Messages

51

General Chat / Re: Who here is into Hip-Hop/Rap?

« on: February 19, 2020, 05:31:02 PM »

Done, i've edited the 4 links in.

I never did get into J Cole, but did accidentally stumble onto Phonte and i'm glad i did. Unlike many around him (even Drake, who seems to have developed himself off Phonte), he raps with clarity ad sings really well and talks about topics that are quite humble - his 2018 album he spoke about the death of his father, trying to lose weight and getting married.

It's sad how he hasn't blown up compared to other - less talented and versatile - rappers, but his output has been nothing short of fantastic.

Yes! No News is Good News is a classic! If you don't know Little Brother, that was a rap duo he was in some time ago and they got back together for an album last year.  Check it out if you haven't!

Phonte specializes in what I call "grown man raps".  He's similar to Black Thought, but with less intensity.

Speaking of Black Thought, please check out Streams of Thought vol 1 & 2, if you haven't!

I really need to try the Little Brother album. I've been listening to the Pacific Time EP quite a lot lately.

52

General Chat / Re: Who here is into Hip-Hop/Rap?

« on: February 18, 2020, 05:46:59 PM »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWX2bXLHXjs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-Y3-i90dFw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rmF_XmWIvQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_B74vG2v2Q
It was Ego that, for me cemented him as someone who can both sing and rap rather than just jump between one or the other.

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General Chat / Re: Who here is into Hip-Hop/Rap?

« on: February 18, 2020, 04:02:45 AM »

I never did get into J Cole, but did accidentally stumble onto Phonte and i'm glad i did. Unlike many around him (even Drake, who seems to have developed himself off Phonte), he raps with clarity ad sings really well and talks about topics that are quite humble - his 2018 album he spoke about the death of his father, trying to lose weight and getting married.

It's sad how he hasn't blown up compared to other - less talented and versatile - rappers, but his output has been nothing short of fantastic.

54

Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last movie you've seen

« on: February 11, 2020, 03:44:36 AM »

Birds of Prey: Go into this movie thinking "unreliable narrator". Thats the only expectation to set. Otherwise its a fun and goofy movie in its own right (its not Legends level of goofy however).

My only complaint was how literally everybody took the chemical plant blowing up to mean Harley and Joker broke up. That's one really big stretch to make. Also what did everyone else make of Black Mask and Zsasz's chemistry? It leaned into they're in some sort of relationship slightly.

EDIT: It's much too late now, and Joaquin Phoenix's Joker killed the opportunity of this happening, but they should have release Birds of Prey and a Leto Joker movie around the same time as each other (maybe a month apart?) to allow them to tell the story of their breakup, and what they did next, to be told in parallel. Harley goes off and runs into the Birds of Prey while Joker throws himself back into his work and tackles some people who thinks he's distracted by the breakup.

55

Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last TV show you've seen

« on: January 28, 2020, 10:19:29 AM »

Is anyone watching Avenue 5? Who is this show aimed at?

There's some very good talent here but it feels like they want to make a comedy about the situation, and then stuff it fully with The Office-type characters, rather than be like Stargate Universe, and even Lost, which past the pilot was saying "we need to get more food and water" and focus on the basics.

56

Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last movie you've seen

« on: January 20, 2020, 06:03:52 PM »

Bad Boys For Life - So......... this was far better than i expected. Substantially better than the car crash the trailers suggested. Martin Lawrence clearly isn't in shape and didn't try to match Will Smith, so the movie works overtime to avoid him doing any physical combat or activity through the movie - but the movie doesnt acknowledge it either, despite the entire movie referring to how they've been doing this for 25 years

57

Movies & TV / Re: Hey! DC's got stuff too... (Official Thread for the DCU of Movies and TV)

« on: January 18, 2020, 03:31:57 PM »

The show's overall sense of lunacy (NOW, that is) brings enough fun that i can ignore all the issues simply to see Mick get mad that a giant Beebo interrupted his book signing as Rebecca Silver - i'm glad Mick has got much more interesting development since the start of the series. He's now easily one of my favourite characters

My only complaints is how Legends, both the show and its characters is treated as a child series to everything else; stories never actually go BACK to Flash or Arrow, but plenty go TO Legends in the early days. And in the crossover Sara mentions how Oliver is the last person to remember him before she got on the boat - has she forgotten her mother is still alive?

I've never watched (and never will watch) Black Lightning

I think you should give it a try. Even though it is Arrowverse adjacent - don't let Crisis fool you into thinking its in the Arrowverse now, all the shows (bar bits of Batwoman) is in Vancouver while Black Lightning is in Atlanta. Crossover opportunities, in terms of production, are limited. Unlike all the other shows, this one looks at superheroes through a different lens. Whether that's successful or not is another story, but it at least makes a strong effort to do that.

Plus Jefferson and Lynn have better chemistry than Iris/Barry, Oliver/Felicity and even Ava/Sara.

58

Movies & TV / Re: Hey! DC's got stuff too... (Official Thread for the DCU of Movies and TV)

« on: January 16, 2020, 05:08:18 PM »

I'm watching Part 5 of Crisis now and the best lines of the entire crossover are, unsurprisingly, in the Legends ep.

"Is this what all the crossovers are like?"

59

Movies & TV / Re: Hey! DC's got stuff too... (Official Thread for the DCU of Movies and TV)

« on: January 16, 2020, 04:09:39 PM »

In fact in order to save your sanity I would recommend against it.

I can agree with this. If you are going to watch one of the shows I recommend Legends of Tomorrow. It's a fun adventure show with a ship full of Losers/C-List heroes that doesn't take itself seriously at all. There is a Unicorn that eats hearts, so yeah not serious. Then there is Rip, he is brilliant asshole, Duvuel carries the show until it can stand on it's own.

A warning I do give is the supporting character of the first 2 seasons are "Please go away". It still suffers from "TV" fighting where somehow it's hand to hand despite guns and there is a bit of shoehorning. It bad enough that at times I rather not have a fight at all, less can be more.

It feels like somewhere in late Season 1 / Early S2 they decided to stop trying to spend money on the characters' powers and go in another direction. Not entirely a bad thing given we wound up with Beebo.

60

Movies & TV / Re: All Things Netflix! Now you can watch on the GO, no mobile data needed.

« on: December 25, 2019, 09:01:08 PM »

Season 4 of The Expanse dropped on Amazon and... wow. It was an all setup season but definitely worth it Avasarala swears like a mofo in every single scene and its totally worth it.

61

Movies & TV / Re: Batman

« on: December 03, 2019, 03:40:49 AM »

I'm still a little disappointed we didnt get JK Simmons more as Gordon because he is a fantastic actor - for proof watch his recent show Counterpart. It's only 20 episodes but his 2 characters is just mind-blowing for how well he plays them. It's Tatiana Maslany levels of good.

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Movies & TV / Re: (NEW Poll Added!!) New Movies/TV Shows we should keep an eye out for!

« on: November 13, 2019, 05:33:34 PM »

Mark Wahlberg has been cast as Sully in the Uncharted movie. Was Bryan Cranston unavailable or something??

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Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last movie you've seen

« on: November 10, 2019, 09:19:54 AM »

Midway - I hope BNM/nickmitch understands where i come from when i say this.. but some movies feel better in context with paired with a loosely related movie or concept.

The Need for Speed movie makes more sense when you consider it to be a Burnout movie instead. First Man makes more sense when paired with Hidden Figures, because you then get an idea of what we didn't see.

Watch Red Tails (or at least become familiar with the story) with Midway.

Because while this is a very hollywood take on what happened there, there was so many tropes portrayed that began to annoy me by the end: pilot with no fear of death but then suddenly loses his resolve, officer who nobody believes ends up being right, female characters literally sidelined only to hangout with other sidelined female characters worrying about their husbands and more subtle production-related ones like zero non-white people seen in the entire movie. Ignoring the Japanese cast (who were obviously required given the plot), i think i saw only one black person in the entire film - from the back of the head with no speaking lines. In 2019 things like that stand out really clearly.

Otherwise its a good movie to put on and not pay attention to.

64

Movies & TV / Re: Streaming Services Getting Hit Hard Lately: Another Industry on Deathwatch?

« on: November 10, 2019, 08:48:59 AM »

Netflix:12.99
Prime Video:8.99
Disney+: 6.99
Apple TV+:4.99

This problem is almost exclusively a US one. Above are the only UK ones (plus Crunchyroll). All the terrestrial platforms (iPlayer, ITV Hub, All 4 and Demand 5) are free to use with only the BBC content, indeed ANY TV watching, requiring a £150/year "TV licence" which pays for the BBC operation - which is incredibly cheap given the amount of content they put out.

65

Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last movie you've seen

« on: October 25, 2019, 06:45:14 PM »

Terminator: Dark Fate - it may have taken 27 years but we finally got the third movie we truly deserved. Linda Hamilton still captures attention as strongly as she did in T2.

66

Movies & TV / Re: Star Wars IX The Rise of Skywalker

« on: October 23, 2019, 03:27:40 AM »

They let John Boyega actually have a hairstyle in this one, so its already a wild improvement over the previous two.

67

Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last movie you've seen

« on: October 21, 2019, 03:06:56 PM »

Maleficent - It was worth the wait to see Angelia ham it up again. I enjoyed only for that.

68

Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last movie you've seen

« on: October 14, 2019, 06:07:10 AM »

I totally forgot about Captain Marvel lol. Fury was good but Coulson looked a touch off in a shot or two, but this was notably worse. Gemini Man moved around a lot more, his face often looked "wrong" in daylight and the colouring in daytime was the wrong shade.

69

Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last movie you've seen

« on: October 13, 2019, 03:34:56 PM »

Gemini Man - I admit i only watched this to see how well the movie handled the CGI de-aging tech. In any dim/night scenes it works great and the younger versions looks  accurate and handles motion easily. In daytime, however, it looks rubbery and the lighting is off in several scenes with even slow motion not clicking properly. Give it a few years and it'll be nailed down properly, but there's a reason why movies like Civil War used it for a 30 second walk and talk and nothing else.

70

Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last movie you've seen

« on: September 25, 2019, 07:23:28 AM »

Ad Astra: Being unflinching is his external character, the jar holding the mess inside. This is where Brad Pitt comes in with subtle inflections, fake smiles, bit too long pauses and doesn't overact. Astronauts and test pilots do have that level of calm.

He may be that calm but very nearly everyone else wasnt. Trying to arrest him during takeoff is a very bad idea

71

Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last movie you've seen

« on: September 24, 2019, 03:47:33 PM »

Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw

All in all, the action's good, the locales are cool enough (London has been done to death, Russia was barely seen, but Samoa was very pretty to look at), and the dialogue is there.  It's just missing a few things regular F&F movies have.

6.5/10

What annoys me is they frequently use the same stretches of London, in many films (mostly around the City), over and over. London is a lot bigger than that.

Rambo - why was this film made? They touted it to be the last one, but nothing about it had anything to do with finality. He's living on a farm with an adopted family, of sorts, where the daughter ignores all common sense almost as if the screenwriter decided this to happen and kicks the story off. The parent of said daughter is then left alone who is filmed several times just sitting and waiting, doing nothing, waiting for the plot - now off in Mexico - to join back to her only for her to be kicked out of the story again because Rambo says to go to your sisters, there's nothing here for you anymore.

The plot needs to go off and do Ramboing so lets visibly shuffle everyone unnecessary out the way. The upside was the film was 90 minutes, but by half way i was pretty frustrated. IF you watch this, watch passively.

Ad Astra - This is a GORGEOUS movie, no doubt about it. But don't go into it expecting Gravity. It isn't. It is way way WAY more talky. It also introduces several characters who all rather abruptly just disappear as soon as their character arc or purpose ends. The main character is unflappably calm all the time and yet through the entire movie death and destruction follows him around, but he doesnt seem bothered by it. Realistically this is a character/family drama dressed up as a scifi - the scifi trappings are merely to grab you and distract from how thin the writing is.

72

Movies & TV / Re: Disney+

« on: August 09, 2019, 07:28:48 AM »

I'll be very surprised if this launched in Australia any time soon.  I'd never heard of Hulu until recently.  It'd damn well better be out by the time the first D+ Marvel project arrives or I'll be forced to look elsewhere for it.

Seeing as Hulu announced an international launch in 2011, don't hold your breath.

73

Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last TV show you've seen

« on: August 08, 2019, 04:01:46 PM »

Is anyone watching Another Life on Netflix?

It has several connections to Stargate Universe, except this is far far more stupid.

74

Movies & TV / Re: IT'S MAHVEL BAYBEE!! [OT] for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Movies & TV)

« on: August 02, 2019, 06:29:19 AM »

There was another Smash Bros. Reference. Okay, the second one is better. Overall, this is still pretty bad. If he was going to make a parody of CinemaSins, he would have to make fun of CinemaSins’ bad jokes. Making the same kinds of jokes is more of an homage. I’m just being pedantic.

That was his aim, he wasn't making something to mock cinemasins rather that he aimed to make exactly what they would make. Definitely pedantic, but to nail how terrible they are so perfectly is quite special.

"I have a series dedicated to criticizing CinemaSins, a channel that I (believe it or not) am a fan of. This video is just another part of that series, but the major difference is that I took a preemptive approach—sin them before they can even make the video, by using their style against them as a form of critique. In other words, I am criticizing CinemaSins by making fun of the way they sin movies. 

The joke is that I am criticizing CinemaSins by purposefully being as ridiculous as they have been."

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Movies & TV / Re: IT'S MAHVEL BAYBEE!! [OT] for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Movies & TV)

« on: July 31, 2019, 04:50:05 PM »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn668amXEYk

This is a complete mockumentary of the original CinemaSins (of a video they havent even produced yet!), and its note perfect. The Smash Bros joke alone is amazing.