Buffista Movies 5: Development Hell
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
Animated Dragonlance movies well - at least one - is coming.
Ooh. Interesting. I liked the books when I was in high school, though they lost their shine for me after a while. Mostly because, as with most gaming books, you can kind of hear the dice rolling in the background, but also because they were rather simple and shallow (though still better than most D&D novels). Still, I think that's a quality that will lend itself well to an animated movie. ANd they had decent plots, so that will be good, too.
Now I'm thinking "The Goebbels Children" would be a good band name....
(The six Goebbels children were
murdered by Ms. Goebbels so they "would not have to live in a world without National Socialism" - i.e. Naziism.)
eta: Or maybe "The Goebbels Bunch."
We're whitefonting history now? Heh.
Loved Downfall. And I did sit there screaming at the tv "You are all fucking psychos!" quite a bit.
We're whitefonting history now? Heh.
Well, in case someone wants to see
Downfall
but hasn't yet
and
is unfamiliar with that bit of history....
It reminds me of when folks were cut-tagging plotpoints from Troy on LJ. Although, to be fair, the movie did screw around with the Homeric version of events more than a little. Still, it made me giggle.
I liked
Superman
way more than I expected.
I am not sure Routh can actually act, but his limitations worked for this role. I loved Posey and Spacey and the snark. I don't thik I have ever seen the Jimmy Olsen actor before, but I thought he nailed it without being too much of caricature. I even liked Bosworth which I wasn't expecting.
There were lots of logical lapses, but one choice I liked a lot was that there was very little talking during the action sequences. People are trying to stay alive, and don't make long speeches or profess true love or describe epiphanies. That felt real to me.
Olsen and White were both very good, although I suspect Langella could do that character in his sleep. Spacey felt more like a collection of oh-so-clever ticks, but for all that, I didn't feel he was that clever. And I was a little thrown by a departure from the
Lex with whom I was familiar, who was astute and powerful in his own right, and didn't have monumentally stupid plans like the one shown here. But putting the crystal in a kryptonite core was
sheer genius.
Speaking of
crystals, didn't a bunch go down/up with the ship?
Poor Kal El--he's still
robbed.
Visually, I'd have liked a distinction between the
growing crystals and the info crystals.
Too many times I was flinching thinking that either
the crystals left in the piano room
or the ones that Parker
dropped from the helicopter were going to
cause more trouble.
Huh. Just remembered that the
kid killed a guy.
Therapy!
The friend I saw it with suggested that it'd be cool if Lois had been putting
kryptonite in the kid's albuterol to prevent him from going all Super.
We also wondered about the timeline--ignoring the potential complications of
Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, White Jr. must know the kid's not his, right? Even if he doesn't know whose.
Ooh, your friend had an excellent idea. On the timeline point - maybe
gestation for Human/Kryptonian mixes is LONGER than just human
? And I wonder if
sad little superboy will turn out to be a mule?
The best wank I heard on that last, ita, was
the Kryptonian gestation is longer, so, even if she took up with him a couple/few months later, there could be question.
But it is hella wanky, anyway. And it is a nice character note if
he knows it's not his kid, genetically.
And I was a little thrown by a departure
Having watched the original recently, I can see where Singer got his characterization from -- it's not a departure from that version, but I'll agree that it probably should have been, especially if he wants a franchise. (I mean, it's even the
exact same dumb plan -- destroy bits of the existing US to create shiny new beachfront property in a way that will annoy Superman.)
The problem is that it's
not a characterization that can really support a long-term nemesis-type relationship, since Lex-as-buffoon is so easily defeated.
For one film, on a symbolic level, I liked that
the real fight wasn't with Lex at all, but with the remains of Krypton (Superman tossing the last remaining bits of his homeworld into space in order to save Earth was a pretty powerful image), but Lex will definitely need an upgrade if he's going to come back for Superman Still Here.