What have you watched lately?

[anarky]

In any year but this, Big Hero 6 would be the best movie of the year. And it gives GotG a run for its money.

Two thoughts, spoiler-free:

1) If Disney handles Star Wars the way they have Marvel (and, to a lesser extent, the Muppets), this will be the best thing to happen to the franchise in thirty years, wiping the EU or not,

and 2) I really hope the success of the Marvel films, The LEGO Movie, and now Big Hero 6 will make everyone else in Hollywood realize things don't always have to be gritty. Because I'd love to see a Transformers movie where I can say, "These aren't the G1 I remember, but, dammit, they're still Transformers" instead of just "God damn you, Michael Bay, eat a bag of diseased dicks."

[Jargo]

Just watched the extended version of The hobbit part 2. What a weird mess of a movie it is. I sat through the eleven hours of bonus features and frankly it seems like an awful lot of effort put into a movie for very little result. I was actually wanting the damn dragon to incinerate the annoying dwarves.

[jjreason]

Yeah the forge scene is the worst thing since the droid factory. Horrible. Good thing I still find some redeeming qualities in (way, way, way overblown, overextended, overly drawn out) movie version of story or else I wouldn't even be a little excited to see how they end it on screen.

You want to know what I want for the Hobbit? The opposite of an "extended" cut - I want a fucking contracted cut where they stick to the book.

[Jargo]

That would be interesting. I must admit to cringing at the spiders scene. I was doing okay until that hideous white thing Bilbo goes bananas on. But yeah, cutting the forge sequence out and the Dol Guldur part, Tauriel and the romancing the dwarf thing, the pale orc and Legolas in Laketown. All that could go and it would work perfectly well. Half the Barrel ride could go too. And most of the Bard scenes.

The book isn't stellar. Tolkien wrote far too much in places and skipped past some areas where it ought to have been fleshed out so it's a very patchy read yet in adapting it for the screen Jackson has forgotten that anything he added in LOTR was done so to benefit the story not simply pad it out. With the exception of his multiple endings to ROTK which was somewhat OTT. The LOTR trilogy seems tighter and concise despite the length. Whereas The Hobbit simply seems stretched thin with clumps of stuff pasted on to feign substance. Trimming down to two films would be very possible. I look forward to the fan edits.

[anarky]

I find it ironic that a book half the size of any LOTR book is made into three movies, each as long as or longer than any LOTR movie.

BBC reported that it will take longer to watch the three movies than it does the average person to read the book. And that's not even the extended versions.

[Ran]

Over Christmas I watched about 20 minutes of Elf. Tapped out after that.

[Slicker]

Everyone loves Elf but I'm not a fan either. It just falls flat with me.

[jjreason]

Will Ferrell himself doesn't get everyone & I can totally understand. There are many times I'm just watching him in complete fascination, not because it's funny but because it's just odd. He has no shame anywhere.

[jjreason]

Oh, forgot to mention I rewatched Guardians & Winter Soldier to check & make sure my Christmas discs work - still both excellent movies.

[anarky]

My wife decided last night we should start a New Year's tradition of watching some good actiony, family-friendly movie. Since I had about five minutes warning and my movies are kinda in disarray because I'm a slob, we settled on Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.

In case you haven't seen it, Legolas is rescued by Sabe at a young age. Years later, Edward Scissorhands sets into motion events that result in her being kidnapped away from her father, Zartan, by Casanova Frankenstein. Edward and Legolas enlist the help of pirates, including Gamora, to save her. Quite a fun flick.

[anarky]

Kidding aside, it's been a few years for me since I've seen it, I just about shat bricks when I recognized Zartan and Gamora.

[Tom Foolery]

Remember when we were going to do that scoring system for actors based on their nerd creds?

[vynsane]

Yeah, Zoe Saldana is the benchmark by which all other nerd cred ratings will be judged at this point. Anamaria (CotBP), Neytiri (Avatar), Uhura (ST), and Gamora (GotG).

[anarky]

Wait, she's in the Star Trek reboot? (I seriously haven't seen it.) Doesn't she fuck Spock? I don't suppose this involves boobootitties, does it?

[Ran]

She is playingLando's daughter in the new Star Wars movie. She's going to bang the clone of Boba Fett on the top of the Falcon.

Or at least that's the rumor I'm making up.