the last harry potter with my dad. we saw all of them in the theaters, starting back when I was a kid.

I mean, you know what it is. but it was actually better than all the other big-budget action movies I've seen lately. I find that a little interesting, because the Harry Potters are definitely the 'gayest' series to all the big blockbuster movie fans, but they're actually a lot better than avatar or the transformers or the hangover or whatever superhero movie besides the new bat mans. I know most of you won't care about comparing burger king and mickey d's but I saw the movie so now I get to post about it.

my favorite part of the movie has to be after Harry buries the house elf, he goes inside to talk to the goblin. the goblin asks, "you buried the elf?" and harry nods eagerly: he has proven he's cool with the magical minorities. I haven't read any of the books since I was a kid, but as far as I know there is no reason why a goblin should care about an elf. the series is full of embarrassing derivative stuff like that, stuff that unintentionally alludes to real life without actually making sense in context. if I was a kid watching this I'd probably think that means harry is a good person and that's why you have to be respectful to all kinds of people.

also I remember when the book came out Steel posted a bunch of spoilers on the forum, and until now I believed them. the ones I could remember, like belatrix lestrange kills ron weasley. apparently they were all made up. I dunno if he knew this or he was just copying someone else's fake spoilers from SA, but he got me.

earl i didn't read that. why are you talking about that. you shouldn't have gone seen that.

i went to see it on sunday with my mom.

my favorite part of the movie has to be after Harry buries the house elf, he goes inside to talk to the goblin. the goblin asks, "you buried the elf?" and harry nods eagerly: he has proven he's cool with the magical minorities. I haven't read any of the books since I was a kid, but as far as I know there is no reason why a goblin should care about an elf. the series is full of embarrassing derivative stuff like that, stuff that unintentionally alludes to real life without actually making sense in context. if I was a kid watching this I'd probably think that means harry is a good person and that's why you have to be respectful to all kinds of people.

i agree that this felt a bit hamfisted in this film without any context. the whole conversation makes a lot more sense in the book since it's been bedded in since the second book that WIZARDS MARGINALISE MAGICAL CREATURES and it'd been expanded upon at various points. without this it is just a bare allusion to real life racism rather than at least being tied into the world in some way (though whether it works that well in the books either is another matter). this is the problem with having cut a lot from the books out of this film / previous films, it really came back to bite them when it came to making the whole thing have any coherence

that said i think a couple of changes were for the better. in the book the very important DESTROY ALL HORCRUXES stuff at hogwarts is basically just harry running around the school looking for a tiara. ginger man and emma watson bump into him on the stairs and say "oh btw we went to the chamber of secrets™ and destroyed a horcrux" with no fanfare whatsoever. at least with this film they made an attempt to play it for some dramatic tension and give a sense that anything was happening around them

all in all i would give this film a non-committal thumbs up. alan rickman still a ridiculous actor

earl i didn't read that. why are you talking about that. you shouldn't have gone seen that.

can it pipsqueak.

i went to see it on sunday with my mom.
i agree that this felt a bit hamfisted in this film without any context. the whole conversation makes a lot more sense in the book since it's been bedded in since the second book that WIZARDS MARGINALISE MAGICAL CREATURES and it'd been expanded upon at various points. without this it is just a bare allusion to real life racism rather than at least being tied into the world in some way (though whether it works that well in the books either is another matter). this is the problem with having cut a lot from the books out of this film / previous films, it really came back to bite them when it came to making the whole thing have any coherence

that said i think a couple of changes were for the better. in the book the very important DESTROY ALL HORCRUXES stuff at hogwarts is basically just harry running around the school looking for a tiara. ginger man and emma watson bump into him on the stairs and say "oh btw we went to the chamber of secrets™ and destroyed a horcrux" with no fanfare whatsoever. at least with this film they made an attempt to play it for some dramatic tension and give a sense that anything was happening around them

I thought maybe there was a specific reason why this goblin cared about the fate of this elf, but it really was because they're both marginalized magical creatures? I find that pretty funny.

can it pipsqueak

yeah, sorry, i wasn't in my right mind

I just watched Transformers III. Just... fuck.

I watched Iron Man 2 about a week ago because I'm a toad who LOVES to roll in the trash and vomit. Don't Tread On Me. It was pretty enjoyable just because it was almost entirely lacking in angst/backstory and you are thankfully never asked to give a fuck that eg charismatic superhero alphamale is dying of some bullshit or that his dad never talked to him. It was a pretty weird film! Like it was FRATBOY CELEBRITY CULTURE FETISH entourage season 8, bros in da club, shrimp & white wine, racin cars & fuckin ALL the women etc except it all had this weird militaristic thing as well. If anyone remembers the bit in the trailer where the Iron Man jumps off a plane and lands at the Electronic Entertainment Expo to accompianment of tremendous cheers & choreographed dancing then you'll know what I mean. Right after this the Iron Man has to testify before a senate subcommittee on his powerful war armor. He announces that he has "privatised world peace" right after he remotely destroys a terrorist cell with his iphone and then flips off Bad Senator while everyone cheers and laughs and also he pwns some beta male nerd lmao. It's really ridiculous and insane and I think that Iron Man 2 probably is to the 21st century what that General Hospital episode about permed dudes in tuxes swilling champagne at a south american guerilla base was to the 80s. There was a pretty funny scene where he gets drunk in the armor and starts shooting wineglasses off girls' heads at a party with his laser cannons but it's never really brought up again.
 
There's a really good essay thing here http://squaremans.com/digging-in-the-cultural-wreckage/ about how stuff like The Venture Bros and Portal and probably Bioshock etc as well kind of has this whole subtext about Living In The Shadow Of The 1960s Space Age and Iron Man 2 does this as well, weirdly. It turns out his Walt Disneyesque dad had encoded a secret blueprint in his plans for something far beyond what modern science could discover and there's an instructional tape shot in period style and the whole bit. Kind of strange that this movie would have it seeing as how it pretty much nonstop cheerleads the incredible modern age of iphones and such. I guess they're not incompatible!
 
One of the villains is an uglier, more awkward version of the hero who desperately apes the Iron Man even as he's passed over by Luscious Babe's and media etc and it's kind of implicit that you should hate him for his Crimes Against Cool. I think there was something similar with Pete's character in Mad Men (altho i barely watched the first season of that show) and also the villain in the first Richard Stark 'Parker' novel where the villain is similarly a bumbling shmoe compared to the ice-cold efficient hero. It's probably a recurring thing in business fantasy stuff but I don't want to check it out.
 
Anyway last night I rewatched Repo Man which is a much better movie that has Harry Dean Stanton and punk rockers and a radioactive car. Never really cared for it before but this time it 'clicked' as they say. Tonight I rewatched The Shining since it was on a local channel and I was very impressed with the wallpaper.
 
Edit: The main bad guy in The Iron Man 2 is played by John Romero and he is an evil russian with a grudge going back to the 60s cold war again. There is very little seen of the brown desert insurgent types from the first film and it's implied that they've all been sent scurrying into hiding by the Iron Man. The only other enemy is internal and it comes from the government wrestling control of this new technology from the rugged individualist Titan Of Industry.

yeah you see alot of that sixties referencing in fallout for sure and I think fallout does it the best. Although bioshock is pretty close. Fallout immerses you in it though. 

I really liked that deconstruction of Iron Man 2, the first was ok but the second kind of totally repulsed me but it probably is like the best and only accurate distillation of what 2011 is and is totally nightmarish and surreal when you think about it (chops up footage/makes it even BLUEer and YELLOWer than it already was and sets to Venetian Snares - Die Die Die Winnipeg Fuckers Die) I have to like any movie which is sort of secretly about fuck Iphones fuck Apple and I dunno even in Oboma years no movies/etc. seem blatantly anti-corporate/grotesque about it whereas the 90's was full of shit like that/picking on Bill Gates and he like saves babies from burning buildings now. Well I dunno maybe not that good but like what does Steve Jobs do for humanity other than like print money Robert Downey Jr. is actually the greatest troll ever

In fairness I think there's a lot of recent bigbudget trashy movies with vaguely topical subtext but the thing is that they're more about uh vague analogies than OTT literalizations. Like there's a ton of movies with SUDDEN GEORGE BUSH REFERENCE where villainous boss dude turns to screen and says WE DONT NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS or some shit but that's about it. Stuff like Star Wars Prequels and The Batman Movies and Avatar and stuff kind of loosely parallel political stuff but I don't think there's any movies which just take existing politics and push it to ridiculous extremes eg They Live where classwar is depicted as battle between muscular prole construction workers and evil brainwashing skeletons or Videodrome where Marshall McLuhan is renamed Dr. O'Blivion and exists solely as library of video cassettes or The People Under The Stairs where Reagan family analogues stalk and murder impoverished black youth.
 
Actually the one exception I can think of (apart from borderline stuff like Drag Me To Hell's weird finance stuff) is that "Gamer" movie which I didn't see. Heard it included a villainous Bill Gates character as well as a ludicrous pulp depiction of videogame / newtechnology stuff so might be worth checking out..!
 
 
Anyway, I just watched "Surf II" (there is no Surf I), an incredibly trashy 80s beach comedy in which a screeching nerd stereotype takes revenge on bombed-out muscular surfer hunks by inventing a cola which transforms them into... punk rockers!! The punks are bestial and violent and eat cans of motor oil, broken glass, seaweed and Dick Dale albums. They communicate through savage grunts and all wear ghoulish makeup and ripped bodysuits and spend their spare time violently headbutting walls and vending machines while listening to the Circle Jerks. The surfers are only marginally less brutal and inarticulate. The plot is just a loose structure on which to hang completely gratuitous scenes of topless girls and stock footage of surfing. There's a really amazing splitscreen scene of two different domestic households reciting the same dialogue in unison for no reason at all and another amazing nearly dialogue-free stretch of movie concerning an eating contest between a burly Surfer Goon and a low-down Zombie Punk. It stretches for several minutes in which the only sound is of the participants crunching seaweed and beach crud.
Basically it's a really astonishingly trashy movie and I'd recommend to anyone who enjoys chewing on garbage. Sample dialogue exchange:
 
- "For Christ's sake don't stop innocent kids from drinking cola and surfing! It's the American Way!"
 
- "Surfing's built this town. It damn near built this country."
 
For "Forbidden Zone" obsessives (ie. vellfire) I should mention that this movie also apparantly features a rare song by Oingo Boingo...

For "Forbidden Zone" obsessives (ie. vellfire) I should mention that this movie also apparantly features a rare song by Oingo Boingo...

yes hello that's me!

According to IMDb Forbidden Zone 2 is supposed to be out before the end of the year.  Quite a few of the same cast and of course the same writers.  Pretty exciting!

On the suggestion of Vell, I watched UP! (1976, not the one with the old dude and the balloons)

All I have to say is HAHhAHAHHAHAHAHAH "YOU AND YOUR ROUND MUSCULAR ASS, LET'S SEE WHAT ADVANTAGES SURVIVE YOU IN A FIGHT TO THE DEATH" "...BUT WHEN WILL I REVEAL MY TRUE IDENTITY!?!"

(spoiler: hitler)

Haha did you watch the whole movie or just the ending?  The rest of the movie was ho-hum but the ending was so goddamn good.

watched two pretty uncomfortable movies back-to-back and felt rotten for the rest of the evening. antonioni's blowup and hitchcock's rebecca.

i don't know how to even summarize these movies. i guess i disliked both of them, although both are pretty good in their own way. effective, interesting, blowup more than rebecca. i didn't like blowup at all when i was watching it and had even more or less abandoned it, only reluctantly finishing it. i still don't really like it, but by the end i got in sync with what the film was trying to convey and it's interesting if not even peripherally entertaining. in it you follow this profoundly smug dickhead mod photographer as he goes around london being the most awful person in the room at all times until he accidentally photographs a murder. i actually got to the point of STRONGLY disliking the movie about two third of the way through it, but the ending is really unusually strong and it sold me on what the movie was driving for. i still can't really get over the fact that it's just an unpleasant movie, but at least i felt like i was watching it for a reason.

the other one was rebecca, which is old and dated. not a fantastic movie, but not a bad one either. it manages to be really UNCOMFORTABLE the whole time to an abnormally effective degree. i'm not really nuts about alfred hitchcock. yeah he's a good FILMMAKER in the same way that steven speilberg is a good filmmaker, but i don't think either are usually particularly good at conveying complex emotional or otherwise pertinent concepts. speilberg probably isn't a great comparison though because he's really never done that and at least hitchcock can get under your skin when he really feels like it. regardless, this movie is one of the better examples of hitchcock doing something with the films, even if it really relies heavily on the actors and pretty good source material. i guess more than anything else this movie is hitchcock doing a good job of not ruining the story and standing in the way of how fucked up and broken everything in it is.

i dunno. both are pretty well-made movies, but neither did a lot for me. don't even know why i'm posting about these moldly old movies nobody here would ever likely watch anyway.