198 replies to this topic

[steveuk]

So did Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. It's still trite rubbish.

Yes it is, but that's not the point under debate.

[Arjan Dirkse]

After ten minutes watching Avatar I gave up. I thought it seemed very artificial and lifeless, I couldn't get into it at all.

[Steve Sensible]

Ten minutes is hardly giving it a fair chance, is it.

[craggy]

Did you even get to the Blue Thundercats and their USB dreadlocks yet?

[steveuk]

Did you even get to the Blue Thundercats and their USB dreadlocks yet?

Ten minutes? I'm not sure Jake's even gone for his first run by then?

[Arjan Dirkse]

Ten minutes is hardly giving it a fair chance, is it.

I didn't like it. Why would I force myself through the remainder of the movie?

[craggy]

yeah, 10minutes is nothing! I watched The Fifth Element and Dune the other night. In that order. After the sheer quantity of cool sh...stuff that is in Fifth Element, I forced myself to watch all of Dune, in disbelief that it could be so undewhelming all the way through, but no, it was in fact, a very big pile of pants.

[steveuk]

The film's over but the debate continues.

Now I have to choose between the non-Cameron 'Titanic' TV mini-series or a documentary on satellites?

I guess its lift-off in T-minus 2 minutes!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00q85bw

[craggy]

someone should make an Equel to Cameron's Titanic. Not a sequel or a prequel, but another film that happens at the same time, and could theoretically be watched side by side with it. Just because. Bonus points if they put robots, ninjas, time-travel or dinosaurs in there somehow.

[Russell H]

Ten minutes is hardly giving it a fair chance, is it.

Ten minutes = ten pages of script, which is all professional script readers give before they ditch a script. At the very least, if the first ten minutes don't make you want to watch the next ten minutes, it's not for you.

someone should make an Equel to Cameron's Titanic. Not a sequel or a prequel, but another film that happens at the same time, and could theoretically be watched side by side with it.

There's a thread in that. Thanks.

[craggy]

so long as you implement said thread, Russell. I'm an ideas firehose, but terrible with the heavy lifting.

[HowardAshton]

Now I have to choose between the non-Cameron 'Titanic' TV mini-series or a documentary on satellites?

Julian Fellows' Titanic was utter rubbish, too much going on, too many characters, not one of them at all likable, every single period drama cliche used ad-nauseam right from the beginning. Even by the standards of a drama based on the Titanic it was predictable. Completely heartless and humourless the entire way through. Downton Abbey it was not.

[Russell H]

so long as you implement said thread, Russell. I'm an ideas firehose, but terrible with the heavy lifting.

Done.

http://forums.millar...__fromsearch__1

[Rory Abel]

The guy who created the Shield created SAMCRO. Great show, season 2 is a knockout, season 3...not so much before a return to form in S4.

Just a quick clarification, Shawn Ryan created The Shield, Kurt Sutter created Sons of Anarchy but was a writer on The Shield. There is cross-pollination between the shows though. The gang that SAMCRO sells guns are from The Shield and, I believe, a motorcycle gang called the Sons of Anarchy appeared in a couple episodes of The Shield.

[Robert B]

Just finished episode 6 of the Game of Thrones Blu Rays. Finding it to be a bit of a slog actually. The wife and I don't look forward to each episode. This is partly because we read the books (although it's been about 12 years since I read them), and partly because the tone is so bland. Friends of ours warned us about that and I guess they were right.

I guess what it comes down to is that to my memory, the books were great fun to read, and by contrast the show is no fun to watch. There's no humor, no thrills, no sense of adventure or excitement.

Love all the sets and costumes and most of the casting, though.


EDIT: I've never gone into a Game of Thrones thread on this board so I have no idea if this opinion is the general consensus or not.

Edited by Robert B, 26 March 2012 - 03:00 AM.

[steveuk]

Mostly, we like it.

Julian Fellows' Titanic was utter rubbish, too much going on, too many characters, not one of them at all likable, every single period drama cliche used ad-nauseam right from the beginning. Even by the standards of a drama based on the Titanic it was predictable. Completely heartless and humourless the entire way through. Downton Abbey it was not.

I wouldn't have expected that.

Fellowes is doing well, and I think was doing fine when the series would've been developed and made, so for him to phone it in just seems to be extra pointless?

[David Meadows]

I was vaguely impressed in the cinema. On a flat TV screen it has to stand far more on its merits as a story ... and it's not that strong.

EDIT: And the more I watch, the clunkier it seems. I think I must have been more impressed by the 3D on the big screen than I realised.

I never saw it at the cinema, only on 2D TV, and I didn't think it was very strong. Not a terrible film by a long shot, but not deserving the plaudits it got, unless you're only applauding the visual effects. And the ending suffered too much from Ewokitis.

[Steve Sensible]

Not a terrible film by a long shot, but not deserving the plaudits it got, unless you're only applauding the visual effects.

I don't really recall it getting plaudits for the story - it was more for the richness of the world they created, and the way it was brought to life. Things like the alien flora and fauna were all given a lot of thought - it's clear that what ended up on-screen barely scratched the surface of the stuff that Cameron and his crew dreamt up.

[David Meadows]

I don't really recall it getting plaudits for the story - it was more for the richness of the world they created, and the way it was brought to life. Things like the alien flora and fauna were all given a lot of thought - it's clear that what ended up on-screen barely scratched the surface of the stuff that Cameron and his crew dreamt up.

But the "richness" of the flora and fauna was purely a visual richness. I didn't get any sense of a detailed ecosystem cleverly imagined. Maybe Cameron and co did have a lot of stuff dreamt up, but all that came across in the film was pretty visuals.

Maybe I'm just spoiled by decades of reading SF with extremely intricate worlds. I mean, you finish reading Dune, for example, and your head is full of, "spice to sand plankton to sand trout to pre-spice mass to spice". You finish watching Avatar and you think, "their flowers are pretty". It's style, not substance.

Or at least, that's how it appeared to me. Maybe I missed something.

[steveuk]

Sidestepping for moment, this will be coming soon to a TV near us all;

James Cameron Completes Record-Breaking Mariana Trench Dive
Solo sub dive is deepest ever.

At noon, local time (10 p.m. ET), James Cameron's "vertical torpedo" sub broke the surface of the western Pacific, carrying the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker back from the Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep—Earth's deepest, and perhaps most alien, realm.

The first human to reach the 6.8-mile-deep (11-kilometer-deep) undersea valley solo, Cameron arrived at the bottom with the tech to collect scientific data, specimens, and visions unthinkable in 1960, when the only other manned Challenger Deep dive took place, according to members of the National Geographic expedition.

After a faster-than-expected, roughly 70-minute ascent, Cameron's sub, bobbing in the open ocean, was spotted by helicopter and would soon be plucked from the Pacific by a research ship's crane. Earlier, the descent to Challenger Deep had taken 2 hours and 36 minutes.


<SNIP>

http://news.national...ns-science-sub/

Those 'Avatar' tickets we all bought? This is what they paid for.