I had some free time at work today so I watched Resurrecting the Champ, Flight of the Navigator, and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.  Liked the first two quite a bit, but didn't much care for the FF movie. 

I just found out that you can buy movies from the Playstation Network, so I downloaded The Abyss (Special Edition) because my brother in law recommended it. I enjoyed it a lot. It had the right amout of action, suspense, romance, mystery, comedy.. overall very fun to watch. Much better than Avatar in my opinion - the films are similar in a way but I think this one pulled "it" off better. I love the crew as well; they gave me a Firefly-esque vibe which is always good. And the special effects were just dazzling for a film released in 1989.

i like the abyss too. always surprised by michael biehn's performance, he's never been known as a great actor but he pulls off something legitimately unnerving by keeping it low-key

Shyamalan said he made the lead character, Aang, older in hopes of broadening the appeal beyond the TV series' younger viewer ship. "The movie is less slapsticky and more epic and darker," he said, than what viewers are accustomed to watching on nickelodeon.

I actually just came back from seeing the Last Airbender. I thought that it would be absolutely terrible from the reviews I've read, but I actually liked it. The acting was pretty bad (but they're child actors, what do you expect?) but I enjoyed the simple story (I never followed Avatar so I had no idea what it was about other than 4 nations each having control over an element) and found it to have sufficient depth, and the effects were nice to watch (I saw it in 2D.. now I want to see it in 3D to be able to compare the two). Lots of the reviews complained about how hard it was to follow the story, which I find to be ridiculous.. how can anyone not be able to follow something so simple? The only hard thing to remember where the names of the characters... I still don't know them! (But I attribute that to my lack of experience with the culture this is all influenced from, so I don't fault the film).

I'm definetely going to see the sequel (sequels?).

reluctantly watched scorsese's shutter island. i don't usually care too much about scorsese's work, but this was a pretty good film. a lot of the film is kinda goofy and over the top, but i think it all works.

hey hundley by the way have you seen blue velvet yet?  I remember when you made the david lynch topic you said that your brother said it was basically a rip-off or something of silent hill 2 which is dumb because a) it came out 15 years earlier and b) he is literally referring to the pyramid head rape scene which was pretty obviously inspired by a scene in blue velvet.  that one scene is the only similarity though.  in fact I would argue that shutter island has more similarities to silent hill but that is neither here nor there.  I don't know I guess I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this.

i was just reading about blue velvet right now. i saw last person posted as roman and thought 'maybe he's posting about...holy snacks.' though i guess it isn't that much of a coincidence.

you know, i feel like i've already talked about this alot but maybe it was to myself. i'm pretty sure i enjoy david lynch and silent hill 2 for the same reasons. it's all to do with the same thing. i wouldn't say silent hill 2 is a rip off though, they don't steal any major elements i can think of and i don't really know that the pyramid head scene you mentioned is that similar to anything in blue velvet at all? i won't get specific for people who haven't seen it, but the components of that scene are entirely different, or differently configured, so they don't really bear any resemblance to any scene in blue velvet that i can think of. and i've seen it 37 times....i'm a blue velvet expert.....

actually i have talked about this before, it was on tomatoland i think. i have alot more to say about it, though, because i feel like this particular ZONE is MY ZONE. i don't know if that's clear - i can't really call it thematic, or aesthetic, because it's almost neither, but at the same time kind of both, and the requirements of this zone it are so permitting that it would be ridiculous to specify them. i think if you appreciate a movie like blue velvet in the same way that i do, you'll know pretty much what i am getting at.

it's a shame about the straight story. it kind of messed up my view of david lynch. i think he done it only for money but that just makes it worse.

i was just reading about blue velvet right now. i saw last person posted as roman and thought 'maybe he's posting about...holy snacks.' though i guess it isn't that much of a coincidence.

you know, i feel like i've already talked about this alot but maybe it was to myself. i'm pretty sure i enjoy david lynch and silent hill 2 for the same reasons. it's all to do with the same thing. i wouldn't say silent hill 2 is a rip off though, they don't steal any major elements i can think of and i don't really know that the pyramid head scene you mentioned is that similar to anything in blue velvet at all? i won't get specific for people who haven't seen it, but the components of that scene are entirely different, or differently configured, so they don't really bear any resemblance to any scene in blue velvet that i can think of. and i've seen it 37 times....i'm a blue velvet expert.....

I guess I'll put this in spoilers but it is just the fact that both scenes have the main character hiding in a closet with the type of door that allows them to witness RAPE (in blue velvet it's when jeffrey breaks into dorothy's apartment and we see frank for the first time; jeffrey is forced to hide in the closet (again) and he watches as frank HAS HIS WAY with dorothy).  It is definitely a nod to blue velvet!  And I hope I didn't imply that I thought that Silent Hill 2 was ripping off blue velvet, because I don't.     

actually i have talked about this before, it was on tomatoland i think. i have alot more to say about it, though, because i feel like this particular ZONE is MY ZONE. i don't know if that's clear - i can't really call it thematic, or aesthetic, because it's almost neither, but at the same time kind of both, and the requirements of this zone it are so permitting that it would be ridiculous to specify them. i think if you appreciate a movie like blue velvet in the same way that i do, you'll know pretty much what i am getting at.

jamie if I'm getting you right now I think we're on the same page here.  we should talk more about this stuff 

it's a shame about the straight story. it kind of messed up my view of david lynch. i think he done it only for money but that just makes it worse.

I saw the straight story a while ago and thought it was NICE and while hardly my favorite Lynch movie it didn't really change my view on him at all.  I'm curious what you mean by this.  for the record it was written by someone who edited a bunch of his movies so there's that and even if it was done for the money I don't think that's inherently a bad thing because most of that money probably went to financing other projects.  like at least it is charming and well made and not just straight GIMME DA MONEY

It is definitely a nod to blue velvet!

actually, yeah, i forgot about that similarity. okay, i think that counts as an official nod.

I saw the straight story a while ago and thought it was NICE and while hardly my favorite Lynch movie it didn't really change my view on him at all.  I'm curious what you mean by this.  for the record it was written by someone who edited a bunch of his movies so there's that and even if it was done for the money I don't think that's inherently a bad thing because most of that money probably went to financing other projects.  like at least it is charming and well made and not just straight GIMME DA MONEY

well my main problem with it was that david lynch has always made idealistic fantasies gone wrong about middle/upper class white Americans. In the straight story, the fantasy doesn't go wrong, it goes exactly right. Imagine if Blue Velvet was just about kyle mclachlan and laura dern getting together and how friggin happy everyone is in the whitewashed suburbs - it would be a trash, sandra bullock type of movie. The Straight Story isn't about rich people, but it'd be any republican's ideal anyway. I also remember there wasn't a single non-white person in that movie - that's a criticism you can make of David Lynch all the time, but usually it can be at least marginally defended by the fact that the kind of stories he is telling are to do with how crazy rich white people can be, and it's about how all of that can be sinister and go wrong. The Straight Story is just supposed to be some perfect fantasy of a true American patriot learning how to be a man again, and anyone who isn't in that white mainstream of America is not included in that fantasy. Aside from that, it was cheesey schlock anyway. Sarah Palin tweet on the straight story: 'tru american hero straight talk, no spin. not looking for any hand outs. wise, just common sense. GO USA!!!'

i liked about the first 20 minutes of it until i figured out what i was actually watching. and the worst part is, if he did it all for the money or actually put some  hard work into this movie, it really makes him a bit of a shithead either. he's either a sell-out to right-wingers looking for a feel-good movie about how good it was until life started getting so colourful, or he is one himself.

Timecrimes. Clever little film. Apparently being remade with Tom Cruise as the lead.

I watched "The Last Airbender" and "Eclipse" on the same night.

Just... fuck...

I like how Aang needed to contact the dragonspirit to learn that he should use fucking water against the fire guys

And yeah, I mean Eclipse was the best one, but it was the worst in terms of so bad it's hilarious. So it was basically just bad and really repetetive.

Overall I liked Airbender better, because at least it was sort of entertaining and had a lot of hilariously bad exposition.