Films The Official bit-tech Movie Thread - What have you seen lately?

If they’d included more from Book 1 - and I mean “Book 1 of The Lord of the Rings”, not “The Fellowship of the Ring” - then that peril would have been brought much closer to home in The Shire and its immediate borders.

Actually the most “whiplash-inducing” part for me was the Hobbits returning to their idyllic, untouched paradise of The Shire. Had “The Scouring of the Shire” plot line been kept intact, it would have given much more weight & gravitas to the hobbit characters. Particularly Merry & Pippin, who largely remain comic relief in the films, but by the end of the book they’re shown to have grown so much more. After the end of the books, Merry & Pippin end up becoming the most famous hobbits in The Shire, and when they die they are laid to rest in the hallows of Minas Tirith, among the Kings of Gondor, as honoured heroes. Sam is elected Mayor for seven consecutive seven-year terms, and eventually, because he too was a ring-bearer for a short time, is allowed to sail into the West and spend the rest of his days in Valinor. I know a lot that is in the appendices and not the “main narrative”, but for me these are some of the most poignant aspects of the whole story.

 

I assume you didnt like it lol

 

Is This Thing On? (Cinema) - No, It's Not/10
This film really isn't sure what it is. It's about a couple with two kids, heading for divorce because they've run out of steam, yet is neither poignant, heartfelt or heart-rending. The guy goes off to take up stand-up, yet it's not funny either. It's not particularly poorly-written in terms of script, it's not badly acted, it's not embarrassingly-filmed. It just does nothing very well at all. It has no depth, maybe. And a lot of superficial characters. I don't go too deep into this stuff, I just want to be entertained or made to feel emotionally involved otherwise, yet I really didn't give two hoots what happened to these people. It's just really boring and does nothing it markets. So don't even bother when it hits the lounge.

I'm taking my dinner to watch Shelter in a bit. I'll know what I'm in for with that, at least and may even end up pleasantly surprised (but if I'm not, then my expectations will have been met).

 

Shelter (Cinema with dinner - not free dinner, though) - The Statham Identity/10
Maybe it's a coincidence they're both Jason. Maybe it's the strange accent where in every film, J can't seem to decide if he's British or American. Maybe it's because I was still wondering why MI6 were operating domestically (unless there's a clause or a restructure I don't know about) and didn't pay too much attention, but this really is a low-rent version of Bourne, which is kind of a shame as I was hoping for a no-brainer solid action flick. It's one of those where the trailer crams all the good bits into a couple of minutes, but those have loooooong gaps between them in the film, which is a lot slower as a result. Bit of a mis-sell.

It wasn't doing too bad, until:
"Don't tell me you're getting sentimental in your old age"
"She's just a girl who was in the wrong place at the wrong time"
"Christ, Mason"

Unless again, I'm missing an homage or a reference to something else, it's as if the tea boy snuck those lines into the dialogue whilst the actual scriptie was having a pee break. And is it me, or have I been spoilt by 4k OLED TVs, because films these days look kind of blurry, a bit faded and......old? Oh well. As a Jason film, it's okay, absolutely zero ground being broken, but it's not awful. As a film in its own right......nah. By the numbers. One you press Play on when the missus has fallen asleep on you to Downton Abbey and you don't want to move her in case she either starts talking or puts the Abbey back on.

 

It's a common theme with recent films - they're over-lit so that they'll compress well for streaming services. Streaming doesn't like darkness, so everything is too bright, and clothes are all just ... beige.

 

Ah, no - I meant the films in the cinema, actually. They just don't seem to be as good as at home, somehow. When the streaming is bad, that's fine (or at least understandably acceptable) because I just chalk it up to either my network or the infrastructure, back to and including the streamer. As luck would have it, I don't often get toooo bad quality for my streams, sometimes blocky blackness, but it doesn't last too long.

I just thought cinema films were all recorded/shown in 4K RED-vision super-dynamic HDR Retina format these days, now it's been invented, but it looks more like VHS where I go.