachowskis yet another whirl.

Most of the space operas I actually like would look pretty fucking crazy if they were filmed with any serious intent of translating them to the screen, so I'm not sure why even on SF-favoring sites a lot of folks are going "lol weird looking shit will be dumb".

New Tron.  Was a much better movie than was credited... and a lot more artistic than at first glance.
Like Cloud Atlas however, JA is miscast.  I just cant get into the leads they chose for either of the movies.  The Wachowskis have made mistakes in this arena.

Yeah, I think that's one of their real weak spots at times.

They showed this at Sundance and the hipster crowd sneered and scoffed through the whole movie.  They couldn't even fill the theater for the showing.

I can't get past Mila Kunis either. She needs the right role and I don't think this is it. I watched part of Oz: The Great and Powerful and she was awful in it.

In related news, a girl at my Whole Foods is exactly like Mila Kunis crossed with Meg from Famliy Guy. She even has Meg's hat! Her voice is also almost identical. It's really weird.

TBH Mila Kunis has been terrible in everything I've seen her in. (No, I haven't seen Black Swan. Will it change my opinion? Dunno.)

I often feel like the only reason she resonated on 70s was that she was playing herself. A whiny, manipulative teenager who gets high a lot.

She was fine in Ted, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Book of Eli (not saying it was a good movie).  She definitely is better at more comedic roles though. 

Unlikely, Black Swan is just pretty crap all round.

How can you forget American Psycho 2?

--Dave

Because it wasn't American Psycho I?

 :rimshot:

Well played.

Also, does not surprise me the Sundance crowd would snicker and sneer at a movie who's leads are essentially "Jackie" and "Magic Mike."  I'll still go see it.

I disagree. You could replace her with just about any vaguely-ethnic woman of similar age from the Hollywood pool and improve all those movies.

Oz: The Great and Powerful was terrible all around. She was good in Book of Eli and it was a good movie.

This however, looks terrible. Pretty but terrible.

This kind of movie is why Netflix is fantastic.  At some point in the future we'll be sitting on the couch looking for something to watch and then we'll be like, oh yeah, i remember that thing, turn it on.

I saw the trailer in the theater, and it looks visually stunning.  I will probably want to watch it (at home) for that reason alone. 

A review that will cure any desire to watch this.

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/dodge-this-the-confounding-lousy-jupiter-ascending-r-1684172129/+robharvilla

Previews and trailers did that for me. I saw nothing of value in anything I have seen. And I actually enjoyed John Carter.

One of my favourite movies ever is The Fifth Element so maybe this will be similar.  That's probably a mind shattering hope that I should not go into the movie with right?

Edit:  I actually had to tell my very smart friend in the theatre that it was clearly tongue in cheek when we went to see The Fifth Element and those hilarious police uniforms made an appearance.  He didn't seem to "get it".

I'm not sure that the Wachowskis actually do "tongue in cheek".

Their over-the-top sensibilities are entirely sincere.

After watching it I would put it at about %25 as good as The Fifth Element, which for me still makes it an okay movie but barely.

Also:
It had some humour and seemed to make references to lots of other sci-fi movies but it was mostly serious.

This was a very dumb movie, but there was enough eye candy to distract me. I did like the apparent "action" of the grav boots though, and whomever animated those scenes kept it up.

I have the feeling that when I'm an old man looking back on Mila Kunis's career the only two things of note will be doing the voice work for Meg and that time she chewed out that Russian Reporter in Russian.

I thought John Carter was a good movie, I enjoyed watching it. The only Real complaint I had with it was toning it down to get a PG rating. Dejah Thoris had on wayyyyyyyy to many clothes. The setting is only about 1.7 smut levels below Gor and it's a genre that works best when it sticks with it's spirit. A Conan movie where all the women wear burkas is no Conan movie at all.

Just saw it.  John Carter was way better sci-fi than this thing.  Really, it did indeed suffer drastically with Kunis and Tatum as leads.  Other than that, I thought it was okay save for the fact it was trying to be Dune in 1.5 less hours of movietime.  Not possible to do.

Also, it's a love story... again.  So yah. :uhrr:   Another missed opportunity in an otherwise awesome world.

JA is only 10 minutes shorter than Dune unless you are referring to the Alan Smithee version that shouldn't exist.

So yeah, fuck this movie. Fuck it, fuck ironic watching it, fuck 'it's so bad it's good,' fuck the wachowskis. I have caught a bit of the hates over this movie because it was a roundly rough last couple of days and I needed a good distraction, but even if I put it aside, this movie really does need to cop some scorn. I'm sure many people have been noticing the Wachowskis were terminally declining slash one hit wonders crumpling after their initial hit, but it's a bit further in this case — their heads grew in relation to how shit their story-building got. They seem to have gotten so bizarre and so wrapped up in things which increasingly make sense only to them that they are no longer effective storytellers and their works are unintentionally absurdist and stymied by dull, bad and contrived writing.

This might be the first thing I've seen Sean Bean in where he doesn't die.

He didn't die in the first Silent Hill!  (Never saw the second, so I don't know.)

I keep telling people that.  Silent Hill was a great film.

It was terrible.  Did you see what they did to the cop? :cry2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOtpgz4L5d8#t=110 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOtpgz4L5d8#t=110)

I enjoyed Silent Hill quite a bit and have no idea why it got the hate it did. It struck me as a sort of modern Clive Barker lite, which is a fine thing in my book.

Strong women in a horror movie rubs people up the wrong way.

Horror is one genre where you'd find the most strong women I'd say.  I always thought silent hill didn't get marketed well and if you knew nothing of the games it was just an ok movie.

I think knowledge of the games is irrelevant to the movie.

Disclaimer :  Never played any Silent Hill Games.

Also, Sluts Get Chopped Up, so I disagree with you.  I get what you're trying to say, but I think just 'cause you can think of some off the top of your head it doesn't make it true for the genre.

I like Silent Hill, I just thought the ending in the church kind of ruined the movie. Other than that, it was really stylish and creepy.

The Slut/Party Girl dies by half way through the movie, usually around the same time as the Jock/Meathead.  The Final Girl (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FinalGirl) survives till the end and comes out on top...  and it is really, really common in slasher/horror movies.  Most modern horror movies are based on either Halloween (Jamie Lee Curtis survives) or on Alien (Sigourney Weaver survives), and most modern horror movies generally just take the formula that worked in either of those two movies and make slight changes.

Surprisingly, slasher movies like to twist popular tropes around...  such as the male love interest of the Final Girl being kind of useless and used as a damsel in distress.

That's not really what I'm talking about though.  In Slasher/Horror movies 'Survives' is pretty much the only qualification for 'strong' and that's really, really lame.  In these movies, they usually only survive by dint of being the last one killed and usually by avoiding 'the Scream rules'.  For example, I'd say a common trait in a strong woman is one in charge of her own sexuality, but the FinalGirl is usually one who has specifically avoided that.  Sluts, as I said, get chopped up.  Alien is a good exception to the rule and makes your point, alas for me, since Ripley is a very good example through all 3 movies of a strong woman completely in touch with who she is.  I'd argue against Jamie Lee, if I remotely gave a fuck that is.

Silent Hill had both the good guys and the bad guys and the middle guys ALL being women and ALL of them were quite clearly defined and stuck to their own viewpoints utterly irrespective of any male presence.  Indeed, Sean Bean and Burned Hands Cop meander around aimlessly, utterly, utterly powerless throughout the entire fucking movie.  Even at the end, when both surviving women are in a house entirely without a bloke, they are completely comfortable and at peace with it.

As you would be, cause it's Sean Fucking Bean.

Survives is the qualification because so many horror/slasher villains don't stay dead.  Plenty of Final Girls actually kill the monster.

Too much is also made of the "rules".  More often than sexuality, the Final Girl is the Final Girl because she is responsible/competent... its just that film short-hand for irresponsible is going off to have an underage party in the woods or sneak out to see the boyfriend instead of look after your sick sibling/parent or babysit or whatever.  And plenty of Final Girls don't have their sexuality mentioned at all, or promptly start a sexual relationship with the surviving male love interest if any.

A better critique I read once is that Final Girls are masculinized.  No male relationship, have gender neutral names or nicknames (Sidney in Scream, Ripley in Alien), etc. and that it is only through denying or moving away from their femininity that they win.

This is really bad and boring. I watched it in 2D what probably saved me from vomiting after first 10 minutes of fights. Most of the alien species is portrayed like in low-budget sci-fi (big ears, elephant-face). One good thing are beautiful ships models.

The Dune I've seen was the extended version (the ones they show on TV).  W/o commercials it's 176 mins long.  The original Dune was 6+hrs of film.  But yah, typically it's seen in about the same time as JA.  So you're right.  Nevertheless, Dune feels epic... JA does not.  Both movies required more time than given, but JA even moreso.

As said before, the difference in quality of cast between the two movies is glaring.  Redmayne holds the whole movie on his shoulders really.  I thought he was amazing in JA, and really wanted to see more of him.  Matter of fact, they should've made HIM the legionnaire and Tatum should've been, I dunno, the bellhop or something.  Redmayne's sister should've been Kunis' role, and Kunis should've been, I dunno, a lady in waiting or something.

Other cool parts that dont get enough screentime; the merc group led by the Pacific Rim chic.  Everyone loves her.  Her crew was cool as shit here.  They were underused.  Nice to see the girl from WingCommander in charge of a cap ship too (if that's indeed her). 

If you took the cool parts of the movie, lengthened and properly wrote them, and replaced the leads with the oscar-worthy supporting roles.... you'd have a hit.  The fact the Wachowskis fucked this up really shows how bad they are.  Recall, they stole the Matrix story... wasn't even theirs.  Before that, their only real tangible credit was penning Ectokid.   :oh_i_see:

Are you talking about this Dune (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087182/?ref_=nv_sr_1)?  Cause I loved that film, but I have never even heard of a 6 hour version of the film.  The special edition only lists a run time of 190 min, which is still almost 3 hours off that runtime.  Any idea where one would find the full 6 hour version?   You sure you are not thinking  of one of the later mini-serieses?

edit to fix link

Maybe he meant filmed ?

Sometimes interaction with the chronically delusional is fun, right?

Silent hill was a really good movie, I liked the ending though.

Avoid Silent Hill 2, it will ruin the first movie for you by shitting up the premise. A lot like Matrix 2 and 3, but even worse in some ways.


I forget if he did or not, but I think he didn't. It was also revealed that he wasn't the girl's foster father but an undercover, secret guardian from a secret organization who's job is to keep her safe from a different secret organization, The Order.

Also, Dune: Never was a 6 hour director's cut, the "director's cut" was the version shown in theaters. The Alan Smithee version was the one shown on TV. It was chopped up to remove about 60 minutes, new scenes filmed, re-edited, some stuff voiced over, etc all done by the De Laurentiis family.

The two recent miniseries are fucking excellent. If you haven't seen them you should do it.

I liked the ending too. I didn't know they made a Silent Hill 2.  Odd.

He didn't die.  He ended up sitting in an empty house.  Much like House.  Except without any patients.  Or Vicodan.

That's what was creepy about it.  The mom and daughter were right there, yet still in Silent Hill.

There is no six hour version of Dune.  It's a very popular myth though.  

Lynch shot about five hours of film (which is where the myth probably comes from), but that's not five hours of actual content.  It's five hours of film because scenes were reshot, etc.  Lynch intended for a three hour version to be created originally, but to please De Laurentiis instead created a cut that was a little over two hours long.  A three hour version was later put together and broadcast on television, which Lynch completely disowns, and his name doesn't even appear in the credits.  If you're curious about the different versions IMDB has a pretty exhaustive page on it here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087182/alternateversions (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087182/alternateversions)

I'm pretty sure people are just thinking of the mini series.  Although that was what 4-5 hours total? 

Saw this last night.  It was mediocre entertainment.  Some of the SFX were quite good where others seemed blurry to me.  Probably didn't help that I was hammered and they kept the theater at 1,000 degrees!  The two leads were meh and there was no growth in the  characters.  My friend complained that there was too much going on sometimes and I agreed.  What good is your sfx when you whooosh them past me until it's all a blur?  The giant ships were really well done however and the grav boots were a good effect.

The three of us independently compared it to Flash Gordon, all it needed was a soundtrack by Queen and Brian Blessed screaming "DIVE!"  It wasn't as overtly cheesy as FG, but JV is an easy movie to mock.  It felt very much like a disco era sci fi film.

John Carter and Speed Racer are better films than this.  Haven't seen Cloud Atlas yet. 

Dammit no.  I was just referring to the original stock footage (which was 6hrs.)  The TV version is a 3+ hr ordeal with commercials.  The theatrical is shorter still.  
Which mini-series is everyone even talking about??  Dune or Children of Dune??

I'm about to fire up Jodorowsky's Dune Documentary (it got rave reviews).  Just came out last year.

It's pretty fascinating, especially if you are really familiar with the source material.  I want one of those storyboard books, they should publish it.