[Closed] Recent Viewing Part III

It will ruin your pants.

Peter

The book certainly is, and is worth a read. It has a better handle on how to tell those stories than the film, and less of a need to end with a positive message.

I also recommend his novel GHOSTWRITTEN. May no one ever make a film of that, if CLOUD ATLAS is any indication of likely success of translation.

Watched the first two episodes of a new sci-fi series, Defiance. I'd heard a bit about this - mostly from Bear McCreary's involvement writing the score for both the TV show and the game.

A bit too early to say whether I like it or not. But I will probably tune in next week for the next installment. In the meantime, here's a blog from McCreary covering the music for the SyFy Channel show.

http://www.bearmccreary.com/#blog/defiance-tv-series/

p.s. I wonder if the film wouldn't have been better called JESUS 2 : HE'S BACK!

By the descriptions in the recent Zimmer interview, about the score to the MAN OF STEEL, what i hear in the trailer, could in fact be his. It's very Zimmer-esque, non-dark and actually uplifting (as he said) and also very heavy on percussion, it has a nice driving rhythm to it. If it's not Zimmer, it's probably by Balfe or Orvarsson or one of the handful of trailer music companies around.

Yeap, it's from the new Hans Zimmer score for THE MAN OF STEEL, from what i read on facebook. Sounds like it could be the main theme...

Ok, I'm officially hooked

And the score sounds cool. Nothing as I would have expected, but cool. I'm sure it will fit in the context of the film.

Tell you the truth, I couldn't expect anything considering Superman will always BE John Williams music. So I was open for just about anything. And I liked what I heard

By the way, IF the music is of Hans Zimmer in the 2 trailers of Rush (the new Ron Howard movie), then I'm officially looking forward to 2 Zimmer scores this year.

Fair enough

Hiya Gilles you lurker

No wonder Mycroft is considered smarter

So I managed to watch the end of Cloud Atlas...

What an absolute mess of a film! None of the separate storylines made sense, nor did they seem to affect each other in the way that the editing and music would have us believe. Yes, I get the general message: love endures, revolt against oppression, liberation etc. All themes worth telling. But this film plunders its way through each message and ends up being a series of mildly well made puzzle pieces laid unstuck hoping for the audience to put them together. Well fuck that. It's boring to have an almost 3 hour film not tie those pieces together and leave us with no thread to follow. What seemed to be rather cool action pieces and sets simply ended up being confusing and frustrating. I don't ask that every story be spoon fed to me, but I do at least ask for there to be something to digest in the first place!

The strongest element that tied the separate stories together was the fact that they used the same actors. Had each event in each story directly affected, or at least translated into the next, I might have found myself less inclined to start checking facebook on my phone while watching it.

Thank Allah, Jesus and Superman I didn't see this in the cinema. As Jeff Goldblum so astutely put it...

Oh drat. I was actually rather looking forward to this film.

It's not the cleverest or most well-done movie, but i don't think it's half as bad; maybe check it out and decide for yourself?

What? And go in blind? Without preconceived notions? Without either hankies for tears of emotion or rotten tomatoes to employ in justified aesthetic rage?

"Death Race" (1973)

Or at least, that's what it is called on IMDb. This poor TV movie had such a low budget that when they decided to change the title, presumably late in the game, they didn't fix the titles on screen, instead they put a freeze from screen grab with "State of Division" as the new title, while the sound effects still played underneath.

I had to skim most of it, it was so bland and boring. Basically, an American pilot during WWII lands at a small British station to refuel, but he's informed they need him to blow up a mine field. Him and a Britush pilot go out to do it, since he had a bomb rack and they don't have a plane that does.

The British guy gets shot down, the American ladns to get him, and a roaming Nazi tank with a Nazi commander who has taken it over, shot the plane, making it unable to fly, but still run around, and so the "death race" begins.

The acting is subpar, the Nazi's are so horribly casted and acted, they are essentially American's in uniforms that are barely Nazi looking at all, with no hint of German that I can find. It's that bad.

The Nazi tank doesn't even had Nai symbols on it, and has an American "31" on it, though I never saw an indication that it was a commondured American tank.

One of the two characters is played by Doug McClure. Yes, the last name isn't coincidental. The creators of "The Simpsons" molded Troy McClure after Doug McClure and anotehr actgor named "Troy (something)". I read trivia that one of those actor's kids call him "Troy McClure" when he isn't looking, as a runing joke in the family (which he's okay with).

The score, not credited in the film (unless there were end credits which were cut off), is credited on IMDb to Hal Mooney & Milton Rosen (Milton's last score, according to IMDb).
It's confusing, it took two people to do ONE cue? That's right -- that's all there was in the film. A drum and snare piece; maybe they were both playing it.
I suspect the film had more score, but they just dropped all of it sans that one small cue. The film needed score badly.

This isn't a "Take it or leave it", it's just a LEAVE IT. Don't waste your time.